German Iowa in Crisis: The Years of Neutrality - Banner Text

The eruption of the Great War in August 1914 threw German Iowa into crisis. While the United States remained neutral until April 1917, German-American communities divided. Some supported Imperial Germany and condemned Great Britain, while others sided with Anglophiles such as President  Woodrow Wilson. Yet as the war progressed, German Americans were often lumped together and characterized as “hyphenated  citizens” with suspect loyalties. They also faced many opportunists in Iowa and the rest of the country who used anti-German propaganda of the day to undermine their German-American competitors in business and politics.

This crisis was part of a global movement. Millions of Germans had settled abroad during the nineteenth century. The majority came to the United States. Yet German communities could be found in Great Britain and many of the British Commonwealth states. There were also large numbers in Brazil and other Latin American countries. All of them felt the weight of the naval blockades, the cutting of undersea telegraph cables, and the blacklisting of German businesses. Violence against German residents and citizens as well as their property erupted in many of these locations.

News coverage of the war varied greatly across Iowa. Some local papers wrote avidly about the war. Others noted the outbreak of hostilities but remained focused largely on local concerns. That was true for both German and English language papers. Even major, controversial events such as German submarine warfare and the sinking of the Lusitania failed to produce a consensus. Yet political debate about war and neutrality continued, particularly in towns and cities, and it had a major impact on local elections. Most German Iowans supported politicians who favored neutrality. By the time of the 1916 presidential election, however, neutral positions were increasingly difficult to maintain.

Prior to World War I, German-speaking Iowans were a very diverse group. They often identified most closely with their class, profession, place of origin, religion, generation of arrival, and even rural versus urban setting. World War I turned them into a unitary group. As  neutrality was hotly debated in the national sphere, Germans as a group were increasingly associated with the German military: the “Huns” ostensibly threatening European civilization and the world. That was true for German Iowans as well. Regardless of their personal associations,  attitudes, patriotism, or their positions on the war, they found that being German in Iowa had taken on completely new meanings.