Sample Solution

Once the war continued, newspapers like these gained courage to write against one-sided accounts, though such instances were rare.

On October 1918, the Barrington Courier praised a German soldier that volunteered to fight in the army:

He bravely laid down his life for the cause of his country. His name will ever remain fresh in the hearts of his friends and comrades. The record of his honorable service will be preserved in the archives of the American Expeditionary Forces.

This quote sheds light onto the positive voices regarding German-Americans. Yet, it is important to note that this quote was published after the German-American had died. This excerpt implies that this German solider was likely pressured to enlist due to societal biases; in order to prove that they were not a German spy, many were forced to enlist in order to escape the harsh and often forms of ethnic prejudices. Even so, the town of Barrington honored Otto as a hero. His name appears in honor rolls in memorial books such as Soldiers of the Great War, Echoes of a Century 1847–1947 and the 1929 Illinois Roll of Honor. A Radke neighbor painted a large oval portrait of Otto in his infantry uniform, and more than one neighbor told the family that the boy had been a young man of promise. CITATION Although Otto was praised, it shows how Germans were only recognized after being forced to show their loyalty to their country.

On September 25, 1919, Woodrow Wilson announced that “any man who carries a hyphen about with him carries a dagger that he is ready to plunge into the vitals of this Republic whenever he gets ready.” President Woodrow Wilson questioned the loyalty of immigrants, including German-Americans. In the midst of the First World War, Roosevelt saw immigrants’ allegiances to their home country as a threat to America’s national security; he claimed that “hyphenated Americans” were not committing fully to their national identity. This quote reveals the significance of labels during this time period. Many German-Americans changed their surnames or parts of their names where German descent was obvious. Furthermore, cities and stores around the nation were changed into more Americanized ones, such as Schmidt to Smith. This reveals how this sentiment penetrated beyond actions into more tangible efforts, such as names. A c