World War I had a devastating effect on German-Americans and their cultural heritage. Up until that point, German-Americans, as a group, had been spared much of the discrimination, abuse, rejection, and collective mistrust experienced by so many different racial and ethnic groups in the history of the United States. Indeed, over the years, they had been viewed as a well-integrated and esteemed part of American society. All of this changed with the outbreak of war. At once, German ancestry became a liability. As a result, German-Americans attempted to shed the vestiges of their heritage and become fully “American.” Among other outcomes, this process hastened their assimilation into American society and put an end to many German-language and cultural institutions in the United States.
Although German immigrants had begun settling in America during the colonial period, the vast majority of them (more than five million) arrived in the nineteenth century. In fact, as late as 1910, about nine percent of the American population had been born in Germany or was of German parentage – the highest percentage of any ethnic group.[1] Moreover, as most German-Americans lived on the East Coast or in the Midwest, there were numerous regions in which they made up as much as 35 percent of the populace. Most of the earlier German immigrants had been farmers or craftsmen and had usually settled near fellow countrymen in towns or on the countryside; most of those who arrived in the 1880s and thereafter moved to the ever growing cities in search of work. Soon enough there was hardly any large U.S. city without an ethnic German neighborhood. German-Americans wielded strong economic and cultural influence in cities such as New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Louis, and Cincinnati, with the latter three forming the so-called German triangle.
The development of RAILROADS was one of the most important phenomena of the industrial revolution. With their formation, construction and operation, they brought profound social, economic and political change to a country only 50 years old.Over the next 50 years,America would come to see magnificent bridges and other structures on which trains would run, awesome depots, ruthless rail magnets and the majesty of rail locomotives crossing the country.
The treaty of varsailles restricted Germany for example : having a great army and building their navy and stripping away their territories, making the then leaders of Germany upset as well as the German people. hence setting the stage for Hitler to take power and take Germany and the world into ww2
