436
June 2015
PHOTOGRAMMETRIC ENGINEERING & REMOTE SENSING
be called the Holy Roman Empire. In 962 Otto I became the
first of the German kings crowned emperor in Rome. By the
middle of the next century, the German lands ruled by the
emperors were the richest and most politically powerful part
of Europe. German princes stopped the westward advances
of the Magyar tribe, and Germans began moving eastward
to begin a long process of colonization. During the next few
centuries, however, the great expense of the wars to maintain
the empire against its enemies, chiefly other German
princes and the wealthy and powerful papacy and its allies,
depleted Germany’s wealth and slowed its development.
Unlike France or England, where a central royal power was
slowly established over regional princes, Germany remained
divided into a multitude of smaller entities often warring
with one another or in combinations against the emperors.
None of the local princes, or any of the emperors, were strong
enough to control Germany for a sustained period.
“Germany’s so-called particularism, that is, the existence
within it of many states of various sizes and kinds, such as
principalities, electorates, ecclesiastical territories, and free
cities, became characteristic by the early Middle Ages and
persisted until 1871, when the country was finally united.
This disunity was exacerbated by the Protestant Reformation
of the sixteenth century, which ended Germany’s religious
unity by converting many Germans to Lutheranism and
Calvinism. For several centuries, adherents to these two
varieties of Protestantism viewed each other with as much
hostility and suspicion as they did Roman Catholics. For
their part, Catholics frequently resorted to force to defend
themselves against Protestants or to convert them. As a
result, Germans were divided not only by territory but also
by religion.
“The terrible destruction of the Thirty Years’ War of 1618-
48, a war partially religious in nature, reduced German
particularism, as did the reforms enacted during the age of
enlightened absolutism (1648-1789) and later the growth of
nationalism and industrialism in the nineteenth century.
In 1815 the Congress of Vienna stipulated that the several
hundred states existing in Germany before the French
Revolution be replaced with thirty-eight states, some of
them quite small. In subsequent decades, the two largest
of these states, Austria and Prussia, vied for primacy in a
Germany that was gradually unifying under a variety of
social and economic pressures. The politician responsible for
German unification was Otto von Bismarck, whose brilliant
diplomacy and ruthless practice of statecraft secured
Prussian hegemony in a united Germany in 1871. The
new state, proclaimed the German Empire, did not include
Austria and its extensive empire of many non-German
territories and peoples.
“Imperial Germany prospered. Its economy grew rapidly,
and by the turn of the century it rivaled Britain’s in size.
Although the empire’s constitution did not provide for a
political system in which the government was responsible to
parliament, political parties were founded that represented
the main social groups. Roman Catholic and socialist parties
contended with conservative and progressive parties and
with a conservative monarchy to determine how Germany
should be governed.
“After Bismarck’s dismissal in 1890 by the young emperor
Wilhelm II, Germany stepped up its competition with other
European states for colonies and for what it considered
its proper place among the great states. An aggressive
program of military expansion instilled fear of Germany
in its neighbors. Several decades of military and colonial
competition and a number of diplomatic crises made for
a tense international atmosphere by 1914. In the early
summer of that year, Germany’s rulers acted on the belief
that their country’s survival depended on a successful war
against Russia and France. German strategists felt that a
war against these countries had to be waged by 1916 if it
were to be won because after that year Russian and French
military reforms would be complete, making German victory
doubtful. This logic led Germany to get drawn into a war
between its ally Austria-Hungary and Russia. Within weeks,
a complicated system of alliances escalated that regional
conflict into World War I, which ended with Germany’s
defeat in November 1918.
“The Weimar Republic, established at war’s end, was
the first attempt to institute parliamentary democracy in
Germany. The republic never enjoyed the wholehearted
support of many Germans, however, and from the start it
was under savage attack from elements of the left and, more
important, from the right. Moreover, it was burdened during
its fifteen-year existence with serious economic problems.
During the second half of the 1920s, when foreign loans
fed German prosperity, parliamentary politics functioned
better, yet many of the established elites remained hostile
to it. With the onset of the Great Depression, parliamentary
politics became impossible, and the government ruled by
decree. Economic crisis favored extremist politicians, and
Adolf Hitler’s National Socialist German Workers’ Party
became the strongest party after the summer elections of
1932. In January 1933, the republic’s elected president, Paul
von Hindenburg, the World War I army commander, named
a government headed by Hitler.
“Within a few months, Hitler accomplished the “legal
revolution” that removed his opponents. By 1935 his regime
had transformed Germany into a totalitarian state. Hitler
achieved notable economic and diplomatic successes during
the first five years of his rule. However, in September 1939
he made a fatal gamble by invading Poland and starting
World War II. The eventual defeat of Hitler’s Third Reich
in 1945 occurred only after the loss of tens of millions of
lives, many from military causes, many from sickness and
starvation, and many from what has come to be called the
Holocaust. Germany was united on October 3, 1990”
(Library
of Congress Country Study, 2015).
Germany is bordered by Austria (801 km) (
PE&RS,
March
2004), Belgium (133 km) (
PE&RS
, October 1998), Czech
