During times of war, fear and animosity towards a group almost always come to the surface of the nation. This fear creates a division in society where an us verse them mentality is created. This is what happened in WW1 America. People of German ancestry were thought to be spies and to be the enemy within the United States. This lead to many anti-German policies and actions that would create many negative impacts upon the German people. This anti-German ideology and sentiment was created and sustained by three main players in America’s society: the government, the people of America, and the media.
The Government
The government is the biggest creator of the anti-German ideas. Without the full and unwavering support from the government the amount of German prejudice would
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The group that heavily opposed this was the German immigrants. German immigrants wanted to maintain their German culture and still be American, this did not fit the agenda that the government wanted. (McPherson 2014) When WW1 started German immigrants were the people that most wanted to remain neutral and stay out of the war. This is when anti-German sentiment first started because there was a lot of support to join Britain in the war, and fight Germany and her allies. This opposition to joining the war made the president at the time Woodrow Wilson very angry. He actively stated things and later passed acts to attack German immigrants. President Wilson stated in 1915 “immigrants have poured poison of disloyalty into the very arteries of our national life”. (McPherson 2014) This kind of rhetoric from a president created an idea that all immigrants were evil. When the US finally enters the war in 1917 it did not take long for anti-immigrant policies, more specifically anti-German policies to get enacted. In 1917 both the Espionage Act and the Trading with the Enemy Act was established; then in 1918 the Sedition Act was