What led to the many downfalls of Germany?

[Hans Blaster]

Does anyone know what this thread is?

As far as I can tell the only clear "downfall" of Germany was the one that came with the collapse of the Third Reich. Germany divided, destroyed, and occupied, an international pariah. I'll let you work that one out on your own.

It's hard for a nation to have a "downfall" if it isn't unified. So what other examples could there be? The breakup of the Frankish empire due to inheritance laws?

 

[Red Gold]

3 voters now.

I would be happy with more voters.

 

[Red Gold]

the War of the Thirty Years - that was a most terrible time!​

 

[Bob Crowley]

I read William Shirer's "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" until my paper back copy of his book disintegrated. In his opinion (and he made it clear he was himself a Protestant), one of the factors which set up the German mind for Hitler was Martin Luther's influence.

William L. Shirer Quotes (Author of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich)

526 quotes from William L. Shirer: 'No class or group or party in Germany could escape its share of responsibility for the abandonment of the democratic Republic and the advent of Adolf Hitler. The cardinal error of the Germans who opposed Nazism was their failure to unite against it.', 'I...

www.goodreads.com

“It is difficult to understand the behavior of most German Protestants in the first Nazi years unless one is aware of two things: their history and the influence of Martin Luther.* The great founder of Protestantism was both a passionate anti-Semite and a ferocious believer in absolute obedience to political authority. He wanted Germany rid of the Jews and when they were sent away he advised that they be deprived of “all their cash and jewels and silver and gold” and, furthermore, “that their synagogues or schools be set on fire, that their houses be broken up and destroyed… and they be put under a roof or stable, like the gypsies… in misery and captivity as they incessantly lament and complain to God about us”—advice that was literally followed four centuries later by Hitler, Goering and Himmler.”
― William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L. Shirer

The Third Reich which was born on January 30, 1933, Hitler boasted, would endure for a thousand years, and in Nazi parlance it was often ref...

ericlanke.blogspot.com

To the lack of political and dynastic unity was added, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the disaster of religious differences which followed the Reformation. There is not space in this book to recount adequately the immense influence of Martin Luther, the Saxon peasant who became an Augustinian monk that launched the German Reformation, had on Germans and their subsequent history. But it many be said, in passing, that this towering but erratic genius, this savage anti-Semite and hater of Rome, who combined in his tempestuous character so many of the best and worst qualities of the German -- the coarseness, the boisterousness, the fanaticism, the intolerance, the violence, but also the honesty, the simplicity, the self-scrutiny, the passion for learning and for music and for poetry and for righteousness in the eyes of God, left a mark on the life of the Germans, for both good and bad, more indelible, more fateful, than was wrought by any other single individual before or since. Through his sermons and his magnificent translation of the Bible, Luther created the modern German language, aroused in the people not only a new Protestant vision of Christianity but a fervent German nationalism and taught them, at least in religion, the supremacy of the individual conscience. But tragically for them, Luther’s siding with the princes in the peasant risings, which he had largely inspired, and his passion for political autocracy ensured a mindless and provincial political absolutism which reduced the vast majority of the German people to poverty, to a horrible torpor and a demeaning subservience. Even worse perhaps, it helped to perpetuate and indeed sharpen the hopeless divisions not only between classes but also between the various dynastic and political groupings of the German people. It doomed for centuries the possibility of the unification of Germany.

Obviously there were other factors - the Prussian military class and the tradition of a strong army, the collapse of the German economy and soaring inflation, resentment of ordinary Germans that they had to pay reparations for World War I when they had no more control over German foreign policy than the average Englishman or American, the fear of communist Russia and Stalin next door, and in general what appeared to be the rise of dictatorships on both the right and the left in Russia, Italy, Japan and other nations, partly as a response to the turmoil of the Great Depression.

In Luther's case I suspect he had an agreement with Franz von Sickingen and Ulrich von Hutten. Sickingen in particular was no stranger to violence, and I believe that if Luther wanted their protection from Rome, they wanted a quid pro quo - his support for the absolute rights of the princes. For a man who was prepared to negate the authority of Rome, he was quite prepared to support the princes when it came to the violent suppression of the Peasant's revolt.

Franz von Sickingen - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Ulrich von Hutten - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Then there was the Thirty Years War, which tore Germany apart and was responsible for a fragmentation which lasted for centuries.

Shirer estimated the population of Germany declined from around sixteen million to about six million as a result of the war, not so much from direct military action as from all the other factors which come with war - famine, disease including the plague, destruction of homes and villages, loss of infrastructure, the killing of young men, and all the rest.

Germany had a record of violence and political autocracy for centuries before Adolf Hitler and the Nazis arrived on the scene.

 

[hislegacy]

I am not talking of the year 2023 - or this century.

I have in mind the whole history of Germany since about around 800 after Christ.

And there have been many downfalls since then.

You are asking for a central reason for more than 1,200 years of history?

I doubt there is a specific reason, anymore than any other country. It has had it's accomplishments and gifts to community and culture and it's downfalls.

 

[Red Gold]

You are asking for a central reason for more than 1,200 years of history?

I doubt there is a specific reason, anymore than any other country. It has had it's accomplishments and gifts to community and culture and it's downfalls.

Dis-unity was such a reason.

 

[Red Gold]

Germany had a record of violence and political autocracy for centuries before Adolf Hitler and the Nazis arrived on the scene.

Well, I most strongly dis-agree!
That way you might just well say:
"Germans are cruel "Huns!"
And they have been just as terrible as the Nazis and Hitler all along!"

That is typical Germanophobe propaganda.

I can't help it if you believe such hateful theories.

 

[Red Gold]

HITLER!!!!!!!!!!

You talk of Hitler, Hitler, Hitler, Hitler, Hitler, Hitler, Hitler, Hitler, Hitler, Hitler, Hitler, Hitler, Hitler, Hitler, Hitler, Hitler, Hitler, Hitler, Hitler, Hitler,

..... as if Germany's history had to show nothing but Hitler!

 

[Red Gold]

You are asking for a central reason for more than 1,200 years of history?

Yes, I do.

 

[Red Gold]

I see:

For some there is no Goethe and no Schiller and no Gutenberg and no Mozart usw usw usw

just HITLER!

I am sick and tired when Germany is just reduced to Hitler!

 

[Red Gold]

Do you know anything about Germany apart from NAZI and HITLER?

 

[Bob Crowley]

Well, I most strongly dis-agree!
That way you might just well say:
"Germans are cruel "Huns!"
And they have been just as terrible as the Nazis and Hitler all along!"

That is typical Germanophobe propaganda.

I can't help it if you believe such hateful theories.

You've reacted to my post with a somewhat jaundiced opinion. I don't indulge in Germanophobe propaganda for a start.

But if I look at the following timeline of German history starting from the Reformation "started" by Martin Luther and going through to the year 2000 for convencience sake, I find the following events to be part of German history in that period.

Timeline of German history - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

1. German Peasant's War.
2. Siege of Vienna.
3. Schmalkaldic War.
4. Cologne War.
5. Sack of Magdeburg.
6. Battle of Lutzen.
7. Battle of Breitenfeld.
8. Battle of Lutzen
9. Thirty Years War
10. Battle of Vienna
11. The rise of autocratic Prussia
12. Silesian Wars.
13. Rhine Campaign.
14. Napoleonic Wars.
15. Battle of Leipzig.
16. German Revolutions 1848-49
17. First, Second and Third Schleswig War.
18. Austro-Prussian War.
19. Franco-Prussian War.
20. Bismarck's Kulturkampf against the Catholic Church.
21. Austro-Hungary war with Serbia.
22. World War I.
23. Spatacist uprising.
24. Kapp Putsch & Ruhr Uprising.
25. Hitler and World War II.
26. Germany divided during the Cold War.

Yet despite all this turmoil Germany somehow managed to give rise to outstanding leaders in music, literature, science, technology, and philosophy as the following list indicates (surnames only) - Bach, Mozart, Kant, Schiller, Schumann, Brothers Grimm, Wagner, Marx, Beethoven, Schubert, Hegel, Goethe, Busch, Brahms, List, Nietzsche, Benz & Daimler, Gauss, Planck, Riemann, Mann, Diesel, and Einstein.

As I said Germany has a long history of (military) turmoil and autocratic style of government. It was only in 1989 that East Germany was able to throw off the shackles of Soviet domination.

Many years ago I worked in the same office as a chap who'd been a (Australian) bombardier in the Royal Air Force during World War II. Obviously he was one of the lucky ones who came back. One out of three Australians in Bomber Command didn't return.

He commented to me "I've got a lot of respect for Jerry!" as he knew how hard they fought.

I also note that you are German yourself, living in Baden-Baden in the Black Forest somewhere, and I think you might be a bit sensitive to what you construe as "German bashing", because that's not what we're on about.

 

[Red Gold]

You've reacted to my post with a somewhat jaundiced opinion. I don't indulge in Germanophobe propaganda for a start.

But if I look at the following timeline of German history starting from the Reformation "started" by Martin Luther and going through to the year 2000 for convencience sake, I find the following events to be part of German history in that period.

Timeline of German history - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

1. German Peasant's War.
2. Siege of Vienna.
3. Schmalkaldic War.
4. Cologne War.
5. Sack of Magdeburg.
6. Battle of Lutzen.
7. Battle of Breitenfeld.
8. Battle of Lutzen
9. Thirty Years War
10. Battle of Vienna
11. The rise of autocratic Prussia
12. Silesian Wars.
13. Rhine Campaign.
14. Napoleonic Wars.
15. Battle of Leipzig.
16. German Revolutions 1848-49
17. First, Second and Third Schleswig War.
18. Austro-Prussian War.
19. Franco-Prussian War.
20. Bismarck's Kulturkampf against the Catholic Church.
21. Austro-Hungary war with Serbia.
22. World War I.
23. Spatacist uprising.
24. Kapp Putsch & Ruhr Uprising.
25. Hitler and World War II.
26. Germany divided during the Cold War.

Yet despite all this turmoil Germany somehow managed to give rise to outstanding leaders in music, literature, science, technology, and philosophy as the following list indicates (surnames only) - Bach, Mozart, Kant, Schiller, Schumann, Brothers Grimm, Wagner, Marx, Beethoven, Schubert, Hegel, Goethe, Busch, Brahms, List, Nietzsche, Benz & Daimler, Gauss, Planck, Riemann, Mann, Diesel, and Einstein.

As I said Germany has a long history of (military) turmoil and autocratic style of government. It was only in 1989 that East Germany was able to throw off the shackles of Soviet domination.

Many years ago I worked in the same office as a chap who'd been a (Australian) bombardier in the Royal Air Force during World War II. Obviously he was one of the lucky ones who came back. One out of three Australians in Bomber Command didn't return.

He commented to me "I've got a lot of respect for Jerry!" as he knew how hard they fought.

I also note that you are German yourself, living in Baden-Baden in the Black Forest somewhere, and I think you might be a bit sensitive to what you construe as "German bashing", because that's not what we're on about.

 

[Red Gold]

I think you might be a bit sensitive to what you construe as "German bashing", because that's not what we're on about.

If that is not what you are on about, then it is OK.

 

[Lukaris]

I have no expertise but I will guess that the social conflicts of the Reformation weakened the already loose principalities of the Holy Roman Empire. This made it difficult for Germany to become a nation state before others like England, France, Spain etc.

The other non German nation states which chose to be Protestant oppressed their Catholic people ( as England oppressing the Irish, English Catholics etc). The other non German Catholic states oppressed their Protestant people (like France with the Hugenots). When their objectives were met, secular unification was more quickly possible.

The German principalities remained divided among sectarian lines. My guess is that Napoleon may have indirectly contributed to unifying Germany since the French Revolution was anti Christian overall in itself. Napoleon, I believe, did eliminate the anti Christian extremism of the French Revolution nonetheless.

Just my guesses here.