What damage did the war do to those children who survived it? This is difficult to know as physical damage was visible and could be dealt with but the psychological damage some must have suffered was difficult to measure – even if anybody tried to do this. In the immediate aftermath of VE Day and VJ Day, returning soldiers were given priority and an emphasis was placed on the return of ‘family’. Children and their welfare seemed to come lower down the list of priorities – the return of a father, according to some, would be enough to restore classic family virtues to society. Psychological assessments were far more basic in 1945 and in the immediate years after the war. ‘Pulling yourself together’ and the child problems. There is also little doubt that the government wanted to portray Britain as a country that had won the war and was harvesting the benefits of it. Fragile family bases did not fit in with this.

The above deals solely with children from Britain and not the rest of Europe. Children living under occupation must have lived in a manner few can comprehend unless an individual has been through similar situations. Children in Poland, the Netherlands, Belgium, France etc would all have experienced the terror produced by Blitzkrieg. Occupying troops could be brutal as the children at Oradur-sur-Glane and Lidice found out. Young German boys were used by the Nazi Party in the final days of the Battle of Berlin. What is thought to be the final picture of Hitler was taken when he pinned Iron Crosses onto the uniform of child soldiers in the garden of his bunker in Berlin. The bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed thousands of children. The crimes committed during the Holocaust involved countless thousands of children. The first experimental ‘gas chambers’ were used on German children who were mentally incapacitated. Josef Mengele specifically targeted children for his experiments at Auschwitz.