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The Region | German
& Roman Europe
Christianity | Kings & Emperors | Prussia Reformation | Independence | Great War | World War II History Germany as a Region The region becomes associated with the name Germany in the 1st century BC, when the conquest of Gaul makes the Romans aware for the first time that there is an ethnic and linguistic distinction between the Celts (or Gauls) and their aggressive neighbours, the Germans. Celts, Germans and Romans: 2nd - 1st century BC The Celts themselves, in earlier centuries, have moved westwards from Germany, crossing the Rhine into France and pushing ahead of them the previous neolithic inhabitants of these regions. More recently the Celts have been subjected to the same westward pressure from various Germanic tribes. The intruders are identified as a group by their closely related languages, defined as the Germanic or Teutonic subdivision of Indo-European language. From the 2nd century BC the Germans exert increasing pressure on the Roman empire. The reign of Augustus Caesar sees a trial of strength between the empire and the tribes, leading to an uneasy balance of power. The region in which Augustus makes the most effort to extend the empire is beyond the Alps into Germany. By 14 BC the German tribes are subdued up to the Danube. In the next five years Roman legions push forward to the Elbe. But this further border proves impossible to hold. In AD 9 Arminius, a German chieftain of great military skill, destroys three Roman legions in the Teutoburg Forest. The Romans pull back (though they return briefly to avenge what seems a shameful defeat). The conclusion, bequeathed by Augustus to his successors, is that the Roman empire has some natural boundaries; to the north these are the Rhine and the Danube.
Their presence becomes part of the history of these regions. France and Spain - prosperous and stable parts of the Roman empire - have becomes almost as Romanized as Italy itself. Culturally they are strong enough to absorb their new Germanic masters, as is revealed by the boundary line of Europe's languages. French, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian are known as the Romance languages because they share a Roman, or Latin, origin. Northern Europe, by contrast, speaks Germanic languages. Scandinavia does so because it is the region from which the German tribes migrate southwards. Britain does so because tribes invading from the 5th century (Angles and Saxons) are able to dominate a culture less fully Romanized than Gaul. And Germany, with the Netherlands, does so because here the tribes are relatively unaffected by Roman influence - secure in a region which Tacitus describes as 'covered either by bristling forests or by foul swamps'. By the same token the tribes in the German heartland are backward. For the first few centuries of the post-Roman era they are no match for the more sophisticated Franks, who have established themselves in Gaul. A centre of Christian learning: AD 780-814 While extending his territories, Charlemagne needs to improve the administration of the empire. Christian clerics (the only literate group in the barbarian north) are enlisted as his civil servants at Aachen, where the emperor also establishes a programme of education and cultural revival. Alcuin, a distinguished teacher from York, is invited in 780 to found a school in the palace at Aachen (Charlemagne and his family sometimes join the lessons); and the copying of manuscripts is carried out in a beautiful script which later becomes the basis of Roman type. Though still primitive by the standards of classical culture, the renewal of intellectual and artistic life under Charlemagne has justly been described as the Carolingian Renaissance. German kings and emperors: 10th - 13th century When the Holy Roman empire was re-established in the 10th century, with the coronation of Otto I, the German kingdom was by far the most powerful territory in Europe. But the political structure in Germany contributes, in the long run, to a decline in the power of the German kings. It is the tradition in Germany, an alliance of powerful duchies, for the king of the Germans to be elected from among the local rulers (though the practice of power ensures that the choice usually remains within a dynasty). And the reign of Otto I introduces an extra tradition - that the German king is also automatically the emperor, once the pope has crowned him in Rome. During the 12th and 13th centuries, when the regions of western Europe (France, England, Spain) are developing strong centralized monarchies, Germany moves in the opposite direction. Large numbers of small territories grow in wealth and independence, while offering nominal allegiance to the emperor. Some are aristocratic in origin, domains of noble families; others are ecclesiastical, with a rich abbot or bishop wielding temporal power; a few are towns, flexing new economic muscle. All are ferociously competitive. This tendency to anarchy results from the paradox of an elected feudal overlord. His position, not based on conquest, must depend on a network of negotiated alliances - meaning, in brutal reality, concessions. The lack of authority of the German kings within Germany is compounded by the demands on their attentions elsewhere. Being Roman emperors, they have interests to defend in Italy. The problem is at its extreme in the 13th century when marriage brings the rich kingdom of Sicily to the Hohenstaufen dynasty of German kings. For much of his reign Frederick II succeeds in controlling Germany, Italy and his favourite domain of Sicily, as well as going on crusade and becoming king of Jerusalem. But after his death, in 1250, the empire loses any real political meaning. The title becomes valued only as the most resounding dignity possessed by the German kings.
The Teutonic knights, short of work in the Holy Land, adopt a new form of crusade in about 1225. A prince of Poland, Conrad of Mazovia, asks them to control his unruly neighbours, the pagan Prussians - tribes who have lived for many centuries in the lands northeast of Germany, bordering the Baltic sea. The knights prepare their campaign carefully, establishing in advance their rights over any land they may conquer. In 1230 Conrad formally cedes to the order his territories on the west bank of the Vistula. During the next thirty years the knights fight their way east along the coast as far as the Neman river, building castles to hold down the Prussians and sharing out the land as feudal fiefs for German families. In 1261 an uprising by the Prussians almost succeeds in evicting the Teutonic knights. It takes the knights some twenty years to regain full control. They achieve their purpose by giving feudal rights to many more families and by importing large numbers of German peasants to till the land (their iron ploughs are more effective than the wooden implements of the Prussians in this heavily wooded region).
The knights improve their security when they seize Gdansk in 1308 and annexe the coast west to the Oder (the region known as Pomerania). This links Prussia with the German empire. But it has a very adverse effect on its southern neighbours, cutting Poland off from the sea. The knights retain this territory for a century, until Poland and Lithuania win a crushing victory over the order at Grunwald in 1410. The disposal of Prussian territory between Poland and the knights is eventually agreed in a treaty at Torun in 1466. The western part of Prussia, around the Vistula, is incorporated in the Polish kingdom. Further west along the coast, Pomerania (annexed by the knights in 1308-9) is now restored to Poland. But the eastern part of Prussia, more densely settled by Germans, is granted to the order as a feudal duchy owing allegiance to Poland. This arrangement lasts until the Reformation. In 1525, under Lutheran influence, the high master dissolves the Teutonic Order in Prussia. However he retains his own position at the head of the duchy, owing allegiance just as before to the Polish crown. But he is now the secular duke of Prussia, a position capable of becoming hereditary. The name of this last high master in the region is Albert. He is a member of the Hohenzollern family. Prussia becomes one of his family's most significant possessions. Germany and the Reformation: AD 1517-1648 The decline of the Holy Roman empire is closely connected with the great 16th-century upheaveal in central Europe - that of the Reformation. The German princes, in the many semi-independent territories of the empire, see the religious options suddenly on offer as political opportunities. The pope is resented by many as a devious and distant intriguer, who
drains away money from local church lands and regularly demands more.
The emperor, lord of vast new Habsburg territories, is now also a distant
figure with interests far beyond the traditional empire. Once the turmoil of the Reformation begins, in the years after 1517, each German prince assesses his own best chance of securing or expanding his territory and his treasury. The resulting conflicts within German-speaking regions are frequent until the peace of Augsburg in 1555. They then erupt again in the Thirty Years' War of 1618-48. The great dispute soon becomes a European event. But the original flare-up in 1517 is very much a German phenomenon.
Ever since Prussia's rapid success in the Seven Weeks' War of 1866, and the resulting consolidation of Prussian territory on the Rhine, there has been alarm and resentment in France at the growth of this ambitious neighbour. It is dramatically increased in 1870 when news leaks on July 3 that a prince of the Prussian Hohenzollern family has been offered, and has accepted, the vacant throne of Spain. Having fought so often in the past against being surrounded to south and east by the Habsburg dynasty, there is public outcry in France at the prospect of the same trick now being pulled off by the Hohenzollern. In an escalating crisis, the Prussian king William I withdraws his relation's candidacy on July 12. The matter might have rested there, but for a diplomatic blunder on the French side. The French ambassador, in an audience with William I at Ems on July 13, demands an assurance (amounting to a slur on the king's good faith) that the candidacy will never be renewed. William refuses to give this assurance. He then sends a telegram to Bismarck describing, in neutral terms, the audience and its outcome. Bismarck, irritated at the collapse of his Spanish policy, shortens the telegram before publication in such a way as to imply that the Prussian king has treated the French ambassador with disdain. Public opinion in France, already inflamed, now explodes. The French government declares war on Prussia on July 19. France suffers as rapidly and as conclusively at Prussia's hands as Austria did four years previously. Again the significant period of warfare lasts less than seven weeks. In early encounters near Metz the French almost hold their own against the Prussians, but by August 31 a large French army is surrounded near Sedan. During September 1 the French cavalry, charging desperately to break out of the encirclement, suffer heavy casualties from the Prussian artillery. On the following day the French surrender. After losses in the battle of 38,000 men (killed, wounded or missing), another 83,000 now lay down their arms and become prisoners of the Germans. Among them is the French emperor himself, Napoleon III. The events at Sedan bring to an end one empire, in France, and hasten the creation of another, in Germany. But they do not immediately end the war. When the news of Sedan reaches Paris, a government of national defence is rapidly formed. Its first action, on September 4, is to depose Napoleon III and declare a republic. But there is nothing now to stop the German army on its march towards Paris. The siege begins on September 19. The only chance of relieving the city is to raise new armies in the provinces. And here aeronautics play their first significant role in warfare. On October 7 a balloon rises from Paris (historic city of the balloon). It floats above the Germany army and lands far beyond their lines. It carries Léon Gambetta, minister of the interior in the new republican government. Two days later he reaches Tours and begins to orchestrate a campaign of guerrilla warfare which severely disrupts the smooth Prussian military operation. But it can only delay the eventual capitulation. Early in 1871, on January 23, delegates from Paris pass through the German lines to Versailles to agree an armistice. They find the Prussians in an excited mood. Just five days previously, in Louis XIV's famous hall of mirrors in the palace of Versailles, the Prussian king has been proclaimed emperor of a united Germany. At first the thrust of the German armies through Belgium and south into France seems to fulfil the Schlieffen Plan. 'Victory by Christmas' does indeed seem possible (though the German high command is not alone in making this promise to its citizens - all the other combatants are professing equal optimism). The Belgian army puts up a heroic resistance but is unable to prevent the Germans from taking Liège on August 16, Brusssels on the 20th and Namur on the 23rd. Meanwhile a small British Expeditionary Force, rushed across the Channel in mid-August to Boulogne, reaches Mons. Confronted at Mons on August 23 by a much larger German army, the British Expeditionary Force fights a successful rearguard action and retreats south again to escape encirclement. Meanwhile the initial French effort has been wasted in a drive east through Lorraine. By August 22 this is halted by the Germans, bringing France massive numbers of dead and wounded (in the region of 300,000, a foretaste of the ghastly statistics which will characterize this war). After this disaster the French redirect their efforts northwards to counter the threat from Belgium. The German intention has been to sweep to the west of Paris and thus encircle the city. Opposition in Belgium and northern France has been sufficient to confine the German thrust to the east of the capital. Nevertheless by September 3, a month after their invasion and well within their schedule, German armies cross the river Marne. To safeguard against the likely fall of Paris, the French government moves south to Bordeaux. The Germans are within 30 miles of the capital when a mainly French force finally halts and then rolls back their relentless advance. During four days of fighting (Sept. 5-8, the battle of the Marne) the German army is pushed north of the river. This reversal means the collapse of the Schlieffen Plan in the west, depending as it did on a rapid conquest of France. Meanwhile it has proved equally defective in the east, where the Russians make early advances. These advances prompt the German high command, in late August, to transfer four divisions from Belgium to the eastern front. So the army which is forced back over the Marne is smaller than intended. It is also much more vulnerable than it should be. The German supply lines have not been able to keep up with the army's rapid move south. With the tide turning, the German forces hurry back to the river Aisne to regroup. They then move west in a second attempt to outflank the Allied armies. (By this time Britain, France and Russia are known as the Allied Powers, after signing a treaty in London on September 5 in which each guarantees not to make a separate peace treaty with the Central Powers.) The Allies also move west, to frustrate the German flanking movement. Thus begins the competitive advance which becomes known as the 'race to the sea', during which the most hard-fought encounters are in October and November around Ypres. The point at which the two armies reach the sea becomes the northwest end of a 400-mile line of demarcation. By November 1914 the line is fixed. It runs roughly along the French and Belgian border and then down the French and German border to Switzerland. The only part of this terrain which is flat and therefore hard to defend is in the northwest, among the fields of Flanders. Here, in the winter of 1914, each side begins feverishly building trenches. These become permanent defensive structures, more like cramped underground barracks than mere shelters from bullets and shells. They will be home to hundreds of thousands of Europe's young men for more than three years. The fanciful notion of 'victory by Christmas' is transformed into protracted and nightmarish warfare of a kind previously unknown in history. War in the east: AD 1914 Russia mobilizes rapidly in August 1914, in an attempt to relieve the German pressure on France. As a result early gains are made, with Russian armies advancing into east Prussia and into Galicia (the northeast corner of Austria-Hungary). This move has the desired short-term effect, causing the Germans to withdraw four divisions from Belgium for the eastern front. But events soon suggest that Russia has entered the field unprepared. Disaster strikes before the end of the month. Several factors contribute. The large Russian army in east Prussia is ill-fed and exhausted. And Russian commanders incautiously send each other uncoded radio messages which are intercepted by the Germans. The result is that a much smaller German force is able to effect a devastating pincer movement during August 26-28 to encircle the Russians at Tannenberg (the site also of a famous medieval battle). About half the Russian army is destroyed, including the capture of 92,000 men. The Russian general, Aleksandr Vasiliyevich Samsonov, shoots himself. Further south the Russians have slightly more lasting success in their invasion of Austria-Hungary. By the end of 1914 much of Galicia is still in their hands. Further south again, the Austrians prove ineffective in their attempts to crush their tiny neighbour Serbia (in the regional dispute which sparked the wider conflict). The local campaign begins in mid-August when an Austrian army invades Serbia, but within a fortnight - and with a loss of some 50,000 men - they are driven back by the Serbs. Another invasion is more successful, three months later, when the Austrians succeed in occupying Belgrade for two weeks (from Nov. 30). But by the end of the year the Serbs have again recovered all their territory. Although there is more movement on the eastern front, particularly on the open plains between Germany and Russia, the outcome at the end of the first calendar year of the war suggests that here too there will be no easy or quick victory. Both sides begin to look for new allies.
Hitler moves swiftly to consolidate his hold on power. At his first cabinet meeting, on the day of his appointment as chancellor, he argues that new elections must be held if the coalition fails to command an immediate majority in the Reichstag. He overcomes the qualms of Papen and his colleagues by promising that whatever the result of the election, the present balance within the cabinet will be maintained (the three Nazi members are Hitler, Goering and Wilhelm Frick). The election is fixed for 5 March 1933. The campaign is one of unprecedented violence. Gangs of Hitler's Brownshirts are unleashed on the streets to break up the meetings of opposition parties. The police are instructed not to intervene. During the election campaign, on the night of February 27, the Reichstag building burns down. Many assume at the time that this was contrived by the Nazis, but it seems probable that it was an isolated act of arson by a mentally disturbed Dutchman, Marinus van der Lubbe. Whatever the precise origin of the fire, it provides Hitler with a heaven-sent opportunity. Proclaiming it as part of a Communist plot to seize control, he passes a decree suspending all rights of the individual and giving the government emergency powers.
On March 23, at the first session of the newly elected Reichstag (using a a Berlin opera house as a temporary home), the 81 Communist members and about 20 Social Democrats are conspicuous by their absence. They are either in hiding or are already in the hands of Hitler's police. Even without their hostile votes, Hitler cannot immediately muster the two-thirds majority which he requires for the business scheduled for the day - an 'enabling act' which will give his government the power to pass decrees independently of the Reichstag and without any restriction by the president. In the event, with gangs of threatening Brownshirts mustered outside the building, only the Social Democrats have the courage to oppose the Enabling Act. The most significant measure in Hitler's political career is passed by the comfortable margin of 441 to 94. With this constitutional step achieved, he is an elected dictator. Subsequent decrees, passed with this new authority, tidy up Hitler's mechanism for controlling the nation. In May 1933 trades unions are brought under Nazi control. In July 1933 the Nazi party is declared to be the only legitimate political organization within Germany. In January 1934 the powers of Germany's proudly independent regions, the Länder, are transferred to the central government. Meanwhile the apparatus of state is being rapidly equipped to cope with personal dissent. In March 1933 the Nazis establish their first concentration camp, organized by Heinrich Himmler at Dachau near Munich. The pattern is soon followed in other parts of the country. By that summer as many as 30,000 Germans are being held without trial in these punitive establishments. The two main groups of victims are Communists and Jews, the twin targets of Hitler's long-standing obsession. The act of war: AD 1939 During the night of August 31 a group of German soldiers, dressed as Poles, attack the German radio station in the border town of Gleiwitz. They have brought with them a German criminal, taken for the purpose from a concentration camp. They shoot him and leave his body as evidence of the night's dark deeds. Berlin radio broadcasts to the world the news of this act of Polish aggression, together with details of the necessary German response. In the early hours of the morning of September 1 Hitler's tanks move into Poland. His planes take off towards Warsaw on the first bombing mission of a new European war. After a final desperate day of diplomacy, attempting even at this late stage to find a peaceful solution, Chamberlain and Daladier each sends an ultimatum to Hitler. When no answer is received, both nations declare war on September 3. The Polish army, airforce and civilian population put up a brave resistance to massive German force - increased, from September 17, by a Russian invasion from the east. Within a few weeks 60,000 Polish soldiers and 25,000 civilians die. By September 28 Warsaw has fallen. Poland is once again partitioned, with an eastern slice going to Russia (as so recently agreed in Moscow) and the lion's share to Germany. The noose tightens: AD 1945 During the spring of 1945 the collapse of Germany comes, after so long, with surprising speed. German commanders in the field, no longer feeling any enthusiasm for a fight which is clearly lost, begin to disregard the stream of hysterical instructions from Hitler to stand firm whatever the cost. To the armies defending the Rhine his order includes the statement that the battle shall be conducted 'without consideration for our own population'. A scorched earth policy within Germany is now the order of the day. All public utilities in the path of the Allies (water, gas, electricity) are to be destroyed. To protests from within his inner group, Hitler replies that if the war is lost, the German nation is lost. There is no need to consider the future requirements of a vanquished people. In this situation, and with Hitler's final reserves sent to the eastern front, the Allies meet little opposition when they cross the Rhine at various points on March 22-4 (first the Third US Army led by George Patton in the south, followed by the British and Canadians in the north). Both groups, pressing on east, reach the Elbe in mid-April. On the way they discover the horrors which bring home to the west, more powerfully than ever before, the true nature of the Nazi regime. On April 10 the Americans reach the concentration camp at Buchenwald. Five days later the British come across Belsen, where there are 35,000 unburied bodies and as many emaciated prisoners still just alive. And these are not even the death camps - merely places where prisoners are subjected to hard work, little food and Nazi indifference. Meanwhile the Russians, pushing westwards, have entered Vienna on April 6. Within three weeks, by April 25, they reach and encircle Berlin, where Hitler is at last beginning to recognize that there can be no iraculous outcome. News of the death of Roosevelt, on April 12, has been enough to make him hope for a sudden reversal of fortune. But on April 29, against his specific orders, the German army in Italy surrenders to the Allies. Hitler also knows that Himmler, his trusted SS commander, has been making peace overtures behind his back. Livid with anger at this betrayal, he now recognizes the end and prepares to meet it. In the elaborate bunker beneath the Chancellery he puts his affairs in order. The traitor Himmler is formally expelled from the party. Admiral Dönitz is appointed as Hitler's successor and the names of his cabinet are selected. Hitler then retires for a while to dictate his last will and testament, a tract of self-justification in which the Jews are still blamed for the war and the Nazi party is urged to continue he necessary campaign against them. On this same day, April 29, in the early hours of the morning, Hitler rewards a woman who has always been quietly faithful to him. He marries his mistress, Eva Braun, following the ceremony with a small champagne party at which Goebbels (the Nazi minister of propaganda) and Martin Bormann (Hitler's secretary and close adviser) are the principal guests. On April 30 Hitler holds his usual daily conference while the Russians, in the streets above, are only two blocks away from the Chancellery. Then Hitler and Eva Braun retire to their quarters. She takes poison, he shoots himself in the mouth. On the following day Goebbels orders SS men to give his six children lethal injections and to shoot his wife and himself.Hitler was appalled that his nation had surrendered in World War I without a single foreign soldier setting foot on German soil. His own unbreakable resolve results in the opposite extreme. When he dies, the enemy is in the heart of Berlin. A week later, on May 7, the unconditional surrender of all the German forces is signed at General Eisenhower's headquarters. May 8 is celebrated by the Allies as V-E Day - victory in Europe. Source: http://www.historyworld.net/wrldhis/PlainTextHistories.asp?groupid=2780&HistoryID=ac62 For Additional Information: |
In
spite of these circumstances, the Nazis and their coalition allies fail
by a narrow margin to win an overall majority within the Reichstag. Steps
are immediately taken to remedy this.