Good Americans: Italian and Jewish Immigrants During the First World War (review)

The recent congressional debates and street protests regarding the legal treatment of immigrants come in the midst of the U.S. war in Iraq. Given that the first soldier killed in the war was not an American citizen, Sterba's book on immigrants' military service is particularly timely and important. Good Americans is a well-written and thoughtfully researched comparative study of Italian and Jewish immigrants in the eastern United States during the World War I era. Sterba challenges immigration historians both to center national events in the making of local communities and to return to older questions that focused on how European ethnic groups were integrated into the political and cultural landscape of America's past. Sterba's study is significant because it reflects an attempt to blend two generations of historiography that have often been in conflict.

Good Americans is organized chronologically around three major thematic issues: (1) How did the nation contend with diverse ethnic populations that supported and criticized the war for distinct reasons? (2) In what ways were Italian and Jewish responses to World War I shaped by national and international circumstances that defined their situations in New Haven and New York, respectively? (3) What were the long-term consequences of America's short combat involvement in the war, and how does an assessment of the postwar period reshape our understanding of new immigration. Sterba is at his best when he articulates gaps in scholarship that allow only a myopic view of immigrant life. His point that analysis of national events is crucial to understanding the meaning of ethnic experience is well taken. The book's comparative framework lends itself well to addressing the first two themes that he highlights. But, because the author devotes only a short epilogue to the postwar period, he is incapable of providing much meaningful contribution on the third theme.

Sterba is meticulous in his depiction of New Haven's Italian and New York City's Jewish populations. He shows that, despite all of the differences, these immigrants had some things in common. Comprising the largest ethnic group in their respective locales, they had relative autonomy, as well as political and economic heterogeneity. Although they were able to remain relatively isolated during the Progressive period, World War I forced a confrontation between nation and enclave. The federal government's nationalization of the armed forces and its demand for loyalty required direct responses. In both cases, this nationalization was, in fact, a transnational phenomenon. The appeal to serve resonated with dual (not hyphenated yet) identities as Italians/Jews and Americans. As the U.S. was pulled into the war, distinctions between the two communities became more apparent. New Haven Italians embraced the war. They were recruited into the Italian army as early as 1915 if they had not yet declared their intention to become U.S. citizens, raised money to support the war before American involvement, and joined ethnically segregated units of the national Guard before 1917. New York City Jews were more divided, waiting for conscription and resisting the draft more consistently than their Italian counterparts. In the end, Sterba argues, regardless of how the Jews and Italians entered the military, the war created unity out of diversity.

Sterba's point that military service created unity (President Theodore Roosevelt made the same point at the time) is well documented, but the author's claim that immigrants on the homefront underwent a similar transformation is less convincing. The main problem stems from Sterba's failure to engage fully primary (especially foreign-language) and secondary sources that focus on dissent.