Into the open – or hidden away? – The construction of war children as a social category in post-war Norway and Germany

After World War II two groups of children fathered by foreign soldiers were assigned special political functions in the building of a future peaceful Europe. In Norway, the children of German soldiers and Norwegian women and in West Germany, the children of African-American soldiers and German women were constructed as specific categories to be handled in certain ways by state authorities. The Norwegian government, after heated debates, decided that the children were allowed to stay and to be silently and discreetly assimilated into society. In West Germany however, the children begotten to African-Americans came to serve as objects in a national public campaign for international recognition as a democratic state. The two cases demonstrate how social politics for children may serve political purposes, rather than being in the interest of the child.