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 it would have been better for the Kaiser’s Second Reich to dominate Europe and even the Americas in the early part of the last century?”
I really don’t know.
The war was so complex all I’ve settled on was that it ended poorly and set the stage for the rise of Hitler (piss be upon him) and WWII.
“Wilson left the Lusitania unavenged for two years,”
The Lusitania was a British ship. And it was carrying a large cargo of war munitions. And the Germans took out an ad in the New York Times saying it was a legitimate target of war as a military cargo vessel. They warned everyone that they would sink it if they could.
There was nothing to avenge.
By the way, at that very moment we were a neutral nation. And the Brits were poised, ready, and certain to attack any American merchantmen that wanted to go to a German port.
The Brits were the bad guys of WWI.
We were in WW I for the money. It wasn’t our war, it was the war of the Royals. Millions of lives lost for Kings and Princes and their greed. One comment about their prisoners here were treated better than ours were in Germany reminded me of a coworker I had. He was captured during the Bulge, they weren’t cruel to him, his only complaint was the food as a PW. He knew that food was scarce while he was a POW, even the Germans complained, however they got what ever the Germans were getting. In 1945 Germany they were lucky if there was anything left that was edible. The PWs here had southern fried chicken and an abundance of other items, because we had them, there was no real food shortage. Heck we even fed the Soviet army. During WW II my parents were refused food at the corner store because the name sounded German and my mom was an Italian. Pop was Scandinavian, the store owner was a complete jerk with a German sounding name but of English or Irish background. In WW II if they locked up all the American Italians and Germans, who would be left fight the war?
Precisely why Wilson was a disaster of a President.
The Versailles Treaty was certainly a hot mess. It stands out as a prime failure of the League of Nations; and of course given Wilson’s heavy influence on that, it would be no wonder.
Too many think that the Kaiser and Hitler were the same.
Bookmark
University of Montana J-school Burns conservative books because they offend students
Although a little-remembered part of history today, America was wracked by the liberal snowflake fear and paranoia that swept from coast to coast during the 2010s. Pictured, a crowd gathers for a conservative book burning at the University of Montana in 2017
Yeah that's right, the leader the demoncrapic party was an evil slave owner who abused his slaves.
Versailles was all Clemenceau, in fact Wilson tried to get Clemenceau to change it.
I hope Clemenceau and Hitler are plugging each other in Hell.
I am meaning when correct history is written. Not right now, but in the future.
No they were not the bad guys. Please refrain from Obama-esque revisionism; I heard enough of that while in school in Ireland, to boot, from Obama’s ideological forebears/brethren.
Leaving the blood of Americans unavenged advertised US weakness; it was not the British who sank the ship, and that is the bottom line.
Bill Clinton won’t make that list. Be realistic. He did a right face during his second term. The impeachment put the fear of history in him.
Obama however sill surely be in the top 3 worst presidents for quite some times. Most if not all of his major accomplishments helped destroy Americans faith in America.
It’s US policy ALWAYS to look the other way when Christians are being oppressed by unbelievers.
“The Second Reich was quite imperialist.”
Your ignorance of WWI is breathtaking. Second Reich? Try the original was Rome, then the Holy Roman empire was second, then Hitler’s Reich.
And no, there was nothing to avenge with Lusitania. Just more British treachery and propaganda. And in WWI the Brits violated our neutrality every single day in numerous ways. The Germans didn’t.
Only the historically illiterate conflate WWI Germany with the Nazis of WWII. For one thing, the average German soldier in WWI had the right to vote for several decades. Most British soldiers, in the war to make the world safe for democracy, did not get that right until after the war.
Well, by “that”, I meant the League of Nations.
France after Clemenceau’s fall was actually more aggressive than Clemenceau himself with respect to enforcing the more draconian requirements of the treaty; and the reason for Clemenceau not getting re-elected in 1920 was due to his inability to secure the Rhine for France, although he did get Alsace (Alsatia) and Lorraine.
No point at reading pass this sentence. The author is an idiot.
“and here the Second Reich was deliberately flouting the Monroe Doctrine”
Leaving aside your second reich ignorance, you are aware that the Monroe doctrine was also meant to keep America out of the pointless and endless European wars?
And there were no German West Indies, but there sure were British West Indies and French West Indies.
So who were the “Imperialists”?
My late grandfather was about 10 when WWI broke out.
This was in a very German area, but the pressure was intense. For instance, they still had church services (Catholic, Lutheran, whatever) in German. He remembered the day “they” came and burned the German hymnals and Bibles and forced placing an American flag up by the altar (there were no flags before that).
Made the service be a variant of the Episcopal service, and tried to make loyalty oaths part of it.
Grandpa did not like Wilson.
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