In 1940, 1,237,000 people of German birth lived in the United States... Further, if one considered the children of families in which both parents were German-born, the number of Germans reached 5 million and, counting families with one German-born parent, the number rose of 6 million. A population of that size had political muscle; the industrial northeast, the midwest and the northern plains states all had substantial German American voting blocs. Radical measures such as exclusion or detention would have carried a very heavy political cost.( "Why Were There No Internment Camps for German-American ..." N.p., n.d. Web. 24 Oct. 2016.