Today, Germany and the United States are geopolitical and commercial trade partners. The two countries maintain a historically rooted but increasingly strained partnership. While they remain NATO allies with deep economic ties, public confidence in the relationship—especially in Germany—has deteriorated significantly amid disagreements over trade, security burdens, and foreign policy.
In the mid and late 19th century, millions of Germans migrated to farms and industrial jobs in the United States, especially in the Midwest. Later, the two nations fought each other in World War I (1917–1918) and World War II (1941–1945). After 1945 the U.S., with the United Kingdom and France, occupied Western Germany and built a demilitarized democratic society. West Germany achieved independence in 1949. It joined NATO in 1955, with the caveat that its security policy and military development would remain closely tied to that of France, the UK and the United States. While West Germany was becoming a Western Bloc state closely integrated with the U.S. and NATO, East Germany became an Eastern Bloc satellite state closely tied to the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. After communist rule ended in Eastern Europe amid the Revolutions of 1989 and the fall of the Berlin Wall, Germany was reunified and the allied powers subsequently restored full sovereignty to Germany with the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany.
The reunified Federal Republic of Germany became a full member of the European Union (then European Community), NATO and one of the United States' closest partners in Europe during the 1990s; however, significant disagreements emerged in the 2000s over the Iraq War, when Germany under Chancellor Gerhard Schröder strongly opposed the U.S.-led invasion. Relations have faced recurring friction, particularly since the late 2010s, with tensions escalating during Donald Trump's second term; as of 2025–2026 under Chancellor Friedrich Merz, only about 27% of Germans view the relationship positively. Since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Germany has sharply increased military aid to Ukraine, boosted defense spending, and reduced its dependence on Russian oil and gas, yet divergences with the U.S. persist on the scope of support, transatlantic trade disputes, and approaches to global challenges, leading Germany to emphasize greater European strategic autonomy while continuing pragmatic cooperation within NATO.
Overview
Before 1800, the main factors in German-American relations were very large movements of immigrants from Germany to American states (especially Pennsylvania, the Midwest, and central Texas) throughout the 18th and the 19th centuries.
There also was a significant movement of philosophical ideals that influenced American thinking. German achievements in public schooling and higher education greatly impressed American educators, and the American education system was based on the Prussian education system. Thousands of American advanced students, especially scientists and historians, studied at elite German universities. There was little movement in the other direction: few Americans ever moved permanently to Germany, and few German intellectuals studied in America or moved to the United States before 1933. Economic relations were of minor importance before 1920. Diplomatic relations were friendly but of minor importance to either side before the 1870s.
After the Unification of Germany in 1871, the country became a major world power. Both it and the US built world-class navies and began imperialistic expansion around the world. That led to a small-scale conflict over the Samoan islands, the Second Samoan Civil War. A crisis in 1898, when Germany and the United States disputed over who should take control, was resolved with the Tripartite Convention in 1899 when both nations divided up Samoa between them to end the conflict.
After 1898, the US itself became much more involved in international diplomacy and found itself sometimes in disagreement but more often in agreement with Germany. In the early 20th century, the rise of the powerful German Navy and its role in Latin America and the Caribbean troubled American military strategists. Relations were sometimes tense, as in the Venezuelan crisis of 1902–03, but all of the incidents were peacefully resolved.
During the encroachment of the new Entente, Kaiser Wilhelm sent Chancellor Bernhard von Bülow to discuss a triple alliance with the US and Qing China in 1907–1908.
The US tried to remain neutral in the First World War but provided far more trade and financial support to Britain and the other Allies, which controlled the Atlantic routes. Germany worked to undermine American interests in Mexico. In 1917, the German offer of a military alliance against the US in the Zimmermann Telegram contributed to the American decision for war. German U-boat attacks on British shipping, especially the sinking of the passenger liner RMS Lusitania without allowing the civilian passengers to reach the lifeboats, outraged US public opinion. Germany agreed to US demands to stop such attacks but reversed its position in early 1917 to win the war quickly since it mistakenly thought that the US military was too weak to play a decisive role.
The US public opposed the punitive 1919 Versailles Treaty, and both countries signed a separate peace treaty in 1921. In the 1920s, American diplomats and bankers provided major assistance to rebuilding the German economy. When Hitler and the Nazis took power in 1933, American public opinion was highly negative. Relations between the two nations turned sour after 1938.
Large numbers of intellectuals, scientists, and artists found refuge from the Nazis into Britain and France. Germany declared war on the United States, but American immigration policy strictly limited the number of Jewish refugees. The US provided significant military and financial aid to the United Kingdom and France. Germany declared war on the United States in December 1941, and Washington made the defeat of Nazi Germany its highest priority, above even the Japanese Empire after it directly militarily attacked the United States in the Pearl Harbor bombing. The United States played a major role in the occupation and reconstruction of Germany after 1945. The US provided billions of dollars in aid by the Marshall Plan to rebuild the West German economy. The two nations relationship became very positive, in terms of democratic ideals, anti-communism, and high levels of economic trade.
Today, the US is one of Germany's closest allies and partners outside of the European Union. While there is largely bipartisan positive sentiment towards Germany in the US, Germans have at times been more skeptical of the relationship due to disagreements on key policy issues. Americans want Germany to play a more active military role, but Germans strongly disagree.
History
Relations between the United States and the different German states was generally friendly in the 19th century. Americans gave strong support to the revolutionary movements of 1848, and welcomed political refugees when that liberalizing revolution failed. The German states supported the United States during the Civil War, and gave no support to the Confederacy. At the time tensions between the United States and France were very high, and Americans generally supported the Germans in their war against France in 1870–71.
German immigration to the United States
For over three centuries, immigration from Germany accounted for a large share of all American immigrants. As of the 2000 US Census, more than 20% of all Americans, and 25% of white Americans, claim German descent. German-Americans are an assimilated group which influences political life in the US as a whole. They are the most common self-reported ethnic group in the Northern United States, especially in the Midwest. In most of the South, German Americans are less common, with the exception of Texas.
1683–1848
The first records of German immigration date back to the 17th century and the foundation of Germantown, now part of Philadelphia, in 1683. Immigration from Germany reached its first peak between 1749 and 1754, when approximately 37,000 Germans came to North America. The main settlements were in Pennsylvania, where they are known as the Pennsylvania Dutch; nearby areas of upstate New York also attract the Germans in the colonial era.
1848–1914
In 1840-1914 about seven million Germans emigrated to the United States. Farmers who sold their land in Germany bought larger farms in the Middle West. Mechanics settled in the cities of Baltimore, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Chicago, Detroit, and New York City. Few went to New England or the South, apart from a colony formed in Texas. By 1890, more than 40 percent of the population of the cities of Cleveland, Milwaukee, Hoboken and Cincinnati were of German origin. By the end of the 19th century, Germans formed the largest self-described ethnic group in the United States and had a strong German—speaking element. They were generally permanent settlers; few either returned to Germany or showed a loyalty to the mother country. Some were political refugees; others were avoiding the universal conscription. They generally spoke the German language until the US entered World War I in 1917 although the younger generation was bilingual.
The failed German Revolutions of 1848 forced political refugees to flee. Those who came to the US were called the Forty-Eighters. Many joined the new anti-slavery Republican Party, such as Carl Schurz, a nationally important politician. In the late 19th century Germans were active in the labor movement. Labor unions enabled skilled craftsmen to control their working conditions and to have a voice in American society.
Since 1914
A combination of patriotism and anti-German sentiment along with civil strife during both world wars caused most German-Americans to cut their former ties and assimilate into mainstream American culture with disbanding of German cultural groups. There was a collapse in teaching the German language in schools and colleges. German-related placenames were also changed.
In 1937, during the Hindenburg's 63rd voyage, which had long been the preferred mode of rapid transatlantic travel between the United States and Germany, a tragic incident occurred as it met its unfortunate end in a catastrophic crash in Lakehurst, New Jersey, USA.
In the wake of this devastating event, rumors and speculations circulated among some German citizens, suggesting the possibility of sabotage orchestrated by elements within the United States government. While these suspicions did arise, their impact on diplomatic relations between the United States and Nazi Germany in 1937 remained relatively limited.
During the Third Reich (1933–1945) a wave of German Jews and other political anti-Nazi refugees left, but restrictive immigration policies blocked many of them from entering the U.S. Among those who did enter were Albert Einstein and Henry Kissinger.
Today, German-Americans form the largest self-reported ancestry group in the United States, with California and Pennsylvania having the highest numbers with German ancestry.
Education and culture
German culture was an important inspiration for American thinkers before 1914.
Philosophy
The influential literary, political, and philosophical movement of Transcendentalism emerged in New England in the early 19th century. It centered around Ralph Waldo Emerson and derived from European Romanticism, German Biblical criticism, and the transcendental philosophy of Immanuel Kant and German idealism. In the late 19th century German Hegelianism was taught by Friedrich August Rauch as well as William T. Harris and the St. Louis Hegelians. It represented an extreme idealism in opposition to pragmatism.
Education
Upon becoming the secretary of education of Massachusetts in 1837, Horace Mann (1796–1859) worked to create a statewide system of professional teachers, based on the Prussian model of "common schools." Prussia was developing a system of education by which all students were entitled to the same content in their public classes. Mann initially focused on elementary education and on training teachers. The common-school movement quickly gained strength across the North. His crusading style attracted wide national support, providing a German roots for the school systems in most states. An important technique which Mann had learned in Prussia and introduced in Massachusetts in 1848 was to place students in grades by age. They progressed through the grades together, regardless of differences of aptitude. In addition, he used the lecture method common in European universities, which required students to receive professional instruction rather than teach one another. American adopted the German kindergarten. German immigrants brought gymnastics and physical education through the Turner movement.
Over 15,000 American scholars and scientists studied at German universities before 1914; 8% were women. They returned with PhDs and built research-oriented universities based on the German model, such as Cornell, Johns Hopkins, Chicago and Stanford, and upgraded established schools like Harvard, Columbia and Wisconsin. Flush with dollars, they built research libraries overnight, often by purchasing major collections in Europe. Syracuse University purchased the research library of Germany's leading historian Leopold von Ranke (1795–1886).
Music
In the colonial era, the Pennsylvania German sects brought their love of music. Moravian music proved widely influential. In the mid to late 19th century, Philadelphia, Boston, New York, Cincinnati, Chicago and other musically inclined cities created symphony orchestras which featured German classical music; prominent German conductors were hired, along with performers and teachers. Theodore Thomas (1835–1905) was the most influential figure, introducing modern European composers and orchestral technique to New York, Cincinnati and Chicago.
In return, Matthias Hohner brought the harmonica to Germany in 1857, where hooty-tooty became popular.