After World War Two, millions of people across Europe had lost their homes due to combat, capture, conscription, or outright removal throughout the war, including hundreds of thousands of children. These people, searching for their homes, wondering if they had homes to return to, were labelled as “displaced persons,” or DPs, and this also applied to the children of Europe. In order to better facilitate the care of DPs, the Allies constructed organized camps for DPs until they could be returned to their homelands, and these camps became small, if only temporary communities, even creating schools for the children of the camps (a class photo of one such school is below).
The focus on children by the European powers was particularly strong, and indeed the belief that children should know where they came from, even if they didn’t return, became very prevalent as nations sought to recover from the war’s losses. It should be no surprise, then, that various nations – such as France – were keen to begin repopulating the demographics they’d lost in the war, in particular young men, and that they sought the return of children their governments deemed “lost” to their nation. The claim and return of displaced children became inherently political and nationalistic, with various standards being put into place as DPs both adult and child sought to return to their homelands, or were claimed by the nation in question. The purpose was rather clearly to rebuild shattered counties into the once-powerful, prosperous entities they were before the war, and ethnic purity was practically mandated.
During the process, not only were children politicized, but so were women, and their conduct during the war. Throughout the war and during the reconstruction of Europe, multinational relationships (both consenting and forced) were established, and those who did engage in relations with soldiers or citizens of opposing nations were vilified, punished, and in some cases expelled, women in particular. Despite the newborn sense of globalism and international cooperation, European nationalism (and nationalism around the world) experienced a new rise as nations sought to come out ahead in the aftermath of the war. The various processes, standards, and mentalities that grew from this period reflected the total war that had taken place, and would also come to affect the ideologies of the world as it entered the Cold War shortly thereafter.
