Children's Fates in Post-War Germany. In the first decade after the end of World War II, Allied soldiers fathered 400,000 occupation children with German women. Throughout their lives, these children bore a dual stigma: they were born out of wedlock and stemmed from a relationship with the "enemy." Their social environment ostracized them, mocking them as "Russian brats," "American kids," or "Negro spawn," and subjected them to psychological and physical abuse. "Bankerte!" traces the long-tabooed, moving history of these individuals. Through numerous written and oral sources, it illuminates the significant stages of their lives in a collective biography: birth, school enrollment, vocational training, and partner choice. Thus, by reconstructing the problems and opportunities faced by these "foreigners," a multifaceted panorama of the two German post-war societies emerges.