This article examines the migration and expropriation policies of Guatemala's revolutionary governments toward Germans present in the country during the postwar years and the start of the Cold War. It reconstructs the challenges around the domestic and international articulations of their strategy. Revolutionary governments’ concerted efforts to confiscate valuable land and condition the return of German-Guatemalans classified as ‘dangerous’ can be interpreted as part of a cohesive plan to regain control of strategic domestic resources for future redistribution. It also reflects financial policies that have both electoral and financial purposes. The article is built around newly available judicial, legislative, and consular (France) Guatemalan sources, along with personal letters from Guatemala's top politicians, and complemented by Mexican, Chilean, Argentine, British, and US diplomatic documents. In methodological terms, this article shows the importance of articulating long-term processes, here the nineteenth-century German presence in Guatemala, in the context of historical junctures such as the end of World War II and the beginning of the Cold War. It also draws attention to the importance of analyzing events on domestic, regional and global scales to understand foreign policy-making. This article enriches an already complex set of global, regional, and domestic interactions of the postwar period, as well as the role of Guatemala during that time.

本文探讨了战后和冷战开始期间危地马拉革命政府对境内德国人的移民和征用政策。它围绕其战略的国内和国际表述重建了挑战。革命政府齐心协力没收宝贵的土地，并为被列为“危险”的德裔危地马拉人返回提供条件，这可以被解释为重新控制国内战略资源以供未来重新分配的整体计划的一部分。它还反映了具有选举和金融目的的金融政策。本文围绕新获得的危地马拉司法、立法和领事（法国）消息来源，以及危地马拉高级政界人士的私人信件，并辅以墨西哥、智利、阿根廷、英国和美国的外交文件。从方法论的角度来看，本文展示了在第二次世界大战结束和冷战开始等历史关头的背景下阐明长期进程的重要性，这里是十九世纪德国在危地马拉的存在。它还提请人们注意分析国内、区域和全球范围内的事件以了解外交政策制定的重要性。本文丰富了战后时期本已复杂的全球、区域和国内互动，以及危地马拉在此期间的作用。