Conferences

During and after the Second World War, American soldiers were stationed in Europe, most notably in Great Britain during the period of preparation for the opening of the Second Front in 1944, and in Germany during the post-war occupation and later the stationing of so-called ‘support troops. In both cases, the situation of stationed troops was that of friendly (or at least not enemy) soldiers with more or less frequent contact with the indigenous population. In both cases, contact between American soldiers and local women resulted in relationships of varying degrees of intimacy; these relationships ranged from entirely voluntary relations to those involving different degrees of coercion; and in both cases a significant number of these liaisons resulted in the birth of children.

The fate of children varied, and the aim of this research is to investigate differences and similarities of the children’s experiences among others depending on

* Where and when they were conceived * Whether the parents married, or whether they grew up in single-parent families, or were adopted either by third parties or one parent’s family * Whether the children were of single-race or bi-racial decent * Whether the children stayed in their mother’s or their father’s home country * Whether the children knew about their father’s background or not

The proposed presentation will outline the state of research in this broader field of field and it will present the work in progress relating to this particular comparative project with focus on working hypotheses, preliminary results and specific methodological problems encountered in the research.