Overview

The connection between first- and second-generation Germans in Missouri was largely severed during the fourth period of migration. Two World Wars—with Germany a major opponent of the United States in both—forced German-America to choose between maintaining a connection with their homeland and demonstrating loyalty to their adopted country. During this period, many German-Americans in Missouri went out of their way to demonstrate their loyalty to the United States, by purchasing war bonds and enlisting in the service of the U.S. armed services. Many old stock Anglo-Americans eyed those with German surnames with a great deal of suspicion and sometimes confronted German immigrants and physically forced them to make statements of loyalty to the United States, such as kissing an American flag or publicly denouncing German political leaders. Even during this period of estrangement, however, some German immigrants in the United States quietly and surreptitiously retained a connection with family and friends in Germany, sometimes sending “care” packages to them by means of friendly post office employees.

Historical Context

The outbreak of the First World War in Europe in 1914 strained traditional ties, due partly to actual German sabotage of American war industries as well as inept German-government efforts to exploit the Mexican revolution. British and French wartime propaganda, often wildly exaggerated, also undermined the image of Germany as well as that of Germans in America. The U.S. declaration of War by the US Congress in 1917 dramatically worsened the position of the German-American population. Although Germans in America usually regarded the economic success of the Germans in Europe with pride, the Prussian-dominated Empire represented a tradition hostile to what German-Americans had pursued in North America. The virulent campaigns against German-Americans made them a proxy for a war far away. The Versailles Treaty that ended the war made the revival of a hostile Germany and a “second round” of war almost inevitable.

With the rise and eventual triumph of Nazism in the 1930s, Missouri Germans faced another wave of persecution. For example, one of the primary results of the Nazi triumph was the definitive separation of Jewish-Americans from their earlier identity as German or Austrian immigrants. A separate Jewish identity came largely to identify with Zionism, ultimately in the State of Israel. This identity was intensified by knowledge of the systematic mass-murder of Jews in all parts of Europe under Nazi control, revealed in its full horror only at the end of the war. In Missouri as in all the states of the United States, the Second World War disrupted many of the ties that German-Americans had with their old homeland.