2018 Volume 60 Issue 3 Pages 2-11
This article focuses on the development of family relations in Germany during and after the Second World War in terms of care for war victims. Frankfurt am Main (Frankfurt) offers good case study because of its character as a commercial city and a city that had been industrialized (chemicals, metals) since the end of the nineteenth century.
The Nazi‒government adopted the policy called “Lebensraum” (living space) to maintain sufficient food supplies for the Aryan Nation for the coming war. They occupied Europe from France to Ukraine and from Denmark to Greece, and seized food, materials and people in those areas as a labour force. Their policy on race caused the mass movement of people (especially Jews) from all over Europe to concentration camps and after 1942, to extermination camps. The Jewish prisoners and civil forced labourers were compelled to work in factories in German cities including Frankfurt.
During the war, as Allied bombardment of German cities became more severe, children and mothers were evacuated from the cities. In many cases, each family member was alone in a different site － father at the front, children in the countryside, mother in the city, elder brothers and sisters in the suburbs working at munitions factories. Fathers who returned home with injuries could take a one‒year course to learn the skills needed for a new job. However, only a few disabled veterans acquired new jobs after their discharging. Fathers became deeply depressed when they found themselves without jobs. They became short‒tempered with other family members or withdrew into themselves, becoming unable to draw empathy from their children.
After the Second World War, about 12 millions people were on the move across Europe, including forced labourers and concentration camp and extermination camp prisoners returning to their countries, the Volksdeutsch who'd been expelled from their homes, and refugees from Eastern Europe. With many people returning to their homes and many others going to new places, the population of German cities rose dramatically. Under these circumstances, the food supply was not functional and ration systems were still in place.
Disabled veterans continued returning home until 1948. They had access to vocational training courses, though, as in the situation during the war, very few of them acquired new jobs. Since they could not communicate rery well with their family members after their long absence, the divorce rate rose until 1950. The war left invisible scars in people’s minds.
