A History of Migration from Germany to Canada 1850 – 1939 (review)

An American professor of history, Jonathan Wagner taught for many years in Winnipeg, returning to Minot State University in North Dakota. His earlier book, Brothers Beyond the Sea: National Socialism in Canada, was published in 1981 by Wilfrid Laurier University Press. In that book Wagner traced Nazi and proto-Nazi movements in Canada, concluding that the Canadian government was kept up-to-date by the rcmp on these developments. This careful preparation paid off, he claimed, and the wartime internment was ‘carried out in an efficient and coordinated fashion.’ In fact, the rcmp was caught completely flat-footed. It had concentrated on communists rather than fascists, had no real intelligence or even language capabilities, and was forced to scramble at the last minute–even advertising in the newspapers for assistance–to name dangerous aliens for the government. Of the more than eight hundred interned, most were quickly let out again because of faulty evidence.

Wagner’s present volume on migration from Germany to Canada covers the period of early German industrialization to the Second World War. He avoids larger migration and modernization theories in this regard, preferring to use the words traditional and modern only as general adjectives. He concentrates on immigrants from Germany itself, thereby leaving aside the much larger groups of Germans who came to Canada from elsewhere such as Russia or Austria-Hungary, who outnumbered Reich Germans eight to one before the First World War, while only a quarter of the hundred thousand German immigrants between the wars came from Germany proper. He also admits he will not discuss Rückwanderung (return migration) or what happened to the immigrants once they arrived in Canada. When writing of German associations in Canada, he does not distinguish clearly between Reich Germans and Germans from elsewhere. Nor do refugees from Nazi Germany appear here.

Wagner tends to concentrate on bureaucratic and propaganda policies in both Germany and Canada, dividing his work into four periods; 1850–70, 1879–90, 1890–1914, and 1914–39. His summaries of politics in both countries are necessarily rather brief as he tries to capture a large background quickly. He quotes interestingly from officials and immigration agents in both countries, emphasizing the Canadian side of the equation. The underlying problem was that Germany progressively restricted emigration as it needed its excess rural labour for its factories, while Canada looked for agricultural workers and domestics in the main. One of Wagner’s conclusions is that Canadian immigration policy was socially and politically a failure. However, in light of Canada’s desire for agricultural workers and its success in admitting so many, especially in the West, this conclusion is not convincing. Aspects of Wagner’s push-pull narrative are useful to students of this topic.