Saxon? German? American?: Negotiating Germanness and Belonging in the United States, 1935–1939

Using a series of letters written by Saxon immigrants living in the United States during the 1930s, this article complicates prevailing views about German ethnic consciousness after World War I. The author argues that immigrants, far from simply being “assimilated” Americans, continued to draw upon their heritage to negotiate challenges unique to their particular group. Subjected to pressures from increasingly exclusive German and American nationalisms, they tried to define Germanness as compatible with the “American Way of Life,” even though that eventually proved to be impossible.