Economic and Political Crisis: Banner Text

The Great Depression, starting in 1929, devastated economies in both Germany and the United States. Since their founding by German immigrants in the 1850s, for example, the utopian Amana  colonies had remained largely self-sufficient. In their isolation, they had even developed their own German dialect, which they still spoke after World War I. During the Great Depression, however, they were forced to abandon their communal organization and turn to the market economy – which meant increased contact with outsiders.

The Great Depression also brought profound political change to both countries. The New Deal enjoyed widespread support among German Americans. But many Americans – not only of German heritage-- admired Nazi Germany’s dynamic recovery from the Great Depression. Anti-Communists and antisemites blamed America’s lingering hardship on the supposed prominence of Jews and socialist sympathizers in the Roosevelt administration. The pro-Nazi German American Bund recruited in German clubs in the Midwest, but with limited success. German Americans overwhelmingly supported mainstream political parties.

Nazi persecution caused hundreds of thousands of Jewish and leftist Germans and Austrians to seek refuge in locations around the world. Antisemitism and anti-immigration sentiment made it difficult for Jewish Germans to gain entry to the United States. Nevertheless, Iowa profitted from Germany’s and Austria’s “brain drain.” Nazi-era refugees became professors at Iowa colleges and universities, joined medical facilities, and practiced many other professions.

The American Friends Service Committee (Quakers) had a long history of providing aid to refugees. In 1939 they repurposed the Scattergood school in West Branch (which had closed due to the Great Depression) as a refugee hostel. It became a temporary  home for  around 185 political and racial/religious refugees from Nazi Germany. Refugees faced suspicions that they might be part of a “Fifth Column” designed to undermine the United States from within.