Comments by "SmallSpoonBrigade" (@SmallSpoonBrigade) on "Why Was There No German Mafia in the USA History? (Short - Documentary)" video.

I think part of it is that a lot of the Jewish mobsters were German as well. Which makes things somewhat confusing, as Dutch Schultz was both German and Jewish. There's also the issue of a lot of German things being misattributed to the Dutch due to the difficulty of Americans to pronounce Deutsch, Pennsylvania Dutch being a good example as it has little to do with Dutch.
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@scoliosis9478 Keep in mind that Germany is also a more or less Northern European group as well, and during the time that the majority of the immigration was happening, there were preferential regulations for people considered to be "white." Italians and other Southern Europeans weren't considered to be white until much later.
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@RaimoHöft Yes, although it gets a little confusing because Dutch itself reads a lot like somebody took and English dictionary and splattered in a bunch of German words and called it good. It's kind of interesting because that same basic process happened against to produce Pennsylvania Dutch through a more recent bit of linguistic sharing.
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It does get a little complicated, as the lack of a German mob has a lot to do with the Germans engaged in that sort of thing typically being Jewish. This was at a time where there was no Israel or any other specific nationality for Jews, so Russians could potentially be in a Russian mob or Jewish one depending on whether or not they were Jewish. But, without a German specific mob, there would just be a Jewish mob if applicable. And these were pretty much all run along ethnic lines until recently.
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@midlife_harmony I think it's more likely that it requires less reason for people coming from countries with a significant mafia presence to import it to the new country. In the case of the Polish, they would have had to figure that out on their own. In the case of Germans where there wasn't a history of the mob back home and there wasn't as much incentive to do that here due to where they were living and the smaller gap between their experience and that of the assimilated population, it wasn't desirable. The most famous German mobsters were also Jewish.
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