Michelle Mouton
Universities of Wisconsin Fellow (2025–2026)
Professor, Department of History, UW–Oshkosh
Kriegskinder: German Children from the Second World War to the Cold War 1944–1955
My book examines the plight of German children from the last months of the Second World War into the Cold War period. It does so from three perspectives: policy design, policy implementation, and children’s lived experiences. Using many varied archival sources and oral histories, it examines humanitarian efforts to help children that increasingly became compromised by Cold War rivalries. By bridging three eras—National Socialism, “Zero Hour,” and East / West Germany—and focusing on children, the book offers new perspectives on a tumultuous period in German history and deepens our understanding of children in wartime.
Michelle Mouton is Professor of History at University of Wisconsin–Oshkosh where she teaches courses in Modern European, German, Women’s and Global Environmental History. Her research interests focus on 20th century German social and women’s history as well as memory and oral history. Her current book project examines German children in the final months of World War II, during the military occupation (Zero Hour), and in the early years of East and West Germany. She is also author of From Nurturing the Nation to Purifying the Volk: Weimar and Nazi Family Policy 1919-1945 (Cambridge) and articles in a variety of Journals and edited collections.
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