In the person of Zimmerman , the filmmakers seemingly found a latter-day Sergeant York . Like the World War I hero that Gary Cooper portrayed in Sergeant York , Zimmerman was a pacifist farmer . In contrast to York , however , he never reassessed his religiously motivated aversion to bearing arms . Like other Mennonite residents of the county , Zimmerman was the descendant of German-speaking Anabaptists – or “ re-baptizers ”– whose embrace of adult baptism and rejection of armed resistance placed them at odds with other Reformation factions in Europe and caused them to seek refuge in colonial Pennsylvania . Even before Germany ’ s September 1939 invasion of Poland launched the war in Europe , the Roosevelt administration frequently employed visual images of Pennsylvania Anabaptists to promote its political agenda . Several reasons existed for this fascination with the Anabaptists of Pennsylvania . In segregated America , Amish , Mennonite , and other white farm families were safer subjects for New Deal celebrations of the nation ’ s “ common man ” than were members of the racially diverse urban working class . The Anabaptist division of labor between male farmers and female homemakers appealed to New Dealers eager to prop up traditional gender roles at a time of high male unemployment . And with their theologically based commitment to nonconformity and agricultural self-sufficiency , Anabaptists neatly reflected the national creation myth . Like the Puritan founders , these thrifty , hard-working , Christian agrarians were admirable role models for depression-weary Americans of the 1930s . Farmer at War was thus following in a tradition established several years earlier in Works Progress Administration posters and Farm Security Administration photographs featuring Amish and Mennonite subjects . 12 12
David Weaver-Zercher , The Amish in the American Imagination ( Baltimore : Johns 95