(Transcript from SBS World News Radio)
Many regarded them as the enemy, causing the contributions of German Australians to the Anzac effort to be largely overlooked.
As historians attempt to correct the record, there is new debate about the treatment of those of German heritage during the war era.
Karen Ashford has the story.
(Click on the audio tab above to hear the full report)
In 1914 no one with German heritage was above suspicion, not even South Australia's Attorney General, Hermann Homburg.
Historian Ian Harmstorf recounts an extraordinary scene.
"The army came and stood outside with the rifles, with the bayonets out attached to the rifle outside his office and demanded that he leave. If he didn't leave voluntarily they were going to frog march him out of Parliament House."
It reflects strong anti-German sentiment that saw almost 40 Lutheran schools closed, and German language classes banned.
Those wanting to serve in the defence force faced barriers, and some changed their names in order to enlist.
Ian Harmstorf says others changed their names to avoid persecution, even those who'd been here for generations.
"Every German, every person with a German name was under suspicion. The slogan was the only good German is a dead German"
The War Precautions Act allowed people of so called 'enemy heritage' to be arrested and placed in prison camps without trial.
Internment camps were set up to manage these perceived enemies, who were then Australia's 4th largest cultural group with more than 100,000 citizens.
But opinion is divided over the extent of internment.
Dr John F. Williams is the author of "German Anzacs", an analysis of German Australians at the time of the Great War.
He says basic logic would suggest the rates of internment have been overstated, arguing the practice was aimed at making an example of a few, in order to control the majority.
"To intern say 100,000 people, we'd have to have traces of our Belsens and our Dachaus and Buchenwalds and we don't. The internment thing I think was exploited by the Australian Prime Minister Bill Hughes. He was able to sort of invent this as a threat over people's heads. If you don't toe the line, you'll finish up in a camp. It's a very good way of keeping people in line."
By contrast, Ian Harmstorf says the camps were large, plentiful and brutal - and often referred to as concentration camps.
"There is a photograph of a German concentration camp. So they concentrated people there. Now South Australia was by far the worst and there was a man called Captain Hawkes who was in charge and he brutalized, he flogged the prisoners with cat o' nine tails, he encouraged the guards to poke them with bayonets, and there are photographs."
Dr Williams agrees it wasn't pleasant, but contends it wasn't as bad as popular belief would make out.
"It certainly would be ridiculous to claim that everything was sweetness and light, that we were decent to the Germans, we weren't. But we weren't obscene.. We didn't put them in concentration camps either."
Dr John Williams believes some 18,000 German Australians soldier fought with the Australian Imperial Force against their ancestral homeland.
He's concerned the heroism of soldiers with German origins, like the highly decorated Edward Mattner, has been neglected.
"They haven't received their proper recognition. You have to first of all have to recognize that they were there, that they did fight, before you recognise what they did. And the whole pressure has been not to recognize that. The story of the internment thing has taken people's minds of the fact that these people were actually fighting and dying on the Western Front. And if we are a multicultural society and we recognise Greek Australians and Aboriginal Australians, and my Anglo Saxon lot Australians, in having played our part in the development of the building up of the country, then it's long overdue. The Germans are long overdue in getting the proper attention in this respect. "
The government of the era claimed not to discriminate against German Australians, but its actions told a different story.
The 1917 Nomenclature Act attempted to wipe German place names off the map.
It was most felt in South Australia, where more than 60 towns underwent cultural whitewashing.
Hahndorf was renamed Ambleside, Lobethal became Tweedvale and Blumberg adopted the name of Birdwood, after the famed Gallipolli commander.
While some towns like Hahndorf have again embraced their German heritage, others like Birdwood have never made the reversion.
Ian Harmstorf says it's not just places, but people too, pointing to many families who to this day remain reluctant to reveal their roots.
"Their parents, and their grandparents were so traumatised by the wars that they have this inner feeling they don't want to talk about it, because somebody one day can turn around, and says as has been said to me, you bloody Nazi".
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