Welcome to City-Data.com Forum!
U.S. CitiesCity-Data Forum Index
Go Back   City-Data Forum > General Forums > History
 [Register]
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
View detailed profile (Advanced) or search
site with Google Custom Search

Search Forums  (Advanced)
Reply Start New Thread
 
Old 05-07-2014, 08:27 PM
 
1,519 posts, read 1,761,143 times
Reputation: 1825

Advertisements

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.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message

 
Old 05-08-2014, 02:40 AM
 
Location: Virginia-Shenandoah Valley
7,670 posts, read 14,184,477 times
Reputation: 7464
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?
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 05-08-2014, 06:57 AM
 
Location: Port Charlotte
3,930 posts, read 6,413,287 times
Reputation: 3457
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.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 05-08-2014, 08:16 AM
 
Location: Philaburbia
41,790 posts, read 74,837,182 times
Reputation: 66728
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.

Anti-German hysteria swept Cincinnati in 1917 | Our History
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 05-08-2014, 12:27 PM
 
Location: NYC
5,187 posts, read 4,640,800 times
Reputation: 7938
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
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 05-08-2014, 03:02 PM
 
Location: USA
30,620 posts, read 21,792,985 times
Reputation: 18878
Quote:
Originally Posted by Adhom View Post
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.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 05-08-2014, 04:17 PM
 
Location: The Woods
18,337 posts, read 26,404,089 times
Reputation: 11335
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.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 05-08-2014, 06:34 PM
 
13,972 posts, read 14,887,449 times
Reputation: 10424
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.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 05-08-2014, 07:09 PM
 
Location: Lebanon, OH
7,057 posts, read 8,886,325 times
Reputation: 14699
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.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
 
Old 05-09-2014, 12:32 AM
 
Location: Peterborough, England
472 posts, read 922,860 times
Reputation: 416
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.
Reply With Quote Quick reply to this message
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.

Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.


Reply
Please update this thread with any new information or opinions. This open thread is still read by thousands of people, so we encourage all additional points of view.

Quick Reply
Message:

Over $104,000 in prizes was already given out to active posters on our forum and additional giveaways are planned!

Go Back   City-Data Forum > General Forums > History

All times are GMT -6. The time now is 02:46 AM.

© 2005-2024, Advameg, Inc. · Please obey Forum Rules · Terms of Use and Privacy Policy · Bug Bounty

City-Data.com - Contact Us - Archive 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37 - Top