Posted on 07/12/2013 7:27:07 AM PDT by ProgressingAmerica
Little known is it that FDR is not the first president to have relocation camps, and Japanese Americans were not the original target. Nearly 30 years prior to World War two, German Americans were the targets and the most interesting thing is that very little is written about this. History has been virtually expunged of this topic. Historians do not write about it, so history books don't contain it, and even from various news journals at the time it was largely unreported. When it was reported, some of the blurbs on it were small and not noteworthy.
The first American President to have internment camps got away with it.
I could only find a handful such articles about the incident, one of which details the treatment of war captives. "How the United States Takes Care of German Prisoners (June, 1918)" The other stories I found are often times reported in passing, they detail the harassment of citizens, business owners, and others who clearly don't exist in a war or battle context.
One such citizen was Agathe Wilhelmine Richrath who:
MISS AGATHE WlLHELMINE RICHRATH, instructor in German at Vassar College, who has been taken into custody at Poughkeepsie on a charge of being pro-German and of circulating German propaganda, has tendered her resignation and it has been accepted. Miss Richrath will be interned as an alien enemy.
The paragraph above the one I quoted lists Dr.s Richard Goldschmidt and Rhoda Erdmann were both detained and interned as well.
Richrath's internment did actually get reported in the NY Times, along with the names of several other people in passing.
Finally, quite a scene was created when the government went after Heinrich Bockisch:
STATUS OF M. WELTE & SONS DEFINEDOfficial Statement Issued by Bureau of Investigation of the Alien Property Custodian
E. M. Atkin of the Bureau of Investigation, Alien Property Custodian, New York, issued the following statement on Tuesday last relative to M. Welte & Sons:
"Heinrich Bockisch, the factory manager and a large stockholder in M. Welte & Sons, Inc., was taken into custody by the United States Government on April 22, 1918, on charges of German propaganda. He was ordered interned and was removed July 2 to Fort Oglethorpe, with 17 other alien enemies.
The story talks about a fight on the street and more.
These are all names which are lost to history at this point, but what I'm getting at is that Woodrow Wilson's concentration camps were real. The government did not just intern foreigners(which is bad enough) but they also went after those who emigrated to our country, set up businesses, were attempting to be productive members of society, may have planned on staying, and some who were even full time citizens. One of the most "well known"(His name is specifically listed on Wikipedia) internees was Dr. Karl Muck, who once he was released from his year of detainment, left the country.
I remember Richard Basehart playing the CO of Andersonville
The worst camps had to be if you were captured by “Japs”
in ww2.Brutal sob’s then.
Who cares? What’s your point? The government robbed these folks of their freedom without due process
I suspect that if the US had stayed out of The Great War, Germany may very well have won, and a certain Austrian painter would have died in anonymity.
By the time the Germans launched their Spring Offensive in 1918, they were nearly dead, but the French were in even worse condition, and the Germans probably would have taken Paris if not stopped by the Americans at Belleau Wood.
Oh I don’t. I blame him for what he did. You were listing “progressive” presidents. Lincoln was the first.
see
The Progressive Era’s Legacy in The New Deal
at: http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/viewSubCategory.asp?id=1228
No flaming liberal here, but what really pist me off was when I read that German prisoners in the south could go to the movies and sit in the lower section, but black U.S. soldiers still had to sit in the balcony.
Please give examples of how Lincoln was a Progressive President.
my grandfathers uncle died at the concentration camp in andersonville
People should not confuse POW camps for internment camps. They’re not completely dissimilar but they’re not the same thing either.
IIRC, after the war ALL German POWs were repatriated to their Fatherland, bombed into ruins & everything. Those who wished to return to America did so as foreign civilians & went through the usual immigration procedures. Many new German immigrants were of course not former POWs but actual Nazi war criminals and they are still being caught well into their nineties.
Hmmm... no mention here yet about the WWII internment of Japanese-Americans who like WWI German-Americans were also citizens.
What is largely discussed is Woodrow Wilson. I knew he was a progressive but never knew what an idiot he was regarding foreign relations. Peace without victory?
The more I read of these times, the more I am reading of the present, honestly.
Are you calling the carving out of reservations for the Indians, “concentration camps”?
You apparently missed reading about the German Bundts both in WWI and WWII. It was not just that people were interned. The interned were indeed antiUS and proGerman.
Eugene V. Debs
What’s your point? The government has been doing it for years - that’s my point.
The only president worse than Woody is Barry.
He did unfortunately follow through with the Progressive idea of federal railroads, but he was not the first to do so. Also, he used the railways for the protection –which is in the purview of any US President - of the attacks against the Federal Government - to protect the Constitution which the Democrat Slave states tried to destroy. And what else do you think was progressive about him?
Yes. The 19th century implementation of Indian Reservations certainly warrant that label.
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