Ethnic Germans' Sufferings After World War I in the United States and Europe

German-Americans were the most visible non-Anglophone group in the US during the 18th and 19th centuries. But the hostility against these groups took place during the nineteenth century, but were largely non-systematic. The Germans' stance of anti-slavery position in the Southern United States brought about violent clashes in slave states such as Texas during the American Civil War.

The pacifist Mennonite and Amish communities attracted considerable hatred, particularly during the American Revolution and the US Civil War, when many Mennonites and possibly Amish were imprisoned or forcibly conscripted. There was a popular view that Germans did not consider themselves part of America.

Upon the outbreak of World War I, anti-German sentiment quickly reached fever pitch. Many Germans supported their (former) homeland's side in the war, in which America long remained officially neutral. The situation came to a crisis with America's entry into the war in 1917. By the time the troops returned from Europe, the German community had ceased to be a major force in American culture, or was no more perceived as German.

When in France during World War I, members of the Yale University had learned about the German song Die Wacht am Rhein and were apparently shocked to discover the fact that Yale's traditional song "Bright College Years" had been written to the "splendid tune" of Carl Wilhelm. Suddenly hating this melody, Yale Alumni sang "Bright College Years" to the tune of the Marseillaise instead, and after the war the German melody was banned for some time until it was reinstated in 1920.

In Canada, thousands of German born Canadians were interned in detention camps during World War I and World War II and subjected to forced labour. Many Ukrainians and other Eastern Europeans were also detained during the First World War as were Japanese and Italian-Canadians during the Second World War.

In Britain, Germans were demonized in the press well before the First World War, when the Kaiserliche Marine started to challenge the Royal Navy, but particularly around 1912 and during the First World War. Anti-German sentiment was so intense that the British Royal Family (which was, in fact, of German origin) was advised by the government to change its name, resulting in the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha becoming the House of Windsor. The German Shepherd dog was renamed as Alsatian. The waters that had been known as the 'German Ocean' were also renamed; the North Sea (as in German Nordsee) despite being east of the British Isles.

Germans' Sufferings

Stephan, a Saxon-Anhalt in our discussion on various Second World War issues, posed vaguely the world should know how the Allied Forces destroyed buildings and killed thousands of people ruthlessly.

There was frustration always in Germany though they apologized to the world for the massacres of Jews, Gypsies and other atrocities committed by Adolph Hitler and his Nazi Forces, the world has not so far apologized properly for the atrocities against the Germans around the world.

Germany apologized in 2004 for the colonial-era genocide, which killed 65,000 Herero people in what is now Namibia. Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul, Germany's development aid minister, at a ceremony to mark the 100th anniversary of the Hereros' 1904-1907 uprising against the German rulers said: "We Germans accept our historic and moral responsibility and the guilt incurred by Germans at that time".

German Chancellor Angela Merkel shared her grievances in front of Israel's national flag during a tree-planting ceremony near the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Museum in Jerusalem on January 30, 2006 and laid a wreath for the six million Jews killed in the Nazi Holocaust.

But the Germans had a general opinion of the world's resentment over the German people's sufferings.

Ethnic Germans were systematically targeted based on their ethnicity in various parts of the world. Anti-German hostilities had been developed after the major World Wars of recent past, for which the German state had been held responsible. The German populations were identified with German nationalist regimes of Kaiser Wilhelm or Nazis.

This was the case in the World War I era; persecution of Germans in the United States and in Eastern and Central Europe following end of World War II. Many victims of these persecutions did not in fact have any connection to those regimes.

In other cases, German populations had been persecuted because they were perceived as lacking proper ties to the country in which they lived. This includes the persecution of ethnic German Mennonite, Amish and Hutterite communities in the United States and of Tyrolean Germans in South Tyrol.

In the case of South Tyrol, these hostilities hit the historically German population of an Austrian territory which had been annexed by Italy after World War I. Following the rise of the Fascist movement of Mussolini, the ethnic Germans of South Tyrol faced growing persecution. Their names, and the names of the towns and places in the area, were forcibly changed to Italian.

In addition, Mussolini engaged in a vigorous campaign to resettle ethnic Italians in the region. Many Tyroleans fled to Germany during this time, and the matter of South Tyrol became a source of friction between Hitler and Mussolini.

After the end of World War II, the organised persecution of Germans in the South Tyrol largely came to an end, although ethnic strife continued for decades.