State adoption: children of the French occupation in Germany, 1945-1952

After WWII, during the Allied occupation of Germany, thousands of children were born to German mothers and fathers who were soldiers of the Allied forces. Beginning in 1946, the French authorities established a policy of "abandon/adoption". The goal was to monitor the abandonment, by their mothers, of children with French fathers and to organize their adoptions in France. From nurseries in Germany to intermediary associations to adoptive families, a complete network was put in place. In a Germany without a state, the French authorities followed a unilateral procedure for these international adoptions. In 1949, with the creation of the Federal Republic of Germany, the situation changed. French diplomacy put an end to this policy that increasingly concerned fewer children. The French protagonists' desire to prevent problems from cropping up in the future went as far as recovering the traces of this policy from German archives.