Tag: war
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History of the First World War. I.
The first years of the twentieth century were characterised by escalating tensions among the European powers, amid relative peace allowing for developing considerable prosperity and technological development. Nevertheless, there was also competition for military supremacy and for resources from colonies abroad were complicated by entangling alliances, which were supposed to make Europe safer, but…
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History of the Origins of the First World War.
The international power politics competition marked by the new imperialism and the system of alliances continued influencing Europe until the outbreak of the First World War. Bismarck’s dominance on the continent had been facilitated by the fact that the other great powers of Europe were engaged in and distracted by imperialist rivalries overseas, but this…
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History of the Second German Empire and Modern Imperialism.
One of the results of the Franco-Prussian War was the establishment of the Second German Empire, following the first created under Charlemagne. The constitution, adopted on 14 April 1871, was simply a remodeled version of the constitution of the North German Confederation, which had also been a creation of Bismarck. The empire was composed of…
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History of Reaction and Unification. 1848-1871.
The 1848 revolutions caused a realignment of forces in European political life. In Italy, the Sardinian kingdom emerged after 1849 as the one hope for the national unification of Italy. King Victor Immanuel II maintained the constitution, and increasingly more Italian nationalists turned toward Sardinia in much the same way as Germans began to look…
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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 National Socialist Germany during the Second World War. VI.
American troops crossed the Elbe at Magdeburg on 12 April and occupied the city on 18 April and then Leipzig on 19 April, while Free French forces occupied Stuttgart on 20 April. German troops defending the economically vital Ruhr industrial region were surrounded during this time, and an American advance toward Hagen cut the Ruhr…
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History of National Socialist Germany during the Second World War. I.
Nazi Germany continued pursuing an aggressive foreign policy of making territorial acquisitions, and British authorities advised Germany that Poland would receive their assistance in the event of an invasion to further revise the Treaty of Versailles to reclaim former German territory. Nevertheless, Hitler invaded Poland on 1 September 1939 and forced a collapse in four…
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History of Germany during the First World War. I.
The German government and general staff precipitated a risk of escalation of the tension between Austria-Hungary and Serbia, and audaciously calculated on the possibility of launching what they considered would constitute a preventive strike against Russia and France, and thereby breaking the influence of the Entente. The German General Staff government planned to overcome the…
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History of Germany and the Outbreak of the First World War
The British Entente Cordiale with France in 1904, and the subsequent agreement with Russia in 1907 resolving potential disputes, thus composed a Triple Entente that was directly opposed to Germany and its allies. The German fleet building, aimed at protect the German coastlines against the Russian and French fleets, as well as protecting its overseas…