When did the German Empire fall?
German Empire
The high command under Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff increasingly controlled the country, but in October after the failed offensive in spring 1918, the German armies were in retreat, allies Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire had collapsed, and Bulgaria had surrendered. The Empire collapsed in the November 1918 Revolution with the abdications of its monarchs. This left a postwar federal republic and a devastated and unsatisfied populace, which later led to the rise of Adolf Hitler and Nazism.
Reich
The term "Deutsches Reich" (sometimes translated to "German Empire") continued to be used even after the collapse of the German Empire and abolition of the monarchy in 1918. There was no emperor, but many Germans had imperialistic ambitions. According to Richard J. Evans:
List of current pretenders
The German Empire was a federation of a score of smaller monarchies, all of which are now abolished under modern republican Germany although a handful never abdicated their titles. As a result, there are a large number of claimants to various German thrones. Since the dissolution of the empire, however, a number of former royal households have become extinct in the male line, and are therefore not represented in the list below. Mecklenburg–Schwerin became extinct in 2001, Saxe-Altenburg in 1991, and Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt and Schwarzburg-Sondershausen in 1971.
History of Germany
The war ended in 1648 with the Peace of Westphalia. Alsace was permanently lost to France, Pomerania was temporarily lost to Sweden, and the Netherlands officially left the Empire. Imperial power declined further as the states' rights were increased.
German colonial empire
The German colonial empire () constituted the overseas colonies, dependencies and territories of Imperial Germany. The chancellor of this time period was Otto von Bismarck. Short-lived attempts of colonization by individual German states had occurred in preceding centuries, but crucial colonial efforts only began in 1884 with the Scramble for Africa. Claiming much of the left-over colonies that were yet unclaimed in the Scramble of Africa, Germany managed to build the third largest colonial empire after the British and the French, at the time. Germany lost control when World War I began in 1914 and its colonies were seized by its enemies in the first weeks of the war. However some military units held out for a while longer: German South West Africa surrendered in 1915, Kamerun in 1916 and German East Africa only in 1918 at the end of the war. Germany's colonial empire was officially confiscated with the Treaty of Versailles after Germany's defeat in the war and the various units became League of Nations mandates under the supervision (but not ownership) of one of the victorious powers.
Names of Germany
The French emperor, Napoleon, forced the Emperor of Austria to step down as Holy Roman Emperor in 1806. Some of the German countries were then collected into the Confederation of the Rhine, which remained a military alliance under the "protection" of Napoleon, rather than consolidating into an actual confederation. After the fall of Napoleon in 1815, these states created a German Confederation with the Emperor of Austria as president. Some member states, such as Prussia and Austria, included only a part of their territories within the confederation, while other member states brought territories to the alliance that included people, like the Poles and the Czechs, who did not speak German as their native tongue. In addition, there were also substantial German speaking populations that remained outside the confederation.
Finnish Civil War
On 15 March 1917, the fate of Finns had been decided outside Finland, in Petrograd. On 11 November 1918, the future of the nation was determined in Berlin, as a result of Germany's surrender to end World War I. The German Empire collapsed in the German Revolution of 1918–19, caused by lack of food, war-weariness and defeat in the battles of the Western Front. General Rüdiger von der Goltz and his division left Helsinki on 16 December 1918, and Prince Friedrich Karl, who had not yet been crowned, abandoned his role four days later. Finland's status shifted from a monarchist protectorate of the German Empire to an independent republic. The new system of government was confirmed by the Constitution Act (; ) on 17 July 1919.
History of Germany
By September 1945, Nazi Germany and its Axis partners (Italy and Japan) had all been defeated, chiefly by the forces of the Soviet Union, the United States, and Great Britain. Much of Europe lay in ruins, over 60 million people worldwide had been killed (most of them civilians), including approximately 6 million Jews and 5 million non-Jews in what became known as the Holocaust. World War II resulted in the destruction of Germany's political and economic infrastructure and led directly to its partition, considerable loss of territory (especially in the East), and historical legacy of guilt and shame.
18th-century history of Germany
Germany, or more exactly the old Holy Roman Empire, in the 18th century entered a period of decline that would finally lead to the dissolution of the Empire during the Napoleonic Wars. Since the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, the Empire had been fragmented into numerous independent states (Kleinstaaterei). In 1701, Elector Frederick of Brandenburg was crowned "King "in" Prussia". From 1713 to 1740, King Frederick William I, also known as the "Soldier King", established a highly centralized state.
American Empire: The Victorious Opposition
Tensions rise in Europe when Germany's longtime ruler Wilhelm II dies on June 4, 1941. The new Kaiser Wilhelm III refuses to return the former French territory of Alsace-Lorraine that France's ruling party Action Française had demanded. The United Kingdom, France and the Confederacy soon declare war on Germany, with Russia joining in days later.
Kapp Putsch
After Germany had lost World War I (1914–1918), the German Revolution of 1918–1919 ended the monarchy and the German Empire was abolished and a democratic system, the Weimar Republic, was established in 1919 by the Weimar National Assembly. Right-wing nationalist and militarist circles opposed the new republic and promoted the stab-in-the-back myth, claiming that the war had only been lost because the brave efforts of the undefeated German military had been undermined by civilians at home.
Fall of the Western Roman Empire
The Fall of the Western Roman Empire was the process in which it failed to enforce its rule. The loss of centralized political control over the West, and the lessened power of the East, are universally agreed, but the theme of decline has been taken to cover a much wider time span than the hundred years from 376. For Cassius Dio, the accession of the emperor Commodus in 180 CE marked the descent "from a kingdom of gold to one of rust and iron"., while Gibbon also began his narrative of decline from rule of Commodus, after a number of introductory chapters. Arnold J. Toynbee and James Burke argue that the entire Imperial era was one of steady decay of institutions founded in republican times, while Theodor Mommsen excluded the imperial period from his Nobel Prize-winning "History of Rome" (1854–56). As one convenient marker for the end, 476 has been used since Gibbon, but other key dates for the fall of the Roman Empire in the West include the Crisis of the Third Century, the Crossing of the Rhine in 406 (or 405), the sack of Rome in 410, and the death of Julius Nepos in 480.
List of Major League Baseball players from Europe
The German Empire refers to Germany from the unification of Germany and proclamation of Wilhelm I as German Emperor on 18 January 1871 to 1918, when it became a federal republic after defeat in World War I and the abdication of Wilhelm II (9 November 1918).
History of Germany since 1990
On October 3, 1990, the German Democratic Republic was dissolved, five states were recreated (Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia) and the new states became part of the Federal Republic of Germany, an event known as the German Reunification.
Germany in the early modern period
The Empire was formally dissolved on 6 August 1806 when the last Holy Roman Emperor Francis II (from 1804, Emperor Francis I of Austria) abdicated, following a military defeat by the French under Napoleon (see Treaty of Pressburg). Napoleon reorganized much of the Empire into the Confederation of the Rhine, a French satellite. Francis' House of Habsburg-Lorraine survived the demise of the Empire, continuing to reign as Emperors of Austria and Kings of Hungary until the Habsburg empire's final dissolution in 1918 in the aftermath of World War I.
Societal collapse
The decline of the Roman Empire is one of the events traditionally marking the end of Classical Antiquity and the beginning of the European Middle Ages. Throughout the 5th century, the Empire's territories in western Europe and northwestern Africa, including Italy, fell to various invading or indigenous peoples in what is sometimes called the Barbarian invasions, although the eastern half still survived with borders essentially intact for another two centuries (until the Arab expansion). This view of the collapse of the Roman Empire is challenged, however, by modern historians who see Rome as merely transforming from the Western Empire into barbarian kingdoms as the Western Emperors delegated themselves out of existence, and the East transforming into the Byzantine Empire, which only fell in 1453 AD.
Perpetual Diet of Regensburg
The last action of the Diet, on 25 March 1803, was the passage of the German Mediatisation, which reorganized and secularized the Empire. Following the approval of that final constitutional document, the Diet never met again and its existence ended with the fall of the Empire in 1806.
Prussia
In 1871, German states (notably excluding Austria) united to create the German Empire under Prussian leadership. In November 1918, the monarchies were abolished and the nobility lost its political power during the German Revolution of 1918–19. The Kingdom of Prussia was thus abolished in favour of a republic—the Free State of Prussia, a state of Germany from 1918 until 1933. From 1933, Prussia lost its independence as a result of the Prussian coup, when the Nazi regime was successfully establishing its ' laws in pursuit of a unitary state. With the end of the Nazi regime, in 1945, the division of Germany into allied-occupation zones and the separation of its territories east of the line, which were incorporated into Poland and the Soviet Union, the State of Prussia ceased to exist . Prussia existed until its formal abolition by the Allied Control Council Enactment No. 46 of 25 February 1947.
History of the East–West Schism
The Western Roman Empire soon ceased to exist. In the early fifth century, its whole territory was overrun by Germanic tribes, and the year 476 saw the end even of the pretence of a Western Roman Emperor, when Odoacer forced Romulus Augustus to abdicate. By the end of the 5th century, the Western Roman Empire had been overrun by the Germanic tribes, while the Eastern Roman Empire (known also as the Byzantine Empire) continued to thrive. Thus, the political unity of the Roman Empire was the first to fall.
History of Europe
Some other notable dates are the Battle of Adrianople in 378, the death of Theodosius I in 395 (the last time the Roman Empire was politically unified), the crossing of the Rhine in 406 by Germanic tribes after the withdrawal of the legions to defend Italy against Alaric I, the death of Stilicho in 408, followed by the disintegration of the western legions, the death of Justinian I, the last Roman Emperor who tried to reconquer the west, in 565, and the coming of Islam after 632. Many scholars maintain that rather than a "fall", the changes can more accurately be described as a complex transformation. Over time many theories have been proposed on why the Empire fell, or whether indeed it fell at all.
Events preceding World War II in Europe
World War II is generally viewed as having its roots in the aftermath of World War I. In that war, the German Empire under Kaiser Wilhelm II, with its allies, was defeated, chiefly by the United Kingdom, France, and the United States.
German Revolution of 1918–19
The roots of the revolution lay in the German Empire's defeat in the First World War and the social tensions that came to a head shortly thereafter. The first acts of revolution were triggered by the policies of the German Supreme Command of the Army and its lack of coordination with the Naval Command. In the face of defeat, the Naval Command insisted on trying to precipitate a climactic battle with the British Royal Navy by means of its naval order of 24 October 1918. The battle never took place. Instead of obeying their orders to begin preparations to fight the British, German sailors led a revolt in the naval ports of Wilhelmshaven on 29 October 1918, followed by the Kiel mutiny in the first days of November. These disturbances spread the spirit of civil unrest across Germany and ultimately led to the proclamation of a republic on 9 November 1918. Shortly thereafter, Emperor Wilhelm II abdicated his throne and fled the country.
Egon Bahr
In an interview with the "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung" in 2005, Bahr confessed that, as a teenager, he had felt a “certain pride” that Poland, France, Denmark, and Norway had been conquered so quickly by the German Wehrmacht. According to a book by German politicians Bernhard and Hans-Jochen Vogel, Bahr reportedly said at the beginning of November 1989, “For heaven’s sake, let’s stop dreaming and blathering about German unity”; the Berlin Wall fell only days later on 9 November 1989.
German Empire
The German Empire (, officially '), also known as Imperial Germany"', was the German nation state that existed from the unification of Germany in 1871 until the abdication of Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1918.
German Empire
The end of October 1918, in Kiel, in northern Germany, saw the beginning of the German Revolution of 1918–1919. Units of the German Navy refused to set sail for a last, large-scale operation in a war which they saw as good as lost, initiating the uprising. On 3 November, the revolt spread to other cities and states of the country, in many of which workers' and soldiers' councils were established. Meanwhile, Hindenburg and the senior generals lost confidence in the Kaiser and his government.
Germanic Heroic Age
The period corresponds to the Germanic Wars in terms of historiography, and to the Germanic Iron Age in terms of archaeology, spanning the early centuries of the 1st millennium, in particular the 4th and 5th centuries, the period of the final collapse of the Western Roman Empire and the establishment of stable "barbarian kingdoms" larger than at the tribal level (the kingdoms of the Visigoths, the Franks and the Burgundians, and the Anglo-Saxon invasion of Britain). The Germanic peoples at the time lived mostly in tribal societies.
Historiography of the fall of the Western Roman Empire
Gibbon took September 4, 476 as a convenient marker for the final dissolution of the Western Roman Empire, when Romulus Augustus, the last Emperor of the Western Roman Empire, was deposed by Odoacer, a Germanic chieftain. Some modern historians question the significance of the year 476 for its end. Julius Nepos, the Western emperor recognized by the Eastern Roman Empire, continued to rule in Dalmatia, until he was assassinated in 480. The Ostrogothic rulers of Italia considered themselves upholders of the direct line of Roman tradition, and the Eastern emperors considered themselves the sole rightful Roman rulers of a united empire. Roman cultural traditions continued throughout the territory of the Western Empire, and a recent school of interpretation argues that the great political changes can more accurately be described as a complex cultural transformation, rather than a fall.
History of Austria
The defeat meant the end of the old Holy Roman Empire. Napoleon's satellite states in southern and Western Germany seceded from the Empire in the summer of 1806, forming the Confederation of the Rhine, and a few days later Francis proclaimed the Empire dissolved, and renounced the old imperial crown on 6 August 1806.
Constitution of the German Empire
The empire was officially defined as a federation of the member states under the presidency of Prussia. The King of Prussia was automatically the bearer of the "Bundespräsidium", since 1 January 1871 additionally with the title "German Emperor" ("Deutscher Kaiser"). Therefore, the imperial crown was tied to the "office" of the King of Prussia instead of a personal union between the Empire and Prussia. This meant that contrary to what Wilhelm II believed at the end of World War I, he could not abdicate merely as German Emperor while keeping the Prussian crown unless he agreed to renounce the entire constitution, which would have been, in effect, the "de jure" dissolution of the Empire.
Germany in the early modern period
The 18th century history of Germany sees the ascendancy of the Kingdom of Prussia and the outbreak of the Napoleonic Wars which lead to the final dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806.
Historiography of the fall of the Western Roman Empire
There is no consensus on a date for the start of the Decline. Gibbon started his account in 98. The year 376 is taken as pivotal by many modern historians. In that year there was an unmanageable influx of Goths and other Barbarians into the Balkan provinces, and the situation of the Western Empire generally worsened thereafter, with recoveries being incomplete and temporary. Significant events include the Battle of Adrianople in 378, the death of Theodosius I in 395 (the last time the Roman Empire was politically unified), the crossing of the Rhine in 406 by Germanic tribes, the execution of Stilicho in 408, the sack of Rome in 410, the death of Constantius III in 421, the death of Aetius in 454, and the second sack of Rome in 455, with the death of Majorian in 461 marking the end of the last opportunity for recovery.
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire (, ; Koine and Medieval Greek: Βασιλεία τῶν Ῥωμαίων, tr. ) was the post-Roman Republic period of the ancient Roman civilization. It had a government headed by emperors and large territorial holdings around the Mediterranean Sea in Europe, North Africa, and West Asia. From the constitutional reforms of Augustus to the crisis of the third century, the Empire was a principate ruled from the city of Rome (27 BC - 285 AD). The Roman Empire was then divided between a Western Roman Empire, based in Milan and later Ravenna, and an Eastern Roman Empire, based in Nicomedia and later Constantinople, and it was ruled by multiple emperors (with the exception of the sole rule of Constantine between 324 and 337, and Theodosius between 392 and 395). The Western Empire collapsed when Ravenna fell to the Germanic Herulians of Odoacer in 476 AD. The end of the Western Roman Empire is traditionally used to mark the end of ancient Rome. The Eastern Empire, known in the post-Roman West as the Byzantine Empire, collapsed when Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks of Mehmed II in 1453.
Margraviate of Brandenburg
The Margraviate of Brandenburg ended with the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806. It was replaced after the Napoleonic Wars with the Prussian Province of Brandenburg in 1815. The Hohenzollern Kingdom of Prussia achieved the unification of Germany and the creation of the German Empire in 1871. As Prussia was the legal predecessor of the united German Reich of 1871–1945, and as such a direct ancestor of the present-day Federal Republic of Germany, Brandenburg is one of the earliest linear ancestors of present-day Germany.
Day of the founding of the German Empire
The North German Confederation had already officially adopted the name "German Reich" in its Constitution by 1 January 1871, so constitutionally speaking, 18 January was not the day of the founding. 
Celebrations were held annually on 18 January. At centralised and local events, patriotic speeches were held and songs such as "Heil dir im Siegerkranz", the unofficial anthem of the empire were sung. Celebrations also took place publicly during the Weimar Republic (1919-1933) and with the participation of high dignitaries. Nazi Germany only celebrated the founding of the German Empire in 1871.
Berlin Declaration (1945)
The German Instrument of Surrender of 8 May 1945 had provided only for the military capitulation of German armed forces, the German signatories being representatives of the German High Command; consequently full civil provisions for the unconditional surrender of the German state remained without explicit formal basis. The Allies had already agreed through the European Advisory Commission a comprehensive text of unconditional surrender, intended to be used in the potential circumstances of Nazi power being overthrown within Germany either by military or civil authorities; a post-Nazi government being set up in Germany and seeking an armistice. In the event, Nazi power remained to the last, Adolf Hitler dying in the ruins of Berlin on 30 April 1945; and the claims of Karl Dönitz, his nominated successor, to have established a civil government at Flensburg being unacceptable to the Allies. So the previously agreed surrender text, redrafted as a declaration and with an extended explanatory preamble, was adopted unilaterally by the four Allied Powers as the 'Declaration regarding the defeat of Germany' on 5 June 1945. This spelled out the Allied position that, following the gross criminal abuses of Nazism, and in the circumstances of complete defeat, Germany now had no government or central administration, and that the vacated civil authority in Germany had consequently been assumed as a condominium of the four Allied Representative Powers on behalf of the Allied Governments overall; an authority subsequently constituted into the Allied Control Council.
Anif declaration
With the imminent collapse of the German Empire at the end of the First World War in November 1918, the Kingdom of Bavaria, like all other states of the Empire, was in a state of transition from monarchy to republic.
Kleinstaaterei
Only after Prussian Chancellor Otto von Bismarck gradually built a unified German state under the Prussian royal house of Hohenzollern did "Kleinstaaterei" largely end in 1871 with the founding of the German Empire. (The only surviving petty states—Luxembourg and Liechtenstein—lie at the periphery of the German-speaking world.) The founding of the German Empire created a largely German nation-state. While the German Empire excluded the partly German but multinational Habsburg domains of Austria–Hungary, it included a substantial Polish minority in parts of eastern Prussia and other minorities along its northern and western borders. The unification of the German Empire put Germany on the map as a major European power, albeit too late to become a major colonial presence. Internally in the nation some of these fragmented boundaries and small political units continued to exist until the modern States of Germany were established in the Federal Republic after World War II.
Consequences of Nazism
44 years after the end of World War II, the Berlin Wall fell on 9 November 1989. The East and West parts of Germany were reunited on 3 October 1990.
Germany
The assassination of Austria's crown prince on 28 June 1914 provided the pretext for the Austrian Empire to attack Serbia and trigger World War I. After four years of warfare, in which approximately two million German soldiers were killed, a general armistice ended the fighting on 11 November, and German troops returned home. In the German Revolution (November 1918), Emperor Wilhelm II and all German ruling princes abdicated their positions and responsibilities. Germany's new political leadership signed the Treaty of Versailles in 1919. In this treaty, Germany, as part of the Central Powers, accepted defeat by the Allies in one of the bloodiest conflicts of all time. Germans perceived the treaty as humiliating and unjust and it was later seen by historians as influential in the rise of Adolf Hitler. After the defeat in the First World War, Germany lost around 13% of its European territory (areas predominantly inhabited by ethnic Polish, French and Danish populations, which were lost following the Greater Poland Uprising, the return of Alsace-Lorraine and the Schleswig plebiscites), and all of its colonial possessions in Africa and the South Sea.
German Confederation
The German Confederation () was an association of 39 German-speaking states in Central Europe (adding the mainly non-German speaking Kingdom of Bohemia and Duchy of Carniola), created by the Congress of Vienna in 1815 to coordinate the economies of separate German-speaking countries and to replace the former Holy Roman Empire, which had been dissolved in 1806. The German Confederation excluded German-speaking lands in the eastern portion of the Kingdom of Prussia (East Prussia, West Prussia and Posen), the German cantons of Switzerland, and Alsace within France which was majority German speaking.
Flag of Germany
In the face of the increasingly violent conflicts between the communists and Nazis, the growing polarisation of the German population and a multitude of other factors, mainly the drastic economic sinking, extreme hyperinflation and corruption of the republic, the Weimar Republic collapsed in 1933 with the Nazi seizure of power () and the appointment of Adolf Hitler as German chancellor.
Berlin Wall
The fall of the Wall marked the first critical step towards German reunification, which formally concluded a mere 339 days later on 3 October 1990 with the dissolution of East Germany and the official reunification of the German state along the democratic lines of the West German Basic Law.
In some European capitals at the time, there was a deep anxiety over prospects for a reunified Germany. In September 1989, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher pleaded with Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev not to let the Berlin Wall fall and confided that she wanted the Soviet leader to do what he could to stop it.
Day of the founding of the German Empire
The Day of the founding of the German Empire (German: "Reichsgründungstag") was an annual celebration on the anniversary of the proclamation of the German Empire on 18 January 1871 in the Palace of Versailles.
History of Germany
After the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars from 1803–1815, feudalism fell away and liberalism and nationalism clashed with reaction. The German revolutions of 1848–49 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 humanities, while music and art flourished. The unification of Germany (excluding Austria and the German-speaking areas of Switzerland) was achieved under the leadership of the Chancellor Otto von Bismarck with the formation of the German Empire in 1871 which solved the "Kleindeutsche Lösung", the small Germany solution (Germany without Austria), or "Großdeutsche Lösung", the greater Germany solution (Germany with Austria), the former prevailing. The new "Reichstag", an elected parliament, had only a limited role in the imperial government. Germany joined the other powers in colonial expansion in Africa and the Pacific.
West Germany
Following the collapse of communism in Central and Eastern Europe in 1989, symbolised by the opening of the Berlin Wall, there was a rapid move towards German reunification. East Germany voted to dissolve itself and accede to the Federal Republic in 1990. Its five post-war states () were reconstituted along with the reunited Berlin, which ended its special status and formed an additional . They formally joined the Federal Republic on 3 October 1990, raising the number of states from 10 to 16, ending the division of Germany. The expanded Federal Republic retained West Germany's political culture and continued its existing memberships in international organisations, as well as its Western foreign policy alignment and affiliation to Western alliances like UN, NATO, OECD and the European Union.
Western imperialism in Asia
World War I brought about the fall of several empires in Europe. This had repercussions around the world. The defeated Central Powers included Germany and the Turkish Ottoman Empire. Germany lost all of its colonies in Asia. German New Guinea, a part of Papua New Guinea, became administered by Australia. German possessions and concessions in China, including Qingdao, became the subject of a controversy during the Paris Peace Conference when the Beiyang government in China agreed to cede these interests to Japan, to the anger of many Chinese people. Although the Chinese diplomats refused to sign the agreement, these interests were ceded to Japan with the support of the United States and the United Kingdom.
United States European Command
In 1989, the Soviet Union and other Soviet Bloc countries in Eastern Europe collapsed and the Cold War came to an end. The citizens from both East and West Berlin began tearing down the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989. As a sign of reduced tensions, in 1991 EUCOM took its airborne command post off alert. Meanwhile, in 1991, EUCOM and its components provided forces -primarily VII Corps- to CENTCOM for Operation Desert Storm.
Germany
In 1871, Germany became a nation state when most of the German states (most notably excluding Switzerland and Austria) unified into the Prussian-dominated German Empire. After World War I and the revolution of 1918–19, the Empire was replaced by the parliamentary Weimar Republic. The Nazi seizure of power in 1933 led to the establishment of a dictatorship, the annexation of Austria, World War II, and the Holocaust. After the end of World War II in Europe and a period of Allied occupation, Austria was re-established as an independent country and two new German states were founded: West Germany, formed from the American, British, and French occupation zones, and East Germany, formed from the Soviet occupation zone. Following the Revolutions of 1989 that ended communist rule in Central and Eastern Europe, the country was reunified on 3 October 1990.
Legal status of Germany
These incidents preceded the unconditional surrender of the German armed forces ("Wehrmacht"), signed by nominated representatives of the three German armed services and of the military High Command ("Oberkommando der Wehrmacht") on May 8 in Berlin-Karlshorst; from which, as it was a purely military capitulation, no direct consequences for the legal status of the German Reich arose. Nevertheless, as all central authority and power within Germany had already been extinguished "de facto" at the death of Adolf Hitler and as the perpetuation of Nazism in any form could not be countenanced, the surrender of all remaining military authority confirmed for the Allied Powers the total extinction of the former German state. "The unconditional surrender of Germany has thereby been effected...". Subsequent historians have treated 8 May 1945 as the date on which Nazi Germany ceased to exist.
Legal status of Germany
Since April 30, the US State Department had been actively pressuring all neutral countries that had retained diplomatic relations with Germany to prepare to close down German embassies and hand over their archives and records to the embassies of the Western Allies; and some had done so even before May 8. However, as the military capitulation of the German High Command was taken as constituting the extinction of the German state and the assumption of all state authority by the Allied Powers, all embassies remaining in neutral countries were immediately ordered by the Western Allies to be closed down, their diplomatic staff recalled and their records taken over into one or another Allied embassy. Those neutral countries that had been nominated as protecting powers in respect of Germany and the Allies under the Geneva Conventions were notified that this function had now been terminated, and were requested by the State Department to hand all embassy records and German state property in their trust over to the western Allies. All the protecting powers complied fully with the Allied demands, formally breaking off diplomatic relations; consequently the German state ceased as a diplomatic entity on 8 May 1945.
Inner German border
The fall of the inner German border came rapidly and unexpectedly in November 1989, along with the fall of the Berlin Wall. Its integrity had been fatally compromised in May 1989 when the Hungarian government began dismantling its border fence with Austria. The government was still notionally Communist but planned free elections and economic reform as part of a strategy of "rejoining Europe" and reforming its struggling economy.
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany is the common English name for Germany between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party (NSDAP) controlled the country through a dictatorship. Under Hitler's rule, Germany was transformed into a totalitarian state that controlled nearly all aspects of life via the "Gleichschaltung" legal process. The official name of the state was Deutsches Reich ("German Reich") until 1943 and Großdeutsches Reich ("Greater German Reich") from 1943 to 1945. Nazi Germany is also known as the Third Reich, from German "Drittes Reich", meaning "Third Realm" or "Third Empire", the first two being the Holy Roman Empire and the German Empire. The Nazi regime ended after the Allies defeated Germany in May 1945, ending World War II in Europe.
History of Germany
In 1866, the German Confederation was dissolved. In its place the North German Federation (German "Norddeutscher Bund") was established, under the leadership of Prussia. Austria was excluded, and the Austrian influence in Germany that had begun in the 15th century finally came to an end. The North German Federation was a transitional organisation that existed from 1867 to 1871, between the dissolution of the German Confederation and the founding of the German Empire.
German Empire (1848–49)
The state was created by the Frankfurt Parliament in spring 1848, following the March Revolution. The empire officially ended when the German Confederation was fully reconstituted in the Summer of 1851, but came to a "de facto" end in December 1849 when the Central German Government was replaced with a Federal Central Commission.
German Empire (disambiguation)
German Empire usually refers to the unified German monarchy existing from 1871 to 1918
Republic Day
The "Tag der Republik" commemorated the establishment of the German Democratic Republic on 7 October 1949. East Germany was dissolved on 3 October 1990.
Fall of the inner German border
The fall of the inner German border came rapidly and unexpectedly in November 1989, along with the fall of the Berlin Wall. The event paved the way for the ultimate reunification of Germany just short of a year later.
Sonderweg
After Germany's defeat in World War II in 1945, the term lost its positive connotations from the 19th century and acquired its present negative meaning. There was much debate about the origins of this "German catastrophe" (as the German historian Meinecke titled his 1946 book) of Nazi Germany's rise and fall. Since then, scholars have examined developments in intellectual, political, social, economic and cultural history to investigate why German democracy failed during the Weimar Republic and which factors led to the rise of National Socialism. In the 1960s, many historians concluded that the failure of Germany to develop firm democratic institutions in the 19th century had been decisive for the failure of the Weimar Republic in the 20th century.
German Reich
The German word "Reich" translates to the English word "empire" (it also translates to such words as "realm" or "domain"). However, this translation was not used throughout the full existence of the German Reich. Historically, only Germany from 1871 to 1918 — when Germany was under the rule of an emperor ("Kaiser") — is known in English as the "German Empire" ("Deutsches Kaiserreich" in German historiography), while the term "German Reich" describes Germany from 1871 to 1945. As the literal translation "German Empire" denotes a monarchy, the term is used only in reference to Germany before the fall of the monarchy at the end of World War I in 1918.
German Instrument of Surrender
The German Instrument of Surrender ended World War II in Europe. The definitive text was signed in Karlshorst, Berlin, on the night of 8 May 1945 by representatives of the three armed services of the "Oberkommando der Wehrmacht" (OKW) and the Allied Expeditionary Force together with the Supreme High Command of the Red Army, with further French and US representatives signing as witnesses. The signing took place 9 May 1945 at 00:16 local time.
Proclamation of the German Empire
The proclamation of the German Empire, also known as the "Deutsche Reichsgründung", took place in January 1871 after the joint victory of the German states in the Franco-Prussian War. As a result of the November Treaties of 1870s, the southern German states of Baden, Hesse-Darmstadt, with their territories south of the Main line, Württemberg and Bavaria, joined the Prussian-dominated "German Confederation" on 1 January 1871. On the same day, the new Constitution of the German Confederation came into force, thereby significantly extending the federal German lands to the newly created German Empire. The Day of the founding of the German Empire, January 18, became a day of celebration, marking when the Prussian King William I was proclaimed German Emperor in Versailles.
World War II
The war in Europe concluded with an invasion of Germany by the Western Allies and the Soviet Union, culminating in the capture of Berlin by Soviet troops, the suicide of Adolf Hitler and the German unconditional surrender on 8 May 1945. Following the Potsdam Declaration by the Allies on 26 July 1945 and the refusal of Japan to surrender under its terms, the United States dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on 6 and 9 August respectively. With an invasion of the Japanese archipelago imminent, the possibility of additional atomic bombings, the Soviet entry into the war against Japan and its invasion of Manchuria, Japan announced its intention to surrender on 15 August 1945, cementing total victory in Asia for the Allies. Tribunals were set up by fiat by the Allies and war crimes trials were conducted in the wake of the war both against the Germans and the Japanese.
Germanic Wars
"Germanic Wars" is a name given to a series of wars between the Romans and various Germanic tribes between 113 BC and 596 AD. The nature of these wars varied through time between Roman conquest, Germanic uprisings and later Germanic invasions in the Roman Empire that started in the late 2nd century BC. The series of conflicts, which began in the 5th century under the Western Roman Emperor Honorius, led (along with internal strife) to the ultimate downfall of the Western Roman Empire.
"For the timeline of events in Britannia after its abandonment by Emperor Valentinian III, see Timeline of conflict in Anglo-Saxon Britain."
Duchess Cecilie of Mecklenburg-Schwerin
The political and economic situation in the last year of the war became more and more hopeless. On 6 November 1918, the new German imperial Chancellor, Prince Max of Baden, met with Minister Wilhelm Solf to discuss the future of the German Empire. They were both of the opinion that the monarchy could only survive with the removal of the Kaiser and his son the Crown Prince and the setting up of a Regentship under the nominal rule of the young son of Crown Princess Cecilie. Such idea quickly disappeared with Friedrich Ebert becoming Chancellor and a republic being declared a few days later. Both the Kaiser and the Crown Prince crossed the border to seek exile in neutral Netherlands. The monarchy collapsed with the defeat of Germany at the end of the war. Cecilie with her young children was living in Potsdam during the revolutionary period. She had moved from her new home of Cecilienhof with her children to join her mother-in-law in the relative safety of the New Palace. It was here that the Empress Auguste Viktoria informed her daughter-in-law, "The revolution has broken out. The Kaiser has abdicated. The war is lost."
German Revolution of 1918–19
It was only on 5 October that the German public was informed of the dismal situation that it faced. In the general state of shock about the defeat, which now had become obvious, the constitutional changes, formally decided by the Reichstag on 28 October, went almost unnoticed. From then on, the Imperial Chancellor and his ministers depended on the confidence of the 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 already regarded 5 October as the birthday of German democracy since the emperor voluntarily ceded power and so he considered a revolution unnecessary.
List of the Germanic Wars
This is a list of the Germanic Wars between various Germanic tribes, the Romans and their descendants between 113 BC and 600 AD. The nature of these wars varied through time between Roman and Byzantine conquest, Germanic uprisings and later Germanic invasions in the Roman Empire that started in the late 2nd century. The series of conflicts which began in the 5th century, under the Western Roman Emperor Honorius, led (along with internal strife) to the ultimate downfall of the Western Roman Empire.
Allied Control Council
The German Instrument of Surrender signed in Berlin had been drafted by the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force and was modeled on the one used a few days previously for the surrender of the German forces in Italy. They did not use the one which had been drafted for the surrender of Germany by the "European Advisory Commission" (EAC). This created a legal problem for the Allies, because although the German military forces had surrendered unconditionally, no counterpart "civilian" German government had been included in the surrender. This was considered a very important issue, inasmuch as Hitler had used the surrender of the civilian government, but "not" of the military, in 1918, to create the "stab in the back" argument. The Allies understandably did not want to give any future hostile German regime any kind of legal argument to resurrect an old quarrel. Eventually, and determined not to accord any recognition to the Flensburg administration, they agreed to sign a four-power declaration of the terms of the German surrender instead. On 5 June 1945, in Berlin, the supreme commanders of the four occupying powers signed a common Declaration Regarding the Defeat of Germany (the so-called Berlin Declaration of 1945), which formally confirmed the total dissolution of the Third Reich at the death of Adolf Hitler, and the consequent termination of any German governance over the nation:
This imposition was in line with Article 4 of the Instrument of Surrender that had been included so that the EAC document, or something similar, could be imposed on the Germans after the military surrender. Article 4 stated that "This act of military surrender is without prejudice to, and will be superseded by any general instrument of surrender imposed by, or on behalf of the United Nations and applicable to GERMANY and the German armed forces as a whole." In reality, of course, all German central civilian authority had ceased to exist with the death of Hitler and the fall of Berlin at the latest. These parts of the Berlin declaration, therefore, merely formalised the "de facto" status and placed the Allied military rule over Germany on a solid legal basis.
German Reich
Before and during the events of World War I, the German state was called an "empire" in English and Wilhelm II was titled "His Imperial and Royal Majesty the German Emperor." After the War and the abolition of the monarchy during the German Revolution of 1918–19, however, when Wilhelm was forced to abdicate, the official English name for Germany was the "German Reich": "Reich" was left untranslated and no longer referred to an "empire" but, instead, took on the connotation of "Realm" or "State". "German Reich" was used in legal documents and English-language international treaties — for example, the Kellogg–Briand Pact and the Geneva Conventions.
Unification of Germany
The unification of Germany into a politically and administratively integrated nation state officially occurred on 18 January 1871, in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles in France. Princes of the German states, excluding Austria, gathered there to proclaim William I of Prussia as German Emperor after the French capitulation in the Franco-Prussian War. Unofficially, the "de facto" transition of most of the German-speaking populations into a federated organization of states had been developing for some time through alliances formal and informal between princely rulers, but in fits and starts. The self-interests of the various parties hampered the process over nearly a century of autocratic experimentation, beginning in the era of the Napoleonic Wars, which prompted the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806, and the subsequent rise of German nationalism.
German Unity Day
An alternative choice to commemorate the reunification could have been the day the Berlin Wall came down: 9 November 1989, which coincided with the anniversary of the proclamation of the German Republic in 1918, and the defeat of Hitler's first coup in 1923. However, 9 November was also the anniversary of the first large-scale Nazi-led pogroms against Jews in 1938 ("Kristallnacht"), so the day was considered inappropriate as a national holiday. (See November 9 in German history.) Therefore, 3 October 1990, the day of the formal reunification, was chosen instead and replaced the "Day of German Unity" on 17 June, the national holiday of the Federal Republic of Germany from 1954.
German State Crown
In 1871 a design and a model for a new state crown were created to reflect the new German Empire. The model was based upon the Crown of the Holy Roman Empire and was kept in the Hohenzollern museum at Schloss Monbijou in Berlin, until it disappeared during World War II. It has never re-surfaced. No final crown was ever made. However, the design was used as a heraldic device for the German Kaisers from 1871 until Kaiser Wilhelm's abdication in 1918. The crown was most used as an heraldic symbol, in the German coat of arms and the Emperor's personal standard.
Prussia
The Kingdom ended in 1918 along with other German monarchies that collapsed as a result of the German Revolution. In the Weimar Republic, the Free State of Prussia lost nearly all of its legal and political importance following the 1932 coup led by Franz von Papen. Subsequently, it was effectively dismantled into Nazi German "Gaue" in 1935. Nevertheless, some Prussian ministries were kept and Hermann Göring remained in his role as Minister President of Prussia until the end of World War II. Former eastern territories of Germany that made up a significant part of Prussia lost the majority of their German population after 1945 as the People's Republic of Poland and the Soviet Union both absorbed these territories and had most of its German inhabitants expelled by 1950. Prussia, deemed "a bearer of militarism and reaction" by the Allies was officially abolished by an Allied declaration in 1947. The international status of the former eastern territories of Germany was disputed until the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany in 1990, while its return to Germany remains a topic among far right politicians, the Federation of Expellees and various political revisionists.
German Empire
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 partial replacement of the Confederation in 1867 by a North German Confederation, comprising the 22 states north of the Main. The patriotic fervour generated by the Franco-Prussian War overwhelmed the remaining opposition to a unified Germany (aside from Austria) in the four states south of the Main and during November 1870 they joined the North German Confederation by treaty.
Kingdom of Prussia
After the Napoleonic Wars led to the creation of the German Confederation, the issue of more closely unifying the many German states caused revolution throughout the German states, with each wanting their own constitution. Attempts at creation of a federation remained unsuccessful and the German Confederation collapsed in 1866 when war ensued between its two most powerful member states, Prussia and Austria. The North German Confederation, which lasted from 1867 to 1871, created a closer union between the Prussian-aligned states while Austria and most of Southern Germany remained independent. The North German Confederation was seen as more of an alliance of military strength in the aftermath of the Austro-Prussian War but many of its laws were later used in the German Empire. The German Empire lasted from 1871 to 1918 with the successful unification of all the German states under Prussian hegemony. This was due to the defeat of Napoleon III in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71. The war united all the German states against a common enemy, and with the victory came an overwhelming wave of nationalism which changed the opinions of some of those who had been against unification. In 1871, Germany unified into a single country, minus Austria and Switzerland, with Prussia the dominant power.
Democratization
The German Empire was created in 1871. It was followed by the Weimar Republic after World War I. Nazi Germany restored autocratic rule before the defeat in World War II .
History of Wrocław
The end of World War I was followed by civil unrest and revolution in Germany. The garrison in Breslau mutinied in November, liberated convicts from jail, among them Rosa Luxemburg, looted shops and seized the offices of the "Schlesische Zeitung", Breslau's biggest newspaper. When emperor Wilhelm II left the country the German Empire dissolved.
History of Germany
The German Confederation () was the loose association of 39 states created in 1815 to coordinate the economies of separate German-speaking countries. It acted as a buffer between the powerful states of Austria and Prussia. Britain approved of it because London felt that there was need for a stable, peaceful power in central Europe that could discourage aggressive moves by France or Russia. According to Lee (1985), most historians have judged the Confederation to be weak and ineffective, as well as an obstacle to German nationalist aspirations. It collapsed because of the rivalry between Prussia and Austria (known as German dualism), warfare, the 1848 revolution, and the inability of the multiple members to compromise. It was replaced by the North German Confederation in 1866.
German Revolution of 1918–19
In mid-September, the Balkan Front collapsed. The Kingdom of Bulgaria, an ally of the German Empire and Austria-Hungary, capitulated on 27 September. The political collapse of Austria-Hungary itself was now only a matter of days away.
North German Confederation
The North German Confederation () was the German federal state which existed from July 1867 to December 1870. Some historians also use the name for the alliance of 22 German states formed on 18 August 1866 (""). In 1870–1871, the south German states of Baden, Hesse-Darmstadt, Württemberg and Bavaria joined the country. On 1 January 1871, the country adopted a new constitution, which was written under the title of a new "German Confederation" but already gave it the name "German Empire" in the preamble and article 11. As the state system largely remained the same in the German Empire, the North German Confederation continues as the German nation state which still exists.
List of modern great powers
The influence and power of the British Empire dropped dramatically after the Second World War, especially after the Partition of India in 1947 and the Suez Crisis in 1956. The Commonwealth of Nations is the successor to the Empire, where the United Kingdom is an equal member with all other states. After the Napoleonic period the Bourbon dynasty was restored in Spain and over the huge number of Spanish territories around the world. But the shock of the Peninsular War sparked declarations of independence in the Latin America controlled by Spain and by 1835 successive revolutions had signed the end of the Spanish rule over the majority of this countries. Spain retained fragments of its empire in the Caribbean (Cuba and Puerto Rico); Asia (Philippines); and Oceania (Guam, Micronesia, Palau, and Northern Marianas) until the Spanish–American War of 1898. Spanish participation in the Scramble for Africa was minimal: Spanish Morocco was held until 1956 and Spanish Guinea and the Spanish Sahara were held until 1968 and 1975 respectively. The Canary Islands, Ceuta, Melilla and the other "Plazas de Soberanía" on the northern African coast have remained part of Spain.After the Napoleonic era, Austria was one of the main powers in Europe with great influence over Germany, Italy and Eastern Europe. During the second half of the 19th century Austria was not able to prevent the unification of Italy and of Germany by Prussia (excluding the also German Austria) and was also obliged to grant equal partnership in the empire to Hungary. Nonetheless the empire remained one of the major players in European affairs until its destruction after the First World War.The Kingdom of Prussia dominated northern Germany politically, economically, and in terms of population, and was the core of the unified North German Confederation formed in 1867, which became part of the German Empire or "Deutsches Reich" in 1871 when the southern German states, excluding Austria, were added. Prussia attained its greatest importance in the 18th and 19th centuries. During the 19th century, Chancellor Otto von Bismarck pursued a policy of uniting the German principalities into a "Lesser Germany" which would exclude the Austrian Empire.
Federalism
Already the Holy Roman Empire, the Confederation of the Rhine, the German Confederation, the North German Confederation, the German Empire and the Weimar Republic were federal complexes of territories of different political structures. Modern Germany abandoned federalism only during Nazism (1933–1945, only de facto but not de jure) and in the German Democratic Republic (1952–1990). Adolf Hitler viewed federalism as an obstacle to his goals. As he wrote in "Mein Kampf", "National Socialism must claim the right to impose its principles on the whole German nation, without regard to what were hitherto the confines of federal states."
Anschluss
The idea of grouping all Germans into one nation-state had been the subject of debate in the 19th century from the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806 until the break-up of the German Confederation in 1866. Austria had wanted a "Großdeutsche Lösung" (greater Germany solution), whereby the German states would unite under the leadership of the German Austrians (Habsburgs). This solution would have included all the German states (including the non-German regions of Austria), but Prussia would have had to take second place. This controversy, called dualism, dominated Prusso-Austrian diplomacy and the politics of the German states in the mid-nineteenth century.
History of Germany
As a consequence of the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945 and the onset of the Cold War in 1947, the country was split between the two global blocs in the East and West, a period known as the division of Germany. Millions of refugees from Central and Eastern Europe moved west, most of them to West Germany. Two countries emerged: West Germany was a parliamentary democracy, a NATO member, a founding member of what since became the European Union and one of the world's largest economies and is controlled by the US, while East Germany was a totalitarian Communist dictatorship controlled by the Soviet Union that was a satellite of Moscow. With the collapse of Communism in 1989, reunion on West Germany's terms followed.
German Army (German Empire)
The states that made up the German Empire contributed their armies; within the German Confederation, formed after the Napoleonic Wars, each state was responsible for maintaining certain units to be put at the disposal of the Confederation in case of conflict. When operating together, the units were known as the Federal Army ("). The Federal Army system functioned during various conflicts of the 19th century, such as the First Schleswig War from 1848–50 but by the time of the Second Schleswig War of 1864, tension had grown between the main powers of the confederation, the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia and the German Confederation was dissolved after the Austro-Prussian War of 1866.
Nazi Germany
During the Battle of Berlin (16 April 1945 – 2 May 1945), Hitler and his staff lived in the underground "Führerbunker" while the Red Army approached. On 30 April, when Soviet troops were within two blocks of the Reich Chancellery, Hitler, along with his girlfriend and by then wife Eva Braun committed suicide. On 2 May, General Helmuth Weidling unconditionally surrendered Berlin to Soviet General Vasily Chuikov. Hitler was succeeded by Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz as Reich President and Goebbels as Reich Chancellor. Goebbels and his wife Magda committed suicide the next day after murdering their six children. Between 4 and 8 May 1945, most of the remaining German armed forces unconditionally surrendered. The German Instrument of Surrender was signed 8 May, marking the end of the Nazi regime and the end of World War II in Europe.
Allied-occupied Germany
Upon the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II, the victorious Allies asserted their joint authority and sovereignty over 'Germany as a whole', defined as all territories of the former German Reich which lay west of the Oder–Neisse line, having declared the destruction of Nazi Germany at the death of Adolf Hitler (see 1945 Berlin Declaration). The four powers divided 'Germany as a whole' into four occupation zones for administrative purposes, under the United States, United Kingdom, France and the Soviet Union respectively; creating what became collectively known as Allied-occupied Germany (). This division was ratified at the Potsdam Conference (17 July to 2 August 1945). The four zones were as agreed in February 1945 by the United States, United Kingdom and Soviet Union meeting at the Yalta Conference; setting aside an earlier division into three zones (excluding France) proposed by the London Protocol.
List of modern great powers
Germany rose again in world power status during the Third Reich (or Nazi Germany) under the dictatorship of Adolf Hitler between 1933 and 1945. It seized Austria and Czechoslovakia, and invaded Poland which launched World War II in Europe. In alliance with Italy and smaller Axis powers, Germany conquered most of Europe by 1940. Following the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, the tide turned against the Third Reich as it suffered major military defeats in 1943; Germany was fully defeated by 1945.The Ottoman Empire during the 19th century was still a considerable power, with a great extension of territories over Europe, Asia and Africa; but the empire was in a condition of decline and during this period lost progressively its influence, and the majority of his territories were conquered by other powers. The empire ended during the First World War in 1918 when the Republic of Turkey was proclaimed.The Russian Empire as a state, existed from 1721 until it was declared a republic 1 September 1917. The Russian Empire was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union. It was one of the largest empires in world history, surpassed in landmass only by the British and Mongolian empires: at one point in 1866, it stretched from eastern Europe across Asia and into North America.
Oldenburg
After German Emperor Wilhelm II was forced to abdicate following the exhaustion and defeat of the German Empire in World War I, monarchic rule ended in Oldenburg as well with the abdication of Grand Duke Frederick Augustus II of Oldenburg "()" on 11 November 1918. The Grand Duchy now became the Free State of Oldenburg "()", with the city remaining the capital.
Die Deutschen
Die Deutschen (“The Germans”) is a German television documentary produced for ZDF that first aired from October to November 2008. Each episode recounts a selected epoch of German history, beginning (first season) with the reign of Otto the Great and ending with the collapse of the German Empire at the end of the First World War. In November 2010 the second season of "Die Deutschen" was published in German television (ZDF and ZDFneo), beginning with Charlemagne, the Frankish King, and ending with Gustav Stresemann, the Chancellor and Foreign Minister during the Weimar Republic.
Provinces of Prussia
Following the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806 and the Congress of Vienna in 1815, the various German states gained nominal sovereignty. However, the reunification process that culminated in the creation of the German Empire in 1871, produced a country that was constituted of several principalities and dominated by one of them, the Kingdom of Prussia after it had ultimately defeated its Austrian rival. Its territory covered some 60 percent of the territory that was to become the German Reich.
List of Presidents of Germany
A number of presidential offices have existed in Germany since the collapse of the German Empire in 1918.
Hugo Stinnes Schiffahrt
In 1989, the Iron Curtain fell and the GDR (East Germany) collapsed. East and West Germany re-united (October 1990). The Volkseigene Betriebe ("People-owned enterprises") were privatized.
German Empire
The defeat and aftermath of the First World War and the penalties imposed by the Treaty of Versailles shaped the positive memory of the Empire, especially among Germans who distrusted and despised the Weimar Republic. Conservatives, liberals, socialists, nationalists, Catholics and Protestants all had their own interpretations, which led to a fractious political and social climate in Germany in the aftermath of the empire's collapse.
Under Bismarck, a united German state had finally been achieved, but it remained a Prussian-dominated state and did not include German Austria as Pan-German nationalists had desired. The influence of Prussian militarism, the Empire's colonial efforts and its vigorous, competitive industrial prowess all gained it the dislike and envy of other nations. The German Empire enacted a number of progressive reforms, such as Europe's first social welfare system and freedom of press. There was also a modern system for electing the federal parliament, the Reichstag, in which every adult man had one vote. This enabled the Socialists and the Catholic Centre Party to play considerable roles in the empire's political life despite the continued hostility of Prussian aristocrats.
Paris in World War I
By November, the Germans and their Allies were unable to continue the war. The Austro-Hungarian monarchy collapsed on November 3, then the German monarchy on November 9. Germany was proclaimed a republic, and the German Emperor Wilhelm II fled to the Netherlands. The new German government sent a delegation to Compiègne, north of Paris, and the armistice was signed at 5:00 a.m. on November 11, 1918. The day was described by the French historian René Héron de Villefosse, who was a young student in a Paris college:
Social democracy
By late 1918, the war situation for Germany had become hopeless and Kaiser Wilhelm II was pressured to make peace. Wilhelm II appointed a new cabinet that included SPD members. At the same time, the Imperial Naval Command was determined to make a heroic last stand against the British Royal Navy and on 24 October 1918 it issued orders for the German Navy to depart to confront while the sailors refused, resulting in the Kiel Mutiny. The Kiel Mutiny resulted in the German Revolution of 1918–1919. Faced with military failure and revolution the Chancellor, Prince Maximilian of Baden resigned, giving SPD leader Ebert the position of Chancellor, Wihelm II abdicated the German throne immediately afterwards and the German High Command officials Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff resigned whilst refusing to end the war to save face, leaving the Ebert government and the SPD-majority Reichstag to be forced to make the inevitable peace with the Allies and take the blame for having lost the war. With the abdication of Wilhelm II, Ebert declared Germany to be a republic and signed the armistice that ended World War I on 11 November 1918.
World War I
With the military faltering and with widespread loss of confidence in the Kaiser leading to his abdication and fleeing of the country, Germany moved towards surrender. Prince Maximilian of Baden took charge of a new government on 3 October as Chancellor of Germany to negotiate with the Allies. Negotiations with President Wilson began immediately, in the hope that he would offer better terms than the British and French. Wilson demanded a constitutional monarchy and parliamentary control over the German military. There was no resistance when the Social Democrat Philipp Scheidemann on 9 November declared Germany to be a republic. The Kaiser, kings and other hereditary rulers all were removed from power and Wilhelm fled to exile in the Netherlands. Imperial Germany was dead; a new Germany had been born as the Weimar Republic.
German Statutory Accident Insurance
In 1871, the German Empire was founded again, at the end of the Franco-Prussian War. Formerly Chancellor of Prussia, Otto von Bismarck, now Chancellor of the new German Empire, introduced highly progressive welfare legislation by the standards of Europe at the time. (5, 6)
British Empire in World War II
On 8 May 1945, the World War II Allies formally accepted the unconditional surrender of the armed forces of Nazi Germany and the end of Adolf Hitler's Third Reich. The formal surrender of the occupying German forces in the Channel Islands was not until 9 May 1945. On 30 April Hitler committed suicide during the Battle of Berlin, and so the surrender of Germany was authorized by his replacement, President of Germany Karl Dönitz. The "act of military surrender" was signed on 7 May in Reims, France, and ratified on 8 May in Berlin, Germany.
Legal status of Germany
The legal status of Germany concerns the question of the extinction, or otherwise continuation, of the German nation state (i.e., the German Reich created in the 1871 unification) following the rise and downfall of Nazi Germany, and constitutional hiatus of the military occupation of Germany by the four Allied powers from 1945 to 1949. It became current once again when the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) joined the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) in 1990.
German Question
On August 6, 1806, Habsburg Emperor Francis II had abdicated the throne of the Holy Roman Empire in the course of the Napoleonic Wars with France, thereby ending the loose Empire. Despite its later name affix "of the German Nation", the Holy Roman Empire had never been a nation state. Instead its rulers over the centuries had to cope with a continuous loss of authority to its constituent Imperial States. The disastrous Thirty Years' War proved especially fatal to the Holy Roman Emperor's authority, as the mightiest entities, the Austrian Habsburg Monarchy and Brandenburg-Prussia evolved into rivaling European absolute powers with territory reaching far beyond Imperial borders. The many small city-states splintered, meanwhile. In the 18th century the Holy Roman Empire consisted of over 1800 separate territories governed by distinct authorities.
Nazi Party
Officially, the Third Reich lasted only 12 years. The first Instrument of Surrender was signed by representatives of Nazi Germany at Reims, France on 7 May 1945. The war in Europe had come to an end. The defeat of Germany in World War II marked the end of the Nazi Germany era. The party was formally abolished on 10 October 1945 by the Allied Control Council and denazification began, along with trials of major war criminals before the International Military Tribunal (IMT) in Nuremberg. Part of the Potsdam Agreement called for the destruction of the Nationalist Socialist Party alongside the requirement for the reconstruction of the German political life. In addition, the Control Council Law no. 2 Providing for the Termination and Liquidation of the Nazi Organization specified the abolition of 52 other Nazi affiliated and supervised organisations and prohibited their activities. The denazification was carried out in Germany and continued until the onset of the Cold War.