The Children of the Occupations Born During the Second World War and Beyond - An Overview

"Kinder der Besatzung: Zweiter Weltkrieg und andere Konflikte - ein Uberblick". This paper will give an overview of one facet of the large research field of children born of war, namely children fathered by foreign soldiers and local mothers in different European countries during and after the Second World War. During this particular conflict, millions of soldiers of different nationalities were stationed in different countries - world wide - often for a considerable amount of time either in preparation of warfare (e.g. Americans and Canadians soldiers in Britain), during military operations in the enemy country (Germans soldiers in Eastern Europe, France, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Greece etc.) or after the defeated countries' surrenders (e.g. American, Soviet, French and British soldiers in Germany and Austria). In a second step, we will discuss how knowledge obtained through the analysis of children born of WWII may contribute to our understanding of specific problems of children born of war generally, and in recent and present day conflicts in particular. Finally, we will introduce some methodological considerations of relevance for the research field of children born of war across time and nations and define issues for future research agendas.