Germanophobia

Tags

emigre, Germanophobia, Germany, history, islamophobia, WWI, xenophobia

Defined as an opposition to or fear of Germany, its inhabitants, its culture and the German language.

My family emigrated to the United States from Germany after WWI.

Germany was the main aggressor in that war, leading a coalition that eventually included the Austria-Hungary, Ottoman Turkey and Bulgaria against the UK, France, United States, and other western superpowers of the day. Even a casual student of history knows Germany was assessed reparations to pay for civilian damage inflicted during the war, and that those reparations were the major reason that Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party were able to take power in the 1930s.

During the war itself, the US Justice Department tried to prepare a list of all 480,000 German emigres in the country, and eventually jailed about 4,000 for fear that they were spies or saboteurs. Even the Red Cross forbade anyone with a German surname from joining the cause.

We’re almost a hundred years removed from the end of the so-called Great War, and nothing has changed except the group we’re trying to register, detain, and ban from our borders. We’re listening to a hate-spewing firebrand who has no business addressing an auditorium, let alone the world, on what American policy ought to be, and we’re forgetting that the United States of America is a nation of immigrants.

I wish everyone supporting the orange idiot would remember how their own families originally came to the United States, and what it meant to leave behind chaos and destruction for a chance at a good and peaceful life. What would have happened to my family if they’d been turned back at the US border, rounded up and detained during WW2?

My own grandmother and her siblings grew up speaking German at home, and Grandma had to repeat the first grade until she could speak English well enough to move on. She worked in a factory during the Second World War to help support her family, and nearly all of my great uncles served in the US armed forces. Maybe one generation removed from being “the huns” meant they were considered safe?

I work in a school and I live in a major US city. I’m aware of the risks of gun violence and attacks on civilians and infrastructure. I’ve tried to confront those risks in my mind and in my heart, and it isn’t easy, but sometimes that’s how it goes when you try to do the right thing. But I think of my ancestors leaving a war-torn country for the promise of hope, and I believe it would be hypocritical of me to deny that promise to another generation of naturalized Americans. We can’t be a shining beacon of hope to humanity if we try to hide the light from people who weren’t born here.