“The Failure of German-Americanism”"In the early 20th century, German Americans remained the largest immigrant group, as well as one of the most highly regarded. Thus the vicious nativist attack on the loyalty of German Americans that emerged before and during World War I was particularly remarkable. Germans had followed a successful assimilation strategy through which they sought to become “American” in politics while remaining “German” in culture. This relative acceptance, however, may have contributed to the problem. Because they saw themselves not as strangers but as full members of the American polity, German Americans responded to the war initially by lobbying strongly to influence American foreign policy in ways favorable to Germany. When the German government began submarine warfare, resulting in American deaths, even German Americans joined in questioning the behavior, if not the loyalty, of their fellow immigrants. In 1916, Reinhold Niebuhr, a German American and young theologian (who later became famous), wrote an article in Atlantic Monthly in which he argued that German Americans were themselves responsible for the “lack of esteem” in which they were currently held by other Americans." GMU History Matters