Prior to WWI Americans typically self-identified among their ancestral lineage like Irish-American, German-American, Italian-American. It took a war and the ass

Prior to WWI Americans typically self-identified among their ancestral lineage like Irish-American, German-American, Italian-American. It took a war and the associated shared trauma and government propaganda machine to start developing a distinct "American" nationality and more unity which developed into a much stronger nativist agenda.