German POWs Went Home to Hunger. A Box of Food From Nebraska Started the Letters.

After the Second World War, a group of farmers in Kansas and Nebraska decided to send food packages to former German prisoners of war. A farmer near Deshler, Nebraska, Fred Kuhlmann, picked one name from the list: Gerd Kruse, a German soldier captured in Tunisia on May 9, 1943, who had worked on his farm as a prisoner. Kruse had gone home to a ruined, hungry Germany. The package led to letters between Kruse and the farmer's daughter, Ella, then to love, and in 1949 to her trip to Germany to marry him. They came back to the same farm near Deshler. The story comes from Kruse's own 1982 interview with historians from Emporia State University, his obituary and cemetery records. Did anyone in your family send packages to Germany after the war, or receive one? Tell me in the comments. CHAPTERS 0:00 A Box of Food From Nebraska 1:36 Bizerte 2:39 Concordia 3:49 The Farm 5:06 German Soil 6:02 The List 6:42 The Trip 7:15 Row 26 SOURCES Patrick G. O'Brien, Thomas D. Isern and R. Daniel Lumley, "Stalag Sunflower: German Prisoners of War in Kansas", Kansas History 7:3 (Autumn 1984), 182-198 (based in part on an interview with Gerd Kruse, 15 November 1982) "Stalag Sunflower" (video), Center for Great Plains Studies and Instructional Television, Emporia State University, 1983 (ESU Special Collections and Archives) Gerd Kruse obituary, Lincoln Journal Star, 16 April 1985 Find a Grave memorials: Gerd Kruse, Ella D. W. Kuhlmann Kruse and Richard Kruse (Peace Lutheran Cemetery, Deshler); Friedrich Wilhelm "Fred" Kuhlmann (St. Peter's Lutheran Cemetery, Byron) Nebraska State Historical Society, "The Hebron CCC and POW Camps" (historical marker, Hebron, Nebraska) The sources do not name the branch camp Kruse was sent to; Hebron was the branch camp in Thayer County. The wedding year, 1949, comes from the cemetery records. The letters quoted about hunger in Germany were written to Kansas families by other former prisoners (Kansas History, 1984). PHOTOGRAPHS AND MAPS Public domain: Irving Rusinow (National Archives); U.S. Army Signal Corps (National Archives); U.S. Navy 80-G-84349; U.S. Navy 80-G-K-13894; U.S. Navy 80-G-87971; National Archives; National Archives 298339; Russell Lee (Library of Congress, FSA/OWI Black-and-White Negatives, LC-USF34-030651-D); Office of War Information (Library of Congress); Patricia D. Duncan, Documerica (National Archives); U.S. Navy 80-G-1010892; John Margolies Roadside America Photograph Archive (Library of Congress); Kgwo1972 (Wikimedia Commons); Edwin Olson, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; Natural Earth (maps). No known restrictions: Mennonite Church USA Archives; OSU Special Collections & Archives (Flickr Commons, no known copyright restrictions). Creative Commons: Jared Winkler (Wikimedia Commons), CC BY-SA 4.0; Bundesarchiv, CC BY-SA 3.0 DE: Bild 183-B0527-0001-753, Röhnert, Bild 183-M0928-501, Blunck, Bild 194-0101-04, Hans Lachmann, Bild 183-S76475, Heinscher, B 145 Bild-F080295-0002, Oberhauser, B 145 Bild-F080295-0004, Oberhauser, Bild 183-S1207-502. Photographs are cropped and most are shown in black and white. Licences: CC BY-SA 3.0 DE https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... · CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... Thumbnail (representative; not Gerd Kruse or the Kuhlmanns): a German prisoner in Tunisia, 30 March 1943 (SC 171609, U.S. Army Signal Corps, National Archives, public domain); a church party in Irwin, Shelby County, Iowa, May 1941 (Irving Rusinow, National Archives 522384, public domain). "Illustrative footage" marks comparable scenes, not the exact events. ARCHIVAL FOOTAGE (Internet Archive, public domain) U.S. Army: German Prisoners, Cherbourg (1944). U.S. Department of Agriculture: Power and the Land (1940); Farm Work Is War Work. Food for Fighters; Town, The; Postwar Germany: 28 Months After V-E Day (Part I); Sea Queen Home with 15,000 Vets, 1945/07/02; Postwar Germany: 28 Months After V-E Day (Part II); Combat Bulletin #22: Operations In France etc.; German Prisoners Evacuated To Naples; German Planes Dive Bomb Anzio, Italy, 12/22/1943; Great Railroad at Work, A (Part I); Combat Bulletin #62 Redeployment Operations, Etc 1945; WW2 POW School, 12/14/1945, has sound; Beaten Nazis Sign Historic Surrender, 1945/05/14; Invasion Of France: POWs & First Air Strip In France, 06/16/1944 - 06/18/1944; Troop Train. MUSIC "Long Note Four" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) "Ossuary 5 - Rest" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) "Long Note Three" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) "Clean Soul" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) "Heartbreaking" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) "Reawakening" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) "Dreamer" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) "Lasting Hope" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b... More forgotten WWII stories from the archive: subscribe to @TheWWArchive #WW2 #POW #Nebraska