Talk:Germany–United States relations/Archive 1

To Anon IP
About all these recent edits, while your work is appreciated, some of it is a little bit over the top in my opinion and possibly in that of others, and you would do yourself a service if you worked collaboratively and communicativly. That's another thing Germans and Americans both value. And might I add that you know you couldn't get away with this stuff on the German version. Adam Mathias 04:42, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

Hi - Its just meant to be a start for an article and changes are more than welcome! Sometimes my English isnt good enough to express it smoother - maybe you can help?

Deutsch-amerikanische Freundschaft
The wikilink to Deutsch-Amerikanische Freundschaft leads to an article about the Düsseldorfer electropop duo. While this will certainly contains an interesting perspective on German-American relations, it is probably not what people are looking for here! Ireneshusband 00:59, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

Why not? Who can say what people are looking for? 162.84.194.183 06:55, 16 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Clearly people are not looking for a pop duo from Düsseldorf, espcially not when there are from Cologne ;-) Nonetheless, this type of redirect needs to be removed.  Signature brendel  18:14, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

European Union part removed
I removed the sentence "The United States is Germany’s closest ally and partner outside the European Union.", because Germany is part of the EU. If there's some reason this was supposed to be here, please let me know. --Phantom784 22:28, 10 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I think you misread that sentence. The US is Germany's closet ally outside the EU as the US is not part of the EU. You can also put the other way around: Germany's closest ally outside the EU is the US. Perhaps the latter revision is easier. Regards,  Signature brendel  22:44, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Military Relations Additions
For the German-American military relations maybe Friedrich_Wilhelm_von_Steuben could possibly be mentioned since he is often viewed as one of the forefathers of the US Army? Or is this article to be waterdowned? I don't want to edit this wiki if that is indeed the intent.


 * Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben, while a great Military Officer Legend in the US Army is not considered a forefather of the US Army in anything I've read. He is considered to be the first Inspector General of the US Army and a brilliant trainer.  I read the wiki article about him and that article ascerted that he was considered a "Founding Father" of the nation - Yet, when I read the wiki entry on "Founding Fathers" he was not listed...but I digress - He definately deserves a mention as a Prussian who was crucial to the success of Washington.  TurboManiacal 15:07, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Also, we could expand on military invovlements of the two nations (ie: Afghanistan. TchussBitc 13:45, 26 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm about to write a section on German Military support to Operation Iraqi Freedom as detailed in Cobra II: The Inside Story of the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq. TurboManiacal 12:17, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

too much politics
relations cant only mean politics. the most is about personal relations between the people, the administration does mostly just follow the peoples mind. germans are everywhere popular in the US, as tourists or (nowadays a rare thing) new citizens. like americans are popular in germany. but in this article it seems like there would be a big dispute between "americans" and "germans", thats more a "bush-issue" i would say. nothing between the people of both countries.

Exactly. And exactly what I wanted to discuss too :-) Dear editor, please change this article considering that. -84.155.125.93 08:34, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

The events "post 1914" are the key to explain the German-American relations
From my point of view it is necessary to extend this chapter, for example as follows: 1. WWI and the Versailles Treaty (1914 - 1917/18), 2. Weimar Republic (1918 - 1933), 3. Hiltler and Nazi Germany, WWII, Holocaust, Teheran Conference, Yalta Conference, Potsdam Conference (1933 - 1945), 4. The Morgenthau Plan and the Marshall Plan, 5. Cold War (1945 - 1989), 6. Renunification (1989/1990) 7. Today (1990 - 2006) (User, Nov. 20th, 2006) I would agree that this would be a much better format.Harrypotter 19:12, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

And again: this is just politics. This part has an overweight in the article! The daily life relations arent that much about politics but between people. The "Real Key" to the German-American or American-German relations is simply that "german" is the by far largest ancestry in the US. So alot of german culture took place in what you can call american and the people didnt forget their herritage and have a way larger public interest in close relations to Germany than with for example Britain, but when you follow the Press und what happens in Washington you could think that Britain is the most important Country for the states. This is why those are two different chapters. -84.155.125.93 08:42, 8 September 2007 (UTC)


 * This assumption that German is the largest ancestry in the U.S. shows how the ancestry chart in the article is a little misleading, because most of the 20.2 million people who claim an undifferentiated ‘American’ ancestry are thought to be of English ancestry, in addition to the 24.5 million who actually specify English ancestry. Even if we decide to exclude all the Catholic Irish, most of whom were English-speaking British subjects when they migrated, roughly half of Irish Americans, or about 15 million, are thought to be Protestants, mostly from Ulster, and therefore mostly of mainland British ancestry too. So in fact there are many more Americans of British descent than of German descent, and they still use their language. In addition, German Americans assimilated and only a small proportion of them speak German. Almost all of them speak English instead. This lack of cultural affinity in descendants has had important historical consequences. It helps to explain why German-American relations have been more distant than the ethnic chart would otherwise suggest, and why German ancestry hasn't always been a big enough factor to overcome diplomatic differences. Lachrie (talk) 16:40, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

1871-1914
There is no information on their relations from the unification of Germany to World War I. Can someone add information about this time? JayLeno175 (talk) 18:42, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

This page needs far better conceptualisation
This page needs far better conceptualisation as it starts of talking about the relation between a country "Germany" and a state, the United States of America. This excludes other parts of America, so perhaps the page should be broadened in scope or altered to become German-US relations.

Also both countries have a hideous racist past, which still unfortunately persists today - I think this should be discussed. Lots of assertions have been made without reference, and it would seem the page needs lots of work to bring it up to standard.Harrypotter 12:51, 7 November 2006 (UTC)


 * The article does fail to make clear in its title that this is an article about German-US relations, but such terms are also used in the articles on French-US (Franco-Anerican) and UK-US (Anglo-American) foreign relations. Until a name change is agreed upon by all of these articles, the names should remain consistent.


 * In reference to the racist past, the article states grammatically that America has a "spirit... for white supremacy" that creats a cultural bond with Germany. One, such language is not only inflammatory but also rather inaccurate. Neither country has expressed any support for the other's racist policies throughout the years; Germany did not yet exist as of the U.S. Civil war, but none of its component principalities or other states gave support to the Confederate or pro-slavery causes, while America was one of the Allies that Germany's racist Nazi regime.


 * It is indeed true that both nations, in Harrypotter's words, have hideous racist pasts, but the pertinent subject is how this relationship fits in with German-American relations. This page does need work. Chathamh 12:46, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree the pages need work - see comment above - and certainly there has been some discussion of the impact of German romantic historicism and its relation to such things as the American Manifest Destiny which involved significant interplay between german and American culture. However I must admit that I would rather find out what other peple feel about this before expanding a lot of energy on this. As for the supposed inflammatory language, it is quite clear that the freedom (ommitted from the quote) never really extended outside the White Settler community - and even then had major restrictions within. Germany did exist as a culture unit before Bismark and the statement that nonwe of the principalities gave support for pro-slaverty causes is simply false. Prussia made substantial investment in the slave trade between 1700 and 1725, and other principalities also dabled in the slave trade principally in the eighteenth century - before, of course, the introduction of slavery directly into the german economy by the SS in the Thirties. I'll check the other (Franco-American and Anglo American) pages and ponder.Harrypotter 21:03, 4 December 2006 (UTC) 21:02, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Do you know who took the most slaves? The Arab states. Do you know the racism in inherent in the histories of most nations and tribes? So, the U.S. Saudi and Egyptian articles should mention the slave trade that both, and especially the Arab states traded in. I mean, this is silly because you are just hyper aware of the racism in these cases, but you ignore how common this is. Also, like i said, in terms of slave trade you will have to include that for the Arab US relations x10 and also for various African nations and kingdoms that sold these slaves. You guys are really on the wrong page if you think this article should be about racism. JohnHistory (talk) 23:27, 19 August 2009 (UTC)JohnHistory

Copyedit
Came to do a copyedit as requested by the article's tag, but to be honest I think it still needs a lot of work before it's ready for that - it still reads like a personal essay, has very little referencing and a lot of weasel words, generalisations and unsourced assertions. It needs a thorough going-over by someone who's an expert in the subject (which I'm unfortunately not). Once you feel it's as good as it's going to get content-wise, if you just remove the "GOCEreviewed" tag on this page, it'll reappear on the Guild of Copy Editors' to-do list. Brickie (talk) 19:54, 4 May 2010 (UTC)

PISS POOR SECTIONS ON WORLD WARS I,II AND THE INTERWAR PERIOD.
DON'T YOU THINK YOU OWE IT TO THE APPROX 345,000 AMERICAN CASUALTIES OF THOSE TWO WARS TO DO BETTER???Johncheverly 22:15, 30 May 2012 (UTC)johncheverly@gmail.com. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Johncheverly (talk • contribs)
 * The war sections be should fairly short as they are covered extensively in other articles. However, you are right in that currently these sections aren't well written and could be expanded to better summarize the topic, then include pointers to existing articles. Detailed information on the wars should ONLY be included if not repeated elsewhere. I'll take a stab at it soon if someone doesn't get to it first. One bit of advice, don't use ALL CAPS, it's considered rude.--  Ultracobalt   &#32;(talk) 01:39, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

in 'Perceptions'
Quoate: "German views of Americans on the other hand often resemble those of Canadians toward Americans.[citation needed]" Nice to know... if I only knew what Canadians think! Change this to real information! 83.216.242.84 (talk) 03:48, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

May 2017 statements - more work needed
I have replaced the misinterpreted statements from Trump and Merkel in May 2017 with direct quotations (neither statement explicitly backed up the paraphrased summary). However, we should try to limit the usage of such fleeting remarks, and focus on the long-term developments in Germany-US relations. I didn't want to delete the whole paragraph, but it would be better to rephrase the whole part to put it into a wider context, and to try to find additional expert analysis for this development. GermanJoe (talk) 11:55, 14 June 2017 (UTC)