At the begging of research I had difficulty finding any information on anti German laws in AVL. Since I did not have much luck in AVL I turned to google. In google I searched Anti German Laws in WWI and found many helpful sources. One site which was a educational site gave me a lot of information on German breweries and how Americans wanted to outlaw them and alcohol itself. The website helped me discover that the anti saloon league and the Women's Christian Temperance Union wanted alcohol to be prohibited with in the united states. Them and others, such as Henry Ford, argued that prohibiting alcohol would end machine politics, eliminate corruption, and help Americanize immigrants.
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| The American view of German-Americans during WWI |
to prohibit alcohol I came across the president at the time, Woodrow Wilson's, name. The president want to partially prohibit alcohol to preserve grain because the country was at war, and in September of that year he banned production of beer while at war. Discovering this made me happy because not that I'm against beer or people drinking but I'm glad the president thought it was more important to feed the troops instead of have a beer.
Even though beer had been banned the Anti Saloon League was still at it calling Milwaukee's brewers "the worst of all our German enemies."This statement place Americans more against the Germans and more for being against beer. Even with this brewers tried to argued that even though the grain was being used for the soldiers that more money was being made by tax on beer then liberty bonds itself. Brewers believe it would be better for the war to keep producing beer and selling it because the tax would go to the government which would then go to the war. This failed miserably though because Americans viewed wine or beer drinking a part of German culture therefore they were against it.
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| Kaiser |
After learning from that website I searched for more! I again returned to google but without much luck I retired AVL! This time I had luck there!! Continuing to learn about how laws were created against alcohol I discovered that the law was called the 18th Amendment. The source I used gave a great description on the law and said, "the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited.” I am not positive if this statement was quoted from the 18th Amendment itself or if it was a statement made about the Amendment.
Turing back to google again I found a website that might of not talked a lot about Anti-German Laws but it did talk about how Americans made it very hard to view any German as a good person. The website explains how Woodrow Wilson hired a journalist named Creel to attempt to publicize anything that would make Americans pro-war and sign up to fight in WWI. Creel placed many adds in different magazines and posters to recruit people to fight in the war, but this is not what made it difficult for German-Americans to be like. When Germans of any kinda started to look real evil was when movies where starting to be created which made German officers just look absolutely crazy. These videos did not only make German officers look crazy, but it made anyone with German blood in them look crazy. The videos were supposed to recruit people for war, which it did, but it also turned people against any German even if they were harmless.
Though out researching this topic I learned a lot about this era. I would have never even imaged that alcohol would be banned I would have thought that there would have been an up roar from people who wanted it. Plus I never knew so many people that ancestors came to a country where they wanted unity and where open to excepting different peoples, that they would turn on those believes and be against them. It is amazing to me because some of the people against Germans probably had some German in them. Over all I really did enjoy researching this topic and learning about laws against German and what all they had to put up with with in that era.
