If I were to be pedantic, I don’t know if it’s correct to say that much of English is German as such. Modern standard German/Hochdeutsch and English have a common ancestor but that split was a very long time ago now. You could say that the grammar is better preserved in German but you could say the same about Dutch, or English‘s closest living sibling - Frisian. „German“ has gone through a great many changes from Proto-Germanic, and still, there’s a mess of different dialects/languages from different family branches in one modern state.

There’s probably a similar argument about the French influence (Norman wasn’t French per se but a closely related Romance language) but I don’t know enough about that.