I was just watching a fictional program set during the first world war. Part of the plot involved a British nurse working in a field hospital in France. Many years before the war began she had fallen in love with a German national living in England, and became engaged to him.
watching this fictional entertainment and seeing how the British are portrayed as viewing all Germans as “the enemy”, and no one having any reasonable sympathy for the fact that she had fallen in love with him long before the war got me to thinking about the real world behavior, expectations, practices, and laws in case of an actual declared war between countries in the modern world. (Vs. undeclared wars like Vietnam and wars against nouns like terrorism)
As an example, let’s say Canada and the US declared war on each other. Leaving all the other issues aside, would US citizens residing in Canada, and Canadian citizens residing in the United States, be forced by law to go home? What do they automatically be considered “the enemy”?
If you declare war, foreign nationals are given a deadline to leave. Anyone found after that will be arrested. They could be deported, but it’s not uncommon for them to be jailed.
The reasoning is simple: the country doesn’t have time to do background checks on all enemy nationals. Most are probably not interested in fighting, but some might be willing to commit sabotage on behalf of their birth country. Even those who are deeply in love with someone from your country when war is declared.
At least historically, the declaration of war usually meant the inability to return home due to blockades, interdiction of shipping, etc. Certainly a country would have difficulty deporting all foreign nationals because the country would either have to have sufficient relations with the enemy to make the arrangements or find a third country to accept them.
It is very common for hostile countries to expel each other’s diplomats and suspected spies, and for countries to issue warnings for their people to flee the area. As for mass deportation, I’m sure it has happened at some point but I’d like an example.
The example of WWII Japanese Americans appears to be the exact opposite. But even then, notice that Japanese Americans were interned but not deported. German and Italian Americans, meanwhile, were not sanctioned at all. On the contrary, many Germans were involved in the production of the atomic bomb. Albert Einstein, Edward Teller, Otto Frisch, Felix Bloch- all German. Enrico Fermi was Italian.
Further, I am not familiar with any war in which this has actually happened. Conflicts in Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq did not involve mass deportations of their respective countrymen.
More importantly, I’m not sure how this would even be accomplished. Even if you could spare the resources to round up every single un-naturalized immigrant, there are practical difficulties in trying to repatriate them to a country you are at war with.
The Alien Enemy Act of 1798 gives the President broad discretion to do nearly anything he wants with unnaturalized persons in the event of a declaration of war. Congress would have to declare war; a Canadian invasion isn’t sufficient under the law. The President would not be compelled to expel Canadians, but he could if he wanted.
Mass expulsions do occur, but they’re now regarded as a breach of the Geneva Conventions (as well as the principle of non-discrimination, which is non-derogable). Individuals can be expelled on national security grounds, but they’re entitled to procedural safeguards.
Not necessarily. There is no rule about this, it’s entirely up to each country concerned, as it was in the historical precedents: in effect, the two world wars, since when the old diplomatic formalities and conventions about war have been superseded by the developments in international law since the foundation of the United Nations.
In the old days, the accredited diplomats of the enemy were given a day or two to pack up and go with due formality under the formal international conventions, but resident citizens of the country concerned might be left alone, at least for a while. Enemy aliens weren’t interned in Britain in WW1 until relatively late on (and if memory serves, then it was only the men of military age), and in WW2 only with the threat of invasion after the fall of France (and even then, there was a sifting out of people who were ideologically on our side, who were released, and many of them were allowed to serve in various war occupations).
If you expand the question to the conclusion of a war, large numbers of ethnic Germans were forcibly expelled from eastern Europe at the end of WW2. Including from areas that had been German territory long before WW2.
There is no hard and fast rule that all countries are bound by. In fact, the situation can be highly variable within a given country during a given war.
In the USA (and Canada) in WWII, all persons of Japanese descent, even those born in the Americas, even those living in Peru, were incarcerated in concentration camps and their assets confiscated. But Americans of German descent were happily recruited into the armed forces and sent to Germany to fight for America’s interests.
There were approximately 11,000 Germans detained in the US in WW2. While it’s only about a tenth of the number of Japanese citizens detained, saying that no Germans were detained is completely wrong.
Here’s the Cite you should have provided.
However, this was a very low number of German people detained in the US, out of the 1.2million German born, 5 million with 2 German parents and 6 million one German parent, compared to theJapanese 110.000-120.000.
As far as I remember, even the Manhatten-Project was made up of a lot of emigrant German scientists. This included Oppenheimer, who’s parents where immigrants from Germany.
Is there a distinction between actual passport-holding citizens of a enemy country, and people who are ethnically descended from the country (or appear to be, because of race or language). I would have thought the former might be acceptable under international law but the latter would be ethnic cleansing.
The 11,000 were all of German descent Jtur, I’m not really sure what you or Doughbag are taking issue with. Fewer people of German descent than Japanese descent were interred, especially if you look by percentage of population, but saying that none were is simply factually incorrect.
Is there any longer a “legally declared war” in the sense I think the OP intends, or as applied up until 1945? I thought international law had moved on; in an inter-state conflict, either the UN sets the terms (in which case, there’ll be at least some wishful thinking declaration about protecting civilians), or it isn’t legal anyway.
I just provided a CITE for your statement.
Here’s an quote from my CITE:
Not sure, what the issue is with jtur88, maybe he didn’t read the CITE? Not many Germans were detained, but 11.000 were. I guess my point was, that most US people of German decent were fighting on the Allied side.
Generally they are Interned for the duration. The Diplomats get to leave.
If the USA has only interned the Japanese Citizens in CA, etc, it wouldnt have been a scandal, but the USA also interned USA Citizens of Japanese descent.
If the UN is the sole authority for setting the terms of war, it has been doing a pretty shifty job of it. In the US, the power to make war is vested in the Congress and the President, and lately the Congress has been writing the President blank checks.
But your fundamental point is accurate. Nowadays we talk about authorizations for military force and other idiotic euphemisms.