Abstract
Among the tens of thousands of GI war brides after the Second World War, a small fraction of them were German women who left their defeated and devastated homeland behind. The war story of Gisela Kriebel explores how her circuitous move from Berlin to Los Angeles, half a world away, meant the virtual severing of family ties and cultural connections that would leave her descendants with scant information about her genealogy and the fate of her family members in the war. Barriers of distance, language, and accessibility of records have made genealogical research particularly difficult concerning this specific population of war brides of defeated nations. The article explores Gisela Kriebel’s family, and specifically how she was conscripted into service in the war, began a career as an interpreter and secretary, and was swept up in two love affairs—one tragic and the other life-long—that, in the end, brought her to Los Angeles. Throughout the article, genealogical sources will be used, such as newly available online military records, to demonstrate how researchers can discover the rich family history of war brides separated from their war-torn homelands.
Highlights
Historical Background One of the remarkable ironies of the Second World War is that amid the devastation of nations at war, tens of thousands of American GIs met foreign-born women, fell in love, and sought to build families together
125,000 GI war brides emigrated to the US from Great Britain, France, Japan, and the Philippines, among other nations—basically wherever American forces were stationed in the Second World War.[1]
As the Second World War drew to a close—as the American and Soviet forces conquered Germany in their race to Berlin—the American government instituted a non-fraternization policy, forbidding American GIs to fraternize with German women
Summary
Historical Background One of the remarkable ironies of the Second World War is that amid the devastation of nations at war, tens of thousands of American GIs met foreign-born women, fell in love, and sought to build families together. 125,000 GI war brides emigrated to the US from Great Britain, France, Japan, and the Philippines, among other nations—basically wherever American forces were stationed in the Second World War.[1] In Germany alone, by the end of 1950, 14,175 German women married American soldiers and came to the United States to begin new lives together.[2]
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