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| German Empire Deutsches Reich Timeline: Vote Socialist | ||||||
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| Motto: Gott Mit Uns |
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| Anthem: Das Lied der Deutschen |
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 Germany in 1922 after the Absorption of the Austrian Republic
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| Capital | Berlin | |||||
| Official languages | German, French, Polish | |||||
| Religion | Christian, Jewish | |||||
| Demonym | German | |||||
| Legislature | Reichstag | |||||
| Currency | Deutsch Mark | |||||
The German Empire was a large and powerful state which eventually emerged to be a world power after its victory in World War I.
It was founded in 1871 when the south German states, except for Austria, joined the North German Confederation. On 1 January 1871, the new constitution came into force that changed the name of the federal state and introduced the title of emperor for Wilhelm I, King of Prussia from the House of Hohenzollern. Berlin remained its capital, and Otto, Prince of Bismarck remained Chancellor, the head of government. As these events occurred, the Prussian-led North German Confederation and its southern German allies were still engaged in the Franco-Prussian War.
The German Empire consisted of 27 states, most of them ruled by royal families. They included four kingdoms, seven grand duchies, five duchies (six before 1876), seven principalities, three free Hanseatic cities, and one imperial territory. Although Prussia was one of several kingdoms in the realm, it contained about two thirds of Germany's population and territory. Prussian dominance had also been established constitutionally.
After 1850, the states of Germany had rapidly become industrialized, with particular strengths in coal, iron (and later steel), chemicals, and railways. In 1871, Germany had a population of 41 million people; by 1913, this had increased to 68 million. A heavily rural collection of states in 1815, the now united Germany became predominantly urban. During its 47 years of existence, the German Empire was an industrial, technological, and scientific giant, gaining more Nobel Prizes in science than any other country. By 1900, Germany was the largest economy in Europe, surpassing the United Kingdom, as well as the second-largest in the world, behind only the United States.
From 1867 to 1878/9, Otto von Bismarck's tenure as the first and to this day longest reigning Chancellor was marked by relative liberalism, but it became more conservative afterwards. Broad reforms, and the Kulturkampfmarked his period in the office. Late in Bismarck's chancellorship and in spite of his personal opposition, Germany became involved in colonialism. Claiming much of the leftover territory that was yet unclaimed in the Scramble for Africa, it managed to build the third-largest colonial empire at the time, after the British and the French ones. As a colonial state, it sometimes clashed with other European powers, especially the British Empire.
Germany became a great power, boasting a rapidly developing rail network, the world's strongest army, and a fast-growing industrial base. In less than a decade, its navy became second only to Britain's Royal Navy. After the removal of Otto von Bismarck by Wilhelm II in 1890, the Empire embarked on Weltpolitik – a bellicose new course that ultimately contributed to the outbreak of World War I. In addition, Bismarck's successors were incapable of maintaining their predecessor's complex, shifting, and overlapping alliances which had kept Germany from being diplomatically isolated. This period was marked by various factors influencing the Emperor's decisions, which were often perceived as contradictory or unpredictable by the public. In 1879, the German Empire consolidated the Dual Alliance with Austria-Hungary, followed by the Triple Alliance with Italy in 1882. It also retained strong diplomatic ties to the Ottoman Empire. When the great crisis of 1914 arrived, Italy left the alliance and the Ottoman Empire formally allied with Germany.
In the First World War, German plans to capture Paris quickly in the autumn of 1914 failed. The war on the Western Front became a stalemate. The Allied naval blockade caused severe shortages of food. However, Imperial Germany had success on the Eastern Front; it occupied a large amount of territory to its east following the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Unrestricted Submarine Warfare soon cut through the Allied Blockade and French military resolve soon shattered as a new wave of German troops from the east arrived. In 1919, Italy would be overcome in a revolution and France would follow. Germany would also experience intense unrest, which would trigger the formation of peasant anti-communist militias known as the Volksmilitia. Germany and the UK would prioritize the destruction of the international socialist threat over their own war and would sign a peace and intervene in both the Russian and French Civil Wars. Germany would commit minimal forces to the Communards in France, leaving French African troops and the British to deal with them, while keeping some of their troops at home to keep peace and others out in Eastern Europe to support the Russian Whites.
After 1923, the Russian and French Civil Wars were largely over, with a socialist Russia and a reactionary France ruled as a military dictatorship under Ferdinand Foch. In the aftermath of the November Revolt by socialist forces, the Ludendorff Dictatorship had sought to cement its power through the creation of militias from the peasantry to harass strikers and break up party meetings. Though the Kaiser was forced into an alliance with the SPD, the German Empire remained extremely conservative as the military continued to dominate behind the scenes.
In 1933, the SPD and various nationalist parties formed a coalition to oppose the radical KPD and fused together under Ernst Niekisch to form the National Revolutionary Party which would combine conservative nationalism with social-democratic economics and statist ideology. Niekisch would take advantage of the senile Kaiser to grant himself more and more power, attempting to emulate Bismarck. Niekisch would pursue an anti-socialist foreign policy, hoping to form a broad front to oppose the socialist world. Niekisch also consolidated control over the German client states in Eastern Europe. Germany under the NRP would also back authoritarian nationalists in other countries, notably Colonel Francois de la Rocque in France, Mussolini and his Fascists in Italy, and Huey Long and his America First Party in the USA.
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