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 ...
>>So the author is an idiot,
A useful one.
https://twitter.com/harveyday94?lang=en
https://uk.linkedin.com/in/h94day
He’s a typical pink/rainbow SJW poodle trying to manufacture a ride on the coat-tails of somebody Else’s “tragedy”.
"Harmsworth, who had been elevated to the peerage as Lord Rothermere, was editorially sympathetic to Oswald Mosley[4] and the British Union of Fascists and he wrote an article, "Hurrah for the Blackshirts", in January 1934.[5] Referring to Adolf Hitler's proposed invasion of Czechoslovakia, Rothermere, again writing in the Daily Mail, said in 1938 that "Czechs were of no concern to Englishmen".[6]"
Funny how Hollywood's fantasy manure tends to reflect and distort reality.
>>the new Wonder Woman movie.
"Wonder Woman Is Officially Queer, Always Has Been"
https://www.google.com/search?source=hp&q=Wonder+Woman+Lesbian
Why did you ping me?
Because you seemed to have a relevant perspective - especially in the context of the authorship/ownership issues associated with the UK Mail’s “tragic” article.
https://twitter.com/harveyday94?lang=en
https://uk.linkedin.com/in/h94day
...or any of the other rainbow minions in Lord Rothermere/Harmsworth/Rothschild/Whatever's Daily "journalistic" empire, written anything about this...
60 Minutes Videos Special Investigation Spies Lords and Predators Pt 1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDVbAD5QCrk
60 Minutes Videos Special Investigation Spies Lords and Predators Pt 2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flNywB5uMt4
60 Minutes Videos Special Investigation Spies Lords and Predators Pt 3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGHe636UBo0https://www.google.com/search?source=hp&q=Harmsworth+Rothschild
...tragic plight?
Very interesting post.
I was recently at a fort in New Mexico where they interned German POWs during WWII. One of the comments was that it was pretty nice and they had been concerned because internment in the USA during WWI could be fine or very harsh, depending on the camp.
This seems to bear that out.
It didn’t even have walls. (It did have about 100 miles of near impassible desert around it.)
Thanks. I had never heard of this issue before. I suppose because it was white people having problems, no one cares to put it in history books.
Do you know the name of the fort in New Mexico? I travel/work at White Sands missile range several times a year.
No, but I know a local who can tell us the name of the fort.
What do you do at WS?
My Great Grandfather, last name Kastenhuber, did not change his name, and anyone who suggested it would probably not have liked the result. He was a Captain in the AEF and fought in a number of engagements in France, including a assault across a pontoon bridge defended by machine guns at the second battle of the Marne.
Fort Stanton and Lordsburg were German internment sites in NM in WWII. There were also POW camps.
My Grandmother lived in a small town in Ohio and had a strongly German surname (Hoopingarner). They were Lutherans. Her family had lived there in Ohio for four generations. Her maternal aunts were members of the DAR (as I am SAR). She was about one eighth German according to family records. The rest of her ancestors were Irish, Scottish, Welsh, English, and Swiss with deep American roots. The German ancestors arrived in this country in 1752 from the village of Oberboihingen via Rotterdam and Southampton before they disembarked from the Phoenix in Philadelphia. They were not allowed off the ship until they had pledged loyalty to King George II. When the US declared war on Germany in 1917, she was immediately ostracized and call a “Hun.” Things got worse. People began to boycott my great grandfather’s general store. Windows were broken. Her house burned down under mysterious circumstances.
The family changed its identity to Pennsylvania Dutch which was still German, but most people did not know that. My grandmother always blamed Woodrow Wilson for making things bad for German Americans. Her family had been Grover Cleveland Democrats. In 1925 when she was old enough to vote she registered Republican. Some of the same people who had not liked her for being German were in the KKK. They burned a cross as a warning to her for registering as a Republican. She gave up and left the town moving to Marietta where she met and married my grandfather who was also a Republican. In a strange way I am indebted to Woodrow Wilson and the Klan for making me possible.
There is no ethnic group ever in America that was as big in immigration as Germans. Nor any greater in genetic influence.
But you wouldn’t know that. Germans never tended to toot their own horns and even with “neighborhoods”, worked more to blend in than stand out. As a result, you won’t see much reference to them in movies, e.g., in the entire life of the industry. Meanwhile....IrishIrishIrish, and plenty of Italians.
My grandfather was really in a pickle. His parents were German immigrants and he didn’t start speaking English until he started school. He always had a slight accent. He entered Annapolis in 1907. He was in the first class of naval aviators at Pensacola. When the war broke out in Europe he watched like a hawk. He retired after WW II as a captain. He always felt that being German put him behind in rank.
Hmmmm interesting. Yes my grandmother and her sibs spoke German until they went to school. Then the kids said, “Mom, we are Americans. We speak English.’ Mom never spoke great English. I remember my grandmother was embarrassed about being German, and yet would say, “That cannot be true. The Germans never would do that’ re WW2.
Well, those two world wars kind of make the German ethnicity a slamdunk butt of hostility for the nitwit writers of movies and TV.
Thanks, but I don't generally watch movies based on comic books, or one about a lesbian dominatrix.
My ideal premise for yet another movie about the rise of the Third Reich would be that a time travelling covert commando force caused WWII by going back to 1923 and saving Hitler, who was supposed to die during the Beer Hall Putsch, because it was calculated to head off a massive downward spiral into a worldwide single party state (which would be a not very disguised version of the EU and USSR). Oops. Obviously, it would be a bit controversial. In this context, a bit controversial is analogous to saying, that Hitler guy sure had some issues.
I don’t thinks so
From late 20s on Wilson was a Yankee or at least lived among them
And did very well amongst them
A landslide in 2012 he only lost Three union states one of which was Tafts home statr
Odd for a confederate sympathizer
Odder still the war ended when he was 8 years old
Course he was old enough to enjoy the lovely Reconstruction era and his Radical Republican overlords
Which more explains him
But what he really was was a progressive in that relative definition for that period
A political ideology that afflicted both parties and north and south
Interesting.
In WWI, there was very widespread anti-German sentiment in the Upper Midwest - especially my state of Minnesota which had many German immigrants. A sizable number of those immigrants were not in favor of war with teir home country. Other identified with the Non-Partisan League, an agrarian political reform movement that many tagged to be socialistic.
The state lgislature passed into law what was called the Minnesota Commission of Public Safety. The Minnesota State Historical Society has a good short article about it. Here’s the link:
http://www.mnopedia.org/group/minnesota-commission-public-safety
This article is a gross distortion of the facts. “German Americans,” if that term is used to mean US citizens of German descent (my ancestors among them), were not subject to mass harassment and internment during WWI. German nationals and citizens of other countries of German birth were. Only 11,000 total were detained, much less interned, out of millions living here.
“German Americans” were and remain the largest “ethnic” group in the country. While animosity toward recent immigrants and very obviously German individuals happened, and the use of the German
Language and German customs were suppressed, there was too damn many Americans of German decent for any mass abuse to have taken place. The Studebaker family of the auto company were of German descent. Pershing was of German decent (his paternal ancestors came from Alsace in the German Empire) and he commanded the AEF! Eisenhower too was “German American.” and a young officer in the same force.
In that era the idea of “hyphenated Americans” of any type was considered un American. You were either American or you were something else. We should go back to that idea.
Third Reich:
“Meaning “third regime or empire,” the Nazi designation of Germany and its regime from 1933-45. Historically, the First Reich was the medieval Holy Roman Empire, which lasted until 1806. The Second Reich included the German Empire from 1871-1918.”
https://fcit.usf.edu/holocaust/DEFN/third.htm
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