The effects of World War I in Wisconsin included attacks on German culture and calls to indict the Socialist mayor of Milwaukee, according to historian Richard Pifer.
Pifer spoke Monday evening to some 50 people at the Chippewa Valley Museum, prior to the museum’s annual meeting. He is the author of The Great War Comes to Wisconsin: Sacrifice, Patriotism, and Free Speech in a Time of Crisis, a 2017 publication of the Wisconsin Historical Society Press.
Pifer, who holds a Ph.D. in American history from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, noted that Nov. 11 will mark the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I.
His book uses Wisconsin as a lens through which to examine what was happening on the home front during that war. It also follows five soldiers from Wisconsin’s 32nd (Red Arrow) Division, four who returned home after the war and one who died of his wounds.
Leadership and diplomacy matter
Pifer said that one of the lessons he drew from events that led to World War I is that diplomacy and leadership both matter. Both were lacking in the second decade of the 20th century, he said, and the fundamental failure of leadership made war almost inevitable as European nations mobilized their armed forces according to long-standing plans.
The nations that fought the war from its beginning in 1914 did so because they thought they were advancing their national interests. But by the war’s end, three of those empires – Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman and German – had disappeared and the British and French empires had begun their long, slow decline, Pifer said, adding that this illustrates his belief that war is an activity that nations can’t control and whose outcome can’t be predicted.
Intolerance ‘a natural partner of war’
Pifer, who retired in 2015 from his position as director of reference and public services for the Library-Archives Division of the Historical Society, said that intolerance – which he called “a natural partner of war” – showed up in several ways in Wisconsin. German culture that had been a respected aspect of the state became reviled overnight, to the point where books were burned publicly in three Wisconsin cities, he said.
Hatreds took the form of “vigilante justice” across the state, with such results as painting, in yellow, various buildings owned by people suspected of sympathizing with Germany or simply opposing American involvement in the war.
Pifer said that Wheeler Bloodgood, a noted Milwaukee attorney, went so far as to demand that Daniel Hoan, the Socialist mayor of Milwaukee from 1916 to 1940, be indicted for disloyalty even though Hoan had broken with the Socialist party’s position opposing the United States’ entry into the war.
‘Self-appointed patriots’ a threat
The situation got so tense, Pifer said, that then-Gov. Emanuel Philipp, a conservative Republican, commented that self-appointed patriots posed the greatest threat to the country.
Pifer said that 90 people in Wisconsin were indicted for activities – such as praising Germany in some way — that allegedly violated the 1917 Espionage Act. The list included Victor Berger, the Socialist editor of several Milwaukee newspapers.
Pifer noted that during World War I, surveillance of individuals for possible disloyalty became fairly commonplace in American society, through the efforts of such groups as the American Protective League. That group, comprised of private citizens, worked with federal law enforcement agencies to identify suspected German sympathizers and to counteract activities opposing the war.
— by David Gordon, associate editor
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