The point of this book is not to press for a paradigm shift, replacing one master narrative with another:from nation state to transnational networks; from national to global German history; from a focus on state-sponsored violence in the last three centuries to economically formidable and inclusive diasporic communities.Rather, the goal is to open up space for multiple narratives that we can harness as analytical tools to help us better understand people’s actions and motivations in particular historical situations. That requires greater integration of mobilities, migration flows, and pluralities of belonging into our narratives of Germans’ histories.

World War I dramatically transformed Germans’ subject position regardless of whether or not they participated in the war or supported Imperial Germany. In addition to exposing Imperial Germany’s dependence on commodities from abroad for its industry and its residents’ well-being, it witnessed a kind of economic warfare that was just as unprecedented as the military conflict that took place in Europe.Around the globe, the Allied powers targetedGermans—citizens of Imperial German as well as ethnic Germans who were not that.That led to internments and confiscations; but the Allies applied pressure outside their territories as well. Latin America, in particular, became a site of extreme pressure as first the British and then the United States used the war to increase their economic and political power in the region at the expense of the German networks that had long competed against them.Facing a shared set of challenges actually served to bind many of these disparate German communities in the Americas together even as they radically reduced the size of many German communities in other European states and the colonial territories.