This is to supplement the poster who mentioned that, yes, it can and did happen in the US. As the thread is more than a week without posters, it does not seem harmful to post in full for those who want greater evidence, even mostly anecdotal. Also added is a guess of how to view the incidents.
I wrote earlier of debating with self to post these writings. Sort of raw data and rambling, but while I personally do not have any German background and only bumped into readings or personal accounts, it is really clear that the ethnic group took a plunge on the social respectability slide.
In fiction, you might also read East of Eden, by partly German background John Steinbeck, to find if it matches the 1955 or 1956 movie. In the film, the barber, a German whose name is Gus I recall, has a mob chase him to his house because he refuted a carnival talking points British military speaker spouting the propaganda worst case if not fabricated Evil Hun line. He was, by the Sheriff (Burl Ives), who broke up the event, only the day before one of the most respected of people. But that night drunken men following him saying they only wanted to treat him with a drink, a woman blaming him for her son's recent battle death, damaged house, give him a piece of my mind, etc sort of mob.
Yes, but it also must be said that Britain did the very same thing with Italy, Romania, Greece, and quite a few other places, promising "Piece -- a piece of this country, a piece of that country. And after the war they delivered as promised. And America the previous year invaded about a quarter of Mexico, albeit with some considerable rights (invasion of Columbus, New Mexico, with 50 US deaths). Or Vera Cruz in 1914, with a few hundred Mexican deaths with highly dubious American reactions and actions.
And the oddest thing is that Zimmermann was at least then an honest man. Whereas a diplomat in the British agencies would have simply lied about it, when asked by possibly cynical reporters if he denied it Zimmermann apparently blurted the truth out. Wiki: However, any doubts as to the authenticity of the telegram were removed by Arthur Zimmermann himself. First at a press conference on 3 March 1917, he told an American journalist, "I cannot deny it. It is true." Then, on 29 March 1917, Zimmermann gave a speech in which he admitted the telegram was genuine.
About the Greek promises of carving up Turkey, it back fired badly. Over extended to the British promises, drunk of dreams having a third or more of Turkey, they were utterly defeated. A million or two of their countrymen were kicked out, ancestors living in Turkey for 2 or 3 thousand years. Many lost their lives, and Aristotle Onassis was able to save his father's life only by becoming a lover with a Turkish Lieutenant, according to his own account I read.
Or the Armenian deal. You see, Armenia had for 50 years or so had young, intellectual hotheads who liked to assissinate Turkish officials. Also they were the largest and wealthiest Christian group in Turkey. The final straw, in Turkish eyes to this day still (but not in mine), was that Russia was formenting discontent, as they had with other minorities and captive majorities thoughout the Balkans and elsewhere for a century or more. In Crimea, the Russian process worked with some locals, so the Turks gave the remaining Goths had a choice, die and intermarry with Crimean Tatar or perhaps the local Greeks, despite Goths being there for about 1,500 years, about 250 years ago. After losing nearly all of their European territories in 1914, the Turks had had enough.
"Enough" apparently meant agreeing to dispose of the Armenians by group conference, especially in the most populous and dangerous military threat close to the Russian border. I say apparently, as it is shrouded in centerfuge to this day, but it is personally believed to be by far the prima facie truth on contrasting opposing evidence. In the course of this March conference, with in two months about a million people disappeared. Interesting how they did it, but it is in digression. Anyway, Russians did not stop trying to stir up trouble through out WWI, despite costing a couple of million or perhaps three million Armenians and Chaldean lives. Hey, it works so do not knock it. Enough survivor males made it over to the Russian lines to form a division or two, so a project success. Millions of people dead are of a small issue, not even a distraction.
Teddy Roosevelt figured into the scheme of being set against "Hyphenated Americans", which is yet another key reason leading up to the German-American misadventure 1917-18, had second thoughts after being pretty much sidelined in WWI. The ultimate trigger was how 'the western powers have decided to sweep Armenian genocide under the rug' or words very similar to that privately written in 1919, soon before his death. He was disgusted.
Which brings up the melting pot. Always in the cities, social workers were hen pecking people to give up the old language. Remember, this is in the times of eugenics holding sway over all and the conviction the best ways were that of Anglo Saxon (both originally German peoples, by the way, as was Queen Victoria, whose FIRST LANGUAGE was German!) My grandmother, the same one mentioned in an earlier post, was held captive for two weeks by social workers in the early 1930's. A bit overweight and arriving alone, she was ordered at the bus station to follow the official sounding and brassy matron. This is New York City. As it turned out, they expected better signs of pregnancy to show, and collect upon threats the baby for eager adoptive parents on the waiting list who were sterile. Point is, you did not mess with social workers back then in many parts. (Happy ending, after two weeks she dropped an envelop without a stamp onto the street below, and by luck some kind soul afixed a stamp and mailed it. Her brother, used to dealing with judges and then living in NYC, quickly came and collected her.)
Ah, yes, the melting pot. Unless you were Black, Chinese, Japanese, etc., then learn our ways but keep your distance. Don't melt. Tweet, out of the gene pool for the color bar. The term salad bowl had very limited use or had not been invented. WWI gave too good a crisis to waste towards this end of forced assimilation. I recall reading in the late 1970's that no ethnic group had been so high on the social scale and then so quickly dropped so low, as in the case of German-Americans. Whoever wrote at this thread that "there were not confiscations" is sadly mistaken.
First of all, confiscation is a long American tradition. Post 1783, the Loyalists, usually the richest 10% of city dwellers, normally lost everything, despite the letter of armistice treaty specifically writing that they had to be compensated. In Nova Scotia to this day, some families are angry. One fellow somewhat recently yelled in Boston, "George Washington was rebel scum." In the Civil War, there is a famous case of the Grosvenor family. Because the UK supported the South tacitly, key UK operators land in the South was confiscated, including the Grovesnor's. Come WWII or so (I forget when about then), the US wanted to buy a key property for the US embassy, the current one until 2008. Virtually every US embassy has been owned outright around the world.
US embassy to move from Grosvenor Square to industrial estate - Telegraph
The family said, sure, despite the largest land owner in London (10% of city center or some such huge amount) long standing policy to only lease, never sell.
Grosvenor Group - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The catch in the deal turned out to be a big one. Return free of charge the lands confiscated in the Civil War. The area turned out to be a very large chunk of what was in 1865 unpopulated swamplands of present day Miami, Florida. The US leased the property.
There was a long standing resident of German birth. He owned, I think, the largest holdings of any other than the 7 or 8 families who own nearly all of Oahu and much of the other islands. He had several cane plantations and processing plants, especially on Kauai and Maui. He came in 1870 I think, when it was a native monarchy, and long before the US businessmen putsch, much less before the 1898 annexation. Now, there was an act: "The act stated any person that was a citizen of the Republic of Hawaii on or before August 12, 1898 would also be a citizen of the United States, and any citizen of the United States that resided in the island on or after August 12, 1898 would have to live there to become a citizen of the Territory of Hawaii.[1]"
Anyway, come WWI, the enemy alien act was taking property right and left but_not_ able to take his property directly. So it was done indirectly. No one would trade or do business with him, from laborers up to the elite (who obviously organized it). He could not ship out his crop that was harvested, in fact. He had to sell for the tax money alone, and did so to a group of said businessmen of the elite for a song, it is reported. The legal name of the holding group? Liberty Holdings, I recall. Liberty coincidentally came to mean as in liberate meaning steal in WWII, very possibly from these WWI issues. The Spanish American War had a few Spaniards mugged in the alley, but as not many Spaniards immigrated to the USA, mostly to few northern cities. Looting religiously tax deviant Quakers was a time honored tradition, I even did a history of one for a client whose ancestor took advantage in the worst one of 1780's, with episodes then, 1812, 1846, and the Civil War (Famed broadcaster Ed Morrow's Quaker family had this trouble in North Carolina.)
In WWI, Montana pacifist Hutterites where attacked in the streets for not knowing any English, and some died of brutal beatings in prison (or was that Jehovah Witness/Seventh Day Adventist). Anyway, they all left for Canada. Fears of 1918 Zepplin bombings, _in Montana_! Fears of 1896 airship bombings in Wichita, Kansas, a large following including a young boy named Dwight Eisenhower. It turned out to be a large kite flying tethered with an advertisement pasted on it.
There are dozens of such stories I have heard of though the years. Like a black guy from Pittburgh, right across from the triangle in Mount Washington. We were living overseas and became acquaintances through mutual rare knowledge of countryside and took occasional mountain bike trips together or in a group. Anyway, born in the 1950's in Pittsburgh, he said he was amazed at tons of locals who claimed Swedish or Danish ancestory, whereas he found out later they were almost wholly German, and switched since WWI to unearth some foreign link real or imagined.
In 1922 President Harding's wife was of German background, yet said angrily she was Dutch. Donald Trump consistently claimed Danish ancestory, since some took a few years off in Copenhagen on business, but is of German background. A former girlfriend said in Toronto she got the accusing look and refusal of business for her surname Scheer (an ancestor was from England, usually spelled Shear, but for a while moved to a German settlement in the midwest and never changed it to the more common Anglicised spelling when the ancestors learned to spell beyond an X). A colleague getting the same in NYC, despite German surname Lute coming in the 1700's and having a long standing US military family background.
True, the three last ones were really about the Holocaust, but the roots are in WWI. In the 1830's we still wanted to separate from British English, spelling words differently, and Teddy Roosevelt was a proponent of that. This is when what Dostoyevsky mentioned kicks in. "While some who are low become better for the hardship, the norm is to look for some one even lower on the pecking order to abuse." or words to that effect. Wolf packs behave in a worse way: yesterday you were friend/colleague, today you are lunch. That is life, the call of the wild. America is not immune to the process, with many lapses and outright trends. In Canada and Australia it was much the same. Religious refugees in South Australia since about 1830's, the order was to change all German names. One had to be changed back when it was later discovered that it was actually an aborigine word. In Canada, Berlin became the now large Toronto suburb named Kitchener.
In Western Pennsylvania, the uncle of future film star Jimmy Stewart erected a war memorial in 1919 at an isolated place in the countryside. It was right next to the German Lutheran cemetery, including those who had just died in the service. Ouch, seems to be a message. Harr harr har, a back woods laugh at other's expense. National Geographic mentions in a recent article on Indianapolis that the city took a dive when the German community left in droves post WWI, due to the treatment given during the war. Oddly, the KKK practically ran the state soon afterwards. Churches had a much steeper decline in German language services, but had been steadily dropping for a long time. For example, the much civil war abused Blue Ridge Germans near the border had the last German service church in the hills switch over in 1905, I recall reading.
One may think of all languages, not just German, similar to buildings of historical value. Once gone, they are gone pretty much forever. Only a few like Ireland's Gaelic or Israel's Hebrew have made a successful comeback, and usually it is as a religious language that is the last link. Ancient Egyptian survives as a rite in Coptic Christian churches and entire paragraphs of the pre Ayran conquest of India scripture survive, the latter handed down orally IIRC. During war it is a perfect time, too good a crisis to waste so to speak, to get rid of influences, AFAIK.
Look at the Roman empire. They were often uncommonly successful at getting rid of the local language, especially if there were many language groups around that were not mutually understandable dialects. Romania only had a few generations of Roman rule but speaks largely a Romance language to this day. Language push tactics work.
For those who read through this, congratulations. Hope you understood the main themes as related to the thread topic. Something most certainly did happen, and it was deep. The language would have died out probably anyway, but the issue was handled in a heavy handed way, I think.