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A Forgotten Legacy of the Second World War: GI children in post-war Britain and Germany

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 April 2011

SABINE LEE
SABINE LEE*
Affiliation:
Department of Modern History, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2TT; [email protected]
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Abstract

Whether in war, occupation or peacekeeping, whenever foreign soldiers are in contact with the local population, and in particular with local women, some of these contacts are intimate. Between 1942 and 1945, US soldiers fathered more than 22,000 children in Britain, and during the first decade of post-war US presence in West Germany more than 37,000 children were fathered by American occupation soldiers. Many of these children were raised in their mothers’ families, not knowing about their biological roots and often suffering stigmatisation and discrimination. The question of how these children were treated is discussed in the context of wider social and political debates about national and individual identity. Furthermore, the effect on the children of living outside the normal boundaries of family and nation is discussed.

Un héritage oublié de la seconde guerre mondiale: les enfants des soldats américains en grande-bretagne et l'allemagne

Que ce soit en temps de guerre, d'occupation ou de maintien de la paix, chaque fois que des soldats étrangers sont en contact avec la population locale, et en particulier avec les femmes locales, certains de ces contacts sont intimes. Entre 1942 et 1945, les GI américains ont engendré plus de 22000 enfants en Grande-Bretagne, et pendant la première décennie de la présence américaine en Allemagne de l'Ouest, après la guerre, plus de 37000 enfants ont été engendrés par des soldats de l'occupation américaine. Beaucoup de ces enfants ont été élevés dans la famille de leur mère, ne sachant rien de leurs racines biologiques et souvent souffrant de stigmatisation et de discrimination. La question de savoir comment ces enfants ont été traités est examinée dans le contexte plus large des débats sociaux et politiques sur l'identité nationale et individuelle, le rôle des enfants dans l'après-guerre. En outre, l'effet sur les enfants du fait de vivre en dehors des limites normales de la famille et la nation est discuté.

Ein vergessenes vermächtnis des zweiten weltkriegs: kinder von gis in großbritannien und deutschland in der nachkriegszeit

Ob in Krieg, Besatzung oder während UN Friedenssicherungsmassnahmen, wenn fremde Soldaten in Kontakt mit der lokalen Bevölkerung, und insbesondere mit einheimischen Frauen, treten, sind einige dieser Kontakte intim. Zwischen 1942 und 1945, als sich US Truppen in Großbritannien auf den Einsatz im Kampf gegen das Hitlerregime vorbereiteten, wurden dort mehr als 22000 Kinder von GIs gezeugt. Während des ersten Jahrzehnts der amerikanischen Besatzung eines Teils Westdeutschlands hinterliessen die Besatzer mehr als 37000 Kinder. Viele von ihnen wuchsen in den Familien ihrer Mütter auf, ohne ihre biologischen Wurzeln zu kennen. Oft litten sie unter Stigmatisierung und Diskriminierung. Die Frage, wie diese Kinder behandelt wurden, wird im Kontext der breiteren sozialen und politischen Debatten über nationale und individuelle Identität untersucht, die Rolle von Kindern in der Nachkriegszeit. Darüberhinaus wird beleuchtet, wie das Aufwachsen außerhalb der normalen Grenzen von Familie und Nation auch mittel- und langfristig Einfluß auf die Lebenswege der Kinder des Krieges genommen hat.

Type
Articles
Information
Contemporary European History , Volume 20 , Issue 2 , May 2011 , pp. 157 - 181
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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References

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28 An interesting account of this is found in Miss P. Arnold, diary 88/3/1, Imperial War Museum.

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46 Extract from archival record held by HF Holidays Ltd., the organisation that subsequently leased the property.

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48 Records about the Home, kept at Somerset Record Office, C/CHI/23, are still closed.

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59 Hazel Carby, in the 2006 Dean's Lecture at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies, recalls her own childhood experiences as a (non-adopted) half-caste and powerfully describes the feeling of ‘otherness’ in what she refers of British racialised society. Hazel B. Carby, ‘Brown Babies: The Birth of Britain as a Racialized State, 1943–1948’, 2 Nov. 2006, http://www.radcliffe.edu/print/events/calendar_2006carby.htm (last visited 10 May 2010).

60 Robbie W. commenting on his childhood in Winfield, Bye Bye Baby, 98.

61 Memo, Hqs, ETOUSA, for Gen Eisenhower, sub: Strength of the U.S. Forces, 30 April 45, in USFET SGS 320.3/2. See also Ziemke, Earl F., The US Army in the Occupation of Germany 1944–1946, Washington, DC: Center of Military History, United States Army (1990)Google Scholar; the American occupation of post-war Germany has been scrutinised beyond the purely military in detail elsewhere. See, for instance, Henke, Klaus Dietmar, Die amerikanische Besatzung Deutschlands (Munich: Oldenbourg, 1995)Google Scholar; McAllister, James, No Exit: America and the German Problem, 1943–1954 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002)Google Scholar.

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66 Another example is an occupation booklet of 1945 titled ‘Don't Be a Sucker in Germany’, http://www.3ad.com/history/wwll/feature.pages/occupation.booklet.htm (last visited 06 May 2010). Distributed to troops in May 1945, this fifteen-page booklet was the 12th Army Group's basic primer for GIs as occupiers. One section on ‘Women’ included: ‘German women have been trained to seduce you. Is it worth a knife in the back?’

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82 See also Luise Frankenstein, Soldatenkinder: Die unehelichen Kinder ausländischer Soldaten mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Mischlinge (Munich: Wilhelm Steinbach, 1954); Waldemar Oelrich, ‘Die unehelichen Besatzungskinder der Jahrgänge 1945 bis 1954 in Baden-Württemberg’, Statistische Monatshefte Baden-Württemberg, 2 (1956), 38–9.

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85 This has been investigated specifically for Austria in Ingrid Bauer, ‘The GI War Bride – Place Holder for the Absent? (De)constructing a Stereotype of Post-World War II Austrian History, 1945–55’, Homme: Zeitschrift fur Feministische Geschichtswissenschaft, 7, 1 (1996), 107–21.

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105 Survey poll, cited in Peter H. Koepf, ‘An Unexpected Freedom’, The Atlantic Times, 1 April 2009.

106 Koepf, ‘Unexpected Freedom’.

107 For details, see Irene Dilloo's letter to Ebony, April 1960, 20.

108 The activities of Irene Dilloo are well documented in the Bundesarchiv, See BAK: B153/342 and in the Archiv des Diakonischen Werkes der Evangelischen Kirche Deutschlands (ADW), HGSt1161 and 1193.

109 See, for example, the story of Udo Ackermann, ‘I Am a Miracle’, http://truemovies.com/forum/tm.aspx?m=1021&mpage=1&key=&#1021 (last visited 11 May 2010).

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115 Fehrenbach, Race, 149.

116 For details, see Fehrenbach, Race, 132–7 and 232, note 7.

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118 See http://www.grammerchildren.com/ (last visited 26 Oct. 2010).

119 Stephanie Siek, ‘The Difficult Identities of Germany's Brown Babies’, Spiegel Online International, 13 Oct. 2009, http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,651989,00.html (last visited 8 Jan. 2010).

120 ‘Mammies für die Negerlein’, Stern, 27 Aug. 1950, 29; and ‘Mammies für die Negerlein’, Stern, 2 March 1952, 8; see also Correspondence from the editors of Revue to the State Youth Welfare Office, Marktredwitz, 22 Feb. 1952, BayHStA, MInn 81096.

121 Fehrenbach, Race, 140ff.

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125 United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, ‘Psychological Problems of Displaced Persons’, June 1945, cited in Zahra, ‘Lost Children’, 47.

126 Ibid., 50, 56, 72.

127 Bessel, Richard and Schumann, Dirk, eds., Life after Death: Approaches to a Cultural and Social History of Europe during the 1940s and 1950s (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

128 Harold Moody to Aneurin Bevan, March 1946, MH55/1656, TNA.

129 Simonsen, ‘Into the Open’, 48.