German Internment in Canada During the First and Second World Wars

By Alexandra Bailey

First World War

Of Canadas seven million people, 393,320 were of German origin in 1911 and 129,103 had roots within the boundaries of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.[1] Many Germans were well settled in Canada before the First World War. However, about 18,000 Germans and 90,000 Austrians arrived in the country after 1901.[2] The sense of threat, created when the War broke out overseas in August of 1914, was heightened by the perception that the German enemy was outnumbering Canadians who had been naturalized. The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, set off a chain of alliances.[3] Canada went to war on behalf of France, Britain, Russia and the United States against Germany, the Austro-Hungarian Empire and, later, the Ottoman Empire.[4] The aggression of Germany towards Canadian allies led to a drawn out history of cyclical alienation and re-integration of Germans into Canadian society.

Even before 1914, incipient anxiety could be detected in relation to the commercial choices made by Germans living in Canada. Suspicious eyes were cast at people such as Count Alvo von Alvensleben, who endeavoured to buy enormous amounts of land in British Columbia.[5] Figures of authority in the European Canadian community would sometimes aggravate the problem. Count Haun von Hannhein, the Austro-Hungarian consul in Montreal, periodically took the time to remind his subjects that naturalization did not relieve them of their former allegiances to Austria and their military obligations. The call to reservists extended across the ocean.[6] Prewar popular fiction also occasionally posed Germans as apostles of a foreign militarism and naval debates in the Parliament of Canada demonstrate that German conquest was never far from the minds of politicians and military strategists.[7]

However, these suspicions were still the exception before 1914. Germans who had immigrated to Canada were generally acculturated with ease because they were considered racially akin and had suitable customs and traditions.[8] Interaction with other immigrant groups appears to have been largely cooperative. In the East, including New France, Nova Scotia, and Labrador, eighteenth century settlers found themselves rapidly intermarrying with Francophones.[9] In Alberta, German settlers from Galicia, a region now divided between Poland and the Ukraine,[10] connected with former Ukrainian neighbours, encouraging them to immigrate to Canada and heralding in a wave of immigration from the Ukraine in 1892. This group of Ukrainians worked on Mennonite farms and built roots next to German speaking

communities near Fort Saskatchewan. The Germans and Dutch were assigned to townships in Ontario, living together harmoniously throughout the nineteenth century.[11] Problems over dual identity or divided loyalties were muted. As J.S. Woodsworth, a pioneer in the Canadian social democratic movement,[12] pointed out: in the long run it would seem as if it is the others who are Germanized.[13]

After the outbreak of the First World War, however, Germans became the most reviled immigrant group in Canada.[14] Unlike their Ukrainian neighbours, this revulsion was not mitigated by attempts to recruit the Germans to the cause of the war.[15] Although the Canadian government had considered war with Germany in great detail, a plan for dealing with possible internal saboteurs and agents had not evolved at the outset. Haphazardly, some army reservists were initially allowed to go back overseas. But, by the end of the first week of war, both naval and army reservists were detained. The cabinet vacillated between reassuring German Canadians and Austro-Hungarians that they were accepted and devising new strategies to limit their freedoms.[16] The German invasion of Belgium, however, and the early blows to the British and French forces turned Canadian popular opinion against this immigrant group.[17]

The War Measures Act[18](1914) was used to authorize an ever-increasing deprivation of rights including, internment, exclusion, arrests for suspicious behaviour, and censorship.[19] Citizenship was taken away from German nationals as well as those that had been naturalized. The Wartime Elections Act [20] of 1917, which stayed in place until 1920, disenfranchised all citizens naturalized after March 1902, if they spoke the language of or were born in an enemy nation.[21] The number of unemployed aliens became alarming, particularly in the west, making officials hope that these people would flee to the States. In the end, however, the government ordered that those who could not support themselves should be interned.[22]

In 1916, violence became a popular form of protest against German presence in Canada and the government largely sanctioned this behaviour by refusing to take action.[23] In the same year, an antiGerman league, run by prominent Canadians in Toronto, rallied around banning German imports, eliminating Germans from civil service positions, and halting immigration from Germany.[24] Reminders of this tense climate can be found in the prolific number of name changes made to cities and towns during this time. For instance, the city of Berlin in Ontario was re-named Kitchener after businessmen and manufacturers pressed politicians for the change.[25] The city also raised $100,000 for the newly founded Patriotic Fund, for the promotion of Canadian values.[26] By 1917, German associations were unheard of, German-language schools dissolved and German content was removed from university curricula.[27]

Twenty-four camps across Canada were set up and filled with almost 9,000 of the 88,000 registered enemy aliens from Europe residing in the country. Just over 2,000 of those confined were German.[28] An Order-in-Council made in October had authorized a system of registrars in major centres.[29] Aliens were obliged to register with the centre and were denied the freedom to leave the country without a

permit. The system of registrars gave the Department of Justice the ability to decide who would be interned.[30] The reasons for internment ranged from simply being unemployed to uttering disapproval of state action.[31] Mass expulsion of the entire population, whether aliens or naturalized, was seriously considered at the time. Only a shortage of transportation and fear of international disapproval kept the number of Germans who were expelled from the country to around 1, 600.[32] The majority of internees were not released until after the armistice in 1920.[33]

Between 1914 and 1918, Canadian police boasted that no acts of sabotage had occurred.[34] Later, German state archives were found to indicate that none had ever been intended and, yet, the Canadian government had spent $4,445,000 on internment camps, not including the cost of personnel.[35]

After the war, most Germans living in Canada reacted to the prejudice against them by stifling their German identity.[36] Some Austro-Hungarians even assumed Scandinavian, Dutch or Russian identities in order to avoid the prejudicial treatment. Not until 1923 did Canada re-open its borders to German immigration.[37] Nonetheless, pro-British sentiment continued to be advanced by labour leaders, veterans organizations and other nationalists.[38] They were concerned about the findings of the 1921 census, which indicated that more than 40 percent of the prairie province population was comprised of non-British immigrants. Canadianization became a popular term and under this rubric, German schooling remained altogether prohibited.[39]

Second World War

During the Second World War, German identity again became the cause of much anxiety. On September 10, 1939, Canada went to war against Germanys Nazi regime.[40] What little German cultural activity had revived after the First World War came to a halt.[41] Although most were not treated as badly as they had been during World War I, around 850 German-Canadians[42] were interned and over 66,000 German and Austrian nationals and naturalized citizens, who had arrived in Canada after 1922, were forced to report to police regularly.[43] Internment operations in Canada were notably small considering that there were over 600,000 Germans living in Canada.[44] Leniency was a product of the fact that most German Canadians did not demonstrate any concern for, let alone affiliation with German political interests.[45] Most had left Germany to flee the hostile climate that was developing or, they had been born in Canada. In 1939, the only camps that were open were in Kananaskis, Alberta, and Petawawa, Ontario.[46] It was not until the British started sending their prisoners of war to Canada, that major operations in Quebec opened in order to accommodate them.[47]

After full knowledge of the atrocities committed by the Nazis was revealed, some argue that German identity did not make a complete recovery until about the 1980s.[48] The German Canadian experience of the two World Wars both worked to draw closer bonds within the community and to divide the community.[49] Being (former) subjects of the Third Reich, certain German communities were collectively stigmatized as Nazis, forcing a reliance on one another for support. On the other hand, those who had been persecuted by the Nazis could no longer find their place in German society, where they had once contributed proudly. Finding the tolerance that some Germans had demonstrated during the war unacceptable, most Jewish immigrants chose to associate primarily with the Jewish community in Canada.[50]

Further Reading

Great Alberta Law Cases, online: The Alberta Online Encyclopedia <http://www.albertasource.ca/lawcases/criminal/powmurder/ setting_camps_canada.htm>.

Wikipedia, List of Concentration and Internment Camps, online: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_concentration_and_internment_camps>.

Books

Gerhad Bassler, The German Canadian Mosaic Today and Yesterday: Identities, Roots and Heritage (Ottawa: German Canadian Congress, 1991).

Eric Koch, Deemed Suspect: A Wartime Blunder (Toronto: Methuen, 1980).

Chris Madsen and R.J. Henderson, German Prisoners of War in Canada and Their Artifacts 1940-1948 (Regina: Self Published, 1993).

John Melady, Escape From Canada: The Untold Story of German POWs in Canada 1939-1945 (Toronto, MacMillan of Canada, 1981).

Franca Iacovetta, Roberto Perin, and Angelo Principe, eds., Enemies Within: Italian and Other Internees in Canada and Abroad (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2001).

[1] Desmond P. Morton, Sir William Otter and Internment Operations in Canada during the First World War, (1974) 55:1 Canadian Historical Review 32 at 32 [Morton, Otter]. [2] Ibid. at 33. [3] Wikipedia, World War I, online: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I>. [4] Ibid. [5]Morton, Otter, supra note 1. [6] Ibid. [7] Ibid. [8] Paul Robert Magosci, ed., Encyclopedia of Canadas People, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998) at 606. [9] Ibid. [10] Wikipedia, Galicia, online: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galicia_(Central_Europe)>. [11] Magosci, supra note 8 at 607. [12] Wikipedia, J.S. Woodsworth, online: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._S._Woodsworth>. [13] Magosci, supra note 8 at 607. [14] Ibid. [15] Ibid. [16] Morton, Otter, supra note 1 at 34. [17] Ibid. at 35.

[18] S.C. 1914 (2d sess.), c. 2. [19] Magosci, supra note 8 at 608. [20] S.C. 1917, c. 39. [21] Magosci, supra note 8 at607-608. [22] Morton, Otter, supra note 1 at 38. [23] Magosci, supra note 8 at 607. [24] Ibid. [25] Ibid. [26] Morton, Otter, supra note 1 at 36. [27] Magosci, supra note 8 at 607. [28] Ibid. at 608. [29] Morton, Otter, Supra note 1 at 38. [30] Ibid. [31]Magosci, supra note 8 at 608. [32] Ibid. [33] Ibid. [34] Desmond P. Morton, "Canadas Responses to Past Serious Threats" in Daubney et al., eds., Terrorism, Law and Democracy: How is Canada Changing after September 11 (Montreal: Les ditions Thmis, 2002) 55 at 61. [35]Ibid. [36] Magosci, supra note 8 at 608. [37] Ibid. [38] Ibid. [39] Ibid. [40]Martin F. Auger, Prisoners of the Home Front: German POWs and Enemy Aliens in Southern Quebec, 1940-46 (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2005) at 3. [41] Magosci, supra note 8 at 608. [42]Auger, supra note 40 at 20.

[43] Magosci, supra note 8 at 608. [44] Supra note 40 at 12. [45] Ibid. [46] Ibid. [47] Ibid. [48] Magosci, supra note 8 at 609. [49] Ibid. [50] Ibid.