Number 3

Winter 2004

The Newsletter will publish similar bibliographic essays in each issue. If you have suggestions for topics or would like to write one of the essays, please contact James Marten or Kathleen Jones.

Never Too Young:
Recent Approaches to the History of Children and War

James Marten

In Children of War (1983), Roger Rosenblatt described the ways that the children he met in the Middle East, Ireland, and Cambodia confronted war, from their attitudes about the "enemy" to their attempts to work their experiences with conflict into their everyday lives. Rosenblatt is a journalist and essayist, but his discovery that war affects children in unique and sometimes surprising ways has been a useful inspiration—if not a model, exactly—for historians who, in the two decades since Rosenblatt's book appeared, have examined the experiences of children in times of war.

Historical fields often become "hot" because of events outside the profession. I'm personally convinced that the growth of the field of children's history stems directly from baby boomers' obsession with their own childhoods and by their experiences as parents—but that may say more about me than about the rest of you! Unfortunately, it is undeniable that the study of the participation of children in war is at least in part inspired by the tragic effects of war on children in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries and the growing awareness over the last decade or two of the use of child soldiers in countless conflicts around the globe.

Although it won't be limited to books on the experiences of under-age soldiers, this brief essay will introduce a number of fairly recent books that attempt to understand the ways that wars have directly affected the lives of children, as well as the ways that children have been integrated into the larger efforts by nations and societies to mobilize for war and to influence children's patriotism and responses to war. Scholars have shown that, in both cases, some children have been the unwilling pawns of adults, while others have been enthusiastic warriors and eager consumers of martial imagery in their own right. This is only a sampling, shaped largely by my own personal interests and expertise, but it is a starting point for anyone interested in the history of children and armed conflict. Many of the most affecting accounts of wartime childhoods are of young boys who are forced—or who choose—to participate as soldiers. At one end of the spectrum of books is the amateurish but useful Callow, Brave, and True: A Gospel of Civil War Youth (1999), in which Jay Hoar celebrates the bravery and sacrifices of the drummer boys and underage soldiers who fought in the American Civil War. At the other end is Ian Brown's Khomeini's Forgotten Sons: The Story of Iran's Boy Soldiers (1990), which describes the hopeless, wasted lives of the teenaged Iranians held as prisoners of war by the Iraqis in the 1980s. Aside from recent news stories on the use and abuse of child soldiers by revolutionary and state sponsored armies in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, this is the most understudied facet of children and war, at least by historians.

But journalists and advocates have tackled the issue. Laura A. Barnitz's Child Soldiers: Youth Who Participate in Armed Conflict (1997) is a useful summary of the employment of 300,000 child soldiers throughout the world, while Child Soldiers: A Study on Behalf of the Henry Dunant Institute, Geneva (1994), by Guy S. Goodwin-Gill, examines the failure of laws protecting children from military service and abuse by the military. Janet Fleischmann has edited a long pamphlet for Human Rights Watch that focuses on one of the countries in which the use of child soldiers has been most prevalent and most reported: Easy Prey: Child Soldiers in Liberia (1994). Human Rights Watch has also published a more detailed examination of child soldiers in Burma, where observers believe more youngsters are recruited or forced into the army than in any other country; see My Gun Was as Tall as Me: Child Soldiers in Burma (2002). ).

The web is an important source of material on child soldiers, although, not surprisingly, most websites on the topic are sponsored by organizations working to end the practice. Here are a few

Perhaps the most stunning victimization of children in any war of the 20th century was the murder of 1.5 million Jewish youngsters in Nazi concentration camps. Drawing on diaries, drawings, and oral histories, Deborah Dwork's Children with a Star: Jewish Youth in Nazi Europe (1991), shows how Jewish children fought to retain some sense of their humanity amid a catalog of abuses and humiliations. Similarly, Children and Play in the Holocaust: Games among the Shadows (1988), by George Eisen, shows that even in the worst conditions children are still children, going so far as to invent games that revolve around the harsh conditions in concentration camps. Richard C. Lukas goes beyond the Jewish victims of the Second World War to examine the ways that German occupation affected all Polish children in Did the Children Cry?: Hitler's War Against Jewish and Polish Children, 1939-1945 (1994, 2001).

A very different sort of victimhood emerged in Britain, at least according to recent publications. Although the evacuation of children from London and other British cities during the Second World War has become a part of the legend of English pluck and determination between 1939 and 1945, historians have recently criticized the policy. Foremost among them are Martin Parsons and Penny Starns, who, in Evacuation: The True Story (1999) and other books and articles, have challenged conventional views. They suggest that political considerations weighed heavier than humanitarian concerns and, through interviews with survivors, chronicle the danger, hardships, and potential abuse to which the children were exposed.

A few books have explored the ways in which children adapt war to their own needs. William M. Tuttle, Jr., takes a developmental approach in Daddy's Gone to War: The Second World War in the Lives of America's Children (1995). Tuttle includes all of the home front activities that we would expect in a book like this—scrap drives, comic books, etc.—but also sensitively explores the way the war affected family dynamics and the ways that children and youth of different ages reacted to war. Useful introductions to the experiences of children during the Second World War are: Jay Kirk, Earning Their Stripes: The Mobilization of American Children in the Second World War (1994); Mike Brown, A Child's War: The Home Front, 1939-1945 (2000—on Britain); and Emmy E. Werner, Through the Eyes of Innocents: Children Witness World War II (2000).

My own The Children's Civil War (1998), while relying less on social science insights than Tuttle, also attempts to show a wide spectrum of ways in which northern and southern children, black as well as white, were affected by and chose to participate in the war efforts of the Union and the Confederacy. Two other books on Civil War children are more descriptive—although, unlike my book, theirs include drummer boys and underage soldiers: Emmy E. Werner, Reluctant Witnesses: Children's Voices from the Civil War (1999) and Scotti Cohn, Beyond Their Years: Stories of Sixteen Civil War Children (2003).

Although studies of the long-term impact of war on child survivors necessarily tend to appear in journals published by social scientists, a few books provide useful introductions. Roberta J. Apfel and Bennett Simon, eds., Minefields in Their Hearts: The Mental Health of Children in War and Communal Violence (1996) includes articles on post-traumatic stress, refugees, and other issues related to children in recent conflicts. Another book-length study on war trauma is Cole P. Dodge and Magne Raundalen, Reaching Children in War: Sudan, Uganda, and Mozambique (1991). Irish social scientists have disagreed on the effects of the "troubles" in children in Northern Ireland; M. Fraser, in Children in Conflict (1973), finds evidence of significant trauma, while a volume edited by J. J. Harbison, Children of the Troubles: Children in Northern Ireland (1983), suggests the opposite.

At one level, the historiography of children and war reflects similar concerns as the historiography of children in peacetime, including education, relationships to government and child welfare institutions, childrearing, health, and popular culture. Wars sometimes inspire nations to question basic assumptions and values; in other cases, the expansion of government power that inevitably accompanies mobilization for war can lead to the formation of institutions and government agencies that provide the impetus for "reforming" the lives of children for good or ill. For instance, Susan Pedersen, in Family, Dependence, and the Origins of the Welfare State: Britain and France, 1914-1945 (1993) places the two world wars in the contexts of feminism, trade unions, and economic development to explain the creation of government social welfare programs, especially those aimed at aiding children. See also Deborah Dwork's War is Good for Babies and Other Young Children: A History of the Infant and Child Welfare Movement in England, 1898-1918 (1987).

The unique experiences of children living in France during the Second World War has inspired two very different books. W. D. Halls, The Youth of Vichy France (1997) examines efforts to help French youth adjust to the realities of defeat and of cooperation with the Nazis. A more positive portrayal of the effects of Vichy policies appears in Sarah Fishman's The Battle for Children: World War II, Youth Crime, and Juvenile Justice in Twentieth Century France (2001) which argues that wartime conditions led officials in the Vichy criminal justice system to see juvenile delinquents as victims rather than criminals, inspiring a change to a therapeutic rather than punitive model for dealing with youngsters.

While a number of books and articles have detailed the experiences of Japanese-Americans interned during the Second World War, the specific experiences of children have not been covered until recently. Karen Lea Riley's Schools Behind Barbed Wire: The Untold Story of Wartime Internment and the Children of Arrested Enemy Aliens (2001) tells the story of the Crystal City (Texas) Family Internment Camp, specifically the ways in which the children of the Japanese, German, and even Latin American enemy aliens confined to the camp were educated.

Another genre of children and war studies examine the ways that societies try to pass along the lessons learned in war—or, conversely, attempt in subtle as well as more manipulative ways to prepare children for future wars. Recent books in this category are: Alan Penn, Targetting Schools: Drill, Militarism and Imperialism (1999); Stephen Stephen Heathorn, For Home, Country, and Race: Constructing Class, Gender and Englishness in the Elementary Classroom (2000—on Great Britain); Lisa A. Kirschenbaum, Small Comrades: Revolutionizing Childhood in Soviet Russa, 1917-1932 (2000); and Thomas Davey, A Generation Divided: German Children and the Berlin Wall (1987)

Although this short essay has focused on books, a useful starting point for information on children and war are the essays I've compiled in Children and War: A Historical Anthology (2002). The mixture of nearly two dozen recent PhDs and senior scholars from around the world who contributed to the anthology introduce a wide variety of topics under-represented in the monographic literature, including children in Latin America, Asia, and among indigenous cultures. The essays cover nearly two hundred years of children and war.

Finally number of recent dissertations that have not yet found their way into print add to our knowledge of the effects of war on children—especially how war shapes educational institutions. They include: Benita Blessing, "The Antifascist Classroom: Education in the Soviet Zone of Germany 1945-49" (Wisconsin, 2000); Andy Dotson, "War-Pedagogy and Youth Culture: Nationalism and Authority in Germany in the First World War" (Michigan, 2000); Barbara Fox, "Rejuvenating France: The Creation of a National Youth Culture After The Great War" (Massachusetts, 2002); Stephen E. Lewis, "Revolution and the Rural Schoolhouse: Forging State and Nation in Chiapas, Mexico, 1913-1946" (UC-San Diego, 1997); and Mary Niall Mitchell, "Raising Freedom's Child: Race, Nation, and the Lives of Black Children in 19th-Century Louisiana" (NYU, 2001).

 

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