World War I Food Quirks

 

If you read this blog regularly, you know that I’m a stickler for getting the period details right in my historical novels. That includes the foods my characters eat.

I’ve been working on two books that take place in the Midwest during World War I. The subjects are different, but the settings are similar, and so are the meals.

In 1917, the government created the U.S. Food Administration and commenced a heavy propaganda campaign encouraging citizens to grow their own vegetables and eat less wheat, meat, and sugar. While there was no shortage of those items in the United States, the government needed them to feed the soldiers overseas.

Although the restrictions were mostly voluntary, the propaganda campaign was successful and people tried to comply. To do that, Americans learned to be creative.

Some of the substitutions weren’t too bad. Wheat bread was frowned on, but cornbread recipes abounded, muffins could be made with oats or bran, and sugar was often replaced with honey. I cringe at the meatless options, however. Here is a recipe for Mock Sausage, originally published in The Twentieth Century Club War Time Cook Book (1918):

1 cup lima beans

½ tsp powdered sage

½ tsp dried thyme

½ tsp dried sweet marjoram

corn or vegetable oil

salt

pepper

flour

 

Soak lima beans overnight, boil until very soft, drain and mash, season with salt, pepper and a half teaspoon each of powdered sage, thyme, and sweet marjoram; make into rolls about the size of a finger; roll in flour and fry a golden brown in corn or other vegetable oil.

 

I was a fussy eater as a child, but my appreciation for new foods grew as I got older.

Still, I’m very glad I didn’t live during World War I.

__________

The picture at the top of this page shows a poster issued by the U.S. Food Administration during World War I. It is in the public domain because of its age.

Paranoia

 

My World War I research found many instances of paranoia, both by and against the German-Americans.

Many Americans with German ancestry, and especially those who were born in Germany, struggled with divided loyalties at the beginning of the Great War. But once the United States entered the war, 99% of them were American first.

Still, not everyone recognized that. One of the most egregious cases of mass paranoia was the lynching of Robert Prager in Collinsville, Illinois on April 5, 1918. The motive for the lynching may have been partly based on his union activities, but that wasn’t the reason given. The lynching party claimed that he was a traitor, and the only evidence of that was his German origin.

Prager’s lynching accelerated the harassment against those with a German background. Prominent men of German descent were tarred and feathered and threatened with lynching. Some were actually strung up but were cut down at the last minute. All things German were banned, including Beethoven’s symphonies, and books written in the language were burned in public bonfires.

The German-American community’s actions showed their own paranoia in reacting to the violence. Churches, businesses, and societies Americanized their names, with St. Paul’s German Lutheran Church becoming St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, Verein Vorwaerta changing its name to the New Athens Singing Society, and Dreieinigkeitskirche translating its name to Trinity Church. Most churches dropped their German services even though some of their older members couldn’t understand English, and many parochial schools—which were already teaching most classes in English—stopped using German altogether. German was no longer heard on the streets, either, as neighbors switched to English when holding public conversations.

Those of German descent had some basis for their paranoia, but their persecutors had none. Although there was no evidence of actual disloyalty among the German-American community,  there were plenty of charges. Consider these instances that were reported in the Belleville News-Democrat in the three weeks following the Praeger lynching. One pastor was arrested for obstructing the draft by telling newly enlisted men that it would be easy for them to cross the line at the front and join the German army. Another man was arrested for simply saying that he agreed with statements made by another man who had been arrested for treason. Both men denied the charges. But the worst offense against the First Amendment was the arrest of a woman who called President Wilson a “fat hog.” There was a little more to it than that, but not much. Here is the full article:

Woman Called Wilson Fat Hog; Is Arrested

Mrs. Bertha Smith, 53 years old, of 301-A Locust street, St. Louis, a native of Germany, was arrested yesterday by agents of the Department of Justice. A warrant charging disloyalty will be issued.

“President Wilson looks like a big fat hog,” Mrs. Smith said, according to Mrs. Peter Van Rysel, with whom she roomed. Mrs. Van Rysel, told Federal agents that Mrs. Smith once tore a Red Cross placard from her window and cursed it. Mrs. Smith had expressed a desire, it is charged, to have the American flag that was wrapped around Paul Prager when he was lynched in Collinsville, Ill., that she might tear it up. [Belleville News-Democrat, April 23, 1918 (errors in the original)]

What happened to freedom of speech? Paranoia trampled all over it.

The lesson is simple. Check your facts before you react to what you hear.

Don’t let paranoia win.

__________

The image at the head of this post is a World War I poster, drawn by Henry Raleigh, which was printed in The Sunday Star on September 29, 1919 and mass-produced as a poster. It is in the public domain because of its age.

Researching the Old-Fashioned Way

 

I am preparing to write a middle-grade historical novel about a German-Lutheran girl living in America during World War I. Germany was the enemy, and people of German ancestry living in the U.S. were often treated as enemies even if they were loyal Americans.

One of the most shocking cases of persecution here in the U.S. was the lynching of Robert Prager on April 5, 1918. It took place in Collinsville, Illinois, which is less than twenty miles from St. Louis, Missouri. The nearby Belleville Public Library maintains old copies of The Collinsville Herald on microfilm, and St. Louis is the home of the Concordia Historical Institute, which holds the archives of the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod. Since many LCMS congregations were affected by the suspicions of their non-German neighbors, it made sense to travel to the St. Louis area to search through relevant documents.

That’s what I did last week. I had already done what Internet research I could and had read a number of non-fiction books about the impact of the war on German-Americans, but it wasn’t enough. So I checked into a hotel that would be my home for the next four nights and started at the Belleville, Illinois public library, which carried copies of the weekly Collinsville newspaper as well the daily Belleville News-Democrat. I had already read up on the Prager incident, and The Collinsville Herald gave me those same factual details but not much else. The Belleville News-Democrat carried less about the lynching but was a much better source for the mood and the atmosphere of the time. I was hoping for personal experience stories and didn’t get them, but my time at the Belleville library was still worth-while.

I spent the next two days at the Concordia Historical Institute in St. Louis. Most of my time there was spent going through LCMS publications from 1914 through 1919. Again, I didn’t find much in the way of personal experience stories, but the archives were a good source of background information to help me understand the reasoning behind some of the decisions that my protagonist’s father would have made as pastor of a local German-Lutheran congregation.

Although I would have been happier if I had come away with some personal experience stories (memoirs, diaries, letters) or even cites to some I could look up later, it give me a better idea of the flavor of the times. Between that and learning more background, it was a good trip.

If I discover that a historical novel has the important facts wrong, I put it down and walk away. I’m not the only reader who does that, either.

Research is essential to a good historical novel, and I won’t write one without it..

__________

The image at the top of this post is a political cartoon aimed at German-Americans during World War I. I don’t know the creator or the original source, but it is in the public domain because of its age.

The Forgotten War

Until World War II came along, World War I was called “the great war” and “the war to end all wars.” It was the first war featuring airplanes and armored tanks and chemical warfare and submarines. (Although submarines had been used in earlier wars, their design turned them into one hit wonders. See my August 6, 2012 blog post on the H.L. Hunley.)

So why are there so few World War I memorials compared to World War II memorials? At least it seems that way in our U.S. travels, where Roland and I have seen several memorials and museums dedicated to World War II and its various battles but none (that I remember) dedicated to World War I.

 
Until last month, that is. On our vacation to Kansas City, Missouri, we visited the
World War I Museum at Liberty Memorial, pictured above. The second picture shows the grounds as taken from the top of the tower.

Why did we enter World War I? After all, the war was happening “over there” and had little direct impact on the U.S. Although some Americans travelled to Europe to volunteer to fight or to serve as nurses in field hospitals and many immigrants worried about their relatives in Europe, the war didn’t touch most people living in this country. Then Germany sank the Lusitania, a British passenger ship, and American lives were lost. (See my July 2, 2012 post.) Even then, the U.S. was reluctant to enter the war.

Historians don’t agree on the actual precipitating event, and it may be a combination of several factors, including the Lusitania. Then there was the British interception and decoding of what is known as “the Zimmerman note.” The message from Germany’s foreign minister, Arthur Zimmerman, to the German ambassador in Mexico involved a German plot to persuade Mexico to declare war against the U.S. in order to keep us occupied and out of the war against Germany. And it didn’t help Germany’s cause that its submarines seemed to be targeting U.S. cargo ships after Germany had promised President Wilson that it would leave neutral shipping alone. If Germany was trying to discourage our participation, its actions had the opposite effect.

There is practically no one left who remembers World War I, and that may be part of the reason it tends to be forgotten. But the Civil War was even earlier, and that war still generates significant interest. So the problem is probably the seeming remoteness of the war’s effect on Americans. The Civil War was fought on our soil: World War I was not. U.S. involvement in World War II also started on our soil—or at least in a U.S. territory at a U.S. military base—when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, and it took us by surprise. Our involvement in those wars also lasted longer and had more American casualties.*

Still, World War I was a significant episode in U.S. history, and it is worth remembering.

* * * * *

* The Civil War lasted for four years with approximately 625,000 casualties (Union and Confederate combined), and our involvement in World War II also lasted almost four years with just over 400,000 U.S. casualties. The U.S. involvement in World War I, in contrast, lasted less than two years (April 6, 1917 – November 11, 1918) with less than 125,000 casualties.