approximately 17%

The Top Ten: Ancestry of U.S. Population by Rank

In 2016, about 4.8 million Europeans lived in the United States, accounting for 11 percent of the roughly 44 million U.S. immigrants—down from 75 percent in 1960.

Pushed out of Ireland by religious conflicts, lack of political autonomy and dire economic conditions, these immigrants, who were often called “Scotch-Irish,” were pulled to America by the promise of land ownership and greater religious freedom.

A majority had been farmers in Germany, and most came seeking economic opportunities. A few dissident intellectuals fleeing the 1848 revolutions sought political freedom, but few, save perhaps the Wends, came for religious freedom. The German settlements in Texas reflected their diversity.

Fredericksburg

Many first-generation immigrants from Germany settled in Central Texas in a region known as the Hill Country. They tended to support the Union and were opposed to the institution of slavery. Because of these sentiments, the Confederate States of America imposed martial law on Central Texas.

European Emigration to the U.S. 1861 – 1870 The growing population of Prussia and the independent German states outstripped the available land. Industrialization could not provide decent-paying jobs, and political rights were limited. Dissatisfied with the lack of land and opportunity, many Germans left.

Immigration ramped up sharply, with eight million Germans arriving during the 19th century, seven and a half million just between 1820 and 1870. They were pulled by the attractions of land and religious freedom, and pushed out of Germany by shortages of land and religious or political oppression.

The German ethnicity emerged among early Germanic peoples of Central Europe, particularly the Franks, Frisians, Saxons, Thuringii, Alemanni and Baiuvarii.

In the first half of 1847, inflation and pauperization in numerous Prussian and south German states led in turn to bread riots and hunger revolts, directed against usurers and grain speculators and often could only be brought under control by massive deployment of troops. …

The hard times that swept over the Continent in the late 1840s transformed widespread popular discontent in the German Confederation into a full-blown revolution. After the middle of the decade, a severe economic depression halted industrial expansion and aggravated urban unemployment.

1923

By the end of World War II, the country’s economic infrastructure was completely destroyed. East Germany’s last remaining economic facilities were dismantled by the Soviet occupation force as one of the first steps of the war reparations plan.

Reparations accounted for about a third of the German deficit from 1920 to 1923 and so were cited by the German government as one of the main causes of hyperinflation. Other causes cited included bankers and speculators (particularly foreign).

Prussia

The advent of the Great Depression doomed the Young Plan from the start. Loans from U.S. banks had helped prop up the German economy until 1928; when these loans dried up, Germany’s economy floundered.

The US provided significant military and financial aid to Britain and France. Germany declared war on the United States in December 1941, and Washington made the defeat of Nazi Germany its highest priority. The United States played a major role in the occupation and reconstruction of Germany after 1945.