Jump to content
Free downloads from TNA ×
The Great War (1914-1918) Forum

Remembered Today:

A Disgrace To His Country


Jarvis

Recommended Posts

Ah yes-renaming sauerkraut into liberty cabbage.

In Cincinnati was the Germanica Insurance Company-the German AMerican Cincinnaati City Council renamed it the "Columbia" insurance Company C/o World War I -and plastered over the name "Germania" on the office building.

In Shelby County Ohio the town of "Berlin" was renamed Ft Loramie. {My great-grandfather family had a German sounding surname-lucky for them they settled in Shelby County in 1820 and were not only a old "Settler" family but came from Switzerland. By 1910 they had married to well known English and Scottish Surname families-At least them didn't have to change their surnames!! :rolleyes: }

Interesting about killing dogs In Cincinnati {Sorry-- Columbus!}-never heard ''that" before!!! As they say-it didn't help the War Effort one little bit!!

Interestingly at least three Aviation Heros In WW I were of German descent:

Edward Rickenbacker.MOH.

Frank Luke-the Balloon buster .MOH.DSC. KIA

Joseph Wehner-DSC.KIA

Possible German descent:

Karl Joseph Schoen-DSC.KIA

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yes, in many places it was made illegal to teach German in school. Another way to win the war.

The Hunde=Mord (Murder of Dogs) took place in Columbus, Ohio. Again, any one who knows about this please post. I don't know where the film project is at the moment; I was not able to help the client with this specific question.

Bob Lembke

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yes, in many places it was made illegal to teach German in school. Another way to win the war.

The Hunde=Mord (Murder of Dogs) took place in Columbus, Ohio. Again, any one who knows about this please post. I don't know where the film project is at the moment; I was not able to help the client with this specific question.

Bob Lembke

You know what Bob? If there is no documentary evidence it never happened.

Much like Belgium and Armenia. :D

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You know what Bob? If there is no documentary evidence it never happened.

Much like Belgium and Armenia. :D

Beppo;

I had a very limited research budget and went well over it looking into this. Did the Hunde=Mort happen? I don't know. But I found four independent mentions of it from different sources. I just noodled about the Internet and have found a bunch of possible sources. So I may take this up and report back.

When doing my research a year ago I came across accounts of daschunds being stoned in London in 1914.

WW I was often so horrible that, in the primary sources, you often find accounts of men hardened to the shelling, bodies, etc., but still badly shaken when seeing horses crippled by shell-fire, knowing that the poor animals were quite innocent and involuntary participants (as were most of the two-legged participants, one might add).

Bob Lembke

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hello Bob

A photograph of the instigator of the "HundeMord" below:

post-859-1174674064.jpg

:P

Regards

Mel

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi, Mel;

Yes, you have uncovered a little-known nugget of later European history, that the creator of mayhem known in the English speaking world as the "Bohemian Corporal" is actually a figment of a combination of a typo and a bad translation, and should more accurately be known as the "Bohemian Cat".

My first cat "Tommy" was probably related to the above; every day he killed a squirrel, and ate every bit of it, feet and head included, everything but the tail and a quarter-sized patch of skin at the base of same. Then, about 8 hours later, "Tommy" threw up an awful mess of crushed bone and fur. He once took on my high-school sweetheart 's spaniel, with the mayhemic skill of a feline Rambo, and that dog emerged, literally, as one sore puppy, with a ravaged nose and self-esteem.

Have done some Internet noodling, and then some phone calls to Columbus, and I may have paydirt on the columbusische Hunde=Mord tomorrow. The neighborhood of Schiller Park is called German Village, and it has its own historical society.

Bob Lembke

Link to comment
Share on other sites

To take revenge on an animal because its breed is not to your or the country's liking, is.....well I can't print what I'd like to, it would get moderated.

Kim

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yes, Kim, it is really beyond the pale. As I said, I read many memoirs and primary sources from all sides, and so often men involved in the fighting in WW I expressed horror at the suffering inflicted on faithful, hard-working animals, when they had adopted to seeing so much suffering inflicted on humans.

Bob Lembke

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Was the state in such a shambles at the time that the utterings of this man either disaffected his majesty (heaven forfend) or materially interfered "....with the success of His Majesty's forces".

No magistrate would dare read a word into an Act of Parliament. (Although stutory interpretation is a strange thing. See: http://www.laborlawtalk.com/archive/index.php/t-101627.html Note that this is not a real case, but a clever parody of judicial reasoning by a Canadian lawyer and comedian.)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Note that this is not a real case, but a clever parody of judicial reasoning by a Canadian lawyer and comedian.

I have a good friend who is a lawyer, and additionally he and his wife are professional clowns. Other lawyer friends are totally shocked, feeling that the second career is extremely unlawyerlike. I say good for him.

Bob Lembke

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm surprised that people are surprised that civil liberties such as freedom of speech are curtailed during wartime. In 1941 one of my dad's high school classmates in California was Bill Yamamoto, a Japanese-American who was a photographer for the school newspaper. The California branch of the American Legion, a veterans' organization, had selected Bill Yamamoto as a finalist in a speechmaking contest it sponsored on the topic of "Why I'm proud to be an American." Then the attack on Pearl Harbor took place and the American Legion barred the guy from further participation in the competition.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Pete;

No, I, for one, am not surprised at all. What happened to your father's friend Bill? Were all of the Japanese-Americans along the coast rounded up and shipped to a camp, or only selected ones? I have heard of US citizens shipped off. Was there case-by-case evaluation?

One factor in the Japanese-Americans in California was, I suspect, land. The Japanese, some of whom were superb farmers, took land that other groups had failed to cultivate successfully and turned them into argicultural wonders, and very profitable. (The Imperial Valley?) The people shipped off were given, I believe, 48 hours to settle their affairs. Those conditions would hardly put them on an attractive bargaining position if they attempted to sell their farms before being shipped off. I am sure that many Angelos were able to buy extremely valuable farmland for cents on the dollar.

My mother was vunerable, as she had been in the US legally for 16 years, but, supremely unpolitical, had not bothered to obtain her US citizenship, although married to a US citizen, and having a child who also was a US citizen. Luckily, my father was an extremely valuable civilian employee, and his base commander counter-threatened the Naval Intelligence officer who wanted to send us off. He had been harrassing us and other German-Americans working on the naval base. Pop said that the FBI and other intelligence services had to expand 10-fold overnight, and took on board many complete idiots.

Bob Lembke

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't recall dad saying that Bill Yamamoto was one of the Japanese-Americans who were interned. One thing many people don't realize is that one of the leaders of the roundup was California's attorney general, Earl Warren, later chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Another California anecdote from WW II--an acquaintance of my grandmother's at the time was a woman who was a fervent admirer of National Socialism. In 1939 she had been indignant that the Poles had dared to fire on the Teutonic "gods" of the invading Wehrmacht. My step-grandfather, a Great War veteran of the 17th London, thought that was perfectly ridiculous--of all the words he could think of for German soldiers, gods was not one of them. According to grandma, after Pearl Harbor the FBI forced the woman to move to Salt Lake City where it was believed that her Nazi sympathies would pose less of a threat to American security. (The woman must have had some redeeming qualities to have been grandma's friend.)

On my mom's side of the family, in 1938-1944 my grandfather was U.S. Marshal for the state of Maine. After Pearl Harbor one of his unpleasant duties was to question recent immigrants from Europe. Most of those people were refugees from the Nazis and were terrified that just when they thought they could finally relax, lawmen show up at their door. Mom said grandpa and his men tried to treat those people as gently as they could.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

A ceremony was held in the park, and the climax of the ceremony was when many, many dogs, of German breeds (German Sheppards, Daschunds, Wiemeraners, Rottweillers, etc.), were dragged to the park and shot, during the ceremony, and tossed in a large pit that had been pre-dug.

You have really excelled yourself this time Bob.

"Any last requests?"

post-1016-1174773400.jpg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I believe that the following comments are correct, but it is not an area of study of mine, I cannot say that every detail is correct.

Someone posted say two weeks ago that the law was passed to recompense the Japanese internees or their surviving decendants with $20,000 each. This was in error, I believe, Congress passed the law, but no funds were appropriated for several years; no decendants were to be compensated, and any camp survivors who passed away after the law was passed but before money was finally appropriated were "out of luck" also, or at least their families were out of luck. They were probably beyond caring.

About 2000 a Federal law was passed designating ten of the camps in which Japanese-Americans were interned as "National Historic Landmarks". I understand that the law designating the camps contained language that made it unlawful for the signage at the camps to state that they also contained German-Americans and Italian-Americans, sometimes as many as internees of Japanese lineage.

Peter, in line with what you stated about the recent refugees being interviewed and frightened, what I understand was going on was not only were some foreign nationals interned, but also the US pressured many Central and South American countries to turn over to the US recent arrivals from enemy states, that were then interned in camps in the US.

But that was not all. There were American civilians interned in Axis states, and the US cut deals for exchanges of civilian internees. The internees obtained from the other American states were traded for American civilian internees. Unfortunately, the US authorities did not discriminate on the basis of race, sex, or religion, and numbers of Jews who had managed to escape Nazi Europe and reach South America were bundled up and sent back to the Nazis.

A few years ago there were to be hearings in Congress on this and other issues about war-time internment, but 9/11 happened, and the idea of such hearings quite evaporated.

Perhaps some of the refugees in Maine knew of some of this and had reason to be afraid. I have not heard that Jews who legally reached the US, as distinct from other American countries, were sent back to the Nazis.

Bob Lembke

Link to comment
Share on other sites

At least the US Government has apologised to the interned Japanese-Americans.

The British Government has yet to do the same for getting hundreds of internees drowned on the "Arandora Star" in 1940. Something like 243 German/Austrian refugees, mostly Jews, were killed, as were something like 470 long term British resident Italians, as well as the ships master, 12 officers, 42 crewmen and 37 army guards.

http://www.bluestarline.org/arandora.html

British-Italians have mounted a campaign for an apology:

http://www.arandorastarcampaign.com/

Link to comment
Share on other sites

In about 1980 when I was stationed in Germany with the U.S. Army some German friends at a gasthaus started talking about how naive and fumbling we Americans had been in our Denazification efforts in 1945 and 1946. One guy recalled how his grandmother, a former minor Nazi party official, had been picked up by our soldiers and hauled away in the back of a truck for questioning--the guy said he chased after the truck, saying, "Oma, Oma" as it drove off. I commented that Germans should consider themselves lucky that we hadn't Denazified the country the way the Nazis would have. There was a pregnant silence when nobody said a thing and there that topic of conversation ended.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 7 years later...

Yes, in many places it was made illegal to teach German in school. Another way to win the war.

The Hunde=Mord (Murder of Dogs) took place in Columbus, Ohio. Again, any one who knows about this please post. I don't know where the film project is at the moment; I was not able to help the client with this specific question.

Bob Lembke

I found a reference to the killing of 'german' dogs during the war (with citation), here:

During WWI, people of German heritage were suspect in the U.S. Some protests against Germans were violent, including the burning of German books, the killing of German shepherd dogs, and even the murder of one German-American.b

b Feldman, Ruth Tenzer. 2004. World War I (Chronicles of America’s Wars). Minneapolis, MN: Lerner Publications Company.

From:

75 Interesting Facts About WWI

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Would he have been tried in Welsh or in English?

Gwyn

In English almost certainly.

A monoglot Welsh speaker would have had to have someone translate for him (maybe at his expense).

The limited right to speak Welsh was not allowed until the Welsh Courts Act of 1942 was passed.

Even then, the witness/defendant had to prove that they would be at a disadvantage when speaking and giving evidence in English.

The Welsh Language Act of 1967 finally allowed Welsh speakers to use Welsh in court as of right.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

IN WW1, I think it was the 32nd Infty Divn of the US Army that was raised primarily in the midwest with a heavy German ancestry. When they reached Fracne they were very tough fighters & one book said something like when German met German in battle there was ferocious fighting & little or now quarter asked or given. The 32nd men were able to trade insults with the enemy & taunt them every day. They'd advise the enemy to surrender while they could before it was too late!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I believe post #45 is actually in the wrong thread - there is a separate one dealing with a young Welsh lad that seems a more likely destination for the comment!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...