Description
Book SynopsisFear can be more dangerous than the threats we think loom over ushow Germans and German Americans were perceived as a dangerous enemy during World War I. Although Americans have long celebrated their nation's diversity, they also have consistently harbored suspicions of foreign peoples both at home and abroad. In Age of Fear, Zachary Smith argues that, as World War I grew more menacing and the presumed German threat loomed over the United States, many white Anglo-Saxon Americans grew increasingly concerned about the vulnerability of their race, culture, and authority. Consequently, they directed their long-held apprehensions over ethnic and racial pluralism onto their German neighbors and overseas enemies whom they had once greatly admired. Smith examines the often racially tinged, apocalyptic arguments made during the war by politicians, propaganda agencies, the press, novelists, and artists. He also assesses citizens' reactions to these messages and explains how the rise of natio
Trade ReviewThis is a thoughtful, well-written piece of scholarship . . . the similarities between the war years and the present were clear and impossible to ignore . . . Sadly, for all that has changed in 100 years, the book is a sobering reminder of lessons we have not yet learned.
—Anita Talsma Gaul,
Annals of IowaTable of ContentsAcknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1: Identity, Decline, and Preparedness, 1914-1917
Chapter 2: The Emergence of the Internal Enemy Other, 1914-1917
Chapter 3: The War on the Internal Enemy Other, 1917-1918
Chapter 4: Resisting Regressive Militarism, 1917-1918
Chapter 5: Toward the Democratic Millennium, 1914-1918
Epilogue: Fear, Othering, and Identity in the Postwar
United States
Notes
Bibliography
Index
