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The period between WWI and WWII, inclusive, was not a good time to be German in the U.S. It was especially bad during WWI. All adult male Germans who were not U.S. citizens were required to register as alien enemies. Many German families anglicized their surnames.
that is what my great grandfather on my fathers side of the family did. he had the pronunciation of our name changed in federal court after he was turned down by the military for service in WW l. after the pronunciation change, he was accepted into the military.
Check out the Lager Beer Riots in Chicago in the 1800s. Prior to the riot, Irish and Germans were competing with one another and often fought with one another based on ethnic lines. When the city's Anglo-American ruling class sought to impose a law banning alcohol consumption in the city, the beer loving Irish and Germans put aside their differences and staged a full scale riot in protest. Many historians believe that the imposition of the law by the ruling class wasn't really about beer, it was an anti-immigrant move.
"German Americans seem more assimilated in the culture than in other British-founded colonial nations around the world. " The main reason for this was the aforementioned suspicion of the patriotism of German-Americans in WWI. They knew they had to downplay their ethnicity to avoid the wrath of their fellow citizens. During WWI, all things German were suspect. Some restauranteurs actually started calling sauerkraut "liberty cabbage". (Remember "freedom fries" after 9-11?)
Check out the Lager Beer Riots in Chicago in the 1800s. Prior to the riot, Irish and Germans were competing with one another and often fought with one another based on ethnic lines. When the city's Anglo-American ruling class sought to impose a law banning alcohol consumption in the city, the beer loving Irish and Germans put aside their differences and staged a full scale riot in protest. Many historians believe that the imposition of the law by the ruling class wasn't really about beer, it was an anti-immigrant move.
You do know that German/Irish mixes are about the most common in the US. Those two peoples really go well together. They love to drink, they love potatoes, and of course both had wars with the British.LOL
Every arriving group was treated as inferior, the Germans were pioneers in this ongoing dynamic in that they constituted the first large wave of non Anglo immigrants. They of course faced an array of stereotypical perceptions and traditional prejudices, but they managed to get out from under this by making an excellent account of themselves in the new world. At the start of the 19th Century, German farming techniques were the most advanced in the world, but of course all arable land in Europe had long settled ownership and the profits from their scientific approach tended to go to the aristocrat owners rather than the clever workers. America, with massive amounts of unsettled land available, was the obvious answer for millions.
The German farms in New York and Pennsylvania were extremely prosperous, wealth was being generated in the German American community and nothing knocks down prejudice in America quite as rapidly as money.
Anti German prejudice lingered until sometime after the Civil War. That it was still alive during that conflict is evidenced by the prejudicial attitudes of Anglo Union soldiers towards the German immigrant dominated units such as the 11th Corps of the Army of the Potomac. They were collectively called "The Dutch", and less flateringly "The Squareheads."
The big break for the German-Americans came in the 1850's when the great wave of Irish immigration was taking place. This allowed the prejudice to be shifted..and allowed the established German Americans to join in on the poo pooing of the drunken, useless Micks.
And once the Irish were largely assimilated, it became mock the Italians and middle Europeans time for those who formed the next wave of immigration near the start of the 20th Century. They took it on the chin until the Chinese tagged in, who in turn suffered until the Latinos arrived to carry the ball.
While prejudicial hatred of immigrants has been a liquid American phenomena, Americans could always count on their long term stable victims, the Africans.
God bless you Grandstander for writing "11th Corps" rather than the anachronistic but common today "XI Corps". I hate the Roman numeral business when applied to Civil War army corps. I wonder when that got started; after the Great War? WWII? Bruce Catton (whom I loved) was guilty of it.
God bless you Grandstander for writing "11th Corps" rather than the anachronistic but common today "XI Corps". I hate the Roman numeral business when applied to Civil War army corps. I wonder when that got started; after the Great War? WWII? Bruce Catton (whom I loved) was guilty of it.
I wasn't really thinking about it, but now that I am, we should also get rid of the use of Roman numerals in listing the year that a film was made. Why employ an informational icon in a cryptic manner that many cannot solve, doesn't that defeat the purpose of publishing the information? You want to know when the movie was released, you look on the back of the dvd cover, and then you have a little puzzle to figure out. If the year gets treated like that, why not list the actor's names in the form of anagrams? Or the movie title in Latin? "Absentis per Ventus" rather than "Gone With the Wind."
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