“One hundred percent” Americans did not use any language other than English, did not read foreign-language newspapers or attend foreign-language church services, were not members of any clubs adhering to German customs…and did not criticize the government.

—Katja Wüstenbecker, Immigrant Entrepreneurship: German-American Business Biographies, 1720 to the Present, 2014

During World War I, the fear and suspicion of all things German swept across North America like a blight. Anti-German sentiments rose quickly with Canada's entry into the war during August 1914, in support of the British Empire. Widespread intolerance and harassment soon spread to the United States, where German Americans and immigrants were made to feel unwelcome and their loyalties questioned. During this period, German immigration slowed to a trickle. In 1911, over 32,000 Germans poured into the country. Most were welcomed with open arms as upstanding members of their communities. By 1919, the figure was just fifty-two individuals, and each was looked upon with wariness.1 Prejudice and mistrust ran deep. Some branches of the American Red Cross, long known for neutrality and independence, excluded volunteers with German surnames, amid rumors that infiltrators were grinding up glass and placing it in bandages used to treat wounded soldiers.2 The New York Times reported claims that bandages were being soaked in poison.³ None of the allegations were ever proven. By 1918, the scare had reached such proportions that in New Haven, Connecticut, city cleaners were kept busy clearing the roadways of rocks, bottles, and eggs after a car drove through the streets dragging an effigy of the kaiser.⁴ That same year, the syndicators of the popular comic strip The Katzenjammer Kids, about the misadventures of two German brothers, changed the name to The Shenanigan Kids. In the new strip, Hans and Fritz became the Dutch siblings Mike and Alec. The cartoon reverted back to the original characters in 1920, as hostilities began to subside.⁵ Such was life in America during the Great German Scare.

From New York to California, paranoia and conspiracies were the order of the day as people saw plots where none existed and turned in their German neighbors, fearing they were enemy agents. One rumor held that German musicians were passing secret messages in their arrangements. According to another, German submarine captains were surfacing in remote locations along the coast and coming ashore to attend the theatre to spread influenza germs.⁶ Perhaps the most far-fetched claims involved pigeons. When a new species was shot in Michigan, there was speculation that it was German and was being used to send coded messages between spies.⁷ The discovery of an exhausted carrier pigeon on a farm near Brisbane, North Dakota, also caused alarm. On its legs were two bands with a series of numbers and letters. After examining the bird, a bank teller took it to authorities believing it was a “German agent” and the bands were coded messages.⁸ It was also rumored that the Germans were melting the corpses of soldiers taken from the battlefield to make soap, candles, and explosives. This story was later revealed to have been an Allied fabrication.⁹

Tales of dubious German atrocities and inhumanity highlighted the ruthless nature of the enemy in order to whip up public hysteria by demonizing Germans as an evil, warlike race. This created problems for scholars who had previously written that the early American pioneers were descendants of ancient Germanic tribes. History was hastily rewritten to include the theory that most of the original inhabitants of Germany had been killed off by Asiatic barbarians.10 The government Committee on Public Information played a major role in stifling voices of dissent and rallying public opinion behind the war effort. A nationwide poster campaign portrayed Germans as thugs and beasts. One depicted an attractive woman being carried off by a demented apelike figure wearing a German helmet—the caption reading: “Destroy this Mad Brute—Enlist!” Another showed a German soldier impaling a baby with his bayonet.¹¹ During the war, the American Defense Society was influential in portraying Germans as an evil, vicious race. Led by its honorary president, Theodore Roosevelt, one of its publications described Germany as “the most treacherous, brutal and loathsome nation on earth…. The sound of the German language…reminds us of the murder of a million helpless old men, women, and children; [and the] driving of about 100,000 young French, Belgian, and Polish women into compulsory prostitution.”¹²

In Canada, there were fears of a surprise attack from German Americans loyal to the kaiser, who were supposedly training on the northern border of Western New York to stage raids or a full-scale invasion. The worst offender in spreading these tales was Sir Courtney Bennett, a British diplomat stationed in New York City. Bennett had a propensity for making sensational statements. In early 1915, he made the dramatic claim that as many as eighty thousand German loyalists were secretly drilling near Buffalo and Niagara Falls, New York, for an invasion. Other rumors held that a five-thousand-man German militia was operating in Chicago, and a force of eight thousand had formed in Boston. Canadian Police Commissioner Percy Sherwood was worried enough to send agents across the border to infiltrate areas where there were large concentrations of German Americans. After visiting bars and clubs in the hope of uncovering subversives, they could find no evidence of a plot to attack Canada or any attempt to recruit volunteers for an invasion.¹³ Anti-German feelings reached such levels that one historian would later observe that “there was hardly a major fire, explosion, or industrial accident which was not attributed to enemy sabotage,” and further investigation “invariably led elsewhere.”14 While there were mysterious fires, explosions, and equipment failures during the war in both Canada and the United States, it is difficult to know which were sabotage. The small number of confirmed incidents were more of a nuisance than a serious threat to the security of either nation.

Attempts to disrupt the war effort in both countries were often so amateurish as to border on the comical. In late 1914, the German Foreign Office received intelligence that Japan was deploying troops to Vancouver, so a scheme was hatched to blow up several bridges of the Canadian Pacific Railroad.¹⁵ After learning that the report was untrue, the plan was canceled. The ringleader of the bridge plot, an agent identified only as Captain Böhm, was never informed of the aborted mission and went ahead with the operation to cross into Canada from Maine. Just before they were to leave, seven of his eight recruits backed out at the last minute, so the mission was aborted. The eighth conspirator, a bungling German army reservist named Werner von Horn, had the easiest task: blow up the Vanceboro Bridge just over the Maine border, for which the German government paid him the hefty sum of $700.¹⁶ Thoroughly inept, von Horn arrived late to the rendezvous point, oblivious to the change in plans. Confident of fulfilling his destiny, he and an Irish companion set out to cross the border in frigid temperatures during a snowstorm. Before long, the Irishman got lost, leaving von Horn on his own. He eventually found the bridge, and, in the early-morning hours of February 2, set off several sticks of dynamite before crossing back over the border and into the small town of Vanceboro, Maine, where residents were on alert after having been awakened by the explosion.¹⁷ By daybreak, von Horn was under arrest. It was not difficult to identify the guilty party, as he “was carrying a supply of dynamite and detonators, and spoke poor English with a heavy German accent.”¹⁸ For all of von Horn's efforts, he had managed to delay bridge traffic by six hours, and the structure was completely repaired within two days.¹⁹ To describe von Horn's mission as a failure would be an understatement. The German counsel in New York observed that newspaper publicity surrounding the failed attempt to blow up the bridge only fueled anti-German hostility in America. Von Horn was eventually sentenced to eighteen months in jail and was fined $1,000. But his ineptitude did not end there. He had a propensity to talk too much and claimed to be an officer in the Prussian military. This resulted in his being treated as a prisoner of war; and, in late 1919, he was extradited to Canada and given a ten-year prison term. After concerns had been raised over his mental health, he was deported to Germany in August 1921. British Canadian historian Martin Kitchen writes that while there were several other attempts by Germans to sabotage the Canadian war effort, “they were so unsuccessful that the Canadian authorities were not aware of them.”20 It was a similar story in the United States.

US WAR HYSTERIA RISES AS THE LUSITANIA SINKS

The scare over the loyalty of persons of German heritage living in North America intensified on the afternoon of May 7, 1915, when a torpedo fired from a German U-boat lying in wait off the Irish coast slammed into the ocean liner Lusitania, killing 1,198 passengers and crew, including 128 Americans.²¹ The incident fueled outrage and was widely condemned as a cowardly and ruthless attack on innocent civilians. In reality, the German government had warned of the danger the very day the vessel left Pier Fifty-Four in New York City bound for Liverpool. The German embassy placed ads in several major New York newspapers appearing near notices of the Lusitania's planned voyage, stating that Germany and Great Britain were at war, and they could not guarantee safe passage. It urged passengers to reconsider boarding. The Germans also maintained that the ship had been carrying munitions for the war, a claim supported by recent archeological surveys of the vessel that identified a cache of Remington .303-caliber bullets—the same type used by the British in the war.²² The anti-German backlash was immediate and swift.

While the overwhelming number of Americans of German heritage were loyal citizens, they were soon widely referred to as “Huns” and “hyphenated Americans” who were looked down upon and viewed with suspicion. As attorney Charles Nagel remarked during the scare: “I do not believe that at this stage any value would be attached to an expression from a citizen of German name.”23 As a result, in the first postwar census taken in 1920, about 900,000 German-born Americans “vanished” by either claiming to have been born in the United States or assuming a different ethnicity.²⁴ As in Canada, the US government would eventually intern German Americans suspected of disloyalty—about four thousand. Following the cue of their northern neighbors, there were soon calls to rename everything from Germanic-sounding streets and schools to food. A public campaign was mounted to change “sauerkraut” to “Liberty Cabbage.”²⁵ But the hysteria did not end there. Restaurants changed the name of hamburgers to “Liberty Burgers,” meatloaf was referred to as “Salisbury Steak” (after a British Lord), while frankfurters and wieners, named after Germanic cities, became known as “hot dogs”—a name that stuck.²⁶ Luckily, Limburger cheese was given a last-minute reprieve when it was found to have been of Belgian origin. Diseases were not even spared, as some people began referring to Rubella or German measles as “liberty measles.”²⁷ There was even a report in Life magazine of people euthanizing dachshunds.²⁸ In Cincinnati, Ohio, Berlin Street was rechristened Woodrow Street, after President Wilson, while German Street became English Street.²⁹ In St. Louis, the Kaiser-Huhn Grocery had its delivery wagons pelted with stones. It soon became the Pioneer Grocery Company. In the suburb of St. Charles, the German Evangelical St. John's Church decided in the interests of self-preservation to remove the word German from its name. In Chicago, the directors of the Kaiser Friedrich Mutual Aid Society, named after the former German emperor Friedrich III, raised eyebrows when it tried to mask its Germanic origins by becoming the George Washington Benevolent Aid Society. Many residents went so far as to take anglicized names: Müller became Miller; Schmidt became Smith; and Oachs was changed to Oaks.30 No German American was above suspicion. Even major league baseball players changed their names to remove any hint of disloyalty. Cleveland Indians pitcher Fritz Coumbe became “Freddie,” while Cincinnati Reds third baseman Heinie Groh began calling himself “Henry.”³¹ When John Fluhrer debuted for the Chicago Cubs in 1915, he went by the British-sounding “William Morris.” If the name change was intended to ward off questions of loyalty after his newfound fame, he need not have bothered. His major league career consisted of just six at-bats.³² Several American towns and cities had the unfortunate distinction of bearing the name of Germany's capital. As a result, Berlin, California, was renamed Genevra; Berlin, Iowa, was re-christened Lincoln; while Berlin, Michigan, became Marne. A number of states had their own Germantown. In Texas, it became Schroeder, to honor Paul Schroeder, the first resident of the community to die in the war; while Germantown, Nebraska, was changed to Garland; and Germantown, Indiana, was renamed Pershing, after General John “Black Jack” Pershing, commander of the American Expeditionary Force on the Western Front.³³ Ironically, his father was of German descent, and the family name was anglicized from Pfoerschin.³⁴

There were 10 million German Americans in 1910; about 20 percent were foreign-born.³⁵ In 1915, one in four high school students studied German; by the end of the war, it was a mere 1 percent.³⁶ Historian Paul Finkelman observes that during the war, there was a common belief that language was organic to the soul. Hence, if you spoke German, you would start to think like a German, and “you would become a totalitarian in favor of the kaiser.”³⁷ Today, the idea would seem ridiculous. It was a similar picture with German-language newspapers, many of which were forced to survive by unofficially becoming part of the government's propaganda campaign. In Texas, papers that were once vigorously pro-German were suddenly urging their readers to “Buy Liberty Bonds,” while the editorial pages of many of these publications carried images of the American flag.³⁸ In Pennsylvania, the Pittsburgh Volksblatt und Freiheitsfreund went to extreme lengths to prove its loyalty, such as publishing images of a bloodied dog with a German emblem, attacking a mother and child.39 The German press was under careful scrutiny, and by October 1917, Congress passed a law requiring foreign-language papers to provide an English translation of war-related articles and give them to the local postmaster before they were allowed to be mailed. By the end of the war, the number of German-language newspapers had halved, as many businesses withheld their advertising.⁴⁰ The German press was in an impossible situation. Historian Alexander Waldenrath observes that “papers were suspect even when they supported the American cause. Consequently, advertising fell off sharply as did circulation. The legislation of 1917 which required translations of the papers to be filed and permits for publication to be secured added heavily to the publisher's burdens.”⁴¹

“SPEAK OF THE DEVIL AND HE IS BOUND TO APPEAR”⁴²

Politicians helped to fan the flames of hysteria as social paranoia reached the highest levels of government. While emphasizing that America was at war with the German government, not German Americans, President Woodrow Wilson cultivated a fear of those very people. On June 14, 1917—Flag Day—he issued an ominous warning to Congress that disloyal German Americans “filled our unsuspecting communities with vicious spies and conspirators and sought to corrupt the opinion of our people in their own behalf.”⁴³ Spurred on by fear-mongering politicians and alarmist press reports, citizens were urged to do their patriotic duty by spying on their neighbors. Worried over the government's ability to combat the threat of so many German spies and subversives, Attorney General Thomas Gregory approved a plan to use volunteers to gather information on anyone of German heritage living in the country, especially immigrants. The organization became known as the American Protection League, and it was billed as a group of amateur sleuths who investigated the actions of possible German subversives in their local communities. In reality, it was a hodgepodge of wannabe police officers and private investigators. Members were given a policelike badge identifying them as a “Secret Service” agent of the American government. At one point, their ranks swelled to an astounding 260,000 members.44 With so many eyes and ears on the lookout for spies, they were soon found to be lurking everywhere. America's ambassador to Germany, James Gerard, proclaimed that “the time has come when every citizen must declare himself American—or traitor!”⁴⁵ This “You're either with us or against us” attitude was reflected in the actions of Missouri Governor Frederick Gardner, who declared in April 1918: “A pro-German is no better than a spy.” His inflated rhetoric and bombastic warnings are no more evident than in his claim that any pro-German found in Missouri would face a firing squad.⁴⁶ During the war, the term “100 percent American” became a popular battle cry among super-patriots on the home front.

Spurred on by groups such as the Anti-German League, there were widespread attempts to ban or burn both books published in German and English works suspected of being subversive and a threat to the nation's youth. One League pamphlet proclaimed: “Any language which produces a people of ruthless conquestadors [sic] such as now exist in Germany, is not a fit language to teach clean and pure American boys and girls.”⁴⁷ In true, exaggerated moral-panic fashion, it also claimed that Germany was “the most treacherous, brutal and loathsome nation on earth.”⁴⁸ One educator even asserted that the German language was phonetically difficult to tolerate due to its “unrefined,” “uncivilized,” and “animalistic” nature. In arguing that German should not be taught in American schools, one American educator claimed that the German philosophy “prides itself in its inhumanity [that] murders children, rapes women, and mutilates the bodies of innocent men.”⁴⁹ Across the country, organizations controlling local libraries generated lists of unacceptable books that were taken off the shelves and either put in storage or destroyed in rallies culminating in public burnings. In Cincinnati, Ohio, the trustees of the city library voted to remove all 10,000 books written in German. It issued a statement supporting the decision, which read: “English is the language which must become universal in the United States, and the Library should be one of the instruments through which this is to be accomplished.” Fortunately, the books escaped the bonfire and were stored in the basement.50

Intolerance reared its ugly head in the form of federal and state laws quashing anyone sympathizing with Germany or dissenting against the war, as the government ran roughshod over the First Amendment “guaranteeing” freedom of speech. Passage of the Espionage Act of June 1917 imposed fines and prison terms for engaging in antiwar activities. The following May, the Sedition Act set harsh penalties for anyone found guilty of using “disloyal, profane…or abusive language,” including insults to the government, the flag, the Constitution, or the military. At least 1,500 people were arrested under these laws as “troublemakers” and dissenters opposing the war.⁵¹ One of the targets of these laws were socialists, who often claimed that the real reason for the war was to boost Wall Street. When New York journalist and prominent socialist Rose Stokes charged that the government was profiteering from the war, she was sentenced to ten years in prison. When the head of the American Socialist Party, Eugene Debs, made similar comments, he was also given ten years. In Texas, the San Antonio Inquirer published a letter to the editor criticizing the treatment of black soldiers who had engaged in a violent mutiny in Houston; its editor, G. W. Bouldin, spent the next two years in prison under the Espionage Act. Hysteria began to die down after the war, and Stokes was freed in 1920 when a federal court overturned her conviction, while Debs was pardoned in 1921.⁵² Members of pacifist religious groups were also arrested under the new laws because they were viewed with suspicion for their failure to support the war effort; silence and neutrality were often equated with being pro-German.⁵³ Canada snapped out of the anti-German spell before America. In May 1917, the United States passed the Selective Service Act and tried to draft a variety of pacifist groups. As a result, over 1,500 members of the Mennonites, Hutterites, and Amish sects fled north. The Canadian government aided in their resettlement and even provided them with tracts of farmland. In a similar vein, while both Canada and the United States are experiencing the Islamic refugee panic, Canada has grown more accepting and has agreed to take in many refugees fleeing over its southern border.54

Some laws were more symbolic than substantive, like attempts to ban the teaching of the German language in schools. By summer 1918, nearly half of all states had banned or restricted the use of German. Some state legislators went to extremes to counter the threat. In South Dakota, the government's Council of Defense not only ordered a halt to German being taught in schools but also prohibited the speaking of German in telephone conversations.⁵⁵ On May 23, 1918, Iowa Governor William Harding signed a proclamation that English must be spoken in public places, prefacing with the extraordinary claim that his decision was not in violation of American's right to free speech!⁵⁶ When the Reverend Henry Prekel of the Immanuel Lutheran Church defied the order, preaching half of his sermons in German, state agents turned up. He soon agreed to comply after he was “generously” allowed to repeat the gospel in German during an “after-meeting.” The ban presented a dilemma for one Lutheran pastor in Alta, Iowa, who was not fluent in English. When he refused to take a leave of absence to study English, he was summoned before a military board, after which he promised to behave.⁵⁷ As for Governor Harding's call for banning all languages but English, he made the unsubstantiated claim that German “propaganda and plots against the federal government were spread through Iowa by the use of all foreign languages.”⁵⁸ Despite these hostile sentiments toward the German language, within a decade of the war's end, it was once again being taught in schools across the nation. With hysteria clouding their judgment, it is remarkable to think that many American school boards feared that the teaching of German could undermine American values. It is absurd to think that speaking a foreign language in school somehow made a person less patriotic.⁵⁹ Nonetheless, after the war, many American classrooms would again hear the echo of German words, helped by a 1923 US Supreme Court ruling that teaching and learning a foreign language in private and religious schools were protected under the Constitution.60

During the scare, residents throughout the country were accused of disloyalty and subjected to harassment based on actions that had little or no legal basis. In Indiana, the alleged crimes of local German Americans included failing to buy Liberty Bonds, displaying the kaiser's picture, failure to salute the flag, calling President Wilson a warmonger, “or uttering any sentiment objected to by whatever patriotic ears might overhear the remark.”⁶¹ Those deemed to have been disloyal were sometimes forced to kiss the American flag or sing the national anthem. Some groups used the groundswell of anti-German sentiment to further their agendas. The Anti-Saloon League, an advocate for the prohibition on alcohol consumption, expressed concerns that German brewers based in the United States were funneling their profits back home. Hence, they could make the case that supporters of prohibition were aiding the war effort. This state of affairs prompted one Kansas newspaper to assert: “The two great menaces in the world today are German militarism in Europe and German brewerism in America.”⁶²

The press further raised fears and inflamed passions. In the lead-up to America's entry into the Great War, the Washington Post published no less than thirty articles on the internal threat from spies and saboteurs. One sensational headline proclaimed: “100,000 Spies in Country.” The New York Tribune also contributed to the dark mood with the scare headline: “Spies Are Everywhere! They Occupy Hundreds of Observation Posts…They Are in All the Drug and Chemical Laboratories.”⁶³ Hollywood played a role in the scare as a series of silent films appeared highlighting the dangers posed by German spies and infiltrators, who seemed to be lurking everywhere. Fraser Sherman has documented the surge in these films during the war. Notable pictures in the genre include Fair Pretender (1915), involving stenographer Madge Kennedy, who stumbles upon a German spy nest. That same year, Her Country First was released, in which the daughter of a munitions maker, Vivian Martin, suspects that their butler is a German spy. She eventually learns that everyone on their staff is a spy—with one exception: the butler, who turns out to be an undercover government agent!64 Just as contemporary films are filled with Communists and Muslim evildoers, Sherman found that during this period, Germans were the bad guys. As a 1919 article in Variety observed,” the villain has to be a German spy—the audience wouldn't feel at home if they were confronted with a villain of any other variety.”⁶⁵

Another genre of motion pictures was that of the invasion scare, which contributed to fears of a likely, if not imminent, German attack on the continental United States. This notion was supported by many books and magazine articles depicting the threat. Eric Van Schaack has documented the many films that led to this “new view of reality, an America threatened by a ruthless invader intent on the destruction of all that Americans held dear” and “whipped up the public fear of the brutal ‘Hun.’”⁶⁶ During the summer of 1915, the patriotic film The Battle Cry of Peace was released about a group of enemy agents who work with pacifists to cut defense spending. They then launch a full-scale attack on the country. This film was based on the book Defenseless America by Hudson Maxim, who made alarmist claims that America was weak and ill-prepared to protect itself from foreign invaders whom he claimed could land hundreds of thousands of men on American soil within a few weeks.⁶⁷ After America had entered World War I in May 1917, the film was reissued under the title Battle Cry of War.⁶⁸ A second invasion film was also released in 1915: The Nation's Peril. Its plot centers around the character Ruth Lyons, the peace-loving granddaughter of a Navy admiral who opposes war, and her efforts to stop the development of a powerful American secret weapon—the aerial torpedo, a remote-controlled flying bomb. She unwittingly gives the plans to a man who turns out to be a foreign spy, endangering the country. While the film has a happy ending, its theme is that America must maintain a strong military and be prepared for war. To underscore the threat, it includes appearances by the Secretary of the Navy and two admirals.⁶⁹ In 1916, there were three more invasion pictures: The Flying Torpedo, The Fall of a Nation, and America Unprepared, followed by Zeppelin Attack on New York (1917), Womanhood, the Glory of the Nation (1917), and The Kaiser, the Beast of Berlin (1918). During the war years, the Hollywood film industry, not the government, promoted invasion fears. Big government-sponsored feature films of the period—America's Answer, Under Four Flags, and Pershing's Crusaders—never even hinted at the possibility of a German invasion. Their purpose was to reassure the public and show that the American military was strong.70 Invasion literature was also popular in the early twentieth century, much of which was anti-German. Many books gained wide exposure due to their tie-ins with popular films, such as Maxim's Defenseless America. Another book that created fear over a possible German invasion was America Fallen! The Sequel to the European War (1915). In it, Germany launches a successful invasion of an ill-prepared America and agrees to withdraw only after the government pays $12 billion. The book was viewed seriously because the author was the prestigious J. Bernard Walker, editor of Scientific American.

VIGILANTE JUSTICE

Rumors of German spies and saboteurs abounded. In Muenster, Texas, there were claims that German Americans had secretly stockpiled an arsenal of rifles and ammunition in the cellar of the Sacred Heart Church. By some accounts, it was to be used in an uprising. Another story held that they were to be sent to Germany to help in the war effort. Authorities scoured the church but turned up nothing.⁷¹ There was widespread persecution and harassment of Americans of German ancestry. In many places local citizens either took the law into their own hands or formed vigilante groups, frustrated at the perceived inaction by law enforcement. In East Alton, Illinois, a German American merchant suspected of being disloyal was forced to kiss the American flag and threatened with hanging. Local police and journalists often turned a blind eye at attempts to dispense small-town justice to those deemed to have German sympathies. In March 1918, an observer in the Midwest wrote: “All over this part of the country men are being tarred and feathered and some are being lynched…. These cases do not get into the newspapers nor is an effort ever made to punish the individuals concerned. In fact, as a rule, it has the complete backing of public opinion.”72 Some German Americans were harassed or beaten for not giving enough to war-bond drives.⁷³

The most extreme instances of anti-German vigilantism took place in Illinois and Texas. The former case involved German-born coal miner Robert Prager, a baker by trade, who was lynched from a tree in Collinsville, Illinois, after being accused of making disloyal remarks and spying. The incident happened on April 4, 1918. The local mayor and police looked on passively as the events unfolded, and Prager was led by an alcohol-fueled mob to the outskirts of town and hanged from a hackberry tree shortly after midnight. His last request was for his body to be draped in an American flag before burial.⁷⁴ It is a testament to the deep feelings of German phobia at the time that a jury acquitted every one of the eleven men who were tried for his murder.⁷⁵ After the verdict, there was little remorse. Even the editor of the local newspaper remained stubbornly defiant: “The city does not miss him. The lesson of his death has had a wholesome effect on the Germanists of Collinsville and the rest of the nation.”⁷⁶ An equally abhorrent episode occurred in Bastrop County, Texas. According to court records at the state archives, a deputy sheriff led a group of vigilantes who tracked down a local farmer who had been uncooperative in the local Liberty Bond fund drive. “On catching up with his mule-drawn wagon, the deputy sheriff held the farmer with one hand while fatally shooting him with the other.” They then beat the victim's widow before escorting her home at gunpoint. The local German newspaper, the Giddings Deutsches Volksblatt, ironically noted that two of the participants were German Texans.⁷⁷ For those accused of disloyalty, it was difficult to regain their reputation. Although not impossible, it took a concerted effort on the part of local residents and government officials to rescue their standing. In 1917, several Gainesville residents accused Marie Deitz of Cooke County, Florida, of committing acts and making statements “that would indicate that she was not loyal to our government.” A local official published an article in the local paper affirming that Ms. Deitz was a good citizen, noting that the false accusations were made in part due to her fluency in German. At the end of the article were no less than twenty-eight signatures of her co-workers, vouching for her patriotism.78

RUMORS

In the South, long-standing fears of a black revolt merged with rumors of German subversives to create a hybrid narrative: African Americans were being manipulated by German agents to create chaos. Fears of a black uprising flared in 1917. The signs were everywhere. In Greensboro, Tennessee, a citizen wrote an urgent letter to the Justice Department noting that some blacks in the town had refused to yield to whites while walking on the sidewalk. Their actions were interpreted as a blatant display of disloyalty encouraged by outside agitators.⁷⁹ During April, the Tampa Morning Tribune reported that agents loyal to the kaiser were fanning out throughout the South to form an alliance with blacks. When rumors spread across Bradford County, Florida, that blacks were being offered “political and social equality” in exchange for their aid, police took the stories seriously enough to investigate. In response, armed guards were sent to patrol the Tampa water reservoirs and electricity plant amid “rumors that the Germans had hired Negroes to blow up the plant and poison the water supply.”⁸⁰ Other Florida papers fueled the social paranoia and kept the population on the lookout for spies. The St. Andrews Bay News was one of the worst offenders at fearmongering. While acknowledging that there were many loyal German Americans, it cautioned in April 1917 that some “are but enemies in disguise, who are plotting against us, and even now are committing acts of treason.”81 It asked all patriotic Americans to “search out” these evildoers and report them. With such exhortations, it should come as no surprise that Floridians began turning in neighbors whom they believed were spies. A man in Plant City was arrested, “his baggage searched for vials of typhoid and yellow fever germs which, according to rumor, were to be deposited in the county water supply.” That same month, a piano teacher at Florida Female College was fired for un-American acts. Miss Felma Bjerge had reportedly refused to take down a German flag and a picture of the kaiser from her studio. Because Florida is a peninsula with long stretches of coastline, state residents felt vulnerable to an invasion by sea; these fears were reflected in unverified stories of mysterious vessels spotted offshore.⁸² On July 21, 1918, anti-German tensions spiked across the country after a German U-boat appeared off the coast of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and without warning opened fire on a tugboat, the Perth Amboy, which was towing several barges. While the vessel sustained heavy damage, there were no fatalities. A few stray shells cratered a marsh near the beach at the town of Orleans, making it the first and only time during the war that any part of the continental United States had been shelled by an enemy. The incident triggered a spate of phantom Zeppelin sightings, while rumors of German plots abounded, including claims that an unfamiliar species of pigeon was spotted flying secret messages over the Canadian border from German agents in the United States.⁸³

THE WAR ON GERMAN MUSIC

Moves to ban music and plays of Germanic origin show the depth of fear and ill-feeling during the war. More symbol than substance, these bans had little effect on the war itself. Hostilities even extended to conductors and musicians. Of the nine conductors of major symphony orchestras with German roots, two were considered such threats that they were placed in internment camps: Ernst Kunwald of the Cincinnati Symphony, and Karl Muck of the Boston Symphony. One of the more fortunate conductors was Alfred Hertz, who managed to survive a smear campaign that bordered on the ridiculous. In 1915, the struggling San Francisco Orchestra had hired the accomplished German conductor who had been with the esteemed New York Metropolitan Opera House since 1902. Hertz had the unfortunate distinction of speaking with a thick accent, which did not endear him to some music fans. Before long, residents sent letters to the Justice Department alleging that he was part of a spy ring. Many of the charges made against him were outlandish, such as claims that he had purchased German—not American—butter at a local grocery store, and that he had once left the stage while the orchestra was playing “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Authorities could find no evidence to substantiate these claims, and he continued in his post until gaining citizenship in 1917.84 Other German conductors were not as lucky.

With the declaration of war in 1917, the Boston Symphony, which was composed of no less than nine Germans, was suddenly under great scrutiny. None of its members were scrutinized more than its accomplished conductor, Karl Muck. A Swiss national, Muck was known for his conducting of German arrangements, and he held an honorary German passport. It did not help matters that due to his fame, it had been signed by the kaiser himself. His personality was described as “blunt and tactless,” and many of his friends were ardent supporters of the kaiser.⁸⁵ A series of unfortunate events would transpire that would result in his losing his job and being imprisoned. One incident involved his summer rental cottage on the Maine coast at Seal Harbor, which was found to have a disassembled radio transmitter. Boston District Attorney Thomas Boynton became concerned that Muck may have been attempting to contact German submarines. In reality, the previous tenant had been a “wireless nut.” As a result, Muck was given a stern warning and reminded that German nationals were not allowed to reside or even visit the Maine coast.⁸⁶

The perception of Muck as disloyal and untrustworthy soon grew. It began innocently enough, with a scheduled concert in Providence, Rhode Island, on October 30, 1917. In the lead-up to the appearance, the Boston Symphony had received a telegram from several local civic and patriotic organizations to open the event with the playing of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” At the time, it was a common practice for most orchestras to play the composition. The orchestra's manager, Charles Ellis, passed on the request to the orchestra founder, Major Henry Higginson, a stubborn figure who refused to tolerate outside interference. “Does the public think that the symphony orchestra is a military band? No: It is a classical musical organization. To ask us to play The Star Spangled Banner is embarrassing. It is almost an insult,” Higginson quipped.87 The trouble was, no one had passed the request onto Muck, who was oblivious to it and was flabbergasted when he first learned about it while riding the train back to Boston. He said that he would have happily obliged the request as a goodwill gesture. Muck would be haunted by the incident for the rest of his life.

The next day, newspapers published a torrent of criticism directed at Muck for his supposed refusal to play the anthem. Newspapers were deluged with angry letters. Many political figures soon entered the fray, including former president Teddy Roosevelt, who declared: “Any man who refuses to play the Star-Spangled in this time of national crisis, should be forced to pack up and return to the country he came from.”⁸⁸ In Baltimore, where the symphony was scheduled to play, former Maryland Governor Edwin Warfield addressed a rally held to protest the composer's disloyalty, during which could be heard shouts of “Kill Muck! Kill Muck!”⁸⁹ Warfield whipped up the crowd and vowed to lead a riot against the concert if it went ahead as planned. He proclaimed: “I told the Police Board members that this man would not be allowed to insult the people of the birthplace of the ‘Star-Spangled Banner.’…I would gladly lead the mob to prevent the insult to my country and my flag.”⁹⁰

A later concert presided over by Muck went ahead at Carnegie Hall, only with a heavy police presence. Public outcry continued to dog Muck for his perceived disloyalty, culminating in his arrest on the night of March 25, 1918. When federal agents combed through his residence, they found nothing that would directly tie him to nefarious activities or indicate disloyalty, but they did find a horde of letters from a love-smitten twenty-year-old socialite from Boston, an aspiring singer named Rosamond Young. A search of her safety deposit box uncovered a series of letters from Muck in which he expressed anti-American sentiments and German sympathies. While he was clearly no spy, he was a German sympathizer who had made insulting comments about his host country. Confronted with the letters, Muck refused to discuss their contents because they were a personal matter involving a lady. He was eventually indicted for the official crime of having violated US postal laws and deemed a potentially dangerous enemy alien. On April 6, he was sent to Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia, where he spent the rest of the war as prisoner number 1357. When the war ended, he was shipped back to Germany in August 1919.91 That November, the Boston Post published a sensational twelve-part series revealing the contents of Muck's letters, in a manner that was intended to enrage patriotic readers. His frustration and anger at America was evident, yet there was no direct evidence that he had been disloyal. On the contrary, in one letter he had stated: “I am doing only my duty and nothing against the holy (even Satan was once holy) laws of the so-called U.S.A.”⁹² The exposé painted Muck as a cunning, ungrateful spy who went around deflowering young women. Part of the outrage with Muck centered on his perceived immorality: a fifty-eight-year-old man having an affair with a twenty-year-old woman.

Even after the war ended and the peace treaty with Germany was signed, throughout 1919, pressure against German music continued. In January, there were indications that the public mood was beginning to thaw, as several excerpts of Wagnerian music were included in programs conducted by the New York Philharmonic. While some letters of protest were received and four plainclothes police officers were stationed in the hall as a precaution, there were no major incidents. The gradual reincorporation of Germanic music may have taken place without much hubbub, if not for the return of a large number of servicemen who began to disembark in New York City in large numbers during this time. In March, when New York's Lexington Avenue Theater announced plans for several German operettas, patriotic groups like the National Security League and the American Defense Society expressed their usual disapproval, but what could not be ignored was the surge in troops throughout the city. The Navy Club on Fifth Avenue quickly drew up a petition calling for a halt to proceedings, gathered two thousand signatures, and sent a delegation to meet with Mayor John Hylan. It read in part: “We feel that such an undertaking at this time is insulting to our patriotism and to the memory of the brave boys who have given their lives that the world shall be free from German influence.”93 The concerts were postponed indefinitely, amid fears of a full-scale riot. Five hundred sailors marched down Lexington Avenue in a victory parade.

With the signing of the Treaty of Versailles in June 1919, opposition to the playing of German music and the use of Germanic conductors began to wane. On July 3, a New York Times editorial called for an end to the witch-hunt: “The crisis is passed now and well passed, and German music can again delight the ear without offending the sensibilities that lie deeper.”⁹⁴ In October, the Lexington Theater attempted another program with German music, under the “Star Opera Company.” There was again immediate opposition by many military organizations. While Mayor Hylan considered closing down the performance, he was unsure of his legal standing and instead sent over two hundred police to guard the theatre and ensure order. The mayor shut the opera down the next day, but they were soon saved by a temporary court injunction, and performances resumed on October 23.⁹⁵ By January 1920, opposition to German music and composers subsided. In early January, even the American Legion, heretofore the archenemy of all things Germanic, announced that it was time for a change of heart: “Good music, whether it be by Wagner, Strauss, or Sousa, cannot and should not be killed, and any attempt to suppress it is bound to fail.” The organization officially endorsed German opera, “where the spirit, the language and the personnel are truly American.”96

ISLAMOPHOBIA: THE GERMAN SCARE IN MODERN CULTURAL GUISE

It is remarkable to think that many Americans once thought that listening to German music and learning German in school posed a threat to the United States by corrupting the morals of our youth. In the calm light of day, more than a century removed from the hysteria of World War I, even the most ardent conservative would likely agree that the reaction was extreme and out of proportion to the reality. The exaggerated threat was a tell-tale sign of a social panic. Yet Germanophobia and kindred scares involving periods of intense intolerance of ethnic groups are alive and well. In December 2015, Virginia high school teacher Cheryl LaPorte was overseeing a class on world geography and Islamic culture when she asked her students to practice calligraphy by copying a single sentence in Arabic from the Qur'an. The assignment created such a public furor and deluge of hate mail that the school closed over safety concerns. The Associated Press reported that Riverheads High School received “tens of thousands of e-mails and Facebook posts” from angry citizens, spurred on by a national conservative radio host who highlighted the incident.⁹⁷ The school's holiday concert had to be canceled, along with several sporting events. LaPorte, who is not Islamic, asked the students to write a common Muslim prayer—the shahada, which proclaims: “There is no god but Allah. Muhammad is the messenger of God.” She gave the students the script in Arabic and did not offer a translation—nor were students asked to translate or recite the prayer. The focus of the lesson was not on religion but on the complexity of Arab calligraphy. It is difficult to imagine the same reaction if she had asked them to write a passage in Hebrew letters about Moses from the Torah. As the editorial board of one newspaper retorted: “And the charge that copying an untranslated passage of calligraphy constitutes ‘indoctrination’ into Islam is as ludicrous as suggesting that American students are ‘indoctrinated’ by being taught to write words about democracy in French class.”98 It is no small irony that the school closed for fears of safety—fear not of Muslims but after threats of violence and intimidation by American citizens espousing Christian values.

While the German Scare happened over a century ago, there are many parallels with today. Just like members of the Anti-German League in the United States and Canada worked to rid their countries of German influence, anti-Muslim organizations have popped up like mushrooms across North America and Europe today. In Germany, one of the largest is PEGIDA—Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the West. In the United Kingdom, the English Defense League openly advocates against Muslims. In the United States, SIOA—Stop Islamization of America—is one of over a dozen active anti-Muslim hate groups. Just as mysterious fires and industrial accidents were once blamed on the Germans, anything that remotely looks like a terrorist attack is now attributed to Muslims. And just as the number of confirmed acts of German sabotage and espionage were quite small, so too have been the number of Islamist terror attacks in the West. Several so-called terror attacks were later determined to have been the result of mental illness or anger over a work dispute. In 2015, there were 372 mass shootings in America, resulting in 475 deaths. The vast majority of the gunmen were not Muslims.⁹⁹ While mass shootings in the United States are a major problem, it is not necessarily a Muslim issue. And just as German Americans were discriminated against and harassed due to their ancestry, many Muslims have experienced verbal harassment and are looked upon as oppressed. Having an Arab-sounding name does not help in applying for jobs, just like many German Americans sought the extreme measure of changing their names in the hope of avoiding discrimination and finding work.

The most remarkable aspect of the German Scare was not its violence, its widespread nature, or even the depth of hostility, but how quickly Americans were able to accept Germans as fellow citizens afterward. Once the fear began to subside and the threat appeared to have passed, the fog of war quickly dissipated, as if a spell had been broken. But for the many German Americans who had to endure this dark chapter in our history, it would take far longer to forgive and forget. For those who changed their names, the scare left a permanent mark on their very identities: a constant reminder of the intolerance of a bygone era, and the lengths that citizens were willing to go to protect themselves and their families.