An Opposing View and A Rebuttal


An Opposing View

  • Review Essay: Were German-Americans Interned during World War Two? A Question concerning Scholarly Standards and Integrity. AATG's The German Quarterly, Winter 1998, pp. 73-77. Jeffrey Sammons (Yale U.) reviews two works on the topic with special focus on the Holian work noted below. Please contact AATG for a copy of the German Quarterly article and consult other related resources, as I am unable to do justice to the issue on this website and furthermore it is simply not my burden.

    Sammons closes his review as follows:

    I am not expert on these matters and I should be glad to be better informed and have my concern for vicitms aroused. Doubtless there is much to criticize in the whole atmosphere of the time. But the quality of the work that has been presented so far is unacceptable. Despite all the assertions, including the blatantly tendentious subtitle of the Tolzmann volumes, no evidence has as yet been brought forward that, except for the minor children of enemy aliens, any German-Americans were interned during World War ll. To claim otherwise is irresponsible. We in our discipline should raise our level of alertness to such matters. There is reason to think that, in discourse relating to Germany and the Germans, especially at the interface with the larger public, there has been a deterioration of scholarly standards. Examples are, on the anti-German side, the flawed histories of Paul Lawrence Rose and Daniel Johan Goldhagen, in literary matters Gordon A. Craig's..."
    The works reviewed are:

    1. Holian, Timothy J. The German-Americans and World War ll. An Ethnic Experience. New German-American Studies. Ed. Don Heinrich Tolzmann., 6. New York: Lang, 1996.

    2. Tolzmann, Don Heinrich, ed. German-Americans in the World Wars, Munich: Sauer, 1995.
    Volume IV: The World War Two Experience. The Internment of German-Americans: Documents
    Editors: Arthur D. Jacobs and Joseph E. Fallon
    Medium: 3 sections in 4 parts
    ISBN: 3-598-21534-7

    NOTE: The Jacobs-Fallon work is a compilation of official government (U.S.) documents. It was a work designed for scholars to use to conduct further research.


    A Reaction to the Above Material

    Dear :

    I hereby respectfully request that you add the following link below the aforementioned Sammons statement on the cited web page, <http://www.foitimes.com> with the following subtitle:

    Authors' Reply to Jeffrey Sammons' review essay: "Were German-Americans Interned during World War II? A Question concerning Scholarly Standards and Integrity".
    If you find it impractical to do this, then I ask that in keeping with academic fairness that you remove the Sammons excerpt listed above from your web page.

    It may not be clear to you, thus I will try to make it clear. Permanent resident aliens residing in the United States, and who are here under a United States Passport, are, in fact, Americans; and in the instance of German permanent resident aliens they are German Americans. To be sure they are not U.S. citizens, but they are Americans, and those interned in the U.S. during World War II, were, in fact, German Americans. And for the record even adult American citizens of German heritage were arrested and interned in the United States.

    Sincerely,
    Arthur D. Jacobs
    Major, USAF Retired


    Return to German Americana Page.