Canada, Germans in (during World Wars I and II)

By 1914, the over 400,000 people of Ger­man descent in Canada constituted the Dominion’s third-largest ethnic group after the British and French. Most of the Ger­man speakers in Ontario—including the sizable Mennonite population—had been Loyalists, although the roots of the small German population in Nova Scotia pre­dated the American Revolution.

In the older, established German com­munities of British Columbia and On­tario, successful business and professional men were part of the local “establish­ment,” politically and otherwise. German cultural clubs flourished in most urban centers. In Berlin, Ontario, the country’s most “German” city, the birthdays of the Emperor Wilhelm II and Queen Victoria were both celebrated as civic holidays. The German Canadians in these long-settled communities saw no contradiction be­tween loyalty to Canada and admiration of German culture.

In the early years of the century, “na- tivism” (or Anglo-conformity) was a grow­ing force in western Canada.

By 1914, half of the German Canadian population was Canadian-born, and only 20,000 were not naturalized (that is, not British subjects). Overall, the “German” community in Canada was markedly het­erogeneous, with no cohesive ethnic iden­tity and with rare exception, only a cul- tural—but not a political—affinity for “the Fatherland.” The outbreak of World War I marked the end of innocence for Canada’s German population as the much-favored settlers and citizens found themselves vili­fied overnight. Canada would wage war against not only Germany but also “Ger­manness.” In fairness, the Canadian gov­ernment faced a difficult situation. The Dominion’s population included half a million people from countries at war with the British Empire, many of them only re­cently arrived. Incautious statements favor­able to the German and Austro-Hungarian cause had been made by some newspapers and community leaders. Canada bordered the neutral United States, where millions more who were sympathetic to the British Empire’s enemies resided. The realization that some German and Austrian reservists were slipping into the United States and thence back to Europe further heightened suspicions. Despite Ottawa’s initial pledge that “immigrants of German nationality quietly pursuing their usual avocation...

Anglo-Canadian animosity focused on “enemy aliens,” of whom Germans quickly became the most loathed. The ex­perience of the 10,000-strong community in Winnipeg, Canada’s third-largest city, was typical. Efforts to create a German Canadian identity, so central to the com­munity’s activities prior to 1914, had to be abandoned. Indeed, churches were the only German cultural institutions not to show a marked decline in participation, and even some of them cut back on German-language services. The outbreak of hostilities ignited a wave of vandalism against German property, and many workers of German descent were fired. Local merchants and consumers boy­cotted German products and businesses. Some members of the community were even assaulted on the street. Most foreign­ers—like the Ukrainians and Poles—were quick to display their loyalty to the British cause as a group, but Germans were reluc­tant, instead trying to lie low. Although no evidence of spying was ever unearthed, fears of German fifth columnists became rampant. Daily the warlike nature of the “Huns” was hammered home in the press. Ottawa supplied every newspaper with a copy of the British Report of the Commit­tee on Perceived German Outrages, which breathlessly accused the German army of “murder, lust and pillage... on a scale unparalleled in any war between civilized nations” (Thompson 1991, 6). Mean­while, German cultural attainments were everywhere denigrated. The idea that “Kaiserism” and militarism embodied the will of the German people was universally accepted. Winnipeg’s Germans were be­wildered by their portrayal in the English- language press but powerless to do any­thing about it. The city’s Germans, who had been trying to integrate before the war, now had less contact than ever with their English-speaking neighbors.

In Ontario, German Canadians volun­tarily closed many of their schools, and most refrained from using their language in public.

For many western Canadians, loyalty and cultural and linguistic uniformity be­came synonymous during World War I. Public pressure finally achieved the aboli­tion of all bilingual schools in Manitoba in 1916. Alberta and Saskatchewan followed suit two years later. Public schools were seen as the mill that would take immigrant children and “turn them out with the stamp of the King and the Maple Leaf ” (Thompson 1991, 8). Such displays of na- tivism were not just aimed at Germans. Nonetheless, many reacted by shedding their identity—Braun became Brown, and Schmidt Smith. Several western communi­ties with German names adopted less of­fensive identities—Dusseldorf, Alberta, be­came Freedom, and Prussia, Saskatchewan, was renamed Leader. Still, many other towns in heavily German-populated areas resisted the tide.

Throughout the war, jittery Canadians invariably linked accidental disasters like the burning down of the parliament build­ings in 1916 to the “hidden hand” of the “enemy alien.” Harvest time reliably brewed a spate of rumors that the crop would be torched. Newspapers repeatedly warned of a German American army massed to invade, with “enemy aliens” se­cretly drilling in Canada to assist them. In reality, German Canadians posed no secu­rity threat, and there was no evidence dur-

ing the war of their involvement in fifth column activity.

Naturalized Germans or Austrians who tried to prove their loyalty by enlisting were usually rejected. The University of Toronto dismissed three German faculty members, and miners in Fernie, British Columbia, struck rather than have to work alongside Germans. Scattered acts of vio­lence against German property and indi­viduals occurred virtually everywhere and usually involved soldiers. Forcing Germans on the street to kneel and kiss the Union Jack was a favored measure.

Although governments rarely encour­aged or approved outbreaks of vigilante justice, prosecutions were rare, and all gradually succumbed to an outraged pub­lic’s demands that they “deal” with the “enemy alien.” The War Measures Act (1914) had given the federal government powers of “arrest, detention, exclusion and deportation” of individuals and specifically denied the rights of bail and habeas corpus to anyone arrested “upon suspicion that he is an alien enemy.” From 1915 onward, such persons—80,000 registered, a large proportion of them Germans—had to re­port monthly to local authorities, and their movements (and bank accounts) were strictly monitored. Altogether Ottawa in­terned nearly 8,000 Canadian residents for varying periods, including almost 1,200 Germans. Internment and registration ap­plied only to the unnaturalized, and the great majority of the internees were impov­erished Ukrainians.

German-language newspapers contin­ued to publish. The War Measures Act in­corporated a censorship law, but Ottawa refused to muzzle the German-language press. Instead, the government closed down “defiant” papers and had local offi­cials and the Royal North West Mounted Police monitor the others. The chief censor quickly extracted a pledge that nothing would be published “unduly to cause exul­tation among German readers” (Entz 1976, 58). Editors walked a fine line. When Conrad Eymann, editor of Der [Saskatchewan] Courier, urged his German Canadian readers to become more involved in Canadian life “from a thoroughly loyal Canadian standpoint,” his apparent advo­cacy of political involvement was not well received (April 24, 1915). So-called re­turned men (mostly wounded veterans) led a growing chorus to silence the “enemy press”—Der Couriers offices were ran­sacked by such protestors twice in 1917 alone.

The reinforcement crisis of 1917 pro­duced a Unionist government of English­speaking Conservatives and Liberals com­mitted to conscription for overseas service. Although principally aimed at French Canadians, conscription made the predica­ment of “enemy aliens” much worse. The War-Times Election Act (1917) disenfran­chised all Germans (and other “enemy aliens”) who were naturalized but had ar­rived after 1898, which included the vast majority of Germans in western Canada. All Mennonites lost the vote without ex­ception. Both groups were also exempted from the draft. The measure was one of several adopted to ensure a Unionist vic­tory at the polls in December 1917. Re­turned soldiers and many others thought the government had let the “enemy aliens” off too lightly. “Left to fatten on war-time prosperity,” they argued, saying it was time to conscript these people for industry at a private’s pay (Thompson 1991, 9). In con­trast to German Canadian business and professional people and urban workers who had suffered badly during the war, German-speaking farmers generally had done well—their sons stayed home, and agricultural prices were high. German Canadians in Ontario did not lose the franchise and scored a rare political victory when William D. Euler, the mayor of Kitchener, won election to the House of Commons in 1917 on an unapologetically pro-German Canadian and anticonscrip­tion platform. By 1917-1918, the “war in­creasingly came to be viewed,” according to Art Grenke, “as a struggle, not between armies, but between forces of British and Allied justice and righteousness, and the Germans forces of darkness and autocracy.” To its credit, the federal government did not accede to the more extreme demands of the nativists and patriots during the last two years of the war, but public opinion would not have stopped it.

The last year of the conflict brought exhaustion at home and a wave of strikes. Frightened upper- and middle-class Cana­dians branded labor unrest as “bolshe­vism,” which was denounced as a German- inspired war strategy. Although German Canadian workers who participated in strikes were just following the lead of their unions, their actions were offered as clear evidence of a malign Teutonic plot. The banning of meetings in German and the suppression of the German-language press that occurred in the last months of the war were both ostensibly aimed at the Bolshe­vik menace. The red scare ensured that many anti-German measures remained in place through 1919.

As David Smith aptly put it, people of “enemy alien” origin became a problem for the Canadian government from 1914 to 1918 “not because they were disloyal... but because many native-born Canadians suspected them of being disloyal” (Smith 1969, 436). Although many of the mea­sures taken against Germans had been part of the prewar nativist agenda, fear of and hatred toward the “enemy alien” nurtured by wartime patriotism had helped to legit­imize government action. The impact of the oppression suffered during World War I was deep and lasting. The ethnic pride and traditional self-esteem of German Canadian communities plummeted to a point where even those United Empire Loyalist families who before 1914 had been proud of their German descent suddenly renounced it. At least 100,000 German Canadians claimed Dutch or Austrian eth­nicity in the 1921 census. The prewar be­lief in “German culture” was discarded, with the result that Germans became one of the most assimilated ethnic groups in Canada during the 1920s and 1930s. In­deed, most wanted nothing more than to be left alone. The government restored the franchise in 1920, and the 1919 prohibi­tion against German immigration was dis­mantled in 1923. Public opinion, however, would have kept the door firmly closed.

The militant Anglo-Canadianism spawned in World War I set the cultural tone during the interwar years and constituted a far more virulent form of nativism than any­thing the “foreign-born” had encountered before World War I.

The 1931 census showed 474,000 Canadians of German descent. Although only about one in ten were from Germany, most Anglo-Canadians continued to feel that all Germans were culturally homoge­neous and had their political roots there. Eight years later, only 16,000 of the Ger­mans in Canada were not naturalized, and large numbers of these were Jewish, Aus­trian, or Czech refugees. The reopening of German immigration had led to an influx of both Mennonites and non-Mennonites from Russia during the 1920s. Of the 90,000 post—World War I German immi­grants in the Dominion in 1939, 80 per­cent had taken up farming in the West (McLaughlin 1985, 13).

Nazi Germany made a major—if dis­organized—effort to proselytize among these newcomers after 1933. The National Socialist German Worker’s Party (NSDAP) itself and the Deutsche Arbeits- front (DAF, or German Labor Front) at­tempted to recruit German citizens, while the Deutscher Bund Kanada (German As­sociation of Canada), a thinly disguised cultural and social club established in 1934, aimed at the naturalized (and by now predominantly Canadian-born) pop­ulation. Membership in the DAF and Nazi Party never exceeded 500 and 140, respec­tively. As for the Bund, it claimed perhaps 2,500 members, including Mennonites and devout Lutherans who joined for nos­talgic and cultural reasons rather than ide­ology. For many of the Russlaender (Rus­sian) Mennonites who had fled Russia in the 1920s, the Nazis’ anticommunism ex­ercised strong appeal. Most German- language newspapers—with several Roman Catholic exceptions—were sympa­thetic or at least benign toward the “new Germany,” a stance that would come back to haunt them after 1939.

Overall, however, Nazism was never able to gain a large following among Ger­man Canadians. Although significant numbers of ethnic Germans undoubtedly sympathized in one way or another, the raving about Jews, Communists, racial pu­rity, and even the preservation of the lan­guage was of little relevance to German Canadians during the Great Depression. Furthermore, the communities were di­vided geographically and otherwise and re­mained profoundly affected by the anti­Germanism of World War I. By the late 1930s, the vast majority of Germans in eastern Canada and a growing number in the west had ceased to identify themselves as Germans, dooming any effort to pro­mote a volkisch ideal and making Nazism itself seem “foreign.”

Such success as the Nazis did achieve was assisted by the apathy of the Canadian government and non-German population. The Bund’s appeal lay primarily among the young, economically marginal, and gener­ally disaffected recent German immigrants. Bund promoters, by continuously refuting anti-Nazi arguments in public, actually heightened the awareness of the Nazi threat among both German Canadians and the larger population. More overtly Nazi initia­tives like setting up swastika clubs generally fizzled in the face of nativist opposition. The shock of the 1938 Reichskristallnacht and the undeniable prospect of war by 1939 finally began to alert Canadians to the “threat” of domestic Nazism.

Throughout the 1930s, “refugee” was a code word for Jew in Ottawa. Amid de­pression and dust bowl conditions, new­comers were unwelcome in Canada, least of all Jews. Proportionately, Canada had the worst record of any country in accept­ing German Jewish refugees. French-speak­ing Catholic Quebec was openly opposed, a view that the Liberal Party government of Mackenzie King felt it dare not ignore, but antisemitism ran deep in English-speaking Canada, too. Making “refugee” policy fell to a few antisemites in the bureaucracy, with predictable—and tragic—results. Ot­tawa mostly offered sanctimonious expres­sions of sympathy and promises to study the problem. The small Canadian Jewish community lacked confidence and was di­vided over how to influence the system. Canada’s response to the 1938 Evian Con­ference starkly revealed the country’s posi­tion—even a proposal to admit some 5,000 German and Austrian refugees, the “better kind of Jew,” over four years, with the costs paid by Canadian Jewry and none of the refugees to be settled in Quebec, was spurned by Ottawa. Reichskristallnacht forced public opinion to confront Nazi brutality, and the government appeared to be on the verge of finally helping on “hu­manitarian” grounds, only to back down again. Instead, Ottawa agreed to admit 200 families of anti-Nazi (and predominantly Roman Catholic) Sudeten Germans, not the least to deflect mounting international pressure to take Jews. As late as 1939, the government, with no significant public op­position, turned away the liner St. Louis with its pitiful cargo of 907 German Jewish refugees. Following strict regulations to the letter, Ottawa would not even provide tem­porary transit for German Jews bound for the United States.

The war changed nothing. About 2,600 “friendly” alien internees from Britain were accepted by Canada in 1940. Among them were many German refugees, including Klaus Fuchs, a future atomic spy. Ottawa, however, deemed them all suspect, and with tasteless irony, interned them with domestic Nazis for two years. Only the desperate need for skilled labor led to their gradual release. British requests to have thousands of German Jewish child refugees temporarily admitted were brusquely turned down, though thousands of British children were welcomed with open arms.

While Canada did not officially de­clare war until September 10, 1939, a week after Britain, the proclamation of the De­fence of Canada Regulations (DCR) under the War Measures Act a week earlier sent shudders through Canada’s German com­munity. Under the DCR, the justice minis­ter could detain without charge anyone who might act “in any manner prejudicial to the public safety or the safety of the state.” Once again, habeas corpus was sus­pended. Ominously, the government also granted these sweeping powers to provin­cial and municipal authorities who were likely to be much less scrupulous in their application. Whether naturalized or not, all Germans who had arrived after 1922 had to register.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) had made a halfhearted effort during the late 1930s to identify the “sus­pect” elements within the German Cana­dian population. The force’s real interest was chasing “Reds”—a preoccupation the war would not change—and few German Canadians were involved in left-wing activ­ities. Lacking contacts in the community or even language skills, the handful of offi­cers assigned to the task had not gotten very far. Mere membership in the Bund could find one portrayed as a dangerous Nazi agent. However, in the absence of anything better, the list compiled haphaz­ardly by the RCMP became the master guide in the fall of 1939. During the first months of the war, English Canadian opin­ion pushed politicians and bureaucrats to destroy the German conspiracy within, and Ottawa and the authorities responded hur­riedly, though rarely out of any legitimate security concerns. The first 303 arrests— most of them ordinary farmers and work- ers—were made on September 4, six days before Canada officially declared war. In camera judicial reviews followed, and with them the first releases for lack of evidence.

Widespread reports of fifth columnists during the blitzkrieg of western Europe convinced skittish Canadians that such ac­tivities might be rife at home, derailing government plans to liberalize the DCR. The ensuing public uproar was fed by RCMP paranoia—even Eskimos, the Mounties claimed, had been recruited, and thousands of dangerous agents were likely on the loose. The force quickly assembled a new and longer list of “enemy alien” sus­pects, mostly via denunciations. By mid- 1941, however, everyone’s attention turned to the Japanese Canadian community in British Columbia. From 1942 onward Ot­tawa steadily released German Canadian internees and held only 89 in custody at war’s end. In December 1942 all natural­ized Germans in Canada were exempted from reporting because of their “exemplary good behavior.” Six months later the armed forces authorized their enlistment. Forty citizens of German descent were de­naturalized during the war, but the process was so poorly received by German Canadi­ans—a vital Liberal electoral con­stituency—that the King government qui­etly discontinued the practice. Altogether, a total of 847 Germans and German Cana­dians were detained, modestly lower than the World War I numbers.

During World War II, policy toward German Canadians was much influenced by a small group of diplomats in the De­partment of External Affairs who advised the prime minister. They subscribed to the view that Nazism was a minority criminal conspiracy even in Germany, let alone Canada—hence it was only necessary to ar­rest the “real” Nazis. Neither King nor his ministers personally saw German Canadi­ans as depraved or untrustworthy in the mass, and their obsession with maintaining national unity meant the government would try to avoid overreacting. In addi­tion, the wartime emphasis on home front economic achievements helped German Canadians—who were already quite assim- ilated—to “fit in.” The relatively light mil­itary losses incurred through mid-1943 helped keep down anti-German feeling as well. Finally, unlike World War I, when from Wilhelm II to humble peasant, all had been “Huns,” during World War II the majority of the Anglo-Canadian public made a distinction between Adolf Hitler and his followers on the one hand and the majority of ordinary German people—and German Canadians—on the other.

Most German organizations, certainly the ones not suppressed as Nazi fronts, quickly professed their loyalty, and many wisely suspended operations. In most areas, Lutheran churches ceased using German in services and proclaimed their loyalty to King George VI. A steady flow of German Canadian enlistments—for example, Al­bert Hoffmeister served with distinction in command of an armored division—helped defuse suspicion. It helped greatly that most of the English-language press gener­ally refrained from the anti-German vitu­peration so prevalent a generation earlier, instead stressing the government line that but for a few bad apples, German Canadi­ans were loyal. Beginning in 1941, the Wartime Information Board (WIB) began targeting immigrant communities, includ­ing German ones, to support the war. As the title of WIB pamphlets and radio pro­grams asserted, they were Canadians All. Nativists and overzealous patriots in the guise of chambers of commerce, service clubs, farmers’ organizations, unions, and of course the Royal Canadian Legion throughout the west protested the lack of “sufficient arrests.” Unlike World War I, however, vigilantism and rioting did not accompany the rhetoric.

The sense of camaraderie that the war effort fostered generally worked to under­mine class and ethnic barriers. Although most German Canadians benefited from this, Mennonites and Hutterites became the object of heightened hostility. In 1939 there were 110,000 Mennonites scattered across Ontario and the Prairies. German­speaking and pacifistic, their practice of “die Stillen im Lande”—being quiet in the land—was unlikely to save them from dis­crimination. Though some had been ar­rested and imprisoned from 1917 to 1918, and there had been serious friction with non-Mennonite neighbors, the Borden government had accepted their claim of conscientious objector status and honored pledges made to earlier Mennonite settlers that they would not be conscripted. Still, no such promise was given to the Russlaen- der Mennonites who immigrated to Canada during the 1920s.

Mennonite leaders failed to reach a consensus when they met in the spring of 1939 to discuss a common stand in the event of another war. Although the Russ- laenders were generally prepared to serve as noncombatants, the majority adhered to the traditional position on nonparticipa­tion, shunning even alternative service if it was directly related to the war. Conscrip­tion for home defense, introduced in June 1940, posed a serious problem. Apart from those groups given carte blanche exemp­tion, initial negotiations with government officials over alternative service did not go well. There were isolated cases of vandal­ism, Mennonite public school teachers lost their jobs, and German-language classes had to be terminated as anti-Mennonite feeling intensified.

Resolving the alternative service im­passe was crucial, and the timely interven­tion of Agriculture Minister James Gar­diner, a former Saskatchewan premier sympathetic to the Mennonite situation, avoided a crisis. Ottawa granted a form of civilian alternative service in late 1940 that served as an acceptable compromise. When the men were initially confined to working in national parks, public opinion dismissed the waste of labor. Although many Men- nonites were prepared and indeed sought to do more, progress in making this possi­ble was painfully slow. In 1943 the govern­ment, confronted with a desperate labor shortage, finally sent most Mennonite con­scientious objectors to work on farms or in industry where their cooperative spirit and work ethic earned general admiration. Later that year, Mennonites were allowed to enlist in the army medical services. Over 7,000 Mennonite men accepted alternative service, and many others simply went to work in war industries.

The most telling statistic involved the more than 3,000 who enlisted in the armed forces, most as combatants. Bearing arms caused much conflict in (and between) Mennonite communities. Many of those who enlisted were shunned by their con­gregations or found it impossible to reinte­grate after the war. Even alternative service broadened horizons. For many Mennon- ites, male and female, leaving home was a frequent—and often permanent—experi­ence during World War II.

Whereas Mennonites’ willingness to cooperate in the war effort in tangible ways won them at least grudging acceptance, the more isolationist and uncooperative Hut- terite community, who adamantly refused any form of alternative service, was much resented and harshly treated. In Alberta, the home of most of Canada’s Hutterites, the government attempted to restrict their land-ownership, finally succeeding in 1947.

By any measure—language use and re­tention, residential and occupational segre­gation, marriage patterns, or membership in ethnic churches and associations— among German Canadians all but the Hut- terites were more assimilated into the Canadian mainstream in 1945 than in 1939. Although some of this process had been economically driven, much was at­tributable to wartime pressure. And al­though the situation was significantly bet­ter than it had been a generation earlier, it was painful enough, especially since “none of these [German] minorities ever consti­tuted a serious threat to Canadian secu­rity,” as John Thompson argued. “In all cases the war emergency provided the justi­fication for internment, but policies were built upon long-established patterns of prejudice established in peacetime” (Thompson 1991, 17).

At least the absence of bitter anti­German tensions within Canada during World War II made the postwar adjust­ment of German immigrants easier. The onset of the cold war, coupled with basic Canadian decency, led to the acceptance of 50,000 displaced persons in 1947 and 1948, primarily from Western-occupied Germany and mostly German refugees from east of the Oder-Neisse Line. By 1950, Ottawa permitted citizens of West Germany to immigrate, and during the next twenty years, almost 300,000 arrived.

The “enemy alien” experience in the two world wars, of which German-speak­ing Canadians bore a disproportionate share, had a profound ethno-cultural im­pact on their community. Gerhard Bassler, a leading historian of the period, pointed out: “While English Canada par­ticipated in the world wars with an un­precedented ‘national’ euphoria and emerged from them with a new sense of nationhood, a large segment of Canadian society, including the population of the entire German-Canadian mosaic... was left the opposite experience. Its members were ostracized as ‘aliens’ and penalized for their non-English cultural and ethnic identity. [Their] experience [during eleven years of war] and, as a result, [their stigmatization] for many more years, made generations of German Canadians eager to renounce their visible ethnicity and heritage” (Bassler 1990, 42).

By the 1960s, while “Germans” were still the third-largest identifiable ethnic group, they were among the best inte­grated, least vocal, and least politically ac­tive ethnic groups in Canada. Certainly the two wars played a central role in this trans­formation.

Pat Brennan

See also Berlin/Kitchener, Ontario; Fuchs, Klaus; Nova Scotia; Ontario; Papen, Franz von; S.S. St. Louis; World War I, German Prisoners and Civilian Internees in; World War I, German Sabotage in Canada during

References and Further Reading

Bassler, Gerhard P. “Silent or Silenced Co­founders of Canada? Reflections on the History of German Canadians.” Canadian Ethnic Studies, 22, 1 (1990): 38-46.

Entz, W. “The Suppression of the German Language Press in September 1918 (with Special Reference to the Secular German Language Papers in Western Canada).” Canadian Ethnic Studies, 8, 2 (1976): 56-70.

McLaughlin, Kenneth. The Germans in Canada. Ottawa: Canadian Historical Association, 1985.

Smith, David. “Emergency Government in Canada.” Canadian Historical Review, 50, 4 (December 1969): 429-448.

Socknat, Thomas. Witness against War: Pacifism in Canada, 1900—1945. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987.

Thompson, John. Ethnic Minorities during Two World Wars. Ottawa: Canadian Historical Association, 1991.

Wagner, Jonathan. Brothers Beyond the Sea: National Socialism in Canada. Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1981.