Title: German-Americans during World War I | Immigrant Entreprenuership
Headings: German-Americans during World War I
Crown Prince Heinrich and U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt in New York, February 25, 1902
German-Americans during World War I
American Reactions to the Outbreak of War in Europe
America's Mobilization for War
The Effect of Anti-German Sentiment on German-American Cultural Identity
German-American Entrepreneurs during the War
Notes

Content: Up until that point, German-Americans, as a group, had been spared much of the discrimination, abuse, rejection, and collective mistrust experienced by so many different racial and ethnic groups in the history of the United States. Indeed, over the years, they had been viewed as a well-integrated and esteemed part of American society. All of this changed with the outbreak of war. At once, German ancestry became a liability. As a result, German-Americans attempted to shed the vestiges of their heritage and become fully “American.” Among other outcomes, this process hastened their assimilation into American society and put an end to many German-language and cultural institutions in the United States. Although German immigrants had begun settling in America during the colonial period, the vast majority of them (more than five million) arrived in the nineteenth century. In fact, as late as 1910, about nine percent of the American population had been born in Germany or was of German parentage – the highest percentage of any ethnic group. [ 1] Moreover, as most German-Americans lived on the East Coast or in the Midwest, there were numerous regions in which they made up as much as 35 percent of the populace. Most of the earlier German immigrants had been farmers or craftsmen and had usually settled near fellow countrymen in towns or on the countryside;