did U.S. gov.betray German Americans in ww1 (WW2, war, Mexican)
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This always puzzled me. German Americans were the biggest ethnic group in the country and they contributed so much to American civilization in education, engineering, culture, etc. It has been said that German Americans were the backbone of the country. And German Americans had the nicest neighborhoods in the big cities with real nice architecture. But WW1 was devastating to the German American communities all across the country. The war broke up their neighborhoods and they never recovered. Naturally the German Americans were against going to war against Germany. But it seemed the government ignored the interests of the biggest ethnic group. So I wonder why the government didn't consider the what the German Americans wanted. It is like they didn't matter or something.
I wasn't born yet so it's hard to give an informed opinion. :-) I'm more well read on WW II but not so much on WW I. Why was WWI so devasting to the German American communities?
The German communities in Texas (and there are a lot of them) had their German language newspapers shut down and were forbidden to talk German. They weren't rounded up like the Japanese in WWII but there is still resentment.
The same occurred in Cincinnati, with a huge German population. Along with harassing German groups and forbidding German language instruction in schools, the city went as far as changing the names of about a dozen streets with German names.
You mean just like what we did to blacks, Asians, Mexicans, Irish, Muslims or any other group we treated like second class citizens at some point in our history? I think that's just part of being American
You mean just like what we did to blacks, Asians, Mexicans, Irish, Muslims or any other group we treated like second class citizens at some point in our history? I think that's just part of being American
This is not specific to America and never has been. This is a common response in Human beings everywhere: Hutu and Tutsi, West and East, etc "You look and act like a threat(Your Enemy) therefore you are". I can guarantee if any society faces this situation again they will respond the exact same way.
It was in large part due to the propaganda put out by the government. Woodrow Wilson was a pretty hateful bigot towards any ethnic group but his own. He also thoroughly segregated the government. Americans by and large up to that point wanted nothing to do with European wars and such, so it took a large amount of propaganda to get Americans to go along with the war. Making the Germans out to be evil was part of that strategy.
Most Germans in America never lived in Germany, many in fact left because they were political enemies of the Prussians who conquered whatever city state they were in.
Also, Germany was conspiring with Mexico to invade America.
When Woodrow Wilson began his second term after being re-elected for keeping the US out of war he jumped in after the sinking of the Lusitania. The German government placed full page ads in New York newspapers stating they would sink the ship as it contained munitions. When it was torpedoed it sank in a matter of minutes because of all the explosives it was carrying.
See David M Kennedy Over Here - The First World War and American Society.
It's an excellent book - the best I've read on this theme - but very chilling in places. The treatment of all dissenters - not just German-American ones - in 1917-18 makes Joe McCarthy look like a feckless amateur.
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