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Old June 7th, 2012, 04:48 PM   #281
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Two more bizarre anti-German measures of WWI in the US

"German Shephards" became "Alsatians"

The city of Syracuse, NY banned the playing of pinochle (a card game, popular with Germans)

The silliness of this aside, one thing that comes to mind about WW I attitudes compared with WWII is that the American populace was encouraged to be chauvinistically anti-German. In WWII, the message from the top was very clear -- Germans and Italians weren't our enemies, the Nazis and the Fascists were.

Only in the case of Japan was their hostility directed at the nation and its nationals per se.

Because WWI has faded so far in American popular culture, we have a hard time remembering that it was a moral crusade for Americans to better the corruption of the old world, and domestically it was an incitement to ethnic chauvinism and discrimination.
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