During World War One as any wartime in American history, Nativism reared its ugly head. When the US declared war on Germany anti-German sentiment soared. This caused perhaps one of the largest assimilations in US history as Germans assimilated into the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant ethnic group.
German immigrants made up and still do make up the largest ethnic minority in the US. In the 1910 census, there were 8 million first and second generation German immigrants. About one in four students studied German as a second language and some classes in major Midwestern cities offered classes in English or German. However, just a few short years later in 1915, only about 1 percent of schools offered German as a secondary language.
Even Wilson himself denounced German Immigrants, “Any man who carries a hyphen [carring a hyphen means being a German] about with him, carries a dagger that he is ready to plunge into the vitals of this Republic when he gets ready.” During the War years and afterward many Germans anglized their names and adopted Anglo-Saxon traditions. This pushing for assimilation was only continued during the second world war. Although prejudice was not quite as high in part due to the assimilation of Germans into American culture the revealing of the Holocaust and other Nazi atrocities gave German Americans further reason to distance themselves from their European counterparts. The German assimilation has been so successful that a whopping 97 percent of German Americans speak only English at home.
I think that this is so interesting, as you are talking about how the german american immigration was successful because all around us in the area we live in today, there are many very successful german people thats grandparents came during this time, to make a life for their family
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