The Gates Open Again: 1965 to 2001

German-Americans

Recently, increasing numbers of students are learning about the racism and bigotry that existed in the United States against groups such as the Native Americans, blacks and Jews. The history of the Japanese internment camps is becoming more widely studied in education, as well. What came as a surprise when researching this report was that German-Americans and Italian-Americans were also interned in the United States, since this is not highly publicized. On February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt initiated Executive Order 9066 that authorized the U.S. War Department to exclude or relocate people from certain areas of the United States the ruling targeted so-called "enemy aliens," those not-yet-naturalized emigrants from countries that were fighting against America overseas in addition to American-born citizens of "alien ancestry," which included not only Japanese-Americans, but Italian-Americans and German-Americans, as well.

In total, nearly 11,000 about the 314,000 German nationals in the U.S. were interned in over 50 camps during the Second World War. These internment camps were based on the WWI model created when 6,300 German-Americans were held at Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia. The camps, which normally were establishments of, or under contract to, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, ranged in geographical location from Ellis Island, New York, to Crystal City, Texas. Similar to the Japanese internment camps, they were enclosed by barbed wire and secured by armed guards. The Justice Department's aim in that selective internment strategy might have been, as Fox suggests, one "of cowing the German community as a whole" (xviii). Despite the fact that the war ended in 1945, some of these camps held individuals into the middle of 1948 (Tolzmann 32).

Fox, in America's Invisible Gulag explained that ironically, the internees' population even consisted of.Jewish refugees, some of whom were bullied by pro-Nazi internees. After receiving complaints from Jewish internees that they were being threatened by these inmates, camp guards at Stringtown, Oklahoma, interviewed them one by one. A number of Jewish prisoners made statements that confirmed that the German internee group was divided between a small Nazi faction and a passive majority. Erwin Klyszcz observed that "a lot of internees would be nice but do not associate with us because they are afraid of the Nazi element." Isidore Rosenberg noted a change in the summer of 1942 after more Germans arrived from Latin America. "Since the people from Costa Rica and Guatemala are here it is better," he said. "They are more intelligent... [these] internees have been much nicer" (Bryan). Because many of the people in the camps were not freed at the end of the war, some actually volunteered for repatriation to a war-ravaged Germany as the only way they could cut short their internment.

In addition, the U.S. cooperated with its Latin American countries by interning nearly 4,000 of their German citizens as well. According to Fox, the U.S. government removed these people from Latin America primarily to further its economic interests in these nations by reducing competitors of American business. According to Friedman (295), some of the FBI and military intelligence agents sent to Latin America accomplished promising results by identifying Nazi Party organizers, destroying a platinum smuggling ring in Colombia, and capturing spies who were sending radio transmissions. However, most of the agents were hindered by a lack of knowledge about the countries and communities on which they were supposed to spy. For example, FBI agent Donald Charles Bird recalled that in August 1941 he was given only two weeks of Spanish language training being sent on assignment to Brazil. The State Department complained that the FBI tended toward "exaggeration, or erroneous evaluation," based upon incomplete understanding of field conditions and background regarding overall conditions in Latin America, and a widely circulated FBI report regarded Bolivia's 12,000 Germans as stormtroopers ready to march despite the fact that 8,500 of them were Jewish refugees fleeing from Nazi Germany (Friedman 296).

Because the FBI did not have the language ability and the contacts in Latin America, they drew up lists of Germans they found suspicious on the slightest evidence and anonymous informants. No holds were barred, as landlords turned in tenants and visa versa, and old lovers turned in each other. Anyone who made a denunciation to the U.S. consul in Guayaquil was paid $50 or given whisky. In Mexico, journalists and informants received retainers for providing "positive information" of dangerous Nazis.

The flaws in this approach were obvious and objected to by at least two U.S. ambassadors, but it continued to be practiced across the Latin region with expected consequences (Friedman 285). With hindsight, the expulsion and incarceration of Germans from Latin America neither hurt Nazi Germany nor helped the U.S. war effort (Friedman 296).

Meanwhile, the list of internments in the United States came from names that informants gave to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). These individuals on the list received arrest orders and did not have any recourse as far as any specific charges or a trial. Nor did they know who added their names or given the opportunity to provide information regarding their innocence or lack thereof. Not only did the informant process encourage false arrests, but it also led to an environment of spying and informing on coworkers, friends and neighbors. U.S. citizens were reported for attending German church services, being officers in German-American societies, receiving German-American newspapers, listening to German programs on shortwave radios, living near train stations or businesses of importance, speaking German at home or on the street and saying something favorable about Germany (Tolzmann 32).

Interning the German-Americans was legal due to laws dating back to the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798. The process of internment, which was started right after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, was altered three months later when the army began to exclude individual Germans and naturalized citizens; the War Department had decided not to relocate these groups en masse as they did the Japanese-Americans. However, individuals did have to plead their case. After an arrest, an alien hearing board considered each case, unconstrained by the rules of due process, since it was not dealing with citizens. Most of those arrested individuals were then either paroled or released, while the others were interned or repatriated (Tolzmann 32).

The Japanese have received some response from the U.S. government regarding their internment. The German-Americans have not. As of the present, there is a law, known as the Wartime Treatment of European-Americans and Refugees Study Act, which was introduced by Senators Russ Feingold (D-WI), Charles Grassley (R-IA) and Ted Kennedy several times since 2001, with the last time this past February. This bill asks to establish a commission to review the facts and circumstances surrounding injustices suffered by European-Americans, European Latin Americans and European refugees during World War II. The Senators state that "We should honor and remember the millions of Americans who bravely served their country in World War II and the thousands who sacrificed their lives for the cause of freedom. But we should also take this moment, at a time of peace, to review the U.S. government' violation of civil liberties and its failure to protect refugees facing persecution during World War II." (website).

The fact that the bill has not yet passed (it is hoped that a Democratic administration will do so in the future) has not stopped other individuals from trying to keep Americans informed of this past situation and have the German-Americans who remain from this period, who are now only a small number, apologized to before they pass away. In a recent conference in California, for example, Karen Ebel told participants about her father who fled to America from Germany in 1937 at the age of 17 after a group of teens stabbed him for refusing to join the Hitler Youth, a group affiliated with the Nazi Party (Bohan).

He became an apprentice cabinetmaker, but unfortunately became one of those incarcerated five years later inside a remote North Dakota detention camp, after he told American Army officers he did not want to join the U.S. military in Germany, where his family still lived. He also made the mistake of saying that Hitler built good highways (Bohan).

He got into a knife fight because he wouldn't join the Hitler Youth," said his daughter Ebel. "Then, irony of ironies, he says something about the autobahn and he gets put into the slammer." As a result, her father, now 87, was incarcerated as an "enemy alien" at Fort Lincoln in North Dakota. Until just recently, he would not talk about his imprisonment. "He was very hurt by what happened to him," said Ebel. "When he finally started talking about it, it was extremely traumatic for him," she said. The occurrence was described by its organizers as the most extensive of its type, who still have not yet addressed this stripping of constitutional rights of American residents of German descent during World War II (Bohan).

The story of the Ebel is indicative of what occurred with others during this time. For example, Alfred and Caroline Heitmann left Germany to follow the "American Dream" and found employment in a manufacturing company. In 1942, they were two of the Germans who were picked up by the FBI. Several FBI agents with machine guns entered the H.I. Voss Engineering Company in Bronx, New York, and arrested Alfred Heitmann. This may have been related to the German submarine landing on Long Island, which resulted in a great deal of war hysteria that made many people believe that German spies were everywhere in New York (Tolzmann 32).

Heitmann's internment resulted from the unconstitutional investigations of the government based on hearsay from informants whose reliability was never seriously checked out. Many informants' names suggest that they were of German origin, who perhaps were afraid of their own internment and thus willing to give evidence to protect themselves from intense questioning. Their comments now appear ridiculous, including such theories that Heitmann took many photographs although he never owned a camera, as later confirmed by a FBI search, and took long walks at night. Such conjecture was enough for the government to justify imprisoning Heitmann for three years (Tolzmann 32).

Following his arrest, he was detained, ironically, at Ellis Island for two months while he waited for his hearing and Washington's final decision about what would happen to him. He was ordered interned, and beginning that year was sent first to Ft. Meade, Maryland with subsequent stays at Camp Forrest, Tennessee, Ft. Lincoln, North Dakota, and Seagoville, Texas, before finally gaining his release in June of 1945.

Heitmann's employer, H.I Voss, who posted a bond for him in November 1941, was never visited by the FBI and the Bureau's report stated that any information obtained "would produce no worth while results." In fact, during Heitmann's Board hearing in 1942, a Department of Justice employee reviewed the evidence presented and argued for parole rather than internment. He stated:

This is a difficult case to decide on the facts available and this reviewer is not satisfied with the result. It may be that further investigation of the subject through the questioning of more people who would know the subject's activities, an interview with the H.H. Voss Company, and an investigation of why the subject still receives remuneration from the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey would reveal information which would help materially in reaching a decision. (Friedman 298)

Scribbled after the paragraph in broad strokes with a marking pen were inscribed the words "I Think Not," and an illegibly initialed superior's signature.

The Alien Enemies Act of 1798, on which such interments were based, is still in force in modified form. It authorizes the president to detain, relocate, or deport enemy aliens in time of war. It was enacted in 1798 in anticipation of war with France but was first employed against British aliens during the War of 1812.

Although it seems that World War II is in the distant past, it must be remembered that as long as such laws remain, similar situations can happen again. In fact, after 9/11, there were Arab-Americans who were detained in jails for quite some time for no reason.

A recurring theme since the beginning of the United States is searching for a means to find the appropriate way of protecting the nation against security threats without losing sight of the liberties that are part of the democratic form of government. The concern of civil liberties vs. national security comes up in every crisis and every war, and will surely come up again in the future. It is possible to review history from the first passing of the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 to the Red Scares that followed World War II to the present time.

Presently, the war on terrorism along with the U.S. Patriot Act, the imprisonment of foreigners at Camp Delta on Guantanamo Bay, and the detention of American citizens through an order of the president, have all made a number of people study the laws as they are written. Given the fact that such concerns will become more instead of less prevalent in the coming years, revisiting the Alien and Sedition Acts should be seriously considered. The debate whether such actions taken during World War II against the Japanese and Germans is lawful continues.

For example, there are those such as individuals as Malkin who say that in time of war, the survival of the nation comes first. Civil liberties are not set in stone. Since 9/11, most Americans have not gone the extent of slandering all Muslims as terrorists. The majority of Americans make clear distinctions between them, especially because of the knowledge and embarrassment of what happened over 60 years ago. However, as can be seen since the beginning of the War in Iraq, there is a great deal of fear in this country and the amount of anti-Muslim mentality continues to grow.