page_title: List of German Americans
section_title: Military
hierarchical_section_title: List of German Americans / Military
caption_attribution_description: General Norman Schwarzkopf.
context_page_description: German Americans are citizens of the United States of German ancestry; they form the largest ethnic ancestry group in the United States, accounting for 17% of U.S. population. The first significant numbers arrived in the 1680s in New York and Pennsylvania. Some eight million German immigrants have entered the United States since that point. Immigration continued in substantial numbers during the 19th century; the largest number of arrivals moved 1840–1900, when Germans formed the largest group of immigrants coming to the U.S., outnumbering the Irish and English. Some arrived seeking religious or political freedom, others for economic opportunities greater than those in Europe, and others for the chance to start afresh in the New World. California and Pennsylvania have the largest populations of German origin, with more than six million German Americans residing in the two states alone. More than 50 million people in the United States identify German as their ancestry; it is often mixed with other Northern European ethnicities. This list also includes people of German Jewish descent.
context_section_description: Rosemarie Aquilina – Judge, Michigan Army National Guardswoman, Michigan's first female member of the Judge Advocate General's Corps
  Otto Boehler – United States Army private awarded the Medal of Honor for actions during the Moro Rebellion during the Philippine–American War
  Johann August Heinrich Heros von Borcke – Major in the Confederate army
  George Armstrong Custer (1839–1876) – United States Army cavalry commander
  Thomas Custer – United States Army officer and two-time recipient of the Medal of Honor for bravery during the American Civil War; a younger brother of George Armstrong Custer, perishing with him at Little Bighorn in the Montana Territory
  Konrad Dannenberg – rocket pioneer and member of the German Rocket Team, brought to the U.S. under Operation Paperclip
  Dieter Dengler – German born United States Navy Naval aviator during the Vietnam War
  Hubert Dilger – decorated artillerist in the Union Army during the American Civil War
  Walter Dornberger – leader of Germany's V-2 rocket program and other projects at the Peenemünde Army Research Center, brought to the U.S. under Operation Paperclip
  Johann de Kalb – Major General in the American Revolution
  Frank Finkel – claimed to be the only white survivor of the Battle of Little Big Horn
  Alfred Maximilian Gruenther – senior United States Army officer, Red Cross president, and bridge player
  Thomas W. Hartmann – Brigadier General, lawyer and officer in the United States Air Force Reserve
  Friedrich Hecker – lawyer, politician, revolutionary and Civil War colonel
  Lewis Heermann – commissioned Surgeon's Mate in the United States Navy 8 February 1802; in 1942, the destroyer USS Heermann was named in his honor
  Nicholas Herkimer – commanding general at Battle of Oriskany, American Revolutionary War
  Daniel Hiester – political and military leader from the Revolutionary War period to the early 19th century
  John Hiester – military leader from the Revolutionary War period to the early 19th century
  Ralph Ignatowski – soldier, of Polish descent, World War II veteran, best friend of John Bradley
  Herman Kahn – military strategist and systems theorist
  August Kautz – Brigadier General /Union Army officer
  Walter Krueger - United States Army general during World War II and military historian
  Eugene H. C. Leutze – Admiral of the United States Navy, appointed to the United States Naval Academy by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863
  Jerry M. Linenger – captain, Medical Corps, U.S. Navy and a former NASA astronaut
  Marc Mitscher – Vice Admiral in the U.S. Navy; served as commander of the Fast Carrier Task Force in the Pacific in the latter half of World War II
  Aleda E. Lutz – American Army flight nurse during World War II, second-most decorated woman in American military history
  Peter Muhlenberg – clergyman, soldier and a politician of the Colonial, Revolutionary, and Post-Revolutionary eras in Pennsylvania
  Chester W. Nimitz – Commander in Chief of Pacific Forces for the United States and Allied forces during World War II
  Peter Osterhaus – Union Army general in the American Civil War, later serving as a U.S. diplomat
  John J. Pershing – officer in the United States Army, rose to the highest rank ever held in the U.S. Army – General of the Armies
  Molly Pitcher (Mary Ludwig Hays) – American Revolutionary soldier
  Friedrich Adolf Riedesel – regiment commander of the Duchy of Brunswick (Braunschweig) unit hired by the British during the American Revolution
  Edward S. Salomon – Union brigadier general in the American Civil War, of Jewish descent
  Frederick C. Salomon – Union brigadier general in the American Civil War
  Alexander Schimmelfennig – American Civil War general in the Union Army
  Harry Schmidt – U.S. Marine Corps general
  Tony F. Schneider – World War II pilot who served as Associate Professor of Naval Science at University of Louisville and as Professor of Naval Science at the University of New Mexico
  James Martinus Schoonmaker – Colonel in the Union Army in the American Civil War and a vice-president of the Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad
  Harold G. Schrier – officer in the United States Marine 
caption: Norman Schwarzkopf
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