Introduction

They came to “Amerika” by the thousands, from a country we had just defeated in a brutal war and that laid in ruins. They were foreigners and recent “enemies”--and yet, the German war brides who married Midwest soldiers and arrived in the American Heartland spoke a familiar tongue, and soon fit right in... Their stories say much about Germany during the Nazi dictatorship, about the war to which fascism gave rise, and about the lives these hundreds of young German women made in the Midwest as returned-soldiers' wives after the guns of war had been lowered and the bombs stopped falling...

Anneliese Solch and Kenny Woodstroms' wedding portrait, 1947

Anneliese Solch Woodstrom

 Anneliese Solch was born in 1926 and grew up in a small Bavarian town in rural Germany. She saw the rise of Hitler and WWII through youthful eyes. She was 19 years old when Germany surrendered in May 1945. In 1947, Annelee came to the United States to become the bride of a Kenny Woodstrom, a Minnesota GI who had befriended her family immediately after the war ended. Despite initially encountering anti-German sentiment in her new "home" Anneliese (now "Annelee") raised a family and later taught English and other subjects at Red River Valley high schools.She has lived the last 60 years in a small town in Northwest Minnesota, and now speaks widely as a published author and witness to the effects of war.

Annelee has written two books about her life experience: War Child (2003), is an award-winning book about growing up in Hitler's Germany. It has recently been reprinted. Empty Chairs (2007) is about her 60 years in the U.S., with myriad references to the Germany of her youth. In both tomes, she explores the intimate ways in which war affects individuals as well as families on both sides of a conflict, and war's indelible consequences for all those whose lives it touches.

Annelee Woodstrom's website