Conditions in the German states leading up to the 1848 revolutions produced a generation of radical socialists and communists who changed world history.

This generation fought against monarchical rule on the barricades of Central Europe, and then many of them crossed the Atlantic to the United States in time to shore up the Union during the Civil War. Radicalized German immigrants went on to prevent Missouri from joining the Confederacy, establish the first American commune during the Great Railroad Strike of 1877, and invent one of the most influential public school systems in the United States.

Between the two world wars and McCarthyism, much of the contribution of radical German American immigrants to the socialist movement remains whitewashed and lost to Red Scare censorship. Except for a few century-old statues and the famed sewer systems of Milwaukee, the monumental influence of leftist Germans is hidden in US history unless you know where to look.