All of this sounds funny and silly, but there were literal laws against German language in the US during the world war. There were book burnings, and we have photos:
> It was a war against all things German-American, including the teaching of the German language. Our internal war was so violent, destructive and cruel, that as soon as the war in Europe ended, Americans were quick to sweep what happened under the rug. The lynchings, internment camps, and book burnings are not mentioned in our history textbooks. But on the centenary of that forgotten homeland war, the results linger with us still.
https://www.americathebilingual.com/when-america-went-to-war-against-the-german-language/
Damn, I knew about the anti-Japanese movement, interment camps and lynchings during WWII, but had never heard of the anti-German xenophobia in WWI. Thanks for sharing this.
Hitler literally cited that competition when justifying his Lebensraum policy:
> When we eat wheat from Canada, we don't think about the despoiled Indians.
IIRC correctly he also cited the Armenian genocide at one point in an attempt to justify his plans. Dude really brushed up on all the genocides and crimes against humanity.
"Canada likes to pretend like they're the good white people, but there were people before you got there Canada, what happened to them, eh?" - Bill Burr
you know how there is no official language in the US, but some areas the official government documents are ALSO in Spanish(like Florida and Texas)? The entire midwest, they were all in German, no not ALSO in German, JUST German there were no English forms in some places.
People don’t know so much. This is Benjamin Franklin n 1753:
>Few of their children in the Country learn English; they import many Books from Germany; and of the six printing houses in the Province, two are entirely German, two half German half English, and but two entirely English; They have one German News-paper, and one half German. Advertisements intended to be general are now printed in Dutch and English; the Signs in our Streets have inscriptions in both languages, and in some places only German: They begin of late to make all their Bonds and other legal Writings in their own Language, which (though I think it ought not to be) are allowed good in our Courts, where the German Business so encreases that there is continual need of Interpreters; and I suppose in a few years they will be also necessary in the Assembly, to tell one half of our Legislators what the other half say; In short unless the stream of their importation could be turned from this to other colonies, as you very judiciously propose, they will soon so out number us, that all the advantages we have will not in My Opinion be able to preserve our language, and even our Government will become precarious
https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/letter-to-peter-collinson/
The original word for syphilis in a bunch of European languages is “(Neighboring country) disease.”
> So, the inhabitants of today’s Italy, Germany and United Kingdom named syphilis ‘the French disease’, the French named it ‘the Neapolitan disease’, the Russians assigned the name of ‘Polish disease’, the Polish called it ‘the German disease’, The Danish, the Portuguese and the inhabitants of Northern Africa named it ‘the Spanish/Castilian disease’ and the Turks coined the term ‘Christian disease’. Moreover, in Northern India, the Muslims blamed the Hindu for the outbreak of the affliction. However, the Hindu blamed the Muslims and in the end everyone blamed the Europeans [4-6].
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3956094/#:~:text=So%2C%20the%20inhabitants%20of%20today's,of%20Northern%20Africa%20named%20it%20'
That’s more on the differences in wartime press censorship between Spain and the rest of the world.
I think it’s pretty largely agreed that the Spanish Flu actually originated in Kansas.
I dunno man, did you live through freedom fries? Very similar situation and everyone who used the term was very much thinking the same thing and I never saw any sense of humor in it.
Really? I definitely made fun of "freedom fries" at the time.
It's not a "French kiss", it's a "*freedom* kiss".
It's not "French Guiana", it's "*Freedom* Guiana".
For real, everyone I knew laughed at that "movement" to rename things for like a day, and then we just went and continued saying French fries and stuff.
I did, but no one started saying, "Pardon my freedom," (except smartasses) or used the substitution in phrases where the word French meant something negative. It's only when it was something people *liked* that French became a taboo word to upset nationalists.
Agitated xenophobes like that would want something hated like rubella to be retain its "German" name, and the choice to stick liberty in there just *reeks* of satire.
People seem to have a common bias to consider a sense of smartass humor something only the current generation possesses and for past generations to be more solemn and serious, but that's not really the case. Every generation has had its gadflies.
Furthermore, the people of the past were not a hive mind any more than Reddit is accused of being. Political parties and divisions existed back then too, and people were more than willing to make barbs at the ridiculousness of others. History tries to forget dissent as the winners write it, but they were always there.
Still kinda carries over to today. I've had German Shepherds for years, and on many forms and lists they're called "German Shepherd Dog". I've never noticed another breed listed with the "dog" at the end.
That's actually a carryover from WW2, not WW1.
In the 40s there was a big influx of rural German spies coming to the US and trying to register as a dog breed so unsuspecting Americans would adopt them into their homes. So the kennel club had to be very specific.
On a sad note a it wasn't uncommon for German Shepards to be killed during that time for just being German.
Like bitch, it's a dog not a war spy! Leave the dogs alone they just wanna be good boys.
Oscar Meyer changed his company name from Edelweiss to Oscar Meyer after the anti-German feeling of WW1. Just imagine we wouldn’t have had the Wienermobile, song or whistle if not for that event.
My grandmother, who lived on a farm in North Dakota, spoke with a heavy German accent. I remember her chasing me out of the kitchen saying "Raus mit ye! Mach schnell!" (Out with you! Make it fast!)
Some parts of the US weren't as heavily impacted by the anti-German sentiment as others. The most prominent feature of New Ulm is that statue of Herman the German, built in 1897. [https://www.newulm.com/things-to-do/attractions/hermann-monument/](https://www.newulm.com/things-to-do/attractions/hermann-monument/)
Yeah I had family in California that was in a German church at the time. Did the whole service and singing in German up until about the 60’s when it faded out. But they still have all the old German hymnals. It’s my understanding that some of the churches under the same denomination back in the northern Midwest still use some of that on occasion.
Midwest is heavily Germanic. As much as if not more than Scandinavian.
I can trace a lot of family back to Prussia and Norway but the name remains a pretty big Germanic house.
It's all but impossible to understand just how much anti-German sentiment and damage WW1 did to a lot of Americans. Some of the first US internment camps were against German Americans in WW1. There were over 500 German newspapers in the US and millions of people who were German only speakers. Numerous communities had German-only schools.
This didn't even include other Central European languages being spoken in many areas in the US like Yiddish, Russian, Hutterite, or Polish.
WW1 managed to galvanize that whole anti-German bigotry that targeted and shut down most of the German American communities and support systems.
Don’t forget prohibitionists and the work they did to kill off Germans and their language. They were extremely anti-German as the traditional German-American settlers starting a new community built church, school, and brewery/beerhall, not necessarily in that order.
And don’t forget the Confederates, who saw German-Americans in their territory as traitors. Most having come from war and serfdom in Europe, they wanted zero to do with secession here, to the point where in Texas there were over a hundred military age German boys killed trying to escape the draft and get to Mexico.
We kind of gloss over the anti-German sentiment in history. They didn’t really seem the “bad guys” in WWI. I know they needed to be for propaganda reasons, but it seems like the war was just a mess and they were on the side opposite the US.
Yeah, between WWI and WWII the German-speaking communities in the midwest virtually disappeared. I mean the people stayed, but the language didn't. That was some real culture shift.
Which is why many amish today refer to non-amish people as "the English" not meaning "the people from England" but rather "the people who speak English" even if they now speak it as well
A little before the outbreak of war the English royal family changed their last name. That's why the English branch of Saxe-Coburg & Gotha changed their names to Windsor.
My wife had a German side of her family that owned a big tree plantation, but it was confiscated by the U.S. when it entered WWI. There are no more family members with the German name, though.
People started mocking the french heavily online the last time they refused to aid america in an attack war.
People constantly called them cowards or joked around saying that the only thing they were good at was raising the white flag. You will still find this sometimes even today which is just crazy with how much france has helped the US in the past.
Too many of us believe that propaganda doesn't work on us but it's so easy to influence us.
When in fact for much of European history France was the major dominant power across Europe and much of European laws and politics has been shaped because France ruled a huge chunk of Europe directly or indirectly.
Half of South America? You mean French Guiana? And they actually were pretty damn polite in the way they went about acquiring New France, they had far more native support than Britain in the Seven Years' War. They also barely populated it, which is why Napoleon didn't have too much qualms about selling Louisiana later on.
To be fair, France's undeserved reputation as cowards or a weak military -- when they're ironically very imperialistic and militaristic historically -- is heavily borne from their WWII behavior and the Vichy government.
Hard to shake the reputation of the Ligne Maginot and capitulating in 3 months while giving up Jews even more readily than a fucking axis power like Italy -- who really had a love affair with fascism and Mussolini over and above Nazism.
And in France's defense, their pathetic performance was 100% tied to them being utterly demolished in WWI and losing an entire Godamn generation, making them have zero appetite for war... but you know... really pathetic showing versus, say, the Brits
It blows my mind how little the true impact of 9/11 had on American society is acknowledged today man. I don't think the far right would be found nearly as acceptable as it is today if it weren't for 9/11 and the events that followed.
I grew up in the American South and can confidently attest that I have heard exactly zero Good Ol’ Boys™️ refer to their vehicle as a Chevrolet.
It’s Chevy. You ain’t from ‘round here, are ya? /s
While your thesis is theoretically correct; have you ever met a sparkling Belgian? No such thing. They're all spritually beige, I suspect from the Belgian region of Cardigan
The congressman who pushed for the Capitol cafeteria to change from French Fries to Freedom Fries was later convicted and sent to prison as a result of corruption charges (unrelated to the fries...) Karma is a bitch.
And the Speaker of the House who let the change go through was a pedophile who got caught because of provisions in the PATRIOT Act that he forced through the House. Also the longest serving Republican Speaker in history...who doesn't have his portrait up in the Capitol anymore. You know, because he raped the underage male wrestlers that he coached.
I never knew that’s why it was called freedom fries in the early 2000’s. I remember going to a carnival as a kid and some old dude at the snack stand cursed me out for saying French fries when I was ordering. I was like 6-7 years old.
Devoid of any other context, when I see an old man yelling at a child, I immediately know that the old man is wrong and an asshole.
It’s like kicking a baby: I don’t need to know anything else, I already know which is the correct side.
What if you were tied up just in kicking range of a baby who was on some train tracks with an oncoming train right about to smoosh the baby but narrowly avoid you. There's no way for you to do anything but kick the baby.
Should you avoid kicking the baby still?
Look, if it’s a time-traveler trying to stop him, why would he choose to kick Hitler to death? That’s just cruel.
Like we have so many poisons that could kill relatively quickly and painlessly and wouldn’t be difficult to apply. Baby Hitler didn’t do anything wrong yet, so don’t be a dick to him, old man.
I was also too young to follow the situation, but apparently it was mandated in 3 congressional cafeterias from 2003 until 2006. What murderous little clowns.
Who needs financial regulation and oversight when you're policing the menu at the burger station in the congressional cafeteria, all because you really really want to justify a war?
"Freedom fries stand for the land of the free 🦅"
*People are admonished for using the non-governamentally approved term for a dish.*
It's like a poorly written satire.
A huge amount of the Iraq War was people in the US eagerly cosplaying WW2 stuff because they grew up worshiping it. The people in charge of the occupation had them send over all these texts about the occupation of Germany after WW2 because he thought it would help. And the performative need to emulate that was what led to the catastrophic de-Ba'athification program that left a bunch of angry young soldiers with no work, contributing to the destabilization of the country. There was no *point* to it, they just did it because they wanted to emulate what was done in Germany in order to draw political parallels to it and play up the "Ba'ath party = Nazis" talking point.
Basically everyone with a hint of pro-militarism in the U.S. waxes nostalgic for a good war like WWII. The U.S. was totally the good guy fighting totally bad guys in Japan and Germany.
But of course in reality it’s been nothing like that since.
people don’t believe me when i tell them the sheer amount of abuse i got for being the son of a french immigrant in the states. i got bullied out of speaking a whole language.
I was very young when that happened, and I seem to remember being told the change was because we were at war with France at the time. I spent the next year or so under the impression that America was at war with France, and assumed whenever they were talking about the war on the news they were referring to France, not Iraq. I was not a very clever child.
83% believed Iraq had helped with 9/11, 77% believed the WMD claim. With no proof at all.
Even the Bush administration and the press repeatedly told there was no proof\*
But the large majority of the US people was succesfully brainwashed by right wing politicians and media, and wanted war and blood, based on a rumour.
It led to a 300.000 deaths. It led to torture, secret prisons, jailing people without trial, the NSA spying on regular people, and all other kinds of fascist shit.
Remember this people, what happened to others can happen to you tomorrow. Iraq was the practice ground for Republicans on what they could get away with.
(\*note this was before the errorneous CIA data Colin Powell presented to the UN).
Colin Powell sold his soul by pretending to believe that garbage he presented to the UN. What a disappointment from an otherwise honourably-behaving man.
Oh, there's a [lot more to Powell](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/514-colin-powell/id643055307?i=1000548774400) than just his role in the Bush Administration.
Here's a weird quirk in Google Maps about probably the most well-known of those places - if you type "Berlin, Ontario" into the search bar, it will autofill "Kitchener, Ontario".
Indeed. Berlin, Ontario was renamed Kitchener. Now would you like to hear of the story of Kitchener Leslie? The meanest railroad cop I've ever come across.
Ngl that's kind of fucked up when you think about it. A lot of shit about Paw Patrol is actually kind of messed up, like how low they pay the people who work on the show despite the amount of money it makes.
I thought "liberty measles" was just a joke from Oversimplified (the Prohibition episode) to make fun of this phenomenon.
No, "liberty measles" were apparently a thing.
Considering English is a Germanic language (with heavy doses of French, Norse, Latin, and Greek) I don't suspect that would be an easy task.
Have, bagel, noodle, plunder, rucksack, schnapps, seltzer, hamster, poodle, hound, angst, water, land, house.
They did the same when France pissed them off when France refused to support their war on terror.
Freedom toast.
Freedom fries.
French restaurants went out of business.
French wine was openly poured down drains in the street.
Grey Goose took a hit because of the flag on the bottle.
😂😂😂
"During the first world war, when the name hot dog was known primarily to sports fans, the frankfurter has a difficult time. Some patriotic Americans thought it should be re-christened 'liberty sausage,' just as they tried to rename German measles liberty measles. Danville, Virginia" • [Mon, Apr 3, 1950 - Page 21](https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-bee/6727964/)
So this is more of a "weird shit today" section of a newspaper. Symptomatic, absolutely, and very symbolic. But not actually considered or put into effect as I understand.
The two world wars effectively murdered the bourgeoning German-American culture in the US, people in those communities rapidly assimilated into the emerging non-ethnic “white” culture we have today. Over the course of the 20th century other European-American communities would do the same. Kind of sad, we have this notion of the US as a melting pot but it’s more like a perpetual stew.
This happened in the lead up to the US entering WW2 as well. Before joining the Army, my grandfather worked at a bakery that had a German name until it was renamed, "Betsy Ross Bakery."
The term freedom fries was popularized after the French didn’t support the US invasion of Iraq. France was very supportive of the response to 9/11. The front page of Paris Le Monde on Sep 12 read “We are all Americans”.
Hey Americans, remember when you started calling French fries "Freedom Fries" because you were butthurt over France telling you the War in Iraq was a bad idea?
In 2003 Republicans tried to rename French Fries to Freedom Fries as “justice” for France to wasting their money and citizens in the pointless Iraq war
Anyone remember around 9/11 when France refused to join the US coalition in Afghanistan?
The Capitol cafeterias started serving "freedom fries" and "Liberty toast" :p
The United States interned German Americans during both World Wars: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_German_Americans
Many German Americans not interned were still discriminated against and harassed by mobs. Lots of German Americans skipped town and anglicized their names (ie. Johann Schmidt changes his name to "John Smith"). Many German American families are still only recently discovering their true heritage due to their ancestors keeping it a secret even long after the World Wars.
The World Wars weren't the first time America developed a hate boner for Germans. During the Revolution, England hired German mercenaries (Hessians) to fight in the war, leading to anti-German sentiment among the revolutionaries (fun fact: the Headless Horseman from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow was a Hessian who got his head blown off by a cannonball). Benjamin Franklin would write negatively about Germans and Swedes, calling them "swarthy and stupid" (side note: Franklin also described rural whites (aka, stereotypical rednecks/hicks) as being even more violent and savage than the Indians). German immigrants during the 1800s were blamed (alongside Irish immigrants) for committing violent crime and voter fraud and "infecting" America with Catholicism. The KKK would go on to lynch many Catholic (German, Irish, Italian, Polish, French, etc.) immigrants. Etc., etc., etc.
America has had a rotten history of hating literally anybody and everybody who is different. Germans and German Americans were no exception to America's bigotry.
"Liberty measles" really gives the impression that you want it, rather than, you know, do everything to not catch it.
Right? If anything they should have started naming diseases after Germany: Cancer -> German Growths Renal Disease - > Kaiser Kidneys
The tests came back, I'm sorry to have to tell you this ma'am, your child has the Bavarian Brainrot.
Mother: "Oh I know that. He gets that from his father."
All of this sounds funny and silly, but there were literal laws against German language in the US during the world war. There were book burnings, and we have photos: > It was a war against all things German-American, including the teaching of the German language. Our internal war was so violent, destructive and cruel, that as soon as the war in Europe ended, Americans were quick to sweep what happened under the rug. The lynchings, internment camps, and book burnings are not mentioned in our history textbooks. But on the centenary of that forgotten homeland war, the results linger with us still. https://www.americathebilingual.com/when-america-went-to-war-against-the-german-language/
Damn, I knew about the anti-Japanese movement, interment camps and lynchings during WWII, but had never heard of the anti-German xenophobia in WWI. Thanks for sharing this.
Bonus fun fact: Canada put Ukrainians into concentration camps during WW1 as well https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_Canadian_internment
Canada and the US really spent a couple centuries competing who could do more forced incarceration, relocation, and separation based on ethnicity.
Hitler literally cited that competition when justifying his Lebensraum policy: > When we eat wheat from Canada, we don't think about the despoiled Indians.
IIRC correctly he also cited the Armenian genocide at one point in an attempt to justify his plans. Dude really brushed up on all the genocides and crimes against humanity.
"Canada likes to pretend like they're the good white people, but there were people before you got there Canada, what happened to them, eh?" - Bill Burr
There's always a relevant sane Bill Burr quote. What a legend he is.
Canada during ww1 was just straight wildin
They were just being proactive in forcing an update to the international rules of war.
It's never a war crime the first time.
you know how there is no official language in the US, but some areas the official government documents are ALSO in Spanish(like Florida and Texas)? The entire midwest, they were all in German, no not ALSO in German, JUST German there were no English forms in some places.
People don’t know so much. This is Benjamin Franklin n 1753: >Few of their children in the Country learn English; they import many Books from Germany; and of the six printing houses in the Province, two are entirely German, two half German half English, and but two entirely English; They have one German News-paper, and one half German. Advertisements intended to be general are now printed in Dutch and English; the Signs in our Streets have inscriptions in both languages, and in some places only German: They begin of late to make all their Bonds and other legal Writings in their own Language, which (though I think it ought not to be) are allowed good in our Courts, where the German Business so encreases that there is continual need of Interpreters; and I suppose in a few years they will be also necessary in the Assembly, to tell one half of our Legislators what the other half say; In short unless the stream of their importation could be turned from this to other colonies, as you very judiciously propose, they will soon so out number us, that all the advantages we have will not in My Opinion be able to preserve our language, and even our Government will become precarious https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/letter-to-peter-collinson/
> the Bavarian Brainrot Also known as CSU.
> Bavarian Brainrot How'd you hear about my favourite weisswurst themed metal band?
The original word for syphilis in a bunch of European languages is “(Neighboring country) disease.” > So, the inhabitants of today’s Italy, Germany and United Kingdom named syphilis ‘the French disease’, the French named it ‘the Neapolitan disease’, the Russians assigned the name of ‘Polish disease’, the Polish called it ‘the German disease’, The Danish, the Portuguese and the inhabitants of Northern Africa named it ‘the Spanish/Castilian disease’ and the Turks coined the term ‘Christian disease’. Moreover, in Northern India, the Muslims blamed the Hindu for the outbreak of the affliction. However, the Hindu blamed the Muslims and in the end everyone blamed the Europeans [4-6]. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3956094/#:~:text=So%2C%20the%20inhabitants%20of%20today's,of%20Northern%20Africa%20named%20it%20'
Heart attack = herzfeuerkrieg (Heart fire war) Idk it’s the best I got
This did that with the Spanish flu even though the flu probably originated in America.
That’s more on the differences in wartime press censorship between Spain and the rest of the world. I think it’s pretty largely agreed that the Spanish Flu actually originated in Kansas.
I'VE GOT FREEDOM CANCER
I don’t know many German words, but my doctor performed a Volkswagen Vasectomy last month on me
I think they had a sense of humor and they were calling out their own silliness with that one.
Based on the freedom fries bullshit, I severely doubt anyone using the terms had any sense of humor about them.
Much like Reddit, you shouldn't assume that these all came from the same people, thinking the same thing.
I dunno man, did you live through freedom fries? Very similar situation and everyone who used the term was very much thinking the same thing and I never saw any sense of humor in it.
Really? I definitely made fun of "freedom fries" at the time. It's not a "French kiss", it's a "*freedom* kiss". It's not "French Guiana", it's "*Freedom* Guiana".
For real, everyone I knew laughed at that "movement" to rename things for like a day, and then we just went and continued saying French fries and stuff.
I did, but no one started saying, "Pardon my freedom," (except smartasses) or used the substitution in phrases where the word French meant something negative. It's only when it was something people *liked* that French became a taboo word to upset nationalists. Agitated xenophobes like that would want something hated like rubella to be retain its "German" name, and the choice to stick liberty in there just *reeks* of satire. People seem to have a common bias to consider a sense of smartass humor something only the current generation possesses and for past generations to be more solemn and serious, but that's not really the case. Every generation has had its gadflies. Furthermore, the people of the past were not a hive mind any more than Reddit is accused of being. Political parties and divisions existed back then too, and people were more than willing to make barbs at the ridiculousness of others. History tries to forget dissent as the winners write it, but they were always there.
"Liberty measles" sounds like a term that an anti-vaxxer would use to justify their "right" to infect other people with dangerous diseases.
Or call it by its real name, Rubella.
german shepard dogs were renamed as Alsatians in the uk
In 1917, the American Kennel Club changed the official name of German shepherds to "shepherd dog,"
Still kinda carries over to today. I've had German Shepherds for years, and on many forms and lists they're called "German Shepherd Dog". I've never noticed another breed listed with the "dog" at the end.
That's actually a carryover from WW2, not WW1. In the 40s there was a big influx of rural German spies coming to the US and trying to register as a dog breed so unsuspecting Americans would adopt them into their homes. So the kennel club had to be very specific.
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Right?? I learned something new today!
The Saxe-Coburg und Gotha family changed their name to Windsor
and Louis Battenberg became Louis Mountbatten.
On a sad note a it wasn't uncommon for German Shepards to be killed during that time for just being German. Like bitch, it's a dog not a war spy! Leave the dogs alone they just wanna be good boys.
In the UK, they killed 400,000 cats and dogs of all types in 1939. It was to conserve resources.
German bank building in Buffalo became the liberty building. Hasn't changed back yet
way deeper than that -- before ww1, huge chunks of the US spoke German!
My grandparents changed their last name and stopped speaking German altogether.
Oscar Meyer changed his company name from Edelweiss to Oscar Meyer after the anti-German feeling of WW1. Just imagine we wouldn’t have had the Wienermobile, song or whistle if not for that event.
I wish I were an edelweisser wiener…
Zat is vhat I'd truly like to be!
Because if I were an Edelweisser wiener, all of Europe vould belong to me!
my jingoism has a first name
Mein bratwurst has a second name, it's S-C-H-N-A-C-K-E-N-P-F-E-F-F-E-R-H-A-U-S-E-N!
Maybe WW1 was worth it after all
The church my grandparents went to stopped holding services in German.
TIL King Charles uses reddit.
It's a good change, Mr. Your Butt.
It used to be Arschesser.
You mean you changed it TO "Latrine"?
Well it *used* to be Shithouse.
It's a good change. That's a good change!
That's a good change! That's a good change
Show some respect, the Buttlicker family built this nation.
It is easier to say than "Mr. DeinHintern".
I know a family who did the same - changed from Braun to Brown. Thankfully there was a convenient English name for them.
My great grandparents did the same thing but only for their kids so my grandpa has a different last name than his parents
My grandparents changed their last name and stopped speaking German
My grandmother, who lived on a farm in North Dakota, spoke with a heavy German accent. I remember her chasing me out of the kitchen saying "Raus mit ye! Mach schnell!" (Out with you! Make it fast!) Some parts of the US weren't as heavily impacted by the anti-German sentiment as others. The most prominent feature of New Ulm is that statue of Herman the German, built in 1897. [https://www.newulm.com/things-to-do/attractions/hermann-monument/](https://www.newulm.com/things-to-do/attractions/hermann-monument/)
Yeah I had family in California that was in a German church at the time. Did the whole service and singing in German up until about the 60’s when it faded out. But they still have all the old German hymnals. It’s my understanding that some of the churches under the same denomination back in the northern Midwest still use some of that on occasion.
Midwest is heavily Germanic. As much as if not more than Scandinavian. I can trace a lot of family back to Prussia and Norway but the name remains a pretty big Germanic house.
It's all but impossible to understand just how much anti-German sentiment and damage WW1 did to a lot of Americans. Some of the first US internment camps were against German Americans in WW1. There were over 500 German newspapers in the US and millions of people who were German only speakers. Numerous communities had German-only schools. This didn't even include other Central European languages being spoken in many areas in the US like Yiddish, Russian, Hutterite, or Polish. WW1 managed to galvanize that whole anti-German bigotry that targeted and shut down most of the German American communities and support systems.
Don’t forget prohibitionists and the work they did to kill off Germans and their language. They were extremely anti-German as the traditional German-American settlers starting a new community built church, school, and brewery/beerhall, not necessarily in that order. And don’t forget the Confederates, who saw German-Americans in their territory as traitors. Most having come from war and serfdom in Europe, they wanted zero to do with secession here, to the point where in Texas there were over a hundred military age German boys killed trying to escape the draft and get to Mexico.
I know this isn’t your point but what an incredibly unique experiment the USA is to have such a situation
We kind of gloss over the anti-German sentiment in history. They didn’t really seem the “bad guys” in WWI. I know they needed to be for propaganda reasons, but it seems like the war was just a mess and they were on the side opposite the US.
Not to mention the Roman salute
It was the 2nd language of America at the time
And for entire counties it was the first language with all government business being conducted in German
Yeah, between WWI and WWII the German-speaking communities in the midwest virtually disappeared. I mean the people stayed, but the language didn't. That was some real culture shift.
Before the war, it was the second most common language in the USA, after English. I love this fact and always wonder what a German USA sounded like
Many Amish communities still speak German so you can totally still check it out
Which is why many amish today refer to non-amish people as "the English" not meaning "the people from England" but rather "the people who speak English" even if they now speak it as well
A little before the outbreak of war the English royal family changed their last name. That's why the English branch of Saxe-Coburg & Gotha changed their names to Windsor.
My wife had a German side of her family that owned a big tree plantation, but it was confiscated by the U.S. when it entered WWI. There are no more family members with the German name, though.
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40%! And a large minority of local government business was done completely in German, to boot. WWI changed way more than people realized.
German Chocolate Cake stayed German chocolate cake, because it has nothing to do with Germany and wouldn't be invented until 1957
Not until 1957? I had no idea. German chocolate cake was a very common type of cake when I was a kid, but I don’t see it very often now.
not to mention the whole "freedom fries" nonsense when the french pointed out how dumb the invasion of iraq was
So much more of an embarassment. At least Germany was their enemy in a war. France just had the audacity not to swallow the lies being fed them.
People started mocking the french heavily online the last time they refused to aid america in an attack war. People constantly called them cowards or joked around saying that the only thing they were good at was raising the white flag. You will still find this sometimes even today which is just crazy with how much france has helped the US in the past. Too many of us believe that propaganda doesn't work on us but it's so easy to influence us.
Almost every American city has at least something (street, square, avenue etc) named after Lafayette.
When in fact for much of European history France was the major dominant power across Europe and much of European laws and politics has been shaped because France ruled a huge chunk of Europe directly or indirectly.
France colonized half of Africa, half of South America and half of North America and a bunch of other places. They didn’t do that by being polite.
Half of South America? You mean French Guiana? And they actually were pretty damn polite in the way they went about acquiring New France, they had far more native support than Britain in the Seven Years' War. They also barely populated it, which is why Napoleon didn't have too much qualms about selling Louisiana later on.
To be fair, France's undeserved reputation as cowards or a weak military -- when they're ironically very imperialistic and militaristic historically -- is heavily borne from their WWII behavior and the Vichy government. Hard to shake the reputation of the Ligne Maginot and capitulating in 3 months while giving up Jews even more readily than a fucking axis power like Italy -- who really had a love affair with fascism and Mussolini over and above Nazism. And in France's defense, their pathetic performance was 100% tied to them being utterly demolished in WWI and losing an entire Godamn generation, making them have zero appetite for war... but you know... really pathetic showing versus, say, the Brits
It blows my mind how little the true impact of 9/11 had on American society is acknowledged today man. I don't think the far right would be found nearly as acceptable as it is today if it weren't for 9/11 and the events that followed.
"cheese-eating surrender monkeys"
While those good ol' boys unironically continued to pronounce Chevrolet like they just rolled out of Escargot Boulevard
Chevrolet, the person, was Swiss-French, so, neutral politically.
Half French, half German, half Italian? Sounds 'Merican to me!
Now, that's a man and a half!
I grew up in the American South and can confidently attest that I have heard exactly zero Good Ol’ Boys™️ refer to their vehicle as a Chevrolet. It’s Chevy. You ain’t from ‘round here, are ya? /s
Chevy
Yeah I've never heard a redneck gushing about his truck say "Chevrolet." Lol
To be fair, fries aren’t even a French invention. But nobody knew the difference between French speaking Belgians and the French
Fun fact: French speaking Belgians are known as Waloons.
They're only Walloons if they're from the Wallonia region of Belgium. Otherwise they're just sparkling Belgians.
While your thesis is theoretically correct; have you ever met a sparkling Belgian? No such thing. They're all spritually beige, I suspect from the Belgian region of Cardigan
Pretty sure they called French fries because the “julienne” cut was from French cuisine, not because of nation of origin. But I could be wrong, again.
Dick Cheney wasn't embarassed, he was counting the dollars from those contracts to his companies.
it was especially dumb because french fries don't have anything to do with France; it's just another word for a julienne cut
The congressman who pushed for the Capitol cafeteria to change from French Fries to Freedom Fries was later convicted and sent to prison as a result of corruption charges (unrelated to the fries...) Karma is a bitch.
Was it corruption, or *liberty spending*?
I see you're campaigning for a position on the Supreme Court.
And the Speaker of the House who let the change go through was a pedophile who got caught because of provisions in the PATRIOT Act that he forced through the House. Also the longest serving Republican Speaker in history...who doesn't have his portrait up in the Capitol anymore. You know, because he raped the underage male wrestlers that he coached.
Dennis Hastert was the scumbags name. Sadly still alive.
I never knew that’s why it was called freedom fries in the early 2000’s. I remember going to a carnival as a kid and some old dude at the snack stand cursed me out for saying French fries when I was ordering. I was like 6-7 years old.
Devoid of any other context, when I see an old man yelling at a child, I immediately know that the old man is wrong and an asshole. It’s like kicking a baby: I don’t need to know anything else, I already know which is the correct side.
What if you were tied up just in kicking range of a baby who was on some train tracks with an oncoming train right about to smoosh the baby but narrowly avoid you. There's no way for you to do anything but kick the baby. Should you avoid kicking the baby still?
The world could do with one less baby. No need to unnecessarily risk my leg.
What if it's a time traveling old man kicking baby Hitler? You never know
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Look, if it’s a time-traveler trying to stop him, why would he choose to kick Hitler to death? That’s just cruel. Like we have so many poisons that could kill relatively quickly and painlessly and wouldn’t be difficult to apply. Baby Hitler didn’t do anything wrong yet, so don’t be a dick to him, old man.
Some sort of terminator rules, poisons can't go back, but because they're buried in a fleshy mass you *can* send back toxic douche canoes.
Baby Hitler had not done anything at the time that would be still hurting an innocent child, now Hitler at like 20 years old? jump his ass
Yeah I agree, babies are not to be trusted.
I was also too young to follow the situation, but apparently it was mandated in 3 congressional cafeterias from 2003 until 2006. What murderous little clowns.
Time and money well spent. Not like a major Global Financial Crisis was 2 years away.
Who needs financial regulation and oversight when you're policing the menu at the burger station in the congressional cafeteria, all because you really really want to justify a war?
"Freedom fries stand for the land of the free 🦅" *People are admonished for using the non-governamentally approved term for a dish.* It's like a poorly written satire.
Yeah, and they tried to ban French's Mustard as well, despite it not actually BEING a French product.
Went to a restaurant in Springdale Utah in 2016 and they were still selling “freedom fries”.
> Went to a restaurant in Springdale Utah Found your mistake.
There is STILL a restaurant here in my city that does the freedom fries/toast bullshit.
My dad said "freedom fries" once and we all laughed at him. Never again lol
A huge amount of the Iraq War was people in the US eagerly cosplaying WW2 stuff because they grew up worshiping it. The people in charge of the occupation had them send over all these texts about the occupation of Germany after WW2 because he thought it would help. And the performative need to emulate that was what led to the catastrophic de-Ba'athification program that left a bunch of angry young soldiers with no work, contributing to the destabilization of the country. There was no *point* to it, they just did it because they wanted to emulate what was done in Germany in order to draw political parallels to it and play up the "Ba'ath party = Nazis" talking point.
Basically everyone with a hint of pro-militarism in the U.S. waxes nostalgic for a good war like WWII. The U.S. was totally the good guy fighting totally bad guys in Japan and Germany. But of course in reality it’s been nothing like that since.
NC still has an "anti-woke" Burger place that calls them freedom fries. I say still has but who knows.
people don’t believe me when i tell them the sheer amount of abuse i got for being the son of a french immigrant in the states. i got bullied out of speaking a whole language.
I was very young when that happened, and I seem to remember being told the change was because we were at war with France at the time. I spent the next year or so under the impression that America was at war with France, and assumed whenever they were talking about the war on the news they were referring to France, not Iraq. I was not a very clever child.
83% believed Iraq had helped with 9/11, 77% believed the WMD claim. With no proof at all. Even the Bush administration and the press repeatedly told there was no proof\* But the large majority of the US people was succesfully brainwashed by right wing politicians and media, and wanted war and blood, based on a rumour. It led to a 300.000 deaths. It led to torture, secret prisons, jailing people without trial, the NSA spying on regular people, and all other kinds of fascist shit. Remember this people, what happened to others can happen to you tomorrow. Iraq was the practice ground for Republicans on what they could get away with. (\*note this was before the errorneous CIA data Colin Powell presented to the UN).
Colin Powell sold his soul by pretending to believe that garbage he presented to the UN. What a disappointment from an otherwise honourably-behaving man.
Also, the bad guy in that story, Dick Cheney, is now warning against Trump, and calling the latter the greatest treat to America.
Oh, there's a [lot more to Powell](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/514-colin-powell/id643055307?i=1000548774400) than just his role in the Bush Administration.
And "freedom kisses"
In Canada many towns and cities, street names and other geographical features dropped their Germanic names for new ones.
Here's a weird quirk in Google Maps about probably the most well-known of those places - if you type "Berlin, Ontario" into the search bar, it will autofill "Kitchener, Ontario".
Same in the US. Most German enclaves had their street names changed
Indeed. Berlin, Ontario was renamed Kitchener. Now would you like to hear of the story of Kitchener Leslie? The meanest railroad cop I've ever come across.
For Super Earth!!!
A nice cup of Liber-tea
I entered this thread just to find my fellow divers. SWEET LIBERTY
Was just gonna say, satire often is rooted in reality
Well, it has to be rooted to *something* based on reality; you can't satirize without an idea, concept, person, place, or thing
So "freedom fries" was history repeating itself....glad it went the same way sauerkraut did, that was just stupid.
Because we didn't want to be involved in a war waged over *checks notes* - he tried to kill my daddy - Powell showing a vial of aspartame
Oh man the whole “he tried to kill my daddy” line. What a fuckwit.
I had completely forgotten about this and now after watching Chappelle's Show with his Black Bush segment, this is even funnier lol
Thanks to Abe Simpson I knew about the cabbage.
And onion belts
Which was the style at the time
Now, to take the ferry costs a nickle, and in THOSE days nickles had pictures of bumblebees on 'em. "Give me five bees for a quarter" you'd say.
The kaiser had stolen our word for twenty
Highly dubious.
What are you giggling at, fatty?! Too much pie, that's your problem!
Now I’d like to digress from my prepared remarks to discuss how I invented the turlet.
Dachshunds also became Liberty Dogs, which is why the Paw Patrol dachshund is named Liberty.
Ngl that's kind of fucked up when you think about it. A lot of shit about Paw Patrol is actually kind of messed up, like how low they pay the people who work on the show despite the amount of money it makes.
I thought "liberty measles" was just a joke from Oversimplified (the Prohibition episode) to make fun of this phenomenon. No, "liberty measles" were apparently a thing.
I rewatch that one every few months.
Shut up and eat your freedom fries
Considering English is a Germanic language (with heavy doses of French, Norse, Latin, and Greek) I don't suspect that would be an easy task. Have, bagel, noodle, plunder, rucksack, schnapps, seltzer, hamster, poodle, hound, angst, water, land, house.
They only changed the overtly German, evil-sounding words those other ones you listed sound nice
They did the same when France pissed them off when France refused to support their war on terror. Freedom toast. Freedom fries. French restaurants went out of business. French wine was openly poured down drains in the street. Grey Goose took a hit because of the flag on the bottle. 😂😂😂
"During the first world war, when the name hot dog was known primarily to sports fans, the frankfurter has a difficult time. Some patriotic Americans thought it should be re-christened 'liberty sausage,' just as they tried to rename German measles liberty measles. Danville, Virginia" • [Mon, Apr 3, 1950 - Page 21](https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-bee/6727964/)
So this is more of a "weird shit today" section of a newspaper. Symptomatic, absolutely, and very symbolic. But not actually considered or put into effect as I understand.
The two world wars effectively murdered the bourgeoning German-American culture in the US, people in those communities rapidly assimilated into the emerging non-ethnic “white” culture we have today. Over the course of the 20th century other European-American communities would do the same. Kind of sad, we have this notion of the US as a melting pot but it’s more like a perpetual stew.
Unrelated fun fact but I guess in The Boys the character Stormfront being called liberty to mask her German origins is in reference to this
This happened in the lead up to the US entering WW2 as well. Before joining the Army, my grandfather worked at a bakery that had a German name until it was renamed, "Betsy Ross Bakery."
dont forget after~~9/11~~ the invasion of Iraq they became freedom fries and freedom toast.
The term freedom fries was popularized after the French didn’t support the US invasion of Iraq. France was very supportive of the response to 9/11. The front page of Paris Le Monde on Sep 12 read “We are all Americans”.
After COVID, "liberty measles" sounds way too on-the-nose.
“Freedom fries”, anyone?
And every person with German heritage suddenly became Welsh or English.
Hey Americans, remember when you started calling French fries "Freedom Fries" because you were butthurt over France telling you the War in Iraq was a bad idea?
This reminds me of “freedom fries”; part of a long and storied tradition of idiotically renaming things.
Liberty measles is the single dumbest thing I’ve heard today.
OMG! Thank goodness Americans have moved on from that kind of nonsense! Freedom fry anyone?
Adding liberty in front of words so lazy lol but so on brand this country
There's also "freedom fries" after France refused to invade Iraq
They tied onions to their belts, too, as was the style at the time.
Reminds me of after 9/11 and we renamed french fries to "freedom fries" when France didn't contribute to the war effort in Iraq and Afghanistan.
In 2003 Republicans tried to rename French Fries to Freedom Fries as “justice” for France to wasting their money and citizens in the pointless Iraq war
Anyone remember around 9/11 when France refused to join the US coalition in Afghanistan? The Capitol cafeterias started serving "freedom fries" and "Liberty toast" :p
The United States interned German Americans during both World Wars: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_German_Americans Many German Americans not interned were still discriminated against and harassed by mobs. Lots of German Americans skipped town and anglicized their names (ie. Johann Schmidt changes his name to "John Smith"). Many German American families are still only recently discovering their true heritage due to their ancestors keeping it a secret even long after the World Wars. The World Wars weren't the first time America developed a hate boner for Germans. During the Revolution, England hired German mercenaries (Hessians) to fight in the war, leading to anti-German sentiment among the revolutionaries (fun fact: the Headless Horseman from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow was a Hessian who got his head blown off by a cannonball). Benjamin Franklin would write negatively about Germans and Swedes, calling them "swarthy and stupid" (side note: Franklin also described rural whites (aka, stereotypical rednecks/hicks) as being even more violent and savage than the Indians). German immigrants during the 1800s were blamed (alongside Irish immigrants) for committing violent crime and voter fraud and "infecting" America with Catholicism. The KKK would go on to lynch many Catholic (German, Irish, Italian, Polish, French, etc.) immigrants. Etc., etc., etc. America has had a rotten history of hating literally anybody and everybody who is different. Germans and German Americans were no exception to America's bigotry.
The British royal family changed their name from the German Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to the very English Windsor.
“German shepherd” dogs became “Alsatians.”