The concept of
Germany as a distinct region in central
Europe can be traced to
Roman commander
Julius Caesar, who referred to the unconquered area east of the Rhine as
Germania, thus distinguishing it from Gaul (
France), which he had conquered. The victory of the
Germanic tribes in the
Battle of the Teutoburg Forest (
AD 9) prevented annexation by the
Roman Empire.
Following the fall of the Roman Empire, the Franks conquered the other
West Germanic tribes. When the
Frankish Empire was divided among
Charlemagne's heirs in 843, the eastern part became
East Francia. In 962,
Otto I became the first emperor of the
Holy Roman Empire, the medieval
German state.
In the High Middle Ages, the dukes and princes of the empire gained power at the expense of the emperors.
Martin Luther led the
Protestant Reformation against the
Catholic Church after 1517, as the northern states became
Protestant, while the southern states remained
Catholic. The two parts of the Holy Roman Empire clashed in the
Thirty Years' War (1618--1648), which was ruinous to the twenty million civilians. 1648 marked the effective end of the Holy Roman Empire and the beginning of the modern nation-state system, with Germany divided into numerous independent states, such as
Prussia,
Bavaria and
Saxony.
After the
French Revolution and the
Napoleonic Wars (1803--1815), feudalism fell away and liberalism and nationalism clashed with reaction. The
1848 March Revolution failed.
The Industrial Revolution modernized the
German economy, led to the rapid growth of cities and to the emergence of the
Socialist movement in Germany. Prussia, with its capital
Berlin, grew in power.
German universities became world-class centers for science and the humanities, while music and the arts flourished.
Unification was achieved with the formation of the
German Empire in
1871 under the leadership of Prussian
Chancellor Otto von Bismarck.
The new Reichstag, an elected parliament, had only a limited role in the imperial government.
By
1900, Germany's economy matched
Britain's, allowing colonial expansion and a naval race. Germany led the
Central Powers in the
First World War (1914--1918) against France,
Great Britain,
Russia and (by
1917) the
United States.
Defeated and partly occupied, Germany was forced to pay war reparations by the
Treaty of Versailles and was stripped of its colonies as well as
Polish areas and Alsace-Lorraine.
The German Revolution of 1918--19 deposed the emperor and the kings, leading to the establishment of the
Weimar Republic, an unstable parliamentary democracy.
In the early
1930's, the worldwide
Great Depression hit Germany hard, as unemployment soared and people lost confidence in the government. In 1933, the Nazis under
Adolf Hitler came to power and established a totalitarian regime. Political opponents were killed or imprisoned.
Nazi Germany's aggressive foreign policy took control of
Austria and parts of
Czechoslovakia, and its invasion of
Poland initiated the
Second World War. After forming a pact with the
Soviet Union in
1939,
Hitler and
Stalin divided
Eastern Europe. After a "phoney war" in spring
1940 the
German blitzkrieg swept
Scandinavia, the
Low Countries and France, giving Germany control of nearly all of
Western Europe. Only Britain stood opposed. Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in June
1941, a reach too far. The systematic genocide program known as
The Holocaust killed six million
Jews in Germany and German-occupied areas, as well as five million
Poles,
Romanies,
Slavs,
Soviets, and others. In 1941, however, the
German invasion of the Soviet Union faltered, and after the United States entered the war, Britain became the base for massive Anglo-American bombings of
German cities. Germany fought the war on multiple fronts through 1942--1943. Following the
Allied invasion of Normandy (June
1944), the
German army was pushed back on all fronts until the final collapse in May
1945.
Under occupation by the
Allies, German territories were split off, denazification took place, and the
Cold War resulted in the division of the country into democratic
West Germany and communist
East Germany.
Millions of ethnic
Germans fled from Communist areas into West Germany, which experienced rapid economic expansion, and became the dominant economy in Western Europe. West Germany was rearmed in the
1950's under the auspices of
NATO, but without access to nuclear weapons. The Franco-German friendship became the basis for the political integration of Western Europe in the
European Union.
- published: 19 Apr 2013
- views: 11593