WWII babies fathered by German soldiers in occupied Europe

Today's Washington Post carries a sobering story about a search for identity by children whose fathers have turned out to be German soldiers. As the Post says "Historians estimate that more than 800,000 children were born to German soldiers enforcing the four-year Nazi occupation of Europe, about 200,000 in France alone."

For one of the men his search for his father was a "decades-long search, of harassing German archivists, of begging historians for clues, of following false leads." Many of the children did not know about their heritage for most of their lives. It sounds much like the frustration of adult adoptees trying to find their own birth parents.