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The really reason is money. Scientist write in the language that their funders speak and since the 1940s this has predominantly been American English. As a monolingunal native English speaking scientist I think it is great, but I suspect that with the rise of China that this may not hold in the future.
I disagree. I think the point the article makes - that it was because of the war that people were more or less banning German. In turn, the people who would make grants stopped accepting research to be published in German.

Had there not been a ban on German, then we probably would have native English speaking funders funding research published in German.

You see this in in most non-English speaking countries where funders are not native English speakers but research is still published in English.

I wouldn't sweat the rise of China too much. So much literature out there is written in English that Chinese folks who can't read/write English will get weeded out pretty quickly.