"Anti-German Hysteria During W.W. I"

New Ulm’s strong German heritage played against it during World War I.

Since 1914, several speeches, meetings and newspaper articles had expressed a view against America’s involvement in the war, although America joined the war in 1917.

After a public meeting where speeches regarding the new military draft and a desire to avoid both the war and fighting potential relatives in Germany were given, the Governor of Minnesota removed New Ulm’s Mayor, City Attorney and County Auditor from office.

There were several newspaper articles around the state condemning New Ulm as being “traitorous”. A newspaper in Princeton questioned whether the Dakota shouldn’t have done a better job in the 1862 battles and a banner hung across the main street of neighboring Sleepy Eye saying, “Berlin - 10 Miles East”!  There were several reports of state and possibly federal “spies” in New Ulm although nothing came of this effort. 

The result of this backlash was a more subdued public expression of “Germanity” in New Ulm, although in some sense it made the German heritage even stronger on a personal level.

As an ironic side-note, we must have proved our loyalty to America by World War II because we were home to a German Prisoner of War Camp in 1944-45 located just outside of town, in modern-day Flandrau State Park!