Posted on 10/18/2017 9:20:01 AM PDT by Jewbacca
A fascinating collection of photos have resurfaced showing the hardships faced by German-Americans at the brutal height of the First World War. As Europe was ravaged by fighting, German immigrants in the US suffered harassment, internment, lynchings - and even the humiliation of being tarred and feathered.
Although a little-remembered part of history today, America was wracked by the fear and paranoia that swept from coast to coast during the Great War.
The United States declared war on Germany in April 1917 and helped lead the Allies to victory. But before that, many Americans were terrified of the German threat growing on the other side of the world.
This collection of pictures reveals the full extent of war hysteria and open hostility towards all things German that erupted across the nation.
Before the war broke out, America had welcomed German immigrants and regarded them highly. German was the second most widely spoken language in the country and there were over 100 million first and second-generation German-Americans living in the United States, with many of them involved in the thousands of German organizations across the country.
The United States embraced them and the German language became an established part of the high school curriculum.
But when the war broke out and Germany became the enemy of the Allies abroad, the American government began calling on its people to reject their German-American neighbors.
President Woodrow Wilson declared that German-Americans were to be treated as 'alien-enemies' and that they should reject their German identity if they were to be accepted in US society.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
We were neutral. Sail a ship full of munitions to a German port and see what the Royal Navy would have done.
He only did that because Gingrich and the gang forced him into it. He vetoed many bills before realizing he had to sign them. Welfare for one.
Slick gets to skate on a lot.
Some reputable people equate him with Ahab of the Bible.
>>We had no business being in WWI.
I forget - which side of WWI were the Frankfurt School’s politically correct benefactors in the business of backing?
+1
Britain had a simple grand strategy at the time. No European power was allowed to be dominate, and no one was allowed to challenge her at sea.
So that is why they defended the French at times. Balance of power (so Britain could have her empire) was the plan.
“Shall we talk about King Leopold and the Belgians in Africa? “
Or the Brits in India? The Brits in Malaya and Singapore? The French all over Africa and Indochina?
There’s an amazing disconnect going on here. The Germans were arguably the most civil of all the empire builders. Also they were late to the game.
This new competition is another reason the British wanted a war with Germany.
That was Britain’s mistake, as long as she had her Navy, who ruled the Continent didn’t matter.
And of course the Brits invented the “Concentration Camp” during the Boer War.
Not to mention our Ally, pre-Revolutionary Russia, in Poland.
So why then, was that our problem?
Yes, Second Reich. Adolf did not lack precedent for his “Third” iteration. The railroads were called “Reichsbahn” and the central bank “Reichsbank”; the national symbol was the “Reichsadler” (the eagle motif) and the legislature was the Reichstag.
The sinking of the Lusitania was a big violation of neutrality. Wilson had sent several notes to the Kaiser requesting that the U-boats not sink ships with US citizens on board, which were utterly ignored.
They wanted the markets.
So if a great power had most of the Continent in its sphere of influence, there would be reduced markets for British goods. That is why they fought so many wars against former allies. Remember, they (the British) viewed the US as a major threat up to WWI, and had plans to ally with the Germans to invade. Granted, they had plans to invade just about everyone then.
After a lot of research, I have found that with the British Empire did many great things, it was pretty evil too.
OK, no bother. I seem to have found enough info.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atrocities_in_the_Congo_Free_State
“Andrew Jackson was a slave owner who put collars around their necks stamped with the words, “property of Andrew Jackson.””
Oh the old slave owner president saw again. He was a good president and stopped some bad things. A good and decent man who wasn’t a pussy.
Speaking of enslaving people, you might want to look at Woodrow Wilson. He enslaved all of us, started the progressive crap we see today, created the FBI, the Federal Reserve, the income tax etc. He enslaved a nation. He put a collar around -your- neck.
That argument has been made at various times. It is not completely outlandish. It was not a matter of dominating Europe nor America; those efforts came about from the relentless escalation of the war as a result of the rats nest of interlocking treaties that were in place at the time. It’s hard to argue that a German crackdown on Serbia as a result of the assassination, even if it might have been brutal, would have been more distasteful than the whole of WWI and the eventual outbreak of WW2.
It isn’t Obama revision. So is your argument that the Germans had no right to sink a war munitions ship? They were even civilized enough to warn everyone in advance with a full page NYT ad.
It was Brit propaganda.
No; it was to keep Europe away from the rest of the Americas so that they would not threaten the USA’s southern borders. Is this a way of saying that Kerry declaring it “over” was a good thing for the USA?
As for “endless wars”, Washington warned the USA to be “at all times ready for war” rather than thinking we could eternally be isolated from that scourge, or “avoid insult” without “be(ing) able to repel it”; he was the first to promulgate “peace through strength”, as Reagan later articulated the policy. Things had gotten so decadent under Wilson that he could actually get successfully re-elected on such a craven slogan as “He Kept Us Out Of War”. The people were not afraid of Germany for no reason, in spite of that.
There was nothing to avenge with the Lusitania; we were violating neutrality and shipping weapons on an ocean liner. German embassy workers with placards warned Lusitania passengers that the ship was taking weapons into a war zone.
We should have declared war on Britain; they blockaded the German coast and wouldn’t let us (as a neutral) trade with them, then complained when Germany tried to prevent our trade with Britain in the only way they could.
I live with a dozen miles of two munitions plants that were targeted by German sympathizers when we were feigning neutrality; both the Canadian Railway Car Company in Lyndhurst NJ (nice cover name, no?) and Black Tom Island in Jersey City NJ were destroyed because they were making weapons for Britain (again, while we were neutral).
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