Early History to 1945
PEOPLE HAVE DWELLED for thousands of years in the territory now
occupied by the Federal Republic of Germany. The first significant
written account of this area's inhabitants is Germania, written
about A.D. 98 by the Roman historian Tacitus. The Germanic tribes he
describes are believed to have come from Scandinavia to Germany about
100 B.C., perhaps induced to migrate by overpopulation. The Germanic
tribes living to the west of the Rhine River and south of the Main River
were soon subdued by the Romans and incorporated into the Roman Empire.
Tribes living to the east and north of these rivers remained free but
had more or less friendly relations with the Romans for several
centuries. Beginning in the fourth century A.D., new westward migrations
of eastern peoples caused the Germanic tribes to move into the Roman
Empire, which by the late fifth century ceased to exist.
One of the largest Germanic tribes, the Franks, came to control the
territory that was to become France and much of what is now western
Germany and Italy. In A.D. 800 their ruler, Charlemagne, was crowned in
Rome by the pope as emperor of all of this territory. Because of its
vastness, Charlemagne's empire split into three kingdoms within two
generations, the inhabitants of the West Frankish Kingdom speaking an
early form of French and those in the East Frankish Kingdom speaking an
early form of German. The tribes of the eastern kingdom--Franconians,
Saxons, Bavarians, Swabians, and several others--were ruled by
descendants of Charlemagne until 911, when they elected a Franconian,
Conrad I, to be their king. Some historians regard Conrad's election as
the beginning of what can properly be considered German history.
German kings soon added the Middle Kingdom to their realm and
adjudged themselves rulers of what would later be called the Holy Roman
Empire. In 962 Otto I became the first of the German kings crowned
emperor in Rome. By the middle of the next century, the German lands
ruled by the emperors were the richest and most politically powerful
part of Europe. German princes stopped the westward advances of the
Magyar tribe, and Germans began moving eastward to begin a long process
of colonization. During the next few centuries, however, the great
expense of the wars to maintain the empire against its enemies, chiefly
other German princes and the wealthy and powerful papacy and its allies,
depleted Germany's wealth and slowed its development. Unlike France or
England, where a central royal power was slowly established over
regional princes, Germany remained divided into a multitude of smaller
entities often warring with one another or in combinations against the
emperors. None of the local princes, or any of the emperors, were strong
enough to control Germany for a sustained period.
Germany's so-called particularism, that is, the existence within it
of many states of various sizes and kinds, such as principalities,
electorates, ecclesiastical territories, and free cities, became
characteristic by the early Middle Ages and persisted until 1871, when
the country was finally united. This disunity was exacerbated by the
Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century, which ended Germany's
religious unity by converting many Germans to Lutheranism and Calvinism.
For several centuries, adherents to these two varieties of Protestantism
viewed each other with as much hostility and suspicion as they did Roman
Catholics. For their part, Catholics frequently resorted to force to
defend themselves against Protestants or to convert them. As a result,
Germans were divided not only by territory but also by religion.
The terrible destruction of the Thirty Years' War of 1618-48, a war
partially religious in nature, reduced German particularism, as did the
reforms enacted during the age of enlightened absolutism (1648-1789) and
later the growth of nationalism and industrialism in the nineteenth
century. In 1815 the Congress of Vienna stipulated that the several
hundred states existing in Germany before the French Revolution be
replaced with thirty-eight states, some of them quite small. In
subsequent decades, the two largest of these states, Austria and
Prussia, vied for primacy in a Germany that was gradually unifying under
a variety of social and economic pressures. The politician responsible
for German unification was Otto von Bismarck, whose brilliant diplomacy
and ruthless practice of statecraft secured Prussian hegemony in a
united Germany in 1871. The new state, proclaimed the German Empire, did
not include Austria and its extensive empire of many non-German
territories and peoples.
Imperial Germany prospered. Its economy grew rapidly, and by the turn
of the century it rivaled Britain's in size. Although the empire's
constitution did not provide for a political system in which the
government was responsible to parliament, political parties were founded
that represented the main social groups. Roman Catholic and socialist
parties contended with conservative and progressive parties and with a
conservative monarchy to determine how Germany should be governed.
After Bismarck's dismissal in 1890 by the young emperor Wilhelm II,
Germany stepped up its competition with other European states for
colonies and for what it considered its proper place among the great
states. An aggressive program of military expansion instilled fear of
Germany in its neighbors. Several decades of military and colonial
competition and a number of diplomatic crises made for a tense
international atmosphere by 1914. In the early summer of that year,
Germany's rulers acted on the belief that their country's survival
depended on a successful war against Russia and France. German
strategists felt that a war against these countries had to be waged by
1916 if it were to be won because after that year Russian and French
military reforms would be complete, making German victory doubtful. This
logic led Germany to get drawn into a war between its ally
Austria-Hungary and Russia. Within weeks, a complicated system of
alliances escalated that regional conflict into World War I, which ended
with Germany's defeat in November 1918.
The Weimar Republic, established at war's end, was the first attempt
to institute parliamentary democracy in Germany. The republic never
enjoyed the wholehearted support of many Germans, however, and from the
start it was under savage attack from elements of the left and, more
important, from the right. Moreover, it was burdened during its
fifteen-year existence with serious economic problems. During the second
half of the 1920s, when foreign loans fed German prosperity,
parliamentary politics functioned better, yet many of the established
elites remained hostile to it. With the onset of the Great Depression,
parliamentary politics became impossible, and the government ruled by
decree. Economic crisis favored extremist politicians, and Adolf
Hitler's National Socialist German Workers' Party became the strongest
party after the summer elections of 1932. In January 1933, the
republic's elected president, Paul von Hindenburg, the World War I army
commander, named a government headed by Hitler.
Within a few months, Hitler accomplished the "legal
revolution" that removed his opponents. By 1935 his regime had
transformed Germany into a totalitarian state. Hitler achieved notable
economic and diplomatic successes during the first five years of his
rule. However, in September 1939 he made a fatal gamble by invading
Poland and starting World War II. The eventual defeat of Hitler's Third
Reich in 1945 occurred only after the loss of tens of millions of lives,
many from military causes, many from sickness and starvation, and many
from what has come to be called the Holocaust.
1945 to 1990
GERMANY WAS UNITED ON OCTOBER 3, 1990. This event came after
forty-five years of division that had begun with the partition of
Germany into four occupation zones following its defeat in 1945 by the
Four Powers--the United States, Britain, France, and the Soviet Union.
Once a powerful nation, Germany lay vanquished at the end of World War
II. The war's human cost had been staggering. Millions of Germans had
died or had suffered terribly during the conflict, both in combat and on
the home front. Intensive Allied bombing raids, invasions, and
subsequent social upheaval had forced millions of Germans from their
homes. Not since the ravages of the Thirty Years' War had Germans
experienced such misery. Beyond the physical destruction, Germans had
been confronted with the moral devastation of defeat.
Germans refer to the immediate aftermath of the war as the Stunde
Null (Zero Hour), the point in time when Germany ceased to exist as
a state and the rebuilding of the country would begin. At first, Germany
was administered by the Four Powers, each with its own occupation zone.
In time, Germans themselves began to play a role in the governing of
these zones. Political parties were formed, and, within months of the
war's end, the first elections were held. Although most people were
concerned with mere physical survival, much was accomplished in
rebuilding cities, fashioning a new economy, and integrating the
millions of refugees from the eastern areas of Germany that had been
lost after the war.
Overshadowing these events within Germany, however, was the gradual
emergence of the Cold War during the second half of the 1940s. By the
decade's end, the two superpowers--the United States and the Soviet
Union--had faced off in an increasingly ideological confrontation. The
Iron Curtain between them cut Germany in two. Although the Allies'
original plans envisioned that Germany would remain a single state,
Western and Eastern concepts of political, social, and economic
organization gradually led the three Western zones to join together,
becoming separate from the Soviet zone and ultimately leading to the
formation in 1949 of two German states. The three Western occupation
zones became the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG, or West Germany), and
the Soviet zone became the German Democratic Republic (GDR, or East
Germany).
During the next four decades, the two states led separate existences.
West Germany joined the Western community of nations, while East Germany
became the westernmost part of the Soviet empire. The two German states,
with a common language and history, were separated by the mutual
suspicion and hostility of the superpowers. In the mid-1950s, both
German states rearmed. The FRG's armed forces, the Bundeswehr, became a
vital part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The GDR's
National People's Army (Nationale Volksarmee--NVA) became a key
component of the Warsaw Pact. The construction of the Berlin Wall in
1961 by the GDR further divided the two states.
In West Germany, by the early 1950s a system of parliamentary
democracy with free and contending political parties was firmly
established. The Christian Democratic Union (Christlich Demokratische
Union--CDU), along with its sister party, the Christian Social Union
(Christlich-Soziale Union--CSU), led the coalitions that governed West
Germany at the national level for two decades until late 1969. In that
year, the Social Democratic Party of Germany (Sozialdemokratische Partei
Deutschlands--SPD) formed the first of a series of coalition governments
with the Free Democratic Party (Freie Demokratische Partei--FDP) that
governed the country until 1982. Late that year, the SPD was ousted from
power when the CDU/CSU and the FDP formed a new coalition government.
These parties ruled for the rest of the 1980s. As successful, however,
as West Germany's adoption of democratic politics had been after 1945,
the country's economic recovery was so strong that it was commonly
referred to as the "economic miracle " (Wirtschaftswunder
). By the 1960s, West Germany was among the world's wealthiest
countries, and by the 1990s, Germany's economy and central bank played
the leading role in Europe's economy.
East Germany was not so fortunate. A socialist dictatorship was put
in place and carefully watched by its Soviet masters. As in the Soviet
Union, political opposition was suppressed, the press censored, and the
economy owned and controlled by the state. East Germany's economy
performed modestly when compared with that of West Germany, but of all
the socialist economies it was the most successful. Unlike West Germany,
East Germany was not freely supported by its citizens. Indeed, force was
needed to keep East Germans from fleeing to the West. Although some
consolidation of the GDR was assured by the construction of the Berlin
Wall, the GDR remained an artificial entity maintained by Soviet
military power. Once this support was withdrawn, the GDR collapsed.
During the four decades of division, relations between the two German
states were reserved and sometimes hostile. Despite their common
language and history, the citizens of the two states had limited direct
contact with one another. At times, during the 1960s, for example,
contact was reduced to a minimum. During the 1970s, however, the two
peoples began to mix more freely as their governments negotiated
treaties that made relations between the two states more open. During
the 1980s, although relations continued to improve and contacts between
the two peoples became more frequent, persons attempting to flee from
East Germany still died along its mined borders, GDR officials continued
to harass and arrest dissidents, and the Socialist Unity Party of
Germany (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands--SED) rigidly
controlled political life.
A key reason for the collapse of the GDR was the poor performance of
its state-owned and centrally directed economy. The efforts of Soviet
president Mikhail Gorbachev, beginning in the mid-1980s, to liberalize
the Soviet Union and reform its economy were met with hostility by the
GDR's top leadership. Word of these measures nevertheless reached East
German grassroots opposition groups. Encouraged by the waves of reform
in the Soviet Union and in neighboring socialist states, opposition in
the East German population grew and became more and more vocal, despite
increased state repression. By the second half of 1989, the East German
opposition consisted of a number of groups with a variety of aims and
was strong enough to stage large demonstrations.
The massive flow of East Germans to the West through neighboring
socialist countries in the summer and fall of 1989, particularly through
Hungary, was telling evidence that the GDR did not have the support of
its citizens. Public opposition to the regime became ever more open and
demanding. In late 1989, confronted with crushing economic problems,
unable to control the borders of neighboring states, and told by the
Soviet leadership not to expect outside help in quelling domestic
protest, the GDR leadership resigned in the face of massive and
constantly growing public demonstrations. After elections in the spring
of 1990, the critics of the SED regime took over the government. On
October 3, 1990, the GDR ceased to exist, and its territory and people
were joined to the FRG. The division of Germany that had lasted decades
was ended.
Germany - Early History
Charlemagne inherited the Frankish crown in 768. During his reign
(768-814), he subdued Bavaria, conquered Lombardy and Saxony, and
established his authority in central Italy. By the end of the eighth
century, his kingdom, later to become known as the First Reich (empire
in German), included present-day France, the Netherlands, Belgium, and
Luxembourg, as well as a narrow strip of northern Spain, much of Germany
and Austria, and much of the northern half of Italy. Charlemagne,
founder of an empire that was Roman, Christian, and Germanic, was
crowned emperor in Rome by the pope in 800.
The Carolingian Empire was based on an alliance between the emperor,
who was a temporal ruler supported by a military retinue, and the pope
of the Roman Catholic Church, who granted spiritual sanction to the
imperial mission. Charlemagne and his son Louis I (r. 814-40)
established centralized authority, appointed imperial counts as
administrators, and developed a hierarchical feudal structure headed by
the emperor. Reliant on personal leadership rather than the Roman
concept of legalistic government, Charlemagne's empire lasted less than
a century.
A period of warfare followed the death of Louis. The Treaty of Verdun
(843) restored peace and divided the empire among three sons,
geographically and politically delineating the approximate future
territories of Germany, France, and the area between them, known as the
Middle Kingdom (see fig. 2). The eastern Carolingian kings ruled the
East Frankish Kingdom, what is now Germany and Austria; the western
Carolingian kings ruled the West Frankish Kingdom, what became France.
The imperial title, however, came to depend increasingly on rule over
the Middle Kingdom. By this time, in addition to a geographical and
political delineation, a cultural and linguistic split had occurred. The
eastern Frankish tribes still spoke Germanic dialects; the language of
the western Frankish tribes, under the influence of Gallo-Latin, had
developed into Old French. Because of these linguistic differences, the
Treaty of Verdun had to be written in two languages.
Not only had Charlemagne's empire been divided into three kingdoms,
but the East Frankish Kingdom was being weakened by the rise of regional
duchies, the so-called stem duchies of Franconia, Saxony, Bavaria,
Swabia, and Lorraine, which acquired the trappings of petty kingdoms.
The fragmentation in the east marked the beginning of German
particularism, in which territorial rulers promoted their own interests
and autonomy without regard to the kingdom as a whole. The duchies were
strengthened when the Carolingian line died out in 911; subsequent kings
would have no direct blood link to the throne with which to legitimate
their claims to power against the territorial dukes.
Germany - The Saxon Dynasty, 919-1024
After the death of the last Saxon king in 1024, the crown passed to
the Salians, a Frankish tribe. The four Salian kings--Conrad II, Henry
III, Henry IV, and Henry V--who ruled Germany as kings from 1024 to
1125, established their monarchy as a major European power. Their main
accomplishment was the development of a permanent administrative system
based on a class of public officials answerable to the crown.
A principal reason for the success of the early Salians was their
alliance with the church, a policy begun by Otto I, which gave them the
material support they needed to subdue rebellious dukes. In time,
however, the church came to regret this close relationship. The
relationship broke down in 1075 during what came to be known as the
Investiture Contest, a struggle in which the reformist pope, Gregory
VII, demanded that Henry IV (r. 1056-1106) renounce his rights over the
German church. The pope also attacked the concept of monarchy by divine
right and gained the support of significant elements of the German
nobility interested in limiting imperial absolutism. More important, the
pope forbade church officials under pain of excommunication to support
Henry as they had so freely done in the past. In the end, Henry
journeyed to Canossa in northern Italy in 1077 to do penance and to
receive absolution from the pope. However, he resumed the practice of
lay investiture (appointment of religious officials by civil
authorities) and arranged the election of an antipope.
The German monarch's struggle with the papacy resulted in a war that
ravaged German lands from 1077 until the Concordat of Worms in 1122.
This agreement stipulated that the pope was to appoint high church
officials but gave the German king the right to veto the papal choices.
Imperial control of Italy was lost for a time, and the imperial crown
became dependent on the political support of competing aristocratic
factions. Feudalism also became more widespread as freemen sought
protection by swearing allegiance to a lord. These powerful local
rulers, having thereby acquired extensive territories and large military
retinues, took over administration within their territories and
organized it around an increasing number of castles. The most powerful
of these local rulers came to be called princes rather than dukes.
According to the laws of the German feudal system, the king had no
claims on the vassals of the other princes, only on those living within
his family's territory. Lacking the support of the formerly independent
vassals and weakened by the increasing hostility of the church, the
monarchy lost its preeminence. Thus, the Investiture Contest
strengthened local power in Germany in contrast to what was happening in
France and England, where the growth of a centralized royal power was
under way.
The Investiture Contest had an additional effect. The long struggle
between emperor and pope hurt Germany's intellectual life--in this
period largely confined to monasteries--and Germany no longer led or
even kept pace with developments occurring in France and Italy. For
instance, no universities were founded in Germany until the fourteenth
century.
Germany - The Hohenstaufen Dynasty, 1138-1254
Following the death of Henry V (r. 1106-25), the last of the Salian
kings, the dukes refused to elect his nephew because they feared that he
might restore royal power. Instead, they elected a noble connected to
the Saxon noble family Welf (often written as Guelf). This choice
inflamed the Hohenstaufen family of Swabia, which also had a claim to
the throne. Although a Hohenstaufen became king in 1138, the dynastic
feud with the Welfs continued. The feud became international in nature
when the Welfs sided with the papacy and its allies, most notably the
cities of northern Italy, against the imperial ambitions of the
Hohenstaufen Dynasty.
The second of the Hohenstaufen rulers, Frederick I (r. 1152-90), also
known as Frederick Barbarossa because of his red beard, struggled
throughout his reign to restore the power and prestige of the German
monarchy, but he had little success. Because the German dukes had grown
stronger both during and after the Investiture Contest and because royal
access to the resources of the church in Germany was much reduced,
Frederick was forced to go to Italy to find the finances needed to
restore the king's power in Germany. He was soon crowned emperor in
Italy, but decades of warfare on the peninsula yielded scant results.
The papacy and the prosperous city-states of northern Italy were
traditional enemies, but the fear of imperial domination caused them to
join ranks to fight Frederick. Under the skilled leadership of Pope
Alexander III, the alliance suffered many defeats but ultimately was
able to deny the emperor a complete victory in Italy. Frederick returned
to Germany old and embittered. He had vanquished one notable opponent
and member of the Welf family, Saxony's Henry the Lion, but his hopes of
restoring the power and prestige of his family and the monarchy seemed
unlikely to be met by the end of his life.
During Frederick's long stays in Italy, the German princes became
stronger and began a successful colonization of Slavic lands. Offers of
reduced taxes and manorial duties enticed many Germans to settle in the
east as the area's original inhabitants were killed or driven away.
Because of this colonization, the empire increased in size and came to
include Pomerania, Silesia, Bohemia, and Moravia. A quickening economic
life in Germany increased the number of towns and gave them greater
importance. It was also during this period that castles and courts
replaced monasteries as centers of culture. Growing out of this courtly
culture, German medieval literature reached its peak in lyrical love
poetry, the Minnesang , and in narrative epic poems such as Tristan
, Parzival , and the Nibelungenlied .
Frederick died in 1190 while on a crusade and was succeeded by his
son, Henry VI (r. 1190-97). Elected king even before his father's death,
Henry went to Rome to be crowned emperor. A death in his wife's family
gave him possession of Sicily, a source of vast wealth. Henry failed to
make royal and imperial succession hereditary, but in 1196 he succeeded
in gaining a pledge that his infant son Frederick would receive the
German crown. Faced with difficulties in Italy and confident that he
would realize his wishes in Germany at a later date, Henry returned to
the south, where it appeared he might unify the peninsula under the
Hohenstaufen name. After a series of military victories, however, he
died of natural causes in Sicily in 1197.
Because the election of the three-year-old Frederick to be German
king appeared likely to make orderly rule difficult, the boy's uncle,
Philip, was chosen to serve in his place. Other factions elected a Welf
candidate, Otto IV, as counterking, and a long civil war began. Philip
was murdered by Otto IV in 1208. Otto IV in turn was killed by the
French at the Battle of Bouvines in 1214. Frederick returned to Germany
in 1212 from Sicily, where he had grown up, and became king in 1215. As
Frederick II (r. 1215-50), he spent little time in Germany because his
main concerns lay in Italy. Frederick made significant concessions to
the German nobles, such as those put forth in an imperial statute of
1232, which made princes virtually independent rulers within their
territories. The clergy also became more powerful. Although Frederick
was one of the most energetic, imaginative, and capable rulers of the
Middle Ages, he did nothing to draw the disparate forces in Germany
together. His legacy was thus that local rulers had more authority after
his reign than before it.
By the time of Frederick's death in 1250, there was little
centralized power in Germany. The Great Interregnum (1256-73), a period
of anarchy in which there was no emperor and German princes vied for
individual advantage, followed the death of Frederick's son Conrad IV in
1254. In this short period, the German nobility managed to strip many
powers away from the already diminished monarchy. Rather than establish
sovereign states, however, many nobles tended to look after their
families. Their many heirs created more and smaller estates. A largely
free class of officials also formed, many of whom eventually acquired
hereditary rights to administrative and legal offices. These trends
compounded political fragmentation within Germany.
Despite the political chaos of the Hohenstaufen period, the
population grew from an estimated 8 million in 1200 to about 14 million
in 1300, and the number of towns increased tenfold. The most heavily
urbanized areas of Germany were located in the south and the west. Towns
often developed a degree of independence, but many were subordinate to
local rulers or the emperor. Colonization of the east also continued in
the thirteenth century, most notably through the efforts of the Knights
of the Teutonic Order, a society of soldier-monks. German merchants also
began trading extensively on the Baltic.
Germany - The Empire under the Early Habsburgs
The Great Interregnum ended in 1273 with the election of Rudolf of
Habsburg as king-emperor. After the interregnum period, Germany's
emperors came from three powerful dynastic houses: Luxemburg (in
Bohemia), Wittelsbach (in Bavaria), and Habsburg (in Austria). These
families alternated on the imperial throne until the crown returned in
the mid-fifteenth century to the Habsburgs, who retained it with only
one short break until the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806.
The Golden Bull of 1356, an edict promulgated by Emperor Charles IV
(r. 1355-78) of the Luxemburg family, provided the basic constitution of
the empire up to its dissolution. It formalized the practice of having
seven electors--the archbishops of the cities of Trier, Cologne, and
Mainz, and the rulers of the Palatinate, Saxony, Brandenburg, and
Bohemia--choose the emperor, and it represented a further political
consolidation of the principalities. The Golden Bull ended the
long-standing attempt of various emperors to unite Germany under a
hereditary monarchy. Henceforth, the emperor shared power with other
great nobles like himself and was regarded as merely the first among
equals. Without the cooperation of the other princes, he could not rule.
The princes were not absolute rulers either. They had made so many
concessions to other secular and ecclesiastical powers in their struggle
against the emperor that many smaller principalities, ecclesiastical
states, and towns had retained a degree of independence. Some of the
smaller noble holdings were so poor that they had to resort to outright
extortion of travelers and merchants to sustain themselves, with the
result that journeying through Germany could be perilous in the late
Middle Ages. All of Germany was under the nominal control of the
emperor, but because his power was so weak or uncertain, local
authorities had to maintain order--yet another indication of Germany's
political fragmentation.
Despite the lack of a strong central authority, Germany prospered
during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Its population increased
from about 14 million in 1300 to about 16 million in 1500, even though
the Black Death killed as much as one-third of the population in the
mid-fourteenth century.
Located in the center of Europe, Germany was active in international
trade. Rivers flowing to the north and the east and the Alpine passes
made Germany a natural conduit conveying goods from the Mediterranean to
northern Europe. Germany became a noted manufacturing center. Trade and
manufacturing led to the growth of towns, and in 1500 an estimated 10
percent of the population lived in urban areas. Many towns became
wealthy and were governed by a sophisticated and self-confident merchant
oligarchy. Dozens of towns in northern Germany joined together to form
the Hanseatic League, a trading federation that managed shipping and
trade on the Baltic and in many inland areas, even into Bohemia and
Hungary. The Hanseatic League had commercial offices in such widely
dispersed towns as London, Bergen (in present-day Norway), and Novgorod
(in present-day Russia). The league was at one time so powerful that it
successfully waged war against the king of Denmark. In southern Germany,
towns banded together on occasion to protect their interests against
encroachments by either imperial or local powers. Although these urban
confederations were not always strong enough to defeat their opponents,
they sometimes succeeded in helping their members to avoid complete
subjugation. In what was eventually to become Switzerland, one
confederation of towns had sufficient military might to win virtual
independence from the Holy Roman Empire in 1499.
The Knights of the Teutonic Order continued their settlement of the
east until their dissolution early in the sixteenth century, in spite of
a serious defeat at the hands of the Poles at the Battle of Tannenberg
in 1410. The lands that came under the control of this monastic
military, whose members were pledged to chastity and to the conquest and
conversion of heathens, included territory that one day would become
eastern Prussia and would be inhabited by Germans until 1945. German
settlement in areas south of the territories controlled by the Knights
of the Teutonic Order also continued, but generally at the behest of
eastern rulers who valued the skills of German peasant-farmers. These
new settlers were part of a long process of peaceful German immigration
to the east that lasted for centuries, with Germans moving into all of
eastern Europe and even deep into Russia.
Intellectual growth accompanied German expansion. Several
universities were founded, and Germany came into increased contact with
the humanists active elsewhere in Europe. The invention of movable type
in the middle of the fifteenth century in Germany also contributed to a
more lively intellectual climate. Religious ferment was common, most
notably the heretical movement engendered by the teachings of Jan Hus
(ca. 1372-1415) in Bohemia. Hus eventually was executed, but the
dissatisfaction he felt toward the established church was shared by many
others throughout German-speaking lands, as could be seen in the
frequent occurrences of popular, mystical religious revivalism after his
death.
Germany - The Protestant Reformation
On the eve of All Saints' Day in 1517, Martin Luther, a professor of
theology at Wittenberg University in Saxony, posted ninety-five theses
on a church door. Luther's primary concern was the sale of
indulgences--papal grants of reduced punishment in the afterlife,
including releases from purgatory. First written in Latin, the theses
were soon translated into German and widely distributed. Summoned by
church authorities to explain his writings, Luther became embroiled in
further controversy and in 1520 wrote his three most famous tracts, in
which he attacked the papacy and exposed church corruption, acknowledged
the validity of only two of the seven sacraments, and argued for the
supremacy of faith over good works. In 1521 Luther was summoned to
appear before Emperor Charles V at the Diet of Worms. Refusing to recant
his writings, he was banned under the Edict of Worms. Secreted away by
the ruler of Saxony, Frederick the Wise, Luther retreated to the castle
of Wartburg, where he worked on a translation of the New Testament and
wrote numerous religious tracts.
Luther's disagreements with the doctrines of the Roman Catholic
Church set off a chain of events that within a few decades destroyed
Germany's religious unity. Although one of the most influential figures
in German history, Luther was only one of many who were critical of the
Roman Catholic Church. However, because of the power of his ideas and
the enormous influence of his writings, it is he who is regarded as the
initiator of the Protestant Reformation. Luther quickly acquired a large
following among those disgusted by rampant church corruption and
unfulfilled by mechanistic religious services. Many warmed to his
contention that religion must be simplified into a close relationship of
human beings with God without the extensive mediation of the Roman
Catholic Church and its accretion of tradition.
Luther magnified the inherent potency of his ideas by articulating
them in a language that was without rival in clarity and force. He
strove to make the Scriptures accessible to ordinary worshipers by
translating them into vernacular German. This he did with such genius
that the German dialect he used became the written language of all of
Germany. Without Luther's translation of the Bible, Germany might have
come to use a number of mutually incomprehensible languages, as was the
case in the northwestern part of the Holy Roman Empire, where local
dialects evolved into what is now modern Dutch. Luther also wrote hymns
that are still sung in Christian religious services all over the world.
A less exalted reason for the wide distribution of Luther's doctrines
was the development of printing with movable type. The Reformation
created a demand for all kinds of religious writings. The readership was
so great that the number of books printed in Germany increased from
about 150 in 1518 to nearly 1,000 six years later.
Luther's ideas soon coalesced into a body of doctrines called
Lutheranism. Powerful supporters such as princes and free cities
accepted Lutheranism for many reasons, some because they sincerely
supported reform, others out of narrow self-interest. In some areas, a
jurisdiction would adopt Lutheranism because a large neighboring state
had done so. In other areas, rulers accepted it because they sought to
retain control over their subjects who had embraced it earlier. Nearly
all the imperial cities became Lutheran, despite the fact that the
emperor, to whom they were subordinate, was hostile to the movement.
Historians have found no single convincing explanation of why one area
became Lutheran and another did not, because so many social, economic,
and religious factors were involved.
Given the revolutionary nature of Lutheranism and the economic and
political tensions of the period, it is not surprising that the
Reformation soon became marked by violence and extremism. The Knights'
War of 1522-23, in which members of the lower nobility rebelled against
the authorities in southwestern Germany, was quickly crushed. Some of
the rampaging knights were ardent supporters of Luther. The Peasants'
War of 1524-25 was more serious, involving as many as 300,000 peasants
in southwestern and central Germany. Influenced somewhat by the new
religious ideas but responding mostly to changing economic conditions,
the peasants' rebellion spread quickly, but without coordination. It
also received support from some dissatisfied city dwellers and from some
noblemen of arms who led its ragged armies. Although the peasants'
rebellion was the largest uprising in German history, it was quickly
suppressed, with about 100,000 casualties. In the 1530s, the
Anabaptists, a radical Christian sect, seized several towns, their
objective being to construct a just society. They were likewise brutally
suppressed by the authorities.
Luther opposed the peasants' cause and wrote an impassioned tract
demanding their quick suppression. However radical his religious views,
Luther was a social and political conservative. He believed that the end
of the world was imminent and regarded practical affairs as having
little importance compared with the effort to win eternal salvation.
Therefore, he counseled obedience to worldly authorities if they allowed
freedom of worship. Lutheranism thus became a means of upholding the
worldly status quo and the leaders who adopted the new faith. In
contrast to England, where Protestantism retained a significant radical
social element, German Protestantism became an integral part of the
state. Some historians maintain that this integration of state and
church has deprived Germany of a deeply rooted tradition of political
dissent as found in Britain and the United States.
Germany - Resistance to Lutheranism
The most important German power after the Peace of Westphalia was
Austria, followed by a few other states with much smaller populations,
most notably Brandenburg, Saxony, and Bavaria. Austria retained its
preeminence until the second half of the nineteenth century, but in the
eighteenth century Brandenburg had become a serious rival, annexing
valuable Austrian territory. The rivalry came to form the so-called
dualism of the empire, that is, the presence in it of two powerful
states, neither of which was strong enough to dominate the empire and
for that reason sought the support of smaller states. The smaller states
worked to derive their own advantages from German dualism, none being
willing to cede sovereignty to either Austria or Prussia.
In 1648 Brandenburg was a small state in northern Germany. It had
been ruled by the Hohenzollern Dynasty since the late fifteenth century
and consisted of the core region and its capital, Berlin; eastern
Pomerania; an area around Magdeburg; the former holdings of the Knights
of the Teutonic Order in eastern Prussia; and some smaller holdings in
western Germany. Brandenburg became known as Prussia in 1701 when its
ruler crowned himself King Frederick I of Prussia. Prussia acquired the
rest of Pomerania after defeating Sweden in the Great Northern War
(1700-21). Prussia's increase in size and influence may be attributed to
a succession of capable leaders, all of whom enjoyed long reigns. The
first was Frederick William (r. 1640-88), known as the Great Elector. He
increased his family's power by granting favors to the nobility,
weakening the independence of the towns, and maintaining a professional
standing army. His son Frederick I (r. 1688-1713) established Prussia as
a kingdom. Frederick further strengthened the army, but not nearly as
much as his son Frederick William I (r. 1713-40), who also modernized
the kingdom's bureaucracy. Frederick II (r. 1740-86), known to posterity
as Frederick the Great, continued along the same lines as his father but
showed much greater imagination and ruthlessness, transforming his small
kingdom into one of the great powers of Europe.
In 1740 Frederick seized Silesia, a wealthy province that belonged to
the Habsburgs and had a population of about 1 million inhabitants. Maria
Theresa (r. 1740-80), the new Habsburg empress, was unable to regain
possession of Silesia, which remained under Prussian control at the end
of the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-48). Frederick retained
Silesia even after facing a coalition of France, Austria, and Russia
during the Seven Years' War (1756-63). Frederick expanded Prussian
territory still further in 1772, when, with his erstwhile enemies Russia
and Austria, he took part in the First Partition of Poland. This last
seizure was highly beneficial to Frederick because it linked eastern
Prussia with much of his kingdom's western holdings.
Although Prussia and Austria were rivals, they had some important
characteristics in common. Neither state was populated by a single
people, but by numerous peoples speaking different languages and
belonging to different religions. Neither state was located entirely
within the empire. Both had sizable territories to the east of the
empire, and it was there that they hoped mainly to expand. Both states
were governed by enlightened monarchs, who, having only to cajole the
nobility with occasional concessions, saw government as for the people
but not by the people. Hence, both states were governed by the most
efficient methods known to the eighteenth century, and both were fairly
tolerant according to the standards of the time. Prussia accepted many
Protestants expelled from other states, most notably the Huguenots who
fled France after the Edict of Nantes in 1685. Austria became one of the
first states to allow Jews to settle where they liked within its
boundaries and to practice the professions of their choice.
Germany - The Smaller States
By the eighteenth century, none of the other states of the empire
were strong enough to have territorial ambitions to match those of
Prussia and Austria. Some of the larger states, such as Saxony, Bavaria,
and Württemberg, also maintained standing armies, but their smaller
size compelled them to seek allies, some from outside the empire. With
the exception of the free cities and ecclesiastical states, smaller
states, like Austria and Prussia, were governed by a hereditary monarch
who ruled either with the consent or help of the nobility and with the
help of an increasingly well-trained bureaucracy. Only a few states,
such as Württemberg, could boast of an active democracy of the kind
evolving in Britain and France. Except in a few free cities, such as
Frankfurt am Main and Hamburg, which were active in international trade,
Germany's commercial class was neither strong nor self-confident.
Farmers in western Germany were largely free; those in the east were
often serfs. However, whether in the east or the west, most who worked
the land lived at the subsistence level.
Despite its lack of popular democracy, Germany was generally well
governed. The state bureaucracies gained in power and expertise, and
efficiency and probity were esteemed. During the eighteenth century, the
principles of the Enlightenment came to be widely disseminated and
applied. Although there were no political challenges to enlightened
absolutism, as was the case in France, all phenomena, including
religion, were subject to critical, reasoned examination to determine
their rationality. In this more tolerant environment, differing
religious views could still create social friction, but ways were found
for the empire's three main religions--Roman Catholicism, Lutheranism,
and Calvinism--to coexist in most states. The expulsion of about 20,000
Protestants from the ecclesiastical state of Salzburg during 1731-32 was
viewed by the educated public at the time as a harking back to less
enlightened days.
Several new universities were founded, some soon considered among
Europe's best. An increasingly literate public made possible a jump in
the number of journals and newspapers. At the end of the seventeenth
century, most books printed in Germany were in Latin. By the end of the
next century, all but 5 percent were in German. The eighteenth century
also saw a refinement of the German language and a flowering of German
literature with the appearance of such figures as Gotthold Lessing,
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and Friedrich Schiller. German music also
reached great heights with the Bach family, George Frederick Handel,
Joseph Haydn, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
Germany - The French Revolution and Germany
The French Revolution, which erupted in 1789 with the storming of the
Bastille in Paris, at first gained the enthusiastic approval of some
German intellectuals, who welcomed the proclamation of a constitution
and a bill of rights. Within a few years, most of this support had
dissipated, replaced by fear of a newly aggressive French nationalism
and horror at the execution of the revolution's opponents. In 1792
French troops invaded Germany and were at first pushed back by imperial
forces. But at the Battle of Valmy in late 1792, the French army, a
revolutionary citizens' army fighting on its own soil, defeated the
professional imperial army. By 1794 France had secured control of the
Rhineland, which it was to occupy for twenty years.
During the Rhineland occupation, France followed its traditional
policy of keeping Austria and Prussia apart and manipulating the smaller
German states. In observance of the Treaty of Basel of 1795, Prussian
and German forces north of the Main River ceased efforts against the
French. Austria endured repeated defeats at the hands of the French,
most notably at the Battle of Austerlitz in 1805. At this battle,
Russians fought alongside Austrians against the French, who were aided
by forces from several south German states, including Bavaria, Baden,
and Württemberg.
Prussia reentered the war against France in 1806, but its forces were
badly beaten at the Battle of Jena that same year. Prussia was abandoned
by its ally Russia and lost territory as a result of the Treaty of
Tilsit in 1807. These national humiliations motivated the Prussians to
undertake a serious program of social and military reform. The most
noted of the reformers--Karl vom Stein, Karl August von Hardenberg,
Wilhelm von Humboldt, and Gerhard von Scharnhorst, along with many
others--improved the country's laws, education, administration, and
military organization. Scharnhorst, responsible for military reforms,
emphasized the importance to the army of moral incentives, personal
courage, and individual responsibility. He also introduced the principle
of competition and abandoned the privileges accorded to nobility within
the officer corps. A revitalized Prussia joined with Austria and Russia
to defeat Napoleon at the Battle of Leipzig in late 1813 and drove him
out of Germany. Prussian forces under General Gebhard von Blücher were
essential to the final victory over Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo
in 1815.
Despite Napoleon's defeat, some of the changes he had brought to
Germany during the French occupation were retained. Public
administration was improved, feudalism was weakened, the power of the
trade guilds was reduced, and the Napoleonic Code replaced traditional
legal codes in many areas. The new legal code was popular and remained
in effect in the Rhineland until 1900. As a result of these reforms,
some areas of Germany were better prepared for the coming of
industrialization in the nineteenth century.
French occupation authorities also allowed many smaller states,
ecclesiastical entities, and free cities to be incorporated into their
larger neighbors. Approximately 300 states had existed within the Holy
Roman Empire in 1789; only about forty remained by 1814. The empire
ceased to exist in 1806 when Francis II of Austria gave up his imperial
title. In its place, Napoleon had created the Confederation of the
Rhine, made up of the states of western and southern Germany, under
French direction. Austria and Prussia were not members. The
confederation was to provide Napoleon with troops for his military
campaigns. After his defeat, the confederation was dissolved.
Germany - The German Confederation, 1815-66
It was not possible for Metternich and his allies to suppress
completely the desire for liberal reforms, including the establishment
of constitutional parliamentary government, economic freedom, and civil
liberties. Some of these reforms had already been under discussion
during the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, and awareness of their
desirability had spread during the Napoleonic era. In addition, the
economic reforms introduced into the Rhineland by France had taken hold.
The business class that formed after 1815 pressed for abolition of
restrictive trade practices favored by traditional handicraft guilds.
Businessmen also sought a common currency and system of measurements for
Germany, as well as a reduction of the numerous tolls that made road and
river travel expensive and slow.
During the 1820s, significant progress was made in reducing customs
duties among German states. At Prussian instigation, the Zollverein
(Customs Union) began to form, and by the mid-1830s it included all the
most important German states except Austria. Prussia saw to it that its
chief rival within Germany was excluded from the union. Vienna, for its
part, did not realize at this early point the political and economic
significance of intra-German trade.
Many of Germany's liberal intelligentsia--lower government officials,
men of letters, professors, and lawyers--who pushed for representative
government and greater political freedom were also interested in some
form of German unity. They argued that liberal political reforms could
only be enacted in a larger political entity. Germany's small,
traditional states offered little scope for political reform.
Among those groups desiring reform, there was, ironically, little
unity. Many businessmen were interested only in reforms that would
facilitate commerce, and they gave little thought to politics. Political
liberals were split into a number of camps. Some wished for a greater
degree of political representation, but, given a widespread fear of what
the masses might do if they had access to power, these liberals were
content to have aristocrats as leaders. Others desired a democratic
constitution, but with a hereditary king as ruler. A minority of
liberals were ardent democrats who desired to establish a republic with
parliamentary democracy and universal suffrage.
The ideal of a united Germany had been awakened within liberal groups
by the writings of scholars and literary figures such as Johann
Gottfried Herder (1744-1803) and by the achievements of French
nationalism after the revolution. France's easy victories over Germany's
small states made the union of a people with a common language and
historical memory desirable for practical reasons alone. Others were
impressed by the political and commercial accomplishments of Britain,
which made those of the small German states seem insignificant. Some
writers warmed to romantic evocations of Germany's glory during the
Middle Ages.
Many members of Germany's aristocratic ruling class were opposed to
national unity because they feared it would mean the disappearance of
their small states into a large Germany. Metternich opposed a united
Germany because the Habsburg Empire did not embrace a single people
speaking one language, but many peoples speaking different languages.
The empire would not easily fit into a united Germany. He desired
instead the continued existence of the loosely organized German
Confederation with its forty-odd members, none equal to Austria in
strength. Prussia's kings and its conservative elite sometimes objected
to Austria's primacy in the confederation, but they had little desire
for German unification, which they regarded as a potential threat to
Prussia's existence.
Germany's lower classes--farmers, artisans, and factory workers--were
not included in the discussions about political and economic reform.
Germany's farmers had been freed to some degree from many obligations
and dues owed to the landowning aristocracy, but they were often
desperately poor, earning barely enough to survive. Farmers west of the
Elbe River usually had properties too small to yield any kind of
prosperity. Farmers east of the Elbe often were landless laborers hired
to work on large estates. Artisans, that is, skilled workers in
handicrafts and trades belonging to the traditional guilds, saw their
economic position worsen as a result of the industrialization that had
begun to appear in Germany after 1815. The guilds attempted to stop
factory construction and unrestricted commerce, but strong economic
trends ran counter to their wishes. Factory workers, in contrast, were
doing well compared with these other groups and were generally content
with their lot when the economy as a whole prospered.
Germany - The Revolutions of 1848
Bismarck's military and political successes were remarkable, but the
first had been achieved at considerable risk, and the second were by no
means complete. Luck had played a part in the decisive victory at the
Battle of Königgrätz (Hradec Králóve in the present-day Czech
Republic); otherwise, the war might have lasted much longer than it did.
None of the larger German states had supported either Prussia's war or
the formation of the North German Confederation led by Prussia. The
states that formed what is often called the Third Germany, that is,
Germany exclusive of Austria and Prussia, did not desire to come under
the control of either of those states. None of them wished to be pulled
into a war that showed little likelihood of benefiting any of them. In
the Seven Weeks' War, the support they gave Austria had been lukewarm.
In 1870 Bismarck engineered another war, this time against France.
The conflict would become known to history as the Franco-Prussian War.
Nationalistic fervor was ignited by the promised annexation of Lorraine
and Alsace, which had belonged to the Holy Roman Empire and had been
seized by France in the seventeenth century. With this goal in sight,
the south German states eagerly joined in the war against the country
that had come to be seen as Germany's traditional enemy. Bismarck's
major war aim--the voluntary entry of the south German states into a
constitutional German nation-state--occurred during the patriotic frenzy
generated by stunning military victories against French forces in the
fall of 1870. Months before a peace treaty was signed with France in May
1871, a united Germany was established as the German Empire, and the
Prussian king, Wilhelm I, was crowned its emperor in the Hall of Mirrors
at Versailles.
Six major political parties were active in imperial Germany: the
Conservative Party, the Free Conservative Party, the National Liberal
Party, the Progressive Party, the Center Party, and the Social
Democratic Party of Germany (Sozialdemokratische Partei
Deutschlands--SPD). Only the SPD survived both the empire and the Weimar
Republic (1918-33) and came to play a vital role in the Federal
Republic. Even though the German Empire lacked a genuinely democratic
system, the six main parties accurately reflected the interests and
hopes of most of its people.
The most right-wing of the six parties was the Conservative Party,
which represented Prussian nationalism, aristocracy, and landed
property. Many of its members remained opposed to German unification
because they feared Prussia's gradual absorption by the empire. The
Conservatives also detested the Reichstag because it was elected by
universal suffrage. The Free Conservative Party represented
industrialists and large commercial interests. The views of this party
most closely matched those of Bismarck. Its members supported
unification because they saw it as unavoidable. The National Liberal
Party was composed of liberals who had accepted Germany's lack of full
democracy because they valued national unity more. They continued to
favor a laissez-faire economic policy and secularization. In time,
National Liberals became some of the strongest supporters of the
acquisition of colonies and a substantial naval buildup, both key issues
in the 1880s and 1890s.
Unlike the members of the National Liberal Party, members of the
Progressive Party remained faithful to all the principles of European
liberalism and championed the extension of parliament's powers. This
party was in the forefront of those opposed to the authoritarian rule of
Bismarck and his successors. The Center Party was Germany's Roman
Catholic party and had strong support in southern Germany, the
Rhineland, and in parts of Prussia with significant Polish populations.
It was conservative regarding monarchical authority but progressive in
matters of social reform. Bismarck's brutal campaign against the Roman
Catholic Church in the 1870s--the Kulturkampf (cultural struggle), an
attempt to reduce the church's power over education and its role in many
other areas of German society--turned the Center Party against him. By
the late 1870s, Bismarck had to concede victory to the party, which had
become stronger through its resistance to the government's persecution.
The party remained important during the Weimar Republic and was the
forerunner of the Federal Republic's moderate conservative parties, the
Christian Democratic Union (Christlich Demokratische Union--CDU) and the
Christian Social Union (Christlich-Soziale Union--CSU).
The Marxist SPD was founded in Gotha in 1875, a fusion of Ferdinand
Lassalle's General German Workers' Association (formed in 1863), which
advocated state socialism, and the Social Democratic Labor Party (formed
in 1869), headed by August Bebel and Wilhelm Liebknecht, which aspired
to establish a classless communist society. The SPD advocated a mixture
of revolution and quiet work within the parliamentary system. The
clearest statement of this impossible combination was the Erfurt Program
of 1891. The former method frightened nearly all Germans to the party's
right, while the latter would build the SPD into the largest party in
the Reichstag after the elections of 1912.
Once Bismarck gave up his campaign against Germany's Roman Catholics,
whom he had seen for a time as a Vatican-controlled threat to the
stability of the empire, he attacked the SPD with a series of
antisocialist laws beginning in 1878. A positive aspect of Bismarck's
campaign to contain the SPD was a number of laws passed in the 1880s
establishing national health insurance and old-age pensions. Bismarck's
hope was that if workers were protected by the government, they would
come to support it and see no need for revolution. Bismarck's
antisocialist campaign, which continued until his dismissal in 1890 by
Wilhelm II, severely restricted the activities of the SPD. Ironically,
the laws may have inadvertently benefited the SPD by forcing it to work
within legal channels. As a result of its sustained activity within the
political system, the SPD became a cautious, pragmatic party, which,
despite its fiery Marxist rhetoric, won increasing numbers of seats in
the Reichstag and achieved some improvements in working and living
conditions for Germany's working class.
Germany - Imperial Germany - The Economy and Population Growth
Foreign policy in the Wilhelmine Era (1890-1914) turned away from
Bismarck's cautious diplomacy of the 1871-90 period. It was also marked
by a shrill aggressiveness. Brusque, clumsy diplomacy was backed by
increased armaments production, most notably the creation of a large
fleet of battleships capable of challenging the British navy. This new
bellicosity alarmed the rest of Europe, and by about 1907 German policy
makers had succeeded in creating Bismarck's nightmare: a Germany
"encircled" by an alliance of hostile neighbors--in this case
Russia, France, and Britain--in an alliance called the Triple Entente.
The first brick to fall out of Bismarck's carefully crafted edifice
was Germany's Reinsurance Treaty with Russia. Harmed by Prussian trade
policies, Russia did not renew the treaty and instead turned to France
for economic assistance and military security. The two countries
formally allied in early 1893. Britain joined them in 1907, even though
France and Britain had nearly gone to war over a colonial dispute in
1898. Britain's main reason for abandoning its usual posture as an aloof
observer of developments on the continent was Germany's plan to build a
fleet of sixty battleships of the formidable Dreadnought class.
The German naval expansion program had many domestic supporters. The
kaiser deeply admired the navy of his grandmother, Queen Victoria of
Britain, and wanted one as large for himself. Powerful lobbying groups
in Germany desired a large navy to give Germany a worldwide role and to
protect a growing German colonial empire in Africa and the Pacific.
Industry wanted large government contracts. Some political parties
promoted naval expansion and an aggressive foreign policy to win votes
from a nervous electorate they kept worked up with jingoistic rhetoric.
The chief figure in promoting the naval buildup was Admiral Alfred
von Tirpitz, who is considered the founder of the modern German navy.
Tirpitz was an effective spokesman for the program and had the ear of
the kaiser and his advisers. In 1898, after the Reichstag passed the
first Naval Bill, Anglo-German relations deteriorated. The Supplementary
Naval Act of 1900 further strained relations with Britain, as did a
proposed Berlin-Baghdad railroad through the Ottoman Empire, a project
that threatened British as well as Russian interests in the Balkans. Two
crises over Morocco, in 1905 and 1911, drove France and Britain closer
together and made for a tense international atmosphere. The great powers
remained neutral during the Balkan Wars (1912-13), a nationalist
rebellion against Ottoman rule, but European tensions were increased
still further, and the expectation that there would eventually be war on
the continent became more certain.
The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo on June 28,
1914, set off a series of diplomatic and military decisions that would
end peace in Europe. The kaiser gave a so-called blank check to his
ally, Austria-Hungary, saying that Germany would support any Habsburg
measure taken against Serbia, which had backed the assassination.
Austria-Hungary's ultimatum to Serbia in late July was so harsh that war
became inevitable. Within days, a set of interlocking alliances had
Europe's great powers embroiled in what would become World War I.
Germany - World War I
Germany's leadership had hoped for a limited war between
Austria-Hungary and Serbia. But because Russian forces had been
mobilized in support of Serbia, the German leadership made the decision
to support its ally. The Schlieffen Plan, based on the assumption that
Germany would face a two-front war because of a French-Russian alliance,
required a rapid invasion through neutral Belgium to ensure the quick
defeat of France. Once the western front was secure, the bulk of German
forces could attack and defeat Russia, which would not yet be completely
ready for war because it would mobilize its gigantic forces slowly.
Despite initial successes, Germany's strategy failed, and its troops
became tied down in trench warfare in France. For the next four years,
there would be little progress in the west, where advances were usually
measured in meters rather than in kilometers. Under the command of Paul
von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff, the army scored a number of
significant victories against Russia. But it was only in early 1918 that
Russia was defeated. Even after this victory in the east, however,
Germany remained mired in a long war for which it had not prepared.
Germany's war aims were annexationist in nature and foresaw an
enlarged Germany, with Belgium and Poland as vassal states and with
colonies in Africa. In its first years, there was widespread support for
the war. Even the SPD supported it, considering it a defensive effort
and voting in favor of war credits. By 1916, however, opposition to the
war had mounted within the general population, which had to endure many
hardships, including food shortages. A growing number of Reichstag
deputies came to demand a peace without annexations. Frustrated in its
quest for peace, in April 1917 a segment of the SPD broke with the party
and formed the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany. In July
the Reichstag passed a resolution calling for a peace without
annexations. In its wake, Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg was
forced to resign, and Hindenburg and Ludendorff came to exercise a
control over Germany until late 1918 that amounted to a virtual military
dictatorship.
Military leaders refused a moderate peace because they were convinced
until very late in the war that victory ultimately would be theirs.
Another reason for their insistence on a settlement that fulfilled
expansionist aims was that the government had not financed the war with
higher taxes but with bonds. Taxes had been seen as unnecessary because
it was expected that the government would redeem these bonds after the
war with payments from Germany's vanquished enemies. Thus, only an
expansionist victory would keep the state solvent and save millions of
German bondholders from financial ruin.
After the Bolshevik Revolution of November 1917, Russia and Germany
began peace negotiations. In March 1918, the two countries signed the
Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. The defeat of Russia enabled Germany to
transfer troops from the eastern to the western front. Two large
offensives in the west were met by an Allied counteroffensive that began
in July. German troops were pressed back, and it became evident to many
officers that Germany could not win the war. In September Ludendorff
recommended that Germany sue for peace. In October extensive reforms
democratized the Reichstag and gave Germany a constitutional monarchy. A
coalition of progressive forces was formed, headed by SPD politician
Friedrich Ebert. The military allowed the birth of a democratic
parliament because it did not want to be held responsible for the
inevitable armistice that would end the war on terms highly unfavorable
to Germany. Instead, the civilian government that signed the truce was
to take the blame for the nation's defeat.
The political reforms of October were overshadowed by a popular
uprising that began on November 3 when sailors in <"http://worldfacts.us/Germany-Kiel.htm"> Kiel
mutinied. They
refused to go out on what they considered a suicide mission against
British naval forces. The revolt grew quickly and within a week appeared
to be burgeoning into a revolution that could well overthrow the
established social order. On November 9, the kaiser was forced to
abdicate, and the SPD proclaimed a republic. A provisional government
headed by Ebert promised elections for a national assembly to draft a
new constitution. In an attempt to control the popular uprising, Ebert
agreed to back the army if it would suppress the revolt. On November 11,
the government signed the armistice that ended the war. Germany's loses
included about 1.6 million dead and more than 4 million wounded.
