Nazi Soldier from Eugene Oregon?
Justin
I am watching Band of Brothers episode two, and there is a scene where a
German soldier says he's from Eugene, Oregon. He also says his family
heard the calling and all true Aryans should heed that call - or words
to that effect.
I had to backtrack the DVD a bit to make sure I wasn't mistaken. Is
there any truth to this? What the hell were US citizens doing fighting
on the German side?
Rich Rostrom
> I am watching Band of Brothers episode two, and there is a scene where a
> German soldier says he's from Eugene, Oregon.
> What the hell were US citizens doing fighting on the German side?
There were hundreds of thousands of German immigrants to the
U.S. in the late 19th and early 20th century.
As a result, there were thousands of reverse immigrations as well.
There were children of immigrants who were sent to the Old Country
for education. Germans especially were likely to seek technical
education in Germany - at the time regarded as supreme in science
and technology. Some of these stayed in Germany for various reasons.
Others went home to visit family, or because they inherited property
in Germany, or to do business - and stayed on. Some immigrants
spent a few years in the U.S., decided they didn't like it, and went
back, taking U.S. born children with them.
(William Joyce a/k/a Lord Haw Haw, the British radio traitor,
was born in the U.S. during his family's brief immigration.)
There may have been some German-Americans who went to
Germany because the U.S. was mired in the Depression, and
they could get jobs in Germany.
Don Phillipson
news:ghah21$tuf$1...@news.motzarella.org...
Race was one of the distinctive features of the Third Reich,
i.e. Hitler as Fuehrer claimed the loyalty of all people of
Aryan/German descent, whether living in Berlin or Buenos
Aires or Eugene, Oregon, and some hundreds or thousands
of people heeded this call in the 1930s. (A neighbour of
mine, born in the Panama Canal Zone where his German-
born father worked, went to Germany about 1938 to attend
engineeriing school, and within a year or two found himself
in the Wehrmacht.)
--
Don Phillipson
Carlsbad Springs
(Ottawa, Canada)
geo...@ankerstein.org
> On Dec 5, 1:01 am, Justin <jus...@nobecauseihatespam.com> wrote:
>
> > I am watching Band of Brothers episode two, and there is a scene where a
> > German soldier says he's from Eugene, Oregon.
> > What the hell were US citizens doing fighting on the German side?
>
> There were hundreds of thousands of German immigrants to the
> U.S. in the late 19th and early 20th century.
>
> As a result, there were thousands of reverse immigrations as well.
> There were children of immigrants who were sent to the Old Country
> for education. Germans especially were likely to seek technical
> education in Germany - at the time regarded as supreme in science
> and technology. Some of these stayed in Germany for various reasons.
>
> Others went home to visit family, or because they inherited property
> in Germany, or to do business - and stayed on. Some immigrants
> spent a few years in the U.S., decided they didn't like it, and went
> back, taking U.S. born children with them.
Do not overlook that the economy in Germany in the late 1930s was
better than in the USA. There was a lot of Polish immigration to
Germany for the same reason.
GFH
Stephen Graham
"Towards the late 1930s, as war loomed, Germany made a concerted effort
to have Germans living abroad return home. Part of the incentive was
through Rückwanderer (returnees of repatriate) marks, a form of currency
that created a line of credit in Germany. For 1,000 U.S. dollars, one
would get something like 4,000 Rückwanderer marks. Individuals entered
into this exchange with understanding that upon returning to Germany
they would remain there. Participants in this program would not be
eligible for a reentry permit to return to the United States." Fisher,
_Nazi Saboteurs on Trial_, p. 2.
Justin
and the US government did nothing to stop them?
I guess there wasn't much they could do, is there?
Tron
"Justin" <jus...@nobecauseihatespam.com> skrev i melding
news:ghcjar$a6q$1...@news.motzarella.org...
And
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSDAP/AO.
AFAIK they had some rather large associations in the USA,
but the increasing persecution of Jews and its pre-war culmination
in 1938 made Germany/NSDAP/NSDAP-AO unpopular as well as controversial.
But I don't know whether the USA AO groups were ever actually banned.
> and the US government did nothing to stop them?
They might have stopped recruiters and recruiting inside the USA, of course.
> I guess there wasn't much they could do, is there?
Well, they could have gone to war, conquered Germany and occupied Berlin.
T
Jebir
news:ghbcmd$el6$3...@theodyn.ncf.ca...
- The term for the group is "Volksdeutsche" -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volksdeutsche - people of german descent, but
living abroad without german citizenship. The Nazi Party created a section
directed towards these people early on, with the (overall) purpose of making
use of them in the war effort.
The Wiki-article is rather good, and besides that if you search the web for
volksdeutsche you get lots of hits - rather interesting reading, actually
:-)
- Jebir
Stephen Graham
> - The term for the group is "Volksdeutsche" -
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volksdeutsche - people of german descent,
> but living abroad without german citizenship.
In this particular case, most of the individuals involved were German
citizens, either born in Germany or children of recent immigrants to the
United States. There was some effort at recruiting those from the
general German-American population, descended from earlier immigrants,
but there wasn't much success in doing so.
Stephen Graham
> Stephen Graham wrote:
>> "Towards the late 1930s, as war loomed, Germany made a concerted
>> effort to have Germans living abroad return home. Part of the
>> incentive was through Rückwanderer (returnees of repatriate) marks, a
>> form of currency that created a line of credit in Germany. For 1,000
>> U.S. dollars, one would get something like 4,000 Rückwanderer marks.
>> Individuals entered into this exchange with understanding that upon
>> returning to Germany they would remain there. Participants in this
>> program would not be eligible for a reentry permit to return to the
>> United States." Fisher, _Nazi Saboteurs on Trial_, p. 2.
>
> and the US government did nothing to stop them?
> I guess there wasn't much they could do, is there?
Most of the individuals were German citizens opting to return to their
homeland. Even if they were naturalized citizens or U.S.-born members of
the second generation, the U.S. couldn't reasonably restrict its
citizens from traveling to a major European country with which the U.S.
was at peace.
This was all a fairly normal part of life for the immigrant communities
in the United States.
Bob Martin
>Well, they could have gone to war, conquered Germany and occupied Berlin.
So why didn't they? ;-)
Justin
Were there any US born people of Italian descent that ended up going
back and fighting for Italy?
Stephen Graham
> Were there any US born people of Italian descent that ended up going
> back and fighting for Italy?
I haven't seen an extensive academic discussion of this but there's a
fair amount of anecdotal evidence in accounts. As Phil suggests, it's
not that unlikely, given the flow of individuals and families back and
forth.
JCarew
> German soldier says he's from Eugene, Oregon. He also says his family
> heard the calling and all true Aryans should heed that call - or words
> to that effect.
> I had to backtrack the DVD a bit to make sure I wasn't mistaken. Is
> there any truth to this? What the hell were US citizens doing fighting
> on the German side?
According to the 1990 Census, the German-Americans
are the largest ethnic group in the U.S. with
57,947,374 persons or 23.3% of the U.S. population
claiming some form of German ancestry.
1990 Rank Ancestry Group Number Percent Total
Population 248,709,873 100.0%
1 German 57,947,374 23.3%
2 Irish 38,735,539 15.6%
3 English 32,651,788 13.1%
4 Afro American 23,777,098 9.6%
5 Italian 14,664,550 5.9%
6 American 12,395,999 5.0%
7 Mexican 11,586,983 4.7%
8 French 10,320,935 4.1%
9 Polish 9,366,106 3.8%
10 American Indian 8,708,220 3.5%
From: U.S. Census, 1990 Detailed Ancestry Groups
for States
Jim
narrl...@hotmail.com
It's been a while since I saw this, but I don't think the German
soldier in question is called, or calls himself, a US citizen. There
are plenty of people around now, and plenty around then, who may have
lived here but were not natural-born or naturalized citizens.
Narr
Prisoner at War
(No, seriously....)
rwalker
<prisone...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>What's "American"???
>
>(No, seriously....)
>
>
>
I worked for the U.S. Army in the late 1980s, collecting
anthropometric data to be used for designing clothing, equipment, crew
compartments in tanks and aircraft, etc. One of the things we also
collected was data on ancestry. Generally, if someone didn't know
what their ancestry was prior to their ancestors' arrival in the U.S.,
they simply answered "American." I'm sure that's what it means in
this context as well.
Joe Osman
Probably the best known traitor was USAAF Lt.Martin James Monti, from
St. Louis, who was a follower of Father Coughlin. He flew a photorecon
version of the P-38 into Milan (an F4 or F5). He became a broadcaster
for the Axis and later joined the Waffen-SS as an Untersturmführer. He
was prosecuted for treason in the federal courts in New York and
paroled in 1960.
Joe
Ed Stasiak
> > Justin
> >
> > What the hell were US citizens doing fighting on the German side?
>
> like it, and went back, taking U.S. born children with them.
In fact from the founding of this nation until 1965, approximately
1/3 of all immigrants to the U.S. ended up returning to their mother
country.
Duwop
I've only very recently been seeing this "factoid", and so far only on
the internet. Ed, are you repeating an assertion you saw somewhere
else, or did you see the original report? A quick search didn't bring
anything up.
As immigration has become a hot button issue amongst some in the US
recently, I'd be careful repeating any recent factoids concerning
immigration as it's likely to have been twisted to suit some agenda or
another.
Stephen Graham
> I've only very recently been seeing this "factoid", and so far only on
> the internet. Ed, are you repeating an assertion you saw somewhere
> else, or did you see the original report? A quick search didn't bring
> anything up.
It's not horrendously out-of-line with the general figures I've seen for
individual groups, which I've referenced here before.
Rich Rostrom
As a datum on this topic: a few
months ago, I met some of the
Tuskegee Airmen. One of them
had survived being shot down
over Yugoslavia, and returned
to the Allied lines with the aid
of the Resistance.
I commented that it must have
been somewhat weird for central
European peasants to see a black
man, and he said no.
He added that there had been a lot
of men who hastily migrated to the
U.S. from Austria-Hungary when WW I
broke out, to avoid military service.
They found well-paying factory jobs as the
U.S. began ramping up war production.
Then after the war, many of them
took their savings and returned to
Europe. There were some of them
in almost very village, he said: men
who were quite familiar with the U.S.