German and Austro-Hungarian Internment during World War One in the United States
April 1919 Signal Corps panorama of Fort Douglas, Utah, War Prison Barracks Three
When Congress declared war against Germany on April 6, 1917, the government of the United States was faced with an unprecedented problem in warfare. Living in the United States were over two million people of enemy birth. Germany required military service so many of those living in the United States were technically "reservists" in the German army or navy. Feared most by the Wilson Administration was the potential of German reserve officers organizing plots against the United States. There were precedents for this fear in the years 1914 to 1917. German Naval personnel jumping ship in the Mexican ports were fighting in the Mexican civil war, German agents were active in the Pacific sending information to Berlin, and German agents were implicated in plots to arm insurgents in India.
Surveillance of reserve German officers commenced in 1915, shortly after the sinking of the Lusitania by the Secret Service and the Justice Department. This was limited to a few hundred individuals and was focused on recruiters, influential members of the German-American community and outspoken followers of the Central Powers.
With the declaration of war, presidential proclamations were issued targeted at "alien enemies," Germans who had not completed the naturalization process. The Wilson Administration was faced with three choices: intern all German aliens, intern no German aliens or selective internment. It chose to selectively intern German aliens, holding the power to intern only in Washington, D.C. with the Justice Department. Internment was integrated into the bureaucracy of the Prisoner of War camps administered by the War Department and run by the United States Army.
Within a few weeks of the declaration the first wave of arrests was completed. By May 6, 1917, 125 Germans had been interned. By the end of October, 1917, arrests in the United States of German aliens only amounted to slightly over 900.
Three camps were established for civilian internees and prisoners of war. War Prison Barracks One, at Fort McPherson, Georgia (four miles from Atlanta), War Prison Barracks Two, at Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia (across the border from Chattanooga, Tennessee, and War Prison Barracks Three, at Fort Douglas, Utah, (four miles from Salt Lake City). Another camp was established by the Labor Department at Hot Springs, North Carolina, but was transferred to the War Department in 1918.
In October, 1917, the War Emergency Division was formed in the Justice Department by John Lord O'Brian to oversee internment. Assistant Attorney General Charles Warren, the person who drafted the Espionage Act, the Trading with the Enemy Act and the Sedition Act was perceived as too conservative and violating civil liberties. O'Brian appointed three prominent Harvard law alums and a recent law school graduate, J. Edgar Hoover, to direct the internment program. The dictatorial powers of Charles Warren were dispersed and the power to arrest was shifted to the local United States Marshal who could make better decisions on the spot. U.S. Marshals were political appointees who, in some cases, were barely literate. This shift set the stage for a disaster. The second set of regulations for alien enemies was proclaimed by President Wilson in November and with those regulations came a series of exclusion zones. Austro-Hungarians became alien enemies when Congress declared war on Austria-Hungary in December. With increasing participation in the war, anti-German hysteria grew. Ambitious marshals filled jails in the spring of 1918. Warrants were requested in some cases weeks after the arrest. Auxiliary police groups such as the American Protective League (APL) and others would detain suspects that were believed to be German but later found to be of another nationality. Greeks, Dutch, French, Belgians, Ukrainians, Poles, Serbs, Italians and others were arrested because U.S. Marshals could not tell who was and who was not an "alien enemy."
With the hysteria of the spring of 1918 came mass arrests. Washington was flooded with requests for warrants. Thousands were arrested in the spring of 1918 for minor infractions such as walking into an exclusion zone, living in an exclusion zone and belonging to an alleged subversive group. IWW's, Jehovah's Witnesses, Socialists, Conscientious Objectors and undesirables were all subject to arrest in this disposal system. The Armistice of November 11, 1918 did not slow arrests. The final arrests took place in February, 1919 but with the defeat of the Kaiser a new threat loomed: the world Bolshevik conspiracy.
Attorney General Thomas W. Gregory was leaving the Justice Department in the spring of 1919 but his successor, A. Mitchell Palmer did not want the subversives released from the camps, numbering over 6,000. With the "Red Scare" of 1919-20, Palmer held as many internees as possible. Gregory released one third of the internees before he left office. Another third took the option given them: repatriation to a Europe many of them barely knew. Congressional pressure from Republicans attempting to reduce spending finally closed the camps in May, 1920.
Internment and Prisoner of War Camps in the United States
War Prison Barracks One, Fort McPherson, Georgia
War Prison Barracks Two, Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia
War Prison Barracks Three, Fort Douglas, Utah
Hot Springs, North Carolina
Legal documents relating to Civilian Internment
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Links to Related Sites
Internment in World War One
Canada - Baniff National Park World War One Internment Camps
Ukranian Internment in Canada in World War One
Australia-World War One Internment records in the National Office
Treaties Relating to the Treatment of Prisoners of War in World War One
The Hague Conventions
Internment in World War Two
The Germanic Conference - Internment
The Invisible Gulag: German American Internment during World War Two by Stephen Fox
Arthur D. Jacobs: Researcher: Internment in the United States during World War II
Industrial Workers of the World
Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)
IWW index to documents
IWW Songs
Domesticity Deployed: Gender, Race and the Construction of Class Struggle in the Bisbee Deportation
The Great Bisbee IWW Deportation of July 12 1917
World War One - General Links
World War I Document Archive
World War One - Trenches on the Web
General Links to Prison sites today
History of Fort McPherson
History of Fort Douglas
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