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The war - another angle - war brides

negritaspider

TunisianBrummie
My dad, whose family are true brums, died in 1965.
The Blitz thread, which I read from top to end has given me a real insight to what his family's life was like during the war, something that I didn't know, as we lost contact with his side of the family after his death.

He married in Germany, and brought his wife to England in 1951 - my mother never talked about her earliest years in england, and she died last year, having spent all that time in Brum.
I'd love to know if anyone else has german family from the war years, and how life was for these brides when they arrived in England......
 
Negritaspider this subject has always interested me as I had a German great great grandfather but never knew untill I did my family history. The subject was obviously kept quiet. I talk to a lady often who was a German war bride. She is now in her 80's. She told me all her family were killed in an air raid on Germany when she was 18. I don't know how she met her husband but he was a British soldier. She married him and came to Birmingham for a while she had to live with his parents this was very difficult for her as the culture and food were so different. Unfortunately the family did not make it easy for her putting sauce on her meals and not offering any alternative. She knew things were hard as rationing made it difficult but she knew they resented her because she was German. Fortunately for her her husband managed to rent a house for them and then things were much better. She told me she loved her husband deeply and they had a wonderful marriage and two children. She lived in Birmingham until her husband died. I never ask her questions I just talk to her and she tells me things but I know she is still wary of her nationality which I find a great shame. I can't imagine what it would be like to loose all your family at 18.
 
negritaspider...

I think your mother is likely to have had a less difficult time of it than if she had arrived four or five years earlier.

In the immediate aftermath of the war I recall that there was a lot of animosity. Germany equated to Germans and the latter meant ALL Germans. It was not only the bombing and all the suffering and disruption caused by the war as a whole to almost every family - for the second time in a generation - but especially it was the discovery of the camps in 1945, particularly Bergen-Belsen and Buchenwald in early April, the news and images of which dominated newspapers and newsreels. I can still remember the shock and horror - and the anger amongst grown-ups. At that moment no fate was too unpleasant for the Germans.

There must be material published by German authors about how they were treated by the British - either there or here - although in general there is nothing like the amount of literature, and especially personal reminiscences, on the war years and the immediate aftermath produced by Germans as there is on our side. The reasons are I suppose fairly obvious. There was however a 1947/1948 British feature film which dealt with precisely this subject - the experiences of a young German woman in England immediately after the war - and it was called "Frieda". I think it still turns up very occasionally on rainy afternoons on British telly.

No doubt as time passed a more reasonable view started to prevail and individual Germans were no longer expected to bear all of the guilt of actions by their government and some of their compatriots. By 1951 there must have been a far greater realisation of what the Germans had themselves gone through, whatever the cause of it, and sympathy for that; and anyway it is difficult to maintain anger towards a nation and its past actions when it is a reasonable individual you are face to face with today.

Your enquiry runs in parallel with the situation involving released German POWs who elected to stay in this country and married British girls. Two sides of a similar coin. I hope forum members will be able to provide us with their personal experiences of all this (as Wendy has already done).

Chris
 
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In a slightly different direction, in my youth my mother was not particularly friendly to germans and german products, but was really against the Japanese . It was only very reluctantly that she allowed herself to use a japanese radio, and this was only because there weren't many english alternatives, This acceptance would have been probably early 1970s. But, to my knowledge, no-one she knew was involved in the far east war .
mike
 
This is a good thread and brings out in the open sides of WW2 that were not talked about very much and even less than the brave soldiers and civilians who lost their lives. The people who came home to live on kept their stories to themselves, some for all their lives. My father-in-law was one of them.

I worked with two German war brides, Elfi and Anna, at my first job in New Street Station. They were both married to British soldiers they had met during WW2. The year was l957 when I met them.

Everyone in the office accepted them and they were able to converse together and seemed to rely on each other quite a lot. They were
obviously well educated in the English language since they were both
typists. There was a deli in the Burlington Arcade that sold German foods and I would often go and buy goods for them. I hadn't met any German people up to that point. They did not talk about the war or how they met their husbands. In my travels I have met several German people from the WW2 era and only one of them related stories of what happened to
them during the WW2 years.
 
It's now almost 50 years ago since I met a German girl working in the house I was lodging at in London, and nearly 49 years since we married and lived happily ever after.
It seems to me that the fact that we came from different countries has actually given us a stronger bond than if we had come from the same place.
Barbara is by no means a war bride - she was almost 9 when it finished, the eldest of 5, and had to do a lot of looking after her younger siblings because her dad was killed in 1945 and her mom never remarried.
But we have spent many hours talking about our wartime experiences, also with several of her relations and our friends.
It's a pity that some people find it so hard to look upon anyone who doesn't come from their background as having anything in common.
Peter
 
or even full size (think I need to go to the practice thread!!
Britisharmy1950Berlin.jpg
 
Great photo, negritaspider. Peter Walker might even be able to tell us exactly where it was taken.

I've taken the liberty of doing a bit of repair work on it. (There are various experts on this forum who might make a better fist of it).

Chris
 
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This is a good thread and brings out in the open sides of WW2 that were not talked about very much and even less than the brave soldiers and civilians who lost their lives. The people who came home to live on kept their stories to themselves, some for all their lives. My father-in-law was one of them.
You are right about that Jenny Anne my father kept things very quiet never spoke about the war or his experiences and he had a bitter dislike of Polish people for some reason which was a bit awkward when he met Maggies moms partner George (we all called him George his real name was Jan } he was a smashing man all be a bit eccentric at times he managed to escape from a concentration camp in Poland his family.. were not so lucky :( .anyway when he and my Dad met :rolleyes: at our wedding there was definite hostility towards each other :( I still do not know why ? my dad would never talk about it) over the years they mellowed to each other . attitudes change once you get to know someone no matter what differences you had in the past:)
 
Hi Tom: I'm glad that eventually your Father was able to be friendlier towards George. After all the years of war and people trying to get their lives back together most people didn't want to talk about the war, both recent and WW1. Soldiers who came home just carried on and kids like me who were growing up at that time didn't realize how much of an effect WW2 had on everyone. There were bewildering bomb sites on the bus routes into town which we didn't really understand about. Great playground though.

I have learned more about WW2 and it's effects on Birmingham in
particular in recent years. Also, I have learned about war brides and what
they had to tolerate if they were German. My mother-in-law was a war bride but from London. She crossed the Atlantic on a war bride ship with a protective convoy in 1943 along with my husband who was almost two years old. All the children had to wear silver bracelets with their names engraved on in case the ships were torpedoed. G still has his. My father-in-law was with the Seaforth Highlanders in Italy and didn't arrive back in Canada until late l945. Here in Canada the German brides didn't fare well either and they were subjected to a lot of hatred.
 
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