Forgotten Internment: German Americans in WWI

When we think of internment camps, our minds usually jump to the forced relocation of Japanese Americans during World War II. But what if I told you that decades earlier, the United States government had already dabbled in the fine art of rounding up civilians based on their ancestry?

During World War I, German Americans—at the time, one of the largest ethnic groups in the country—found themselves caught in the crosshairs of suspicion, propaganda, and outright persecution. While their experience was not as widespread or devastating as the mass internment of Japanese Americans in World War II, the echoes of history are too loud to ignore.

Guilt by Ancestry: The Internment of German Americans in WWI

When the United States entered World War I in 1917, our government realized that over 8 million people in the country had been born in Germany or had German ancestry. The reaction of our government was: Let’s treat them all like potential enemy spies!

Under President Woodrow Wilson’s administration, German immigrants who had not become U.S. citizens were labeled as “enemy aliens.” Over 250,000 Germans were required to register with the government, carry special identification cards, and report any changes in address to the authorities. Sounds a little dystopian, right? But just wait, It gets worse!

Internment Camps and Surveillance

Approximately 6,000 German Americans were arrested and detained in internment camps during the war, placed under watch for suspected disloyalty—even when no actual evidence existed. These camps, located in places like North Carolina, Georgia, and Utah, housed Germans who were sometimes separated from their families for years. Some were targeted for something as innocent as speaking German in public or questioning wartime policies.

At the same time, German-language newspapers were shut down, schools stopped teaching German, and sauerkraut was patriotically renamed “liberty cabbage”. German culture in America, which had once thrived, was viewed by the government and the American public as an internal threat. 

Déjà Vu: The Internment of Japanese Americans in WWII

Fast forward to World War II, and history decided to hit repeat—only this time, with even more devastating consequences.

Following the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, over 120,000 Japanese Americans—two-thirds of whom were U.S. citizens—were forcibly removed from their homes and placed in internment camps under Executive Order 9066. Unlike German Americans in World War I, this internment was massive, systematic, and justified by outright racism rather than just wartime paranoia.

Much like their German American counterparts from WWI, Japanese Americans faced surveillance, property seizures, and loss of livelihoods. But unlike WWI, they were herded into barbed-wire camps in desolate locations, living under armed guard with minimal freedoms for years.

The key difference? While German Americans in WWI faced selective internment and a crackdown on their culture, the treatment of Japanese Americans in WWII was wholesale racial profiling on a national scale. The U.S. government, backed by Supreme Court decisions like Korematsu v. United States, justified mass incarceration during WWII as a “military necessity.”

Why Don’t We Talk About WWI German Internment?

The internment of German Americans during World War I is often overshadowed because it was smaller in scale, less brutal, and didn’t involve mass displacement. Additionally, after the war, many German Americans assimilated into American society, shedding their ethnic identity in ways that Japanese Americans could not due to racial barriers.

But the pattern was clear: In times of war, the United States has a troubling history of treating immigrant and ethnic communities as security threats rather than citizens. The German American experience of WWI should serve as a warning that what starts as "security measures" can quickly escalate into civil rights violations.

Lessons (Hopefully) Learned

The government formally apologized for Japanese American internment in 1988, acknowledging it as a grave injustice. But what about the internment of German Americans in WWI? It is still largely forgotten.

As history shows, fear and nationalism can turn even democratic governments against their own people. The question is: Will we recognize the patterns in time to stop it from happening again?