During the First World War, nearly half a million immigrant 
draftees from forty-six different nations served in the U.S. Army. 
This surge of Old World soldiers challenged the American military's
cultural, linguistic, and religious traditions and required 
military leaders to reconsider their training methods for the 
foreign-born troops.How did the U.S. War Department integrate 
this diverse group into a united fighting force?


The war department drew on the experiences of progressive social 
welfare reformers, who worked with immigrants in urban settlement 
houses, and they listened to industrial efficiency experts, who 
connected combat performance to morale and personnel management. 
Perhaps most significantly, the military enlisted the help of 
ethnic community leaders, who assisted in training, socializing, 
and Americanizing immigrant troops and who pressured the military 
to recognize and meet the important cultural and religious needs 
of the ethnic soldiers.


Ford's research illuminates what it meant for the U.S. military 
to reexamine early twentieth-century nativism; instead of forcing
soldiers into a melting pot, war department policies created an 
atmosphere that made both American and ethnic pride acceptable.

    
During the war, a German officer commented on the ethnic 
diversity of the American army and noted, with some amazement, 
that these "semi-Americans" considered themselves to be "true-born 
sons of their adopted country." The officer was wrong on one count. 
The immigrant soldiers were not "semi-Americans"; they were 
"Americans all!"


_________________________________________________________

NANCY GENTILE FORD is a professor of history at Bloomsburg 
University in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania. She has written a number 
of articles dealing with ethnicity, gender, and citizenship in war. 
Ford is currently writing a book that examines key debates in military 
history.


Number Seventy-three: Texas A&M University Military History Series