Analysis: Presidential Proclamation 2526: Alien Enemies—Germans
Presidential Proclamation 2526, issued shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 8, 1941, marked a significant moment in the United States' response to World War II. It designated German nationals residing in the U.S. as "alien enemies" amidst growing fears of internal threats as the country prepared for war against Germany and its allies. This proclamation expanded existing measures that had already targeted Japanese nationals and Italian citizens, reflecting an atmosphere of heightened suspicion and security concerns. Under its provisions, thousands of German nationals faced hearings to assess their loyalty, which could lead to internment or restrictions on their movements and rights.
The historical context reveals a nation grappling with the implications of conflict, balancing national security with civil liberties. The proclamation was rooted in the Alien Enemy Act of 1798, a law that allowed the government to regulate the conduct of non-citizens from nations at war with the U.S. As the U.S. transitioned from a position of neutrality to active involvement in the war, the implications of Proclamation 2526 underscore the complexities of citizenship, national identity, and the treatment of immigrant populations during times of crisis. This era also highlights the paradox of individuals who fled persecution in their homeland only to face suspicion and restrictions in their new country.
Analysis: Presidential Proclamation 2526: Alien Enemies—Germans
Date: December 8, 1941
Author: Franklin D. Roosevelt
Genre: law
Summary Overview
On December 7, 1941, Japanese forces launched an air attack on the US naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Over the next few days, the United States plunged into World War II as it (along with Britain) declared war on Japan on December 8 and Germany and Italy declared war on the United States on December 11. Amid this turmoil, President Franklin D. Roosevelt first issued a proclamation under existing US law permitting the detainment and internment of Japanese nationals residing in the United States. Two additional orders, including Presidential Proclamation 2526, expanded these authorizations to include German and Italian citizens. Over the next several years, the US Department of Justice oversaw thousands of cases in which so-called enemy aliens were brought in for hearings to determine their loyalty to the United States. Some of these foreign nationals were interned in detention camps; others were released, but subjected to additional restrictions on their rights and movements.
Defining Moment
When Presidential Proclamation 2526 was issued on December 8, 1941, the United States was not yet at war with Germany, although Americans by that time fully expected that it would come. The Nazi government under German dictator Adolf Hitler had spent years building up the national military, and in 1936 formed a military alliance with Benito Mussolini's fascist government in Italy as well as an anti-Soviet pact with Japan. Hitler's persecution of Jews and political opponents in Germany led to a surge in immigration to the United States as German intellectuals, Jews, and other at-risk Europeans fled for safety.
With the devastation of World War I still fresh in the minds of the British and German people, among others, Western Europe did little to block the rise of a Germany reenergized under the Nazis. The British policy of appeasement allowed Hitler to make territorial grabs in Austria and Czechoslovakia in 1938. In 1939, Hitler signed a nonaggression pact with Soviet leader Joseph Stalin and launched an invasion of Poland that at last led Polish allies Britain and France to declare war on Germany. The next several months saw intense fighting that left Germany and its allies in control of much of mainland Western Europe.
Worried Americans watched the conflict from across the Atlantic. National sentiment opposed intervention in the war; Americans, too, recalled the immense human and economic costs of World War I. During 1940 and 1941, however, the nation's support for the Allies slowly escalated, as the US public generally agreed that Great Britain should not fall to the Nazis. The US federal government also ramped up internal measures to protect domestic security and, hopefully, prevent—or at least prepare for—the possibility of attack.
Among these was the Alien Registration Act of 1940, also known as the Smith Act. This law required anyone living in the United States and not a US citizen to register with a local agency as an alien. Some five millions immigrants across the nation registered their names, personal details, and fingerprints with the government, receiving an alien registration card in return. Upon signing the act, Roosevelt emphasized that the law was not intended to cast suspicion on foreigners but instead to provide a uniform, national way to identify the foreign population in the interests of national security. Some of these same foreigners were, perhaps ironically, those who had escaped oppression in Nazi Germany. The association between noncitizen status and security risk, however, was implied in the mere existence of such a registry.
German Americans comprised one of the largest ethnic groups in the country. Many of these people were native-born US citizens with long domestic family histories. But German Americans and German culture had been subject to persecution in the United States before, during World War I; as 1941 ended, feelings over the US entry into the World War II ran high.
Author Biography
Roosevelt was first elected president in 1932 and had led the United States through many of the difficult years of the Great Depression. Beginning in the mid-1930s, however, Roosevelt had also had to carefully watch the development of fascist and militaristic governments both in Europe and in Japan. Even as the US Congress and American people had remained strongly against US intervention in the burgeoning conflict, Roosevelt had sought to secure US support for Great Britain and France in the face of German military aggression. The president had also supported policies resisting the growing power of the Japanese military government, which began its own efforts to expand into mainland Asia. By the time Proclamation 2526 and the related proclamations 2525 and 2527 were issued in late 1941, the United States had shifted from neutrality to open support for the Allies, as Roosevelt believed that the risk of German attack on the United States would grow greatly if Britain, German's last significant opponent in Western Europe, fell.
Document Analysis
Issued just after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and three days before Germany and Italy formally declared war on the United States on December 11, 1941, Presidential Proclamation 2526 reflected the nation's fears of treachery from within by US residents loyal to a home country then opposed to the United States. The proclamation justifies the legal restrictions it establishes as central to US national defense, and closely resembles Proclamations 2525 and 2527, which established proceedings for the questioning and detainment of Japanese nationals and Italian nationals within US territory, respectively. Following the strictures of the proclamation, the document asserts, would allow these “alien enemies” to “preserve the peace… and to refrain from crime against public safety, and from violating the laws of the United States.”
Proclamation 2526 based its legality on the Alien Enemy Act of 1798, which authorized the president to “direct the conduct to be observed” by the US government toward citizens of a country engaged in hostilities against the United States. Part of the Alien and Sedition Acts passed during a period of tensions with France under the administration of President John Adams, the 1798 law had generated no small amount of controversy in its own day. Proclamation 2526 relies on the tenets of the 1798 law to proclaim German citizens aged fourteen and older “alien enemies” subject to the provisions of the proclamation. It further grants authority to execute the proclamation to the US attorney general within the nation's borders, and to the secretary of war in the Panama Canal Zone and US territories, effectively assigning the domestic administration of the proclamation to the Department of Justice's Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS).
Linking to the preceding Proclamation 2525, the document also formally extends the regulations placed on Japanese nationals to German Americans. These regulations included, but were not limited to, a bar on civilian entry into the Panama Canal Zone, Hawaii, or the Philippines; limits on travel to and from the US territories of Alaska, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands; a bar on international travel and air travel of any kind; and restrictions on changing jobs, moving residences, or joining certain organizations. The proclamation also prohibited German aliens from owning weapons, radios, cameras, or other instruments that could be used to record or transmit confidential information. The document thus placed strict limits on personal freedoms and civil rights basic to the foundational democratic ideals of the United States.
Bibliography and Additional Reading
Behen, Scott M. “German and Italian Internment.” Encyclopedia of Immigration and Migration in the American West. Ed. Gordon Morris Bakken and Alexandra Kindell. Vol. 1. Thousand Oaks: Sage, 2006. Print.
“Brief Overview of the World War II Enemy Alien Control Program.” National Archives. US Natl. Archives and Records Administration, 2014. Web. 14 Oct. 2014.
Holian, Timothy J. The German-Americans and World War II: An Ethnic Experience. New York: Lang, 1998. Print.
TenBroek, Jacobus, Edward N. Barnhart, and Floyd W. Matson. Prejudice, War, and the Constitution. Berkeley: U of California P, 1954. Print.