ANCIENT GERMANY. About 55 BC Julius Caesar conquered the Roman province of Gaul. He made the Rhine the frontier of the new province. It was a natural.
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- Short History of Germany - Nations Online Project
- A Short History of Germany
- Germany: A brief history
- A brief introduction to the history of Germany.
Medieval Germany The area that is now known as Germany spent several centuries as an empire of loosely aligned states. Charlemagne Charlemagne , known as the King of the Franks a Germanic tribe , conquered the entire area and made it part of the Frankish Empire during his reign , but it remained a group of provinces under Frankish rule. East Frankia East Frankia wasn't a very good inheritance, but Louis couldn't have expected to get the best selection. Toward a United State Another roadblock to fully recognize unification came in when Martin Luther published his 95 Theses.
Try it risk-free No obligation, cancel anytime. Want to learn more? Select a subject to preview related courses: Modern Germany Nazism Germany's success also led to problems. Lesson Summary Beginning as the least attractive segment of Charlemagne's empire and existing for centuries as a loosely controlled empire in its own right, Germany has metamorphosed over the centuries.
Short History of Germany - Nations Online Project
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Your goal is required. Email Email is required. Email is not a valid email. Email already in use. The military, which had made unification possible, enjoyed tremendous prestige. These groups were pitted against the Roman Catholic Center Party, the Socialist Party, and a variety of liberal and regional political groups opposed to Prussia's hegemony over Germany. In the long term, Bismarck and his successors were not able to subjugate this opposition.
A Short History of Germany
By the Socialists had come to have the largest number of representatives in the Reichstag. They and the Center Party made governing increasingly difficult for the empire's conservative leadership. The Treaty of Versailles, the peace settlement negotiated by the victors Britain, France, and the United States in , imposed punitive conditions on Germany, including the loss of territory, financial reparations, and a diminished military.
These conditions set the stage for World War II. Weimar Republic A republic, the Weimar Republic —33 , was established with a constitution that provided for a parliamentary democracy in which the government was ultimately responsible to the people. The new republic's first president and prime minister were convinced democrats, and Germany seemed ready at last to join the community of democratic nations. But the Weimar Republic ultimately disappointed those who had hoped it would introduce democracy to Germany.
By mid it had been destroyed by Adolf Hitler, its declared enemy since his first days in the public arena. Hitler was a psychopath who sensed and exploited the worries and resentments of many Germans, knew when to act, and possessed a sure instinct for power. His greatest weapon in his quest for political power, however, was the disdain many Germans felt for the new republic. At the war's end, no foreign troops stood on German soil, and military victory still seemed likely.
Instead of victory, however, in the view of many, the republic's Socialist politicians arranged a humiliating peace. Many Germans also were affronted by the spectacle of parliamentary politics. The republic's numerous small parties made forming stable and coherent coalition governments very difficult. Frequent elections failed to yield effective governments. Government policies also often failed to solve pressing social and economic problems. Hitler as chancellor A modest economic recovery from to gave the Weimar Republic a brief respite.
The severe social stress engendered by the Great Depression, however, swelled the vote received by extreme antidemocratic parties in the election of and the two elections of The government ruled by emergency decree. Kaiser William developed a strong navy in Germany. Because of this, Great Britain joined France and Russia in to form the Triple Entente, a move meant to counter the increasing strength of the Triple Alliance.
The War was won by the Allies, and in , with the Treaty of Versailles, Germany was stripped of its colonies, its military force and a good portion of their industrial power. The country was also forced to pay war reparations to countries in the Alliance. The defeat in World War I meant the collapse of the Germany monarchy, and a new German Republic was formed in its place. In August of , a new constitution, prepared at Weimar, went into effect, and Friedrich Ebert was elected the new president of Germany. During the Weimar Republic, as this period is familiarly known, the people of Germany became increasingly angry and resentful of the peace terms of the Versailles Treaty.
They believed victory was still in their reach during the First World War, and that Germany had ceded too much in defeat. Military officers supported a burgeoning faction led by Adolf Hitler in his unsuccessful Munich revolt, which followed the French occupation of the Ruhr. Soon the Nazi party held a majority in the German parliament, and in , President von Hindenburg named Adolf Hitler chancellor of Germany. Hitler built a one-party state, a dictatorship in which opponents of his regime were imprisoned in concentration camps and laws were passed limiting the rights of Jews and other minorities.
He denounced the Treaty of Versailles and ordered compulsory military service and training for all capable men. In , he formed an alliance with Italy known as the Rome-Berlin Axis, an alliance later joined by Japan. In , Hitler unified Germany and Austria.
Germany: A brief history
A very powerful force at the time, Germany successfully conquered much of Europe and parts of Africa during the war. However, Allied forces liberated the conquered lands and invaded Germany. With no strategy for moving forward, the German ultimately surrendered unconditionally in As the hundreds of concentration camps were being discovered in the final months of the war and soon after, the Allies determined that about six million Jews and millions of other minorities were put to death at the hands of Hitler and the Nazi Party.
Following the War, Germany was stripped of all its conquests and was partitioned into four distinct zones. The eastern zone was occupied by the Soviet Union, while the three western zones were occupied respectively by the United States, Great Britain and France. Thousands of Nazis and other war criminals were tried and convicted by the World Court for their despicable crimes against humanity. West Germany, which was more than twice the size of East Germany, became known as the Federal Republic of Germany, with Bonn as its capital.
Recovery came rapidly in West Germany following the war. East Germany, on the other hand, did not recover as quickly. West Berlin reflected the prosperity of the new republic, a fact that angered the communists. As such, in the Soviets tried to force the Western powers out of Berlin by closing all the land entries into the city. Supplies continued to be airlifted, however, and thousands of East Germans fled to West Germany through Berlin.
When Adenauer passed away in , his party, the Christian Democratic Union, remained in power, first under Ludwig Erhard and then under Kurt Kiesinger Prosperity continued in West Germany and many new jobs were created, so many, in fact, that West Germany had to augment its workforce with millions of temporary workers.
A brief introduction to the history of Germany.
In the s, the economy of East Germany improved dramatically, although it continued to lag behind the West. In , the East German regime built a wall between East and West Berlin to put an end to refuges flocking to the latter. In Germany adopted a new constitution that formally recognized the division of Germany into two separate nations.
After Germany was reunited, many economic and social problems arose, particularly in the Eastern states.
High employment and increasing crime plagued the country for a number of years, and the costs of the reunification process set the economy back greatly throughout the s.