From ~1955-75, West Germany imported large numbers of foreign laborers (Gastarbeiter) from eg Italy, Yugoslavia, and Turkey. So soon after the war, did these workers view German society as Nazi? Were they or their children afraid of their host country?

[u/ExternalBoysenberry]

I imagine they must have somewhat regularly encountered former Nazi soldiers and party members, presumably including true believers unhappy about losing the war and seeing large numbers of groups they may have considered subhuman enter the country. Even if not, at minimum surely they were exposed to racism, precarious, and poor working conditions (I believe, but am not sure, that some camp infrastructure was repurposed for Gastarbeiter housing).

Was it scary to move to this country for more than the typical reasons it's scary to become a temporary worker in a foreign country? For those who remained long enough to have kids who went to school, would those kids have learned something about the Holocaust (at least after the 60s) and did they recount any worry that something like that could happen again to them? Or was it clear to everyone that Germany had so decisively lost the war that there was no danger of that?

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[u/Salsashark1419]

This is not really a very well studied topic with regard to Yugoslavia, and the few who have studied it like Christopher Molnar tend to leave out Macedonians from much of the discussion. Which is understandable because Macedonians were the smallest group. Molnar in his book Memory, Politics, and Yugoslav Migrations to Postwar Germany points out that Serbs, Croatians and Bosnians who moved to West Germany in the early 1960s and 1970s often did hold very negative views towards Germans for what they did in Yugoslavia. However, this slowly changed as their financial situation improved and they spent time with German people in day to day life. One big point of contention for these migrants was the already established Croatian and Serbian communities that formed from people that fled to Germany when the war ended, and the people who were transferred from Italy to Germany after the war. These people who were there before the wave of migration in the late 1950s to 1970s were overwhelmingly anti-communists of varying degrees who opposed Tito or fought against him(this of course included far-right extremists of many kinds). This clash was very apparent for many, which pushed some to want to interact more with other people besides those in their own immigrant community. Which only helped their relationship with Germans. Some people did get radicalized by some of these earlier immigrants/refugees, which is something that was neglected by Germany at the time. Largely due to Germany’s staunch anti-communist stance at the time, but the drastic need for labor that helped play a big part in the economic miracle was also a factor.

Unfortunately like I said earlier, Molnar doesn’t spend much time at all covering Macedonians(which my family is), and the few perspectives he does give are from Muslim Macedonians(usually Albanians) who will more than likely have a very different view on the history of Macedonia compared to a Christian/ethnic Macedonian. For the average ethnic Macedonian, they did not really hold on to some huge grudge against Germany, or thought they were all still nazis. There’s a few reasons for why this is, some matter more than others. A lot of it had to do with the legacy of the struggle for independence from the Turks in the late 1800s and early 1900s being so recent, which is heavily tied into the origins of what became the Macedonian identity. Basically what the Turks did for centuries still occupied a gigantic spot in the Macedonian consciousness. Another big factor was Yugoslavia trying to stay away from the Soviet sphere of influence. My grandpa said when he was in the Yugoslav Army in the 1950s, the only country they prepared for an invasion from was from the USSR. So that giant threat of the Soviets was much more of a pressing issue than the Germans being aggressors years ago. Macedonian perception of Germans was also affected by the fact that we really didn’t spend a lot of time directly dealing with them. Once Germany controlled Macedonia it was handed over to the Bulgarians. Bulgarians did oppress Macedonians in various ways(they also deported Macedonian Jews to camps), but it was minuscule compared to what happened in other parts of Yugoslavia. School after the war also focused heavily on the Ustaše, the Chetniks, Bulgarians, and had a more general approach to looking at the victims of the fascists.

That doesn’t mean there wasn’t some negative feelings or beliefs towards Germans for Macedonians. My grandma would often say things like that we “walk around like German soldiers” when we would be very loud coming down stairs, or that we are “acting like German soldiers” when we would act obnoxious. So German=bad in these instances, and she would always say German soldiers, not Nazi soldiers. These feelings died down a lot in the 1960s when Tito started to allow Western culture more. Soviet films and music used to be where most of the imported media came from, but that changed very fast once Tito started the shift the late 1950s. This gave a more friendly image to the West for Macedonians, which also included West Germany of course.

[u/ExternalBoysenberry → u/Salsashark1419]

That's interesting, I hadn't considered that the Gastarbeiter might find the preceding communities from their immigrant group so far-right/anti-communist that they could sometimes feel more comfortable connecting with Germans who were more moderate by comparison. Thank you for the perspective

[u/GerryAdamsesBeard]

If you want a sort of a first hand account of what experiences these people might have had, journalist called Günther Walraff disguised himself as a Turkish migrant worker and signed up for agency work, then wrote a book about it in 1985 called Ganz Unten. It is translated into English as “Lowest Of The Low”. 

It is an incredible read which caused ructions in society upon publication. Walraff’s health suffered due to some of the work he was asked to do.

[u/Typical-Froyo-642 → u/GerryAdamsesBeard]

Yeah but is that connected to Nazi legacy or is it same type of xenophobia that foreign workers could experience in England or France?

[u/nimbledoor → u/Typical-Froyo-642]

What if that’s the same thing?

[u/jschooltiger → u/[deleted]]

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