Il y a 100 ans, les Sammies débarquaient en France pour prendre part à la Grande Guerre. Nous allons continuer d'en parler sur @France24_fr. pic.twitter.com/SULcQ3Dii4
— Stéphanie Trouillard (@Stbslam) July 14, 2017
100 years ago, the Sammies (US doughboys) landed in France to take part in the Great War. We will continue to talk about it at @France24_fr https://t.co/aLBGYYYlp3
— Lloyd Spencer (@lloyd_t_spencer) July 14, 2017
While the French celebrate the final hours of Bastille Day, including historic displays of US troops in Paris on this day in 1917, I want to take a moment and focus on what was happening on the home front in the US 100 years ago. Reflecting on this history is important given the concern expressed in comments and on the front page here and other places about what is happening in the US.
It is not often remarked, if it is even remembered, that during WW I President Wilson essentially leveraged all forms of national power to achieve his objectives – in terms of both the war effort in Europe and domestically at home. As a result he converted the Federal government into something of an authoritarian regime. There were still elections. The Constitution and Bill of Rights were technically still in existence and in force, but in reality the US under President Wilson during World War I was about as far from its ideals as it has ever been. President Wilson essentially federalized Jim Crow, which was in line with both his racism and his obscure religious beliefs in Anglo-Israelism.
The power of the Presidency and the Federal government was leveraged through what we now call a psychological operation (PSYOPS) campaign to ensure broad and deep support for President Wilson’s agenda. To this end he tapped George Creel who created the propaganda campaign that would mobilize Americans behind President Wilson. Creel’s work is a textbook example of how to plan and implement a PSYOPS campaign. And it was incredibly successful. Through Creel’s work, President Wilson was able to convince Americans to not just go with meatless or wheatless days at home, but to turn in their neighbors if they suspected them of not getting on board with these initiatives to ensure that the troops in Europe had what they needed for their sustainment. Creel also set the conditions for forced charitable contributions to the war effort, including enforcement that would bring public pressure (shaming, denigration, job termination, extrajudicial violence) against those that didn’t give or give enough.
And even though Creel tried to tone down the official anti-German components of his propaganda, he largely failed. German nationals in the US and German-Americans were forced to register with the government and carry ID cards. In a grim foreshadowing of what Germans would do throughout Europe during WW II, as well as what the US would do to Japanese Americans and Japanese nationals in the US, German nationals and German Americans lost their jobs, had their property taken away, were relocated into internment camps, and were subjected to extrajudicial violence and punishment. Simply for being German or Americans of German descent.
As the war dredged on, nativism took root. Newspapers printed one-sided war coverage. President Wilson railed against “hyphenated Americans,” a slight against German-Americans. Even the growing support for Prohibition was seen as a fight against the Germans.
Then, when the U.S. entered the war in 1917, all pretenses disappeared. German culture was attacked. Anti-German hysteria swept the nation – especially here.
German language classes, taught in Cincinnati schools since 1840, were dropped. The Enquirer offered the headline: “Bang! Hun Study Is Floored.”The public library moved their 10,000 German books to the subbasement. “This library has been used to further a reptilian and insidious propaganda by enemies of the United States,” said board trustee James Albert Green. “German literature published during the last 40 years is tainted with the ideas and ideals which American boys now are giving their lives to combat.”
For those wondering what tyranny and authoritarianism in the US looks like, the US during World War I is the real example. The US and its ideals survived President Wilson and his efforts during World War I. It still has the resilience to survive the trials and tribulations it is facing now. All that is required is that Americans, regardless of background, remember the ideals that America is based on and act accordingly. Small acts are as important as large, grand sweeping gestures.
For an excellent four hour documentary on the US and World War I, including an in depth examination of what was occurring domestically, I highly recommend PBS’s The American Experience: The Great War. It will be four well spent hours.
TenguPhule
I have found the only flaw in your cunning plan, Baldrick.
Nora
Thanks for reminding us of World War I. Even WWII, much more sensationalized in movies and the like, is receding from popular memory, while in the United States World War I has pretty much been forgotten altogether.
It’s useful to remember, also, that the same secrecy and refusal to listen to anything that might undermine the war effort were probably at least partially responsible for the spread of the Great Influenza which, contrary to its old name (“the Spanish Flu”), probably started in an army camp here in the United States.
raven
Ah, it’s on the ROKU!
Oatler.
“LIons led by donkeys.”
paper
a little off topic, but you reminded me of how Germans were treated in WWII in my parents’ home town, Windfall, Indiana. The German prisoners were trucked into the fields of the surrounding farms to perform manual labor. My father remembers providing them with tomato and mayonnaise sandwiches. They would have one guard per field, who usually had to be woken up by the POWs when it was time to go back to the POW barracks.
Gin & Tonic
The US wasn’t the only Western country gripped by anti-Germanic hysteria. Canada had, in the very late 19th and early 20th centuries, actively encouraged immigration of Eastern Europeans, chiefly Ukrainians, to populate the prairie provinces. At the time WWI broke out, the areas of Galicia and Volyn (present-day Ukraine) that many of them had left, were under the control of the dying Austro-Hungarian Empire, so just as in the US, the loyalties of those emigrants were called into question, and just as in the US, their property was taken and they were moved into internment camps, chiefly in Alberta. Much of the infrastructure of Jasper National Park was constructed by internee labor. It’s only fairly recently that the Canadian government finally acknowledged this.
Miss Bianca
I’ll just re-iterate that the history of the United States – and colonial America – seems to consist of one long, bloody struggle between the forces and ideals of white supermacy and nativism and “liberty for me but not for thee” with the ideals of inclusiveness embodied in the notion of “all men are created equal”, and “liberty and justice *for all*”.
Thanks for the perspective, Adam, and the reminder that we have, in fact, lived thru’ days just as dark as these, if not darker. The challenge now, as always, will be to see if the arc of history really is bending toward social and economic justice for all Americans, not just the topmost tier.
feebog
So is Bannon to Trump what Creel was to Wilson? Or is Bannon just another wannabe?
FlipYrWhig
This means Nietzsche, right?
TenguPhule
@Miss Bianca:
Trump: Hold my beer Bitches!
GOP: We will comply!
Bill Arnold
Thank you for this.
Sophistication levels for PSYOPS have increased significantly (and such ops have become more subpopulation-targetable) but so has awareness of such methods including in the press (as J. Fallows notes: What’s Broken—and What’s Still Working—in American Politics). Interesting times.
Amir Khalid
I remember reading somewhere that the Battenburgs, a family connected to the British royals, had to change their name to Mountbatten. I wonder how the royal family itself dealt with having Kaiser Wilhelm as a cousin.
Adam L Silverman
@Gin & Tonic: One of the links in the post is to a comparative study of how German Americans were treated in Wisconsin versus German Canadians in Ottawa.
Adam L Silverman
@feebog: Bannon is not today’s Creel. Creel actually tried to prevent anti-German messaging in what he was charged with doing. It didn’t work, but he at least made an effort. He was also very effective, essentially mobilizing the majority of Americans on behalf of President Wilson’s objectives or, at least, getting them to conform. Bannon is nowhere this good.
scav
Liberty Cabbage and Victory Sausages!
Gin & Tonic
@Adam L Silverman: Hold on just one second there. You expect us to read the linked material? Will that be on the exam?
FlyingToaster
@Amir Khalid: The Saxe-Coberg-Gotha had to change their name to Windsor.
And their other cousin was Tsar Nicholas. Victoria was called “the Grandmother of Europe” for a reason.
dm
I was surprised to learn that the American Civil Liberties Union was founded in 1920 — in response to this (and the post-war Palmer Raids, which led to countless radicals being jailed and deported), and that the meaning of “the Bill of Rights” that we give it today is pretty much a child of the 20th Century.
Adam L Silverman
@Gin & Tonic: I don’t expect anyone to do anything. I was just informing you that I was thorough in my linked material.
Bnad
Trump isn’t the authoritarian dictator they wanted, but he played one on TV, so they voted him in.
Next they’ll vote in the guy who played Jack Welker in Breaking Bad.
TenguPhule
@Gin & Tonic:
I was told there would be no grading on this blog.
Laura
@dm: over 100 members of the IWW were rounded up for insufficient loyalty. In Oklahoma 12 were turned over to the Knights of liberty -a precursor to the KKK after conviction for refusing to buy war bonds. They were taken out of town, tied to a tree one by one and tarred feathered. Arrests and prosecutions occurred in Stockton, CA, in Wisconsin and Washington.
goblue72
@TenguPhule: Well sure. I mean, we survived Wilson, even if the U.S. first had to live through the combined Republican administrations of Harding-Coolidge-Hoover, Prohibition, the stock market crash of 1929, and the Great Depression. But eventually got FDR!…
Mike in NC
That PBS documentary on the Great War was outstanding and I’m ordering the DVD set from them. I worked in Washington when they were building the new bridge across the Potomac and was very disappointed when they kept the name Woodrow Wilson, since he was such a malevolent, racist bastard.
Laura
(“the Spanish Flu”), probably started in an army camp here in the United States.
My maternal grandfather had returned to San Francisco after the rebuild following the Earthquake. He fondly recalled raking in a bit of cash by tossing cigarettes and booze over the fence into the military base at Crissy Field & Presidio. The soldiers were sequestered due to the Spanish flu at the time.
Villago Delenda Est
@dm: In many ways, it wasn’t until the Warren Court came along and actually made the Bill of Rights mean something. Which is why Rethuglicans of the time talked about impeaching Earl Warren. The Warren Court was an outlier.
BC in Illinois
As part of maneuvering through the anti-German feeling of that time, my German-speaking Grandfather – – who had only been in the country for 8 or 9 years – – enlisted in the U. S. Army. He was treated roughly, but he was a big guy. (Family legend says that there were fistfights involved.) He had a brother who died fighting in the German army.
Why did he enlist? He was told it would help his application for citizenship.
Plus ça change and all that.
Nick
WWI was when my family of Swiss Mennonites stopped using German — my grandfather was, up until then, raised speaking German; after that, they spoke English at home and he lost the language.
Then in WWII he was interned in an army prison camp for refusing to participate in the weapons training part of Basic Training; this went on for some time after the war ended.
Nicole
As a child, I loved reading Albert Payson Terhune’s Lad: A Dog stories, but holy cow, did that guy stick anti-German sentiment in wherever he could. He even claimed Germans smelled different from normal people.
I’m totally going to watch that documentary; thanks for the recommendation! I just finished watching Ken Burns’ 3 parter on Prohibition, and it also mentions the anti-German sentiment in the push to ban beer.
Major Major Major Major
Don’t the right-wingers hate Wilson? I seem to remember Glenn Beck et al. going on rants about him in the early Obama days.
schrodingers_cat
@Major Major Major Major: He was pretty lefty in economic matters IIRC.
Brachiator
@Gin & Tonic: RE: Anti-German hysteria
WWI and the railing against “hyphenated Americans” probably accelerated the conglomeration of white ethnic groups into “white people.”
One possible residual legacy of this pushback: “Although both of Trump’s parents were born in Germany and he had been conceived there, for decades after World War II Fred Trump [Donald’s daddy] told friends and family that his family was of Swedish origin.”
People forget or don’t know that Joseph Pulitzer got his start in journalism working for a German Language newspaper, the Westliche Post.
Schlemazel
My maternal Grandfather was wounded at Belleau Wood. We had strict orders from my Grandmother to never ever ask him about the war. When we were packing their things to move into a nursing home he showed me his address book from the war. His name was Max, he came from Germany to the US at age 16 in 1914 and every name in that book of his company was Hans, Fritz, Adolf, Horst – every one was 1st gen German-American. I couldn’t help myself & I asked him if it flt weird to have to go fight against Germany and what made him join. He said, “2-3 of us boys were on the corner and this guy came up to us and asked where we thought we would be living after the war”. The message was clear enough
Mike in DC
Great. So the previous Republican administration was a throwback to McKinley, and this one draws from the worst of Jackson, Wilson, Harding and Nixon.
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
@Miss Bianca: Indeed. America recovered from anti-German hysteria, so much so that come WWII, German prisoners of war were afforded better treatment than the many African-American servicemen that helped defeat them.
Also of note: in the aftermath of WWI, returning African-American soldiers were subject to lynching for a variety of “reasons” – including being in uniform.
Adam L Silverman
@Brachiator: That’s Trump’s paternal grandparents. His father was born in the US after his grandfather was refused repatriation permission to remain in Germany because he’d shirked his military duty during. The President’s mother was born and raised in Scotland.
a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio)
My great-great grandfather brought his family to the US in the 1850s but they kept in touch with various relatives in Germany until World War I. His family settles in Missouri near a small community called Mary’s Home which was settles almost entirely by Germans–as a result of the war they abruptly abandoned the use of German, with some difficulty, as many of the older residents still had very shaky English–my mother recalls a neighbor explaining to her father the advantages of his new Chevrolet in the late 1920s–it had button-on lights, a self-commencer, and would go up the hill in Big!
Many of the German communities in Texas had a strong tradition as Freethinkers–they suffered a great deal from the combined effects of both World War I and the subsequent Palmer Raids.
And while we’re at it–let’s remember a young lawyer named John Edgar Hoover who got his start helping out with Wilson’s war efforts. From Wikipedia:
(The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interrèd with their bones.)
The Moar You Know
@Major Major Major Major: I can’t imagine why. He was an out-of-touch rich guy who ran the country for the benefit of his rich friends at the expense of the poor and middle class, hated blacks and foreigners, and if not an outright member of the Klan he was certainly a huge supporter.
Kinda like the current asshole.
smintheus
Not to forget, Wilson had Eugene Debs imprisoned for speaking against the draft. It is little remembered that during the debate before the declaration of war, the hawks promised that the US would rely upon volunteers, there would be no draft, and American troops would not even need to be sent overseas (it was supposedly just going to be a question of supplying and supporting the European combatants). Shortly after the war declaration, those promises went right out the window and draft protesters were looked up and prosecuted under brutally unconstitutional new laws like the Espionage Act.
The nightmare years of 1917-1918 on Wilson’s ‘homefront’ are memorably portrayed in Katherine Anne Porter’s novel Pale Horse, Pale Rider.
Schlemazel
@Amir Khalid:
Don’t quote me but I believe they took the name “Windsor” at the time in order to downplay their German heritage. The whole line had descended from Germans and there were questions about their commitment.
That came up again during WWII, particularly with Eddy, the Duke of Windsor collaborating with the Nazi’s
joel hanes
@paper:
My great-grandparents were German-speaking landowning farmers in SE Iowa at the time: the Johann Friederich Reinke family.
They were “forced” (I gather, by fear of their neighbors) to abandon speaking German entirely, and to abandon most stereotypical German folkways. Their children grew up without any German language at all, except that Grandpa (who would enlist for a doughboy just before the end of the War) would sometimes say “heiss” if he felt burnt or scalded, and had the habit of calling small wayward children “Snickelfritz’.
Brachiator
@Major Major Major Major:
Wilson was not an isolationist, and believed in the League of Nations, the precursor to the United Nations. This alone brings out the right wing nutjobs.
TenguPhule
Baud, get ready to get naked with the mop and mustard!
As predictable as the sun rising in the east.
Feathers
At a recent funeral, there were memories of WWII. My Dad said that there was a good novel to be written about the twisting ailegiances and patriotism in Boston (and I’m sure Chicago, too) Catholic Churches during WWI & Ii. He especially talked about the Italians, who were allies in WWI and enemies the next time around. Apparently some took it hard.
I had a great uncle who everyone called Franz the Nazi. Didn’t learn for a long time that he really had been a Nazi, and deported back to Germany. His Irish American wife and their kids went with him. Interestingly enough, they were treated well in Germany. It was seen as right and good that they had come “home.”
BC in Illinois
In southern Illinois (Randolph County), between WWI and WWII, you were liable to have your phone line cut for speaking German. The family that told me that story said that what really hurt was that the other people on the phone lines were their neighbors and that there were members of the family in poor health. This still bothered them 70 years later.
Party lines have their drawbacks.
Schlemazel
@Mike in NC:
I have been sporadically watching a youtube channel “The Great War” it follows week by week the events from 1914 it is nearing the close now. There is a tremendous amount of info and it is very well presented. The presenter has some really annoying habits so I have to take a break from time to time. But you can get a great history lesson in 10 minute bits once a week.
FlipYrWhig
@Brachiator: Right — IIRC the Beck riff on Wilson is essentially that he was the original globalist.
raven
Rock of the Marne
A Ghost to Most
@Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant):
I can confirm what my grandparents told me; the prisoners at the Medina, NY POW camp were well treated, and many wanted to stay after WWII.
Bago
For a few brief hours, I too am West Virginia.
Brachiator
@Adam L Silverman:
Yep. Thanks for the correction.
raven
@BC in Illinois: My mom’s family are from Du Quoin.
raven
@A Ghost to Most: Many did stay in Georgia. There was a big camp in Valdosta and they worked at the Langdale turpentine works.
Schlemazel
@Laura:
The one story Grossvater told about his time in France:
They were lined up to get their steel helmets when several men collapsed with the flue, the entire unit was quarantined. After a couple of weeks an officer came & told them to get dressed the trucks were coming to take them to the front. They all got dressed but the officers left so they all got back into bed. The trucks arrived & saw the men in bed assumed they had the wrong place & fled out of fear of getting the flu.
smintheus
@Nicole: As a child, I read a very old book of stories that portrayed Danes as the worst kind of bumpkins. It was published in English in Germany. Looking back on it now, I’d guess it was propaganda published after Germany’s seizure of Schlesswig-Holstein from Denmark. Anyway, the book had the opposite of the intended effect. It gave me a lot of sympathy for Danes, in fact I dated the first Danish girl I met a few years later.
Bill Arnold
@The Moar You Know:
He was a member of the Democratic Party.
henqiguai
Way off topic. From https://balloon-juice.com/2017/07/13/chicago-tribune-gop-operative-who-sought-clintons-emails-from-russian-hackers-committed-suicide-records-show/#comment-6466326
I believe “sil lum” is Cantonese for ‘small forest’ or ‘young forest’. There’s no peak there on which to sit. But maybe you have a different interpretation.
Schlemazel
@BC in Illinois:
I wonder if my grandfather & yours knew each other? That would really be a small world.
Lapassionara
If you want a good summary of the evils visited on the world as a result of the Treaty of Versailles, read Paris, 1919. I have forgotten the name of the author. I believe she is Lloyd George’s granddaughter, and she now teaches in Canada. It is a chilling account of how Wilson’s “big principles” and the conniving of the English and French essentially drew up imaginary countries, for their own convenience and profit, setting in motion not only WWII, but also the present ongoing wars in the ME and South Sudan, to name just a few.
Librarian
@The Moar You Know: Wilson had his faults, but to compare him with the present incumbent of the WH is just plain stupid.
raven
@Lapassionara: Ho Chin Minh went there to plead for independence for Vietnam.
A Ghost to Most
“Our Lady of the Well”
Karen
@Amir Khalid: the royal house changed their name to “the house of windsor” in 1917
Ian G.
I think (but am not certain) that I had a great-great uncle who died fighting for Austria-Hungary in WWI. All of my great grandparents emigrated to the US in the years immediately before WWI, so they all had family still on that side of the Atlantic when the Great War broke out.
Anyone have tips for researching ancestry like that? Is ancestry.com any good?
smintheus
@Adam L Silverman: One of my former students (at an Academy) told me – after one of my classes on the civil-rights abuses of WWI – that his German-American grandparents had their business burned down in Wisconsin.
Adam L Silverman
@Brachiator: I knew what you meant, but figured I’d clarify. It happens sometimes. Buhleeve me!
NotMax
@Karen
Just think – had the internet been around they might have ended up the house of Royal McRoyalface.
:)
Schlemazel
@smintheus:
So are you Garrison Keillor?
Ever since BJ was mentioned on Prairie Home Companion we have wondered if he had visited. He married the first Danish girl he ever met . . .
Karen
My great grandmother had terrible stories about how so many people around Milwaukee treated the German families; her family would ask for prisoner help and then take them north and allow them to “disappear” one of her best friends when I was child talked about how grandma saved her from having to work for those who specifically looked for young, good looking German girls.
Major Major Major Major
@Adam L Silverman:
The most important thing about Trump’s mother is that she looked like the drag queen version of him.
@raven:
Yeah, the way we treated Uncle Ho was definitely one of America’s bigger 20th-century fuckups.
raven
@Ian G.: I enrolled a month ago and got my DNA test back yesterday. There are a number of levels you can subscribe to and I did the “All Access” for $169 (0n sale) but that still is limited to the US. I’m not sure if it worth it or not. I have a pretty extensive set of family trees already but I have found some interesting stuff. Oh, the DNA test was an additional $80.
BC in Illinois
@raven:
I heard the phone line story from the Sparta – Red Bud area. Lot of German-speakers in the local history
@Schlemazel:
Your story of your grandfather enlisting under (implied) pressure may be more true-to-the-time than my family’s story of Grandpa enlisting to help his citizenship. (Akron, Ohio) At a time of anti-German sentiment, the actions of the German-American community would certainly have been complex.
And totally off-topic: another Randolph County story tells of stills in the local hills. (Lots of these stories, from Chester to Collinsville.) When the authorities came to investigate . . .? Ich weiß nicht. Ich kann Sie nicht verstehen. Ich kann kein Englisch sprechen.
Adam L Silverman
@henqiguai: I told you it was a bad attempt at transliteration. The literal meaning of, at least part of, the characters for Shaolin (少林寺) literally means “the forest”.
smintheus
@Schlemazel: I was very fond of her, but no we did not marry. So fond, I guess, that I also dated the second Danish girl I met.
A Ghost to Most
@raven:
Mormon Church has extensive genealogy records on many, if not most, Americans. They use the records to build their zombie membership.
gene108
@Major Major Major Major:
Everybody seems to have grown to hate Wilson.
He pushed through a lot of Progressive legislation. Progressive income tax, creation of the Federal Reserve, creation of the Federal Trade Commission to enforce anti-trust laws, child labor laws, etc.
Liberals focus on his unreconstructed racist self (he was born in the South in 1856), and I guess conservatives hate him for the above stuff he got done.
Adam L Silverman
@smintheus: My former boss, a retired SF colonel, once told me that his grandfather was interred.
raven
@A Ghost to Most: Yea and I know.
Adam L Silverman
@raven: They now own your genetic data and information. Congrats – you’ve just obligated everyone in your family to their terms of service.
https://thinkprogress.org/ancestry-com-takes-dna-ownership-rights-from-customers-and-their-relatives-dbafeed02b9e
NotMax
OT (for Adam):
Rake season 4 scheduled to show up on Netflix this weekend!
raven
@Adam L Silverman: Well, nothing I can do now is there? I’m a person who was sure the heat was looking at me through my TV when I was, let’s say, dealing in leafy commodities. Fuck it.
Major Major Major Major
@Adam L Silverman: Wow. That’s awful.
henqiguai
@Adam L Silverman(#72): Yeah, I’m lagging way behind, as usual.
少 -> small (shao in Mandarin, sil in Cantonese); 林 -> forest (lin in Mandarin, lum in Cantonese). Yep yep, practicitioner of the Arts where I picked up this little bit.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
The Great War was the real show that led to the major global realignment, and truly broke European colonialism as a viable model of global governance. Centuries of accumulated capital (aka “zombie labor”) got wiped out as a consequence.
I do argue that the similar mistakes of leadership are at play now, most specifically a disdain for multilateralism in the Anglosphere.
A Ghost to Most
@gene108:
If there were a hell, he’d be there, right next to Nixon and Wallace.
His noble acts don’t excuse his virulent racism.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
It is worth also noting that Wilson was considered a quite capable man so that helped him a lot. Also there was a serious thought at the time disasters like WWI were caused by racial hatreds stroked by the muliti ethnic European empires and giving each race their own self governing homeland was the only way to have peace. See Archduke Ferdinand’s assassination how they are arrived at that silly idea.
I am curious though how much of the Senate holding out over the League of Nations was pay back to Wilson for his anti-German racism and general playing an American dictator. I recall the senator leading the refusal against the treaty position was basically, if Wilson was for it, that was reason enough to say no.
Adam L Silverman
@NotMax: Thanks.
Ladyraxterinok
In the 1990s there were several articles in the Des Moines Register about anti-German activities in IA. Many German books in IA public libraries were destroyed, German courses in IA public schools were abolished. People were reported to the police for speaking a foreign language thought to be German. In several areas of IA there were (and still are) large numbers of people of Dutch heritage, many of whom spoke Dutch; Dutch speakers were often reported. I have read somewhere that there was in NE a strong movement to prohibit the use of German in church sevices.
IIRC IA had a high percentage of 2nd generation Germans and an extremely high number of German language newspapers; many of those papers ceased publication.
During WWI, ‘sauerkraut’ became known as ‘German cabbage.’ Dachshunds were also renamed. Families changed their last names. I’ve heard the House of Hannover became the House of Windsor at the same time.
Schlemazel
@smintheus:
But I notice you don’t deny being Mr. Keillor! :)
MomSense
My grandma was a senior in high school in Ohio in 1917 and was upset that she couldn’t complete her last year of German. Her dad owned several small businesses and was outspoken against entering the war. She said that he was paid several visits and that he was told to stop speaking out about the war or he would lose his barbershop license.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
Mote topical to the thread, once the US entered the Great War, cities throughout the Midwest lost their German newspapers – and there were several in each city. Remember – the Know Nothings targeted German and Irish populations in the 1850s.
Louisville lost a bunch of German papers, as well as German street names – some major thoroughfares.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Schlemazel: Just watching “The Great War”, a week at time underscores the pointless insanity of WWI, just about every episode is another 100,000 dead and it’s been three years now.
AliceBlue
@Major Major Major Major:
I will never be able to unsee that.
Karen
@Ian G.: I didn’t find it helpful, it was probably still is linked to the Mormon church and is basically what others have learned. I found that if your family has kept track of history you sometimes have a good chance of adding more information; ex’s family came from Germany just before WWI so was able through others track for stepchildren, on father’s side of ex’s family was from Prussia and the only family history is what they kept track of themselves. One family member tried to find information about “old country” but since both WWI and WWII had battles fought in that are there weren’t even church records to track down
Adam L Silverman
@raven: I knew I should have done a post on it when I first saw the reporting about four months or so ago. My bad!
A Ghost to Most
My mother was obsessed with our genealogy. I avoid it; it seems really tribal to me. I am an American.
Adam L Silverman
@Major Major Major Major: Always be selling!
Adam L Silverman
@henqiguai: No worries.
Major Major Major Major
@AliceBlue: My work here is done!
Brachiator
@gene108:
Fuck Wilson. Hard.
He sent the US Marines into Haiti in 1915 to take over the government and to protect this hemisphere from “foreign interests.” The officer corps included many Southerners who brought their own malignant racism into the country. And to be absolutely fair, Haiti had its own racism and colorism from its French beginnings until now, but the US influence added to the vile mix.
And then we can talk about Wilson’s contribution to American racism, including bringing segregation into the federal government.
Schlemazel
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
It is particularly painful to hear the Generals talking about their plans and then think – like you said – “well, there is another 100,000 dead for no gain”.
I love their plain takes on the power players involved. He has no problem pointing out incompetents by name & rank.
Geeno
@Amir Khalid: Haven’t read through to see if anyone else responded, but the Brittish “House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha” responded by changing its name to the “House of Windsor” and George V demanded that his sons marry English nobility as their blood-line by this time was almost purely German.
eclare
@NotMax: Hahaha….
Mike in NC
@Ladyraxterinok: Liberty Cabbage was a precursor to Freedom Fries.
debbie
Adam, I can attest to the excellence of the American Experience series. I’ve read a number of WWI books over the past several years, but seeing what I’d been reading about brought it all to a whole new level. What asses human beings are.
Brachiator
@Geeno:
George V may have believed this, but the royal family includes ancient Britons, the Welsh and of course the Normans. Thanks to Diana, the royal family is more tied to ancient English Kings than the German pretenders. And Prince Philip is Greek and Danish.
Ladyraxterinok
@Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant): Apparently one of the elements that freaked out whites during the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 was the fact that black veterans with guns showed up downtown when word spread that white men were mobilizing because of a rumored confrontation of a white woman with a black man in an elevator.
Ellsworth, the first to write about the riot, notes that the newspaper edition containing the rabble-rousing call to arms enraging uwhites ‘mysteriously dissapeared’ almost immediately from the paper’s archives.
bystander
Yet what era is more romanticized in our popular culture than America pre-WWI and its aftermath? So much of Fussell’s The Great War and Modern Memory focuses on the profound sentimentality of the period. By 1929, Kern and Hammerstein stage the musical Sweet Adeline, at its core a nostalgic and loving regard for WWI, the patriotism of the servicemen, and the ensuing crassness of the evolving modern world. In 12 years, WWI has become a paradise of unity and uniformity. That’s a very different reaction we see in the aftermath of WWII.
Karen
From the posts I would say that if there was a test most wouldn’t have any worries about passing, the people to be concerned about are the idiots who have declared that college education is bad.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Schlemazel:
The worst part was the conduct of British generals in the hours leading up to the Armistice. They already had orders in hand with clear demarcations of the lines of their forces. A number launched pointless major offenses with such forces at their disposal (including Canadian, Australian and some attached American units) at significant casualty rates. The objective was to show that the U.K. was “still willing and able” to fight. It was a disaster, but of course the postwar inquiries went nowhere.
Raven
@Adam L Silverman: fido
Brachiator
@Adam L Silverman:
I was aware of some of this, but not the depth of the potential issues.
I’ve had fun watching YouTube videos of people investigating their ancestry using various testing services. Some folks are often quite surprised at some of the results.
debbie
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
General Haig should be exhumed and put on trial for his crimes against his own soldiers.
Brachiator
Apropos of The Great War, Stanley Kubrick’s “Paths of Glory” is worth a rental or streaming, an amazing work on military blindness and military hubris.
Oddly enough, on the fantasy front, “Wonder Woman” touches on the war with a surprising degree of artistic integrity.
SiubhanDuinne
@Geeno:
There is an anecdote, quite likely apocryphal, that when their cousin Kaiser Wilhelm heard this news, his response was “And I suppose now we will all go see Shakespeare’s ‘The Merry Wives of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha’!”
sharl
Thanks for this post Adam – both the O.P. and the discussion have been pretty interesting and informative.
Schlemazel
@Brachiator:
“Oh What A Lovely War”
While it is funny it is bitterly so. I only saw it once and it is still memorable today. It was very controversial and I don’t know if it has ever been available online of on DVD.
RobNYNY
The Metropolitan Opera performed no German or Austrian operas for the duration of the United States’ involvement in the war. No Beethoven, Mozart, Wagner, Weber, Strauss, or the other Strauss, all of whose works had been in the core repertory. Not even Mozart’s Italian operas were perform. Not even Beethoven’s proto-antifascist opera Fidelio. (Likewise, the Met dropped Madama Butterfly after Pearl Harbor, which had been in repertory almost every season from 1907 to November 1941, and then disappeared until 1946.)
You can walk through the cemeteries in the small Midwestern town where I was born, and see the progression on the tombstones: Götz, Goetz, Getz, Gates. German was dropped as a subject in the school system about 1917, but the textbooks were in antique stores for another 80 years.
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
@Ladyraxterinok: I knew about the riot, but not about the media contribution to it. Thanks for the info.
RobNYNY
@Brachiator: It’s even more complicated than that. Every monarch of England since James I is a descendant of Mary Queen of Scots, who was Scots and French. Prince Phillip, while being mostly Danish and German (House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg) had more Romanov blood than Greek.
Waratah
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Australians learned a lesson, Australian forces would only be under Australian command.
Mike in NC
@Schlemazel: I found “Oh What A Lovely War” in the Netflix mail-order catalogue last year.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@Ian G.: German genealogy is complicated. Before spending money on Ancestry (or any other site), I recommend locating a good guide to German research.
I haven’t done much poking around on FamilySearch, which is the online version of the LDS Family History Centers, but you might be able to do some basic research there without spending any money.
@Adam L Silverman: IANAL, but the professional DNA genealogy community found that article hysterical. In both senses of the word.
Ancestry’s TOS (or 23 and Me, or FTDNA, or MyHeritage) is always dependent on current law, just like the TOS of your email service. In the end, it’s a political question.
Origuy
There was an episode of the genealogy show Who Do You Think You Are not long ago, featuring actress Julie Bowen, who found out that her ancestor was the head of the American Protective League, A. M. Briggs. Briggs was himself born to German immigrants. The APL was supposedly a private organization, but they worked closely with the police and military to target opposition to the war.
Brachiator
@RobNYNY: Great point. There’s a podcast I listen to called Rex Factor, a mostly fun, but well researched look at the king’s of England, and currently Scotland. The most recent episode is about James III. Each episode includes a reference to how the person featured is related to the present British monarch
Karen
I was fortunate that both parents had ancestors who kept diaries and tracked other family members, so when grade school class did project on tracking ancestors I had stories to go along with names, dates and places of origin. I loved the fact that one said that grandpa Roy came over courtesy of Crown, while her sister wrote that grandpa Roy was shipped over in chains, in hold of ship for part in rebellion against the Crown.
Side note anyone catch the comment from dolt45 when he discovered that France was an ally during Revolutionary War? he didn’t think people knew that or at least it appeared he didn’t until he read it during press conference
joel hanes
@Ian G.:
Is ancestry.com any good?
Do not give them your DNA data, unless you plan to revoke the license you give them fairly soon after you have learned what you want to learn, and will carry through on that plan.
http://www.snopes.com/ancestry-dna-steal-own/
debbie
@Karen:
Oh, he always does that. He doesn’t realize he’s the last to know anything. I loved when he explained what opposition research is. Obama was often criticized for being too professorial, but Trump, now there’s a much betterer teacher!
debbie
@Ian G.:
Go here first. It’s run by the LDS, but it’s free.
Another Scott
@Ian G.: I used Ancestry.com a few years ago, but never enough to justify the monthly fee. YMMV.
Maybe start with a free site like the one run by the Mormons – https://familysearch.org/about – and see how it goes.
Good luck!
Cheers,
Scott.
Lee Hartmann
@TenguPhule:
+1000
Karen
@Ian G.: When I used ancestry they were just getting started and free, you should know that anything you find out is based on others just like yourself; and they will ask you to share your family tree with an eye to having one of their members bringing your family into LDS after death
J R in WV
@Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant):
Thos guys had been taught how to shoot straight. Had to be gotten rid of by the red-necks, who were fearful of any African-American trained to shoot well. You see how it was, don’t you?
Racists were afraid, for years, still are. Cowards and bullies. Despicable behavior towards everyone they could mistreat, women, Jews, Blacks, everyone not related to them and living under their roof, really.
J R in WV
@Bago:
You’re welcome. Enjoy your stay.
Lapassionara
@raven: yes. And he finally got his wish, after the expenditure of so much blood, some of which belonged to you and your friends.
Miss Bianca
@Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant): @J R in WV: Oh, *this* is the thing that makes my blood boil – our cruel, cruel hypocrisy as a nation. The gap between our rhetoric and our reality.
The Fat Kate Middletion
My grandfather shipped over there in 1917. He suffered the effects of mustard gas after he returned (but managed to sire 10 children). He died of emphysema in his sixties. The photos I have of that very young man in uniform are precious to me.
ETA: His parents were German immigrants.
The Fat Kate Middletion
@paper: My husband’s little hometown of Algona, Iowa also had a German POW camp on farmland outside town. There’s even a small museum there devoted to it;.They were welcomed by the residents of the town, who recognized these were not evil Nazis so much as young men forced into fighting. Some even stayed after the war was over, and there’s still a nativity scene they created for the town that is on public display.
The Fat Kate Middletion
@bystander: Exactly. I hated Fusell’s book for this reason. How can you write from this perspective about a brutal, incredibly inhumane (adjectives are failing me here) war that essentially wiped out a nation’s entire generation?
The Fat Kate Middletion
@Karen: Has anybody here brought up the slaughter of “intellectuals”* in Cambodia? Are you educated? Look for it. It’s coming.
Mike G
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
The worst part was the conduct of British generals in the hours leading up to the Armistice.
The last day of the war highlighted the senselessness of the whole slaughter. An American commander launched an attack on a town half an hour before the armistice, because he wanted his men to have bathing facilities when the fighting ended — which cost about 300 casualties.
The last soldier to die was a German-American, at 10:59AM.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7696021.stm
TBDBITL
My grandpa changed the spelling of his first name from Karl to Carl so he would blend in better during WW1.