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.

“Hitler’ s New Order” refers to the introduction of racism in occupied Europe and ruling eastern Europe so as to benefit Germany. In order to realize this purpose, the “Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia” was formed in 1939. It was one of the mos timportant areas for Germany, especially because some profitable heavy industries, coal mines, and coke coals were located in the “Ostrava‒Karviná industrial district” and “Vitkovice ironwork.” Therefore, this area was the vital target to Nazi not only for business but also for the military strategy to occupy eastern European “Reich Commissariat.” Consequently, the Nazi’ s racial and occupation policy were clearly reflected in the life of the inhabitants of this area.

In Ostrava, the Nazi occupation principle gave preference to hardworking individuals such as miners or Vitkovice ironworkers to join the military. For example, these workers could receive more ration and public welfare goods such as recreation than the other workers, although they were not German but of Czech nationality. However, the Nazi ruling policy was the reason for creating inhumane working conditions for other occupational category workers, which was a result of the deteriorated war situation.

Moreover, Jewish inhabitants in Ostrava were excluded from the society and were transferred to concentration camps. Although Nazi rulers established the goal of “Czech self‒government” in Protectorate, Nazi‒intolerant racism influenced every inhabitant.

For the local society in Ostrava, postwar period from 1945 to 1948 was the more crucial turning point than Nazi rule, because the Czechoslovakian postwar government began to expel Germans from country and implemented the Czech nation settlement policy. Certainly, it seemed that the principle of Nazi racism and the postwar German expulsion policy from Czech lands had some common point, but the Czechoslovakian postwar government placed more importance on the restoration of the industry and the creating of individual ownership for farmers than on national (racial) retaliation.

Although Czech society during Nazi wartime experienced a controlled economy and was prepared for Communism from 1948, the postwar government, influenced by the Communist Party in 1948, gave priority to the Czech farmers in colonizing and distributing property from German inhabitants to contribute to industrial concentration and the nationalization policy. In addition to the policy for expulsion of Germans, the resettlement policy of Czech immigrants from abroad and the beginning of the Cold War resulted in the definitive transformation of postwar Czech society in Ostrava.

The aim of this paper is to clarify the characteristics of the urban social problems that arose in colonial cities during the Asia‒Pacific War by examining the living conditions of Chinese laborers in the city of Fengtian (Shenyang), which expanded rapidly under Imperial Japanese rule.

Fengtian, including the Tiexi area, was a typical expanding industrial zone of Manchuko. However, as the wartime economy progressed, shortages of materials, fuel, and labor came to have a large impact on Fengtian, to the extent that by 1940 actual production had fallen to half of productive capacity. In addition to the scarcity of labor, declining productivity was also attributed to the flow of Chinese laborers moving from large Japanese companies in the Tiexi area to higher‒paying factories in order to earn a better livelihood.

Many Chinese laborers chose to move to jobs at small and medium‒sized factories because these factories paid two to three times as much as large Japanese companies and because it was easier to commute to them. Although the high wages were caused by fierce competition for laborers among the rapidly proliferating small and medium‒sized factories, the underlying cause was the extraordinary expansion of productivity underway in Tiexi. Production in wartime Fengtian was driven up both by heavy industry and by the production of necessities to support the growing population. However, the supply of labor did not keep pace with the expanding scale of industrial production, and as a result, labor shortages and competition for laborers across all industries led to high wages. Although high wages imposed a burden on small and medium‒sized factories, they were able, by depending on the black‒market for all stages of procurement, production, and sales, to offer wages on par with black‒market commodity price levels.

Within Fengtian, large Japanese heavy‒industry factories were concentrated in the Tiexi area to the west, while Japanese resided in the eastern district on the other side of the railroad tracks, and Chinese as well as Chinese‒owned small and medium‒sized factories specializing in consumer goods were located still further east in the old city and its surrounding areas. Because Tiexi had virtually no housing for laborers, the majority of the Chinese laborers working at Japanese companies lived around the old city and had to commute long distances of over ten kilometers between their homes and their factories. This was an other reason that laborers left their jobs in Tiexi.

Japanese settlement in Manchuria (Japanese immigration to Manchuria) was a national emigration policy implemented by the Empire of Japan from 1932 until Japan’ s defeat in 1945. The history of Japanese immigration to Manchuria has previously been analyzed from various perspectives, though analysis has focused mainly on agricultural history and colonies. Over the past few years, considerable focus has been placed on increased food production as dictated by the expansion of Japan’ s total war effort and the role of immigrants as a means of food production. Immigrants were responsible for increasing food production. This paper examines the circumstances faced by farmers both in their home villages in Japan and in the villages they were sent to establish in Manchuria. Specifically, this paper has ascertained food shortages those immigrants faced and their domination overo ther ethnic groups in Manchuria as the Asian‒Pacific War intensified.

Japanese immigration to Manchuria markedly intensified during the Asian‒Pacific War as the shortage of the rural labor force became more evident. Two policy issues, military requirements and increased food production in Manchuria, were crucial to increased immigration. Imperial agencies and village communities pressured farmers to immigrate to Manchuria. This induced bad behavior among immigrants in Manchuria and the return of some farmers to Japan, and it led to greater friction with local residents such as Chinese.

In addition to wartime shortages in material and food, Manchuria lacked an adequate system for settlement of immigrants. Immigrants were forced to lead hard lives under appalling conditions. The original aim of immigration was to increase food production, but anticipated results were not achieved. Instead, immigrants were dissatisfied since they had to toil to farm and live, and they became violent toward other ethnic groups. This violence was in addition to Japanese expropriating land when they settled, and local ethnic groups increasingly pushed back. In some instances, Chinese assaulted Japanese immigrants. Living in Manchuria meant enduring a cycle of unabashed violence and retaliation. Japanese immigrants oppressed other ethnic groups in Manchuria, but they were also in a precarious position themselves even though immigration to Manchuria was supposedly backed by Japanese Imperial authority. This may be why food shortages were acutely evident in the Empire of Japan at the time.