Re: THE CARE AND FEEDING OF EMPIRES. (and no, I'm not going to spell stuff the wrong way) -- Early World History, Level I

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Date Posted: 19:35:48 05/09/02 Thu
Author: Jimmy McCumber
Subject: Re: THE CARE AND FEEDING OF EMPIRES. (and no, I'm not going to spell stuff the wrong way)
In reply to: J CURBOY 's message, "THE CARE AND FEEDING OF EMPIRES." on 11:52:20 04/24/02 Wed

-----The beginning of what is now the country of Germany is unclear in many places. The nation had its beginnings with barbaric groups before becoming the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation during the Middle Ages. The modern Germany wasn�t unified until the 1870s. Only forty years later, they attempted their first of two attempts to take over the world. Throughout these many phases, many different countries were revealed, from weak empire, to the racist, fanatical Adolf Hitler, who struck fear into every country in the world.
-----The early Germans were not unified, instead they were a collection of tribes. They did not partake in sacrificial ceremonies. They had multiple gods, representative of things they needed including the sun and moon. Children were trained early on in life in fighting and hunting, which were the two main responsibilities of men at the time. Agriculture was less important to them, and their main food sources were milk, cheese and meat.
-----In the final hundred years before Christ, no one officially owned land in the German tribes. Instead, the magistrates and chiefs of the tribes would assign land to the different clans they controlled. The Germans at the time were nomadic, seldom spending more than a year in the same place. They did not want people to settle down and lose their enthusiasm for war.
-----The German tribes� biggest war aim was to destroy all lands around them. They would pillage other nearby villages and make the land inhospitable so as to remove nearby threats. Robbery was considered an honor if done to another tribe. Despite this harsh treatment of outsiders, it was considered a crime to mistreat a guest. No matter what their purpose, visitors were to be regarded as sacred, protected from injury, and given the finest foods available. This strange contradiction was indication of the importance of loyalty to the Germans, who detested all outside of their tribe, but befriended all who came to them in peace.
-----A different picture of Germans was painted late in the first century. The Germans were still not a major empire, and were still composed of mainly barbaric groups. Unlike today�s Germans, they had mainly red hair with blue eyes and were on average the largest race at the time. People were not allowed to intermarry with other races, leaving the gene pool relatively unchanged.
-----The Germans did have a unifying government at the time. Kings were chosen by birth, and they did not have absolute power. A king�s generals did not have disciplinary privileges, instead only the priests could punish citizens. Clans went into battle together. The Germans believed that this way, the troops would be more united, since they were fighting alongside their loved ones. The women in the tribe would also go to war to supply the soldiers with food and medical attention.
-----The Germans had a remarkable legal system. Punishments for different crimes were all regulated followed through on. Traitors or deserters were hanged, while cowards were buried alive in the swamp. The definition of coward was one problem with law, but the priests� �spiritual guidance� was trusted as the final word. For smaller offenses, a man was fined a set number of horses or cattle. Half were given to the government, and half were given to the person who was wronged and sometimes his relatives also. The Germans also had a strict marriage code, and usually married only one person.
-----The German empire in the Middle Ages was the �Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation.� Their kings were crowned by the pope under this title, so as to be linked to Charlemagne, the most powerful king of the time. For the protection this alliance brought, there were prices to pay. For starters, the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation was not entirely German. It included Burgundy and parts of Holland and Italy, and although the emperor was German, there were interior conflicts between nations which were costly to the empire.
-----Princes of the church in the area were able to claim independence from the emperor and also control peasants living on their land, taking away power from the emperor. German princes also caused problems for the empire. In the Investiture Controversy in 1120, German princes won all the land back that they had owned before the Holy Roman Empire had taken over. This �compromise� reached at the Concordat of Worms took away power from the empire, a blow from which the empire may never have recovered from.
-----Popes always had veto power over the German emperor until 1356. That year, emperor Charles IV formed the Golden Bull decree. He established an electorate of seven princes: the archbishops of Mainz, Cologn, and Trier, the King of Bohemia, the Count Palatine of the Rhine, the Duke of Saxony and the Margrave of Bradenburg. Charles formed an electorate representative of all of his empire, and since three of the princes are from the church, that constituted the church�s power and dispelled with the papal veto.
-----In the thirteenth century, the Reichstag was formed as the main branch of the empire after the emperor. The Reichstag was separated into three estates: the seven imperial electors, the other imperial princes, and the free imperial states. The princes had a tendency to band together and outvote the imperial states, leaving them with little legislative power. The princes would also take away as much power as possible from the nobles in their areas so as to retain complete power over their lands, and over the next hundred years the princes were able to greatly reduce the power of the lower nobility. There were, however, estates of nobles to restrain the central government. This form of government is known as a Standestaat, where nobles of imperial cities practiced restraint on the emperor.
-----In the 1870s, the modern country of Germany was formed. In the early 1900s, Germany nearly rose to a new level of power, almost controlling all of Europe. However, their empire was twice destroyed in what are known as the two World Wars.
-----On June 28th, 1914, Austria�s archduke Frances Ferdinand was assassinated, and Austria declared war on Yugoslavia. Because Yugoslavia had an alliance with Russia, Germany agreed to defend Austria. Germany wanted to avoid being surrounded by enemies, but had also been planning an attempt at total control over all of Europe. This strategy was known as the Schlieffen Plan.
-----The Schlieffen Plan started with Germany conquering Belgium, then encircling France. On August 3rd, 1914, Germany declared war on France, beginning World War I. They defeated Belgium in only three days, and assaulted France. The French army retreated to Paris, and there, with England�s help, defeated the Germans at the Battle of Marne.
-----Germany then focused their attacks on Eastern Europe. Austria was wiped out by Russia, but Germany defeated the Russians at the Battle of Tannenburg, taking them out of the war. Germany conquered Rumania, but drew the United States into the war after setting a navy attack on the Americans.
-----Germany continued their military agenda in Eastern Europe, defeating Ukraine after signing a peace treaty with them, and then forcing the Russians to surrender to them. However, this was the end of Germany�s dominance. When they turned back west to attack France and England, over two million American soldiers came to the rescue, and together with the French, who used their new military invention, tanks, pushed the German army back. They also liberated Rumania, the Balkans, and joined forces with Austria. When Hungary and Bulgaria fell, Germany requested an armistice. They surrendered their weapons and returned to their own borders. They were also forbidden to make any more attempts to strengthen their army. The armistice was signed on November 11, 1918.
-----The defeat plunged Germany into an economic crisis. Germans didn�t work because their wages were used to pay for war deficits. German money became worthless. The Mark fell more than twenty-billion times its� pre-war value!
-----Germany halted their war efforts, but were never actually forced to admit defeat. The allied forces were convinced that Germany could never rise to power again. Instead, influential leaders spread the propaganda that Germany would have won the war if the armistice had not been signed. Behind one man, the German empire would rise again, even stronger than before, only twenty years later.
-----Adolf Hitler, a poor Vienna artist, joined the German army in 1914. After being wounded in battle, he entered the world of politics and started a small party, the National Socialist German Worker�s Party, known as the Nazis. Hitler�s party grew, and began taking over the German Parliament. In 1933, Hitler used lies of peace intentions and his Nazi army to terrorize voters into passing the Enabling Act, which ended democracy and made Hitler the Dictator of Germany. Hitler then combined the positions of Reich Chancellor and Reich President and made himself the Fuhrer of Germany, or absolute leader. The former president, Paul von Hindenburg, forbade this in his will, but Hitler simply destroyed the letter and forged a new one in which Hindenburg pledged his support to Hitler. This letter convinced 90 percent of the voters to approve Hitler as Fuhrer. Hitler immediately made all soldiers swear loyalty to him, not to Germany.
-----Hitler chose to blame the Jews for the war failures. He took away all rights from Jewish people, and would later attempt to wipe them from the face of the earth. In 1937, Hitler made his first conquest, using his alliance with Italy to take over Austria. He also annexed part of Czechoslovakia, despite the Czechs� alliances with Russia, France, and England. He also conquered Poland before World War II officially began.
-----In 1940, the Allied Forces of England, France, United States, China, and the Soviet Union declared war on Germany. Despite the fact that all these powers were united against them, the Germans continued to take over Europe. Norway, Holland and Belgium all fell in early 1940. Spain and France were also easily conquered.
-----Despite these attacks, an assault on England never really materialized. Hitler instead began conquering eastern European countries, and even some of Northern Africa, including Egypt.
-----During the war, Hitler also waged a war on Judaism. He arrested Jews from all over Europe and placed them in concentration camps. At these camps, they were starved or burned to death. During �The Holocaust�, over six million Jews were killed.
-----In July 1940, Hitler began an attack on the Soviet Union which would last four years. Hitler managed to march within several miles of Moscow, but could not take it. Then Hitler tried to hold the city of Stalingrad, and was surrounded by Russians. Russia then went on the offensive and regained their land as the United States weakened the Nazis back in Germany. At the end of the war, Hitler, suffering from mental instability, poisoned his wife and shot himself to death.
-----Adolf Hitler�s death ended not only the war, but also all attempts at global domination by the Germans. Germany has retained the same borders up to today, and is back on good terms with most countries in the world. The more civilized Germany of today resembles neither its� distant past of disorder and constant changing of power, or its recent past as a disciplined, stoic military machine.

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