This project explores the post-war reconstruction of social order in Poland and Czechoslovakia. Focusing on the conduct and control of the plundering of property left by Germans in Central Europe in the wake of their so-called flight and expulsion at the end of the Second World War, the study analyzes the attempts that were made to reinstate ownership, security, and justice in both societies. The re-establishment of these basic tenets of social order in the period of transition from the Nazi occupation to communist rule has been investigated as a relational process. The project studies, therefore, how the state reclaimed its authority; how the relationship between the state and society was re-shaped in this process; and how values and norms regulating social coexistence were negotiated in everyday life. This approach allows the conventional division between the social and the political to be transcended. It is hoped that in this way the project can open a new perspective on the post-war history of Central Europe.