Sample Solution

As the CPI released many posters and cartoons, the society took on an anti-German-American environment. News articles began to attack German-American communities and their culture: churches, schools, societies, and even the German language. As a result, the freedom of speech and other civil liberties were held in a lesser regard. Congress passed the Espionage Act, which arrested those who advocated “treason, insurrection, or forcible resistance to any law of the United States.” Then the Sedition Act was passed, restricting limitations on the rights of free speech and free press by making it illegal to publish anything that would undermine the government. Soon, such advocation of anti-German sentiments and suppression of those that spoke out against it affected more than the political atmosphere of the war, but the entirety of America as well.

A cartoon drawn by Jay Norwood “Ding” Darling in Iowa 1917 depicts the German-American as a child-like, sneaky figure:

We see a teacher chastising a child saying, “Take a seat up front, where I can watch you and you won’t be looking over anyone’s shoulder.” The child is dressed in overalls that says “German-American,” a copy of the US war plans in one hand and a letter to the Kaiser in the other. This cartoon quickly fostered suspicion and hatred amongst the nation. Germans were characterized as manipulative people eager to gather scraps of news. A mass phobia against German-Americans developed as many were in fear that German spies were everywhere, reporting back all that they overheard to their motherland. Such characterization of the German-Americans was not uncommon. In fact, cartoons like these were what isolated the German-American community. Possibly other examples and quotes of cartoons?