Mein Gott! America is the new Germany

Germans are America’s big ethnic secret. No people and no culture has contributed more to what the United States is and is becoming. In the nation’s ethnic tangle, no root runs deeper than German America. As a scattered community only fitfully conscious of its own existence, none has more successfully pursued wealth, power and intellectual influence. And as a philosophical force in US politics — a whole political mindset — none has greater potency. Germany as a European state may have lost her way, the German language may struggle to keep its world grip, but the German spirit is alive and well and living in — and through — America: Bismarck’s last laugh on modern history.

Yet from new Labour to the Tory Right, the British Establishment has fallen in love with the reincarnation of our former European enemy, even as our Europeanism sours. Across much of conservative Britain, an embrace with America is welcomed as a healthy, English-speaking alternative to the sinister advance of the Franco-German axis.

Why? It is understandable that the British do not feel towards America the visceral distrust that continental Europe arouses. Americans speak English. Their invasions have been peaceful. We remember the Mayflower, the Founding Fathers, and the familiar English surnames of almost all the Presidents until Roosevelt. We remember, too, that the United States did (after a slight hiccup) support us against Germany in both world wars, and we take vicarious pride in seeing another great English-speaking country — once ours — stride the globe: imperialism by proxy. We count the Americans as our cousins. These world-beaters are our kith and kin, are they not?

No, they are not. America’s cousins are the Germans. This is true literally — in blood lineage — but also the personalities of the two nations. Modern America has become more Germanic than it is British. The New England aristocracies are pushed aside, Mittelamerika rides high, yet few notice and still fewer discuss the Teutonic phase the country is now entering. A common language — English — overlays deep cracks in the collective American psyche, blurring the outline of a vast community so submerged that its members have all but lost consciousness of what they have in common: an outlook.

Everybody knows about the blacks and the Hispanics (each about 10 per cent of the population in the 1990 US Census). Irish-Americans are slightly less than 16 per cent. Those of broadly English origin are even fewer — some 13 per cent. Italian-Americans are 6 per cent. But nearly a quarter (23.3 per cent) of all Americans are of predominantly German origin. They are easily the biggest single ingredient in the New World melting pot. Financially and politically they are also among the most successful. Were the pie chart to be adjusted according to wealth, the German-American share would grow further. A roll-call of the names of elected congressmen (or the presidents of the great US corporations) sounds like the calling of the register in a Bavarian kindergarten. As for the power of ideas, the US academic and research world is stuffed with German-descended talent.

After the Holocaust, it may be tactless to mention the flowering in the New World of the union between the German and the Jewish traditions, but the fruits have been extraordinary and America has been the beneficiary. The energy and genius of this small community has earned it an influence beyond its numbers. The cultural inheritance of German-Jewish immigrants was a powerful hybrid, and the inheritance is fresh because the wave came late. Names such as Wolfowitz, Perle or Fleischer are only recently famous: but the political and academic contribution is long-standing, and so is the contribution to the national media. The most recent issue of The Economist argues that the philosopher Leo Strauss, who fled the Holocaust for the US, is the leading intellectual influence on the neoconservatives in Washington.

German America hardly amounts these days to a community: it is almost too predominant to know itself. Its ancestors were among the earliest citizens of their emerging New World nation: they came early — before the Revolution and immediately after. They learnt to see themselves as Americans rather than look back. They have had time to assimilate. The days when (for example) the State of Pennsylvania almost made German its official language are gone. In what some might call a thoroughly Teutonic manner, many German-American families wiped their family slates clean of the old language and kinships and invested unstintingly in their new loyalty. Kurt Vonnegut, in his autobiographical Palm Sunday, says: “My parents volunteered to make me ignorant and rootless as proof of their patriotism.”

Indeed, you could argue that one reason German America has been in the driving seat has been that German-Americans have been so ready to forsake a separate identity, assume a new one, and push on. Many even Anglicised their names, further complicating the statistics.

Still, the roll-call of names is impressive, Donald Rumsfeld’s being only a latecomer to the pack. George W. Bush’s partly German ancestry — Amish and Mennonite through the Demuth family, who were 18th-century immigrants from Saxony — is well-known. Surnames (if you seek them) tumble from the books of modern American history — Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Kissinger.

But this argument is not about amassing names or imagining conspiracies. Americans’ ancestries are a hotchpotch, and which surname a US citizen ends up with can be haphazard, saying little about his family’s active cultural inheritance. There is no membership and no plot. What there is is a confluence of successful citizens with shared ways of looking at the world, helping to shape a national personality. In a family-centred society, culture, taste and attitude are heritable down the generations long after folk memories of the old country are gone. A German-descended American friend of mine from Pennsylvania said: “I went to Berlin and took a train to Prague. The food was the food I grew up with — meat, sausage, potatoes and cabbage. The houses outside the cities looked American, with unwalled gardens of grass around detached, single family homes. It was spooky."

Spookier for me has been reading the way German statesmen used to talk, and listening to the way Donald Rumsfeld talks now. Italian and Irish America have made their own distinctive mark on political life in the US. It would be surprising if Germanic attitudes were not contributing in different ways.

What are these? In an article in The New Republic two years ago, Peter Beinart suggested the following qualities as typical of the German American in politics: “earnest”, “strait-laced” and “disciplined”. Voters, he adds, “like politicians, are often products of political traditions they do not fully comprehend. And those political traditions often have their origins in an America more ethnically segmented than it is today.”

To Beinart’s list I would add the work ethic and energy — never something that the British Establishment has been sure it wholly admired. In March 1990, Margaret Thatcher summoned to Chequers a team of historians, academics and specialists to advise her on a unified Germany’s long-term intentions and abiding characteristics. A leaked memo quoted: “Angst, aggressiveness, assertiveness, bullying, egotism, inferiority complex, sentimentality and capacity for excess.” I would add these: candour; a yearning for structure and direction; impatience with ambiguity; a weakness for approaching problems in a blindly, sometimes self-defeatingly, methodical way; and overconfidence.

I do not find all these qualities unattractive. I love the sudden directness of Germans; I share their hankering for road maps in life; I admire bullishness; and I think an instinct to impose theory and system on a haphazard world marks a high order of intelligence. Notwithstanding the caveats one must enter about all generalisation, I cite these assessments neither to praise nor condemn, but as contributing to a national personality.

But is it not uncannily like George W. Bush’s America? Is it not as close an approach as we are likely to get to a definition of the neoconservative personality? And has the Tory Right removed continental Germans from the party’s guest list, only to welcome their reincarnation from across the Atlantic?

Out goes Vorwärts! and in comes Yee-ha! Somebody should whisper in Britain’s ear: America is the new Germany.

My g-grandfather was a contempory of your g-g-g-grandfather. He went to TX in 1850 as an 18 year-old farm boy from the Virginia mountains. He settled in Bexar county, and became a Texas Ranger in 1855. He also married my g-grandmother in that year. She was only 15 at the time, but it must have been true love because they were married for the next 62 years and raised 13 children.

I learned all I know about him from my grandmother, who died in 1964 when I was in my twenties. I wasn't too interested in that kind of thing back then, but luckily my aunt put it all down in writing, and now I find it very interesting. I wish i had a picture of him like you have of your ancestor, but none are known to exist.

I recently reviewed my heritage. My mother is is 3/4 German, my father is 1/3 German.

I'm guessing that makes me right about 50% Kraut. In fact, I can read and understand about half of the German I can hear and read so the number seems fitting.

I guess that's why I'm an Engineer and have blondish red hair and blue eyes, am over 6 feet tall and have high cheekbones. heh.

Probably also why people assume I'm a racist and hate Jews if they don't know me. I work for a Jewish company and ALL my closest friends who I'd trust my life(cept one Italian) also happen to be Jews. It's odd really, people assume that since I mostly look like a German, I must be a racist self loathing white person. It took me a while to accept this since a moved from Ohio 9 years ago.

Where I was in Ohio, it was very hard to be a racist. There simply wasn't any particular race to hate since it was only white immigrants from Europe. I come to NJ and people assume from my complextion that I hate anyone or another. I don't and it's taken me quite a while for people to accept that I'm not an intolerant bastard, heh.

I accept people who are people. Race and/or ethnicity doesn't have any issue in it for me.

I EMAILed the following to the TIMES UK

__________________________________________________________

Recently (Matthew Parris) wrote an rant saying America is now the new Germany. I would suggest that Mr. Parris is a total idiot and not worth any expendable effort to reply to such an accusation. To allow this "reporter" to even be in print with an opinion such as evil minded is outrageous.

If Mr. Parris and your paper do not like America or its people or have strong opinions against the US policies world wide fine, but to put in print that America is simply the new NAZI's is outright disgusting. Sadly it brings down your paper and you will find an American backlash against this type of outright vicious attack. And it is just that, an attack on America. Almost half a million AMERICAN soldiers lie in graves as a reminder that WE, AMERICA took up the fight to end Hitler and Nazism. How it seems our former and supposedly current ALLY seems to forget that without the United States, there may not even be a United Kingdom.

If Mr. Parris and other Brits feel this way, then it may be time to leave England to herself. We do not need an ally that is merely waiting for us to turn around to knife us in the back. With articles like this and anti-American stands by the BBC, it seems the blade is only being sharpened. The third reich is indeed alive though, but it is in the hearts and minds of people like Mr. Parris, represented by the evil that is in his head and now put into print. Hitler would indeed be proud of what is happening more than 50 years later. Hitler tried to tear the US and the UK alliance apart. But it is slowly happening, and it is not of German origin, it is coming from some Brits.

From the U.S.A.
Michael

[I'm "wrong", about what?] About Americans of German ancestry. Your posts in general are off the mark, imho.

Uh, I haven't said ANYTHING "about Americans of German ancestry". And this is my third post to the entire thread. The previous was the question "about what?" and my first post said that the article was unintentionally funny and that its author was a piece of work. THAT'S ALL I HAVE POSTED TO THIS THREAD.

Are you sure you don't have me confused with somebody else?

OK Matt, you asked for it. Get the women & children out of the room, here are some real German recipes.

BRAINS WITH EGGS

Take one pound of calf, lamb, pork or beef brains. I don't want to know where you get them - send Igor.

Put them in cold water and wash off all the blood and take off the fine membranes.

Pour a little melted butter and chopped parsley into a bowl with the brains, and moosh everything up with a wooden spoon until it all looks sort of whitish.

Add enough beaten eggs, salt and pepper the concoction and cook. Don't add too many eggs or you'll just get scrambled eggs and scrambled brains.

Resist the temptation to overcook. There's no way you're going to disguise this stuff, and anyone you torture with this it to feel the texture of the meal.

SOUR LUNG SOUP

If you can get brains, you can get lungs. Don't tell Igor about Chinese cooking - you don't want to know the secondary purpose of Chinese zoos either. Beef lungs are better.

Cook the lung (clean it first), together with an onion, a bay leaf and any soup greens you think might help. Cover that sucker strongly and boil it hard until it stops trying to crawl out of the pot, or for 30-45 minutes, whichever takes longer.

Once it has shrunk so much that it feels like liver (ask Igor if you don't know) when you give it a little poke, take the lung out and slice it into noodle-like strips in the hope that your victims will think it's some sort of exotic pasta.

Make some becamel or any old white gravy which comes to mind. Mix it into some of the strained lung broth and pour in enough vinegar. Take a few slugs of vinegar yourself before trying it.

PINEAPPLE SAUERKRAUT

Drain and dry some sauerkraut. If you're so lazy you don't even make your own sauerkraut, you'll just have to cope with the acidity.

Boil the sauerkraut in unsweetened pineapple juice until the kraut absorbs the juice.

Hollow out a pineapple and throw the diced pineapple into the sauerkraut. Cook it a little bit. Drain. Stuff everything back into the pineapple. Serve with something else.

Take a look around PNAC's website. You'll see they wrote extensively about Iraq as early as January 1998. An early PNAC "Project Article" advocating Hussein's removal was published in the Washington Times and can be found at

http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraq_pdf_02.pdf

(Acrobat PDF file). Dated January 27, 1998 it was signed by Elliot Abrams, Richard Armitage, Bill Bennett, Francis Fukuyama, Robert Kagan, William Kristol, Richard Perle, Donald Rumsfeld, Vin Weber, Paul Wolfowitz, James Woolsey. Some of these individuals are certainly more than minor players in the current White House.

Addressed to President Clinton, it begins:

"We are writing you because we are convinced that current American policy toward Iraq is not succeeding, and that we may soon face a threat in the Middle East more serious than any we have known since the end of the Cold War....

That strategy should aim, above all, at the removal of Saddam Hussein's regime from power. We stand ready to offer our full support in this difficult but necessary endeavor."

It seems to me fair to wonder if our current Iraq policy, as implemented by some of these same individuals, was in fact designed by them years before President Bush even took office. Is President Bush well served by these individuals?

Hehe the Goatee is nice, too. I would have to check my Dad's family book when we migrated to Texas. My Dad's side is pretty much 100% Irish. First migrated to Tennessee then to Texas. My mother's side is primarily English with a dash of French(which is great since it allows me to have a nice tan instead of being a puking pale skinned Irish).

The problem I have with this article is that the numbers I have seen show the Irish decent to be around 36 million and German decent around 25 million, with the Italians and Anglos in 3 & 4. This is the reason why when the European Socialist rail about us damn yankee anglos its piss me off and makes me crack up laughing. They are such hypocrits when they say we don't know anything about the world or Europeans, evidently though don't know anyhting about us either.

1. I think that more Americans than Germans know the text of the Horst-Wessel-Lied. I don´t know it, either - and I don´t want to learn or even read it, so I will make no remarks about it.

2. The time when most Germans emigrated was when a united Germany didn´t exist officially (and that´s the explanation for the first stanza of the Deutschlandlied btw). But we had 35 states and 4 free cities then, not more than 200 as you stated.

3. Interesting article, although it tries to divide Brits and Germans, Americans etc. However, the reactions on it are exaggerated and one could think wether it is legal for Bush-followers to admit that they´re from German heritage.

It´s a pity that all that comes to the minds of most here when they confess their German heritage, is the beer... :-(

And finally, many have not understood that English names do not necessarily mean British ancestors. Many German names were changed because of WW1 and WW2 - and many of them not voluntary. A Smith could have been a Schmidt, a Miller maybe was a Müller, and so on.

Did you know that we´d all speak German now, if the ONE missing German representative on the day the founders of the USA decided about the future language was punctual? So the Brits won with 1 vote... just imagine how the world would look like today if that many was punctual!

Also, many Austrians and Hungarians, who emmigrated to America had German last names. Quite often, no one, hearing an American's last name, can say just which nationality his/her ancestors came from.

Don't worry, I think of Germans such as Goethe, Wagner ( and other music greats),and Marx when I think of Germany; not to mention such characyers as King Ludwig of Bavaria. LOL

The British Monarchs have been GERMAN since the Gerorges. The author has also forgotten utterly, that the Saxons, the Angels, and many other Germanic tribes invaded/took over much of England more than a millenia ago.

I'm so ashamed.... All Italians have done is discover and name America.

Now look here, FVSCVS, you Italians conquered all of Western Civilization from Hispania to Britannia and from Judea to Mauretania. Why can't you guys be happy with that and not get greedy?

When Columbus discovered America, he carried this white flag with Royal Arms. (And the arms ain't Italian except for half of the 2nd and 3rd quarters that show the arms of Sicily which then belonged to Ferdinand of Aragon):

Royal Standard of the Catholic Kings Carried by Columbus

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