The German diaspora is quite old, and despite there having been no single German state until the mid 19th c, and hence no large overseas conquests (unlike Spain, Portugal, France, and Britain, and even the Netherlands and Belgium got into the act), Germans wound up far and wide, particularly in the Americas. The Pennsylvania 'Dutch' (Deutsch), also my ancestors, have been in N America over 300 years, and the first trickled in during the New Amsterdam settlement of the Dutch.
I also have cousins in Brazil, descended from relatives who migrated there in the 1870s, in part for the gold rush, and in part because there was already a substantial and fairly old German community there.
After WWII there were the "rat lines" run by expatriate ex-Nazis and non-German sympathizers; they arranged for the emigration (mostly to Latin America) of low-priority war criminals and so forth who felt that arrest was imminent. Joachim Pieper, otoh, elected to live in France, which is where he was murdered by some, well, murderers.
Others took their chances, stood trial, served time, and lived a while after release. 'Sepp' Dietrich did 10 long in Spandau, then spent his remaining years lobbying for German veterans, particularly from the Waffen SS. Dietrich had headed the Liebstandarte Adolf Hitler, technically answering to Himmler, but Dietrich reported directly to Hitler,and was the only man he trusted. Solid soldier, not a strategic thinker, great field commander, led from the front (in a white tank, a US veteran once told me), fightin'est officer those crazy Nazi bastards had.
I read someplace recently that the largest nationality among Americans is decedents of Germans, even outnumbering decedents of the British. I remember reading about all manner of consternation in 19th Century American because those doggone Germans were speaking in German and reading German language newspapers. They just weren’t assimilating.
Thanks for the info.