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Racist Hysteria to Pragmatic Rapprochement? The German Debate about Rhenish ‘Occupation Children’, 1920–30

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 April 2013

JULIA ROOS
JULIA ROOS*
Affiliation:
Department of History, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA; roos@indiana.edu
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Abstract

This essay revisits 1920s German debates over the illegitimate children of the Rhineland occupation to examine hitherto neglected fluctuations in the relationship between nationalism and racism in Weimar Germany. During the early 1920s, nationalist anxieties focused on the alleged racial ‘threats’ emanating from the mixed-race children of colonial French soldiers. After 1927, plans for the forced sterilisation and deportation of the mixed-race children were dropped; simultaneously, officials began to support German mothers’ paternity suits against French soldiers. This hitherto neglected shift in German attitudes towards the ‘Rhineland bastards’ sheds new light on the role of debates over gender and the family in the process of Franco–German rapprochement. It also enhances our understanding of the contradictory political potentials of popularised foreign policy discourses about women's and children's victimisation emerging from World War I.

De l'hystérie raciste au rapprochement pragmatique? le débat allemand sur les ‘enfants de l'occupation’ en rhénanie, 1920–1930

Cette étude réexamine les débats suscités dans l'Allemagne des années 1920 par les enfants illégitimes de l'occupation de la Rhénanie et étudie l’évolution du rapport entre nationalisme et racisme sous la République de Weimar, sujet encore peu approfondi. Au début des années 1920, ce sont surtout les soi-disant ‘dangers’ raciaux que pouvaient représenter les enfants métis des soldats français des colonies qui suscitaient des inquiétudes à caractère nationaliste. Après 1927, avec l'abandon des initiatives pour la stérilisation forcée et la déportation des enfants métis, l'administration a commencé à encourager les mères allemandes à intenter des procès en paternité contre des soldats français. Ce changement d'attitude envers les ‘bâtards rhénans’ en Allemagne, encore peu étudié, apporte un nouvel éclairage sur le rôle des débats sur le genre et la famille dans le cadre du rapprochement franco-allemand. Il nous permet en outre de mieux comprendre le potentiel politique contradictoire des discours de politique étrangère sur la victimisation des femmes et des enfants à l'issue de la Première Guerre mondiale.

Von der rassistischen hysterie zur pragmatischen annäherung? die deutsche debatte über die rheinländische ‘besatzungskinder’, 1920–30

Dieser Beitrag untersucht die in der Weimarer Republik geführten Debatten über die unehelichen Kinder kolonialer französischer Besatzungssoldaten auf bislang vernachlässigte Schwankungen im damals bestehenden Verhältnis zwischen Nationalismus und Rassismus. Während der frühen zwanziger Jahre konzentrierten sich die nationalistischen Ängste auf die vermeintliche ‘rassische Bedrohung’, die von gemischtrassigen Kindern französischer Väter kolonialer Herkunft ausging. Nach 1927 wurden Pläne zur Zwangssterilisierung und Deportation dieser sogenannten ‘Rheinlandbastarde’ jedoch verworfen. Zugleich begannen Beamte die Vaterschaftsklagen deutscher Mütter gegen französische Soldaten zu unterstützen. Dieser bislang vernachlässigte Einstellungswandel lässt die Rolle der Debatten um Geschlecht und Familie im deutsch-französischen Annäherungsprozess in einem neuen Licht erscheinen. Er trägt zudem zu einem besseren Verständnis der widersprüchlichen politischen Potenziale popularisierter außenpolitischer Diskurse bei, die im Anschluss an den Ersten Weltkrieg die Opferstellung und Verletzlichkeit von Frauen und Kindern fokussierten.

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Articles
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Contemporary European History , Volume 22 , Issue 2 , May 2013 , pp. 155 - 180
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013

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References

1 Dr Franz Rosenberger, ‘Gefahr der Mulattisierung’, Münchner Neueste Nachrichten no. 163, 18 April 1922, in Bundesarchiv Berlin (BArch) R 1603 (Rheinische Volkspflege)/2221.

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4 Erica Kuhlman talks about the debate about the illegitimate German children of American occupation soldiers, yet does not link this debate to the one over the mixed-race ‘Rhineland bastards’. See Kuhlman, Erica, Reconstructing Patriarchy after the Great War: Women, Gender, and Post-war Reconciliation between Nations (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 32–3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

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7 Campt, Other Germans, 28. See also Tina Campt, Pascal Grosse and Yara-Colette Lemke-Muniz de Faria, ‘Blacks, Germans, and the Politics of Imperial Imagination, 1920–60’, in Friedrichsmeyer et al., The Imperialist Imagination, 205–29.

8 Maß, Weiße Helden, 213, 130; on German fears of being ‘colonised’, see also Baranowski, Shelley, Nazi Empire: German Colonialism and Imperialism from Bismarck to Hitler (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 113–5.Google Scholar

9 See also Scheck, Raffael, Hitler's African Victims: The German Army Massacres of Black French Soldiers in 1940 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).Google Scholar

10 Pommerin, ‘Sterilisierung’, 30–2. On the debate over a sterilisation law in the Weimar Republic, see Hong, Young-Sun, Welfare, Modernity, and the Weimar State, 1919–1933 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), 254–64.Google Scholar

11 The lack of more comprehensive analyses of the history of the Rhenish occupation children of the 1920s is particularly striking when compared to the significant scholarship on German and French occupation children born during and after World War II. Especially Fehrenbach, Heide, Race after Hitler: Black Occupation Children in Post-War Germany and America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005)Google Scholar; Virgili, Fabrice, Naître ennemi: Les enfants de couples franco-allemands nés pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale (Paris: Payot, 2009)Google Scholar; and Zahra, Tara, The Lost Children: Reconstructing Europe's Families after World War II (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 On some of the tensions between the campaign's extreme racism and more conventional nationalist objectives, see Roos, Julia, ‘Nationalism, Racism, and Propaganda in Early Weimar Germany: Contradictions in the Campaign against the “Black Horror on the Rhine”,’ German History, 30, 1 (March 2012), 45–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 For linguistic analyses, see Wigger, ‘Schwarze Schmach’; and Sneeringer, Julia, Winning Women's Votes: Propaganda and Politics in Weimar Germany (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2002)Google Scholar, esp. 46–7, 67–8.

14 Letter, Dr von Dryander to the Reich Minister for the Occupied Territories, 12 Feb. 1927, in BArch Reichsministerium für die besetzten Gebiete (R 1601)/2234.

15 Reich Minister for the Occupied Territories to Dr Dryander, 23 Feb. 1927, in BArch R 1601/2234.

16 On the German campaign against France's colonial troops during World War I, see Koller, ‘Von Wilden aller Rassen’, 103–51.

17 On Eberlein, see Gerhard Gräber and Matthias Spindler, Revolverrepublik am Rhein: Die Pfalz und ihre Separatisten, Vol. 1: November 1918–November 1923 (Landau: Pfälzische Verlagsanstalt, 1992), 74. On Beveridge, see Wigger, ‘Schwarze Schmach’, 56–66.

18 Eberlein's telegram to Beveridge, 30 Nov. 1920, in Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv (BayHStA) Haupthilfsstelle Pfalz (HHStPf) no. 45.

19 Beveridge, Ray, Die schwarze Schmach – Die weiße Schande (Hamburg: F. W. Rademacher, 1922).Google Scholar

20 Ibid., 14.

21 Ibid., 22.

22 Letter, Beveridge to Eberlein, 8 Dec. 1920, in BayHStA HHStPf no. 43.

23 Beveridge, Schwarze Schmach, inside of cover.

24 Richard Delbrueck, ‘Aufzeichnung über die Propaganda gegen die farbigen Truppen im Rheinland’, 28 Feb. 1921, Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amts (PAAA) Politische Abteilung II: Besetztes Rheinland (R) 74.419.

25 Letter, the German legationary in Stockholm, Nadolny, to the foreign office in Berlin, 19 Nov. 1923, in PAAA R74.424.

26 Liljeblad, Martin, The World's Shame at the Rhine, 4th edn (Hålsingborg: Schmidt, 1924), 29–30Google Scholar.

27 Ibid., 34.

28 During the early 1920s, an average of about 25,000 colonial soldiers formed part of the French army of the Rhine; this amounted to roughly 30% of all French occupation troops. Maß, Weiße Helden, 79; and Le Naour, Honte Noire, 73.

29 Oberlandesgericht Zweibrücken, ‘Übersicht über die Zahl der unehelichen Kinder in der Pfalz, die von Besatzungsangehörigen stammen’, March 1927, in BArch R 1601/2234.

30 Letter, Heinrich von Friedberg to Albrecht Graf von Bernstorff, 9 Feb. 1931, in PAAA R 74.424.

31 Report on ‘Uneheliche Kinder farbiger Besatzungsangehöriger’ by the Oberlandesgerichtspräsident Düsseldorf to the Prussian minister of justice, 1 Sept. 1923, in PAAA R 74.424. On the legal status of illegitimate children in Weimar Germany, see Mouton, Michelle, From Nurturing the Nation to Purifying the Volk: Weimar and Nazi Family Policy, 1918–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 199–212CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Crew, David F., Germans on Welfare: From Weimar to Hitler (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 123–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hong, Welfare, 78–80; and Dickinson, Edward Ross, The Politics of German Child Welfare from the Empire to the Federal Republic (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), 121–3.Google Scholar

32 On relations between French soldiers and Germans in the occupied Palatinate and the cultural dynamics of national stereotypes, see Kientiz, Sabine, ‘L'occupation française et la construction culturelle des différences nationales dans le Palatinat de 1918 à 1930’, in Histoire et sociétés: Revue européenne d'histoire sociale, 17 (2006), 32–43Google Scholar; and Kientiz, , ‘Mal Freund, mal Feind: Deutsch-französische Beziehungen im linksrheinischen Besatzungsalltag nach 1918’, in Johler, Reinhard, Raphaël, Freddy, Schlager, Claudia and Schmoll, Patrick, eds, Zwischen Krieg und Frieden: Die Konstruktion des Feindes (Tübingen: Tübinger Vereinigung für Volkskunde Verlag, 2009), 219–43Google Scholar. Kienitz suggests that the perceived exoticism of France's African soldiers played a major role in reinforcing German nationalists’ sense of insurmountable cultural differences between France and Germany: ‘Occupation française’, 39. On civilian interaction with colonial occupation soldiers, compare also Maß, Weiße Helden, 105–20. Violence directed against German women who (allegedly) had had sexual relations with foreign soldiers was also a feature of ‘passive resistance’ during the Franco-Belgian occupation of the Ruhr in 1923. See Krüger, Gerd, ‘“Wir wachen und strafen!”: Gewalt im Ruhrkampf von 1923’, in Der Schatten des Weltkrieges: Die Ruhrbesetzung 1923 (Essen: Klartext, 2004), 233–55Google Scholar; esp. 247–50.

33 ‘Amtlicher Teil’, Wormser Zeitung: Amtsblatt für die Bekanntmachungen sämtlicher Behörden des Kreises und der Stadt Worms, 144, 351 (15 July 1919), 1. In Stadtarchiv Worms (StdtAW) Abt. 13, no. 2281.

34 Report on the care for occupation children by Dr Schmitt to the Bavarian state commissioner for the Palatinate, 26 Nov. 1927 in Landesarchiv Speyer (LASp) Pfalzbesatzung und Separatistenbewegung (R12)/693.

35 ‘Bericht über die im Kreise St. Goar lebenden unehelichen Kinder von Besatzungstruppen und deutschen Frauen und Mädchen’, circa 1921, in LHAK Best. 441/19884. Unless otherwise noted, I have changed the names of the children and their relatives.

36 Internal memo, Bayerischer Vertreter bei dem Reichskommissar für die besetzten rheinischen Gebiete, 16 May 1920, in BayHStA Vertreter beim Reichskommissar für die besetzten Gebiete 8.

37 Report by Frau Held, 20 Jan. 1921, in BayHStA HHStPf no. 35.

38 Statement by the Regierungspräsident in Koblenz, 3 April 1922, in LHAK Best. 441 (Bezirksregierung Koblenz)/19884.

39 Mayor of Landau to the Bavarian state commissioner for the Palatinate, 16 July 1921, in BayHStA, HHStPf no. 63.

40 Mouton, From Nurturing, 202.

41 Pommerin, ‘Sterilisierung’, 30.

42 Dr Witte to the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Territories, 11 Jan. 1928, in BArch R 1601/2234.

43 Letter, Ministerialrat Meyer of the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Territories to Dr Witte, 17 Jan. 1928, in BArch R 1601/2234.

44 Timmermann, Annelise, Die Rheinlandbesetzung in ihrer Wirkung auf die Sozialausgaben der Städte (Berlin: Reimar Hobbing, 1930), 89.Google Scholar

45 Survey of out-of-wedlock children of occupation soldiers compiled by the Regierungspräsident Düsseldorf, circa spring 1930, in LHAK, Best. 403/14918.

46 On post-war stabilisation, see Steiner, Zara, The Lights That Failed: European International History, 1919–1933 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Cohrs, Patrick O., The Unfinished Peace after World War I: America, Britain, and the Stabilisation of Europe, 1919–1932 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006).CrossRefGoogle Scholar On Franco–German relations, see Nicolas Beaupré, Das Trauma des großen Krieges, 1918–1932/33, trans. Gaby Sonnabend, Deutsches Historisches Institut Paris, Deutsch-Französische Geschichte, vol. 8 (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2009), esp. 68–92 and 201–16, on détente.

47 Führ's letter to Eva Meyer, 27 April 1927, in BArch R 1601/2259.

48 Führ's letter to Eva Meyer, 25 June 1927, in BArch R 1601/2259.

49 Führ's letter to the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Territories, 4 Jan. 1930, in BArch R 1601/2259.

50 Letter, Count Adelmann, Reich commissioner for the occupied Rhenish territories, to the Regierungspräsident in Wiesbaden, 14 May 1927, in LHAK Best. 441/19884.

51 Letter, the Reich Minister for the Occupied Territories to the foreign office in Berlin, 25 June 1927, in BArch R 1601/2260.

52 Prussian minister of the interior to the Reich Minister for the Occupied Territories, 5 Feb. 1928, in BArch R 1601/2259.

53 Webler, Heinrich, ‘Besatzungskinder’, Zentralblatt für Jugendrecht und Jugendwohlfahrt, 22, 4 (July 1930), 126–8Google Scholar; statistics at 127.

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55 Report by the German foreign office, 19 Jan. 1928, in BArch R 1601/2259.

56 Report on English illegitimacy law, 3 Jan. 1930, Beckeridge and Braune, London, in BArch R 1601/2259. See also the undated typewritten summary of British and American illegitimacy laws in LHAK Best. 441/19884.

57 Fuchs, Rachel G., Contested Paternity: Constructing Families in Modern France (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008), 30Google Scholar; and Pedersen, Jean Elisabeth, Legislating the French Family: Feminism, Theater, and Republican Politics, 1870–1920 (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2003).Google Scholar

58 Fuchs, Contested Paternity, 123.

59 Letter, the Reich minister to Führ, 28 July 1927, in BArch R 1601/2260.

60 Becker's deposition, 29 Jan. 1929, in BArch R 1601/2260. The real name of the defendant suggests that he belonged to the pieds noirs with European ancestry rather than to Algeria's Muslim population. On differential citizenship in French Algeria, see Shepard, Todd, The Invention of Decolonization: The Algerian War and the Remaking of France (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006), 26–7Google Scholar. See also Fogarty, Richard S., Race and War in France: Colonial Subjects in the French Army, 1914–1918 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008).Google Scholar

61 Report by the office of the Cologne district president to the Prussian minister of the interior, 7 June 1927, in BArch R 1601/2260.

62 Führ's letter to the Regierungspräsident in Cologne, 7 Dec. 1927, in BArch R1601/2260.

63 On Article 1382, see Fuchs, Contested Paternity, 70, 297 n. 23.

64 Fuchs, Contested Paternity, 177.

65 Legal assessment composed by the German embassy in Paris, 17 April 1928, in BArch R 1601/2260.

66 ‘Rechtslage der unehelichen Kinder’, Badisch-Pfälzischer Landesdienst (Mannheim), 18 Feb. 1930, in LASp R 12/693.

67 Letter, Führ to the welfare and youth office in Euskirchen, 22 Jan. 1929, in BArch R1601/2260.

68 Court's letter, 11 May 1929, in BArch R1601/2260.

69 See Saingery's letter to Erich Becker, Hermine's brother and Jakob's legal guardian, 15 May 1929, in BArch R 1601/2260.

70 Statement by Hermine Becker given before the district court (Amtsgericht) in Euskirchen, 24 June 1929, in BArch R 1601/2260.

71 Dickinson, Politics, 121.

72 Führ's letter to Saingery, 3 July 1929, in BArch R 1601/2260.

73 Ruling of the civil court in Constantine, 26 Nov. 1929, in BArch R1601/2260.

74 ‘Kurze politische Nachrichten’, in Frankfurter Zeitung, 11 (5 Jan. 1930), in LASp R12/693.

75 Correspondence between the Reich Minister for the Occupied Territories and the French high commissioner for the French Republic in the Rhineland, 11 March and 9 April 1930, in BArch R 1601/2259.

76 ‘Tommys sind schlechte Väter – Ein Prozeß von prinzipieller Bedeutung’, Kölner Tageblatt, 5311 (19 Oct. 1929), in BArch R 1601/2259.

77 Johannes Bückler, ‘Pioniere von Ingelheim’, in Die Weltbühne, 25, 44 (29 Oct. 1929), 645–60.

78 ‘Wer bezahlt die Besatzungsalimente?’, Welt am Morgen, 50 (16 Dec. 1929), in BArch R 1601/2259. See also ‘Wer bezahlt die Besatzungs-Alimente?’, Bayerische Staatszeitung, 17 Dec. 1929, in LASp R12/693.

79 ‘Zwei Divisionen von Besatzungskindern’, Rheinische Zeitung, 352 (23 Dec. 1929), in BArch R 1601/2259.

80 Letter, the Reich Minister for the Occupied Territories to Führ, Jan. 1930, in BArch R 1601/2259.

81 On the nationalist politics of debates over children, see Zahra, Tara, Kidnapped Souls: National Indifference and the Battle for Children in the Bohemian Lands, 1900–1948 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2008).Google Scholar

82 Führ's letter to ‘Köhler’ in the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Territories, 4 Jan. 1930, in BArch R 1601/2259.

83 Letter, Erna Schulz to Führ, 22 Oct. 1929, in LASp R12/694.

84 Letter, Gerlinde Kuhn to Führ, 20 Dec. 1929, in BArch R 1601/2259. Kuhn mentioned that she read about Führ's involvement in paternity suits against occupation soldiers in the newspaper. See also the other letters by unwed mothers in this folder.

85 Letter to the foreign office, 2 Jan. 1930, in BArch R 1601/2259.

86 ‘Arbeitsbericht des Archivs für Berufsvormünder’, Zentralblatt für Jugendfürsorge und Jugendwohlfahrt, 22, 11 (Feb. 1931), 369–72.

87 Letter, ‘Deters’ of the Archiv für Berufsvormünder to Dr Führ, 23 Dec. 1929, in BArch R 1601/2259.

88 Correspondence between the French military command and the Archiv für Berufsvormünder of Nov. 1929 in PAAA R. 74.425. In this case, I decided to abbreviate rather than change the father's name.

89 The collaboration between German and French officials in the effort to locate the French fathers of German out-of-wedlock children may well have been indicative of significant shifts in inter-war attitudes towards masculinity and fatherhood. Unfortunately, the sources say relatively little about the fathers’ own viewpoints and motivations. Within the limited scope of this article, it was not possible to include an analysis of the paternity suits from the perspective of the history of fatherhood.

90 Harris, Especially Ruth, ‘“Child of the Barbarian”: Rape, Race, and Nationalism in France during the First World War’, Past and Present, 141 (1993), 170–206CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gullace, Nicoletta F., ‘Sexual Violence and Family Honour: British Propaganda and International Law during the First World War’, American Historical Review, 102 (1997), 714–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Grayzel, Susan R., Women's Identities at War: Gender, Motherhood, and Politics in Britain and France during the First World War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999)Google Scholar. On post-war repercussions, see Kent, Susan Kingsley, Making Peace: The Reconstruction of Gender in Inter-war Britain (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993)Google Scholar; and Kuhlman, Reconstructing Patriarchy.

91 Gullace, ‘Sexual Violence’, 725, 747.

92 Grayzel, Women's Identities, 85.

93 Kent, Making Peace, 141.

94 Marjorie Levine-Clark, ‘From “Relief”, to “Justice and Protection”: The Maintenance of Deserted Wives, British Masculinity and Imperial Citizenship, 1870–1920’, Gender and History, 22, 2 (2010), 302–21, 315.

95 For instance, the theme of national ‘pollution’ through mass rapes committed by ‘racially inferior’ enemy soldiers figured prominently in the French wartime debate over what to do with the ‘children of the barbarians’, children born to French mothers who had been raped by German troops. Compare Harris, ‘“Child of the Barbarian”’; and Audoin-Rouzeau, Stéphane, L'enfant de l'ennemi, 1914–1918 (Paris: Aubier, 1995)Google Scholar. On select borrowing from wartime anti-German propaganda, see Koller, Christian, ‘Enemy Images: Race and Gender Stereotypes in the Discussion on Colonial Troops. A Franco–German Comparison’, in Hagemann, Karen and Schüler-Springorum, Stefanie, eds, Home/Front: The Military, War and Gender in Twentieth-Century Germany (Oxford: Berg, 2002), 139–57Google Scholar, esp. 143; and Anja Schüler, The ‘Horror on the Rhine’: Rape, Racism, and the International Women's Movement, John F. Kennedy-Institut für Nordamerikastudien Working Paper no. 86 (Berlin, 1996), 2. I am grateful to Rebecca Spang for drawing my attention to some of the ‘copy-cat’ aspects of black horror propaganda. On ‘colonial themes’ in the First World War atrocity propaganda, see John Horne and Kramer, Alan, German Atrocities 1914: A History of Denial (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), 221–3Google Scholar. Compare also van Hoesen, Brett M., ‘Visualising the Enemy: The Rhineland Controversy and Weimar Postcolonialism’, in Eley, Geoff and Naranch, Bradley, eds, German Cultures of Colonialism: Race, Nation, and Globalization, 1884–1945 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, forthcoming)Google Scholar.

96 Bland, Lucy, ‘White Women and Men of Colour: Miscegenation Fears in Britain after the Great War’, Gender and History, 17, 1 (April 2005), 29–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Camiscioli, Elisa, Reproducing the French Race: Immigration, Intimacy, and Embodiment in the Early Twentieth Century (Durham, NC: Duke University, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

97 As shown above, during the late 1920s nationalism continued to play a major role in the German debate over the Rhenish occupation children. To the extent that official Franco–German collaboration on the matter of child support moved beyond the rigid national hatreds of wartime, it may have contributed to what John Horne has called the process of ‘cultural demobilisation’. See Horne, John, ‘Kulturelle Demobilmaching 1919–1939: Ein sinnvoller historischer Begriff?’, in Hardtwig, Wolfgang, ed., Politische Kulturgeschichte der Zwischenkriegszeit (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2005), 129–50Google Scholar; see also Beaupré, Trauma, esp. 181–3.

98 The contrast to the period following the Second World War period is striking. If in the late 1920s, the welfare of German occupation children became a matter conducive to Franco–German rapprochement, after 1945, French authorities often considered such children ‘spoils of war’. During the mid- and late 1940s, French officials set up an ambitious adoption scheme for the illegitimate German children of French soldiers to replenish the French nation and ward off the threat of German ‘overpopulation’. Compare Virgili, Naître ennemi, Ch. 9; and Zahra, Lost Children, Ch. 5.