Brown Babies facts for kids
Brown Babies is a term used for children born to black soldiers and white women during and after World War II. These children were also called "war babies" or "occupation babies." In Germany, they were sometimes known as Mischlingskinder, which meant "mixed-race children." This term was first used in a negative way during the Nazi era for children of mixed Jewish-German families.
After World War II, about 5,000 children were born to African-American soldiers and German women in the American-controlled part of Allied-occupied Germany. This was about 1% of all births in that area in 1945. In Occupied Austria, between 8,000 and 30,000 children were born to Austrian women and Allied soldiers, with about 500 of them being biracial. In the United Kingdom, around 2,000 children were born to West Indian members of the British military and African-American soldiers. A smaller number, perhaps a few hundred, were born in the Netherlands. The stories of these children help us understand what life was like for "Brown Babies" across Europe after the war.
Children of War: The "Brown Babies" Story
After World War II, many children were born to soldiers from the occupying forces and local women. Often, the military did not want soldiers to become too friendly with local people or to marry them. For example, the United States military discouraged its soldiers from forming close relationships with Germans. Soldiers needed special permission from their commanders to marry overseas. Since marriages between people of different races were not allowed in most parts of the United States at that time, many U.S. commanders prevented these couples from marrying or forced them to separate.
Life in Post-War Germany
The way Germans viewed biracial children after the war was influenced by what happened during the Nazi era. After World War I, about 600 biracial children were born in Germany. They became symbols of Germany's defeat. Under Adolf Hitler, some of these children were called "Rhineland Bastards" and faced harsh treatment.
Challenges for Families
After the war, laws in West Germany about children born outside of marriage were complex, especially if the father was American. These children were often considered to be under the care of the government. The mother usually had no legal rights over her child and could not be the legal guardian. This responsibility, including financial support, fell to the father or to the man the mother was married to, unless he could prove the child was not his. This was easy to do if the child was biracial. American soldiers were not held responsible under German law until 1950, when the U.S. agreed that Germany could have power over American soldiers in these cases.
Orphanages and foster parents received small payments to care for abandoned children. Many German mothers who lost their American partners when soldiers moved away found it hard to get support for their children. There was also unfair treatment against black people, as they were linked to the occupying forces that many Germans resented. However, a 1951 article in Jet magazine noted that most mothers did not give up their "brown babies." Some Germans fostered or adopted these children, and one German woman even started a home for thirty "brown babies."
Adoptions and New Homes
In the ten years after the war, many mixed-race children born outside of marriage were put up for adoption. Some were adopted by African-American military families in Germany and the United States. By 1968, Americans had adopted about 7,000 "brown babies." Many of these children did not learn about their German heritage until they were adults.
African-American newspapers, which had spoken out for equality in the military during the war, also supported the cause of the German and English "Brown Babies." The Pittsburgh Courier newspaper, for example, reported strongly on "Brown Babies turned into sideshow attractions" in their home countries. It even warned of possible danger if they were not protected in Germany.
The newspaper wrote: "These international orphans . . . in the European Command of the American occupation forces . . . are being given away, abandoned, killed because their mothers cannot care for them. And there are 1,435 recorded births (unverified) in the Munich (Germany) area alone."
The article encouraged American families to adopt these children and even started to name and locate them for its African-American readers.
Changing Attitudes
Fortunately, the worst fears did not come true. In the 1950s, German attitudes toward these children began to change, moving away from the racism of World War II. A popular movie from 1952, "Toxi", showed these issues. The main character, Toxi, was played by Elfie Fiegert, who was herself one of the "Brown Babies." The film showed a little brown girl taken in by a modern German family, representing the different views in post-war German society.
The children were not always treated well and often faced unfairness. In 1952, a conference was held in Wiesbaden to discuss the situation of these children. Experts and leaders agreed that German society should treat them as equals and help them build secure futures. This conference partly came from the idea that a defeated, racist Germany was occupied by a country that also had racial problems, and that the German children might be better off staying in their home country.
Eventually, many German "Brown Babies" adopted in America began to search for their parents. Some returned to Germany to meet their mothers if they could find them. Since the late 1900s, there has been new interest in their stories as people continue to look back at the war and post-war years.
The "Brown Babies" in Great Britain
Millions of Americans, mostly men, passed through the United Kingdom during and after World War II. It's estimated that 22,000 children of American soldiers were born there by the 1950s. About 1,700 of these were called the "Brown Babies of England," "tan yanks," or "wild oats babies." They were often referred to as mixed-race children. They started being born in Spring 1943, mostly in different parts of the UK where African-American soldiers worked in support roles.
Welcome and Worries
At first, Black Americans were generally welcomed by British people. British officials and military leaders also seemed to welcome them, but they had private concerns that their presence might cause problems in a society that had few Black people, except for those working in port areas. British officials shared some of the same mixed feelings about race as their American allies. On one hand, the British government felt it shouldn't get involved in American racial issues. On the other hand, the British command showed sympathy for the American military's rules about segregation, especially concerning women.
Support and Challenges
This mixed approach affected the lives of the children. While most were not treated badly, they were seen as a possible problem for society. In 1944, the League of Coloured People started an effort to bring attention to these children, calling them "casualties of war." They held a "Conference on the Position of the Illegitimate Child Whose Father is Alleged to be a Coloured American." The seventy-five social, government, and church groups who attended were generally kind and realistic about the children's well-being. However, the children's place in society remained unclear.
There was never a clear plan for the children's care and future. Many ended up in orphanages or in family situations that weren't fully supportive. Although many Britons felt they should be adopted in America if possible, these children were British citizens. The law did not allow them to be adopted outside the country, except for a short time in 1947. Also, their African-American fathers were not legally recognized. The children's difficult situation became an important topic first in the African-American press and later in some popular media aimed at white readers. In 1946, the Hartford Chronicle newspaper wrote, "The American Negro needs to do something about this whole matter. It is not a question of taking the child away from the mother and bringing it here for adoption, but there are more than enough churches, lodges, fraternal organizations, etc. to send a regular stream of funds to England and help raise these youngsters."
In 1948, the children were still in England and were written about in Newsweek as the "Brown Tiny Tims." In the same year, Life magazine showed a picture of a group of children sitting happily on the lawn of a British orphanage, with the headline "The Babies They Left Behind Them."
A detailed book about these children, Britain's Brown Babies, was written by British historian Lucy Bland, a Professor of Social and Cultural History at Anglia Ruskin University.
The Netherlands: A Smaller Story
The Netherlands, a smaller country, did not see as many children born to American soldiers as Germany and England. Most "war babies" there were born from relationships between Dutch women and Canadian soldiers who helped free the country starting in late 1944.
The southern Limburg Province of the Netherlands, located between Belgium and Germany, was freed before the rest of the country. This happened as Allied forces moved from Normandy into Germany. This force included African-American soldiers from the Quartermaster Corps, who did support work, transport, and began building the American cemetery at Margraten. The Netherlands had very little experience with Black people, and there were no rules for recording the births of biracial children. Their exact number is unknown, but it's estimated to be between 70 and 100. The lives of some people from this small group have been followed into the 21st century, offering personal stories not found elsewhere in Europe.
Finding Their Fathers
Twelve people from this group became part of a research project starting in 2014, called "The Children of African American Liberators." This led to books published in Dutch and American versions, as well as newspaper articles in de Volksrant and NRC Handelsband, and a television documentary in 2017.
The books, based on their personal stories, showed that nine of the twelve described childhoods where they were cared for by parents or others who were not always attentive, or they had been abandoned. Three had spent time in Catholic orphanages. Of those who stayed with their married mothers, four were accepted and cared for by their stepfathers.
In their lives, ten faced unfair treatment from family or society at different times. Most of them constantly felt the need to connect with their birth fathers. In four cases, the fathers' identities were known at birth, and three of those fathers were involved in their children's lives from America during their early years. Five actively searched for unknown fathers at different points in their lives, and three were found. Two were found after the fathers had passed away, and one was found in time for the father and daughter to build a strong relationship, traveling between the United States and the Netherlands. One person was finally able to visit her father's grave in Florida several years after his death.
"Brown Babies" in Movies and Documentaries
- Brown Babies: The Mischlingskinder Story (2011) is a documentary by American journalist Regina Griffin. This film was shown on CNN and won several awards, including Best Film at the African-American Women in Cinema Film Festival in New York City. It was also a finalist for HBO Best Documentary at the 2011 Martha’s Vineyard Black Film Festival. That fall, a related documentary, Brown Babies: Germany's Lost Children (Brown Babies: Deutschlands verlorene Kinder), was shown on German television. The fictional movie Toxi shows the challenges "brown babies" presented to German families at the time. The different views of the family members in the film reflect the attitudes of the 1950s in Germany regarding black people and mixed-race children.
These mixed-race children were sometimes seen as "a human and racial problem." This put the blame for any difficulties on the children themselves, instead of on the wider German community that struggled to accept them. One way German society thought about dealing with these children was to send them abroad. This idea was based on the belief that these "Occupation Babies" would face too much unfairness in their home country. This unfairness came from a general dislike of the occupying forces, prejudice against the mothers of these children, and old ideas about race that were unfair and suggested black people were inferior.
In 1951, the United States recognized these Afro-German children as orphan children under the Displaced Persons Act of 1948. That year, the first Afro-German child was adopted by Margaret E. Butler in Chicago. This adoption across countries was important because these children had been judged mostly based on their race. Many Germans wanted to send the children of occupiers abroad to help them avoid racism and find more of a home in a country with a history of many people of African descent, even though they faced segregation in the South. Ultimately, these children became a symbol for black people to stand up for themselves in both Europe and America.
