Discuss the life of German immigrants in the United States before World War I and the Nazi era

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Beginning in the 1830s through 1890, Germans represented at least one-quarter of the immigrants, ensuring their destiny in the settlement of the United States. Their major urban presence was in Milwaukee, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, and Cincinnati.
Early in the history of America, German immigrant cultural influence was apparent. Although the new United States never voted on making German the national language, publications of the proceedings of the Continental Congress were published in German and English. Yet even in those early years, the fear of foreigners—that is, non-Anglos—prevented German, even temporarily, from ever getting equal footing with English.
German Americans, then perhaps representing 10 percent of the population, established bilingual programs in many public schools, but the rise of Germany as a military foe in the twentieth century ended that movement.

In 1901, the German-American National Alliance (Deutsche-Amerikanischer National-Bund) was founded to speak for all Germans in the United States, especially urban Protestant middle-class German Americans. As time passed, it sought to commemorate the contributions to the nation's development but also sought to block prohibition. With the rise of German military power, many German Americans sought to argue for U.S. neutrality. But these efforts ended quickly, and the organization actually disbanded after the United States declared war on Germany in 1917.