West Germany

“ The greater prosperity and stability of West German remained an obsessive attraction to the East Germans - particularly the trained and the educated - who continued to flee to the West in large numbers. By the early 1960s it had become apparent to the leadership that it could not consolidate control over the political and economic system as long as some of the nation's most valuable workers "voted with their feet" and moved west. ”

“ It is obvious that the German gains on the West and the East, important as they are, are relatively small by comparison with the enormous seizures which Germany has effected at the expense of Austria-Hungary, of half the Balkans, and of Turkey. ”

“ THE GERMAN BURNS. The extreme southwestern corner of Germany is an irregular right-angle, formed by the course of the Rhine. Within this angle and an hypothenuse drawn from the Lake of Constance to Carlsruhe lies a wild mountain-region—a lateral offshoot from the central chain which extends through Europe from west to east—known to all readers of robber-romances as the Black Forest. It is a cold, undulating upland, intersected with deep valleys which descend to the plains of the Rhine and the Danube, and covered with great tracts of fir-forest. ”

“ One concrete result was the conclusion of special agreements in January 1971 allowing visa-free travel between these countries. The East German regime also remains a staunch supporter of economic and technological cooperation among the Communist nations through the Council on Economic Mutual Assistance which is headquartered in Moscow.
c. Relations with West Germany In one sense, East Germany serves as a mere instrument of Soviet policy towards the Federal Republic of Germany, the West Berlin authorities, and the Western Allies. ”

“ The first and principal point of the German eastern policy is to hold Austria-Hungary; Austria is to Germany a bridge, as the title of a Pangerman pamphlet has it—the bridge to the Balkans and Turkey, and therefore to Asia and Africa. Germany in union with Austria presses into Russia; the nominal freedom of the Baltic provinces, of Russian Poland and the Ukraine, is a temporary expedient. Belgium, Alsace-Lorraine, and the West in general, have, as the world situation stands to-day, a much smaller importance for the Germans, if they succeed in winning the East ”

“ They show the fundamental opposition between East and West Europe, an opposition which becomes of world-significance when we remember that the line through Germany which History indicates as the frontier between East and West is the very line which we have on other grounds taken as demarking the Heartland in the strategical sense from the Coastland.
In West Europe there are two principal elements, the Romance and the Teutonic. As far as the two chief nations, Britain and France, are concerned, there is and can be in modern times no question of conquest of the one by the other. ”

“ There had been no repose for Europe yet—incessant tribal changes; a surging mass of humanity pouring from one land into another. The troubled continent was a great, seething caldron, from which was to emerge a new civilization. But soon after this final convulsion of the Hunnish invasion the migrations ceased, and now, about the year 570, the foundations of the present European divisions began to appear. In Britain, subjugated by the Angles and Saxons, we see foreshadowed the Anglo-Saxon England of to-day; in the country lying east and west of the Rhine, France and Germany begin to be outlined ”

“ We may approach the subject from a somewhat different angle by considering what percentage of her total population Germany could call to the Colours under stress—and she is to-day under stress. Savage tribes have been known to put one-fifth under arms. An industrial State such as Germany cannot go to this extreme. Yet by using every means within her power she makes a very close approach to it. In practically every village of which I secured figures in Saxony, Bavaria, Posen, East Prussia, West Prussia, Pomerania, Mecklenburg, and Oldenburg, a fifth or nearly a fifth have been called up. ”

“ These men trained to solitude in small bands, owing to the geographical exigencies of their northern country, become the founders of the particularist or individualistic nations, Great Britain and the United States among others. Those who had gone south, driven by pressure from behind, follow the Danube to the north and west, find the Rhine, and push on into what is now southwestern Europe. ”

“ Again, when any one says to you, "There is not much doing in the West," imagine a three hundred mile line with three quarters of a million soldiers standing in muddy brown water, and three quarters of a million more, too, whom they have just relieved, lying on beds of straw, too exhausted to remove their uniforms until it is time to wash; think of that line in which for every five minutes of every day a German [128] is being killed—and God knows how many English, French and Belgians. ”

“ There can be no doubt that Germany in already controlling Luxemburg, eagerly looks to Antwerp and to the Channel coast, and at the same time looks with disfavour upon Denmark. But it is safe to assume that Germany’s pressure on the West will be all the stronger and keener, if she has a huge economic Hinterland easily accessible on her eastern frontier. ”

“ While Germans of both Germany and Austria will ask for the separation from the new Slav state of large districts in the north of Silesia, Moravia and Bohemia, and in the west of Bohemia, there is little fear that their demands will be granted, especially as the German minorities concerned are themselves far from anxious to be incorporated into Germany. ”

“ The rulers at Constantinople, Sofia, Vienna, and Budapest are simply marionettes moved by threads which are pulled by Berlin according to her strategic needs.
[Pg 9]
Very often we hear it said, ‘Germany has created Mitteleuropa.’ This is another mistake. Geographically speaking, Mitteleuropa includes only Central Europe; and Germany’s dominion is infinitely further flung, extending as it does from the west front in France to the British front before Bagdad. If we wish to see things in the light of reality, we must say, for the present at least, ‘There is no longer any Germany ”

“ Although it is now relatively easy for East German citizens to travel in Eastern Europe and millions have taken advantage of this opportunity, there is little likelihood that the tight controls on travel to the West will be relaxed in the near future. ”

“ On this Saturday of which I write not a potato was to be bought in the West-end of Berlin, where the better classes live. Berlin had been without potatoes for nearly a week. To-day they had arrived, and the first to come were sent to the East-end. In the West-end the people are filled with more unquestioning praise of everything the Government does; they applaud when their Kaiser confers an Order upon their Crown Prince for something, not quite clear, which he is supposed to have accomplished at Verdun. Therefore they can wait for potatoes until the more critical East-end is supplied. ”

“ France is cutting her way up with the purse instead of the sword. The great Triad might alter the map of Europe. 'The sons of Hermann' would absorb Belgium and Holland; the Muscovite swallow Constantinople with its neighbouring appendages, and Austria convey ('the wise call it') the remainder of Turkey's Slavonic provinces. But they will do nothing of the kind. Germany has proved herself the natural guardian of the Eastern frontier of Europe. ”

“ I know that Germany is an ugly beast ready to jump at the throat of civilization the moment the word is said, the moment the leash is slipped. I know how they are working here, for that one end, blood and conquest and booty, with all their might, their energy, their strength. I know Germans. They believe. They obey. They think that whatever is told them by their master is the truth. ”

“ The occupation of Vienna or Berlin is more of a demonstrative character, whereas the occupation of Alsace-Lorraine, Poznan (Posen) and Prussian Silesia, Galicia, Moravia, Bohemia and of Croatia in the South has a great significance as a first step towards the organisation of Central Europe on anti-German lines.
The occupation of the Slav countries of Germany and Austria-Hungary is the end of Pan-German imperialism; Austria-Hungary is the weakest point of Germany, every weakening of Austria is a blow to Germanism. ”

“ The rule is that the growing people slowly but continually overflow their political boundary, which then advances to cover the successive flood plains of the national inundation, or yet farther to anticipate the next rise. This has been the history of Germany in its progress eastward across the Elbe, the Oder, the Vistula and the Niemen. The dream of a greater empire embraces all the German-speaking people from Switzerland, Tyrol and Steiermark to those outlying groups in the Baltic provinces of Russia and the related offshoot in Holland.314 [See map page 223.] ”

“ Only, never again a withered Reichsland! (imperial territory.) From Calais to Antwerp, Flanders, Limburg, Brabant, to behind the line of the Meuse forts, Prussian! (German Princes no longer haggle, German tribes no longer envy one another;) the Southern triangle with Alsace and Lorraine—and Luxemburg, too, if it desires—is to be an independent federated State, intrusted to a Catholic noble house. Then Germany would know for what it shed its blood. ”

“ That the maintenance of civilization rests today with that magnificent Teutonic stock which is represented alike by the two hotly contending rivals, England and Germany, as well as by Austria, Scandinavia, Switzerland, Holland, and Belgium, is as undeniably true as it is vigorously disputed. ”

“ Celtic tales of the migrations westward which brought them into their European seats are but lying legends, mere echoes of their later knowledge of the countries and nations to the eastward. Germany is, from the first, the home of the Germans: they are a seething mass; south-eastward as well as southwestward rove their restless hordes, disturbing for centuries the peace of the civilized world ”

“ Would we comprehend the Germany of to-day, we must hold firmly in our minds an epitome of what it has been, and see vividly the devious path of its development through the ages.
The German nation is of ancient lineage, and indeed belongs to the royal line of human descent, the Aryan; its ancestral roots running back until lost in the heart of Asia, in the mists of antiquity.
The home of the Aryan race is shrouded in mystery, as are the impelling causes which sent those successive tides of humanity into Europe. ”

“ I shall curse them both if they prevent you from tearing yourself away from the Donnish atmosphere and bachelor life of Oxford, and from throwing yourself into the fresh mental atmosphere of Germany and of German mind and life. You must take other journeys besides lake excursions and Highland courses. Why don't you go to Switzerland, with an excursion (by Berlin) to Breslau, to the German Oriental Congress? There is nothing like the German spirit, in spite of all its one-sidedness. ”

“ Geographical contours, economic forces, the trend of invention and social development, point to a unification of all Western Europe, but they certainly do not point to its Germanisation. I have already given reasons for anticipating that the French language may not only hold its own, but prevail against German in Western Europe. And there are certain other obstacles in the way even of the union of indisputable Germans. One element in Germany's present efficiency must become more and more of an encumbrance as the years pass. ”

“ The German view is very different. As colonists the Teutons do not shine, except, curiously enough, when under any Government but their own. Very well. They give you a slice of virgin territory. You develop it, and it increases in value a thousandfold in a couple of decades. When 'The Day' comes, should Great Britain be overwhelmed by the Triple Alliance, Germany takes back her former territory—and a lot besides—all ready for her much-wanted place in the sun."
"You're a jolly old croaker, Detroit," exclaimed the Sub. ”

“ Had not the uprising of the peasants been shamefully betrayed by the leaders of German culture and civilization, the development of the nation would, at that time, have already assumed a normal form, and not only would Germany be the equal of the other civilized nations, but as the first-born modern nation, would have held the roost prominent place among them. ”

“ Beyond these limits the former United Provinces, with the whole oceanic coast of Germany as far as the Elbe, and the cities of Bremen, Hamburg, and Lübeck, were incorporated with France. France now stretched to the Baltic, and, as Holstein was now incorporated with Denmark, France and Denmark had a common frontier. The Confederation of the Rhine was a protected state, and the Kingdom of Prussia and the self-styled ‘Empire’ of Austria could practically hardly claim a higher place. ”

“ Colonists were brought, specially from the Frisian lands, by whose means the Low-Dutch tongue was spread along the whole southern coast of the Baltic. German cities were founded. The marchlands grew into powerful German states. At last one of these marchlands, united with a German conquest still further cut off from the heart of the old German realm, has grown into a state which in our own days has become the Imperial power of Germany.
♦Internal geography of Germany.♦
The internal geography of the German kingdom is the greatest difficulty of such a work as the present. ”