Women among Montana’s World War I heroes

via the Laurel Outlook (Montana) newspaper web site

It’s easy to find evidence of women’s contributions on the home front to the war effort in The Laurel Outlook archives from 100 years ago. Every week, even before the U.S officially entered WWI on April 6, 1917, stories of the work of local Red Cross women filled the news columns. Some Montana women even went overseas serving in uniform as nurses, as Laurel author and veteran Ed Saunders is detailing in his forthcoming book, “Knapsacks and Roses, Montana’s Women Veterans of World War I.”

While the historical narrative is not yet ready for publication, Saunders has found details of heroism in many of the women’s stories, including that of Harriet O’Day Nielsen, who is buried in Laurel’s cemetery.

Elizabeth Sandy Sandelius “Almost all the women who volunteered for service were nurses, like Harriet O’Day,” Saunders said. “America had estimated a need for at least 25,000 nurses, most of them for the western front. Despite not getting the same respect or pay as men, many volunteered.”

According to Saunders’ research, of the 206 Montana women who entered military service in WWI, 86 voluntarily went overseas.

“It wasn’t until many years later that the U.S. government even recognized the women as veterans, although they made great contributions,” Saunders said. The 23 women WWI veterans with ties to Yellowstone County were memorialized on the courthouse lawn, however belatedly. The plaque in their honor was installed less than a year ago on the 100th anniversary of America’s entry into the war.

Although there were doubtless many instances of women performing their duties under fire, Saunders found evidence that two Montana nurses were officially cited for heroism in France. They were Elizabeth “Sandy” Sandelius from Cokedale and O’Day. Sandelius refused to evacuate and continued tending the injured while under aerial and artillery bombardment at Field Hospital 112 in Cohan, France. O’Day helped evacuate wounded American soldiers while under artillery fire at Evacuation Hospital 4 near Verdun, France, where she was stationed.

Verdun is primarily known for the horrific 303-day battle the year before O’Day’s arrival. The battle is considered one of the deadliest in human history, having claimed the lives of about one million men, both French and German. A highly prized strategic enclave, warring continued in the Verdun area despite the battle’s end. O’Day would have seen the gory aftermath and had to live with the sights and smells of death, all while doing a what had to be a dangerous and disheartening job.

After five months working at the Evacuation hospital treating battle injuries ranging from amputations to gas burns, German forces opened fire on the Americans on Nov. 3, 1918. The hospital was bombarded with artillery for four hours, according to Saunders research.

4 Noted Women Authors as WWI Nurses & Relief Workers

via the Literary Ladies Guide web site

What writers like to do most is to write — ideally in a quiet place, and most often, by themselves. So what motivated these four authors — Edith Wharton, Agatha Christie, Dorothy Canfield Fisher, and Enid Bagnold — to leave their comfortable homes and writing desks, and get involved in war efforts, as nurses and refugee and relief workers?

Edith Wharton with soldiers Edith Wharton with WWI soldiersEach of them, two Brits and two Americans, has a unique story of their involvement in World War I, in Britain and France.

Edith Wharton: Heroine of war refugees

Edith Wharton (1862 – 1937) was a wealthy heiress and a product of New York high society, never wanting for anything — except perhaps happiness. She was nonetheless socially conscious and became more of an observer of the upper crust than an adherent to it.

After her divorce from Teddy Wharton in 1913, Wharton moved to France, which was on the brink of entering World War I. Upon the outbreak of the war, she immediately plunged into relief work. Among her accomplishments were employing skilled 90 women who had been thrown out of work; feeding and housing hundreds of child refugees, establishing hostels for other refugees; and assisting wounded soldiers and struggling families.

She wrote: “There is hardly a form of human misery that has not come our way and wrung our hearts with the longing to do more and give more.” An account of some of her expeiences, My Work Among the Women Workers of Paris, was published in the November 28, 1915 edition of The New York Times.

For her war relief efforts, Wharton received one of France’s highest honors, the Chevalier of the Legion of Honor. Belgium named her a Chevalier of the Order of Leopold.

For all her compassion for war refugees, wounded soldiers, and orphaned children, Edith Wharton wasn’t perfect and made no secret of her antisemitism. It’s hard to square those two sides of her, though it’s apparently true that they coexisted in one talented, energetic, and complicated woman.

Agatha Christie: Volunteer nurse

Soon after Agatha Christie (1890 – 1976) married an officer in the the Britain’s Royal Flying Corps, her new husband was deployed. She, too, joined in the efforts in 1914. While Archie Christie battled German forces, Agatha worked as a volunteer nurse in the VAD (Voluntary Aid Detachment). She clocked in more than 3,000 hours of unpaid work assisting physicians and apothecaries. serving in these capacities until 1918.

On Idaho Day, state remembers WWI veterans like Pvt. Hansen, Pvt. Neibaur, and Cpl. Buckles

By Linden Bateman
via the Idaho Statesman newspaper web site

Leland Hanson Leland Hansen, wearing his WWI Army uniform, shows photos and speaks to a Bonneville High School class in 1976, taught by author Linden Bateman (background).“Idaho Remembers” is the 2018 theme for Idaho Day — March 5 this year — honoring members of the armed forces from Idaho who served during World War I, which ended 100 years ago on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month.

Buckles Neibaur Frank W. Buckles (top), America's longest-living WWI veteran, died in 2011 at age 110; Thomas Neibaur (bottom) was the first person born in Idaho to be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.One on the most inspirational memorials to that war can be found within the sanctuary of the First Presbyterian Church in Idaho Falls, a sacred space hardly changed in a century, with a soft glow coming from its honey-oak furnishings and a hundred shades of color reflected by its stained-glass windows. Within that beautiful glass are etched the names of members of the congregation who served in the Great War, as it came to be known, with gold stars marking the names of those who gave their lives.

I knew several of those men. Marshall Scott owned a book store on Broadway, and Don Wilson, a drug store on Boulevard, with a classic soda fountain and jukebox, where all the high school kids gathered and danced during the 1940s.

Many of my friends, neighbors and teachers were veterans of the war. Leland Hansen lived just down the road from our farm on Iona Road. Each year he would visit my history classes at Bonneville High, dressed in his World War I uniform, and tell stories of sacrifice and heroism he witnessed while serving in France. Leland barely survived the war. One evening following an enemy artillery barrage, he burrowed into a pile of sawdust to sleep, only to wake in the early morning with a dangerously high fever, later diagnosed as the deadly flu sweeping through his division. Leland related that had it not been for a young French nurse providing constant care, he would have surely died.

Delusional and in a dreamlike state of semi-consciousness, he was aware of her image and countenance hovering over him day and night, for days, until he began to heal and she was transferred to another aide station. Pvt. Hansen never saw the woman again and never learned her name. He wept often, yearning to meet and thank the young woman who saved his life.

Now all the World War I veterans are gone and their children will soon pass, leaving the third generation to tell their stories. With the death of Cpl. Frank W. Buckles in 2011 at age 110, America’s last World War I veteran was laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery, and the Great War has begun to slip from memory. Even its most heroic participants are seldom remembered.

How the devastating 1918 flu pandemic helped advance US women’s rights

By Christine Crudo Blackburn, Gerald W. Parker, and Morten Wendelbo
via theconversation.com web site

When disaster strikes, it can change the fabric of a society – often through the sheer loss of human life. The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami left 35,000 children without one or both parents in Indonesia alone. The Black Death killed more than 75 million people worldwide and more than a third of Europe’s population between 1347 and 1351.

Stretchers More women than men were left standing after the war and pandemic. (Photo courtesy Library of Congress)While disasters are by definition devastating, sometimes they can lead to changes that are a small silver lining. The 2004 tsunami ended a civil conflict in Indonesia that had left 15,000 dead. The 14th century’s plague, probably the most deadly disaster in human history, set free many serfs in Europe, forced wages for laborers to rise, and caused a fundamental shift in the economy along with an increased standard of living for survivors.

One hundred years ago, a powerful strain of the flu swept the globe, infecting one third of the world’s population. The aftermath of this disaster, too, led to unexpected social changes, opening up new opportunities for women and in the process irreversibly transforming life in the United States.

The virus disproportionately affected young men, which in combination with World War I, created a shortage of labor. This gap enabled women to play a new and indispensible role in the workforce during the crucial period just before the ratification of the 19th Amendment, which granted women suffrage in the United States two years later.

Why did the flu affect men more than women?

Known as the Spanish flu, the 1918 “great influenza” left more than 50 million people dead, including around 670,000 in the United States.

To put that in perspective, World War I, which concluded just as the flu was at its worst in November 1918, killed around 17 million people – a mere third of the fatalities caused by the flu. More American soldiers died from the flu than were killed in battle, and many of the deaths attributed to World War I were caused by a combination of the war and the flu.

The war provided near perfect conditions for the spread of flu virus via the respiratory droplets exhaled by infected individuals. Military personnel – predominantly young males – spent months at a time in close quarters with thousands of other troops. This proximity, combined with the stress of war and the malnutrition that sometimes accompanied it, created weakened immune systems in soldiers and allowed the virus spread like wildfire.

How doughnuts helped keep spirits high on the front line of WWI

By Kara Schlegl
via the Australian Broadcasting Corporation News web site

A simple fried pastry delivered to American troops in the trenches of World War I provided not only a sweet treat for officers, but helped change a nation's attitude to war.

By looking through the lens of history it is possible to understand the true impact of this minute and often overlooked point of change.

9360908 3x2 700x467 Women helped bake and distribute thousands of doughnuts during World War I. (Photo courtesy Salvation Army.)Doughnuts were first delivered to the trenches in 1917, during World War I, when American Salvation Army Officers Helen Purviance and Margaret Sheldon were assigned to the front line in France.

They were supplied with gas masks, pistols and a mission to boost the morale of the new American recruits.

The president at the time, Woodrow Wilson, won his second election campaign with the slogan "He kept us out of war".

When Wilson finally joined the war — after the Germans attacked American commercial ships tasked to trade with the Allies — his countrymen weren't too pleased.

The Government had to resort to conscription after their one-million-troop recruitment target was met with only 73,000 volunteers.

This meant Purviance and Sheldon were faced with the near-impossible task of bringing cheer to teenage boys sent to war against their own will.

Using ammunition shells as rolling pins

After these newly-minted American soldiers were hit with 30 days straight of rain and a hailstorm of German gunfire, the officers realised hot tea and lively conversation wasn't going to cut it.

It was Purviance who had the idea to find eggs, an ingredient that was essential if they were to cook the troops a treat and something that would give these young men a taste of home.

To make doughnuts, they needed to beg the residents of a nearby village for eggs, raid ration packs for sugar, and invent new methods of shaping these doughnuts, including using ammunition shells as rolling pins, and tin cans as cutters.

Some days were spent on their knees to be level with the oil vats they used for deep frying.

Other days were spent dodging bullets to deliver these doughnuts to soldiers in the trenches.

American Legion National Commander Denise Rohan (right) visited the maquette of the sculpture design for the new National World War I Memorial at Pershing Park in Washington, DC, during the American legion meeting in Washington, DC last week. Betsy Anderson, Volunteer Director for the U.S. World War Centennial Commission staff (left) gave Rohan a detailed update on the memorial's progress.

WW1CC and the Memorial maquette on hand for the American Legion's big week in DC

By Chris Isleib
Director of Public Affairs, United States World War One Centennial Commission

Last week was a big one for our Commission member organizations, the American Legion. Over 200 members of their national leadership were in Washington, DC for their annual Winter Conference at the Washington Hilton, with such featured speakers as Secretary of Veterans Affairs David J. Shulkin. Following several days of meetings, the Legion leadership conducted their massive annual 'Storm The Hill' outreach effort to members of Senate and Congress.

In the midst of it all, the U.S. World War I Centennial Commission was there, telling the story of our programs, including the new National World War I Memorial for Washington DC. The Legion invited us to set up the scale-model maquette created by our sculptor Sabin Howard, and recently featured on television's FOX & FRIENDS.

The maquette was set up in the conference lobby by WW1CC's project manager Dale Archer, and memorial designer Joseph Weishaar. During the conference, a team of volunteers, led by WW1CC Volunteer Director Betsy Anderson, were at the site during the Legion conference, handing out literature, and discussing our efforts with Legion leaders from all over the United States.

The maquette display and the volunteer interchanges were a big success. Hundreds of Legion members came by the display to hear about the Centennial Commission, and to offer their help in getting the word out.

2018 flu bug similar to 1918 outbreak but with big differences

By Delthia Ricks
via the newsday.com web site (Long Island, NY)

A ferocious flu outbreak that circumnavigated the globe in 1918 has eerie parallels to the epidemic sweeping across the United States now, but medical and history experts said despite each arriving 18 years into new centuries, the two influenzas differ significantly.

libby oconnell Libby O’Connell Joseph Nappi Newsday photo Joseph Nappi, of Lake Ronkonkoma, whose ancestors survived the Spanish flu during World War I, wears a military uniform of the period and holds their photo on Monday, Feb. 19, 2018, at the Museum of American Armor in Old Bethpage, where experts discussed previous flu outbreaks and the current one. Photo Credit: Johnny Milano During a news briefing Monday at the Museum of American Armor in Old Bethpage where vast collections of memorabilia from both 20th century world wars are displayed, experts rekindled memories of the 1918 pandemic, the worst flu outbreak in history.

“This was a global crisis, bigger than the Black Death,” said Libby O’Connell, who chairs the New York World War I Centennial and is chief historian emeritus at the History Channel. “It was closely intertwined with the environment of WWI, which included trench warfare.”

The “Black Death” was a rat-borne plague that moved in waves across Eurasia from 1347 to 1351. It was caused by a bacterium, Yersinia pestis, that killed an estimated 75 million to 200 million people. By contrast, the 1918 flu pandemic was spawned by a virus not identified until technology and a new era of scientific questioning emerged in the 1930s.

Scientists estimate the pandemic a century ago claimed the lives of 600,000 people in the United States and about 50 million worldwide. It is believed to have been a bird flu strain.

“There weren’t enough gravediggers,” O’Connell said. Bodies piled up faster than they could be buried. Mass graves were sometimes a solution.

The fierce respiratory illness swept through Camp Upton, a military installation in Brookhaven Town, O’Connell said. The camp was packed with soldiers and served as a veritable influenza incubator.

World War One Nurse 2 Still from the sold-out production of The Great Forgotten at the 2015 NYC International Fringe Festival.

Four Questions for Kacie and Karen Devaney

"Understand war through the eyes of women and re-think their historical relevance."

By Cheryl Farrell
Staff Writer, United States World War One Centennial Commission

The daughter and mother team of Kacie Devaney and Karen Devaney are authors of The Great Forgotten, which had a sold-out run in the 2015 New York City International Fringe Festival. With the 2018 centennial commemoration of The Great War, Kacie and Karen hope to bring their play to a larger audience with a longer run. They also hope to turn the play into a series for Netflix. Kacie and Karen talked with us about the play, its origins, and what the future holds for the production.

You wrote the play, “The Great Forgotten” that honors and remembers the thousands of women who served as nurses with the American Expeditionary Force during World War One. What inspired you to write this play?

Devaney Duo 500 Kacie and Karen DevaneyI was living in Paris, France, when a bolt of inspiration hit me to write The Great Forgotten. I had been studying at The American University of Paris for two years and traveling in France. The history in France is incredibly visceral, so as a writer it gets my wheels turning. I have always been obsessed with World War II and knew very little about “the war to end all wars.”

After visiting a handful of war museums and memorials in France, it was disheartening to see the lack of inclusion of the women who also served, particularly the nurses. When I moved to New York City five years ago I picked up a novel about the men of the Lost Generation, many of the writers and artists and some just merely “lost” after The Great War. I wondered about the women who also served during the war.

Now my mind was rapidly brainstorming. I was determined to learn everything I could about the American nurses who served during World War One. Additionally, I started thinking of a way I could merge these two abandoned histories - the American nurses who served during World War One and the soldiers who returned from the war who we call the Lost Generation. Thus, The Great Forgotten was born.

As a writer, I am always digging deep for untold stories. I am also an ardent supporter of championing women's tales, particularly in history where much of the literature is about men. Realizing this would be an enormous undertaking, I reached out to my mother who is not only a fellow writer but also a registered nurse. Together as a mother-daughter team, we wrote The Great Forgotten.

WWI Women: Nurse Vashti Bartlett

By Nicole Renna
Staff Writer, United States World War One Centennial Commission

Vashti Bartlett, born November 15, 1873 in Maryland, was a Johns Hopkins Hospital Training School for Nurses 1906 graduate who proudly served the Allied forces as a nurse in WWI.

Vashti Bartlett 200 Vashti BartlettIn 1908 Bartlett first combined nursing and traveling as Chief Nurse at St. Anthony Hospital, in Canada, before working as Superintendent of Nurses at Watts Hospital in Durham, North Carolina and at Church Home and Infirmary in Baltimore. She then went on to service with the American Red Cross throughout WWI in 1915, beginning her years of service which not only saved countless lives, but indubiously helped pave the road for the future efforts of womankind to achieve equal rights.

Bartlett served as head nurse and supervisor with the Red Cross from March 1915 to January 1916 in Pau, France, and La Panne, Belgium. She then went on to become assistant to Clara Noyes at Red Cross Headquarters in DC until August of 1918. Afterwards, Bartlett decided to enter the Army Nursing Corps, and served as Chief Nurse of Base Hospital, Unit 71, in France, until April of 1919.

Bartlett’s dedication to the Allied cause was clear in her respect and concern for the soldiers she treated; she said once, in regard to her work with the wounded, “we bring them back and heal them and send them forward again to the firing line that they may go through this agony once more-- but such is the...bravery of these ordinary” men.

After the war, Bartlett continued her service to the country. She was among those the United States sent as aid to Siberia, serving with the American Red Cross Siberian Commission from June 1919 to February 1920. She then went to Harbin, Manchuria, to oversee the treatment of a cholera epidemic as Chief Nurse.

Just before the Gaida battle, at a train station on November 17-18, Bartlett returned to Vladivostok and helped establish an American Red Cross Hospital, saving many wounded there. She also instructed lay women in Home Hygiene and Care of the Sick from December 10, 1919 to February 2, 1920, ensuring the future care of patients before her leaving.

J'Ecoute: The Story of U.S. Army Signal Corps Telephone Operators in WWI

By Eric Saul
via the easaul.com web site

Two hundred twenty-three women served as telephone operators in the U.S. Army Signal Corps during World War I.

These were the first women to serve as soldiers in the U.S. Army, specifically in non-nursing roles.

U.S. Army Signal Corps women telephone operators in the long distance toll office at La Belle Epine, outside of the gates of Paris, France. Head operator Grace Banker standing background on left. The Army desperately needed bilingual telephone operators to staff the switchboards at various headquarters for the American Expeditionary Forces in France. Few men were found who were capable of this demanding job, so General Pershing called for women to fill these vital wartime positions.

They were enlisted in the Army as official soldiers and given the status of company grade officers. They were sworn into the Army under the Articles of War. They wore regulation U.S. Army uniforms and were subject to Army regulations.

This unique unit was comprised of French-speaking American citizens. They trained in their specialized skill at the AT&T headquarters in Manhattan and at the Signal Corps training facility at Camp Franklin, later Fort Meade, in Maryland.

They served with honor and distinction close to the front lines after they arrived in France in March 1918. They were close enough to the front to be in danger of being shelled by the Germany army. They served in Paris, Chaumont, and numerous other French locations. They also served in Great Britain in London, Southampton, and Winchester. Their service was a vital link between the American and French armies. Their work contributed to the Allied victory over Germany. Several of the women volunteered and served as operators in France after the war and in the Army of Occupation in Germany through 1920.

Chief Telephone Operator Grace Banker received the U.S. Army Distinguished Service Medal for her services. This is the third highest medal that the Army can bestow.

At the conclusion of their service, the Signal Corps telephone operators were given certificates of service rather than the honorable discharge to which U.S. Army soldiers are entitled. To their surprise, they were told that they never, in fact, had official status as soldiers. The Army told them that they were civilian employees of the military. This was contrary to all that they were told at the beginning of the war.

With the exception of Grace Banker, they received no honorable discharges, no campaign medals or victory ribbons for their service overseas. They did not receive the bonus pay that was given to other soldiers in the AEF, and received no pensions or Veterans Administration benefits.

American Women in World War I

By Carl J. Schneider and Dorothy Schneider
via the National Council for the Social Studies' socialstudies.org web site

When the guns of August sounded the beginning of World War I in 1914, a good many Americans could not believe their ears. To their way of thinking, humanity had outgrown war. Even though some other Americans, women as well as men, still thought of war as vital to the health of nations, in 1914 most considered this particular war Europe's business, in which the United States should take no part. But the British and French propagandized skillfully and effectively. Germans stupidly based their diplomacy on the erroneous belief that Americans of German descent would always support Germany, whatever outrages Germany committed, and arrogantly underestimated America's capacity to wage war. And the American president professed peace but refused to intervene among the European powers. By 1917, all of these forces nudged the United States into a deadlocked war.

DW k R VAAAnCFV American women experienced this "Great War" differently than any previous war. For the first time, the Army and Navy nurse corps were activated. It was the first American war in which no woman enlisted as a foot soldier disguised as a man, for it introduced thorough physical examinations. Yet it was the first war in which women officially and openly served in the Navy, the Marine Corps, and the Army Signal Corps. For the first time in the history of the world, 25,000 women, 15,000 of them civilians, crossed a hostile ocean to succor war's victims-many of them long before the United States entered the war. Women struck out on their own like entrepreneurs, finding their own ways to help people and seeking the money and capital to accomplish their goals.

In a period of overt racism, African-American women who tried to participate in these efforts met almost immovable obstacles. After a long struggle, a few black nurses were admitted into the nurse corps, but not until after the war. The military accepted no other black women. Although 200,000 black soldiers served overseas, no more than half a dozen black women managed to get there, for with the sole exception of the YMCA all the volunteer organizations excluded them from service abroad. Black women worked nobly in this country in the workplace and as volunteers, but almost always in their own groups, set apart from whites.

Before America's Entry, 1914-1917

As soon as the shooting started in Europe, American women organized to help its victims, military and civilian. They used their existing women's clubs and lodges and church ladies' aid societies, and they started new groups focused on specific needs. As a need arose, an American women's group sprang up to meet it. The Children of the Frontier collected and shipped money and mounds of clothing to its American-French counterpart overseas to rescue, support, and train refugee and repatriated children. The American Relief Clearing House (ARCH), Le Bienetre du Blesse, and the American Fund for French Wounded furnished and distributed hospital supplies, the French transportation system having broken down. ARCH not only operated the American Ambulance Service but also afforded "5,000 relief organizations, societies, schools, churches, and individuals at the head of small circles . . . its free facilities for transferring material to France." Le Bienetre du Blesse provided special diets for convalescent French soldiers unable to stomach army food. American women established workshops and furnished materials for French seamstresses thrown out of work.

But sending money and goods did not suffice. Beginning in 1914, American women themselves went overseas. Some went for adventure, for the fun of the thing. Some simply refused to be left out of the action, insisting on participating in a great moment in history. Overwhelmingly, they wanted to serve the thousands victimized by the war.

2018 National Women’s History Month: NH Women & WWI

By Janice Brown
via the Cow Hampshire web site

The month of March has been celebrated as National Women’s History Month since 1980 when it became the flagship of the National Women’s History Project. I’ve been writing here about New Hampshire women’s history since its creation in 2006 (12 years).

New Hampshire in WWI poster 300x226 Despite our accomplishments, women are still often left out of the history books. It is time for us to be included. If each of us writes and publishes at least one story about a woman, then we help to bring our history out of the darkness and into the light.

My obsession in the past year or two has been to document New Hampshire’s role in World War I. My object is not to glorify or honor war, but rather to put a human face back on the list of names that we see engraved on monuments and plaques. I also try to cover all facets of the war, for we cannot fully understand what happened until we look at both sides of the coin, and at both genders.

When we think of World War I, most of us picture the men in military uniform readying for battle. Women played as great a part in everything. Some women served as yeowomen, nurses, telephone operators and others who were often at the battlefield and subject to the same grave dangers of bombs, gas and disease.

The women left behind experienced great hardships, but also it was a door of opportunity for them as for the first time certain jobs were now available to them due to lack of “man” power.

Eruption of anti-German hysteria in WWI wiped out German culture in the US

By Erik Kirschbaum
via the High Plains Public Radio web site

f766k1g Anti-German sign, Chicago, 1917 (Library of Congress)Hi, my name is Erik Kirschbaum and this is a story about a dark – and forgotten chapter of U.S. history.

Long before Americans ever had a taste of “freedom fries” there was a brief era a century ago when hamburgers were changed into “liberty steaks”, sauerkraut was turned into “liberty cabbage” and Americans got sick with a disease renamed “liberty measles” instead of “German measles”.

That might sound funny in 2018 but it reflects a traumatic chapter of US history 100 years ago. The eruption of anti-German hysteria that wiped out German culture in the US shook an increasingly divided country as it drifted into the war in Europe. The giant German ethnic minority that had long been such an important, influential, and integral pillar of fin-de-siècle society came under sudden attack from jingoistic Americans determined to do their part “over here” in the fight “over there” against Kaiser Wilhelm’s Germany.

The hatred and even violence against German-Americans came out of the blue. It was a reaction to their efforts to keep the United States neutral and out of the war in Europe as well as to their ability to preserve so much of the German culture, language, pride and traditions that they had brought with them across the Atlantic.

It is well known that the US entered World War I in April 1917 and the “doughboys” played an important role in helping to win it in 1918. But less well known is what happened to all those German-Americans.

Page 81 of 136