War widow

A war widow is a widow who lost her husband in a war. In the Second World War, about 5.5 mililon German soldiers were killed. After the war, there was about one million war widows in Germany. These people had lost their husband either in the First or Second World War. These widows were classified as being poor. Most of them were single parents, who still needed to raise their children. There was another problem: the money they received from the state was only paid as long as they were a widow. If they remarried, they would no longer get this money. This meant that many of them lived together with a new man, who helped raise their children, but which they could not marry.