Immigration from Germany to America began in the seventeenth century as radical religious groups such as the Mennonites and Anabaptists fled from religious persecution at home to the relative tolerance of the American colonies. By 1776 Benjamin Franklin estimated that 150,000 German speakers lived in America. Many of them settled in the rural farming districts of Maryland, New York and Pennsylvania, while others went west to the then frontier district in Ohio. In the nineteenth century war, political problems and economic problems in Germany and the AustroHungarian empire led to a peak period of German immigration between 1815 and 1870; nearly 4 million German speakers came to the US during this period. Thereafter German immigration declined somewhat, to be replaced by large migrant flows from Eastern Europe. There was another wave of immigration following the First World War, and another following the Second World War and the partition of Germany; 150,000 Germans came to the US in 1950 alone. This latter group was a mixture of displaced persons, refugees from East Germany and war brides of American soldiers.

Unlike the later Eastern European arrivals, who sought work and wages, most of the German immigrants were interested in acquiring land. In the early nineteenth century they settled in the Midwest, particularly in Ohio, in and around cities such as Cincinnati, OH and Milwaukee, WI (today nearly half the population of these cities is of German descent). These German communities remained highly homogeneous; during the American Civil War, regiments raised from among the “Dutch” (as they were known) often had to have staff interpreters as neither officers nor men could speak English. Even today many of the Ohio communities are bilingual in German and English. Later arrivals moved further west, homesteading in Kansas, Nebraska, Wisconsin and the Dakotas. It has been estimated that by 1900, one-quarter of all German immigrants were engaged in farming.

German Americans have a long history of association and political involvement.

Before the First World War, the German American Central Alliance focused mainly on domestic issues concerning German speakers, but it also pressed for US neutrality in the war. Earlier, German Americans such as Emma Goldman had also been active in socialist and anarchist movements. Between the wars, other strong German cultural movements emerged, some of which were suspected of supporting the Hitler regime in Germany In fact, though, almost all German Americans supported the war effort and German American men served overseas in large numbers.

Today some 55 million Americans claim German descent, more than any other ethnic group. German Americans have been prominent in every walk of life. German contributions to American culture have been immense, even if they are no longer recognized as distinctly German. Great German American figures include Albert Einstein and Samuel Pulitzer; more controversial ones include Werner von Braun, the rocket scientist who was spirited out of Germany at the end of the war to mastermind the US space program, having previously built rockets for the Nazis. On another level, the American brewing industry was founded by German immigrants (mostly from the AustroHungarian empire). All across America in the summertime, people gather at picnics and barbeques to drink beer and eat hamburgers and hot dogs made with frankfurters, implicitly acknowledging how German culture has become embedded in that of America.