In Crystal City, Texas, there was a German P.O.W. camp. My dad lived there during the first part of the way and he told me that the local girls would visit the prisoners and naturally, relationships cropped up. After the war ended, most of the prisoners had no desire to return to a flattened city and ended up staying and marrying some of the local girls.
shareThe same thing happened here in parts of Canada, especially Northern Ontario. People forget that people didn't see the War the same as we do now when it was actually occurring, and that particularly with the Allies and Germans there was a lot of fraternizing and good nature. This doesn't mean atrocities didn't occur, but generally speaking there wasn't as much hatred and animosity until AFTER the War, mainly when the Holocaust became common knowledge. The most famous example I can think of offhand is how when the 101st Airborne went into Germany they were amazed that Germany reminded them of America more than France, Holland, and even Great Britain.
shareYou would feel rather differently if you had lived in a London street like the Rowans on a miserable diet with no petrol to go anywhere and those handsome blond Germans bombing your neighbours to bits night after night. Not shown in the film was when they stopped flying over and instead fired missiles which, being largely immune to fighters, flak and balloons, did the job even more efficiently.
shareYes, a very good point. I didn't intend to downplay the terrible things that happened in Europe, but rather to point out that the war was experienced quite differently here in North America, particularly since aside from U-boats sinking some ships in the Atlantic and St. Lawrence River, people never saw the war first hand, and never saw the enemy eye to eye when he was holding or operating a weapon.
shareThe same happened here in southern California with Italian prisoners of war. They were interned at the U.S. Army Supply Depot near San Bernardino (Camp Ono), and were employed at various jobs. Some were granted leave to go into town on weekends for recreation. After the war, many of them married American women and stayed. Quite a few worked in the vineyards of the wineries that used to exist in the region.
shareAt an Italian POW camp I think in Montana, at the end of the war fights broke out between local women who had come to say good-bye when it turned out some of the prisoners were involved with more than one woman.
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