Organised persecution of ethnic Germans

The Organised persecution of ethnic Germans refers to systematic activity against groups of ethnic Germans based on their ethnicity.

Historically, this has been due to two causes: the German population were considered, whether factually or not, linked with German nationalist regimes such as those of Imperial Germany

German Empire

The German Empire refers to Germany during the "Second Reich" period from the unification of Germany and proclamation of Wilhelm I as German Emperor on 18 January 1871, to 1918, when it became a federal republic after defeat in World War I and the abdication of the Emperor, Wilhelm II.The German...

or the Nazis. This was the case in the World War I era persecution of Germans in the United States, and also in Eastern and Central Europe following the end of World War II. While many victims of these persecutions did not, in fact, have any connection to those regimes, cooperation between German minority organisations and Nazi regime did occur, as the example of Selbstschutz

Selbstschutz

Selbstschutz stands for two organisations:# A name used by a number of paramilitary organisations created by ethnic Germans in Central and Eastern Europe# A name for self-defence measures and units in ethnic German, Austrian, and Swiss civil defence....

shows, which is still used as a pretense of hostilities against those who did not take part in such organisations. After World War II, many such Volksdeutsche

Volksdeutsche

Volksdeutsche - "German in terms of people/folk" -, defined ethnically, is a historical term from the 20th century. The words volk and volkische conveyed in Nazi thinking the meanings of "folk" and "race" while adding the sense of superior civilization and blood...

were killed or driven from their homes in acts of vengeance, others in ethnic cleansing of territories prior to populating them with citizens of the annexing country. In other cases (e.g. in the case of the formerly large German-speaking populations of Russia, Estonia, or the Transylvanian (Siebenbürgen) German minority in Rumania and the Balkans) such persecution was a crime committed against innocent communities who had played no part in the Third Reich.

German populations have also been persecuted because they were perceived as lacking proper ties to the country in which they lived — this includes the persecution of ethnic German Mennonite

Mennonite

The Mennonites are a group of Christian Anabaptist denominations named after the Frisian Menno Simons , who, through his writings, articulated and thereby formalized the teachings of earlier Swiss founders...

, Amish

Amish

The Amish , sometimes referred to as Amish Mennonites, are a group of Christian church fellowships that form a subgroup of the Mennonite churches...

and Hutterite

Hutterite

Hutterites are a communal branch of Anabaptists who, like the Amish and Mennonites, trace their roots to the Radical Reformation of the 16th century. Since the death of their founder Jakob Hutter in 1536, the beliefs of the Hutterites, especially living in a community of goods and absolute...

communities in the United States, and of Tyrolean Germans in the province of South Tyrol

South Tyrol

South Tyrol , also known by its Italian name Alto Adige, is an autonomous province in northern Italy. It is one of the two autonomous provinces that make up the autonomous region of Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol. The province has an area of and a total population of more than 500,000 inhabitants...

. In the case of the South Tyrol, these hostilities hit the historically German population of an Austrian territory which had been annexed by Italy after World War I.

The debate sometimes encompasses the persecution of citizens of German descent in countries such as the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, and Australia during World War I and World War II.

Australia

Persecution of ethnic Germans was much the same in Australia as it was in the United States during World War I. Many were interned for the duration of the war and others faced hostility from their fellow citizens. To avoid persecution and/or to demonstrate that they commit themselves to their new home, many Germans changed their names into anglicised or Francophone

Francophone

The adjective francophone means French-speaking, typically as primary language, whether referring to individuals, groups, or places. Often, the word is used as a noun to describe a natively French-speaking person....

variants.

Germany

The book Other Losses by James Bacque

James Bacque

James Bacque is a Canadian novelist, publisher and book editor. He was born in Toronto, Ontario.-Early life:Bacque was educated at Upper Canada College in Toronto and then the University of Toronto, where he studied history and philosophy graduating in 1952 with a Bachelor of Art degree...

(ISBN 1-55168-191-9) alleges that General

General

A general officer is an officer of high military rank, usually in the army, and in some nations, the air force. The term is widely used by many nations of the world, and when a country uses a different term, there is an equivalent title given....

Dwight Eisenhower ordered the mistreatment of German prisoners of war who were detained in American-run POW camps after World War II. Other U.S. and German sources estimate the number of German POWs who died in captivity at between 56,000 or 78,000 or about 1% of all German prisoners, which is roughly the same as the percentage of American POWs who died in German captivity, and far less than the 64% of Soviet POWs who died while detained by the Third Reich.

Still, the likelihood of a German POW of dying in captivity was four times higher when captured by Americans than when captured by the British. In fact, Eisenhower had them for a period relabeled as Disarmed Enemy Forces

Disarmed Enemy Forces

Disarmed Enemy Forces , and—less commonly—Surrendered Enemy Forces, was a U.S. designation, both for soldiers who surrendered to an adversary after hostilities ended, and for those previously surrendered POWs who were held in camps in occupied German territory at that time. It is mainly referenced...

in order to rid them of the protection of the Geneva Convention. Their food rations were then lowered, and the Red Cross was forbidden to visit them.

In addition, millions of German prisoners of war were for several years used as forced labor, both by the Western and Eastern Allies. (See also History of Germany since 1945#Forced labor reparations)

In the U.S. an initially successful campaign was carried out in the years 1944-1948 to convince the U.S. public that the German people should be dealt with harshly.

At the Potsdam conference

Potsdam Conference

The Potsdam Conference was held at Cecilienhof, the home of Crown Prince Wilhelm Hohenzollern, in Potsdam, occupied Germany, from 16 July to 2 August 1945. Participants were the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States...

after World War II, the victorious allies awarded roughly 25% of Germany's pre-war territory to Poland and the Soviet Union. The German population in this area was expelled by force, together with the Germans of the Sudetenland

Sudetenland

Sudetenland is the German name used in English in the first half of the 20th century for the northern, southwest and western regions of Czechoslovakia inhabited mostly by ethnic Germans, specifically the border areas of Bohemia, Moravia, and those parts of Silesia being within Czechoslovakia.The...

and the German populations scattered throughout the rest of Eastern Europe

Eastern Europe

Eastern Europe is the eastern part of Europe. The term has widely disparate geopolitical, geographical, cultural and socioeconomic readings, which makes it highly context-dependent and even volatile, and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...

. 12-15 million were expelled in total. One to three million are estimated to have died during the expulsion, mainly women and children. (See also Expulsion of Germans after World War II

Expulsion of Germans after World War II

The later stages of World War II, and the period after the end of that war, saw the forced migration of millions of German nationals and ethnic Germans from various European states and territories, mostly into the areas which would become post-war Germany and post-war Austria...

).

As agreed at Potsdam, an attempt was made to convert Germany into an agricultural nation, which would only be allowed a minimum of light industry to pay for food imports. Large numbers of factories were dismantled during the years 1945-1950 as reparations or simply destroyed in order to lower the German industrial potential. (see also the Morgenthau Plan

Morgenthau Plan

The Morgenthau Plan, proposed by United States Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, Jr., advocated that the Allied occupation of Germany following World War II include measures to eliminate Germany's ability to wage war.-Overview:...

).

Due in part to these economic occupation policies, and also due to the refusal of the U.S. to allow food imports to help ethnic Germans, large numbers of German civilians died in the years following the unconditional surrender in what would eventually become West Germany

West Germany

West Germany is the common English, but not official, name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation in May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990....

Soviet Union

Hundreds of thousands of German Prisoners of War were kept in Soviet

Soviet Union

The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

custody for 10 years after World War II. These were not repatriated until Konrad Adenauer

Konrad Adenauer

Konrad Hermann Joseph Adenauer was a German statesman. He was the chancellor of the West Germany from 1949 to 1963. He is widely recognised as a person who led his country from the ruins of World War II to a powerful and prosperous nation that had forged close relations with old enemies France,...

went to Moscow in 1955 and urged their release. They, along with alleged German collaborators and other ethnic Germans, were imprisoned in Gulag

Gulag

The Gulag was the government agency that administered the main Soviet forced labor camp systems. While the camps housed a wide range of convicts, from petty criminals to political prisoners, large numbers were convicted by simplified procedures, such as NKVD troikas and other instruments of...

concentration camps. The Volga German Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic

Volga German Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic

The Volga German Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was an autonomous republic established in Soviet Russia, with its capital at the Volga port of Engels .-History:...

was abolished and Volga Germans were banished from their settlements on the Volga River

Volga River

The Volga is the largest river in Europe in terms of length, discharge, and watershed. It flows through central Russia, and is widely viewed as the national river of Russia. Out of the twenty largest cities of Russia, eleven, including the capital Moscow, are situated in the Volga's drainage...

with many being deported to Siberia

Siberia

Siberia is an extensive region constituting almost all of Northern Asia. Comprising the central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, it was part of the Soviet Union from its beginning, as its predecessor states, the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, conquered it during the 16th...

or Kazakhstan

Kazakhstan

Kazakhstan , officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a transcontinental country in Central Asia and Eastern Europe. Ranked as the ninth largest country in the world, it is also the world's largest landlocked country; its territory of is greater than Western Europe...

Forced labor of Germans in the Soviet Union

Forced labor of Germans in the Soviet Union was considered by the Soviet Union to be part of German war reparations for the damage inflicted by Nazi Germany on the Soviet Union during World War II. German civilians in Eastern Europe were deported to the USSR after World War II as forced laborers...

)

In the dying days of World War II and during the occupation of Germany, Soviet forces invaded German villages and raped German women en masse. It is believed by historian Antony Beevor

Antony Beevor

Antony James Beevor, FRSL is a British historian, educated at Winchester College and Sandhurst. He studied under the famous military historian John Keegan. Beevor is a former officer with the 11th Hussars who served in England and Germany for five years before resigning his commission...

that "a 'high proportion' of at least 15 million women who lived in the Soviet zone or were expelled from Germany's eastern provinces were raped." Several thousand women committed suicide. On the final day of hostilities, 900 women in one village just east of Berlin took their children and drowned them in the river (followed by their own suicides) as soon as they heard the Russian guns coming. Although all militaries have histories of rape, the gang-raping of ordinary German women occurred with the approval of many district commanders. In all, only about 4,000 Soviet soldiers were ever punished for atrocities. (See also Red Army atrocities

Red Army atrocities

War crimes perpetrated by the armed forces of Soviet Russia and the Soviet Union from 1919 to 1991 include acts committed by the regular army—the Red Army —as well as the NKVD, including the NKVD's Internal Troops. In some cases, these crimes may have been committed on express orders of the early...

)

Poland

In the 18th century, the German states of Prussia

Prussia

Prussia was a German kingdom and historic state originating out of the Duchy of Prussia and the Margraviate of Brandenburg. For centuries, the House of Hohenzollern ruled Prussia, successfully expanding its size by way of an unusually well-organized and effective army. Prussia shaped the history...

and Austria participated in the Partitions of Poland

Partitions of Poland

The Partitions of Poland or Partitions of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth took place in the second half of the 18th century and ended the existence of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, resulting in the elimination of sovereign Poland for 123 years...

, in which the historical Kingdom of Poland

Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth

The Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth was a dualistic state of Poland and Lithuania ruled by a common monarch. It was the largest and one of the most populous countries of 16th- and 17th‑century Europe with some and a multi-ethnic population of 11 million at its peak in the early 17th century...

was erased from the map of Europe.

Poland regained its independence only in 1919, when the Treaty of Versailles

Treaty of Versailles

The Treaty of Versailles was one of the peace treaties at the end of World War I. It ended the state of war between Germany and the Allied Powers. It was signed on 28 June 1919, exactly five years after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. The other Central Powers on the German side of...

recreated country Second Polish Republic

Second Polish Republic

The Second Polish Republic, Second Commonwealth of Poland or interwar Poland refers to Poland between the two world wars; a period in Polish history in which Poland was restored as an independent state. Officially known as the Republic of Poland or the Commonwealth of Poland , the Polish state was...

. However, minorities of Ethnic Germans remained in the territories of Poznań, West Prussia

West Prussia

West Prussia was a province of the Kingdom of Prussia from 1773–1824 and 1878–1919/20 which was created out of the earlier Polish province of Royal Prussia...

, Upper Silesia

Upper Silesia

Upper Silesia is the southeastern part of the historical and geographical region of Silesia. Since the 9th century, Upper Silesia has been part of Greater Moravia, the Duchy of Bohemia, the Piast Kingdom of Poland, again of the Lands of the Bohemian Crown and the Holy Roman Empire, as well as of...

, and eastern Pomerania

Pomerania

Pomerania is a historical region on the south shore of the Baltic Sea. Divided between Germany and Poland, it stretches roughly from the Recknitz River near Stralsund in the West, via the Oder River delta near Szczecin, to the mouth of the Vistula River near Gdańsk in the East...

within Poland. In Poznań and eastern Pomerania, the number of German speaking citizens was 9% in 1931, and 6% in Upper Silesia.

In 1939, the Germans exploited the fact that Poland contained ethnically German populations as a casus belli
Casus belli
is a Latin expression meaning the justification for acts of war. means "incident", "rupture" or indeed "case", while means bellic...

in order to justify their actions against the Polish Republic. In this, they were aided by a number of ethnic German Polish citizens who sympathised with Nazism.

In Poland during the German occupation in World War II, the status of Volksdeutsche

Volksdeutsche

had many privileges but one big disadvantage: unlike Poles, Volksdeutsche were conscripted into the German army. The Volksliste (a list of peoples categorised according to Nazi philosophies of "racial purity") had 4 categories. No. 1 and No. 2 were considered ethnic Germans, while No. 3 and No. 4 were ethnic Poles that signed the Volksliste. No. 1 and No. 2 in the Polish areas annexed by Germany numbered ~1,000,000 and No. 3 and No. 4 ~1,700,000. In the General Government

General Government

The General Government was an area of Second Republic of Poland under Nazi German rule during World War II; designated as a separate region of the Third Reich between 1939–1945...

territory, there were about 120,000 Volksdeutsche.

Volksdeutsche of Polish origins were treated by Poles with special contempt, and the fact of their having signed the Volksliste constituted high treason according to Polish underground law.

German citizens that remained in the territory of Poland after World War II became as a group personae non gratae
Persona non grata
Persona non grata , literally meaning "an unwelcome person", is a legal term used in diplomacy that indicates a proscription against a person entering the country...

. They had the choice of either applying for Polish citizenship or being expelled to Germany. The property that belonged to Germans, German companies or the German state, was either transferred to Soviet Union or confiscated, along with many other private properties, by the new Polish communist state. German owners, as explicitly stated by the law, were not eligible for any compensation. Those who decided to apply for compensation were subjected to a verification process. There were also many acts of violence against Volksdeutsche.

Czechoslovakia

See also: Germans in Czechoslovakia (1918-1938)
Germans in Czechoslovakia (1918-1938)
From 1918 to 1938, after the breakup of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, more than 3 million ethnic Germans were living in what became the Czech lands of the newly created state of Czechoslovakia. Ethnic Germans had lived in Bohemia, a part of the Holy Roman Empire, since the 14th century , mostly in...

, Beneš decrees
Beneš decrees
Decrees of the President of the Republic , more commonly known as the Beneš decrees, were a series of laws that were drafted by the Czechoslovak Government-in-Exile in the absence of the Czechoslovak parliament during the German occupation of Czechoslovakia in World War II and issued by President...

, Sudetenland
Sudetenland
Sudetenland is the German name used in English in the first half of the 20th century for the northern, southwest and western regions of Czechoslovakia inhabited mostly by ethnic Germans, specifically the border areas of Bohemia, Moravia, and those parts of Silesia being within Czechoslovakia.The...

, Flight and expulsion of Germans from Czechoslovakia during and after World War II.

In the summer of 1945 there were a number of incidents and localised massacres of the German population.

The following examples are described in a study done by the European University Institute in Florence:

In the Přerov
Prerov
Přerov is a town in the Olomouc Region of the Czech Republic where the Bečva river flows through. Přerov is a statute town . It has population of about 47,373 to January 2, 2008. Přerov is about 22 km south west of Olomouc. In the past it was a major crossroad in the heart of Moravia in the...

incident, 71 men, 120 women and 74 children were killed.
30,000 Germans were forced to leave their homes in Brno
Brno
Brno by population and area is the second largest city in the Czech Republic, the largest Moravian city, and the historical capital city of the Margraviate of Moravia. Brno is the administrative centre of the South Moravian Region where it forms a separate district Brno-City District...

for labour camps near Austria. It is estimated that several hundred died in the death march.
Estimates of killed in the Ústí massacre
Ústí massacre
The Ústí massacre was a lynching of ethnic Germans in Ústí nad Labem , a largely ethnic German city in northern Bohemia shortly after the end of the World War II, on July 31, 1945....

range from 30 - 50 to 600 - 700 civilians. Some women and children were thrown off the bridge into the Elbe River and shot.

Law No. 115 of 1946 (see Beneš decrees

Beneš decrees

Decrees of the President of the Republic , more commonly known as the Beneš decrees, were a series of laws that were drafted by the Czechoslovak Government-in-Exile in the absence of the Czechoslovak parliament during the German occupation of Czechoslovakia in World War II and issued by President...

) providees: "Any act committed between September 30, 1938 and October 28, 1945, the object of which was to aid the struggle for liberty of the Czechs and Slovaks or which represented just reprisals for actions of the occupation forces and their accomplices, is not illegal, even when such acts may otherwise be punishable by law."

As a consequence all atrocities committed during the expulsion of Germans were made legal, and since the law is still in effect no perpetrator has ever faced charges for his or her crimes during the expulsion.

Norway

The children of Norwegian

Norway

Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...

mothers and German soldiers were persecuted after the war, see War children

War children

A war child refers to a child born to a native parent and a parent belonging to a foreign military force . It also refers to children of parents collaborating with an occupying force...

.

German POWs in Norway were forced to clear minefields and then walk over them, leading to the death and mutilation of hundreds of prisoners.

Italy

See also: History of South Tyrol
History of South Tyrol
The modern-day South Tyrol, an autonomous Italian province created in 1948, was originally part of the Austro-Hungarian County of Tyrol until 1918 . Its area was annexed by Italy following the defeat of the Central Powers in World War I...

.

After the end of World War I, the German-speaking southern part of Tyrol was included in the new boundaries of Italy. Following the rise of the Fascist

Italian Fascism

Italian Fascism also known as Fascism with a capital "F" refers to the original fascist ideology in Italy. This ideology is associated with the National Fascist Party which under Benito Mussolini ruled the Kingdom of Italy from 1922 until 1943, the Republican Fascist Party which ruled the Italian...

movement of Benito Mussolini

Benito Mussolini

Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini was an Italian politician who led the National Fascist Party and is credited with being one of the key figures in the creation of Fascism....

, the ethnic Germans of this enclave faced growing persecution. Their names, and the names of the towns and places in the area, were forcibly changed to Italian. In addition, Mussolini engaged in a vigorous campaign to resettle ethnic Italians into the region. Many Tyroleans fled to Germany during this time, and the matter of this province became a source of friction between Hitler and Mussolini.

After the end of World War II, the organised persecution of Germans in South Tyrol

South Tyrol

came to an end, although ethnic strife continued for decades.

United States

During the 18th and 19th centuries, German-Americans were the most visible non-Anglophone group in the United States. Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...

was the most Germanic state but German-language schools and German-language media were common throughout the Midwestern and Mid-Atlantic

Mid-Atlantic States

The Mid-Atlantic states, also called middle Atlantic states or simply the mid Atlantic, form a region of the United States generally located between New England and the South...

states. Numerous incidents of hostility against these groups took place during the nineteenth century, but were largely non-systematic. The anti-slavery position of Germans in the South brought about violent clashes in slave states, such as Texas

Texas

Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...

during the American Civil War

American Civil War

The American Civil War was a civil war fought in the United States of America. In response to the election of Abraham Lincoln as President of the United States, 11 southern slave states declared their secession from the United States and formed the Confederate States of America ; the other 25...

.

A source of particular tension was the presence of pacifist

Pacifism

Pacifism is the opposition to war and violence. The term "pacifism" was coined by the French peace campaignerÉmile Arnaud and adopted by other peace activists at the tenth Universal Peace Congress inGlasgow in 1901.- Definition :...

Mennonite

and Amish

Amish

The Amish , sometimes referred to as Amish Mennonites, are a group of Christian church fellowships that form a subgroup of the Mennonite churches...

communities, which spoke (and speak) a dialect of German called Pennsylvania Dutch

Pennsylvania Dutch

Pennsylvania Dutch refers to immigrants and their descendants from southwestern Germany and Switzerland who settled in Pennsylvania in the 17th and 18th centuries...

. These communities attracted considerable hatred, particularly during the American Revolution

American Revolution

The American Revolution was the political upheaval during the last half of the 18th century in which thirteen colonies in North America joined together to break free from the British Empire, combining to become the United States of America...

and the U.S. Civil War, when many Mennonites and possibly Amish were imprisoned or forcibly conscripted. Although most Germans were not Mennonites, this reinforced the popular view that Germans did not consider themselves part of America.

Upon the outbreak of World War I, anti-German sentiment quickly reached a fever pitch. Many Germans supported their (former) homeland's side in the war, in which America long remained officially neutral. The portrayal of Germany as "The Hun" in British pro-war propaganda

Propaganda

Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....

inflamed existing tensions. The situation came to a crisis with America's entry into the war in 1917. The period from 1917 to 1919 is regarded as the time when German-American ethnic identity came to an end. Anti-German rioting was widespread. Many German-language periodicals, which had numbered in the hundreds, ceased operation (many were destroyed). However, there are cases of towns where the residents spoke German on a daily basis and the local newspaper was in German at least as late as the 1950s. These towns were primarily in the Midwestern region of the United States. Many German-Americans translated their names or altered them to resemble English names (a trend which had begun in the nineteenth century, e.g. Gustave Whitehead

Gustave Whitehead

Gustave Albin Whitehead, born Gustav Albin Weisskopf was an aviation pioneer who emigrated from Germany to the U.S., where he designed and built early flying machines and engines meant to power them....

). By the time the U.S. troops returned from Europe, the German community had ceased to be a major force in American culture, or was no longer perceived as German (see Groucho Marx

Groucho Marx

Julius Henry "Groucho" Marx was an American comedian and film star famed as a master of wit. His rapid-fire delivery of innuendo-laden patter earned him many admirers. He made 13 feature films with his siblings the Marx Brothers, of whom he was the third-born...

).

When in France during World War I, members of Yale University

Yale University

Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...

had learned about the German song Die Wacht am Rhein

Die Wacht am Rhein

"Die Wacht am Rhein" is a German patriotic anthem. The song's origins are rooted in historical conflicts with France, and it was particularly popular in Germany during the Franco-Prussian War and the First World War....

and were apparently shocked to discover the fact that Yale's traditional song "Bright College Years

Bright College Years

Bright College Years is one of the traditional songs of Yale University, and often cited as the university's alma mater...

" had been written to the "splendid tune" of Karl Wilhelm

Karl Wilhelm

Karl Wilhelm, also Carl Wilhelm was a German choral director. He is best known as the composer of the song “Die Wacht am Rhein.”-Biography:...

. Suddenly hating this melody, Yale Alumni sang "Bright College Years" to the tune of the Marseillaise instead, and after the war the German melody was banned for some time until it was reinstated in 1920.

Today, many argue that the Germans are the one ethnic group that has been assimilated into American society. Largely for this reason, although some persecution of ethnic Germans did occur during World War II, it was not widespread. Most of the German-American population no longer identified themselves as German, nor were they identified with the Nazis in the popular mind. Despite this, the US government interned as dangerous nearly 11,000 persons of German ancestry. Only enemy aliens were supposed to be interned, but family members, many of them American citizens, often joined them in the camps.

Canada

In Canada, thousands of German born Canadians were interned in detention camps during World War I and World War II and subjected to forced labour. Many Ukrainians

Ukrainians

Ukrainians are an East Slavic ethnic group native to Ukraine, which is the sixth-largest nation in Europe. The Constitution of Ukraine applies the term 'Ukrainians' to all its citizens...

and other Eastern Europeans were also detained during World War I as were Japanese and Italian-Canadians during World War II.

Britain

Germans were demonized in the press well before World War I, e.g. when the Kaiserliche Marine

Kaiserliche Marine

The Imperial German Navy was the German Navy created at the time of the formation of the German Empire. It existed between 1871 and 1919, growing out of the small Prussian Navy and Norddeutsche Bundesmarine, which primarily had the mission of coastal defense. Kaiser Wilhelm II greatly expanded...

started to challenge the Royal Navy

Royal Navy

The Royal Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Founded in the 16th century, it is the oldest service branch and is known as the Senior Service...

, but particularly around 1912 and during World War I. Anti-German sentiment was so intense that the British Royal Family

British Royal Family

The British Royal Family is the group of close relatives of the monarch of the United Kingdom. The term is also commonly applied to the same group of people as the relations of the monarch in her or his role as sovereign of any of the other Commonwealth realms, thus sometimes at variance with...

(which was of German origin) was advised by the government to change its name, resulting in the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha becoming the House of Windsor

House of Windsor

The House of Windsor is the royal house of the Commonwealth realms. It was founded by King George V by royal proclamation on the 17 July 1917, when he changed the name of his family from the German Saxe-Coburg and Gotha to the English Windsor, due to the anti-German sentiment in the United Kingdom...

. On the other hand, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany was a grandson of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom

Victoria of the United Kingdom

Victoria was the monarch of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until her death. From 1 May 1876, she used the additional title of Empress of India....

and the nephew of King Edward VII of the United Kingdom

Edward VII of the United Kingdom

Edward VII was King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions and Emperor of India from 22 January 1901 until his death in 1910...

. The German Shepherd

German Shepherd Dog

The German Shepherd Dog , also known as an Alsatian or just the German Shepherd, is a breed of large-sized dog that originated in Germany. The German Shepherd is a relatively new breed of dog, with its origin dating to 1899. As part of the Herding Group, the German Shepherd is a working dog...

dog was renamed the Alsatian, which is the name under which this breed is still commonly known in Britain.

External links

NY Times book review of Other Losses by historian Stephen Ambrose
Stephen Ambrose
Stephen Edward Ambrose was an American historian and biographer of U.S. Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and Richard Nixon. He was a long time professor of history at the University of New Orleans and the author of many best selling volumes of American popular history...
History News Network Bacque and Fisher respond to Ambrose
Totenbuch der Donauschwaben History of Communist Yugoslavian persecution and genocide of ethnic German minority and collection of names of the missing and dead.
de Zayas Homepage Alfred-Maurice de Zayas
Alfred-Maurice de Zayas
Alfred-Maurice de Zayas is an American lawyer, writer, historian, a leading expert in the field of human rights, as well as a former high-ranking United Nations official...

, Professor and author who has studied the German expulsions and persecutions extensively and written books on the topic.
A Legacy of Dead German Children Ten thousand German children under five died in Danish camps
Danish Study Says German Children Abused
A modest proposal, Time magazine, 1941
Morgenthau's Hope, Time magazine 1945

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