The Wife and Children of the ‘Boche’. Marriage and Procreation Between Occupiers and Occupied Women in Belgium, 1914-1918

This chapter examines how four years of military occupation of Belgium and northern France by German armies led to marriages and procreation between occupiers and occupied women. At a local level, the occupied population was characterized by a gender imbalance because of the mobilization and deportation of men. The massive presence of German occupiers somehow compensated this imbalance, but did not prevent a steep decline of marriage rates. Behavioral norms among the occupied population, imposing a ‘patriotic distance’, did not favor marriages between a German groom and a local bride. German military authorities were also reluctant and discouraged or forbade such unions in times of war. Evidence suggests that no more than a few tens of such binational war marriages probably occurred during the whole occupation period. Relationships between German soldiers and Belgian women, by contrast, had a far higher impact on the rate of single mothers in society. Data on children born of an unknown father show that their rate climbed significantly in the part of the occupied territory close to the front. An estimated 5,000 Belgian women became single mothers because of their relations with Germans. The same phenomena occurred in occupied France, but with a higher proportion.