The Celts are believed to have been the first inhabitants of Germany. They
were followed by German tribes at the end of the 2nd century B.C. German
invasions destroyed the declining Roman Empire in the 4th and 5th centuries A.D.
One of the tribes, the Franks, attained supremacy in western Europe under
Charlemagne, who was crowned Holy Roman Emperor in 800. By the Treaty of Verdun
(843), Charlemagne's lands east of the Rhine were ceded to the German Prince
Louis. Additional territory acquired by the Treaty of Mersen (870) gave Germany
approximately the area it maintained throughout the Middle Ages. For several
centuries after Otto the Great was crowned king in 936, German rulers were also
usually heads of the Holy Roman Empire.
By the 14th century, the Holy Roman Empire was little more than a loose
federation of the German princes who elected the Holy Roman emperor. In 1438,
Albert of Hapsburg became emperor, and for the next several centuries the
Hapsburg line ruled the Holy Roman Empire until its decline in 1806. Relations
between state and church were changed by the Reformation, which began with
Martin Luther's 95 theses, and came to a head in 1547, when Charles V scattered
the forces of the Protestant League at Muhlberg. The Counter Reformation
followed. A dispute over the succession to the Bohemian throne brought on the
Thirty Years' War (1618–1648), which devastated Germany and left the empire
divided into hundreds of small principalities virtually independent of the
emperor.
Meanwhile, Prussia was developing into a state of considerable strength.
Frederick the Great (1740–1786) reorganized the Prussian army and defeated Maria
Theresa of Austria in a struggle over Silesia. After the defeat of Napoleon at
Waterloo (1815), the struggle between Austria and Prussia for supremacy in
Germany continued, reaching its climax in the defeat of Austria in the Seven
Weeks' War (1866) and the formation of the Prussian-dominated North German
Confederation (1867). The architect of this new German unity was Otto von
Bismarck, a conservative, monarchist, and militaristic Prussian prime minister.
He unified all of Germany in a series of three wars against Denmark (1864),
Austria (1866), and France (1870–1871). On Jan. 18, 1871, King Wilhelm I of
Prussia was proclaimed German emperor in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. The
North German Confederation, created in 1867, was abolished, and the Second
German Reich, consisting of the North and South German states, was born. With a
powerful army, an efficient bureaucracy, and a loyal bourgeoisie, Chancellor
Bismarck consolidated a powerful centralized state.
Wilhelm II dismissed Bismarck in 1890 and embarked upon a “New Course,”
stressing an intensified colonialism and a powerful navy. His chaotic foreign
policy culminated in the diplomatic isolation of Germany and the disastrous
defeat in World War I (1914–1918). The Second German Empire collapsed following
the defeat of the German armies in 1918, the naval mutiny at Kiel, and the
flight of the kaiser to the Netherlands. The Social Democrats, led by Friedrich
Ebert and Philipp Scheidemann, crushed the communists and established a moderate
state, known as the Weimar Republic, with Ebert as president. President Ebert
died on Feb. 28, 1925, and on April 26, Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg was
elected president. The mass of Germans regarded the Weimar Republic as a child
of defeat, imposed upon a Germany whose legitimate aspirations to world
leadership had been thwarted by a world conspiracy. Added to this were a
crippling currency debacle, a tremendous burden of reparations, and acute
economic distress.
Adolf Hitler, an Austrian war veteran and a fanatical nationalist, fanned
discontent by promising a Greater Germany, abrogation of the Treaty of
Versailles, restoration of Germany's lost colonies, and the destruction of the
Jews, whom he scapegoated as the reason for Germany's downfall and depressed
economy. When the Social Democrats and the Communists refused to combine against
the Nazi threat, President von Hindenburg made Hitler the chancellor on Jan. 30,
1933. With the death of von Hindenburg on Aug. 2, 1934, Hitler repudiated the
Treaty of Versailles and began full-scale rearmament. In 1935, he withdrew
Germany from the League of Nations, and the next year he reoccupied the
Rhineland and signed the Anti-Comintern pact with Japan, at the same time
strengthening relations with Italy. Austria was annexed in March 1938. By the
Munich agreement in Sept. 1938, he gained the Czech Sudetenland, and in
violation of this agreement he completed the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia in
March 1939. His invasion of Poland on Sept. 1, 1939, precipitated World War II.
Hitler established death camps to carry out “the final solution to the
Jewish question.” By the end of the war, Hitler's Holocaust had killed 6 million
Jews, as well as Gypsies, homosexuals, Communists, the handicapped, and others
not fitting the Aryan ideal. After some dazzling initial successes in 1939–1942,
Germany surrendered unconditionally to Allied and Soviet military commanders on
May 8, 1945. On June 5 the four-nation Allied Control Council became the de
facto government of Germany.
(For details of World War II and of the Holocaust, see Headline History, World
War II.)
At the Berlin (or Potsdam) Conference (July 17–Aug. 2, 1945) President
Truman, Premier Stalin, and Prime Minister Clement Attlee of Britain set forth
the guiding principles of the Allied Control Council: Germany's complete
disarmament and demilitarization, destruction of its war potential, rigid
control of industry, and decentralization of the political and economic
structure. Pending final determination of territorial questions at a peace
conference, the three victors agreed to the ultimate transfer of the city of
Konigsberg (now Kaliningrad) and its adjacent area to the USSR and to the
administration by Poland of former German territories lying generally east of
the Oder-Neisse Line. For purposes of control, Germany was divided into four
national occupation zones.
The Western powers were unable to agree with the USSR on any fundamental
issues. Work of the Allied Control Council was hamstrung by repeated Soviet
vetoes; and finally, on March 20, 1948, Russia walked out of the Council.
Meanwhile, the U.S. and Britain had taken steps to merge their zones
economically (Bizone); on May 31, 1948, the U.S., Britain, France, and the
Benelux countries agreed to set up a German state comprising the three Western
zones. The USSR reacted by clamping a blockade on all ground communications
between the Western zones and West Berlin, an enclave in the Soviet zone. The
Western Allies countered by organizing a gigantic airlift to fly supplies into
the beleaguered city. The USSR was finally forced to lift the blockade on May
12, 1949.
The Federal Republic of Germany was proclaimed on May 23, 1949, with its
capital at Bonn. In free elections, West German voters gave a majority in the
Constituent Assembly to the Christian Democrats, with the Social Democrats
largely making up the opposition. Konrad Adenauer became chancellor, and Theodor
Heuss of the Free Democrats was elected first president.
The East German states adopted a more centralized constitution for the
Democratic Republic of Germany, put into effect on Oct. 7, 1949. The USSR
thereupon dissolved its occupation zone but Soviet troops remained. The Western
Allies declared that the East German Republic was a Soviet creation undertaken
without self-determination and refused to recognize it. Soviet forces created a
state controlled by the secret police with a single party, the Socialist Unity
(Communist) Party.
Agreements in Paris in 1954 giving the Federal Republic full independence
and complete sovereignty came into force on May 5, 1955. Under the agreement,
West Germany and Italy became members of the Brussels treaty organization
created in 1948 and renamed the Western European Union. West Germany also became
a member of NATO. In 1955, the USSR recognized the Federal Republic. The Saar
territory, under an agreement between France and West Germany, held a plebiscite
and despite economic links to France, elected to rejoin West Germany on Jan. 1,
1957.
The division between West Germany and East Germany was intensified when the
Communists erected the Berlin Wall in 1961. In 1968, the East German Communist
leader, Walter Ulbricht, imposed restrictions on West German movements into West
Berlin. The Soviet-bloc invasion of Czechoslovakia in Aug. 1968 added to the
tension. West Germany signed a treaty with Poland in 1970, renouncing force and
setting Poland's western border as the Oder-Neisse Line. It subsequently resumed
formal relations with Czechoslovakia in a pact that “voided” the Munich treaty
that gave Nazi Germany the Sudetenland. By 1973, normal relations were
established between East and West Germany and the two states entered the United
Nations.
West German chancellor Willy Brandt, winner of a Nobel Peace Prize for his
foreign policies, was forced to resign in 1974 when an East German spy was
discovered to be one of his top staff members. Succeeding him was a moderate
Social Democrat, Helmut Schmidt. Schmidt staunchly backed U.S. military strategy
in Europe, staking his political fate on placing U.S. nuclear missiles in
Germany unless the Soviet Union reduced its arsenal of intermediate missiles. He
also strongly opposed nuclear freeze proposals.
Helmut Kohl of the Christian Democrat Party became chancellor in 1982. An
economic upswing in 1986 led to Kohl's reelection. The fall of the Communist
government in East Germany left only Soviet objections to German reunification
to be dealt with. On the night of Nov. 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall was opened,
making reunification all but inevitable. In July 1990, Kohl asked Soviet leader
Gorbachev to drop his objections in exchange for financial aid from (West)
Germany. Gorbachev agreed, and on Oct. 3, 1990, the German Democratic Republic
acceded to the Federal Republic and Germany became a united and sovereign state
for the first time since 1945.
A reunited Berlin serves as the official capital of unified Germany,
although the government would continue to have administrative functions in Bonn
during the 12-year transition period. The issues of the cost of reunification
and the modernization of the former East Germany were serious considerations
facing the reunified nation.
In its most important election in decades, on Sept. 27, 1998, Germans chose
Social Democrat Gerhard Schroder as chancellor over Christian Democrat incumbent
Helmut Kohl, ending a 16-year-long rule that oversaw the reunification of
Germany and symbolized the end of the cold war in Europe. A centrist, Schroder
campaigned for “the new middle” and promised to rectify Germany's high
unemployment rate of 10.6%.
Tension between the old-style left-wing and the more probusiness pragmatists
within Schroder's government came to a head with the abrupt resignation of
Finance Minister Oskar Lafontaine in March 1999, who was also chairman of the
ruling Social Democratic Party. Lafontaine's plans to raise taxes on industry
and raise German wages—already nearly the highest in the world—went against the
more centrist policies of Schroder. Hans Eichel was chosen to become the next
finance minister.
Germany joined the other NATO allies in the military conflict in Kosovo in
1999. Before the Kosovo crisis, Germans had not participated in an armed
conflict since World War II. Germany agreed to take 40,000 Kosovar refugees, the
most of any NATO country.
In Dec. 1999, former chancellor Helmut Kohl and other high officials in the
Christian Democrat Party (CDU) admitted accepting tens of millions of dollars in
illegal donations during the 1980s and 1990s. The enormity of the scandal led to
the virtual dismemberment of the CDU in early 2000, a party that had long been a
stable conservative force in German politics.
In July 2000, Schroder managed to pass significant tax reforms that would
lower the top income-tax rate from 51% to 42% by 2005. He also eliminated the
capital gains tax on companies selling shares in other companies, a measure that
was expected to spur mergers. In May 2001, the German Parliament authorized the
payment of $4.4 billion in compensation to 1.2 million surviving Nazi-era slave
laborers.
Schroder was narrowly reelected in Sept. 2002, defeating conservative
businessman Edmund Stoiber. Schroder's Social Democrats and coalition partner,
the Greens, won a razor-thin majority in Parliament. Schroder's deft handling of
Germany's catastrophic floods in August and his tough stance against U.S. plans
for a preemptive attack on Iraq buoyed him in the weeks leading up to the
election. Germany's continued reluctance to support the U.S.'s call for military
action against Iraq severely strained its relations with Washington.
Germany's recession continued in 2003—for the previous three years Europe's
biggest economy had the lowest growth rate among EU countries. In Aug. 2003,
Schroder unfurled an ambitious fiscal reform package, and called his proposal
“the most significant set of structural reforms in the social history of
Germany.” The reforms reduced some of the benefits of Germany's generous social
welfare system, including national health insurance and unemployment
compensation.
Gerhardt Schroeder's Social Democratic Party (SPD) suffered a devastating
defeat in local elections in May 2005, ending the party's 39-year reign in
Germany's most populous state, North Rhine-Westphalia. The election was seen as
a referendum on Schroeder's economic reform programs, which have done little to
rejuvenate the economy and have angered many Germans accustomed to their
country's generous social welfare programs. The reforms have reduced such
programs as unemployment benefits at a time when unemployment has reached an
alarming 12%. Schroeder announced that he will seek early elections, in Fall
2005 instead of Sept. 2006, and appears to be taking a gamble that despite this
defeat, when given the bald choice between the SPD and the conservative CDU and
its leader Angela Merkel, the electorate will continue to support him.