GERMANY-U.S. RELATIONS

The United States' relations with a German state officially began in September 1785 when it negotiated a commercial treaty with Prussia. The more important immigration and cultural connection had started a century earlier when Germans settled in colonial Pennsylvania. By the time America achieved independence, Germans, who were scattered throughout the nation, comprised about 9 percent of the population. In the nineteenth century they continued to arrive by the thousands. Although these immigrants frequently encountered nativist animosity, their industriousness and frugality generally made a favorable impression. Americans who studied at German universities also helped create an admiration for German thought and culture. During the Civil War many people in the German states were friendly toward the Union cause, and Americans favored Prussia in its nineteenth-century wars.

Following Germany's unification in January 1871, economic, colonial, and naval rivalry often replaced the earlier cordiality. There were periodic conflicts over trade and tariffs and colonial rivalry over Samoa, which Germany sought to annex. The latter dispute did not end until 1899 with the partition of Samoa, but American distrust of Germany remained strong. A year earlier, during the Spanish-American War, an American naval force in the Philippines had faced a stronger German fleet seemingly poised to take the islands if the United States did not. No clash occurred, but again American suspicion of Germany mounted.

The United States' closeness to Great Britain was a key ingredient in the growing antagonism. British and American leaders both viewed Germany, the possessor of Europe's strongest army and a powerful fleet, as autocratic and militaristic. The extent of U.S.-British cordiality was illustrated when Germany and Britain in 1902 punished Venezuela for reneging on its debts: Americans criticized Germany, not Britain, for violating the Monroe Doctrine.

In August 1914, when the First World War started, President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed neutrality, but he and most Americans favored the Allied side. When Americans received news of Belgium's violation and other military high-handedness, it confirmed their negative perception of imperial Germany. The most critical friction between the two countries arose out of maritime issues. Early in 1915 Germany used submarines to break a British blockade and destroy shipments of American military supplies sent to the Allies. Wilson protested, saying that the United States would hold Germany accountable for any loss of American lives and property.

The first major confrontation occurred on May 7 with the sinking of the British passenger liner Lusitania. Nearly 1,200 people died, 128 of them American. Backed by an aroused public, the president demanded that Germany abandon its U-boat attacks on civilian vessels. That crisis passed with a partial German retreat. But more sinkings, revelations of German spying in the United States, and the renewal of unrestricted submarine warfare in January 1917 led the president to ask for a declaration of war against Germany, which Congress voted on April 6. Anti-German sentiment rose to a fever pitch with many Americans violently attacking the German language, music, and culture.

Fresh American troops in Europe proved crucial in turning the tide in favor of the Allies, and in 1918 Germany sued for an armistice on terms outlined in Wilson's Fourteen Points. Fearing harsh treatment from the French and British, the Germans at Versailles pinned their hopes for a mild settlement on Wilson. To a degree the tactic worked: he blocked French plans for dismembering Germany.

In the postwar era, as anti-German sentiment in the United States subsided, the relationship between the two countries revolved around economics and culture. Under the Dawes Plan of 1924 American loans provided Germany with funds for reparations to Allied nations, which in turn used the money to repay debts owed to the United States. This system, which scaled down both reparations and debts, contributed to an economic revival in Germany that ended with the Great Depression.

In January 1933 Adolf Hitler became Germany's chancellor, and soon thereafter the brief spell of cordiality with the United States ended. Hitler rearmed Germany in defiance of treaty restrictions, and when in October 1937 President Franklin D. Roosevelt urged a quarantine of aggressors, official German-American relations became minimal. The Third Reich's annexation of Austria the following March inaugurated eighteen months of almost constant crises. In November the Nazis launched a pogrom against Jews, and the United States in protest recalled its ambassador.

When in September 1939 the Nazis invaded Poland, Roosevelt, although outraged, proclaimed neutrality. But since he regarded Nazi Germany as a threat to national security, he aided the Allied cause in any way he could. In September 1940 Hitler countered with the Tripartite Treaty, an alliance with Italy and Japan aimed at the United States. All the while the American government was shipping vast amounts of war matériel to Britain and, after June 1941, to the Soviet Union then under assault by the Nazis. On December 11, four days after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Hitler cast aside caution and declared war on the United States.

All through the Second World War Roosevelt insisted on a policy of unconditional surrender because he wanted the German people this time to taste the full reality of defeat. They did in May 1945. The victors divided Germany into four zones of occupation, but soon the country's fate became the most important issue in the cold war rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union. In 1948 the Western powers integrated their zones and brought West Germany into the European Recovery Program backed by the American Marshall Plan. The Soviets countered with a blockade of the Western sections of Berlin, which the United States and its allies then supplied by air until the Russians backed down. In September 1949 American initiative shaped the Federal Republic of Germany and a month later the Soviets formed the German Democratic Republic. Two Germanys had come into existence, one hostile to the United States, and the other a client state. In May 1955 the Western powers brought the Federal Republic into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (nato), overcoming fears of a revived German militarism by tying the country to the Western European community.

As West Germany benefited from American aid and trade, the relationship between Germans and Americans became friendly once again. Beginning with John F. Kennedy's administration, the United States promoted off and on a policy of détente with the Soviets, which implied de facto acceptance of Germany's partition. In 1974 the United States established formal relations with the German Democratic Republic.

During these decades West Germany became one of the world's most prosperous nations. It possessed Western Europe's largest army and became a bastion of nato and America's major Continental ally. Americans admired German achievements in science, engineering, and industry as well as its music, philosophy, and literature. American political ideas, popular music, and movies, in turn, influenced German society. Americans also rejoiced over the dismantling in 1989 of the wall built by the Soviets that divided Berlin. In public opinion polls in 1990, Americans—unlike many Europeans—approved of Germany's reunification. On the other hand, many Americans were still haunted by the memory of two great wars and the Holocaust.

Thus, over the years Americans have regarded Germans with ambivalence. Nevertheless, those with German blood in their veins form the second largest ethnic group in the United States. In recent decades the theme of cordiality in the German-American relationship has prevailed over that of animosity.

Hans W. Gatzke, Germany and the United States: A "Special Relationship"? (1980); Manfred Jonas, The United States and Germany: A Diplomatic History (1984); Frank Ninkovich, Germany and the United States: The Transformation of the German Question since 1945 (1988).

Alexander DeConde

See also Berlin Blockade; Cold War; Dawes Plan; Holocaust, American Response to the; Versailles Treaty and League of Nations; World War I; World War II.