Internment of German Americans

Internment of German resident aliens and German-American citizens occurred in the United States during the periods of World War I and World War II. During World War II, the legal basis for this detention was under Presidential Proclamation 2526, made by President Franklin D. Roosevelt under the authority of the Alien Enemies Act.

With the U.S. entry into World War I after Germany's unrestricted submarine warfare, as well as the Zimmermann telegram, German nationals were automatically classified as enemy aliens. Two of four main World War I-era internment camps were located in Hot Springs, North Carolina, and Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia. Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer wrote that "All aliens interned by the government are regarded as enemies, and their property is treated accordingly."

By the time of WWII, the United States had a large population of ethnic Germans. Among residents of the United States in 1940, more than 1.2 million persons had been born in Germany, 5 million had two native-German parents, and 6 million had one native-German parent. Many more had distant German ancestry. Between 1940 and 1948, the United States detained at least 11,507 German Americans (excluding thousands of voluntary Internees, many of whom were children) and 4,058 German Latin Americans. The adults were overwhelmingly permanent residents who had not completed naturalization, while most of the children interned with their parents were U.S. born. The government examined the cases of German nationals individually, and detained relatively few in internment camps run by the Department of Justice, as related to its responsibilities under the Alien Enemies Act. To a much lesser extent, some ethnic German US citizens were classified as suspect after due process and also detained.