Unification of Germany

“ Thus while the kings of England, France, and Spain were gradually consolidating their dominions, and building up strong centralized monarchies on the ruins of Feudalism, the sovereigns of Germany, neglecting the affairs of their own kingdom, were allowing it to become split up into a vast number of virtually independent states, the ambitions and jealousies of whose rulers were to postpone the unification of Germany for four or five hundred years—until our own day. ”

“ But now two un-German words, "unification" and "uniformity," expressing un-German tendencies, are carrying the Germans into despotism. Germany will be Prussianized, and Prussia Germanized, say the unificators; but all will, in the end, be compelled to give way before the republicans and socialists. The high schools of Germany are all infected with the revolutionary doctrines and Masonic ideas.
What shall we say of Austria? [82] Thanks to "liberalism," it has disappeared, and is now a dualism in its government and tri-parliamentary in its system. ”

“ It was most advanced in civilization and wealth, although inferior in numbers. But the Slavs, the Magyars and the Italians, stimulated by the revolutionary movements of 1848, were striving for national autonomy, and although Austria had held the foremost place in the later periods of the ancient German empire and then after the Napoleonic wars in the German Confederacy, it seemed problematic whether her large non-German interests would permit her to play a leading part now in the political unification of Germany under a constitutional government. ”

“ We demand the unification of all Germans in the Greater Germany on the basis of the right of self-determination of peoples.
“2. We demand equality of rights for the German people in respect to the other nations; abrogation of the peace treaties of Versailles and St. Germain.” (1708-PS)
An even clearer statement of these goals is contained in Hitler’s speech at Munich on 15 March 1939, in which he said:
“My foreign policy had identical aims. ”

“ The Germans are in occupation of Austria-Hungary and they have the power. They may disguise their enslavement of this vast empire under various formulas, such as extension of the Zollverein, economic union of the Central Empires, unification of the commercial laws of Austria and Germany, etc.; or they may even, as a subterfuge, to lull the fears of the Allies to sleep, give up the use of any positive formula, the final result will always be the same, the political seizure by Germany of the Hapsburg Monarchy cloaked under the decent pretext of economic measures. ”

“ The country is in a prosperous state, and nothing but its passionate desire to recover Alsace and to avenge Sedan appears threatening to its future. {1102} The new German Empire. While the army of the Germans was still besieging Paris, and King William and Prince Bismarck were at Versailles, in January, 1871, the last act which completed the unification and nationalization of Germany was performed. This was the assumption of the title of Emperor by King William, in response to the prayer of the princes of Germany and of the North German Parliament. ”

“ Millions of Germans in Alsace-Lorraine, Bohemia, Poland, and East Prussia were transferred to alien domination; millions of others in German Austria were denied the right of self-determination in the form of union with Germany ”

“ German unity suffered, but national unity was a far-off ideal in Northern Europe in the thirteenth century. The great development of trade, wealth, law, literature, and civilisation showed that Germany was far from being an absolute loser by the change of system. Unluckily the power of these lesser rulers did not, as in France, prepare the way for a strong monarchy when the time grew ripe for a single government. Germany paid the penalty for her premature unity under her early kings by her inability to set up a national authority when national states became possible. ”

“ The German people will never forget that its unity, personified in the Empire, is the principal condition of its power, its greatness and its prosperity. And the Empire will infallibly find the surest guarantee of its stability in the progressive development of free institutions. The Germans are like every other strong people—fidelity will increase with freedom. So we wish most sincerely and we confidently hope, that united Germany may flourish and blossom forever, a glory and a blessing to herself and to all the world! ”

“ When the army has been brought to such a state as to command respect, then I will take the first opportunity to declare war with Austria, burst asunder the German Confederation, bring the middle and smaller States into subjection, and give Germany a national union under the leadership of Prussia. ”

“ Delenda est Prussia, understanding thereby not, of course, the inhabitants of Prussian territory as such, but Prussia as a State-system and as an independent Power in Europe, must be the watchword in the present crisis of every well-wisher of Humanity, Germany included. A united Germany, if that be insisted upon, by all means let there be—a federation of all the German peoples with its capital, for that matter, as of old, at Frankfurt-on-the-Main, but with no dominant State and, if possible, excluding Prussia altogether, but certainly as constituted at present. ”

“ Welcoming the fact that the German people, freely exercising their right of self-determination, have expressed their will to bring about the unity of Germany as a state so that they will be able to serve the peace of the world as an equal and sovereign partner in a united Europe ”

“ If the great and enlightened German States, occupying, as they do, a central and commanding position in Europe, shall succeed in establishing such a confederated government, securing at the same time to the citizens of each State local governments adapted to the peculiar condition of each, with unrestricted trade and intercourse with each other, it will be an important era in the history of human events. Whilst it will consolidate and strengthen the power of Germany, it must essentially promote the cause of peace, commerce, civilization, and constitutional liberty throughout the world. ”

“ Germany acknowledges and will respect strictly the independence of Austria, within the frontiers which may be fixed in a Treaty between that State and the Principal Allied and Associated Powers; she agrees that this independence shall be inalienable, except with the consent of the Council of the League of Nations. ”

“ If, for the whole or part of the territory, the League of Nations decides in favour of union with Germany, it will be the duty of the League of Nations to cause the German Government to be re-established in the government of the territory specified by the League. ”

“ Where there are no common interests there can be no unity of purpose, much less of action. The German Confederation, it is true, was declared [Pg 27] everlastingly indissoluble; yet the Confederation, and its organ, the Diet, never represented German unity. The very highest pitch to which centralization was ever carried in Germany was the establishment of the Zollverein; by this the States on the North Sea were also forced into a Customs Union of their own, Austria remaining wrapped up in her separate prohibitive tariff. ”

“ Austria claimed to range itself with a foreign population of thirty millions within the German Federation; in other words, to reduce the German national union to a partnership with all the nationalities of Central Europe, to throw the weight of an overwhelming influence against any system of free representative government, and to expose Germany to war where no interests but those of the Pole or the Magyar might be at stake. ”

“ Although the Congress of Vienna had established a new Germanic confederation, (Deutsche Bund) and a federative diet charged with the maintenance of peace at home and abroad, yet it was soon perceived and felt that the kind of union obtained by means of this confederation was more formal than real. ... The late King of Prussia was one of the first to perceive, that, in order to unite Germany in reality, something more cogent than the federative diet was indispensable. ”

“ In the same way the Poles and Ukrainians of the Dual Monarchy must be free to unite with their co-nationals across existing frontiers, and it is obvious that the same right of self-determination cannot be denied to the German provinces of Austria, should they desire to enter Germany as a federal unit. ”

“ Germany’s feet first trod that road when German policy was expanded from a European to a universal policy, from the constructive defence of German unity and interests in Europe to the unlimited megalomania of modern German Imperialism to which there could be but one issue. The world does not long tolerate a restless, powerful, covetous, braggart without combining to keep him in order. ”

“ The Zollverein, the Reform associations, the hue and cry openly made about unity, the very entrance of Austria into the Holstein war, and latterly the alliance between the liberals and a statesman whose principles they have uniformly opposed, all indicate the popular effervescence, and excite a suspicion that ere long Germany will be united. All the machinery of which governments can avail themselves is used by Austria and the secondary princes to ward off the danger which menaces them. ”

“ Or has the single state exhausted our political ability? Are we willing to acknowledge this? We have had very little idea yet of a community of nations. The great fault of Germany is not that she overestimates her own power of achievement, which is indeed marvellous, but that she has never yet had any conception of a community of nations. Let her apply all her own theory of the subordination of the individual to the whole to the subordination of Germany to an allied Europe, and she would be a most valuable member of a European league. ”

“ There is no such crushing defeat of a strong nation recorded in history.
1871.
Even before the capitulation of Paris the natural political result of the victory was secured to Germany. The cooperation of the three Southern States in the war removed the last barrier to a union of all, except Austria, under the [Pg 448] lead of Prussia. That which the great majority of the people desired was also satisfactory to the princes: the "North-German Union" was enlarged and transformed into the "German Empire," by including Bavaria, Würtemberg and Baden. ”

“ In the late 'sixties and early 'seventies it had seemed as if united Germany was to play quite a different political rôle from historic Austria or Prussia. Universal equal suffrage had been introduced in the North German Confederation and extended to the empire. The North German Confederation had legalized coalitions and associations of artisans for trade purposes. ”

“ The cherished aspiration for national unity which for ages has inspired the many millions of people speaking the same language, inhabiting a contiguous and compact territory, but unnaturally separated and divided by dynastic jealousies and the ambition of short-sighted rulers, has been attained, and Germany now contains a population of about 34,000,000, united, like our own, under one Government for its relations with other powers, but retaining in its several members the right and power of control of their local interests, habits, and institutions. ”

“ Some friends of Austria in the West use also the argument, that we are fighting Germany and its Prussian militarism, and that Germany, therefore, must not be strengthened by being permitted to annex the German provinces of Austria. ”

“ The present war is to be fought out to the end, not so as to humble France and interfere in her internal concerns, but in order to assure to Europe the blessings of a solid peace based on the claims of justice and of national independence. France must be satisfied with reasonable boundaries, and Prussia be restored to the limits of 1805 or their equivalent. Germany is to be freed from the dictation of the French, and become a "constitutional federation," with a boundary "parallel to the Rhine." Austria is to be asked to join the present league, regaining Tyrol and the Mincio frontier. ”

“ It would mean, of course, the alliance of all the States of Western Europe, large and small (and including both a remodelled Germany and a largely remodelled Austria) in one great Federation—whose purpose would be partly to unite and preserve Europe against any common foe, from the East or elsewhere, and partly to regulate any overweening ambition of a member of the Federation, such as might easily become a menace to the other members. ”

“ Instead of strengthening the allegiance of the Germans towards their sovereign, the imperial title was the means of steadily undermining it. To the connexion of their kingdom with the Empire they owe the fact that for centuries they were the most divided of European nations, and that they have only recently begun to create a genuinely united state. France was made up of a number of loosely connected lands, each with its own lord, when Germany, under Otto, was to a large extent moved by a single will, well organized and strong. ”

“ Thus from the time of the war of the old German electors against the Holy Empire, and of the treaty of Westphalia, which sanctioned their independence and broke in pieces the former unity of the nation, Germany continued under an eclipse, until the period of the rise of the house of Brandenburg from the midst of the anarchy of the little German States, when a rival was given to the house of Austria and a strong dualism established. Dualism is not, however, the only mode in which a society can be constituted, at once solid and elastic. ”