German History: A Captivating Guide to the History of Germany and Germania

by Captivating History

If you want to discover the captivating history of Germany, then keep reading...Two captivating manuscripts in one History of A Captivating Guide to German History, Starting from 1871 through the First World War, Weimar Republic, and World War II to the A Captivating Guide to the History of a Region in Europe Where Germanic Tribes Dominated and How It Transformed into GermanyGermany is one of the richest and most influential countries in the world, which is amazing when you consider that the nation is only about the size of the US states of Oregon and Washington combined. It’s even more astounding when you consider that at the end of World War II, every major German city (and many minor ones) had been flattened by the Allied bombing campaign. Still more amazing is that the country has gone from international pariah and home of the Holocaust to one of the most well-regarded and humanitarian nations on Earth.Some of the topics covered in part 1 of this book The intrigue and wars of the famous “Iron Chancellor” Otto von Bismarck and how his political maneuverings united the German states into oneThe bizarre upbringing and strident personality of Kaiser Wilhelm IIThe rise of Germany to world power between 1871 and 1914The reasons for Germany entering World War OneThe German experience of World War One and its startling defeatThe Versailles Treaty and why it was hated by most GermansThe horrible hyperinflation of the early 1920s when the German government printed 100-billion mark notes that were worthlessAnti-Semitism in Germany and EuropeThe wild culture of Weimar BerlinThe rise of Hitler and why it happenedHitler’s Germany and WWIIThe post-war division of GermanyThe Berlin WallThe reunification of Germany in 1989 and moreSome of the topics covered in part 2 of this book The Early History of GermaniaThe Barbarian LeadersThe Merovingians and the CarolingiansThe Holy Roman EmpireThe ReformationThe Thirty Years’ WarThe Age of EnlightenmentNapoleon and the Revolution in GermanyThe Many Wars and the UnificationWorld War IWorld War IIModern GermanyAnd much, much more!Scroll up and click the “add to cart” button to learn more about the History of Germany!

Genres: History

428 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 14, 2021

Reviews

[Kathryn Nelson · Rating 3 out of 5]

While this did provide a great synopsis on German history, I had a number of complaints.

First, Captivating History needs to fire their editor. There were a number of typos littered throughout the entire book. It destroyed the credibility of the text!

I also found the quality of the two manuscripts to be drastically different. I thoroughly enjoyed Book 1 (Germany) and would rate it independently a 4.5. Book 2 (Germania), however, was a snooze and I would probably give it a 2. There was some overlap in content between the two books, such as the World Wars and Berlin Wall era, and book 1 just did a much better job describing the events. I would have been thoroughly confused (in addition to disinterested) if I didn’t have that context already.

I also felt as though book 2 did not live up to the name of captivating history. Broader themes were generally glazed over in favor of battle minutiae.

I wish I had just read the first book and moved on from there. I ended up struggling to find the will to finish during the entire second book.

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However, I did learn a lot, and want to record my notes here:

BOOK 1: GERMANY

Pre-WWI
- Prussia created one of the first standing armies in Europe and was famous for military genius
- The Junkers was the landowning class of Prussia. The peasants on these estates could not leave, kind of like slaves
- Austria and Prussia went to war over territories they won in a war against the Dutch. Prussia won.
- the iron chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, is largely considered responsible for the unification of Germany in 1871
- Bismarck definitively started a war with France next by editing a telegraph to make it appear like the Prussian monarch insulted the French ambassador. They were the last power that would stand in the way of German unification
- Kaiser Wilhelm I had a disabled arm
- Communism and Stalinism are ideological cousins, but communism is more militant and believes violence is needed to overthrow the government

World War I
- Lenin was in exile during WWI but Germany sent him back into Russia to start the Bolshevik Revolution and get Russia to remove itself from the war (on the side of the allied powers) in 1917
- The US entered the war because of the Zimmermann Telegraph, where Germany told Mexico they would support them in a war against the US for formerly Mexican territory (New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas)
- German U-boats, or submarines, were a primary method of warfare
- Russia entered the war because Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, Russia’s ally. Serbians (the Black Hand) murdered the crown prince of Austria Archduke Ferdinand when they were visiting Bosnia-Herzegovina (which would be part of their empire for 30 years per a treaty between Russia and Turkey, who had just lost a war and had previously claimed this territory). Bosnia-Herzegovina had a large Serbian population though so the Serbs wanted it
- Germany entered the war in alliance with Austria-Hungary and Turkey
- France and GB followed because France had treaty obligations to Tsar Nicholas II

Treaty of Versailles
- Germany only finished paying reparations for World War I in 2010
- Kaiser Wilhelm I self-exiled in Holland after the end of the war and lived a relatively peaceful and luxurious existence there
- The treaty of Versailles limited the size of the German army, demanded reparations, ensured the loss of East Prussia to Poland, and the demilitarization of the German-French border
- President Woodrow wilson called WWI “the war to end all wars”

The Weimar Republic
- the Weimar Republic ruled after the Kaiser abdicated after WWI
- Berlin had a largely liberal culture in the 1920s filled with art, theater, clubs and jazz, and sexual experimentation
- The Spartacist League (a group of communists) attacked Berlin and put fear into the common people about communism
- In 1923, hitler led a “March on Berlin” and tried to overthrow the government, but failed

The Nazis, Hitler, and anti-semitism
- “fuhrer” = leader
- Hitler was Austrian
- His father was abusive and his mother, who he loved, died of breast cancer. The doctor was Jewish, and hitler allowed the me doctor and his wife to flee Austria safely during the holocaust
- Hitler’s niece killed herself, likely due to the oppressive nature of their relationship
- Hitler was denied admission to art schools due to his inability to draw people
- The ideas of racial supremacy start at the top of society, and from the lower middle class down. They also especially appeal to young males
- The mayor of Vienna, where Hitler lived, was also extremely anti-Semitic
- Anti-Semitism can be traced all the way back to the Roman Empire. Sources below
- The Jews were the only monotheistic culture that the Romans conquered, and they refused to worship the Roman emperor as a god
- People blamed the Jews for allowing Christ to die instead of the murderer Barabbas
- Jews didn’t appear to be affected by the bubonic plague in the 1340s and 1350s as much as other groups, and that’s largely because they lived in isolated communities at that time
- Jews were accused of crazy myths, such as that they used the blood of Christian virgins for matzoh bread
- Only Jews were allowed to lend money at interest, so they got a bad rap for taking advantage of poor people
- Karl Marx was a Jew, so they were often blamed for communism
- Jews were forbidden from participating in a lot of guilds in Germany
- Jews represented only about 1% of the population
- Hitler evaded the draft in Austria and went to fight in Bavaria instead
- Hitler remained in the army after WWI and was in charge of keeping an eye on DAP, of the German workers party. He soon realized he shared a lot of beliefs with DAP, which eventually became the Nazis. One of the beliefs was a hatred of the treaty of Versailles
- Hitler’s speaking ability led him to lead the Nazis
- The Nazis were a minority group throughout the 1920s, until the Great Depression
- The Nazis designed wings to appeal to specific demographic groups, such as Hitler Youth and the League of German Maidens. They believed a woman’s place was in the home, raising large groups of children that could help colonize the world
- Hindenburg (the president of Germany) named Hitler chancellor as a “power sharing agreement” arranged by von Papen. They thought this would rein the Nazis and their street violence in
- Poland was hit hardest by WWII, with 20% of the overall population being killed and 90% of the Jewish population
- The burning of the Reichstag, or German parliament building, in 1933 by a Dutch communist gave the Nazis an excuse to pass the enabling act, which allowed Hitler to rule by decree for the next 4 years
- Dachau was the first concentration camp and was first used for communists
- Helen Keller’s books were included in nazi book burnings
- “That was but a prelude: where they burn books they will ultimately burn people as well” - Heinrich Heine, whose books were burned
- After hearing rumors that Rohm, the head of the SA, wanted to replace the army and maybe even Hitler, Hitler rounded a bunch of leaders up and had them killed. This would be known as the night of the long knives, and a lot of Germans were shocked but relieved since they caused so much violence
- When the president, Hindenburg, died, Hitler assumed total power and was never elected into office
- Hitler created the Autobahn
- The Nuremberg laws prevented marriage between a German and a Jew
- Jesse Owens, a black American runner, angered Hitler at the Berlin Olympics of 1936
- Hitler used the death of a diplomat at the hands of a Polish Jew in France as a reason to persecute the Jews, which led to the Night Of Broken Glass
- Hitler first waltzed into Austria, then the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia, but the invasion of Poland is what kicked off WWII
- Hitler had 3 goals - “living space” in the USSR, the removal of the Jews from Germany, and the destruction of communism
- In 1939, the German and Russian governments offered a nonaggression pact, which was shocking since they were ideological enemies and had just supported opposite sides of the Spanish civil war
- On sep 1, 1939, Hitler invaded Poland. France and Britain declared war on Sep 3. Stalin invaded the other side of Poland
- Russia also invaded Finland, and won although sustained a lot of losses
- Germany offered Norway a nonaggression pact which would allow them to use Norwegian waters, but the British wouldn’t allow it and invaded Norway
- On June 25, 1940, the French surrendered to Germany
- Germany could not defeat Britain
- Hitler attacked the Soviet Union in 1941, obviously breaking the terms of the nonaggression pact they had. Churchill had warned Stalin but he chose not to believe him
- Hitler aided Mussolini (Italy) in his invasion of Greece, which was disastrous
- In December 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, and Germany declared war on the US per their pact with Japan
- 90k men were captured in Stalingrad and only 5k returned to Germany (10 years later)
- The D-Day landings were when the US successfully landed on French soil
- Hitler commit suicide on April 30, 1945 and Germany surrendered the war on May 8
- The first victims of Auschwitz were the Soviet prisoners of war
- Jewish children were expelled from schools and Jewish shop owners were required to transfer all businesses to the German government
- The US, Canada, and Cuba all turned around a ship called the St Louis with Jewish refugees
- The Nazis started by killing the Jews in public by gunshot, but it was deemed inefficient and potentially psychologically troubling to civilians and Nazis
- There was a prisoners revolt at auschwitz on Oct 7, 1944
- Auschwitz killed 12-14k people per day
- There was 6 extermination camps, but hundreds of concentration camps
- 25-35 guards were gunned down by US liberating troops at Dachau

Post-war Germany
- from 1945-1949 Germany was divided into 4 zones of control (American, soviet, British, and French)
- In 1948 Stalin ordered a blockade of Berlin to force the Allies from the city, but US planes just dropped food (and even candy) on the city for nearly a year, arriving every 30 seconds at the height. This was known as the Berlin Airlift
- West Germany experienced an economic miracle while Soviet occupied east Germany struggled
- The Berlin Wall was built in 1961
- There’s an entire museum dedicated to the ways people tried to escape from east to west
- Mikhail Gorbachev became the premier of the Soviet Union in 1985 and decided to move away from communism
- The Berlin Wall came down on Nov 9, 1989 and Germany United once more
- A new party known as “alternative for Germany” has gained a spot in the political stage and is often compared to nazism, which scares people
- Germany currently takes in more refugees than any other country
- 16% of Americans claim German heritage, which is more than any other ethnic group

BOOK 2: GERMANIA

- Homo sapiens settled in Germany near their genetic cousins, the Neanderthals. Neanderthals share at least 99% of their dna with Homo sapiens
- Humans crafted the first music instruments in the Hohle Fels cave: two flutes crafted from bird bones and mammoth ivory
- Between 5k and 3.5k years ago, humans switched from hunter gatherers to farmers
- The celts and the Germanic tribes were warfaring tribes that often battled the Roman Empire
- Women could be warriors in the celts
- The Druids were the religious leaders of the Celts that encouraged warfare but were excluded from it. They also preached outside
- Romans grouped the Germanic tribes together because of their common language, even though they often fought amongst themselves
- Rome conquered some of Germania (Germania Romana) but not all (the rest was called Germania Barbarica)
- By the 5th century, Rome had weakened and Germanic tribes conquered part of Rome
- The leader of the franks conquered Rome but converted to Christianity by 496, which allowed the Romans to accept their rule
- The Pope crowned Charlemagne emperor in 800, which was the first time it was considered an empire composed of many provinces ruled by many regional kings
- The Franks did not have primogeniture and instead divided their kingdoms between all their male heirs
- Otto I was crowned as the first Holy Roman Emperor in the 10th century and him and his father paved the way for many regional kings ruling under a United emperor
- The 14th century witnessed the plague, or Black Death, which killed a third of the European population and depressed the economy
- In 1495, a conference of sorts called the Diet of Worms was held to introduce a series of reforms, the most important being “eternal peace” which dictated that nobles had to settle their disputes in court instead of on the battlefield as they had historically. This increased the sense of unity and contributed positively to stability
- Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press in the 1440s, which allowed the spread of ideas that created the Reformation to spread
- Martin Luther first became famous for his Ninety Five Theses that criticized the Catholic Church and the sale of indulgences (certificates that allowed you or your dead loved ones to be absolved of your sins for a price)
- He later became famous for publishing a German bible, which standardized the German language
- Luther then sided with the authorities during the Peasants rebellion in the early 1500s
- After the Princes’ Revolution, the princes were given the right to decide between Catholic and Protestant for their territories and people
- The Thirty Years War that started in 1618 was largely a Catholic vs Protestant conflict, with Sweden supporting the Protestants
- It is estimated that Germany lost at least 1/3 of its population to the Thirty Years War (and the witch hunts of the time)
- The French Revolution lasted from 1789-1799 and was closely followed by the Napoleonic Wars of 1803-1815
- Marie Antoinette was the sister of the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire
- The Holy Roman Empire dissolved during the Napoleonic Wars
- The revolts of 1848, in which the peasants were violently suppressed, led to a delay in the unity of Germany and a continuation of regional absolutist rule
- The Third Reich was called the third after the first (Holy Roman Empire) and second (Germany under Otto von Bismarck)
- Western Germany prospered so much more than Eastern Germany because the US sent a billion dollars of economic aid
- The Allied Powers ended their occupation of Germany in 1949, only a few years after the occupation began
- Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in Russia and declared they would no longer use military force to preserve communism in Eastern Europe and that these countries (Romania, Hungary, etc) were free to choose whichever political system they wanted, which led to the collapse of the Berlin Wall
- Even today, there are major economic differences between East and West Germany, with wages being 20% lower in East Germany
- Angela Merkel grew up in Eastern Germany and became the first female chancellor. She was named the most powerful woman in the world 14 consecutive times and the second-most powerful person in the world (after Putin). She was also the longest standing leader in an EU country

[Jerry Jares · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is two books for the price of one. It's a great way to get an overview of a subject without a huge outlay of time. However, I always find these books full of interesting information.

HISTORY OF GERMANY --
If you are looking for a clear explanation of how Germany became a country in 1871, this is it. We often hear that WWI happened because the Archduke was murdered in Sarajevo. However, the truth is more interesting, and a bit more involved. One extra fact is that Archduke Franz Ferdinand was very unpopular).

There were huge political changes taking effect in the Ottoman Empire and the Astro-Hungarian Empire, all making movements after the first world war. This book is an overview of Germany, from its inception to its current status. A strength of this book is that it gave the 'why' of things. That made this book useful as a reference in the future.

GERMANIA --
I've been doing genealogy for 40+ years and always wondered why relatives, living in close proximity to each other, listed their country of origin as Prussia, Russia, Poland, Germany, or even Poland, depending on the time they immigrated. Captivating History explains how that happened in wonderful detail.

It also became obvious how Louis got to be such a common name for French royalty prior to the French Revolution. Louis the Pious was the first Louis and he was the King of the Franks and co-emperor with his father, Charlemagne.

[Kelsey · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an interesting book due to the new information that I learned. The english colonists who came to the United States had a population of Irish descendants which were greater than the actual population of Ireland. Another interesting aspect was that the German immigrants were not German but Alsatian, Bavarian, and Swiss. This book goes on with in depth insight and information about the treaty of Versailles and Napoleon and Germania. If you are already deep in to the readings of Captivating History, then you will enjoy this read.

[Kat · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very good summary. Looking for something more detailed.