Talk:Internment of German Americans

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Improperly categorized[edit]

JCDenton2052 has improperly categorized this as a "War crime", notwithstanding the fact that it does not match the guidelines for the related topic. Looks like excessive POV-editing, which is not helped by his frequent edits of user pages accusing other editors of vandalism. Tedickey (talk) 18:49, 25 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see that it's a war crime so much as it's just a regular everyday garden-variety run of the mill crime crime, given that American citizens don't qualify as aliens, and the Alien Enemy Act specifically exempts naturalized citizens, and always has since 1798. --70.131.52.222 (talk) 07:37, 9 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
It is certainly not a war crime to intern citizens of Germany when Germany declares war on the U.S. It is not a war crime for their family members to voluntarily be interned with them. This article is very poorly referenced, makes POV statements to create the impression that German American citizens were herded into camps like the West Coast Japanese-American citizens. I personally knew a great many German Americans who lived in communities where German was spoken in the schools, churches, and stores during WW2, who were not harassed in any way by the government, and from where the young men were drafted or enlisted and fought against Germany in Europe. One reference is from an individual's writing and does not appear to have been published, so does not qualify as a reliable source. It appears to be original research. There is mention of some legislation proposed in 2001. Did it ever pass? There is a website from a group which wants recognition or compensation for claimed abuses, which again does not constitute an independent and reliable source. The article should discuss the internment of enemy aliens, and reliably source any involuntary internment of U.S. citizens. There were also U.S. citizens who had been in Germany at the war's start, and who were POWs. The Germans from Latin America were not, presumably, U.S. citizens, but form another category. The "11,000" figure seems to lump together some quite different categories. Treatment of U.S. citizens by Germany should also be discussed, in all fairness, since in war countries may adjust their treatment of foreign nationals according to how their own citizens are treated in the other country. Edison (talk) 20:31, 7 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

No sort of crime at all. Detention of citizens of enemy nations in time of declared war is normal, customary, and completely legal. Solicitr (talk) 18:34, 6 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that much needs to be clarified in this article: first, it is common practice for countries to classify as "enemy aliens" those enemy nationals on their soil in times of war. What they do about it can vary. Comparisons to treatment of Japanese Americans needs to distinguish some of these differences. While there were numerous German and Italian native-born immigrants noted in the 1940 census, for instance, they had not been prohibited from becoming US citizens under the naturalization process, as the Issei (Japanese immigrants) were. Secondly, they were not rounded up in any great number and interned for years during the war. While both native-born Germans and Italians outnumbered Japanese Americans (and conceivably composed more of a danger), they were not all put in camps. Their cases were examined individually and a relatively small percentage of German and Italian nationals, and fewer US citizens of either ethnicity, were interned. At least that appears to be the case, although it is hard to tell as the article does not make the necessary distinctions all the way through. It really needs some careful editing.Parkwells (talk) 18:57, 14 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

General[edit]

I'm intrigued that this article ignores the detention of German-Americans in World War I. I agree with the general suspicions about its quality noted by Edison above and hope to return when I've had a chance to investigate. But for now I'm more interested in anti-German hysteria and the 100% American movement, and the campaign against hyphenated Americans circa 1916-20.

Bmclaughlin9 (talk) 01:42, 15 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Saved material from non-working URL[edit]

[[cite web|url=http://www.foitimes.com/internment/gasummary.htm%7Ctitle=WWII Violations of German American Civil Liberties by the US Government|author=Karen E. Ebel|date=2003-02-24|accessdate=2007-08-08|quote=Pursuant to the Alien Enemy Act of 1798 (50 USC 21-24), which remains in effect today, the US may apprehend, intern and otherwise restrict the freedom of "alien enemies" upon declaration of war or actual, attempted or threatened invasion by a foreign nation. During WWII, the US Government interned at least 11,000 persons of German ancestry. By law, only "enemy aliens" could be interned. However, with governmental approval, their family members frequently joined them in the camps. Many such "voluntarily" interned spouses and children were American citizens...On August 3, 2001, Senators Russell Feingold (D-WI) and Charles Grassley (R-IA) introduced S. 1356, The European Americans and Refugees Wartime Treatment Study Act in the US Senate, joined by Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) and Senator Joseph Lieberman. This bill would create a much-needed independent commission to review US government policies directed against European "enemy" ethnic groups during WWII in the US and Latin America.}}

This passage has POV issue in any case. The URL in question fails. The site in general, Freedom of Information Times, appears to be the work of an advocacy group. It presents much documentary evidence that migth prove useful, but I think we need to be wary of its interpretations and emphases. Like those quotes around "voluntary" above. There's a difference between forcing families into camps and giving them hard or even impossible choices. Maybe some people were given choices that we would all agree made them less than "voluntary" internees. But we need to write about that without saying "voluntary."

Bmclaughlin9 (talk) 23:42, 20 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]


http://www.foitimes.com is a working URL — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.162.129.226 (talk) 16:13, 7 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Work in progress[edit]

I know I'm just taking small steps here, adding Word War I, which is the period I know much more about, and expanding the Sources section. I don't know how far I'll take this, but I hope in a few weeks that it will have graduated to non-embarrassing status. Some of the sources are good, there's real scholarship available, and there's lots of good info in public sources like the New York Times.

Here's my suggestion for a more suitable name for this entry: Wartime Internment of Germans in the United States

Bmclaughlin9 (talk) 23:41, 20 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

We should avoid "word wars" in editing Wikipedia. Edison (talk) 04:58, 20 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Merger proposal[edit]

I propose to merge the entry World War II related internment and expulsion of Germans in the Americas, which is a very unwieldy title, into this entry, following the convention of these 2 entries: Italian American internment and Japanese American internment. Someday it may make sense to make this a disambiguation page and use it to distinguish between internments related to WWI and WWII. But I don't think we need to do that just yet.

Bmclaughlin9 (talk) 19:39, 12 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I figure they're different enough to justify two different articles but I do agree the first one def. needs a better title. - Schrandit (talk) 01:36, 15 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Can you explain what "different enough" means. I believe all the information in the entry I propose to delete has been incorporated into the entry I propose to keep. I didn't cut & paste material. I tried to integrate it properly. Bmclaughlin9 (talk) 16:30, 15 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This article deals with the wartime internment of German Americas, the other deals with the internment of Germans from other countries and what the American government did after the war with those detained both from America and from abroad, namely Latin America. - Schrandit (talk) 20:00, 16 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Merge The merger proposal was never closed, so I retagged it and opened the debate again. I believe the articles cover material that is worth merging into one article on the internment and explusion of Germans and German Americans. --Daysleeper47 (talk) 15:16, 3 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I am of the opinion that articles cover relatively different actions, carried out by different means and motivated by different suspicions. They could reasonably be merged but I think we'd be better off expanding the World War II related internment and expulsion of Germans in the Americas article. - Haymaker (talk) 06:57, 4 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Merged. While I agree with Haymaker and Schrandit that historically there were several different actions that I suspect deserve independent articles, at the moment there was no clear distinction between these articles and it seemed that the contents of both articles attempted to cover all those actions. I went ahead with a cut-and-paste move, as recommended by the first step of WP:MERGETEXT. I hope that by having all the content in this one article for a while, it will be easier to tease apart these different actions into separate sections, and then perhaps WP:SPLIT those sections into separate articles. --DavidCary (talk) 17:25, 4 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Renaming proposal[edit]

The current title, "German American internment," is highly misleading, since it implies quite falsely that German-Americans, US citizens of German extraction, were interned as was done with the Nisei. In fact it was German nationals who were interned (standard practice by all nations during declared wars), together with a fairly small number of other aliens of German background. Suggest "US internment of Germans."

Note that two US 5-star theater commanders, General Eisenhower and Admiral Nimitz, were German-Americans. Solicitr (talk) 18:32, 6 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think the name is probably for the best and keeps in line with the names for the other internments. The article about the internment of Italians has a nice opening paragraph discussing the legal definitions of the terms used and making a few general statements about those interned. Maybe such a paragraph would be helpful for this article? No doubt about Eisenhower, maybe he should be included in the see also section? - Haymaker (talk) 06:54, 4 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The term Germsn American is appropriate....for they were German Americans....but were not American citizens...but they were definitely not German nationals. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.162.129.226 (talk) 16:08, 7 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]

All of you are incorrect, no doubt regurgitating secondary sources rather than looking at primary sources and the historical record. At minimum over 100 German Americans *were* interned, including naturalized and natural-born citizens, and not merely the children of "enemy aliens". The FBI's own record shows these arrests by ethnicity, in addition to thousands of enemy aliens who were arrested, and I have added it as a resource. Solictr appears to have some sort of ax to grind; it is unclear if he is the person who added a similar statement comparing Japanese and Italian internment in the Italian article. That claim, too, was rebutted by a 2001 Department of Justice report, as well as the FBI records, which show at least thirty (30) Italian American citizens were interned. As for the comment about German-Americans who were military commanders, besides the fact that it is completely irrelevant to the topic (perhaps Solicitr is unaware that Japanese Americans also fought in the war? or that not all Japanese Americans were interned, including thousands who remained relatively free on Hawai'i?)... both of them were from Texas, a state with many native-born German-Americans whose ancestors settled there in the 19th century. The citizens who were interned were recent immigrants, including those who were days or weeks away from finishing their naturalization. Playing a game of "whose pain is worse" is not only not helpful, it really has nothing to do with an encyclopedia. Save it for an op-ed page. 66.102.16.25 (talk) 23:59, 21 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

No, you are incorrect, 66.102.16.25. Unsurprisingly, some US Persons of German (or other Axis nationality) birth did goose-step about their US neighborhoods singing the praises of Hitler, Mussolini, &c. (the trains ran on time, eh?) before the Pearl Harbor attack. Some German-Americans were invested in Ruekswanderer Marks (Nazi War Bonds) with an intent to repatriate to Das Vaterland. How, again, were these GA's referred to in the "historical record" and FBI records? US "citizens with enemy sympathies" &c., right? - 75.108.184.217 (talk) 04:17, 1 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Exactly zero US-born persons (other than Japanese/Koreans/Formosans) were "interned" involuntarily in the United States by the DOJ during the war without due process. The FBI records do not even contemplate "ethnicity", 66.102.16.25. Detainees were identified by nationality in their respective Immigration and Naturalization Service (DOJ) files, not guesswork. The US residents of German birth were not only (and not mostly) "recent immigrants, including those who were days or weeks away from finishing their naturalization", but also US Germans that were pro-Nazi and/or funding the Nazi German government even after the declaration of war with Germany, i.e. enemies and traitors from a US POV. They were mostly identified as such in the FBI docs you're citing. - 75.108.184.217 (talk) 06:24, 1 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
There are likely academic studies that can serve as RS about internment of German Americans and Italian Americans during WWII, and identify the processes for evaluating the threat of individuals. Such secondary sources should be used.Parkwells (talk) 19:20, 14 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move[edit]

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: moved to Internment of German Americans and Internment of Italian Americans. User:Peacemaker67's suggestion answers the objections of the early opposers regarding grammatical ambiguity. Although it is slightly out-of-process, there does appear to be a unanimous consensus that all three internment articles should be uniform in title; therefore, I will move the article concerning Japanese American internment to Internment of Japanese Americans as well. Xoloz (talk) 20:04, 19 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]


– Despite phrases like "hyphenated American," terms like "German American" should only have hyphens when used as adjectives, e.g., Kurt Vonnegut was a German American; the Moravian Church is a German-American church. The current form is not exactly incorrect, as the article is about internment which was of a German-American nature. But it's more accurate to describe this as internment of German Americans. Japanese American internment gets it right, though for the sake of consistency, it should move if these don't. --Relisted. EdJohnston (talk) 02:27, 9 April 2014 (UTC) -- BDD (talk) 20:53, 1 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

  • Oppose – since it's used attributively (that is, as an adjective), the hyphen is called for here. Otherwise, it suggests German internment of Americas. Dicklyon (talk) 02:11, 2 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Is it, though? Is it "internment which is German-American"? --BDD (talk) 16:23, 2 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
No, but it is internment associated with German Americans, as the hyphen signifies. Dicklyon (talk) 02:47, 5 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that Japanese American internment is a problem that needs to be fixed. Simply move that one to Japanese-American internment as some sites and books do ([1], [2]). Dicklyon (talk) 02:45, 5 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

There seems to be consensus in favor of a move. If there are no immediate objections I'll roll this over to "German American". Haymaker (talk) 22:50, 17 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

which departments handled which ethnic groups, and why[edit]

The sentence

A total of 11,507 Germans and German-Americans were interned during the war, accounting for 36% of the total internments under the Justice Department's Enemy Alien Control Program, but far less than the 110,000 Japanese-Americans interned.

raises far more questions than it answers. Did the "the Justice Department's Enemy Alien Control Program" intern *only* people of German and Italian ancestry? What (other?) department interned Japanese-Americans, under what (other?) program? Were any people of German ancestry interned by that other (?) department under that other (?) program? Was there some reason at the time that different programs (?) handled different ethnic groups? --DavidCary (talk) 18:07, 4 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Agree - there is too much confusion here between treatment of enemy aliens, where detention or house arrest is often common in war time (and most nationals were not detained anyway), and treatment of US citizens of German ethnicity - again, this group was so large that most German Americans were not directly affected. There is more information in the article on "Internment of Japanese Americans" that explains why different departments had different responsibilities. I will look at that again. Basically, DOJ administered "Enemy Alien" control under its immigration authority, and the FBI (part of DOJ) had been surveiling some enemy aliens under its authority. DOJ examined the German and Italian nationals on a case-by-case basis; there was no wholesale detention (except for sailors on ships.) By contrast, the Dept. of Defense got part of the West Coast set up as an exclusion zone for certain peoples under an Executive Order, and excluded all Japanese Americans, including the US citizens who comprised about 2/3 of this group. It is also useful to note that Japanese immigrants had been prohibited from becoming citizens, regardless of their length of residency. A separate authority under the Defense Dept. was set up to build the concentration camps to hold Japanese Americans (nationals and citizens) from the West Coast. A small percentage moved on their own and resettled in areas outside the exclusion zone. Some Japanese nationals or others under suspicion were tracked by DOJ and, as I recall, were detained in DOJ camps.Parkwells (talk) 19:16, 14 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Current version is still unclear. It still says 36.1% but the numbers 11,507 for Germans and 110,000~120,000 for Japanese does not seem to add up. Without reading some of the explanation here in this talk page, the numbers are absolutely baffling. --Puellanivis (talk) 15:47, 26 February 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Define groups, provide scale[edit]

Have edited to try to clarify the differences among the groups affected and also provide context in Lead and body - size of ethnic German population in the US, treatment, etc. Also edited heavily to reduce duplication. For some reason, many facts about numbers of detainees and their treatment - both those in the US and those deported from Latin America - were repeated in the sections under Congressional studies (or consideration) and activism. The two examples of activism have pretty weak sources - one the organization's website and the other a minor newspaper. Needs to be bolstered. Added some info about treatment of Japanese Americans during WWII to the Lead, as this seems to be in the background - at least to provide scale. This whole paragraph could come out - I know it needs sourcing from its main article with more reference within the article if there is to be a comparison. At least there is more context now.Parkwells (talk) 20:33, 14 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Possible source websites[edit]

This website http://www.foitimes.com (the other one, http://www.gaic.info, is already linked) has been mentioned at WT:GER and possibly contains additional information to expand this article (see Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Germany#German_Americans_during_World_War_II). Disclaimer: Both sites look interesting, but I haven't checked their reliability more closely - just mentioning them for interested editors. GermanJoe (talk) 12:26, 25 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

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