Germ Foreign Pol 1871-1914 V9

Geiss

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136468650
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

First Published in 2001. Looking at German Foreign Policy between 1847 to 1914 this Volume IX of the Foreign Policies of Great Powers collection. It includes the general framework of the Reich and European diplomacy, the second German empire's history and social structure, and moves into the Pre-Imperialist era of 1871-95 before the 'Welpolitik' up until 1912, and finally the coming of the war over the period of 1909-14 and the German War of Aggression aims in 1914.

Part one

THE GENERAL FRAMEWORK: THE REICH AND EUROPEAN DIPLOMACY

Chapter 1

THE SECOND GERMAN EMPIRE-HISTORICAL BACKGROUND AND SOCIAL STRUCTURE

Before discussing German foreign policy from 1871 to 1914, the historical background of the Second German Empire , and its economic and political structure have to be explained. Bismarck's Empire was the successor to the (First) Medieval Empire, which had been founded with the pretence of restoring the Roman Empire, but was ruled by dynasties of German emperors. (1) In its struggle with the Pope, it adopted the addition ‘Holy’ to its official name in the thirteenth century and at the beginning of the sixteenth the addition ‘of the German Nation’. Originally a cover for the claims of German tribes or their leaders to a kind of hegemony over Christian Europe, the Empire degenerated, from the second half of the thirteenth century, into a kind of loose confederation of minute, small, some middle-sized and two great states - Austria and Prussia - both of whom had part of their territories lying outside the official boundaries of the Empire. The Empire, the regional and the lesser local dynasties preserved the feudal structure in Germany more than the great national monarchies in the West, in particular Britain and France. (2) The growth of modern capitalism on the basis of overseas trade in general, the transatlantic Slave Trade and slavery in the New World in particular, from the late fifteenth century onwards, relegated Germany for centuries to the background of economic development, which, in its turn, helped to stabilize the traditional structures of feudalism and monarchy. (3)

THE CONSEQUENCES OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

Only the shattering effects of the French Revolution, executed by Napoleon I, put an end to the century-long agony of the ‘Holy Roman German Empire of the German Nation’ in 1806. After a short period of confusion, the Congress of Vienna constructed the German Confederation (‘Deutscher Bund’) as a kind of provisional substitute without a formal sovereign at its head. Two hegemonial German powers dominated the ‘Bund’ - Austria the greater, with an emperor of her own, and Prussia the lesser, having only a king. The rivalries of both powers largely dissipated whatever strength had remained in the Old Empire during the eighteenth century. After defeating Napoleon, the heir of the French Revolution, Austria and Prussia carried on their rivalries in the German Confederation as the question arose how to organize the German power into a more definite form. The Revolution of 1848-9 tried to create a new German Empire through a combination of pressure from below, from the liberal middle classes, and action from above, the princes and dynasties of Germany. (4) The driving force behind the liberal clamour for another Reich was the economic interest of the emerging industrial bourgeoisie who wanted a wider common market in Germany, secured by a greater degree of political unity than offered by the German Confederation. The German Customs Union of 1834 (‘Zollverein’) in fact foreshadowed the later German Empire of 1871. It also pointed to the final decision as to who would be dominant in the coming German ‘Reich’ - Austria or Prussia. The Zollverein had been introduced by Prussia as early as 1818 to further Prussia's economic and political interest in Germany. By acquisition of the Rhine Province in 1815, Prussia was to become the leading industrial state in Germany in the nineteenth century. (5)

The ideology, corresponding to the political interests of the middle classes was, apart from free trade and liberalism, a romantic patriotism which idealized the medieval Empire through the restoration of its glory and power by the resurrection of ‘Kaiser and Reich’. The Revolution of 1848-9, for all its failures, decided two issues: first, Austria would not be the dominant factor in the new Empire. Austria's ruling class, an aristocracy headed by the Austrian Emperor, was unwilling to accept the new political structure without the inclusion of the predominantly peasant provinces of non-German population, because they were their traditional source of strength. The liberal movement in Germany, however, only wanted to include the Austrian Germans in the new Empire and not the many non-German nationalities. The first German parliament, assembled in Frankfurt's Paulskirche, offered the German crown to the King of Prussia, not to the Emperor of Austria.

The second issue was closely connected with the first: King Friedrich Wilhelm IV refused the crown offered by a deputation of the ‘revolutionary’ parliament. He made it clear that another German Reich would be created only by the ruling classes, not in cooperation with the middle classes. There was no doubt as to where the seat of political sovereignty would be in such a Reich - with the crown and not with the people or its spokesmen. The Second German Empire, therefore, would mean the creation of economic and military power on the one hand and the crown on the other, using the liberal movement as a welcome propaganda force only as long as its demands for a constitution could be made to coincide with the more authoritarian concepts of the ruling Junkers, the landed Prussian gentry. This rigidly conservative ruling class, with the support of Tsarist Russia, had broken the backbone of the Revolution in Prussia, Aristocratic and monarchical Prussia had been the champion for conservatism and counter-revolution in 1848-9 in Germany. From the late 1850s onwards, Prussia became the great champion of German unification, first in its short-lived phase of a sham-liberal renaissance with the ‘New Course’ of 1859, then after 1862, with the coming of Bismarck, in its more enduring phase of military preparation and military conquest. Bismarck's statecraft largely consisted of combining two contradictory elements: the threat or use of military force inside and outside Germany to suppress or domesticate revolutionary or progressive elements, and the fulfilment of political demands of the liberal classes - unification and a constitution.

BISMARCK AND THE CREATION OF THE NEW GERMAN EMPIRE

Bismarck had been called to power in 1862 as Prussian Prime Minister at the height of the prolonged constitutional crisis between the liberal majority in Parliament and the crown. The crown insisted on streamlining and expanding the army under the exclusive command of the crown. The new King, Wilhelm I, had even considered a military coup to subdue parliament. Bismarck's coming to power, however, spared him the risks of a military coup and made a civilian form of the same policy possible: Bismarck eliminated parliament by openly flouting the Prussian Constitution and reorganized the Prussian army to become a force capable of waging offensive wars. From now onwards, Prussian politics, later to be the politics of the German Empire, stood under the shadow of threatening ‘coup d’état’ from above. (6)

Bismarck's first political move in the field of foreign policy was to persuade Russia not to abandon Russian Poland as a.reaction to the last Polish revolt of 1863. This he did through the Alvensleben Convention. It meant that Prussia, later the German Empire, would cling to its part of Poland, restored to Prussia in Vienna 1815, at any cost. If Russia had given freedom to her Poles under liberal pressure or under the pressure of resurgent Poles in Russian Poland, the position of Prussia in its predominantly Polish provinces would have become impossible in the long run. Bismarck made it clear that there would be no coexistence between a free Polish national state and Prussia, with serious consequences for the existence of monarchical and feudal Prussia. Bismarck's Prussia was more vitally interested than Austria-Hungary or Russia to keep Poland divided and to preserve the conservative solidarity for the partitioning powers against the Poles. With the help of the Alvensleben Convention, Bismarck also succeeded in neutralizing Russia in the coming struggles ahead for German unification. It was with great justice that a conservative German historian, Egmont Zechlin, saw the Alvensleben Convention as Bismarck's starting point in laying the foundations of Germany's position as a great power. (7)

Bismarck's next step was the first of the three short wars which led to the creation of the new German Empire. This war waged by Prussia and Austria against Denmark, in 1864, gave Prussia the greatest immediate advantages. By embroiling Austria in the hopeless maze of the Schleswig-Holstein question, Prussia not only gained Schleswig immediately and Holstein a little later, but also acquired an instrument to put pressure on Austria. The squabble over Holstein, which was administered by Austria after Denmark's defeat, connected with the reform of the German Bund in the interest of Prussia, furnished the immediate cause of the Prussian war of 1866 against Austria and nearly all of the remaining German states (in particular Saxony, Hanover, Hesse, Baden, Wiirttemberg, Bavaria) .

The battle of Sadowa in July 1866 decided Prussia's hegemony in Germany and finally broke the backbone of German liberalism. Most of the liberals made their peace with Bismarck and supported him through the National Liberal Party, founded in 1867. In the same year, Prussia, enlarged by the annexation of Hanover, Northern Hesse, and Frankfurt, founded the North German Confederation with a Reichstag based on universal and equal (male) suffrage. (8) Bismarck was now halfway to achieving the future Empire, the southern German states still remaining outside. By incorporating the Poles in the eastern provinces of Prussia who had not formed part of the old Empire into the North German Federation, and through the protest of their spokesmen in parliament, it was decided that the new German Empire would also be burdened with the liability of the partition of Poland. Austria was thrown out of Germany and, in reaction to her defeat, was reorganized in 1867 under pressure of the Magyars by means of a constitutional compromise (‘Ausgleich’) to form the Dual Monarchy Austria-Hungary.

By cleverly manipulating the liberal and constitutional movement in Germany and by superior diplomacy, Bismarck succeeded in manoeuvring France into isolation and a position of appearing to be the last enemy left to stop German unification. The Franco-Prussian War, finally, was decided by numerical superiority in manpower provided by all German states, including those of southern Germany, by more efficient organization and strategic leadership of the united German armies. After the defeat of Napoleon III at Sedan, Prussia made the Germans carry on with the war against the French Republic, with the aim of annexing Alsace-Lorraine. The German Empire was officially proclaimed in a ceremony full of symbolic implication at Versailles, the seat of the old French monarchy, on 18 January 1871, exactly 170 years after the coronation of the first King in Prussia at Königsberg, i.e. on territory outside the old German Empire. The Second German Empire was founded and proclaimed on the foreign soil of conquered France. (9) Bismarck meanwhile managed to neutralize Austria-Hungary, thanks to the looming threat of Russian intervention on behalf of Prussia and the emerging German Empire. (10)

THE SECOND GERMAN EMPIRE

With the founding of the Second German Empire the Germans, or at least their majority, had a common state of their own for the first time in modern history. The lesser German solution (‘kleindeutsch’) had materialized, as had first been hinted at by the Paulskirche parliament in 1848-9. It was not the product of a successful revolution or of a democratic movement and it was not based on the principle of the sovereignty of the people. To employ the word ‘national’ is misleading, if taken in the strictest political sense; it can only be loosely applied to the German Empire to describe the highest political level in the state, in contrast to the regional or local level. (11)

The constitution of the German Reich was an extension and adaptation of the North German Constitution of 1867. The new Empire was officially a Federation or League (‘Bund’) of the German princes and three free Hanseatic Cities (Hamburg, Lübeck, Bremen). The Kingdom of Prussia was by far the largest and most powerful of the federal states. The other states preserved a large degree of internal autonomy, and the largest of them, i.e. the kingdoms of Bavaria, Württemberg and Saxony had preserved a few special rights, among them the privilege of having an army of their own in peacetime and of maintaining ministers of their own in the important capitals of Europe. The character of a federation was stressed by the fact that all German states kept ministers in Berlin, which formed part of the diplomatic corps there in the capital of Prussia and the new German Reich.

The seat of sovereignty lay with the German princes and Free Cities, and the King of Prussia was officially no more than the permanent President of the Federation, although having the title of Emperor. As the monarchical head of the Empire, he had the power to rule through the Chancellor of the Reich. Constitutionally, the Chancellor was not obliged to have a majority in the Reichstag, the central parliament of the Empire. The confidence of the Emperor was enough to keep him in power. As a matter of fact, all Chancellors were interested in having a majority. In all the changes of majorities over the decades one principle emerged: the very structure of the German Empire and German society made it impossible for a Chancellor to rule while seeking Socialist support, at least not in peacetime.

The Constitution gave the Reichstag more the appearance than the substance of political power: universal and equal suffrage (while in the individual federal states unequal franchise still existed, e.g. the three-class franchise in Prussia) and budgetary rights were the only attributes of modern parliament granted to the Reichstag. It had no direct influence on the composition of governments, could not elect or overthrow a Chancellor, could not even, on its own initiative, debate on foreign policy or vote on a declaration of war. It could only indirectly influence the course of the government by its vote on the budget and was a general rostrum for the expression of public opinion. But in both respects the Reichstag was open to manipulation from the government, who tried to relegate the Reichstag to a rubber-stamping and acclamatory body. The main political function of the Reichstag consisted in giving an outlet to political forces in Germany, to represent and articulate public opinion in a specific form, on the strength of the various political parties and the speeches made in parliament and during election campaigns.

Prussia in the nineteenth century had been a bulwark of conservatism, and the new Reich as an extension of Prussia was even more so. But the economic development of Germany, especially after the founding of the new Reich, created serious discrepancies between the economic foundation, the social structure and the political institutions of the Reich. Germany witnessed a remarkable coalescence of feudal-monarchical elements with industrial power. Prussia had originally been a predominantly agrarian monarchy, run by a military-minded lower gentry, the Junkers, east of the River Elbe. Their economic basis was fairly small manors, the Ritterguter, which they ran more in the manner of agrarian entrepreneurs than as typical feudal landlords. In 1815 Prussia acquired the valuable Rhine Provinces, where the industrial revolution was just beginning. The growing industries in the west (Rhineland, Westphalia, Saar) and the secondary industrial district in the east (Upper Silesia) provided the economic and material basis for Prussia's emergence as the founding and hegemonial state of the new German Empire in 1871. (12)

Yet, Prussia's Junker class was threatened by Revolution and Liberalism. The Crown's triumph over the Revolution of 1848-9 and Liberalism in 1862-6 consolidated the leading political position of the junkers in Prussia and also indirectly in the new Reich. The army, the bureaucracy, in particular the diplomatic service and the courts, but also schools, universities and the churches were the strongholds of the conservative elements in Bismarck's Germany. They were dominated either by members of the aristocratic classes themselves or by members of the middle classes who had conformed to the political and social standards set up by the ruling junkers or their southern German counterparts. By the late 1870s the last remnants of liberal interludes since 1848 had been purged or quietly dropped for reasons of age. (13)

THE IMPACT OF INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION

Between the wars of 1870-1 and 1914-18, however, Germany advanced to become the most powerful industrial state of the Continent, having the most modern industry in all Europe, including Britain. By 1914 Germany had even surpassed Britain, the motherland of the Industrial Revolution, in key sections, i.e. the production of steel or chemicals and the electrical industries. (14) The founding of the Reich in 1871 brought about a unification of the German market by unifying currencies, weights and measures, the legal system and through a common representation abroad. The five milliards francs paid by France to Germany as reparation were an additional incentive to a powerful boom, which ended abruptly in the great crash of 1873. The following period up to 1895 is now known as the ‘Great Depression’, owing to the slow recovery of the economy and reduced economic growth. (15) From 1896 to 1914 economic expansion was the characteristic trait, apart from a few oscillations. In particular, the last two decades of peace saw the hectic, even breathtaking rise of German industry with serious political, social and psychological consequences.

One of the immediate consequences of industrialization was the rapid increase in population. Emigration, in particular to America, was drastically reduced in the 1880s and more Germans found work and relative prosperity in the new German industries. The German population rose from 41 million in 1871 to 64 million. Germany by far surpassed France, traditionally the largest nation in Europe since the Middle Ages. The French population in the same inter-war period rose only from 38 to 40 million.

In the last pre-war years, however, Germans were impressed and frightened by a corresponding rise of population further to the East. In the last few years before the war the population increase became an additional justification of political expansion both in Europe and overseas, sought by the Reich. Even Kurt Riezler, the political aide of Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg and in many respects the most liberal of Germany's Establishment, could write in 1914, immediately before the outbreak of the war: (16)

But the young German Empire pushed out into the world. Its population grows yearly by 800,000 to 900...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Title Page
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Part One The General Framework: the Reich and European Diplomacy
• Part Two German Foreign Policy in the Pre-Imperialist Era, 1871-95
• Part Three ‘Weltpolitik’ and no War - 1896-1912
• Part Four The Coming of War, 1909-14
• Part Five Germany's War of Aggression and Conquest
• Documents
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index