Well, to be fair to the Germans, they were the largest non-English colonists in America at the time of the revolution. Anyone hear the factoid of the early congress voting as to whether America's national language would be either English or German?
Regarding that film, the dubbing really did make it worse. Glad the Critic showed that Bugs Bunny short, which also had the stereotyped right-off-the-boat Italian immigrant voice of Columbus. It is very obvious that the woodworm dream sequence was suppose to be mostly without dialogue. It is a very similar case with the Miramax Thief and the Cobbler "butchered" version, and with the American theatrical dub of Little Nemo, which also featured a lot of "gee whiz" dub filler.
@Saturn:
Also, Columbus never really proved that the world is round, as people (well, maybe not peasants, but those who dabbled in astronomy and sailing) already correctly assumed that it was round to begin with. They however figured that it would take too long to travel the way Colombus did, and they're right as Colombus never reached India ever. And yet, for some reason this myth is perpetuated for kids (maybe they want them to have a strong conviction despite other people's objections? But he's flat out WRONG). One of history's luckiest figure to get vindicated by history, and even get a day for him in the U.S…
Well, to be fair, he was the first to make the trip and return to tell the tale. In the early days of the colonies, Columbus was typically the one historians of the day gave credit to and since then, the legend of Columbus overcame the actual history. In the days of colonists and early 20th century immigrants, it was easy to compare their experiences with those of those on the Mayflower and, indeed, Columbus–crossing the vast Atlantic from Europe to an unknown land. I wouldn't be surprised if his fame in the U.S. also had to do with his noticably un-Italian, American/English sounding name.
In a very similar fashion, Cortez became a very mythical, larger than life figure in Mexico for centuries. He is essentially their Columbus, with a story straight out of a novel.
At least Magellan, who personally proved the world was round, gets a Japanese manga character named after him...