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Children were a special category of displaced persons after the War. The only more tragic aspect than the number of displaced children, was the huge number of children killed in the War. This was not just the colateral damage of the War, but Axis genocidal policies. And the NAZIs as part of its genicidal policies actually specifically targeted children. The survivors was a heart wrenching one and difficult to deal with because so many children were separated from their parents. Often the parents were killed in the War. Others were seized and transported to the Reich for slave labor. No provision were made for any dependants left behind, both children and the elderly. As part of the NAZI Hunger Plan these people were to be left to starve. The Germans did not feed slave and forced workers adequately. They had no desire to feed 'non-workers'. Jewish childrern were a special category, but very few managed to survive. Children were especially vulnerable to the Holocaust. The children were not only the most vulnerable, but actully targeted by the Germans as part of the Holocaust killing plan. Children were also caught up in German anti-partisan campaigns. Many children were affected by the loss of their parents. This could be because their parents were killed in the fighting or caught up in NAZI sweeps to secure forced labor for the war industries. Some children were kidnapped by the NAZIs as part of the SS Lebensborn porogram. Other had fathers who were soldiers and killed in the War or held as POWs after the War. In Eastern Europe there were often no organized group to assist them because of German occupation policies. As the War turned against the Axis, we begin to see displaced children in those countries as well. There were, however, the most likely children to survive because Allied war policies were not genocidal in nature and there were programs in those countries to aid children both duing and after the War.
The NAZIs as part of their genocidal policies actually specifically targeted children. The survivors was a heart wrenching one and difficult to deal with because so many children were separated from their parents. Often the parents were killed in the War. Others were seized and transported to the Reich for slave labor. No provision were made for any dependants left behind, both children and the elderly. As part of the NAZI Hunger Plan these people were to be left to starve. The Germans did not feed slave and forced workers adequately. They had no desire to feed 'non-workers'. Hitler appointed Ernst Friedrich Christoph "Fritz" Sauckel, Gauleiter of Thuringia, as General Plenipotentiary for Labour Deployment (1942). He ws ordered to solve the labor shortage in the Reich. While Jews who could have solvd much of the problem were being killed, Sauckel began sending workers from the occupied territories into the Reich. In the west this was done beaureacatically and individuals were conscripted abd orderd to report for transport. In the east, indivisuals were commonly rounded up by surrounding movie theaters or whole city blocks. They were thus much less slective about who went into the rail cars. Speer complains that large numbers of ill and poorly suited individuals arribed. It is likely that Sauckel's men included younger teenagers in these sweeps, but we do not think many very young children.
Jewish childrern were a special category, but very few managed to survive. Children were especially vulnerable to the Holocaust. The children were not only the most vulnerable, but actully targeted by the Germans as part of the Holocaust killing plan. Jewish children were the most vulnerable of all and died in the greatest proportion. They were the most vulnerable and had no economic value which the NAZIs could exploit. Even more importantly, they also were the seed for the future of the Jewish people. The NAZIs also saw them as a force for future retribution if they were not killed. The NAZIs are estimated to have murdered over a million Jewish children. One can not forget the images of the starving Jewish children on the Warsaw Ghetto whose parents had been killed. A great body of literature exists on the Holocaust including the experiences of the children. some of the children were killed by SS Einsatzgruppen in mass executions with their parents in Poland and on a larger scale in the Soviet Union. Most were forced into gettoes where those without parents often starved. Then they were deported and died in the various NAZI transit, labor, or death camps. Some Jewish children managed to survive the Holocaust by hiding, emmigrating (often without their family), or concealing the fact that they were Jewish. When asked after the War why they killed the chilldren, a ranking SS officer told his interviewers that was a stupid question. Of course it was a question from an American that had not yet full come to terms with the evil of the Holocaust. The children were not a messy consequence of killing the adults, Killing the children was the heart and soul of the NAZI effort to destroy the Jewish people. And the NAZIs were terrifyingly effective. It is estimated that about 90 percent of the Jewish children in the occupied were killed by the NAZIs. Survival was not random. Survival depeneded on who you were, where you were from, gender, age, health, appearance and other factors.
Children were also caught up in German anti-partisan campaigns. Many children were affected by the loss of their parents. This could be because their parents were killed in the fighting or caught up in NAZI sweeps to pacify areas where Partisan were active. whole villages were burned to the ground and the people killed. This was not always the case. In some cases the women and children were spared. This varied from commander to commander. We note some of these children in German concentration camps in Poland. Some may have been transferred to the Reich asthe Red army drove west.
Racism was a key aspect of World War II. Racism was a primary factor within in the Axis military alliance. World War as conceived by Adolf Hitler was a racist war. Hitler clearly conceptualizes a great conflict against Jews and the only slightly more preverable Slavs. The Jews Hitler believed had to be purged from German life. This process ebolved into the Holocaust. Aat least some of the Slavs would be allowed to survive because slave labor was needed for the new Reich. And Hitler saw the war as not a German war, but an Aryan war. For this reason, the people of the Nordic countries, the Neterlands, and the British would fit into the new Aryan nation. Hitler was frustated at the beginning of the War because he found himself fighting the British and allied with the Soviets. What he wanted of course was to bee alied with the British and fighting the Soviets which he saw the worst possible combination of Jewish Bolshevicks overseeing the Slavic masses. Not all the people in Germany and racially acceptable countries were acceptable to Hitler. Gyneology became big business in Germany. To enter the SS one had to prove an Aryan ancestry back centuries. Had the NAZIs won the War, the SS would have evolved as a new aristocracy in Germany. The Japanese also had highly racist attitudes which showed in their treatment of Koreans, Chinese, and other subject peoples. Japanese attrocities are less publicized, but resulted in the deaths of even more people than fell victim to NAZI racist policies. Italy was less affected by racist notions. Italian Fascism rather emphasized Italian nationalism and cultureal identity, but Italy proved to be a largely ineffectual military partner in the Axis war effort. Racism was not, however, limited to the Axis. America entered the War as a still largely racist country. The South was still strictly seggregatated with black Americans denied civil rights and precvented from voting. America fought the War with a segregated military. The anti-Japanese prejudice of the time was often intense and was reflected in the disgraceful internment of Pacific-coast Japanese-Americans simply on grounds of their ethnicity. One interesting aspect is that with all this anti-Japanese feeling, it virtually disapperated after the War. And all kinds of restrictions on Asians as to citizenship, employment, iniversity admission also disappeared. It is a phenomenon I do not fully understand, but have been meaning to address. Such overt descrimination did not exist in Britain, but Britain at the time did not have a substantial minority population. The situation in the colonies was different. The situation in the Soviet Union is more difficult to assess. Communist doctrine was race neutral which was one reason that it appealed to many Jews. Of course Communist neutrality on race does not mean that racist beliefs were no prevalent among Soviet officials.
Eugenics were a group of sciences aimed an controlling hereditary factors in an effort to improve the human race through biological and social means. It was by no means a NAZI creation. The principle that the white race was superior was widely accepted in both intellectual and mainstream thought in America and Europe during the 19th and early 20th century. After Darwin published his land mark principles of evolution, important writers in America and Europe began to develop a new science which they called eugenics. Many eugenic laws were passed in America and other countries, especially Protestant counties, aimed at sterilizing retarded individuals--often youths. The NAZIs in fact used American laws to justify their program, but built a much expanded program aimed at not only retarded children and adults, but physically handicapped children as well. At first the NAZI program focused on sterilization, but eventually it evolved into the T4 euthanasia program--state scantioned murders by medical personnel.
Some children were kidnapped by the NAZIs as part of the SS Lebensborn porogram. A counterpoint to the NAZI program of exterminating Jews and other groups considered to be sub-human was the Lebensborn program, a secret NAZI program to enrich German racial lines with pure Nordic Aryan blood. The Lebensborn program was a pet project of SS Reichsf�hrer Himmler. The program was launched in Germany in a small way to encourage and assist German girls to give birth to racially pure children, even if they were unmarried. We have noted some difference of opinion about the Lebensborn homes. After the Germans launched World War II and occupied large stretches of Eastern Europe, they proceeded to kidnap thousands of children who were deemed to be Aryan. Himmler indicated that these children had to be Germanized or killed because he though Aryan populations outside of the Reich were a threat. The Lebensborn program also affected other countries such as Norway--albeit on a smaller scale. Estimates suggest that 0.20-0.25 million children, mostly Polish, were eventually involved in this program. Only a small number were ever returned to their parents.
The public fears in the unter-Wae era camecto fruition the first day of WotldcWar II when thecGerman Luftwaffe began bombing Polish cities (September 1939). The Japanee had already begun nombing Chinee cities and the Germans and Italians had unleased their airforces on Spanish cities. SEspite the concrn with aerial bombardment, few bomb shelters were built for civilians. Polish civlians had virtually no shelters or protective air cober. And the same was true of the Dutch, Belgians and French when the Germans struck in the West (May 1940). The British sprung their Home Chain Network on the Germans. This assusted the RAF, but civilans at first had to make do with home shelters. There were few prepared, public shelters. The British Government evn tried to prevnt civilians from using the Underground stations. The basic defense of Londoners was the fact that London was so spred oit with single family homes. It took an emense amount of bombing to casuse many casualtie except in h=densely populated areas likecthe East End. The British moved the children out ofvthe city, so most were safe, but their parents stated in London so quite a number of children lost thir parents in thevombing or their fthers in the service. The Luftwaffe was tacticalnground support force. It's light and mwdium bombers were not well suited for straregic bombing. The Allies )British nd Americans), however, built massive stratehic bombing forces ideally suited to bomb Germany. When the War turned against the Germans, it was German children that began to lose their parents. The greater industrial capacity of the Allies meant that a far greater strategic bombing campaign was launched against Germany. German civilians had access to the best public sheters of tge War, They needed them. As the intensity of the Allied bomving increased, the Germns also sent their children into the city. This meant that many children lost their parents in thecur raids or theirvfathers as war casulties or prisoners of War (POWs). Few Grman POWS ever returned from Soviert camps. And those that did returned several years after the War. Japan considered itself safe from strategic bombing because at the time it launched the War, no bomber had the range to reach Japan. This changed with r=the development of the B-29. Intul runs proved sisappointing, nut by 1945 the B-29s began hitting Japan wood and paper cities. The Japnese also moved their children in the countryside. Tge carnage in the cities was terrible, leaving many war orphans.
Other children had fathers who were soldiers and killed in the War or held as POWs after the War. In Eastern Europe there were often no organized group to assist them because of German occupation policies. As the War turned against the Axis, we begin to see displaced children in those countries as well. There were, however, the most likely children to survive because Allied war policies were not genocidal in nature and there were programs in those countries to aid children both duing and after the War.
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