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→Assimilation
Historians have tried to explain what happened. Kazal (2004) looks at Germans in Philadelphia, focusing on four ethnic subcultures: middle-class Vereinsdeutsche, working-class socialists, Lutherans, and Catholics. Each group followed a somewhat distinctive path toward assimilation. Lutherans, and the better situated Vereinsdeutsche with whom they often overlapped, after World War I abandoned the last major German characteristics and redefined themselves as old stock or as "Nordic" Americans, stressing their colonial roots in Pennsylvania and distancing themselves from more recent immigrants. On the other hand, working-class and Catholic Germans, groups that heavily overlapped, lived and worked with Irish and other European ethnics; they also gave up German characteristics but came to identify themselves as white ethnics, distancing themselves above all from African American recent arrivals in nearby neighborhoods. Well before World War I, women in particular were becoming more and more involved in a mass consumer culture that lured them out of their German-language neighborhood shops and into English language downtown department stores. The 1920s and 1930s brought English language popular culture via movies and radio that drowned out the few surviving German language venues.<ref> Russell A. Kazal, ''Becoming Old Stock: The Paradox of German-American Identity'' (2004).</ref>
Historians have tried to explain what happened. Kazal (2004) looks at Germans in Philadelphia, focusing on four ethnic subcultures: middle-class Vereinsdeutsche, working-class socialists, Lutherans, and Catholics. Each group followed a somewhat distinctive path toward assimilation. Lutherans, and the better situated Vereinsdeutsche with whom they often overlapped, after World War I abandoned the last major German characteristics and redefined themselves as old stock or as "Nordic" Americans, stressing their colonial roots in Pennsylvania and distancing themselves from more recent immigrants. On the other hand, working-class and Catholic Germans, groups that heavily overlapped, lived and worked with Irish and other European ethnics; they also gave up German characteristics but came to identify themselves as white ethnics, distancing themselves above all from African American recent arrivals in nearby neighborhoods. Well before World War I, women in particular were becoming more and more involved in a mass consumer culture that lured them out of their German-language neighborhood shops and into English language downtown department stores. The 1920s and 1930s brought English language popular culture via movies and radio that drowned out the few surviving German language venues.<ref> Russell A. Kazal, ''Becoming Old Stock: The Paradox of German-American Identity'' (2004).</ref>
===Politics===
Historians have traced the highly complex voting patterns. Down until 1912, Catholic Germans were heavily Democratic, Protestants were split between the parties, and Jewish Germans voted Republican. Seculrar Germans split, with many workers voting Socialist. In 1896 all the groups were alienated by [[William Jennings Bryan]] and moved toward the GOP. They moved back in 1900. The double blows of prohibition and anti-German agitation in 1917-20 alienated German Americans. In Wisconsin they moved o support [[Robert LaFollette]], who became their champion in the state and in 1924, nationally. In 1928 Germans voted along reklgious lines, with the Protestants for [[Herbert Hoover]] and the Catholics for [[Al Smith]]. Roosevelt won most of the German to the [[New Deal Coalition]] in 1932 and 1936.
====World War II====
In 1940 large fraction of the German-American voters switched to [[Wendell Willkie]], who of course was of German descent himself. As Willkie crusaded against the anti-business excesses of the New Deal, the Democrats counter-crusaded, arguing that the danger of an internal fifth column was grave, and broadly suggesting that Willkie along with isolationists like Lindbergh was pro-Nazi. Although FDR promised there would be no repeat of the anti-Hun hysteria of the First War, distrust levels were high. Of course, everyone knew what was happening to the Japanese on the West Coast. During the war the federal [[Office of War Information]] sponsored numerous polls to monitor possible disloyalty or slackerism. NORC did a study in spring 1942, based on two nationwide surveys. The Germans were slightly more hostile to Britain than non-Germans, and exactly the same versus USSR. People with both parents born in Germany were slightly less hostile to Germany (only 11% wanted to "destroy Germany as a nation" vs 26% of the whole US; only 19% thought Germany has used poison gas in ww2, versus 33%). People with one parent born in Germany were almost exactly like the national average. None of the reports indicated any pro-Nazi sentiment whatever.<ref> "A Study of the Effect of German and Italian Origin on Certain War Attitudes" (NORC special Report #6, copy in NORC, University of Chicago).</ref>
President Roosevelt made a deliberate effort to reassure Germans there would be no attacks on their culture as happened in World War I. Indeed he appointed two prominent Americans of german descent to top commands in the Army and Navy, General [[Dwight D. Eisenhower]] in Europe and Admiral [[Chester Nimitz]] in the Pacific.
The Germans enthusiastically supported [[Dwight D. Eisenhower]], another German-American in 1952 and 1960, and in 1960 they split along religious lines just as in 1928. Since 1960 German identity has become so weak it is not much of a factor in partisanship.
==Basic reading==
==Basic reading==
see the detailed guide at the Bibliography below
see the detailed guide at the Bibliography below