Saksalaisten sotilaiden lapset. Ulkomaalaisten sotilaiden lapset ...

These marriages might lead to divided loyalties; at the same time, these personal
relationships were more than just personal – they affected the entire German
nation, as the women in question received German citizenship.
This ban only applied to soldiers, and German civilians were in fact allowed to
marry foreign women so long as racial laws or other legislation did not forbid it.
Reich’s Chancellor Adolf Hitler decided, in mid-March 1941, that German soldiers
were allowed to marry persons of equal racial stature. This meant members of
Germanic kindred peoples, which is to say women from the Netherlands, Norway,
Denmark, and Sweden.
In 1943 the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht drafted a booklet of instructions called
”Der Deutsche Soldat und die Frau aus Fremdem Volkstum” (The German Soldier
and the Foreign Woman). This booklet emphasized that German soldiers should, in
occupied countries, act with the utmost reserve towards local women, as it was
precisely women who often served as intermediaries for the enemy’s secret police
and espionage organizations. The booklet enjoined German military personnel
thus: “Enlisted men and officers must not marry foreign women, unless these
women are by blood, and by their own acknowledgement Germans abroad
(Volksdeutsche) and do not consider themselves to be citizens of a foreign country
except as a formality. Lately permission has also been granted to marry the Aryan
citizens of neighbouring races such as citizens of Norway, Denmark, Sweden, and
those Flemish and Finnish women who are racially related to them”. However, this
did not include women of Sami, Jewish, or Rom descent.
Thus this booklet published in 1943 allowed German soldiers to marry Finnish
women. However, unlike Norway, Denmark, and Sweden, the Finns were not
considered to be automatically acceptable as a nationality, but rather special
mention was made of those Finnish women who could be considered to be
“Aryan”. Though Norwegian, Danish, and Swedish women also had to fulfil this
condition, the exact form used in the booklet indicates that the racial heritage of
Finnish women was considered somewhat suspect compared to that of other Nordic
women.
Reich’s Chancellor Hitler was the ultimate authority on whether German soldier’s
applications to marry foreign women would be approved. It seems somewhat
strange, that the supreme leader of Germany, by all accounts a very busy man, had
reserved the final veto in such a relatively trivial matter of approving applications,
but this is a historical fact. This proves how important marriage and the
preservation of the purity of Aryan blood were for Hitler.
Marriage regulations in Norway. Either in late 1941 or early 1942 the Germans
established a civil registry office (Amtslegen), which operated in conjunction with
the Reichskomissariat of Norway. It was tasked with serving as a civil registry for
German citizens living in the country, registering births, deaths, marriages etc. It
also granted marriage permits for German citizens marrying Norwegian women. If
Hitler approved the permit in question, the court of the unit to which the soldier
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