Jami's blog: "Jami's Shit"

CLOSER TO HOME Marshfield, Wisconsin was an immigrant community, settled predominately by German-speaking settlers. When war erupted in Europe, not only President Wilson but many Americans had to stand aside and practice a policy of neutrality, to keep the political loyalty to their new country in balance with the deeper cultural and familiar loyalty to the "old" country. As the war dragged on beyond the late summer and fall of 1914 into 1915, tensions mounted. Inflation, increasing the price of ordinary goods and services, along with rationing, all fanned the flames of distrust. As time went on the war stretched into 1916. When America finally entered the war alongside England and France in 1917, Marshfield's German residents were forced to make some public choices. The Marshfield Times editorialized that shortly after the war's expansion in Europe in September 1914, that "Wisconsin, more than the average American state is interested in the great war that is being fought in Europe. More than a third of her population is either German or of German extraction and thousands of Wisconsin families are represented by relatives in the fighting army of the Kaiser." Hoping that peace would come quickly and decisively, the Marshfield papers backed Wilson's policy of "watchful waiting" and assured readers that America should fear nothing except a temporary decline of exports to Europe. The search for reliable information regarding the war's progress and impact, especially on the German people brought a flurry of responses from the papers, their editorials and letters to the editor. On the one hand, the concern surfaced that America was underprepared and could not resist an invasion of the type that rocked Europe's borders. On the other hand, it became the duty of people here in Marshfield to help those suffering in Germany. Throughout late September and into October 1914, German social organizations in the city pulled together to raise money and ship food and clothing to families and veteran's groups in Germany. "United in bonds of common sympathy for the widows, the orphaned children and the wounded soldiers, noted the Marshfield Times, "members of the Marshfield Kriger-Verein and the German-American Alliance have set out to raise a large fund for relief of the suffering and destitute in the Fatherland which has been caused by the Great European War." Yet this campaign was done "quietly" throughout the city and state, surreptitiously to avoid the glare of publicity and accusations of violating American's official stance of neutrality. Marshfield residents benefited from the American Express's offer to ship Christmas presents overseas free of charge, so long as the gifts were packed and ready to ship by November 3, 1914 and were clearly marked as "Christmas Gifts for Children of Europe." While debate appeared on whether or not continued immigration should be allowed during the war, the Marshfield Times in 1915 celebrated German achievements in pharmacology, medicine, science, and its many recipients of the Nobel Prizes. "Where is the blighting effect of Prussian militarism?" asked an editorial rhetorically. "To the unprejudiced observer it seems an excellent institution. Truth, justice, efficiency, faith will win in the end, which means Germany (shall win)." Unfortunately, this positive tone came just two weeks before the Lusitania went down with a German torpedo which shook many Americans' sense of security in Wilson's neutrality policy. Throughout May, 1915 the Times worked to put the best face on the sinking of the ship and loss of American lives by blaming England for using the ship to transport munitions under the cover of passenger service and asserting that German submarine warfare was a logical measure of self-defense. In the following months and throughout the summer, the paper endorsed the neutrality policy and urged readers to avoid the war hysteria promulgated by those in "New York" who would manipulate anti-German sentiment to enter the war on the side of England and France. The Marshfield Times endorsed Charles Evans Hughes for the presidency over Wilson, because the paper assured readers that Hughes would represent a more balanced perspective for Germany. Noting that nearly a half million people rallied to Hughes' Milwaukee visit that fall while only 30,000 appeared for Wilson, the paper let the impression form that the Republican party offered a better choice than the usually endorsed Democrats. Responding to the dissatisfaction voiced by numerous Marshfield residents in the paper's stance, the Times defended itself against charges of being "a spy of the Kaiser" and kowtowing to the German Chancellor by claiming in its headline "Pretty Hard to Please Everybody with Newspaper." Despite Wilson's close reelection in November 1916, the city celebrated Christmas with the German Theatre Company of Bavaria giving a performance at the drama festival hosted at the Adler Opera House. However, after Germany resumed unrestricted submarine warfare, relations with the United States worsened, and it appeared that war with Germany would become inevitable. As early as February 1917 the paper reported that all German language columns (such as local and syndicated news features) would disappear from the paper, because "it has been deemed advisable for us to discontinue this feature indefinitely...." Rumors of Wilson's death only made matters worse as an uproar swept through the community provoked by "conflicts" between Marshfield's German and non-German residents. Tensions mounted and were reflected in the Marshfield Times banner reminder that "We are all Americans" and whether or not born here, everybody should support this country as if it were his homeland. That all was not quiet in town could be seen in the political sniping reported in the Times as a current definition of education making the rounds as "learning to become ashamed of father, mother and the old home." Two days later, the United States declared war against the German Empire. Once a state of war existed, Marshfield residents met the new conditions with some degree of enthusiasm. During the year and a half of American participation in the European conflict, several distinct patterns emerged in the newspapers. First, any public sympathy for Germany was criticized. While not the extreme example taken in West Bend, Wisconsin, where teaching German was forbidden in the public schools, Marshfield readers sought to put some distance between the good or "modern Germany" that was "orderly and industrious" and from which their family had come, and the bad or "political Germany" that was "medieval and absolutist." Germans who had come stateside and failed to become citizens were chided. Asking "Can You Explain It?" the Marshfield Times denounced the wealthy, upstanding citizens in their community or across the United States who made money but not patriotic commitments. Further attacks came when the paper reported the words of state senator Atlee Pomerence who declaimed that "If your heart speaks German you are against us." Pacifism was equated with pro-Germanism and both were denounced as hurting the American war effort. On another occasion the Times attacked, as traitors to the U.S., those Germans who "came here without a cent" and who made money but did not commit by purchases of war bonds or filing for citizenship. Even the News struck out at the Herald as providing support for the German war effort by falsely reporting German investments as favorable means for those looking to make money out of the war. Each local paper did its best to assure readers of its loyalty and faith to the American war effort. Second, in the attempts to show support for the war effort, the city service groups raced to raise money through the sale of war bonds during the liberty bond drives, as well as fund-raising for the Red Cross. The citywide goal of $14,000 was set in June 1917; the Eagles and Knights of Columbus each tried to outdo the other in money raised for the Red Cross and Liberty Bond Drives to show the depth of their patriotism. For those who were slow in coming around and making a public show of support, the News reported how one "pro-German" became a "100 percent patriot" after being dunked in the river (which river was not mentioned) and then forced to kiss the American flag. Third, the increase in the cost of living created tensions that undoubtedly helped to fuel the suspicions and animosities noted in the first two instances. Shortages of certain basic staples had shown up at the war's outset in August of 1914. Increases in the price of flour showed up first, followed by sugar and then corn and animal feed. Prices at the wholesale level doubled in a month's time as speculators did their best to capture supplies for sales overseas. Even cigars jumped 150 percent in cost by 1917 and the price of a newspaper doubled. After the American declaration of war in April 1917, the federal and local governments urged people to grow their own food and preserve that produce for home consumption; the motto "raise all you can-can all you raise" urged citizens to keep out of the larger marketplace and thereby reduce the pressures on climbing prices for the food needed to help feed our own soldiers as well as our allies' troops. Soon tin cans fell into short supply because of the drastic demand for overseas shipment and the Times announced that cans would be provided by the local governments only to those industrial concerns involved in packing perishable goods absolutely necessary to the war effort. As if these aggravations were not enough, dogs running freely through the city found their way into these "liberty gardens" tearing up the plants and vegetables so carefully sown. The Marshfield Times urged people to pen up, or at least to leash their dogs (but to what effect is only speculation). Fourth and finally, growing apprehensions that war in some form might be inevitable brought the call for universal service to the United States for the first time since the Civil War. Urging young men to volunteer for the army before any draft was necessary, the Marshfield Times endorsed the actions of young ladies of the city who played an encouraging role by assuring "young men who failed to affiliate with the local militia company" that they "would be stricken from their (the young ladies') list of social acquaintances." On the other hand, the paper chided women who married men in order to keep them out of the war. Noting an increase in the number of marriages since the declaration of war with Germany, the Times called for potential brides to keep a distance if they suspected that a married man would use the excuse of breadwinner to avoid the patriot's call to duty. The call to enlist and wear the uniform came at precisely the same time that verbal fights over German identity had heated up in town. War bond drives and food shortages also had tempers flaring. Some preliminary action was seen by Company "A" Second Regiment from Marshfield as part of the Wisconsin militia mobilized for patrols along the Mexican and American border during the Mexican Revolution and the famous incursions by Pancho Villa. From the summer of 1916 through January 1917, Marshfield's young enlisted men traveled much and fought little in this minor campaign. However, the martial spirit dominated, and after their return and war in Europe was begun, "A" Company formed part of the Red Arrow Division, the 32nd, from Wisconsin that saw action in France that summer through to the Armistice of November 11, 1918. News of the war remained scarce until after the Armistice and then letters from Marshfield's soldiers to their families appeared in the Times with increasing frequency. The 32nd Division had served in some of the bloodiest fighting from the late summer of 1918 through to the end of the war. The soldiers of "A" Company stood up against the fierce German offensive and allied counter attacks at St. Mihiel, Belleau Woods and Chateau Thierry. Some returned with their health, celebrated for their bravery, such as R. Connor who was promoted from major to lieutenant colonel. Others came back seriously wounded, such as Leo Luis, who lost a leg in the fight at Belleau Woods during August. He returned home in late November to zero degree weather at three a.m. on a 30 day furlough, but welcomed nonetheless by family, friends and a small band, to whom he showed off his artificial limb. More often than not, the paper carried notices of those who would never come home again. Notices in the paper included mention of funerals for Lutherans, a memorial mass for Catholics, and the name and address of surviving family members. "Died in France" read one column head, "Three more Blue Stars of Boys from this Section Turned to Gold" referring to the practice of hanging a blue star in the window of a family with a serviceman, and a gold star for a casualty. Corporal Henry Schielz was one native son who did not come home and who had been with Company "A" from its initial muster and service on the Mexican border in 1916. He died of a gunshot wound in France two days before the Armistice. Often times there were letters from sons to families telling of the great scenery, the "queer looking money" and the industrious farmers of Europe. The cost of cigarettes was high, and wherever the "Sammys" went (U.S. soldiers were named after Uncle Sam-the "G.I.s" named after the term government issue would be another 20 years later) the natives were glad to diddle the exchange rate from four francs to the dollar to nearly one franc to the dollar! Underlying much of the stories that the papers chose to print were sentiments voiced by Charles Normington who was in Paris when the Armistice was signed who wrote, "I only hope the soldiers who died ... are looking down upon the world today. It was a grand thing to die for." Paul Schultz, aged 23, was one of those Marshfield men who died for this "grand thing" and would not return to his job at the R. J. Baker Ice Cream Company. In February 1919 W D. Connor sponsored a banquet for nearly 400 soldiers, and sailors from Marshfield and the surrounding communities at the armory. These most recent veterans were joined by Civil War members of the G.A.R. and the Spanish-American war veterans. Home guards accompanied by 20 or so young ladies dressed as Red Cross nurses did the serving. Planning began shortly thereafter for a gala parade and celebration for the local veterans returning sometime that summer. The middle of June was selected as "Red Arrow Days" and the city began fund-raising to get the needed $8,000 to carry off the day in some style. When asked where the name "Red Arrow" came from, one returning soldier said that it was the Red Arrow that had pierced the Hindenberg Line, referring to notations on the military maps marking the allied advances in the summer of 1918. "Red Arrow Days" took place Thursday and Friday, June 18 and 19, 1919 on Central Avenue with "a stuffed critter," parades, speeches, fireworks, various patriotic shows and the now-celebrated Second Regiment Band from Marshfield. The band had always been a source of local pride from its inception at the turn of the century and its role in military service. With the first world war, it rose to some national prominence under its director Theodore Steinmetz (or "Steiny" as the Marshfield Times called him) and his composition "Lafayette, We Are Here." The "stuffed critter" turned out to be an ox for the barbecue, which weighed more than 800 pounds when dressed and more than a half ton when stuffed! The stuffing was made of "30 pounds of bacon, 30 pounds of liver, 30 loaves of bread, a bushel of onions and three gallons of catsup." J. P. Adler brought in a professional cameraman to record movies of the great celebration. Amidst it all, few may have noticed the small column head proclaiming "Peace. Teutons Willing to Sign the Peace Terms-Day of Signing Uncertain," with the brief explanation that the German government would sign the peace terms unconditionally. This brief note is important for a couple of reasons. First, those defeated were "Teutons," not Germans. The German sympathies of three years earlier had disappeared when enlisted men gave their lives overseas. They had become "Americans" with little mention of their German descent; their combat as much as the home front propaganda had served to foster a new identity of Marshfield's largest ethnic group. Second, the unconditional surrender at Versailles set the stage for a series of disasters, political and economic, that would bring the world to war again within 20 years. The war's impact could be seen in other ways as well. One obvious sign was the great affection felt for Sergeant Willard D. Purdy who had given his life in France. After returning from patrol in Hegenbach, Alsace, on July 4, 1918, Sergeant Purdy was engaged in calling roll and collecting the grenades from his men when a pin dislodged from one of the grenades. Unable to toss the grenade away without injury to others, he ordered the men to scatter. Smothering the grenade in his stomach, he died instantly but saved the lives of more than a half dozen other soldiers. A year later, the city decided to name the new junior high school and vocational school in his honor. A second less obvious, but dramatic impact of the war was on the population. Nearly 450 young men from Marshfield enlisted. Approximately one in ten died in the war, either in battle, the raging influenza epidemic, or as a result of military service. Did the high proportion come about because such a large number served? Did such a large number serve in order to prove their American patriotism to a much stronger degree because they had names like Grube, Riethus, Seidl, Schultz, Oertel, and Yaeger? Was there a need to prove once and for all that German-Americans were not the same as "Huns" or "Teutons?" TO THE FRONTIER The only area in North America still available for homesteading at this time was the Great Plains-the plateau stretching from Saskatchewan in Canada through the states of North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Kansas. In the United States before 1875, this region was better known as the Great American Desert, a vast expanse to be suffered en route to more promising acreage in the Far West. Frequent skirmishes with Indians and the meager rainfall deterred most prospective farmers. These conditions did not deter Russian Germans. Between 1872 and 1920, nearly 120,000 ethnic Germans emigrated to America from homes on the Russian steppes-flat, dry terrain that resembled the prairies of the Dakotas. Their ancestors had been lured to Russia by the promises of rulers Catherine the Great (reigned 1762-96) and Alexander I (1801-25), who wanted German farmers to cultivate the untitled steppes, and, later, according to her invitation, to "serve as models for agricultural occupations and handicrafts." Among the incentives were promises of religious liberty, exemption from military duty, cash grants, and self-government. There were 300 colonies of German settlers in southern Russia, scattered along the lower Volga River and in the Black Sea district, when in 1870 the czarist government began to revoke their original privileges. The inhabitants of these colonies lived a life separate from their Russian neighbors and closely tied to their church, a pattern they duplicated in North America in independent communities of Lutheran, Catholic, or Mennonite persuasion. Most of those who chose the United States as their home (many Mennonites went to Canada because it granted them exemption from the draft), settled between the Missouri and Mississippi rivers to the east and the Rocky Mountains to the west. The isolation of Russian Germans in this area naturally slowed their assimilation into American society, but their success in farming the inhospitable land was key to the development of the Great Plains as the "granary of the world." By 1920, 420,000 of them lived in America, spread across most of the United States and in the western provinces of Canada. Russian Germans, who had introduced a variety of grain called red hard winter wheat from Turkey to the Volga River region, then grew the crop on their farms in the Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas, and Colorado. In so doing, they helped make the United States self-sufficient in food production to this day. URBAN TENSIONS Not everyone who arrived in the 1880s met with such opportunity. In the city as well as in the countryside, the average German immigrant found fewer acres and less work than had greeted his predecessors. Industrialization was altering life in American cities much as it was in Germany. Artisans such as bakers, furniture workers, and toolmakers found their age-old skills of little value-factory work required the speedy completion of one small task, not a craftsman's painstaking care. A 12-year-old boy who had to learn the meticulous skills of cabinetmaking, for instance, might now stand for years at a machine repeatedly making one small item. This trend led to high unemployment and to living conditions that were often miserable. In 1884, one German cigar maker in Chicago could find only occasional work; his family of eight lived in a three-room house that was "scantily and poorly furnished, no carpets, and the furniture being of the cheapest kind." His children were sick "at all times. " Workers who found permanent employment could take little pride in their work and were often "exploited. A conductor who put in a 16-hour day protested that "the company is grinding [me] and all the others down to the starvation point." Nor did city officials make the workers' plight any easier. During the last decades of the 19th century, Chicago was the scene of repeated police abuse and election fraud. Meetings organized by workers were often disrupted by police, and police harassment and violence were used to get striking workers back on the job. The German newspapers of the day reported many cases in which politicians moved voting places overnight to prevent workers from voting in the morning, closed them before the workday ended, intimidated those who did arrive, and stuffed ballot boxes with illegal votes. The German-language newspaper Verbote responded indignantly to a blatant case of vote fraud in 1880: "We are fully justified in saying that the holiest institution of the American people, the right to vote, has been desecrated and become a miserable farce and a lie." These disillusioning events, coupled with poor living and working conditions, encouraged German immigrants to turn to labor unions as organizations that could best represent their interests. In 1886, almost one-third of the total union membership in Chicago was German, and of all the ethnic groups, Germans contributed the most members. In fact, more Germans joined labor unions in that city than did native-born Americans. German involvement in the labor movement did not sit well with nativists, who, in the last decades of the 19th century, were again seeking support for anti-immigration laws. With the railroad strike of 1877 and the Haymarket Riot of May 4, 1886 (which broke out when someone at a workers' protest threw a bomb at policemen, who fired randomly in response), nativists claimed that German immigrants-with their predilection for socialism and radical labor activism-had imported the trouble. Though it was never determined who threw the bomb, eight men were tried in the wake of the Haymarket Riot; four were subsequently hanged, three of them German-born. This fact fueled the nativists' fire, as did the surge in German (and other) immigration in the 1880's. UNITED GERMANY: INSIRATION AND THREAT The unification of Germany by the Prussian prime minister Otto von Bismarck in 1871 focused American attention abroad long before World War I broke out in 1914. Some Germans in the United States were unenthusiastic: German-American Catholics in particular grew bitter at the oppressive measures the "Iron Chancellor" used to achieve his ends, and many emigrants now left the German empire in order to avoid being drafted into the Prussian army. But other German Americans overlooked Bismarck's failings, which they felt were exaggerated by the English-language press, and emphasized instead his leadership in the defeat of the French in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 and the creation of a united Germany. In fact, to an outspoken minority of German Americans, the event was an inspiration. If Germany could be united, they reasoned, why could not the diverse groups of Germans in America-never before united politically, but sharing a language, and to a large extent, a culture-act as a potent and unified bloc? A speaker in Cincinnati leader expressed this viewpoint by urging his compatriots to "make an end to all our petty quarrels.... Let us make our power felt, and let us use it wisely." By the 1890s, this sentiment became more popular and was echoed in many of the 800 German-language publications across America, which shifted the focus of their news away from America and back to the fatherland. In part, this nationalism was in response to a sharp drop in German immigration at the end of the 19th century. This led to fears among some German Americans that without strong efforts to promote German culture their communities would assimilate completely, and the German language as well as German art, music, and literature would no longer have a presence in the United States. Promoting German culture did not mean abandoning the new homeland; indeed, many German Americans believed that the national interests of Germany and the United States were complementary, so that support for the one would ultimately benefit the other. Native-born Americans grew increasingly wary of this German political and cultural activity in their midst. Nativist groups such as the Immigration Restriction League and the American Protective Association sought to limit immigration and supported measures-the prohibition of alcohol, woman suffrage (most suffragettes advocated prohibition), Legislation requiring all students to speak English-that German Americans opposed. German Americans responded by forming their own organizations, most notably the German-American National Alliance, founded in 1907 by an American-born engineer from Philadelphia named Charles J. Hexamer. Nativists, though, heard in the Alliance an echo of Germany's own Pan-German League, part of whose platform was "to oppose the united commercial power of our enemies, the Anglo-Saxons." Could Germany be trying to establish a power base in the Western Hemisphere, using German Americans as an advance guard? Suspicions were fed by American fears of Germany's leader Kaiser Wilhelm, who had come to power in 1890 and whose militarism led many to believe he was bent on world domination. To a growing number of Americans, German-American unity seemed an expression of support for the Kaiser's imperialistic path, or at least a sign Of split loyalties. As early as 1894, in a speech entitled "What 'Americanism' Means," future president Theodore Roosevelt denounced immigrants who regarded themselves as "Irish-Americans" or "German Americans." In his view, they were distinctly unpatriotic: "Some Americans need hyphens in their names because only part of them has come over. But when the whole man has come over, heart and thought and all, the hyphen drops of its own weight out of his name." The term hyphenate became an increasingly popular insult to describe just about anybody who felt strongly about his ethnic identity. Ethnic tensions in America increased in August 1914 when fighting broke out in Europe. President Woodrow Wilson initially set the nation on a course of neutrality, urging that Americans be "impartial in thought as well as in action ... neutral in fact as well as in name." But before the war was one month old, reports of German atrocities in Belgium (especially the burning of Louvain, with its ancient library) shocked many Americans and emboldened the American caricature of the goose-stepping, brutal Hun. Life magazine published a cartoon in late July 1915 that fueled this stereotype: a German officer with pointed helmet struts across the page; suspended from his bloody bayonet are an old man, a woman, and two small children. German submarines prowled the Atlantic, and by the time one sank the British passenger ship Lusitania in May 1915, killing 1,200 persons (including 124 American citizens), Wilson was hard put to recommend neutrality in thought or deed. The vocal leadership of the German-American community inadvertently worsened tensions. The depredations of Belgium, they believed, had been exaggerated by Germany's enemies, especially Great Britain, in a deliberate attempt to draw the United States into the war-an attempt made all the easier by the two nations' common language and Wilson's noted allegiance to English culture. The publisher of the German-language Omaha Tribüne, Val Peter, reflected this mentality in a 1915 address to the Nebraska branch of the German-American National Alliance: Both here and abroad, the enemy is the same! perfidious Albion [England]! Over there England has pressed the sword into the hands of almost all the peoples of Europe against Germany. In this country it has a servile press at its command, which uses every foul means to slander everything German and to poison the public mind. But by dismissing every reported atrocity as anti German propaganda and portraying the nation's leadership (especially President Wilson) as unsuspecting dupes of the British, prominent German Americans came across to the American public as callous, uncaring, and undiscriminating in their support of Germany. For example, although most German-American newspapers and organizations expressed dismay over the lives that had been lost when the Lusitania was torpedoed, they also made excuses for the German action: United States citizens had been warned by the German embassy about traveling on British ships; Germany was forced into submarine warfare by the British blockade of Germany; Congress should have ensured a policy of strict neutrality by forbidding the sale of American weapons to the British. These excuses rang hollow to many Americans who were distraught over the tragic loss of life. President Wilson vigorously repaid the attacks on him in the German-American press with a number of speeches made in the fall of 1915. In his State of the Union address to Congress that year, Wilson condemned "citizens of the United States, . . . who have poured the poison of disloyalty into the very arteries of our national life; who have sought to bring the authority and good name of our Government into contempt." With language that was more characteristic of the fiery Roosevelt, Wilson went on to insist that all such traitors must be crushed out," and that "the hand of our power should close over them at once." Wilson's speeches, implicitly equating support of Germany with treasonous anti-Americanism, marked the beginning of the end of American neutrality. The United States entered World War I on April 6, 1917, with this declaration by President Wilson: "The world must be made safe for democracy ... the right is more precious than peace." He had been driven to declare war, he told Congress, by Germany's continuation of submarine warfare. But there was another major factor in Wilson's decision. A telegram, written by German foreign minister Arthur Zimmermann and sent to Mexico, had been intercepted by the British navy. In the telegram Germany offered to help Mexico regain Texas, Arizona, and New Mexico, a plan evidently designed to keep U.S. troops out of Germany's backyard by keeping them busy at home. The telegram convinced both Wilson and the American public of Germany's hostile intentions toward the United States. Unfortunately, like many of Germany's actions during World War 1, it sparked hatred of all things German. As American soldiers - many of German descent - arrived on the battlefields of Europe, anti-German hysteria welled up in cities, towns, and rural outposts across America.