SearchScriptoriumOrderArchives IndexSponsor
Germans helped build 
America - and how has America repaid them?

Part 8: The First World War
and its Consequences

he outbreak of the war in 1914 prompted enormous rallies and parades by the German-Americans. Almost without exception, the approximately 500 German-language newspapers advocated American neutrality. "German-American Literary Defense Committees" were organized in a number of cities. The New York association "American Women of German Heritage" called for action against the anti-German agitation. Collection points are set up by Germans for Germany, where "gold for iron" is donated for the benefit of the German homeland.

But despite its numerical strength, the politically unorganized German ethnic group proved not be up to the task of combating the anti-German incitement in the press, which was under the control of economics and high finance. The German Emperor, listening to poor advice, unwittingly supplied the agitators with ammunition when he overestimated his influence in the USA and announced: "Three million German-Americans vote according to my wishes."

Wilson officially declared America to be neutral. "Well, had he gone mad?" writes Joachim Fernau. "A neutral America which would have had to discontinue its supplies shipments to the Allies would have come to the edge of ruin! The entire country was already in war production mode! If the President failed to see it, high finance did not!

"The war party (the mighty coalition of politics and high finance) decided to take a desperate measure to teach the President better. The First Lord of the British Admiralty, Mr. Winston Churchill, had been notified.... The British passenger steamship 'Lusitania' with 1,000 passengers, among them 128 Americans, was studded with cannons and stuffed full of ammunition to right beneath the passenger cabins! And this weapons transport had been 'leaked' to the German secret service!..." It was the year 1915. On February 4, the German Foreign Office declared the waters surrounding England a war zone, and newspaper notices from the German Embassy warned the passengers of the 'Lusitania' accordingly. On May 7, a German torpedo launched within the English war zone hits the ammunition stores of the passenger ship. "This incident strengthened Theodore Roosevelt's war party in the United States over the peace party of Jennings Bryans, who stepped back as Foreign Minister," states the book Politisches Geschehen des XX. Jahrhunderts.

Längin describes with impressive vividness the incredible, almost overnight downfall of the Germans that occurred with America's entry into the war. "The Germans are turned from 'Jerry' into 'kraut' into bloodthirsty Huns... A crusade of annihilation begins in the 'Land of the Free', and the world's oldest democracy falls victim to its hatred... The press is saturated with allegations of German atrocities. Organized denouncers make more than three million reports to the police. There are mass dismissals of German workers [incentive for them to go into military service instead?! ed.], monuments of Goethe and Schiller are razed or covered up. Eventually, teaching in the 'tongue of the Huns' is prohibited. The chorals of the Reformation must be translated into English, and Mozart and Wagner are banned from the concert halls. The German Theater in New York must close down... German shepherds [i.e. the dogs; trans.] are killed, German books are burned, German companies set afire... sauerkraut changes its nationality and becomes 'liberty cabbage', and the Frankfurter sausage is turned into a 'hot dog'. The word 'kindergarten' is abolished."

This insanity culminates in the prayer which the American Congress jointly prayed "in pharisaical self-adulation", in order, as Wilson put it, "to make the world safe for democracy" - a prayer of which we quote only the conclusion here, for the sake of brevity: "We entreat Thee, bare Thy mighty arm and beat back the massive pack of hungry wolfish Huns, from whose fangs drip blood and slime. We entreat Thee, let the stars in their courses and the winds and waves fight against them... And praise be to Thee for evermore, in Jesus Christ. Amen."

The Germans were torn in their feelings and loyalty. While their hearts still beat faster at every German victory, their pious "leaders" had taught them well that their loyalty now belonged to their new homeland.

"In order to make the American population ready for war," writes H. J. von Leesen, "the British set up a special propaganda office under Sir Gilbert Parker, financed by the British secret service... Atrocity propaganda played a preeminent role... supported by Lord Northcliffe, the owner of the London newspapers Times and Daily Mail. Allegedly 75,000 speakers in 5,000 American cities gave such anti-German propaganda speeches to audiences totaling more than 300 million listeners."

Some ten million German-Americans surrendered to this concentrated campaign of hate. They submitted out of fear and mute despair. "America's entry into the war took place within only a few hours," writes Richard O'Connor. "In this short time, the German-Americans disappeared forever as a political factor."

In his poem "The Hour of German Destiny" Walter Flex addresses this Germanophobia, fueled by unscrupulous enemy propaganda throughout the world. We quote only three stanzas here (unfortunately the rhyme is lost in translation):

"We are the target of the world's hatred,
whether man, woman or child.
But whatever shall come of it,
we remain what we are!

Only pride can serve us
as the elixir of strength.
A fool is he that gawks
at foreign eyes and mouths!

We stand united before God
and share both right and blame,
and throw the foreigners' hate
and adulation alike to the dogs."

True to the German tradition of adaptability (the Germans fell gullibly for the propaganda aimed against them even in those days!), most of the German-Americans vied with each other to prove their American patriotism. Newspapers who until shortly before had still stood in for the German cause now suddenly struck an anti-German note. Even the German National Association declared shortly thereafter: "We, as American citizens of German blood, declare wholeheartedly that we shall stand together against the inner and outer enemy."

As so many times before in their history, Germans once again bleed en masse for foreign interests. Seen proportionally to the number of its inhabitants, the city "Hermann" on the Missouri made the greatest blood sacrifice of all American cities. "With stamina such as only Germans are capable of," the Baden Catholics of St. Nazianz manufactured more than 300,000 replacement parts for the American aircraft industry, as "sign of their loyalty"!

Germans became the most successful American fighter pilots - such as Edward Rickenbacher, Frank Luke and Joseph Wehner. John Joseph Pershing, the great-grandson of the German Lutheran preacher Friedrich Pförschin, became Commander-in-Chief of the American expedition corps.

The German-American novelist Kurt Vonnegut recounts that his parents were so shamed by the anti-German hatemongering that they refused to speak German with him and to share German literature, German music or even the family's own chronicle with him. The result was that later on he felt "purely American in cultural respects, but German-American by the standards of the dog breeder's association!"

In order to escape hateful attacks, countless German-Americans changed their names. Braun is changed to Brown, Müller to Miller, Schmidt to Smith, Becker to Baker. As a rule the double n, as in Hollmann, disappears and becomes the Americanized Hollman! Therefore the ancestry of most German-Americans is no longer apparent from their names.

After the end of the war the Germans were nearly wiped out as a culturally independent group. As Wilbur Keegan said at a Schurz Memorial Festival in Chicago: "The German element in America has fallen from the highest heights to such a depth that not even the lowliest still shows it any respect. No further retreat is possible, save into slavish submission. Men who otherwise will march towards a loaded cannon and look death fearlessly in the eye, shudder when they are recognized to be a German."

In 1919 the Steuben Society was founded with the aim "to thoroughly Americanize the relics of formerly independent Germanness." Once more, associations and clubs revived, especially in the field of sports. Heritage and ethnic costume clubs also became active, at least as tourist attractions. But once again, dissent arose amongst them (as though it had been deliberately sown) when Catholics came into conflict with Protestants or the "successful" intellectual and economic circles strove to distance themselves from their German heritage.

Even if not much of the rich German tradition was permitted to survive, there is one product that would continue to own its German origin. The largest breweries, such as Schlitz, Papst or Anheuser-Busch, retained their leading positions. With 94 breweries, the largely German city of Milwaukee proudly called itself "the Beer Capital of the World". Cincinnati also has a proud beer tradition, with eight breweries as early as 1840, and 36 by 1860. A master brewer named Austerlitz, formerly an NCO in the Austro-Hungarian army, also became famous - though less for his brew than through his son Fred, who made a name for himself in Hollywood, as Fred Astaire.

Prior to the outbreak of World War Two, the United States again had more than 1,000 German clubs, among them the "American-German Alliance" led by Fritz Kuhn from Munich. Certain circles subjected Kuhn to hateful persecution because he openly professed his support for the Third Reich. In 1939 the Alliance had more than 100,000 members, including a considerable number of Ukrainians who decidedly preferred Germany to life under Comrade Stalin.

Once again the United States became the target nation for political emigrés. Approximately 105,000 of them emigrated from Germany and Austria, some 75% of them Jews. Jews had already been emigrating to America since the 18th century, and family dynasties such as the Seligmans, Warburgs, Belmonts, Strauss, Guggenheims, Loebs and Schiffs had amassed mighty fortunes. Albert Einstein as well was taken in by Princeton University. Ultimately, the dedicated "pacifist" Einstein was the one who urged Franklin Roosevelt, early in the war, to construct the American atom bomb!



 


Part 9: World War Two and Afterwards -
Critical Voices
eanwhile the Germans of America have become so disenfranchised that they displayed the Stars and Stripes even in their own clubs, and sing the American national anthem there louder than anywhere else! There were no longer any clubs or associations that retained their German character or consciousness. American historians find that no more than one percent of the German-Americans were "fanatical National Socialists" during and since the war; in 1940 a political periodical described America as the "mass grave of the German emigrant".

German industrialists contributed extensively to the production of arms against their country of origin. "In the Seattle assembly plants of the entrepreneur Boeing, whose origins are in Hohenlimburg, the Flying Fortresses are built that drop 640,036 tons of bombs on Germany. The Bechtels arm the navy. Dwight D. Eisenhower, whose ancestor was driven out of the Odenwald for his pacifist views, is the Commander-in-Chief of the Allied forces, and Chester D. Nimitz, whose grandparents were from Bremen, becomes Fleet Admiral. Generals Krüger and Eichelberger lead two armies, General Spaatz commands the bomber fleet, and hundreds of thousands of soldiers of German extraction fight for America. Additionally, after the war, the financiers Bernard Baruch and Henry Morgenthau Jr. compete in the development of ideas for Germany's ultimate annihilation. Baruch's ancestors were from East Prussia, the Morgenthaus from Mannheim!"

Regarding America's entry into the war under the leadership of Roosevelt, the President who according to the unanimous verdict of all Revisionists 'tricked America into the war with lies', Joachim Fernau writes: "The 'Lusitania' had once cost 128 Americans their lives, but Roosevelt's Pearl Harbor cost 4,000!" These were lives which this ambitious and cynical warmonger sacrificed in cold blood in order to finally force his reluctant people "through the back door" and into the war against the Axis powers!

In his 1947 book The Crime of Our Age about America's war politics, war aims and political morals - a book which circulated widely in America even in the highest political circles, including President Truman's - the American Reverend Dr. Ludwig A. Fritsch writes: "In the presence of God I ask our nation, I ask you, ministers of the Gospel: Did the Germans in all our histories ever inflict such injuries on us as we did in the two World Wars and still do inflict on them? What wrong did the German nation do to us Americans that we punished them twice in a generation in the most cruel and inhuman way such as history never saw before? Do you call that American gratitude for all the hard work and faithfulness by which German people here built up our country and won our victories?"

Of the German scientists and engineers who worked under Wernher von Braun in Peenemünde to develop the V2 rocket and who surrendered to the Americans in 1945, some 120 went to America "voluntarily" as intellectual war booty. Among them was the noteworthy scientist Dr. Rudolph, who was later - after he had served his purpose! - banished again from the United States, even though he held American citizenship! Working in Huntsville, Alabama within the framework of NASA, von Braun invented the propulsion system for the Saturn V, making the 1969 "Apollo" trip to the moon possible. Martin Schwarzschild, a professor who had immigrated from Potsdam in 1937, had contributed substantially to this success. And even Neil Armstrong, "the first man on the moon", was of German extraction - his ancestors were from Ladbergen in Westphalia.

Between 1951 and 1960 a new wave of immigrants arrived in America: almost 478,000 Germans and some 104,000 Austrians - and these were not a negative selection, such as would be the case later on, in a different country, but the cream of the crop, selected according to strict criteria! Additionally, the American occupiers of post-war Germany brought several thousand German women home as "war brides". Most of these immigrants were people with special qualifications, who no longer saw a future for themselves in their homeland, destroyed as it had been by Anglo bombs. Another reason for the hopelessness experienced by these unemployed Germans is to be found in the post-war dismantling of vital German industries, as well as in the influx of millions of Germans fleeing from Stalin's Red hordes.

Reverend Fritsch comments on this post-war situation: "The extradition and presentation of entire countries and nations to the Russians by Roosevelt; the senseless and deliberate destruction of the most magnificent cities; the most cruel expulsion of millions of Eastern-Germans from their century old homes; the development and the execution of the Eisenhower-Morgenthau-Roosevelt plan, the most inhuman act of revenge since there is a recorded history; the slow and painful murdering of 20-30 million human beings by starvation, cold and privation. Those are not political 'mistakes' as our leaders now want us to believe; they are conscious, deliberate, premeditated crimes!"

In 1987 the American Congress declared October 6 to be "German American Day", an empty gesture since the Germans continue to be the States' only, yet largest, minority with no voice. But at least at that time reference was still made to the countless contributions Germans made to America's development (a subject which is now an absolute taboo again). According to Längin, there was a certain recollection that "Walter Chrysler (Kreisler) had founded the automobile manufacturing company that is named for him; that Martin Brill from Kassel had established the largest manufactory of street cars, Johann Bausch and Heinrich Lomb the foremost manufactory of optical lenses, and Karl Pfizer from Ludwigsburg a leading drug company. Charles Schwab and Henry Flick are regarded as giants of the steel industry, and the Viennese Charles Bluhdorn was co-founder and President of Gulf & Western Industries. Frank A. Seibelring, a descendant of immigrants from Stuttgart, was the founding father of the company Goodyear, and the ancestors of his main competitor Harvey Firestone (these are the two largest American rubber manufacturers; ed.) were Austrians who had immigrated via Alsace. Hermann Hollerith introduced the first electric calculating machine in his adopted homeland, and in 1942 the Viennese woman Hedy Lamarr (actually Hedwig Kiesler) received the patent for a torpedo guidance system."

"The opinion of history remains divided," adds Längin. "The German sickness, namely a lack of group consciousness, is the formula that facilitates a rapid and thoughtless assimilation into the host society, which quickly turns the German into the 'Anglo monkey' and the United States into the 'graveyard of the Germans'." The historian Lamprecht comments in a similar vein: "The Germans have failed as Germans," and no Oktoberfest with lederhosen, chamois hat decorations, yodeling and beer can whitewash that!

The question remains whether the demise of America's most numerous, efficient and probably also most decent ethnic group with the lowest crime rate of all is the consequence primarily of German naiveté and lack of political ability, or of a large-scale, clever exploitation of German energy and expertise by the politically savvy Anglo-Saxon leadership elite.

Regarding the crimes committed by America against the Germans as well as other peoples in both world wars and since, Reverend Dr. Fritsch expresses the educated German-American view thus: "All these tremendous might and power and profits were achieved at the lowest price in comparison to the appalling damage and the irreparable loss we inflicted on our 'enemies.' Hitherto we were in our whole history the lucky winners of all our aggressive wars against the Indians, the English, Spaniards, Mexicans, Japanese and twice against the Germans. In this last gigantic struggle of nations we have lost only as many human lives as we have at home by accidents. The American Red Cross in 1945 reported officially that '99 per cent of the American prisoners of war in Germany have survived and are on their way home!' (In contrast to this fact we have sent not 1 per cent of our German prisoners of war home, but we traded them as slaves to France and England!) Concerning the 260 billions - the cost of Roosevelt's war - it is more than paid off through the patent secrets and art treasures and scientists stolen and kidnapped from the Germans. Thus we have only profited from all the wars we waged while at the same time we inflicted on mankind unspeakable misery and bitter disappointments. The greatest of all sins in the presence of God and in the light of history that we as a nation have committed is making ourselves guilty of matricide. Europe is our physical and spiritual mother. But most of all we should appreciate and honor that nation whose sons' and daughters' blood and sweat mostly had flowed for our country: the German. Is it not true that in every third American's veins flows Teutonic blood?"

And as for the possibilities of a Germany left in peace, Reverend Fritsch writes: "In my opinion the Germans would have broken the eccentricities of Hitlerism after they had reached their goal - unification of all Germans. Their unique ability to organize would have created order and tranquillity in Europe and in the World in the shortest possible time. They would have created the United States of Europe without bloodshed. They would have placed their great capabilities in the fields of science, arts and technology to the disposition of the whole world as they did before. Their deep spiritual life would have enriched and ennobled mankind, as for example the unique German music and hymns heretofore did."

With regard to the jealous fear of competition that characterizes England, the nation Hitler (oddly enough) admired so much, he writes: "Germany was at that time at the zenith of her might, fame and reputation. She built the greatest and most luxurious ships of the world with which she gained the world market, because she was able to supply the best and cheapest production. In the realm of science Germany was ahead of all nations of the world. Her scientists had more Nobel-Prizes in all spheres of science than all the other nations combined. From all countries of the globe the seekers of knowledge and lovers of art came to the famous universities of the 'people of poets and thinkers.' But the might and greatness of Germany was at the same time envied and suspected. England, feeling that she was put back to play the second fiddle in world affairs, in her unsatiable greediness worked so hard and so long until she succeeded in surrounding Germany with enemies. Europe became a powder keg. Only the spark was necessary to make her explode. The world became ablaze."

For the second time! For even regarding the earlier great European fraternal war, Fritsch observed: "When our soldiers returned home and after they had seen the sad consequences of our intervention in the European quarrel they cried out: 'We fought on the wrong side!'"

To conclude, we will quote another prominent American, Austin J. App, who writes in his pamphlet History's Most Terrifying Peace: "Any German who feels guilty towards the Allies is a fool. Any American who expects it, is a crook."


previous pageIndexnext page

Germans helped build America
...and how has America repaid them?