The outstanding bravery of the soldiers of the all Japanese-American 442nd Infantry Regiment while fighting in Italy is fairly well known (as is, hopefully the fact that 21 of the Regiment’s soldiers were awarded the Medal of Honor).
Were there any similar regiments made up exclusively of German-American soldiers?
Less specifically, and my main question, I am curious to know whether German-American servicemen were preferentially sent to the Pacific front.
Thanks!
No. German-Americans caught hell during WWI, but by the time WWII rolled around they were pretty much considered to be real Americans. Besides, there were so many Americans of German & Italian descent during WWII that any thoughts along those lines would have probably resulted in protests. strikes, riots, & a big black eye for the party in power.
The Japanese were more recent arrivals & fewer in numbers. They got to catch hell for Hirohito, Hitler, & Mussolini.
German Americans are now 17% of the US population (#1 ancestry), a number which still seems surprisingly small. I can’t imagine that it was smaller in WWII, possibly even larger. It would be hard to avoid finding a German American soldier, and possibly drain troop levels from certain areas.
By the way, some German and Italian ancestry Americans were interned. I believe they were typically only “fresh off the boat” when compared to nisei, etc. The extent of interment was not as large as Japanese internment, for reasons both discriminatory and practical.
Well, Dwight Eisenhower was himself of German dissent and was Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe.
And Chester Nimitz’s grandfather was in the German Merchant Marine.
And “Eisen” and “Stalin” both mean “steel” (I think 
).
Adolf Hitler’s own German dissent is apparent in this clip.
Almost. Not sure about Stalin (although “Stahl” is steel in German), but “Eisenhauer”, which would be the proper German spelling, means iron smith (“Eisen” - iron, “hauen” - to pound).
Wow, I see now just how silly my question is. Given the way I worded it and, as pointed out by thelurkinghorror, in light of the huge German American population, it’s obvious the answer can’t be in the affirmative.
What I should have said is more along the lines of ‘were relatively recent German immigrants preferentially sent to the Pacific theatre’? Or, ‘was any attempt made to direct recent German immigrants into the Pacific’.
I’ll also use this post to mention that the motivation for starting this thread came from me reading A Fiery Peace in a Cold War (about the German American pilot Bernard Schriever who, despite being fluent in German, was stationed in the Pacific). It didn’t seem sensible to me to send him to fight the Japanese when his language skills were tailor made for a soldier/airman fighting the Germans.
Werner Göring served in the USAAF in Europe, flying B-17s I think. If they were willing to let Göring’s nephew fly over Germany, I think that says something.
I remember a documentary showing how Jewish-American POW’s were separated from their groups by the SS and made to carry rocks up and down hill until many of them died.
Hitler ordered that any German nationals captured while serving in the French Foreign Legion be shot (which Rommel ignored).
So although ethnic Germans in the ETO were not targeted, it was not guaranteed.
D’oh!!! :smack: What can I say? I had a looong day.
Please pardon a minor hijack - but how would they be detected as such by the Germans? I suppose some names would be a giveaway to Jewish decent, but was there any other ways for the Germans to identify Jewish prisoners? I’m guessing Military ID don’t include religion, but maybe it did back then?
Ther religion was marked on their dogtags.
Ah, that sounds like a rather bad idea. Is this still done today, or was it something that has been done away with?
According to Wikipedia, the pratice continues, although it seems the service allows the individual to obtain a set that does not list the members religious preference. The cites for this appear a little weak.
I served as enlisted in the USN in the 80’s, they had religious pref’s printed on the dog tags at that time.
I imagine the idea is to get the appropriate clergymen to console you or administer last rites or whatever if your injured severely enough that you can’t make your preferences known verbally.
I think that’s the idea: so they know who to have say a prayer if you get killed in battle.
In Europe, at least, when looking for Jews pretending to be Gentiles to avoid deportation, etc., the Germans made a practice of checking if a man was circumcised. Especially in that area and era, a circumcised man was very likely to be Jewish. Cite #1. Cite #2 (search for ‘circumcision test’). The same test was used on POWs.
The problem is that such a test only worked well for Europeans. Then, as now, a large percentage of American and Canadian men were circumcised.