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 ...
>>The photos and news from WW I are being recycled today
Gee whiz how did that happen!?
So did Obama when he won the primaries over Hillary in 2008.
Wilson's decision to allow the arms trade with the Entente was the ultimate reason the US was drawn into the war. However, Germany's response was disproportionate and ultimately provocative. Unrestricted submarine warfare violated maritime law. Acts of sabotage on US soil were the equivalent of state sponsored terrorism and demanded a response. The US had attacked no Germans on German soil. Promoting an invasion of the US by Mexico, at a time when Villistas were attacking towns on our side of the border was not a wise strategy either.
BTW, regarding the pictures of German prisoners in Hoboken, the camp pictured was just a couple of miles from Black Tom Island, scene of the worse German sabotage attack.
Germany wasn’t involved in “cracking down” on Serbia; they supported Austria-Hungary against Russian interference so THEY could.
And meanwhile right then also, the Mediterranean was basically a British lake. The truth is that the Germans were the least abusive to the few colonies they did have. And they were becoming tough business competitors.
The Brits didn’t like that.
That's like asking not to bomb a hospital where armaments are stored.
There were Danish West Indies, which we bought and renamed the US Virgin Islands...
True.
Dutch, too.
“even the humiliation of being tarred and feathered”
I call BS. Better have pics of that.
The US as a neutral had no right to supply weapons that would be used to kill German troops while claiming neutrality; that alone justified the sabotage. We also abided by Britain’s blockade, and wouldn’t trade with Germany.
Yes; they are still there!
Wilson, all along knew what he was doing, he knew the Germans would take the bait.
I'm a WWII baby, and while I don't HATE 'em, they're still Japs and Krauts or Nazis to me. And the French are still Cheese Eating Surrender Monkeys.
That’s the propaganda line. The Lusitania was an ocean liner of the Cunard Line, not a supply vessel. 128 American deaths went unavenged for two years, and to accuse them of somehow “violating neutrality” is a direct insult to them and their descendants.
An alliance with the Second Reich would have violated what the US stood for. If not for that Reich inciting Mexico, Wilson may have considered just that.
Who was it that said that “The Balkans weren’t worth the bones of a single Pomeranian Grenadier”?
True again, the Brits get away with everything. one of my favorites is that the Brits fled the battlefield at Dunkirk leaving the French flank exposed. They surrendered in Singapore to a Jap force one third their size.
Yet we never hear about tea sipping surrender monkeys.
Why then was the ship carrying munitions?
Bismarck; see that in light of the context. Prussia would rule the German states, and Austria had to look south.
Idiotic. No historian anywhere uses the term second reich. And as for neutrality, a US citizen on a ship doesn’t make it neutral.
Neither does its British flag. Neither does its military munitions cargo.
A ship loses neutrality in those situations. The Lusitania was not a violation of neutrality. (but selling weapons to the Brits was)
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