George Creel

Anti-German Hysteria in the United States
When George Creel began his
publicinformation campaign on behalf of
the U.S. war effort during World War I, the
United States had never before sent its
soldiers to fight on European soil. A wave
of hysteria directed against Germany and
Austria-Hungary swept the nation, and
many Americans directed their hatred
against people from those countries,
calling the Germans “Krauts” and the
Austrians “Huns.” Some local governments
passed “English-only” laws; many high
schools stopped teaching the German
language; and many orchestras stopped
playing music by Beethoven, Brahms, and
other German composers. The Viennaborn
violinist Fritz Kreisler was on a
concert tour in the United States when the
war broke out, and he was forbidden to
play in many cities. Some people even
suggested using the term “Liberty
cabbage” instead of the German word
“sauerkraut” and substituting “Salisbury
steak” for the word “hamburger.”
In the decades immediately before
the war, many people from Europe,
including Germany and Austria-Hungary,
had immigrated to the United States.
Some Americans feared that these newer
immigrants might be more loyal to their
old homelands than to the United States.
Under George Creel’s direction, the
Committee of Public Information made
special efforts to reach out to these
immigrant communities and publicized the
contributions that immigrants were
making to the war effort, such as
volunteering for the armed services or
buying Liberty Bonds. Creel strongly
criticized so-called patriotic organizations
for harassing immigrants and questioning
their loyalty.
The CPI angered many people, including CPI member
Robert Lansing, who thought Creel’s use of actors, filmmakers,
and journalists was undermining the traditional role of U.S.
diplomats. Creel countered this criticism by arguing that “We
wanted plain Americans who thought regularly and enthusiastically
in terms of America, and who would worry over doing
the job, not whether they had on the right coat.” Still, in 1918
Congress voted to cut the CPI’s budget in half, but not before
the agency had created a modern and influential publicinformation
program for the United States, one that would
serve as a model for democracies worldwide.
32 World War I: Biographies