Preface:
CONTENTS:
The seeds of World War One were not initially sowed in lofty principles of liberty, religious freedom,
or from a need to topple cruel kings or despots. It was a war born of jealousy, revenge, politics and
greed, and it was contrived in cigar-filled board rooms, political office spaces, stock exchanges and
banks on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, then propagated by small groups of men who stood to
gain politically or financially. It was a banal, needless war, a brilliantly manufactured evil that
maimed and murdered a generation of young men and laid a direct pathway to another war.
To achieve this goal, motivations and villains had to be artificially crafted.
What ensued was the largest ethnic assault in human history.
WORLD WAR ONE
ANTI-GERMAN HYSTERIA
But in the United States of America, where Germans were the majority of immigrants for decades
and where they formed a huge part of the population, one often wonders how it came about that a
phenomenon such as anti-German hysteria could even take root.
Secondly, most Germans tended to assimilate more rapidly than other ethnic groups. They were
eager to become Americans. While they enjoyed German language newspapers, ate German food  
and held on to some customs near and dear to them, they still wanted to mingle and mix into their
new world, primarily to make money and prosper. It was easier for Germans to assimilate than other
distinct ethnic groups, in part because they were not physically "different" than the other European
settlers already in place except for their language and most shed that quickly if expedient.
Lastly, the bulk of Germans who came in the mid-19th century were not especially happy with the
land of their birth. Many came to America to escape tyranny, oppression and control by petty little
dukes and pompous princes. They came because archaic laws in the old homeland would have
prevented them from marrying the one they loved, owning their own farm or business, hunting and
fishing where and when they wanted and even giving their children the names of their choice.
However, Germans were none the less proud of their mutual heritage and culture, and especially
elated with Bismarck's success in the unification of Germany in 1871, something which many recent
immigrants or their parents had dreamed of and fought for before coming to America. Germany's
respected new status in the world reflected on each and every American of German descent. They
shared the excitement and enthusiasm for a new democratic Germany with as much joy as their
kinfolk "back home" did. For the first time, Bavarians, Saxons, Swabians and Prussians in German
lands as well as America were all proudly calling themselves Germans.
But this fleeting moment of mutual German pride and German cultural unity would not survive. The
young and glorious German Empire, the envy of the world, would last less than a human lifetime
before it was cut off at the knees by the old, entrenched power structure, and when that occurred
there was no umbrella of protection for German culture in America. It dissolved as quickly as it had
emerged, leaving vulnerable German Americans only one option: self defense; to prove themselves
innocent and verify their loyalty to America by a grueling standard set by the propagandists, one
which was not forced upon any other ethnic group. With this in mind, German Americans themselves
often played a major role in abetting the rabid anti-Germanism sweeping the nation, either directly or
by their silence when the injustice and violence was directed at others.
Author Kurt Vonnegut, whose grandfather had founded the Indianapolis Turnverein, said:
"The anti-Germanism in this country during the First World War so shamed and dismayed my parents
that they resolved to raise me without acquainting me with the language or the literature
or the music or the oral family histories which my ancestors had loved.
They volunteered to make me ignorant and rootless as proof of their patriotism."
The bulk of "Germans" who came to America arrived at a time when there was not yet a nation of
"Germany". They came as Saxons, Bavarians, Prussians, Swabians, Hessians, etc. and thought of
themselves as such, not necessarily as "Germans". They wore distinctive dress, spoke in dialects
other Germans did not always understand and even tended to marry within their respective groups.
Germany was not yet unified in the early years of major German emigration, so they were not an
entirely exclusive, cohesive or distinct group and as such did not have an "us versus them" mentality.
Intense Germanophobia swept through Britain with the outbreak of hostilities between Britain and
Germany, even though there had been a well established and highly respected German minority for
generations. Hans Holbein and Georg Friedrich Händel were among the Germans who once made
England their home, and there were 4,000 members of German Lutheran churches in London as
early as 1750. From long before the days of their mutual cooperation in defeating Napoleon through
the time of Bismarck, an ardent Anglophile, friendship had thrived between German lands and
Britain. With the outbreak of war, an intense disinformation campaign produced propaganda so
inflammatory that mobs were inspired to attack German shops, homes and churches, resulting in the
deaths of some German citizens. Only one German church in London was still open at the end of the
war. It was likewise in Britain's crown dominions where ethnic Germans were stripped of their civil
rights, ripped from their jobs or had their reputations ruined. Some lost their homes and properties by
deceit. Their churches and schools were closed down and many faced internment in dreary camps.
We no longer have to prove anything of the sort.