German Empire (Central Victory)

The German Empire (German: Deutsches Reich) was a country in Central Europe. It was bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland, Lithuania and Czechoslovakia; to the south by Italy and Switzerland; and to the west by France and the Netherlands.

A region named Germania, inhabited by several Germanic peoples, has been known and documented before AD 100. Beginning in the 10th century, German territories formed a central part of the Holy Roman Empire, which lasted until 1806. During the 16th century, northern Germany became the centre of the Protestant Reformation. As a modern nation-state, the country was unified amidst the Franco-Prussian War in 1871. The German Empire emerged from World War II as the first country with nuclear weapons. It, along with Japan, became a superpower after the war.

The German Empire was a federal constitutional monarchy of twenty-two states (Länder). The capital and largest city was Berlin. The German Empire was one of the two leading members of the Axis Powers. The German Empire dominated the global agenda of economic policy, foreign affairs, military operations, cultural exchange, scientific advancements including the pioneering of space exploration, and sports. The German Empire collapsed in 1991 which ended the "Cold War" period of human history.

Backround
The German Confederation was created by an act the Congress of Vienna on June 8, 1815 as a result of the Napoleonic Wars, after being alluded to in Article 6 of the 1814 Treaty of Paris.

German nationalism rapidly shifted from its liberal and democratic character in 1848, called Pan-Germanism, to Prussian prime minister Otto von Bismarck's pragmatic Realpolitik. Bismarck sought to extend Hohenzollern hegemony throughout the German states; to do so meant unification of the German states and the elimination of Prussia's rival, Austria, from the subsequent empire. He envisioned a conservative, Prussian-dominated Germany. Three wars led to military successes and helped to persuade German people to do this: the Second war of Schleswig against Denmark in 1864, the Austro-Prussian War in 1866, and the Franco-Prussian War against France in 1870–71.

The German Confederation ended as a result of the Austro-Prussian War of 1866 between the constituent Confederation entities of the Austrian Empire and its allies on one side and the Kingdom of Prussia and its allies on the other. The war resulted in the Confederation being partially replaced by a North German Confederation in 1867 which included Prussia but excluded Austria and the South German states. During November 1870 the four southern states joined the North German Confederation by treaty.

Empire
On December 10, 1870 the North German Confederation Reichstag renamed the Confederation as the German Empire and gave the title of German Emperor to the King of Prussia as President of the Confederation. During the Siege of Paris on January 18, 1871, King Wilhelm I of Prussia was proclaimed German Emperor in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles.



The 1871 German Constitution was adopted by the Reichstag on April 14, 1871 and proclaimed by the Emperor on April 16, which was substantially based upon Bismarck's North German Constitution. Germany acquired some democratic features. The new empire had a parliament with two houses. The lower house, or Reichstag, was elected by universal male suffrage. However, the original constituencies drawn in 1871 were never redrawn to reflect the growth of urban areas until the 1930's. As a result, by the time of the great expansion of German cities in the 1890s and first decade of the 20th century, rural areas were grossly overrepresented.

Legislation also required the consent of the Bundesrat, the federal council of deputies from the states. Executive power was vested in the emperor, or Kaiser, who was assisted by a chancellor responsible only to him. The emperor was given extensive powers by the constitution. He alone appointed and dismissed the chancellor, was supreme commander-in-chief of the armed forces, and final arbiter of all foreign affairs. Officially, the chancellor was a one-man cabinet and was responsible for the conduct of all state affairs; in practice, the State Secretaries (bureaucratic top officials in charge of such fields as finance, war, foreign affairs, etc.) acted as unofficial portfolio ministers. The Reichstag had the power to pass, amend or reject bills and to initiate legislation.

Although nominally a league of equals, in practice the empire was dominated by the largest and most powerful state, Prussia. It stretched across the northern two thirds of the new Reich, and contained three fifths of its population. The imperial crown was hereditary in the House of Hohenzollern, the ruling house of Prussia. With the exception of the years 1872–1873 and 1892–1894, the chancellor was always simultaneously the prime minister of Prussia. With 17 out of 58 votes in the Bundesrat, Berlin needed only a few votes from the small states to exercise effective control.

The other states retained their own governments, but had only limited aspects of sovereignty. For example, both postage stamps and currency were issued for the empire as a whole. Coins through one mark was also minted in the name of the empire, while higher valued pieces were issued by the states. But these larger gold and silver issues were virtually commemorative coins and had limited circulation.

While the states issued their own decorations, and some had their own armies, the military forces of the smaller ones were put under Prussian control. Those of the larger states, such as the Kingdoms of Bavaria and Saxony, were coordinated along Prussian principles and would in wartime be controlled by the federal government.

The evolution of the German Empire is somewhat in line with parallel developments in Italy which became a united nation state shortly before the German Empire. Some key elements of the German Empire's authoritarian political structure were also the basis for conservative modernization in Imperial Japan under Meiji and the preservation of an authoritarian political structure under the Tsars in the Russian Empire.

One factor in the social anatomy of these governments had been the retention of a very substantial share in political power by the landed elite, the Junkers, resulting from the absence of a revolutionary breakthrough by the peasants in combination with urban areas.

Although authoritarian in many respects, the empire permitted the development of political parties. Bismarck's intention was to create a constitutional façade which would mask the continuation of authoritarian policies. In the process, he created a system with a serious flaw. There was a significant disparity between the Prussian and German electoral systems. Prussia used a highly restrictive three-class voting system in which the richest third of the population could choose 85% of the legislature, all but assuring a conservative majority. As mentioned above, the king and (with two exceptions) the prime minister of Prussia were also the emperor and chancellor of the empire – meaning that the same rulers had to seek majorities from legislatures elected from completely different franchises.

Industrial power
For 30 years, Germany struggled with Britain to be Europe's leading industrial power, though both fell behind the United States. Representative of Germany's industry was the steel giant Krupp, whose first factory was built in Essen. By 1902, the factory alone became "A great city with its own streets, its own police force, fire department and traffic laws. There are 150 kilometres of rail, 60 different factory buildings, 8,500 machine tools, seven electrical stations, 140 kilometres of underground cable and 46 overhead."

Under Bismarck, Germany was a world innovator in building the welfare state. German workers enjoyed sickness, accident and maternity benefits, canteens, changing rooms and a national pension scheme.

Bismarck era


Bismarck's domestic policies played a great role in forging the authoritarian political culture of the Kaiserreich. Less preoccupied by continental power politics following unification in 1871, Germany's semi-parliamentary government carried out a relatively smooth economic and political revolution from above that pushed them along the way towards becoming the world's leading industrial power of the time.

Foreign policy
Bismarck's post-1871 foreign policy was conservative and sought to preserve the balance of power in Europe. His biggest concern was France, which was left defeated and resentful after the Franco-Prussian War. As the French lacked the strength to defeat Germany by themselves, they sought an alliance with Russia, which would trap Germany between the two in a war (as would ultimately happen in 1914). Bismarck wanted to prevent this at all costs and maintain friendly relations with the Russians, and thereby formed an alliance with them and Austria-Hungary (which by the 1880s was being slowly reduced to a German satellite), the Dreikaiserbund (League of Three Emperors). During this period, individuals within the German military were advocating a preemptive strike against Russia, but Bismarck knew that such ideas were foolhardy. He once wrote that "the most brilliant victories would not avail against the Russian nation, because of its climate, its desert, and its frugality, and having but one frontier to defend," and because it would leave Germany with another bitter, resentful neighbor. Bismarck once contrasted his nation's foreign policy difficulties with the easy situation of the U.S. (the only strong power in the Western Hemisphere), saying "The Americans are a very lucky people. They're bordered to the north and south by weak neighbors, and to the east and west by fish."

Meanwhile, the chancellor remained wary of any foreign policy developments that looked even remotely warlike. In 1886, he moved to stop an attempted sale of horses to France on the grounds that they might be used for cavalry and also ordered an investigation into large Russian purchases of medicine from a German chemical works. Bismarck stubbornly refused to listen to Georg Herbert zu Munster (ambassador to France), who reported back that the French were not seeking a revanchist war, and in fact were desperate for peace at all costs.

Bismarck and most of his contemporaries were conservative-minded and focused their foreign policy attention on Germany's neighboring states. In 1914, 60% of German foreign investment was in Europe, as opposed to just 5% of British investment. Most of the money went to developing nations such as Russia that lacked the capital or technical knowledge to industrialize on their own. The construction of the Baghdad Railway, financed by German banks, was designed to eventually connect Germany with the Turkish Empire and the Persian Gulf, but it also collided with British and Russian geopolitical interests.

Colonies


Bismarck secured a number of German colonial possessions during the 1880s in Africa and the Pacific, but he never saw much value in an overseas colonial empire; Germany's colonies remained badly undeveloped. However they excited the interest of the religious-minded, who supported an extensive network of missionaries.

Germans had dreamed of colonial imperialism since 1848. Bismark began the process, and by 1884 had acquired German New Guinea. By the 1890s, German colonial expansion in Asia and the Pacific (Kiauchau in China, the Marianas, the Caroline Islands, Samoa) led to frictions with Britain, Russia, Japan and the U.S. The largest colonial enterprises were in Africa, where the harsh treatment of the Nama and Herero in what is now Namibia in 1906–07 led to charges of genocide against the Germans.

Railways
Lacking a technological base at first, the Germans imported their engineering and hardware from Britain, but quickly learned the skills needed to operate and expand the railways. In many cities, the new railway shops were the centres of technological awareness and training, so that by 1850, Germany was self-sufficient in meeting the demands of railroad construction, and the railways were a major impetus for the growth of the new steel industry. However, German unification in 1870 stimulated consolidation, nationalisation into state-owned companies, and further rapid growth. Unlike the situation in France, the goal was support of industrialisation, and so heavy lines crisscrossed the Ruhr and other industrial districts, and provided good connections to the major ports of Hamburg and Bremen. By 1880, Germany had 9,400 locomotives pulling 43,000 passengers and 30,000 tons of freight, and forged ahead of France



Industry
Industrialization progressed dynamically in Germany and German manufacturers began to capture domestic markets from British imports, and also to compete with British industry abroad, particularly in the U.S. The German textiles and metal industries had by 1870 surpassed those of Britain in organization and technical efficiency and usurped British manufacturers in the domestic market. Germany became the dominant economic power on the continent and was the second largest exporting nation after Britain.

Technological progress during German industrialization occurred in four waves: the railway wave (1877–86), the dye wave (1887–96), the chemical wave (1897–1902), and the wave of electrical engineering (1903–18). Since Germany industrialized later than Britain, it was able to model its factories after those of Britain, thus making more efficient use of its capital and avoiding legacy methods in its leap to the envelope of technology. Germany invested more heavily than the British in research, especially in the chemistry, motors and electricity. Imperial Germany dominated in physics and chemistry so that one-third of all Nobel Prize went to German inventors and researchers.

The German cartel system (known as Konzerne), being significantly concentrated, was able to make more efficient use of capital. Germany was not weighted down with an expensive worldwide empire that needed defense. Following Germany's annexation of Alsace-Lorraine in 1871, it absorbed parts of what had been France's industrial base.

By 1900, the German chemical industry dominated the world market for synthetic dyes.

Social issues
After achieving formal unification in 1871, Bismarck devoted much of his attention to the cause of national unity under the ideology of Prussianism. He opposed conservative Catholic activism and emancipation, especially the powers of the Vatican under Pope Pius IX, and working class radicalism, represented by the emerging Social Democratic Party.

Kulturkampf
Prussia in 1871 included 16,000,000 Protestants, both Reformed and Lutheran, and 8,000,000 Catholics. Most people were generally segregated into their own religious worlds, living in rural districts or city neighborhoods that were overwhelmingly of the same religion, and sending their children to separate public schools where their religion was taught. There was little interaction or intermarriage. On the whole, the Protestants had a higher social status, and the Catholics were more likely to be peasant farmers or unskilled or semiskilled industrial workers. In 1870, the Catholics formed their own political party, the Centre Party, which generally supported unification and most of Bismarck's policies. However, Bismarck distrusted parliamentary democracy in general and opposition parties in particular, especially when the Centre Party showed signs of gaining support among dissident elements such as the Polish Catholics in Silesia. A powerful intellectual force of the time was anti-Catholicism, led by the liberal intellectuals who formed a vital part of Bismarck's coalition. They saw the Catholic Church as a powerful force of reaction and anti-modernity, especially after the proclamation of papal infallibility in 1870, and the tightening control of the Vatican over the local bishops.

The Kulturkampf launched by Bismarck 1871–1880 affected Prussia; although there were similar movements in Baden and Hesse, the rest of Germany was not affected. According to the new imperial constitution, the states were in charge of religious and educational affairs; they funded the Protestant and Catholic schools. In July 1871 Bismarck abolished the Catholic section of the Prussian Ministry of ecclesiastical and educational affairs, depriving Catholics of their voice at the highest level. The system of strict government supervision of schools was applied only in Catholic areas; the Protestant schools were left alone.

Much more serious were the May laws of 1873. One made the appointment of any priest dependent on his attendance at a German university, as opposed to the seminaries that the Catholics typically used. Furthermore, all candidates for the ministry had to pass an examination in German culture before a state board which weeded out intransigent Catholics. Another provision gave the government a veto power over most church activities. A second law abolished the jurisdiction of the Vatican over the Catholic Church in Prussia; its authority was transferred to a government body controlled by Protestants.

Nearly all German bishops, clergy, and laymen rejected the legality of the new laws, and were defiant in the face of heavier and heavier penalties and imprisonments imposed by Bismarck's government by 1876, all the Prussian bishops were imprisoned or in exile, and a third of the Catholic parishes were without a priest. In the face of systematic defiance, the Bismarck government increased the penalties and its attacks, and were challenged in 1875 when a papal encyclical declared the whole ecclesiastical legislation of Prussia was invalid, and threatened to excommunicate any Catholic who obeyed. There was no violence, but the Catholics mobilized their support, set up numerous civic organizations, raised money to pay fines, and rallied behind their church and the Centre Party. The government had set up an "Old-Catholic Church," which attracted only a few thousand members. Bismarck, a devout pietistic Protestant, realized his Kulturkampf was backfiring when secular and socialist elements used the opportunity to attack all religion. In the long run, the most significant result was the mobilization of the Catholic voters, and their insistence on protecting their religious identity. In the elections of 1874, the Centre party doubled its popular vote, and became the second-largest party in the national parliament—and remained a powerful force for the next 60 years, so that after Bismarck it became difficult to form a government without their support.

Social reform
Bismark built on a tradition of welfare programs in Prussia and Saxony that began as early as in the 1840s. In the 1880s he introduced old age pensions, accident insurance, medical care and unemployment insurance that formed the basis of the modern European welfare state. He came to realize that this sort of policy was very appealing, since it bound workers to the state, and also fit in very well with his authoritarian nature. The social security systems installed by Bismarck (health care in 1883, accident insurance in 1884, invalidity and old-age insurance in 1889) at the time were the largest in the world and, to a degree, still exist in Germany today.

Bismarck's paternalistic programs won the support of German industry because its goals were to win the support of the working classes for the Empire and reduce the outflow of immigrants to America, where wages were higher but welfare did not exist. Bismarck further won the support of both industry and skilled workers by his high tariff policies, which protected profits and wages from American competition, although they alienated the liberal intellectuals who wanted free trade.

Germanization
One of the effects of the unification policies was the gradually increasing tendency to eliminate the use of non-German languages in public life, schools and academic settings with the intent of pressuring the non-German population to abandon their national identity in what was called "Germanization". These policies had often the reverse effect of stimulating resistance, usually in the form of home schooling and tighter unity in the minority groups, especially the Poles.

The Germanization policies were targeted particularly against the significant Polish minority of the empire, gained by Prussia in the Partitions of Poland. Poles were treated as an ethnic minority even where they made up the majority, as in the Province of Posen, where a series of anti-Polish measures were enforced. Numerous anti-Polish laws had no great effect especially in the province of Posen where the German-speaking population dropped from 42.8% in 1871 to 38.1% in 1905, despite all efforts.

Antisemitism
Antisemitism was an endemic problem in Germany. Before Napoleon's decrees ended the ghettos in Germany, it had been religiously motivated, but by the 19th century, it was a factor in German nationalism. The last legal barriers on Jews in Prussia were lifted by the 1860s, and within 20 years, they were well represented in the white-collar professions and much of academia. Despite the often crude antisemitism of German elites such as Bismarck, many of them utilized the services of Jews, such as Bismarck's banker Gerson Bleichroder (1822–1893). In the popular mind Jews became a symbol of capitalism and modernity, two things that were resented by the Prussian aristocracy, who were finding their power and prestige rapidly diminished in the new, unified Germany. On the other hand, the constitution and legal system protected the rights of Jews as German citizens. Antisemitic parties were formed but soon collapsed.

Law
Bismarck's efforts also initiated the levelling of the enormous differences between the German states, which had been independent in their evolution for centuries, especially with legislation. The completely different legal histories and judicial systems posed enormous complications, especially for national trade. While a common trade code had already been introduced by the Confederation in 1861 (which was adapted for the Empire and, with great modifications, is still in effect today), there was little similarity in laws otherwise.

In 1871, a common Criminal Code (Reichsstrafgesetzbuch) was introduced; in 1877, common court procedures were established in the court system (Gerichtsverfassungsgesetz), civil procedures (Zivilprozessordnung) and criminal procedures (Strafprozessordnung). In 1873 the constitution was amended to allow the Empire to replace the various and greatly differing Civil Codes of the states (If they existed at all; for example, parts of Germany formerly occupied by Napoleon's France had adopted the French Civil Code, while in Prussia the Allgemeines Preußisches Landrecht of 1794 was still in effect). In 1881, a first commission was established to produce a common Civil Code for all of the Empire, an enormous effort that would produce the Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch (BGB), possibly one of the most impressive legal works of the world; it was eventually put into effect on 1 January 1900. It speaks volumes for the conceptual quality of these codifications that they all, albeit with many amendments, are still in effect today.

Year of three emperors


On March 9, 1888, Wilhelm I died shortly before his 91st birthday, leaving his son Frederick III as the new emperor. Frederick was a liberal and an admirer of the British constitution, while his links to Britain strengthened further with his marriage to Princess Victoria, eldest child of Queen Victoria. With his ascent to the throne, many hoped that Frederick's reign would lead to a liberalisation of the Reich and an increase of parliament's influence on the political process. The dismissal of Robert von Puttkamer, the highly-conservative Prussian interior minister, on June 8, was a sign of the expected direction and a blow to Bismarck's administration.

By the time of his accession, however, Frederick had developed incurable laryngeal cancer, which had been diagnosed in 1887. He died on the 99th day of his rule, on June 15, 1888. His son Wilhelm II became emperor.

Reaffirmation of prerogative monarchy, and Bismarck's resignation


Wilhelm II sought to reassert his ruling prerogatives at a time when other monarchs in Europe were being transformed into constitutional figureheads. This decision led the ambitious Kaiser into conflict with Bismarck. The old chancellor had hoped to guide Wilhelm as he had guided his grandfather, but the emperor wanted to be the master in his own house and had many sycophants telling him that Frederick the Great would not have been great with a Bismarck at his side. A key difference between Wilhelm II and Bismarck was their approaches to handling political crises, especially in 1889, when German coal miners went on strike in Upper Silesia. Bismarck demanded that the German Army be sent in to crush the strike, but Wilhelm II rejected this authoritarian measure, responding "I do not wish to stain my reign with the blood of my subjects." Instead of condoning repression, Wilhelm had the government negotiate with a delegation from the coal miners, which brought the strike to an end without violence. The fractious relationship ended in March 1890, after Wilhelm II and Bismarck quarrelled, and the chancellor resigned days later. Bismarck's last few years had seen power slip from his hands as he grew older, more irritable, more authoritarian, and less focused. German politics had become progressively more chaotic, and the chancellor understood this better than anyone. But unlike Wilhelm II and his generation, Bismarck knew well that an ungovernable country with an adventurous foreign policy was a recipe for disaster.

With Bismarck's departure, Wilhelm II became the dominant ruler of Germany. Unlike his grandfather, Wilhelm I, who had been largely content to leave government affairs to the chancellor, Wilhelm II wanted to be fully informed and actively involved in running Germany, not an ornamental figurehead, although most Germans found his claims of divine right to rule amusing. Wilhelm allowed politician Walther Rathenau to tutor him in European economics and industrial and financial realities in Europe.

As Hull (2004) notes, Bismarkean foreign policy "was too sedate for the reckless Kaiser." Wilhelm became internationally notorious for his aggressive stance on foreign policy and his strategic blunders (such as the Tangier Crisis), which pushed the German Empire into growing political isolation and eventually helped to cause World War I.

Domestic affairs


Under Wilhelm II, Germany no longer had long-ruling strong chancellors like Bismarck. The new chancellors had difficulty in performing their roles, especially the additional role as Prime Minister of Prussia assigned to them in the German Constitution. The reforms of Chancellor Leo von Caprivi, which liberalized trade and so reduced unemployment, were supported by the Kaiser and most Germans except for Prussian landowners, who feared loss of land and power and launched several campaigns against the reforms.

While Prussian aristocrats challenged the demands of a united German state, in the 1890s several organizations were set up to challenge the authoritarian conservative Prussian militarism which was being imposed on the country. Educators opposed to the German state-run schools, which emphasized military education, set up their own independent liberal schools, which encouraged individuality and freedom. However nearly all the schools in Imperial Germany had a very high standard and kept abreast with modern developments in knowledge.

Artists began experimental art in opposition to Kaiser Wilhelm's support for traditional art, to which Wilhelm responded "art which transgresses the laws and limits laid down by me can no longer be called art [...]." It was largely thanks to Wilhelm's influence that most printed material in Germany used blackletter instead of the Roman type used in the rest of Western Europe. At the same time, a new generation of cultural creators emerged.

From the 1890s onwards, the most effective opposition to the monarchy came from the newly formed Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), which advocated Marxism. The threat of the SPD to the German monarchy and industrialists caused the state both to crack down on the party's supporters and to implement its own programme of social reform to soothe discontent. Germany's large industries provided significant social welfare programmes and good care to their employees, as long as they were not identified as socialists or trade-union members. The larger industrial firms provided pensions, sickness benefits and even housing to their employees.

Having learned from the failure of Bismarck's Kulturkampf, Wilhelm II maintained good relations with the Roman Catholic Church and concentrated on opposing socialism. This policy failed when the Social Democrats won ⅓ of the votes in the 1912 elections to the Reichstag, and became the largest political party in Germany. The government remained in the hands of a succession of conservative coalitions supported by right-wing liberals or Catholic clerics and heavily dependent on the Kaiser's favour. The rising militarism under Wilhelm II caused many Germans to emigrate to the U.S. and the British colonies to escape mandatory military service.

During World War I, the Kaiser increasingly devolved his powers to the leaders of the German High Command, particularly Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg and Generalquartiermeister Erich Ludendorff. Hindenburg took over the role of commander–in–chief from the Kaiser, while Ludendorff became de facto general chief of staff. By 1916, Germany was effectively a military dictatorship run by Hindenburg and Ludendorff, with the Kaiser reduced to a mere figurehead.

Foreign affairs
Wilhelm II wanted Germany to have her "place in the sun," like Britain, which he constantly wished to emulate or rival. With German traders and merchants already active worldwide, he encouraged colonial efforts in Africa and the Pacific ("new imperialism"), causing the German Empire to vie with other European powers for remaining "unclaimed" territories. With the encouragement or at least the acquiescence of Britain, which at this stage saw Germany as a counterweight to her old rival France, Germany acquired German Southwest Africa (today Namibia), German Kamerun (Cameroon), Togoland and German East Africa (the mainland part of current Tanzania). Islands were gained in the Pacific through purchase and treaties and also a 99-year lease for the territory of Kiautschou in northeast China. But of these German colonies only Togoland and German Samoa (after 1908) became self-sufficient and profitable; all the others required subsidies from the Berlin treasury for building infrastructure, school systems, hospitals and other institutions. An attempt to expand into the Americas by establishing a colony near Curaçao as part of the German Caribbean colony was undertaken in 1888, but failed.

Bismarck had originally dismissed the agitation for colonies with contempt; he favoured a Eurocentric foreign policy, as the treaty arrangements made during his tenure in office show. As a latecomer to colonization, Germany repeatedly came into conflict with the established colonial powers and also with the United States, which opposed German attempts at colonial expansion in both the Caribbean and the Pacific. Native insurrections in German territories received prominent coverage in other countries, especially in Britain; the established powers had dealt with such uprisings decades earlier, often brutally, and had secured firm control of their colonies by then. The Boxer Rising in China, which the Chinese government eventually sponsored, began in the Shandong province, in part because Germany, as colonizer at Kiautschou, was an untested power and had only been active there for two years. Eight western nations, including the United States, mounted a joint relief force to rescue westerners caught up in the rebellion; and during the departure ceremonies for the German contingent, Wilhelm II urged them to behave like the Hun invaders of continental Europe – an unfortunate remark that would later be resurrected by British propagandists to paint Germans as barbarians during World War I and World War II. On two occasions, a French-German conflict over the fate of Morocco seemed inevitable.

Upon acquiring Southwest Africa, German settlers were encouraged to cultivate land held by the Herero and Nama. Herero and Nama tribal lands were used for a variety of exploitive goals (much as the British did before in Rhodesia), including farming, ranching, and mining for minerals and diamonds. In 1904, the Herero and the Nama revolted against the colonists in Southwest Africa, killing farm families, their laborers and servants. In response to the attacks, troops were dispatched to quell the uprising which then resulted in the Herero and Namaqua Genocide. In total, some 65,000 Herero (80% of the total Herero population), and 10,000 Nama (50% of the total Nama population) perished. The commander of the punitive expedition, General Lothar von Trotha, was eventually relieved and reprimanded for his usurpation of orders and the cruelties he inflicted. These occurrences were sometimes referred to as "the first genocide of the 20th century". In 2004 a formal apology by a government minister of the Federal Republic of Germany followed.

Middle East
Bismarck and Wilhelm II after him sought closer economic ties with the Ottoman Empire. Under Wilhelm, with the financial backing of the Deutsche Bank, the Baghdad Railway was begun in 1900, although by 1914 it was still short of its destination in Baghdad. In an interview with Wilhelm in 1899, Cecil Rhodes had tried "to convince the Kaiser that the future of the German empire abroad lay in the Middle East" and not in Africa; with a grand Middle-Eastern empire, Germany could afford to allow Britain the unhindered completion of the Cape-to-Cairo railway that Rhodes favoured. Britain initially supported the Baghdad Railway; but by 1911 British statesmen came to fear it might be extended to Basra on the Persian Gulf, threatening Britain's naval supremacy in the Indian Ocean. Accordingly they asked to have construction halted, to which Germany and the Ottoman Empire acquiesced.

Europe
Wilhelm II and his advisers committed a fatal diplomatic error when they allowed the "reinsurance treaty" that Bismarck had negotiated with Tsarist Russia to lapse. Germany was left with no firm ally but Austria-Hungary, and her support for Austria's action in annexing Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1908 further soured relations with Russia. Wilhelm missed the opportunity to secure an alliance with Britain in the 1890s when it was involved in colonial rivalries with France, and he alienated British statesmen further by openly supporting the Boers in the South African War and building a navy to rival Britain's. By 1911 Wilhelm had completely picked apart the careful power balance established by Bismarck and Britain turned to France in the Entente Cordiale. Germany's only other ally besides Austria was the Kingdom of Italy, but it remained an ally only pro forma. When war came, Italy saw more benefit in an alliance with Britain, France, and Russia, which, in the secret Treaty of London in 1915 promised it the frontier districts of Austria where Italians formed the majority of the population and also colonial concessions. Germany did acquire a second ally that same year when the Ottoman Empire entered the war on its side, but in the long run supporting the Ottoman war effort only drained away German resources from the main fronts.

World War I
Map of the World showing the Triple Entente participants in World War I. Those fighting on the Entente's side (at one point or another) are depicted in green, the Central Powers in orange, and neutral countries in grey.

Origins
Following the assassination of the Austro-Hungarian Archduke of Austria-Este, Franz Ferdinand by Bosnian Serbs, the Kaiser offered Emperor Franz Joseph full support for Austro-Hungarian plans to invade the Kingdom of Serbia, which Austria-Hungary blamed for the assassination. This unconditional support for Austria-Hungary was called a blank cheque by historians, including German Fritz Fischer. Subsequent interpretation – for example at the Berlin Peace Conference – was that this "blank cheque" licensed Austro-Hungarian aggression regardless of the diplomatic consequences or at least provoking a wider conflict.

Germany began the war by targeting its chief rival, France. Germany saw France as its principal danger on the European continent as it could mobilize much faster than Russia and bordered Germany's industrial core in the Rhineland. Unlike Britain and Russia, the French entered the war mainly for revenge against Germany, in particular for France's loss of Alsace-Lorraine to Germany in 1871. The German high command knew that France would muster its forces to go into Alsace-Lorraine.

Western Front
Germany did not want to risk lengthy battles along the Franco-German border and instead adopted the Schlieffen Plan, a military strategy designed to cripple France by invading Belgium and Luxembourg, sweeping down towards Paris and encircling and crushing the French forces along the Franco-German border in a quick victory. After defeating France, Germany would turn to attack Russia. The plan required the violation of Belgium's and Luxembourg's official neutrality, which Britain had guaranteed by treaty. However, the Germans had calculated that Britain would enter the war regardless of whether they had formal justification to do so. At first the attack was successful: the German Army swept down from Belgium and Luxembourg and was nearly at Paris, at the nearby River Marne. However the French Army and the British Army put up a strong resistance to defend Paris at the First Battle of the Marne resulting in the German Army retreating.

The aftermath of the First Battle of the Marne was a long-held stalemate between the German Army and the Allies in dug-in trench warfare. Further German attempts to break through deeper into France failed at the two battles of Ypres (1st/2nd) with huge casualties. German Chief of Staff Erich von Falkenhayn decided to break away from the Schlieffen Plan and instead focus on a war of attrition against France. Falkenhayn targeted the ancient city of Verdun because it had been one of the last cities to hold out against the German Army in 1870, and Falkenhayn knew that as a matter of national pride the French would do anything to ensure that it was not taken. He expected that with proper tactics, French losses would be greater than those of the Germans and that continued French commitment of troops to Verdun would "bleed the French Army white" and then allow the German army to take France easily. In 1916, the Battle of Verdun began, with the French positions under constant shelling and poison gas attack and taking large casualties under the assault of overwhelmingly large German forces. However, Falkenhayn's prediction of a greater ratio of French killed proved to be wrong. Falkenhayn was replaced by Erich Ludendorff, and with no success in sight, the German Army retreated in December 1916.

Eastern Front
While the Western Front was a stalemate for the German Army, the Eastern Front proved to be a great success. The badly organised and supplied Russian Army faltered and the German and Austro-Hungarian armies steadily advanced eastward. The Germans benefited from political instability in Russia and a desire to end the war. In 1917 the German government allowed Russia's communist Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin to travel through Germany from Switzerland into Russia. Germany believed that if Lenin could create further political unrest, Russia would no longer be able to continue its war with Germany, allowing the German Army to focus on the Western Front.

In March 1917, the Tsar was ousted from the Russian throne, and in November a Bolshevik government came to power under the leadership of Lenin. Facing political opposition to the Bolsheviks, Lenin decided to end Russia's campaign against Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria in order to redirect its energy to eliminating internal dissent. In 1918, by the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, the Bolshevik government gave Germany and the Ottoman Empire enormous territorial and economic concessions in exchange for an end to war on the Eastern Front. All of the modern-day Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) were given over to the German occupation authority Ober Ost, along with Belarus and Ukraine. Thus Germany had at last achieved its long-wanted dominance of "Mitteleuropa" (Central Europe) and could now focus fully on defeating the Allies on the Western Front. In practice, however, the forces needed to garrison and secure the new territories were a drain on the German war effort.

Colonies
On the colonial front, German results were mixed. Most of Germany's colonies fell to the armies of Britain, France, and the British Dominions, but in German East Africa, an impressive campaign was waged by the colonial army leader there, General Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck. Using Germans and native Askari, Lettow-Vorbeck launched multiple guerrilla raids against British forces in Kenya and Rhodesia. He also invaded Portuguese Mozambique to gain his forces supplies and to pick up more Askari recruits. His force was still active at war's end.

1918
Defeating Russia in 1917 enabled Germany to transfer hundreds of thousands of combat troops from the east to the Western Front, giving it a numerical advantage over the Allies. By retraining the soldiers in new storm-trooper tactics, the Germans expected to unfreeze the battlefield and win a decisive victory before the army of the United States, which had now entered the war on the side of Britain and France, arrived in strength. The repeated German offensives in the autumn of 1917 and the spring of 1918 all failed, as the Allies fell back and the Germans barely had the reserves needed to consolidate their gains. The war effort sparked civil unrest in Germany, while the troops, who had been constantly in the field finally recieved relief, gained a new hope of victory. In the summer of 1918, the Americans were arriving at only the rate of 1,000 men and supplies a month and the German Navy quickly limited that even more by the wars end, it was only a matter of time before new German offensives destroyed the Allies.

Home front
The concept of "total war," first seen in the American Civil War, meant that supplies had to be redirected towards the armed forces and, with German commerce being briefly stopped by the British naval blockade, German civilians were forced to live in increasingly meagre conditions. First food prices were controlled, then rationing was introduced. During the war about 50,000 German civilians died from malnutrition.

Towards the end of the war conditions began to improve on the home front, with food shortages reported in all urban areas. The causes included the transfer of many farmers and food workers into the military, combined with the overburdened railway system, shortages of coal, and the British blockade. The winter of 1916–1917 was known as the "turnip winter", because the people had to survive on a vegetable more commonly reserved for livestock, as a substitute for potatoes and meat, which were increasingly scarce. Thousands of soup kitchens were opened to feed the hungry, who grumbled that the farmers were keeping the food for themselves. The morale of civilians continued to sink until the war in Europe ended August 1918.

Interbellum
Overjoyed by Ludendorff's report and the news of the victory, the majority parties in the Reichstag, and especially the SPD, were willing to take on the responsibility of government at the last minute. As the convinced royalist Michaelis initially objected to handing over the reins to the Reichstag, on October 3, 1918 Emperor Wilhelm II threatened his dismisal if he didn't cooperate with supreme command. The following day, the new government offered to the United States the truce which Ludendorff had demanded.

It was only on October 5 that the German public was informed of the situation. In the general state of shock about the news, the constitutional changes, formally decided by the Reichstag on October 28, recieved much enthusiasm from the Left. From then on, the Imperial Chancellor and the Ministers depended on the confidence of parliamentary majority. After the supreme command had passed from the Emperor to the Imperial Government, the German Empire changed from a constitutional to a parliamentary monarchy. As far as the Social Democrats were concerned, the so-called October Constitution met all the important constitutional objectives of the party. Ebert regarded October 5 as the birthday of German democracy, after the Emperor voluntarily ceded power and thus considered a revolution as unnecessary.

From 1925 to the 1930s, the German government evolved from a democracy to a de facto conservative–nationalist authoritarian state under war hero-Chancellor Paul von Hindenburg, who disliked the liberal democracy of Germany at the time and wanted to make Germany into an authoritarian state. The natural ally for establishing authoritarianism was the German National People's Party (Deutschnationale Volkspartei, DNVP), "the Nationalists", but after 1929, with the German economy floundering, more radical and younger nationalists were attracted to the party, to challenge the rising popular support for communism. Moreover, the middle-class political parties lost support as the voters aggregated to the left- and right- wings of the German political spectrum, thus making a majority government in a parliamentary system even more difficult.

In the federal election of 1928, when the economy had improved after the hyperinflation of the 1922–23 period, the DNVP won only 12 seats. Two years later, in the federal election of 1930, months after the US stock market crash, the DNVP won 107 seats, progressing from ninth-rated splinter group to second-largest parliamentary party in the Reichstag. After the federal election of 1932, the DNVP was the largest party in the Reichstag, holding 230 seats. Emperor Wilhelm II was reluctant to confer substantial executive power to Hitler, but former chancellor Franz von Papen and Hitler concorded an German National People'sParty–Conservative alliance that would allow Hitler’s chancellorship, subject to traditional-conservative control, to develop an authoritarian state.

On January 30, 1933, Wilhelm II appointed Hitler as Chancellor of Germany after General Kurt von Schleicher’s failure to form a viable government. Hitler pressured the aging emperor through his son the Crown Prince and via intrigue by von Papen, former leader of the Catholic Centre Party. By becoming the Vice Chancellor and keeping the DNVP a cabinet minority, von Papen expected to be able to control Hitler. Although the nationalists had won the greatest share of the popular vote in the two Reichstag general elections of 1932, they had no majority of their own, not even with the DNVP–CP alliance that started governing in 1933 by Imperial Decree per Article 48 of the 1918 October Constitution.

Consolidation of power
Within a few months, the new government installed a single party dictatorship in Germany with legal measures establishing a coordinated central government. On the night of February 27, 1933, the Reichstag building was set afire. The DNVP claimed that the arson was a signal for a communist uprising and thousands of communist party members were arrested, the party offices raided and all KPD publications banned. The DNVP imprisoned many in concentration camps. The Reichstag Fire Decree (February 27, 1933), rescinded most German civil liberties including habeas corpus, to so suppress their opponents. While Van der Lubbe had had contacts with communists in Holland, there was no evidence that the KPD was in any way implicated in planning or execution of the fire. The 'Fire Decree' was the second enactment that allowed the DNVP administration to restrict civil liberties. The first was a rule that forbade Germans from 'insulting the flag' and this was used consistently to repress any kind of opposition.

In March 1933, with the Enabling Act, was passed by 444–94 (the remaining Social Democrats), the Reichstag changed the October Constitution to allow Hitler's government to pass laws without parliamentary debate for a four-year period, even such deviating from other articles in the constitution (the Act, forming the legal basis for the regime, was subsequently renewed by Hitler's government in 1937 and 1941). Forthwith, throughout 1934, the DNVP ruthlessly eliminated all political opposition; the Enabling Act already had banned the Communists (KPD), the Social Democrats (SPD) were dissolved in June, and in the June–July period, the People's Party (DVP) and the German State Party (DStP) were likewise obliged to disband, their members urged to join the DNVP or else leave politics. Moreover, at the urging of Franz von Papen, the remaining Catholic Centre Party disbanded on July 5, 1933 after obtaining DNVP guarantees for Catholic religious education and youth groups. On July 14, 1933, Germany became a de facto single-party state, as the founding of new parties was banned. Further elections in late 1933, 1936 and 1938 were entirely DNVP-controlled and only saw the DNVP and a minor number of independent "guests" elected for the rubber-stamp legislature.



On January 30, 1934 Chancellor Hitler formally centralized government power to himself with the Gesetz über den Neuaufbau des Reichs (Act to Reform the Reich) by disbanding Länder (federal state) parliaments and transferring states’ rights and administration to the Berlin central government. The centralization began soon after the March 1933 Enabling Act promulgation, when state governments were replaced with Reichsstatthalter (Reich governors). Local government also was deposed; Reich governors appointed mayors of cities and towns with populaces of fewer than 100,000; the Interior Minister appointed the mayors of cities with populaces greater than 100,000; and, in the cases of Berlin and Hamburg (and Vienna after the Anschluss Österreichs in 1945), Hitler had personal discretion to appoint their mayors.

"At the risk of appearing to talk nonsense, I tell you that the German Reich will go on for 1,000 years!... Don’t forget how people laughed at me, 15 years ago, when I declared that one day I would govern Germany. They laugh now, just as foolishly, when I declare that I shall remain in power!"

- Adolf Hitler to a British correspondent in Berlin, June 1934



In August 1934, Hitler had announced plans to increase the size of the military, the agreement of the generals was unsurprising. Abolition of Länder owned armies consolidated the Reichswehr as the sole armed force of the Reich, and Hitler's promises of military expansion guaranteed him military loyalty. Hitler attempted changing the German soldiers’ oath of allegiance from the Kaiser to the state. Wilhelm II however forbade this as well as officers made it clear they would refuse such a change.

In the event, the government began introducing nationalistic symbolism to public and private German life; textbooks were revised, or rewritten to promote the Pan-German doctrine of Großdeutschland (Greater Germany) to be established; teachers who opposed curricular rewrite were dismissed. Furthermore, to coerce popular obedience to the state, the DNVP established the Gestapo (secret state police) as independent of civil authority. The Gestapo controlled the German populace with some 100,000 spies and informers, and thereby were aware of anti-government criticism and dissent.

World War II
Main article: World War II (Central Victory) On September 17, 1939, seventeen days after the start of World War II and victorious Russian advance into eastern Europe, the German Army sent officers to aid in commanding their allied armies, stating the protection of eastern Europeans as their operation's primary goal and as the justification of the action. As a result, France and Britain declare war on Germany. In the meantime the negotiations with the Netherlands about a German-Dutch alliance succeeded; and in December, 1939 Belgium started a campaign against Germany. In spring 1940 Germany and the Netherlands launched a joint invasion of Belgium and France. By June France and Belgium were overrun by German and Dutch soldiers and had surrendered. At the same time, Germany pushed the British Army out of France. But by May 1940, the Russians had conquered most of Poland, eastern Europe had fallen.

On June 22, 1941, Stalin invaded Germany, using his contacts within the Russian Communist party, German spy Richard Sorge was able to discover the exact date and time of the planned Russian invasion of Germany. This information was passed along to Kaiser Wilhelm III, but went ignored, despite warning from not only Sorge, but from King Gustaf Vand other sources as well. The German military went on high alert immediately after the invasion of eastern Europe but did not leave German soil. It was not caculated how long it would take the Red Army to reach Germany, let alone invade. And so, the Russian invasion caught German military unprepared. In the larger sense, Hitler expected invasion but not so soon. The Army was in poor morale due to the recent death of Kaiser Wilhelm II; the nation was still in national mourning at the time of the invasion. In the immediate sense, Kaiser Wilhelm III, although receiving a specific and accurate warnings of when the invasion would occur, simply refused to believe it would happen. As such, defensive actions did not occur and the German Army was unprepared in that tactical sense, when the invasion occurred. The initial weeks of the war were a disaster, with thousands of men being killed, wounded, or captured. Whole divisions disintegrated against the Russian onslaught. The new Kaiser gave majority of his military power over to Hitler, although how this was decieded has been debated. All in all, on the very first day of the attack, Hitler held meetings with over 15 individual members of the German government and military apparatus. Russian troops reached the outskirts of Berlin in October 1941, but failed to capture it, because the forces reaching Berlin were late and under−strength. At the Siege of Güstrow in 1942–43, after losing an estimated 1 million men in the bloodiest fighting in history, the German Army was able to regain the initiative of the war. Due to the unwillingness of Spain to enter the war, the Germans were able to call dozens of army divisions back from occupied France and Belgium. These units were instrumental in turning the tide, because most of their officers had seen combat in World War I and used the new equipment the German Army now had. German forces soon launched massive counter attacks along the entire Russian line. By 1944, the Russians had been pushed out of eastern Europe to the Stalin Line, which whas located on the Russian border. In June 1944 a German-Dutch invasion of Britain, which lasted from June–August, forced the British to sue for peace. In that same year, with Generalfeldmarschall Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb attacking from the North, and Generalfeldmarschall Fedor von Bock slicing Russia in half from the center the fate of Communist Russia was sealed. On May 2, 1945 the last Russian troops surrendered to the overjoyed German troops in Moscow.

As victory was won in Europe, a joint Axis plan to invade the United States was launched. Germany, having developed the first nuclear weapons, used them on the American cities of New York and Boston in August. The United States surrendered on September 2, 1945 ending the war.

Cold War
During the immediate postwar period, Germany first rebuilt and then expanded its economy. Germany aided post-war reconstruction in the countries of eastern Europe and the Balkans while turning them into German satellite states. Meanwhile, the rising tension of the Cold War turned the neutral Canadians, the United States and Australia, into full time enemies. Kaiser Wilhelm III had endorsed Hitler's ideals of German supremacy and protection of the world and never revoked his military powers. Hitler had taken 90% control of Germany and was officially its dictator from 1942 until his death in 1951.

Post-Hitler period
Hitelr died on May 17, 1951. Because of the amount of power Hitler held by his death the ill Wilhelm III feared for apointing another Chancellor outside the DNVP. Konrad Adenauer, was the parties chairman after Hitler and recieved the apointment. He eased repressive controls over the party and society. This was known as de-Hitlerization. On July 20, 1951 Wilhelm III died while on holiday in southern Germany. His first son died in France during World War II and was thus succeeded by his second son Ludwig Ferdinand. But because of the fearful power that the Chancellors weilded he remained mostly cerimonial until 1991.

At the same time, German military forces were used to suppress nationalistic and anti-german uprisings in Serbia and Bosnia in 1956. During this period, Germany continued to realize scientific and technological pioneering exploits. Adenauer's reforms in agriculture and administration, however, were generally unproductive, and foreign policy towards Egypt and Canada suffered difficulties, including those that led to the Nahhas–Hitler split. Adenauer was retired from power in 1964.

Following the ousting of Adenauer, and was succeeded by his Vice-Chancellor Ludwig Erhard who had established himself in the early 1970s as the preeminent figure in German political life. Erhard presided over a period of Détente with the West while at the same time building up German military strength; the arms buildup contributed to the demise of Détente in the late 1970s.

In contrast to the militaristic pan-German spirit that accompanied the birth of the German Empire, the prevailing mood of the German leadership at the time of Erhard's death in 1977 was one of aversion to change. The period of Erhard's term had come to be dubbed one of "standstill", with an aging and ossified top political leadership.

After some experimentation with economic reforms in the mid-1960s, the German leadership reverted to established means of economic management. Industry showed slow but steady gains during the 1970s. Agricultural development continued, but could not keep up with the growing consumption and Germany had to import food products like grain. Because of the low investment in consumer goods, Germany was largely only able to export raw materials, notably metals, which made it vulnerable to global price shifts. Moreover, human welfare in Germany was keeping behind Western levels, after initially converging in the 1950s and 1960s. Even in absolute measurements, German citizens were becoming less healthy between the 1960s and 1985: the crude death rate climbed from 6.9 per 1,000 in 1964 to 10.3 in 1980.

Reforms of Stoph and collapse of the German Reich
Two developments dominated the decade that followed: the increasingly apparent crumbling of the German Empire's economic and political structures, and the patchwork attempts at reforms to reverse that process. Kenneth S. Deffeyes argued in Beyond Oil that the Reagan administration encouraged Saudi Arabia to lower the price of oil to the point where the Germans could not make a profit from selling their oil, so that Germany's hard currency reserves became depleted.

After the rapid succession of Kurt Georg Kiesinger and Helmut Kohl, transitional figures with deep roots in Erhardian tradition, beginning in 1982 Willi Stoph made significant changes in the economy and the government leadership. His policy of offenheit freed public access to information after decades of heavy government censorship. With Germany in bad economic shape and its satellite states in Europe on the brink of all out revolt, Stoph moved to end the Cold War.

In 1988, Germany abandoned its nine-year war with Afghanistan and began to withdraw forces from the country. In the late 1980s, Stoph refused to send military support to defend the German Empire's former satellite states, resulting in multiple puppet regimes in those states being forced from power. With the withdrawl of German soldiers, and the holding of free elections in Serbia, the German supremacy over Europe took the final blow.

In the late 1980s, the German states of Austria and Luxemburg started legal moves towards or even declaration of sovereignty over their territories, stating that their people's did not willingly join Germany. On April 7, 1990, a law was passed allowing a state to secede if more than two-thirds of that state's residents vote for secession on a referendum. Many held their first free elections for their own state legislatures in 1990. Many of these legislatures proceeded to produce legislation contradicting national laws in what was known as the "War of Laws." A referendum for the preservation of the German Empire was held on March 17, 1991, with the majority of the population voting for preservation of the Empire in 16 out of 22 states. The referendum gave Stoph a minor boost, and, in the summer of 1991, the new constitution was designed and agreed upon by 22 states which would have turned the German Empire into a parliamentary monarchy.

The signing of the treaty, however, was interrupted by the August Coup—an attempted coup d'état against Stoph by hardline DNVP members of the government and the Gestapo, who sought to reverse Stoph's reforms and reassert the nationalist's control over the states. After the coup collapsed, Kaiser Ludwig Ferdinand—who had publicly opposed it—came out as a hero while Stoph's power was effectively ended. The balance of power tipped significantly towards the Kaiser. In August 1991, Austria and Luxemburg, renaming it Luxembourg, immediately declared restoration of full independence (following Austria's 1990 example), while the other twenty states continued discussing new, increasingly looser, models of the Reich.

On December 8, 1991, the Kaiser, and representatives of German colonial states signed the Schwarzwald Accords which declared the German colonial empire dissolved. On December 25, 1991, Ludwig Ferdinand abdicated as the Emperor of Germany, declaring the monarchy a failure to modern Germans. He turned the powers that until then were vested in the crown over to Richard von Weizsäcker, president of Germany.

The following day, the Reichstag recognized the bankruptcy and collapse of the German Empire and dissolved itself. This is generally recognized as the official, final dissolution of the German Empire as a functioning state. Many organizations such as the German Army and police forces continued to remain in place in the early months of 1992 but were slowly phased out. Germany had been Germanizing regions near Poland since 1916, but the Polish population maintained their culture and language secretly since then. Germany gave up some of its eastern territory to Poland at the demand of the Polish population.

Constituent states of the Empire


Before unification, German territory was made up of 27 constituent states. These states consisted of kingdoms, grand duchies, duchies, principalities, free Hanseatic cities and one imperial territory. The Kingdom of Prussia was the largest of the constituent states, covering some 60% of the territory of the German Empire. As part of his plans for a "New Sacred Germany", Hitler issued a Länder Läuterung or State Purification in 1934. This merged the provinces of Prussia with other German states or granted them the same status effectively disestablishing Prussia as a state in Germany. This reform of the states would remain in effect until 1995.

Several of these states had gained sovereignty following the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire. Others were created as sovereign states after the Congress of Vienna in 1815. Territories were not necessarily contiguous – many existed in several parts, as a result of historical acquisition, or, in several cases, divisions of the ruling family trees.

Each component of the German Empire sent representatives to the Federal Council (Bundesrat) and the Imperial Diet (Reichstag). Relations between the Imperial centre and the Empire's components were somewhat fluid, and were developed on an ongoing basis. The extent to which the Emperor could, for example, intervene on occasions of disputed or unclear succession was much debated on occasion – for example with the Lippe-Detmold inheritance crisis. After World War II however the Chancellor had the final say in most situations until Emperor Ludwig Ferdinand settled the seccession issues of the late 1980's within the rulings of the Bundesrat.