Tag: germany
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History of the French Revolution. 1803-1815. III.
Regardless of the questions of whether the liberties given to the French people were provided by a despot, Napoleon considered himself to be an extension of the revolution, and intended to take it abroad through advantageously taking rapid military action with support from military conscription and a cohesive command system. Napoleon planned to invade England…
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History of the Age of Absolutism.
The history of monarchy in Europe from the late Middle Ages tended toward greater political unification, and increasingly greater subordination of feudal intermediate authorities to the control of a central monarchy. Most European states experienced a steady growth in the power of the central governmental authority from approximately the beginning of the fifteenth to the…
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History of German Reunification
Mikhail Gorbachev was elected General-Secretary of the Communist Party on 11 March 1985 at a time when he was fully conscious of the Soviet Union’s economic and social difficulties, and therefore called for a fundamental restructuring of the party and modernize the Soviet political and economic system (perestroika). This would entail overhauling the entrenched party…
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History of the Two German States: 1949-1973.
The consolidation of the two German states became increasingly further consolidated in different stages, following the failures of the four-power military occupation and their diplomatic representatives to cooperate toward a common postwar permanent postwar settlement. The zonal divisions in the west and the east became permanent with the creation of two separate German states as…
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History of Postwar Germany: 1947-1949.
The consolidation of Soviet controls in Eastern Europe continued, and this process culminated in the coup in Czechoslovakia in February 1948, which did not have a fully communist government before this time. Non-communist leaders in Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and Albania had been eliminated by terrorism, faked trials and political purges by the end…
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History of Postwar Germany: 1945-1947.
Great Britain, the Soviet Union and the United States discussed how a defeated Germany was to be treated, and determined the “negative” aims of demilitarisation, disarmament and denazification, and the prosecution of war criminals. The representatives of these Big Three powers agreed at the Yalta Conference in February 1945 that the country was to be…
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History of National Socialist Germany during the Second World War. VII.
Troops from over twenty countries enlisted to serve in the German military, which numbered as many as a million international volunteers in various formations. The SS international volunteers joined the war effort to take action against the Soviet Union that had invaded their home countries and Soviet authorities ruthlessly established their control. Although German occupation…
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History of National Socialist Germany during the Second World War. V.
The advance through northwestern Germany thereafter by penetrating the defensive Siegfried Line. Further advances into northwestern Germany took place in the face of stiff resistance against Montgomery’s British Second Army, with Osnabrück falling on 4 April, prior to advancing to Bremen and then Lauenburg. The final British offensive culminated in the battle of Hamburg as…
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History of National Socialist Germany during the Second World War. III.
The excessively bitter street fighting at Stalingrad continued while the German forces’ supplies diminished, and the Soviets managed to launch a counteroffensive on 19 November, Operation Uranus, that trapped 220,000 German troops of the Sixth Army that occupied ninety percent of the city in what became a defensive cauldron, which Hitler refused to allow to…
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History of National Socialist Germany during the Second World War. II.
Germany launched large-scale air attacks on Britain to defeat the Royal Air Force (RAF) beginning in August, before a seaborne invasion could be attempted, first against military targets, including air fields and radar station installations, and then against British cities to first secure air superiority, and also to weaken the British resolve to stay in…