History of German part 2

The history of German Americans in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries proves the resilience and powerful cultural effects that German immigrants had in the United States. German Americans who had resided in the United States for two or three generations began to assimilate into the general population, adopting the customs and language of the American society at large. However, the immigrants exerted a profound influence over the society that they sought to assimilate into, and played their part in establishing some of the very American customs they adopted. From the early 1880s, many German schools were bilingual, with classes taught both in English and German. Even church services were offered in German. This changed, however, when the Americans joined the Allied effort against the Central Powers in 1917, which effectively ended German language instruction and most religious services. This was a dark period in the history of German Americans.

During the First World War, Americans became suspicious of German immigrants, viewing them as too sympathetic to the Kaiser’s cause. Many prominent figures, such as Theodore Roosevelt, rallied against “hyphenated Americanism,” insisting that loyalties to more than one nation were impossible while the country was at war. However, some German Americans, including journalist H.L. Mencken and Harvard psychologist Hugo Munsterberg, supported the German cause, and tried to find a middle ground between American and German interests. As a result of the Sedition Act, many opponents of the war were put in jail. German Americans were urged to prove their loyalty by buying war bonds. The xenophobia became so flagrant that the Red Cross would not permit German Americans to join because they were afraid of sabotage from the inside. During this period in the history of German Americans, many immigrants Americanized their names and curtailed their use of the German language. For five years following the war, Nebraska outlawed school instruction in languages other than English.

The inter-war period saw another large influx of German immigrants, many of whom were Jews fleeing oppression under the Nazi government. Before the war, many German Americans supported the Nazi party, and 25,000 people joined the German-American Bund, a group created in the 1930′s to bolster the reputation of Nazi Germany among German Americans. During the Second World War, German Americans faced the same suspicion and persecution as they had in during World War I, but to a lesser degree, especially in comparison with the Japanese. The United States government interned around 11,000 Germans Americans during the war, many of whom were not yet American citizens, in comparison to over 110,000 Japanese Americans interned. However, many German Americans rose to prominence in the military, including General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Admiral Chester Nimitz, and General Carl Spaatz. The history of German Americans during the war proves that, for many German Americans, service to their new country was more important than loyalty to the old.

In the years after the war, many Germans who were expelled from Eastern European nations liberated by the Soviet Union, or simply fleeing the wartime devastation, relocated to America. As time wore on, anti-German sentiment in the United States began to diminish. Today, 58 million Americans identified themselves as solely or partially of German descent”and the history of German Americans continues to be written by new generations of new immigrants and assimilated “natives” alike.