The movement of the United States towards entry into World War I impacted German-Americans more that most other ethnic groups that were part of America’s celebrated melting pot. Forming roughly ten percent of the population at the turn of the century, first and second-generation German-Americans living within the United States retained strong cultural ties to the land of their ancestors. When the United States entered the war in April 1917, anti-German sentiment expectedly rose among the general population, yet many German-Americans enlisted in the U.S. armed forces to fight under the Stars and Stripes. Among them was Arthur Christian Niedermiller, the son of a Detroit shoemaker.
(Left) Looking up Woodward Avenue in downtown Detroit, July 1917 (Library of Congress)
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