Sedition During World War I
Shortly after the United States entered World War I, the U.S. Congress passed several measures, ostensibly for the purpose of securing allied victory overseas and security at home. The Espionage Act of 1917 was designed to prevent sabotage to wartime equipment as well as willful acts that might aid the enemy or result in military insubordination. In 1918, this Act was extended through a series of amendments. Known collectively as the Sedition Act, these amendments criminalized the expression of speech critical of the government that could be construed as harmful or opposed to the war effort.
Sedition Law Passes

Delivering the Government’s Message

With commercial radio still several years away, the ability of public speakers to inform and persuade audiences carried great importance. Prior to U.S. entry, Carrie Chapman Catt had opposed the war but afterwards, like many other suffragists, she embraced the war effort and served as chairman of the Educational Propaganda Department. This arm of the Woman’s Committee of the Council of National Defense sought to train female speakers to disseminate the government’s message to the people, particularly the foreign born, a group that continued to draw attention from the government: “The messages must be taken to the less educated and more apathetic portions of the population and much of it must done among persons of foreign birth.”

After the Sedition Act, passed on May 16, 1918, augmented the already stringent Espionage Act of 1917, the New York Herald ran this cartoon by William Allen Rogers touting Uncle Sam’s expanded authority to “round up” those that would oppose the government. Rogers identifies the undesirables as spies, Irish separatists, and radical anti-war International Workers of the World, commonly known as the “Wobblies.” The law now made it illegal time of war to “willfully utter, print, write, or publish any disloyal profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of government . . . the Constitution . . . the military or naval forces . . . the flag . . . or the uniform of the Army or Navy of the United States.”

Report Suspicion or Disloyalty

During World War I, no centralized intelligence infrastructure existed. To augment its efforts, the state depended on the vigilance, and in some cases vigilantism, of citizens. Broadsides like this one issued by the Committee of 100 on Public Safety in New Hampshire imbued Americans with a sense of responsibility for safeguarding their communities against potential German spies and dissidents posing a threat to U.S. security. Vigilance sometimes slipped into coercion and suppression amidst the pressures of war. Ashes left from a 1918 bonfire fueled by German textbooks in Baraboo, Wisconsin, are visible in the above photograph. The Baraboo fire may have been as much a protest over the difficulty of local German language courses as an expression of anti-German sentiment prevalent across the nation at that time.

Shadows of War

For German Americans, the 20th century was a time of growth and consolidation; their numbers increased, their finances became more stable, and Americans of German heritage rose to positions of great power and distinction. For German American culture, however, the new century was a time of severe setbacks–and a devastating blow from which it has never fully recovered.

The coming of World War I brought with it a backlash against German culture in the United States. When the U.S. declared war on Germany in 1917, anti-German sentiment rose across the nation, and German American institutions came under attack. Some discrimination was hateful, but cosmetic: The names of schools, foods, streets, and towns, were often changed, and music written by Wagner and Mendelssohn was removed from concert programs and even weddings. Physical attacks, though rare, were more violent: German American businesses and homes were vandalized, and German Americans accused of being “pro-German” were tarred and feathered, and, in at least once instance, lynched.

The most pervasive damage was done, however, to German language and education. German-language newspapers were either run out of business or chose to quietly close their doors. German-language books were burned, and Americans who spoke German were threatened with violence or boycotts. German-language classes, until then a common part of the public-school curriculum, were discontinued and, in many areas, outlawed entirely. None of these institutions ever fully recovered, and the centuries-old tradition of German language and literature in the United States was pushed to the margins of national life, and in many places effectively ended. 

President Woodrow Wilson spoke disapprovingly of “hyphenated Americans” whose loyalty he claimed was divided. One government official warned that “Every citizen must declare himself American–or traitor.” Many German Americans struggled with their feelings, realizing that sympathy for their homeland appeared to conflict with loyalty to the U.S.

Some German Americans reacted by overtly defending their loyalty to the United States. Others changed the names of their businesses, and sometimes even their own names, in an attempt to conceal German ties and to disappear into mainstream America. Ironically, and contrary to Wilson’s opinion about divided loyalties, thousands of German Americans fought to defend America in World War I, led by German American John J. Pershing, whose family had long before changed their name from Pfoerschin.

Fifteen years later, the shadows of a new war brought another surge in immigration. When Germany’s Nazi party came to power in 1933, it triggered a significant exodus of artists, scholars and scientists, as Germans and other Europeans fled the coming storm. Most eminent among this group was a pacifist Jewish scientist named Albert Einstein.

Anti-German feelings arose again during World War II, but they were not as powerful as they had been during the first World War. The loyalty of German Americans was not questioned as virulently. Dwight Eisenhower, a descendant of the Pennsylvania Dutch and future president of the United States, commanded U.S. troops in Europe. Two other German Americans, Admiral Chester Nimitz of the United States Navy and General Carl Spaatz of the Army Air Corps, were by Eisenhower’s side and played key roles in the struggle against Nazi Germany.