Vikings to U-Boats: The German Experience in Newfoundland and Labrador (review)

Describing this book as a ‘labour of love’ that began some forty years ago, Professor Bassler uses it to culminate his extensive research into the history of the German-speaking people of Newfoundland-Labrador. While it’s a story that begins with hints of a German presence among the Viking settlers of first-millennium Canada, the principal narrative begins with the 1760s arrival on the Labrador coast of Moravian missionaries sent out from Germany. Elsewhere in the colony of Newfoundland, the German presence long remained limited to a small scattering of individuals of diverse background, most of whom were sojourners rather than permanent settlers. Nevertheless, by 1914 the nucleus of an emerging German community had emerged in St John’s.

Local attitudes toward these newcomers was ‘predominantly positive,’ including widespread acceptance of German-style lager beer brewed under the direction of craftsmen brought from the old country. Then came the Great War and with it a rapid and dramatic shift in the popular attitude toward those of German background living in Newfoundland-Labrador. Fuelled by the hysteria of wartime propaganda, which endlessly reported ‘Hun’ atrocities, local Germans, regardless of their individual innocence and degree of cultural assimilation, were viewed as enemy aliens, inherently disposed toward subversion. Even the pacifist Moravian missionaries were seen as a threat to the war effort, so much so that they were placed under police supervision. The net effect of the 1914–18 war, Bassler argues, was to cripple the German presence in Newfoundland-Labrador and leave a lasting legacy of distrust.

Old enmities broke out again when war with Germany resumed in 1939. If anything, things reached a new low for Germans who found themselves living in Newfoundland-Labrador. Incarceration, combined with acute ostracism, made life miserable, even for the small number of Germans of Jewish background who had fled to Newfoundland as refugees from Nazi oppression. Anyone who spoke German was regarded, both high and low among Newfoundlanders, as a potential traitor. Bassler further notes that there has been no postwar recognition or apology for the victimization suffered by Newfoundland’s German-speaking minority. Instead, a folklore persists which claims that fifth-column treason flourished within this beleaguered and essentially blameless community.

Thus we have the paradox that a place with so very few Germans was perhaps the area where anti-German prejudice became most destructive. The reason, Bassler suggests, was first because the German community in Newfoundland-Labrador lacked the cohesion and leverage needed to mount a collective defence against its enemies. And here was a host community overwhelmingly composed of the native-born, most of whom had ethnic roots in the British Isles. Being thus ‘closed, rural and culturally homogeneous,’ the host had limited capacity to achieve a nuanced relationship with the ‘other’ as represented by those of German background.

Overall, Bassler’s argument is persuasive, although at times claims that Newfoundland-Labrador had the potential to become a many-cultured community through acceptance of the German presence seem exaggerated. Perhaps that argument could be better advanced through investigation of the Aboriginal and francophone elements within the overall Newfoundland population. Furthermore, readers might have been given more detail about the transformation of the Moravian community in Labrador, especially in the aftermath of World War One. To summarize, although expensive, this book offers an insightful assessment, particularly of how war shaped the Canadian experience through the first half of the last century.