Did the US have relocation camps for German-Americans during World War 2?

Answer 1

Relocation CampsAccording to the Time-Life series on WW2, the volume titled "The Home Front: U.S.A,":

"After war was declared, about 5,000 German-Americans were rounded up & interned at Ellis Island. By the end of 1942 most were released."

Here are some more considerations:

POW camps of Germans were spread all over. My family met and worked with some of them for a time, in the southern USA. I believe there was also one famous attempt at escape during the war, in Texas(?), but these German prisoners stood out like a sore thumb and were reported and recaptured quickly.

Additional strategic and real-world considerations for General DeWitt's removal order in early 1942 for ethnic Japanese from the West Coast Zone that he commanded, while the same was not viwed as necessary for ethnic Germans:

(1) There was very little risk of a German land invasion of the USA in early 1942, whereas the Japanese had already, on the two days surrounding Pearl Harbor (as mentioned in FDR's speech on December 8th) made large-scale AMPHIBIOUS invasion landings on another five or six major target locations in the Pacific.

(2) 50,000 of the ethnic Japanese were NOT U.S. citizens and thousands spoke little of no English. This was not the case with the ethnic Germans, who had for the most part assimilated in a major way.

(3) Some few German and other eastern European nationals were arrested by the FBI on the west coast, as spies, during this same timeframe. Their numbers were small and easily monitored.

More input

A history site on Beale AFB contains the following exerpt in it's summary of history of the base...

{During World War II, Camp Beale's 86,000 acres were home for more than 60,000 soldiers, a prisoner-of-war encampment, and a 1,000-bed hospital.}

http://www.beale.af.mil/history/ptop.asp

The story I heard goes as follows;

Two nazi pow's planned an escape from the camp at Beale. One night under the cover of darkness, the two men set out through the fence with a couple of days worth of food and the clothes on their back. After three days of walking, they decided to give up and go back. They were trying to walk out of the country and they decided that the U.S.A. was just too big. The catch in the story is that when they left, they set out in a southerly direction. Beale is about 30 miles north of Sacramento, just above Marysville. In reality, they never even got out of the state of California.

That one, I cannot verify, as it is a handed down story from the elders of our family.

In very general terms one needs to distinguish between (1) the relatively small number people in the U.S. who were German nationals and (2) the much larger group of Americans who in varying senses were of German origin who had only U.S. citizenship. This latter group included Americans who spoke no German at all to the small German-speaking communities in some parts of Wisconsin, for example. In other words, the term "German-Americans" is vague.

However, note that the legislation - such as the Alien Enemy Act of 1798 - refers to "enemy ancestry". Those most likely to be arrested and relocated were those who were not well integrated. They could be interned on the basis of gossip and hearsay and things that no ordinary US court would take seriously. Usually, only adult men were interned, but in some cases their families obtained permission to join them.

As far as I'm aware, the latter group was **on the whole** left alone in WWII. As for people in America with German citizenship (and this included many refugees from Nazi persecution) some were interned and/or relocated.

This website provides much more information:

http://www.foitimes.com/internment/gasummary.htm

Added:

It should be obvious that German prisoners of war, that is, members of the German armed forces taken prisoner in combat, were in a completely different category.

Answer 2

Yes, they did. And some Italian-Americans. And Germans and Italians from Central and South American nations.