The
fascinating history of Germany begins in a country of forests,
windswept coastlines and mountains inhabited by Celts and Germanic
tribes, who fought against the Roman Empire. Towards the s.
IX, the eastern regions of the Rhine had developed its own identity,
and for the first time could talk about sovereign "Germanic".
But the fate of the country remained for a long time in the hands of
the feudal rulers, moving from self-interest at the expense of a unified
state.
The Middle Ages was a period marked by barbarism and desolation, the
disputes of princes, religious wars, plagues and cultural obscurantism. With the configuration of a federal state in the s.
xix, laid the foundations of the tortuous path that led to the
unification of the war, from democracy to fascism and the Second World
War, and then to the stark division of the Cold War, peaceful
reunification and contemporary Germany.
From 100 BC, Germanic tribes east of the Rhine and the Romans began a bloody struggle for control of territory across the river until 9 AD, when the Roman general Varius lost three legions (about 20,000 men) in the bloody Battle of the Teutoburg Forest and the Romans abandoned their plans to expand eastward. Around 300 AD, had formed and four basic groups: Germans, Franks, Saxons and Goths.
The Roman presence is perceived today in the thermal baths and the amphitheater Treverorum Augusta (now Trier), as well as in other Roman relics Aachen, Xanten, Cologne, Bonn, Mainz (where you can find Roman shipwrecks s. IV) , Bingen (famous for its Roman surgical instruments), Koblenz, Augsburg and Regensburg. The vineyards of the Rhine and Moselle are a lasting tribute to the fans of the Romans for wine.
When the s. VII fighting broke out between aristocratic clans, the Merovingians were replaced by the Carolingians, who introduced the hierarchical structure of the Church. Kloster Lorsch, Hesse today is an extraordinary relic of that era. Since its grand residence in Aachen, Charlemagne [768-814], the greatest king of the Frankish monarchy, conquered Lombardy, appropriated part of Bavaria, held a 30-year war against the Saxons of the north and was crowned emperor by the Pope in 800. The tide turned in the s. IX, when the attacks of the Danes, Saracens and Magyars generated chaos in the eastern portion of the empire of Charlemagne from which emerged four dominant ducats: Bavaria, Franconia, Swabia and Saxony.
The funeral of Charlemagne in Aachen Cathedral which became court chapel was an important place of pilgrimage (to date). The Treaty of Verdun (843) led the progressive division of the kingdom, and when Louis the Child [900-911], grandson of Charlemagne's brother, died childless, the duchies francs of this (ie the Germans) chose a king among his own. Thus was born the first German monarch.
and in 1165, the year of the canonization of Charlemagne, was awarded the rights to freedom. Meanwhile, Henry the Lion, Guelph with special interest in Saxony and Bavaria, extended its influence to the east by germanizar and campaigns to convert the Slavs who populated much of the current East Germany, which today can still be a minority Slavic Sorbs, settled in the Spreewald region. Henry, who was well connected (his second English wife, Matilda, was the sister of Richard Lionheart), not only founded Braunschweig (where his tomb now lies), but also Munich, Lübeck and Lüneburg. In his heyday, his kingdom stretched from the North and the Baltic coast to the Alps, and from Westphalia to Pomerania (Poland).
The kingdom gained territory east and Italy, but soon fell apart as a result of premature deaths, disputes among aspirants to the throne Guelphs and Hohenstaufen, and the election of a king and a king-backed anti-Pope. At that time, the kings chose the Kurfürsten (Electors) but it was the Pope who crowned emperors the system that the emperors became reluctant lackeys. In 1245, the kingdom was plunged into the Great Interregnum or Antique called Terrible, when Pope Innocent IV deposed his own emperor, kings multiplied and central authority collapsed.
Although the central kingdom was now only a shadow of its former power, the eastward expansion was not affected at all. In the middle of s. XII, the lands east of the Oder River (now the eastern border of Germany) were occupied by peasants and German citizens. In the s. XIII, the Teutonic Knights continued to advance eastward passage lifting his fortress cities like Königsberg (now Kaliningrad). At its peak, the knights unified state stretching from the Oder to Estonia. Later, in the s. XVII, a strip significant of these lands became part of Brandenburg-Prussia.
The symbolic center of power was the cathedral of Aachen, 936 converted from the headquarters of the coronation and burial of dozens of German kings. Otto I opened tradition that in 962 Charlemagne renewed the promise to protect the papacy, to which the Pope responded with a vow of loyalty to the emperor. This made the two powers in a strange and often fierce partner during the next 800 years, and marked the birth of the Holy Roman Empire, nebulous state survived until 1806.
The power struggle between the pope and the emperor, who also had to deal with local princes or clerics, princes, was the cause of many of the revolts of the early Middle Ages. The so-called Investiture Conflict took place during the reign of King Henry IV sálico [1056-1106], when the Pope banned the practice of simony (buying and selling of ecclesiastical privileges and benefits). The king, excommunicated and repentant, traveled to Canossa (Italy) where he spent three days barefoot in the snow waiting for the papal pardon. He was acquitted, but as a result his kingdom was shaken by a civil war nearly 20 years, finally settled in a treaty that was signed in the city of Worms (Rhineland-Palatinate state) in 1122. The graves of Henry and other Salian monarchs are now in the great cathedral of neighboring Spira.
During the reign of Frederick I [1152-1190], Aachen became the capital of the kingdom, and in 1165, the year of the canonization of Charlemagne, was awarded the rights to freedom. Meanwhile, Henry the Lion, Guelph with special interest in Saxony and Bavaria, extended its influence to the east by germanizar and campaigns to convert the Slavs who populated much of the current East Germany, which today can still be a minority Slavic Sorbs, settled in the Spreewald region. Henry, who was well connected (his second English wife, Matilda, was the sister of Richard Lionheart), not only founded Braunschweig (where his tomb now lies), but also Munich, Lübeck and Lüneburg. In his heyday, his kingdom stretched from the North and the Baltic coast to the Alps, and from Westphalia to Pomerania (Poland).
The kingdom gained territory east and Italy, but soon fell apart as a result of premature deaths, disputes among aspirants to the throne Guelphs and Hohenstaufen, and the election of a king and a king-backed anti-Pope. At that time, the kings chose the Kurfürsten (Electors) but it was the Pope who crowned emperors the system that the emperors became reluctant lackeys. In 1245, the kingdom was plunged into the Great Interregnum or Antique called Terrible, when Pope Innocent IV deposed his own emperor, kings multiplied and central authority collapsed.
Although the central kingdom was now only a shadow of its former power, the eastward expansion was not affected at all. In the middle of s. XII, the lands east of the Oder River (now the eastern border of Germany) were occupied by peasants and German citizens. In the s. XIII, the Teutonic Knights continued to advance eastward passage lifting his fortress cities like Königsberg (now Kaliningrad). At its peak, the knights unified state stretching from the Oder to Estonia. Later, in the s. XVII, a strip significant of these lands became part of Brandenburg-Prussia.
However, ordinary Germans did not think precisely in dance: lynchings faced indiscriminate anti-Semitic persecution and labor shortages, all triggered by the plague (1348-1350), who finished with 25% of the population Europe. While death was a dent in the German common people, universities were created throughout the country. The first was that of Heidelberg, who turned the town into the oldest university town (and supposedly more spectacular) of Germany.
The Catholic and Lutheran churches coexisted not equal to 1555, when Charles V [1520-1558] signed the Peace of Augsburg, which the princes could choose the religion of their rulers. The more secular northern Lutheran teaching adopted, while clerical lords south, southwest and Austria remained faithful to Catholicism.
However, the religious problem was not extinguished, but degenerated into the bloody Thirty Years War, which joined Sweden and France around 1635. Calm returned to the Peace of Westphalia (1648), signed in Münster and Osnabrück, although the rule, then made more than 300 states and 1000 smaller territories, was turned into a nominal and helpless nation. Switzerland and the Netherlands achieved independence, France took fragments of Alsace and Lorraine, and Sweden took over the mouths of the Elbe, Oder and Weser.
As a result of the acquisition of the territories of the former Teutonic Knights and the support of the Hohenzollern monarchs, Frederick William I, nicknamed The Soldier King, and his son, Frederick II [1740-1786], Brandenburg-Prussia became an entity weight, after the Seven Years' War (1756-1763) against Austria, annexed Silesia and Poland fragmented.
Between 1801 and 1803, during the Napoleonic wars, a delegation secularized and reconstituted Imperial German territory by order of the French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. In 1806, the Confederation of the Rhine eradicated a hundred principalities. The Emperor Francis II [1792-1806], which smelled so Holy Roman Empire, he moved to Austria, where he proclaimed Francis I of Austria abdicated the throne. That same year, Brandenburg-Prussia fell to the French, but the humiliating defeat prompted reforms that approached statehood, and the granting of equal status to the Jews or the abolition of slave labor.
In 1813, the advance of Russian troops on the French at Leipzig caused most of the defeats of Napoleon. At the Congress of Vienna, Germany was recognized as a federation of 35 states, after which he settled in Frankfurt an ineffective legislative assembly (Reichstag), unsatisfactory solution slightly better than the Holy Roman Empire. The assembly, which only represented the most populous states, failed to stem the Austro-Prussian rivalry.
By the middle of s. Century, modern engines purring industrial era and throughout the country and a new urban proletarian movement demanded the government centralization while writers called Young Germany published leaflets in which censored the powerful at the time and required the creation of a central state.
In 1848, Berlin, like most of the Southwest, became a hotbed of riots that prompted the German leaders meet in the church of San Pablo (Paul's Church) in Frankfurt to the first freely elected parliamentary delegation. Meanwhile, Austria and Germany split drafted its own constitution, but soon returned to monarchism. In revolutionary effervescence, in 1850 the Prussian king Friedrich Wilhelm IV drafted a constitution would remain in force until 1918.
Bismarck's power was based on the support of merchants and junker, Prussian aristocracy formed by landowners without knighthood. Otto, skillful diplomat and political mediator, achieved many of its objectives with Otto Honored false face, which allowed him to fix deals between European powers and encourage colonial vanity to distract the rest of their own actions. After 1880, belatedly gave the rule of William I to the acquisition of valuable colonies in Central Africa, southwestern and eastern as well as many offshore in the Pacific, such as Tonga Islands, where the Prussian prince could one day, and fatigued, take the steel hull and lie in the sun.
Under pressure and against his true nature, Bismarck made some concessions to the growing and increasingly antagonistic socialist movement, and launched the first modern social reforms in Germany.
By 1888, the nation was suddenly ruled by a new emperor, Wilhelm II, ready to expand social reform, and Iron Chancellor determined to enact stricter anti-socialist. Two years later, the mighty hand imperial dismissed Bismarck and after unraveling the legacy of this brilliant diplomacy, Germany, rich, unified, industrially mighty, stepped into the new century led by incompetents.
The seeds of bitterness and humiliation which later would lead to the Second World War were sown in peace conditions of the First World War. Russia, paralyzed by revolution, Germany accepted a shameful peace terms, and this destroyed his army, on the brink of revolution and trapped between the monarchy and modern democracy, signed the Treaty of Versailles (1919), which made responsible for the losses suffered by his enemies. Retracted its borders and was forced to face high financial compensation. To facilitate negotiations, was appointed first chancellor who was answerable to parliament. In 1919, a mutiny of sailors in the bustling port of Kiel sparked a workers' revolt and a revolution in Berlin, German Emperor bitter end, who abdicated the throne and fled to the Netherlands.
Meanwhile, in July 1919, was adopted in Weimar (Thuringia state city where the constitutional assembly took refuge during the chaos of Berlin) the creation of a new federal democratic republic.
The government called the Weimar Republic (1919-1933) was formed by a coalition of left and center headed by Friedrich Ebert Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD; German Social Democratic Party) until 1925 and then by quarterback Paul von Hindenburg, courageous monarchy of 78. However, the republic did not please either the communists or supporters of the monarchy.
The new government suffered its first blow in 1920 when right-wing militants forcibly occupied the government district of Berlin during the failed "Kapp Putsch". In 1923, hyperinflation shook the republic. That same year, Adolf Hitler (1889-1945), Austrian volunteer German Army in World War I prepared the "coup de Munich" with help from members of his National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP). Hitler ended up in prison, where he served a sentence of two years, his work began to write nationalist and anti-Semitic: Mein Kampf. Upon leaving, he began to rebuild the party.
Hitler's NSDAP obtained 18% of the vote in the 1930 elections, which led him to compete against Hindenburg for the presidency in elections in 1932, with a final score of 37%. A year later, Hindenburg appointed Hitler chancellor and put at the head of a coalition cabinet formed by nationalist (conservative, old aristocrats and industrialists powerful) and National Socialists (Nazis). When the Berlin legislature mysteriously caught fire in March 1933, Hitler found the excuse to ask for emergency powers allow him to arrest all communists and liberal opponents and force through its Training Act through which they could enact their own decrees and change the constitution without consulting Parliament. The Nazi dictatorship had begun. A Hindenburg's death a year later, Hitler merged the offices of President and Chancellor to become Führer of the Third Reich.
In April 1933, Joseph Goebbels, head of the Ministry of Propaganda efficient, announced a boycott of Jewish businesses. Soon after, they were expelled from the Administration and prohibited the presence of individuals of "non-Aryan race" in many professions, business and industry. By the Nuremberg Laws (1935) were non-Aryans deprived of German citizenship and prohibited from marrying or having sexual relations with Aryans, anyone who breach these laws racist faced the death penalty and also had to run with the expenses of his trial and execution.
Hitler received much support from the middle classes by injecting large sums of money in employment programs, many of them designed to meet the evolving needs of heavy industries and rearmament. In Wolfsburg (Lower Saxony), the first Volkswagen factory, founded in 1938, began producing affordable vehicles.
That same year, Hitler's troops were well received in Austria. In order to avoid another bloody war, international governments accepted the annexation of Austria. In this line of appeasement, in September 1938, Hitler, Mussolini (Italy), Neville Chamberlain (United Kingdom) and Edward Daladier (France) signed the Munich Agreement which gave Hitler the southern portion of Czechoslovakia, mostly ethnic Germans. In March 1939 and also had annexed Moravia and Bohemia.
In August 1939, Hitler and Stalin's USSR signed a nonaggression pact whereby the axis Berlin-Rome-Tokyo expanded to include Moscow (Hitler had already signed agreements with Italy and Japan). A Soviet-German secret protocol dividing eastern Europe into spheres of interest guarantee Soviet neutrality.
In late August, the false attack on a German radio station in Gleiwitz (Gliwice, Poland) organized by the SS gave Hitler an excuse to invade Poland, incident that triggered World War II, three days later, on September 3 1939, France and the United Kingdom declared war on Germany.
Poland fell quickly to the German giant, and soon Belgium, the Netherlands and France. In June 1941, Germany violated the nonaggression pact signed with Stalin and attacked the USSR. However, Operation Barbarossa, initially successful, ultimately led to the withdrawal of troops from Hitler. The defeat of the German Sixth Army at Stalingrad (now Volgograd) rose significantly following winter Soviet morale.
The final solution
At the request of Hitler, at the Wannsee Conference (Berlin) in January 1942, a protocol was devised involved in administrative jargon which laid the foundations for the murder of millions of Jews. The Nazi Holocaust was a genocide systematic, bureaucratic and meticulously documented, carried out by 100 000 Germans, but with the tacit agreement of many more.
The SS troops and executed systematically terrorized the Jewish population of the occupied areas. Hitler sent Jews to concentration camps in Germany (Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald and Mittelbau Dora, among others) and eastern Europe. Also Roma minorities, political opponents, priests, homosexuals, those who fought in the resistance and habitual offenders were incarcerated in a network of 22 fields, mostly in Eastern Europe. 165 labor camps (such as Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland) provided labor to large industries, including IG Farben AG, producer of the named Zyclon B, hydrocyanic acid compound used in the gas chambers to exterminate more three million Jews. The former headquarters of this conglomerate is now part of the university campus of Frankfurt Main. Of the approximately seven million people sent to Nazi camps, only 500,000 survived.
The powerful Nazi terror machinery immediately crushed any resistance to Hitler, but it never completely vanished. The July 20, 1944, Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg and other high-ranking officers staged a failed attempt to assassinate the Führer for which they were executed. The extermination of Jews and other atrocities of the regime were contained in the anti-Nazi leaflets distributed in Munich and other cities by "White Rose" college group most resistance which cost them their lives.
In the Soviet advance on Berlin, the Führer, defeated and paranoid, and his new bride, Eva Braun, committed suicide on April 30, 1945 in Hitler's Berlin bunker, and May 7, 1945 Germany capitulated, peace is signed U.S. headquarters in Rheims and again in Berlin in the current Museum Berlin-Karlshorst.
At the Yalta Conference (February 1945), Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin agreed to divide Germany and Berlin into four occupation zones controlled by the UK, USA, USSR and France. In July 1945, Stalin, Clement Attlee (who replaced Churchill after a surprising electoral victory) and Roosevelt's successor, Harry S. Truman met at the Schloss Cecilienhof Potsdam (Brandenburg) to detail the plan carefully. Stalin's insistence, France received their piece of land, and the areas to the east of the Oder and Neisse rivers (where it is today the border) were delivered to Poland as compensation for the earlier loss of territories to the USSR.
The turning point took place in June 1948, when the Allies introduced the Deutschmark (DM) in their zones of occupation. The USSR interpreted as a violation of the Potsdam agreement, whereby all the powers occupying Germany should consider a single economic zone, so it was circulated its own currency and immediately announced an absolute economic blockade West Berlin. To ensure the provision of food in this part of Berlin, the Allies responded with the famous Berlin Airlift, by which some riders Americans, British, Canadians, Australians and even managed to take daily to Berlin's Tempelhof airport (where it is today the memorial of that feat) content of 22 freight trains 50 cars in 90 seconds.
East Germany adopted its own constitution corresponded to the German Democratic Republic (GDR). On paper, guaranteed its citizens freedom of press and religion, and the right to strike, but in practice such freedoms were severely limited. In Berlin, the capital, was established a bicameral system (one of the cameras was later abolished) and Wilhelm Pieck became the country's first president. However, from the beginning, the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED), led by Walter Ulbricht, dominated economic policy, justice and security.
As a result of centralized policy, the eastern states of Saxony, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia were divided into 14 administrative regions, and in 1950 he created the famous State Security Service (Ministerium für Staatssicherheit, also known as Stasi) to ensure loyalty to the SED. Workers began to depend economically on the State due to the collectivization of farms and the nationalization of production, as was the case with the Horch automobile factory in Zwickau, near Leipzig (who later produced Trabants East in response to Volkswagen of RFA).
In the Soviet zone, the Nazi concentration was generally fast and cruel. In the west, the Allies conducted war crimes trials in Nuremberg court 600 (now open to visitors).
Erhard was economy minister and then deputy foreign minister during the government of Konrad Adenauer. Their actions encouraged investment and boosted economic activity in order to sustain the system of the capitalist Western welfare state. He helped create the European Coal and Steel, designed to regulate the production of coal and steel in France, Italy, West Germany and the Benelux countries, and earned the support of the FRG, in 1958, the European Economic Community (now the EU). The Adenauer deep fear of the Soviet Union led him to pursue a relentless policy of integration with the West.
In the GDR, the death of Stalin in 1953 raised hopes of reform never met. Extreme poverty and economic tensions only encouraged the Government to establish higher production targets. The simmering discontent resulted in violence on June 17, 1953, when 10% of the RDA workers took to the streets. Soviet troops crushed the revolt, resulting in hundreds of deaths and the arrest of 1,200 people. Economic differences became military when the FRG joined NATO in 1955 and the GDR joined the Warsaw Pact, which belonged from 1956 to 1990.
After grounding behind the Wall to the rest of his restless population (330 000 East Germans fled west side only in 1953), the RDA issued a new economic policy to improve their situation. And he succeeded. The level of national life peaked at Eastern bloc and the GDR became its second largest industrial power (after the USSR).
The appointment of Erich Honecker (1912-1994) in 1971 marked the beginning of rapprochement with the West and improving international acceptance of the GDR. Honecker was akin to Soviet policy (replaced reunification clauses of the Constitution of the GDR by a statement of irrevocable alliance with the USSR in 1974), but their economic policies favored an economic revival which continued until the late stagnation 1980s.
In 1963, Ludwig Erhard, the then Vice Chancellor Adenauer also, did the latter leave his post, but in 1966 the economy began to fluctuating significantly impair the credibility of Erhard, a result formed the first grand coalition government of Christian Democrats (CDU / CSU) and Social Democrats (SPD), Kurt Georg Kiesinger (CDU, 1904-1988) and chancellor Willy Brandt (SPD, 1913-1992) as vice chancellor. The absence of parliamentary opposition encouraged the growth of radical demands for social reform by the student movement.
The turning point came in 1969 when Willy Brandt's SPD formed a new government with the Liberal Democratic Party (FDP). The Nobel Peace Prize (1971), born in Lübeck, had spent the years of Hitler's power working as a journalist in exile in Scandinavia, where he was denied citizenship by Nazi writings. His priority was the normalization of relations with the GDR (policy approach that became known as Ostpolitik), and in December 1972 signed the Basic Treaty, which paved the way for the incorporation of both Germanys to the United Nations in 1973 . The treaty guaranteed the sovereignty in national and international affairs, but did not solve the problem of formal recognition because it precluded the formation of the RFA.
In 1974, Brand Helmut Schmidt replaced as a result of monumental public scandal (one of the main advisers proved Brandt Stasi spy). During the 1970s the movement gained strength antinuclear and environmentalist (Greens), which was opposed by the new Chancellor and finally got Bohn representatives to parliament in 1979. In 1974, West Germany became part of the group known as G8 industrialized nations. But this decade was also a time of terrorism, in which the Red Army Faction anticapitalist killed several prominent figures from the political and business world.
Entente Dream Brand East West continued with Chancellor Helmut Kohl, with the help of his conservative coalition government 1982, polished relations between East and West while some gains dismantled the welfare state. In 1987, Kohl received in the capital of the FRG to his counterpart in the GDR, Erich Honecker, with honors.
The call Wende of Germany (the change which saw the fall of communism) and reunification came from the German way possible: progressive development culminating in a big bang. The East Germans, who remembered the situation in Berlin in the 1950s, began leaving the country in droves. This time I had to cross that line of concrete and barbed wire separating East from West, but they crossed the open borders of Austria and Hungary. The SED could not stem the tide of citizens who wanted to leave, some of whom sought refuge in the Embassy of the Federal Republic in Prague. At about the same time, the East Germans began to take to the streets and demonstrate the Monday after the Mass at St. Nicholas Church in Leipzig, and other churches in the GDR, knowing that the Church supported their demand greater respect for human rights.
The spread and intensification of Erich Honecker made demonstrations accept the inevitable and cede his post to Egon Krenz. And in the decisive night of November 9, 1989, the party official Günter Schabowsky informed of GDR citizens could travel directly west; 10,000 jubilant East Germans crossed the border at various venues in Berlin and elsewhere the country and put an end to the cold stage of the German division.
Unified Germany today, with 16 states (five of which are located in eastern Germany, the so-called "new states"), was achieved after a fleeting national political debate and a series of treaties for the suppression of the areas resulting occupation of the Second World War. The days of four-power occupation passed into history. Berlin acquired its current status as an independent city-state, and immediately after reunification, the October 3, 1990, recovered the capital of Germany.
The most prominent figure certainly the reunification and 1990s was Helmut Kohl, whose coalition of CDU / CSU and FDP was re-elected in the first elections of unified Germany, held in December 1990.
Under the leadership of Kohl, were privatized East German properties and supersubvencionadas state industries suffered significant cuts were sold or liquidated in full; also modernized infrastructure (in some cases even sobreinvirtió in them) to generate the boom of unification by which this country grew by up to 10% annually until 1995. However, this boom fell sharply in the second half of the decade, and the result was divided into East Germany winners and losers as a result of unification. To those who had jobs did well, but the unemployment rate was high and the lack of opportunities in regions like Harz Mountains or in cities like Magdeburg and Halle (both in Saxony-Anhalt) are causing many young people in eastern Germany seek luck in the west or in rapidly developing cities as Leipzig (Saxony). Berlin is the exception, despite its instability. Bohn Many public officials have moved to the capital to similar administrative positions, and a vibrant cultural scene attracts young people from around the country.
Helmut Kohl also strove to bring to justice the leaders of the GDR, and Erich Honecker, who fled after resigning and died in Chile in 1994. His case was dismissed before his death due to his poor health.
The legacy of Helmut Kohl regarding unification is unquestionable. However, his involvement in the bribery scandal with party funds in the late 1990s almost financially ruined his own party and deprived him of the position of honorary life president of the CDU. In 1998, a coalition of the SPD and Bündnis 90/Die Grünen (Alliance 90/The Greens) defeated Christian-liberal coalition (CDU-CSU/FDP) until then in power.
Under the leadership of Gerhard Schröder, Germany began to adopt a more independent foreign policy, categorically rejecting participation in the invasion of Iraq, but U.S. support, historically its closest ally in the war in Afghanistan and Kosovo. His stance on Iraq, reflecting the sentiments of the majority of Germans, led to tension in relations with the U.S. administration of George W. Bush.
In a sense, Germany is concentrated both reunification that disregarded the changes that occurred in the global economy during the 1990s. Nationally, trying to adapt the social market economy to what he perceived as new needs in a global economy, especially through a series of labor market reforms. The fourth of these reforms, popularly known as "Hartz IV", intended to streamline the unemployment and other social benefits systems and assist long-term unemployed to find work. However, in practice, the reform measures Hartz IV Schröder government (still in force) were inflexible, bureaucratic and sometimes severe for beneficiaries, contributing to a gradual shift from traditional voters smaller parties SPD towards the center. In the elections of 2009, the Hartz IV laws and law approving the State retirement pension for the Germans after 67 years, causing many voters gravitate toward games that in his opinion had social policies fair. One of these parties was Die Linke (The Left), from the ancient oriental SED, and later successor party would join a left-wing grouping in western Germany. All together as the Left, question social policies and labor market and social democratic Labour Party traditional SPD.
A key reform to the environment and the energy of the government of the SPD and Alliance 90/The Greens 1998-2005 was a law providing for the closure of all German nuclear plants by 2020. There is controversial and there will be pressure to override this decision in a coalition government formed by early CDU / CSU and FDP. All these parties support extending the life of nuclear power plants, saying it is necessary to cover the lack of energy until renewable energies are seated.
When the financial crisis came in 2008-2009, the German government injected hundreds of millions of euros into the financial system to support the banks. Other measures allowed enterprises to shorten shifts without losing salary workers and injecting money into the economy by encouraging citizens to change your old car for a new one.
Export industries that depend both Germany for wealth (world's third largest economy, behind Japan and the U.S., and the largest exporter) have suffered greatly during the crisis and, if the predictions of the OECD are good, unemployment in Germany will increase to about five million (11.8% of the workforce) over 2010. Other predictions are less drastic.
The elections of 2009 confirmed the trend towards smaller parties and political system of five games. The CDU / CSU won second worst result in the party's history (about 34% of the vote) and the SPD had the worst result in its nearly 150 years of history, with nearly 23% of the vote. Support Left has remained strong in eastern Germany over the years, but success in the federal elections of late 2009 enabled him to establish himself at the federal level. The Left won about 12% of the votes and is the second strongest party in the opposition, after the SPD. It came very close to the FDP (below 15%), while Alliance 90/The Greens, despite some voters get disillusioned SPD won about 11% and became the smallest party in the opposition.
Despite having lost support, the CDU / CSU governs in coalition with the FDP, with Angela Merkel again in the position of chancellor. It is likely that the influence of a strong FDP in Germany to focus heavily on the neo-liberal economic policies, but also on the rights of citizens, traditionally part of the FDP program. Their leader, Guido Westerwelle, is the current Minister of Foreign Affairs.
Predictably, the five-party system will become a lasting peculiarity of the political scene in Germany, and the SPD will continue to accept the prospect of having to conclude agreements coalition with the Left in a future government led by the SPD. He has refused so far, but is likely to change, especially if the current mayor of Berlin, Klaus Wowereit is a candidate for chancellor (believed to have many possibilities) in the next election, scheduled for 2013. Currently, Wowereit leads a coalition of the SPD and the Left in Berlin. Sigmar Gabriel and Olaf Scholz (both ministers in the previous grand coalition may also appear on any renewal of the SPD.
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Germanic tribes and Romans
The first inhabitants of Germany were the Celts, Germanic tribes that followed. In the Iron Age (from 800 BC approx.), Germanic tribes of the German northern plateau of the Central Highlands margins occupied Celtic regions, so that given the cultural influence of this town, although never came to join him. Today you can still find clear signs of this influence in Thale, in the Harz mountain region.From 100 BC, Germanic tribes east of the Rhine and the Romans began a bloody struggle for control of territory across the river until 9 AD, when the Roman general Varius lost three legions (about 20,000 men) in the bloody Battle of the Teutoburg Forest and the Romans abandoned their plans to expand eastward. Around 300 AD, had formed and four basic groups: Germans, Franks, Saxons and Goths.
The Roman presence is perceived today in the thermal baths and the amphitheater Treverorum Augusta (now Trier), as well as in other Roman relics Aachen, Xanten, Cologne, Bonn, Mainz (where you can find Roman shipwrecks s. IV) , Bingen (famous for its Roman surgical instruments), Koblenz, Augsburg and Regensburg. The vineyards of the Rhine and Moselle are a lasting tribute to the fans of the Romans for wine.
THE KINGDOM FRANCO
The Frankish kingdom, settled on the west bank of the Rhine, became the main European political power during the Middle Ages. This was due in part to the Merovingian king Clovis [482-511], which unified the various populations. In the peak season, the Frankish kingdom came to understand France, Germany, the Netherlands and half of the Italian peninsula. Some missionaries like Saint Boniface (675-754), considered the father of German Christianity, crossed the Rhine to convert the heathen.When the s. VII fighting broke out between aristocratic clans, the Merovingians were replaced by the Carolingians, who introduced the hierarchical structure of the Church. Kloster Lorsch, Hesse today is an extraordinary relic of that era. Since its grand residence in Aachen, Charlemagne [768-814], the greatest king of the Frankish monarchy, conquered Lombardy, appropriated part of Bavaria, held a 30-year war against the Saxons of the north and was crowned emperor by the Pope in 800. The tide turned in the s. IX, when the attacks of the Danes, Saracens and Magyars generated chaos in the eastern portion of the empire of Charlemagne from which emerged four dominant ducats: Bavaria, Franconia, Swabia and Saxony.
The funeral of Charlemagne in Aachen Cathedral which became court chapel was an important place of pilgrimage (to date). The Treaty of Verdun (843) led the progressive division of the kingdom, and when Louis the Child [900-911], grandson of Charlemagne's brother, died childless, the duchies francs of this (ie the Germans) chose a king among his own. Thus was born the first German monarch.
and in 1165, the year of the canonization of Charlemagne, was awarded the rights to freedom. Meanwhile, Henry the Lion, Guelph with special interest in Saxony and Bavaria, extended its influence to the east by germanizar and campaigns to convert the Slavs who populated much of the current East Germany, which today can still be a minority Slavic Sorbs, settled in the Spreewald region. Henry, who was well connected (his second English wife, Matilda, was the sister of Richard Lionheart), not only founded Braunschweig (where his tomb now lies), but also Munich, Lübeck and Lüneburg. In his heyday, his kingdom stretched from the North and the Baltic coast to the Alps, and from Westphalia to Pomerania (Poland).
The kingdom gained territory east and Italy, but soon fell apart as a result of premature deaths, disputes among aspirants to the throne Guelphs and Hohenstaufen, and the election of a king and a king-backed anti-Pope. At that time, the kings chose the Kurfürsten (Electors) but it was the Pope who crowned emperors the system that the emperors became reluctant lackeys. In 1245, the kingdom was plunged into the Great Interregnum or Antique called Terrible, when Pope Innocent IV deposed his own emperor, kings multiplied and central authority collapsed.
Although the central kingdom was now only a shadow of its former power, the eastward expansion was not affected at all. In the middle of s. XII, the lands east of the Oder River (now the eastern border of Germany) were occupied by peasants and German citizens. In the s. XIII, the Teutonic Knights continued to advance eastward passage lifting his fortress cities like Königsberg (now Kaliningrad). At its peak, the knights unified state stretching from the Oder to Estonia. Later, in the s. XVII, a strip significant of these lands became part of Brandenburg-Prussia.
EARLY MIDDLE AGES
The strong regionalism Germany today has its roots in the disputes and intrigues by the territorial spoils held at the beginning of the Middle Ages, the various dynasties, just controlled by a central state ineffective Roman inspiration.The symbolic center of power was the cathedral of Aachen, 936 converted from the headquarters of the coronation and burial of dozens of German kings. Otto I opened tradition that in 962 Charlemagne renewed the promise to protect the papacy, to which the Pope responded with a vow of loyalty to the emperor. This made the two powers in a strange and often fierce partner during the next 800 years, and marked the birth of the Holy Roman Empire, nebulous state survived until 1806.
The power struggle between the pope and the emperor, who also had to deal with local princes or clerics, princes, was the cause of many of the revolts of the early Middle Ages. The so-called Investiture Conflict took place during the reign of King Henry IV sálico [1056-1106], when the Pope banned the practice of simony (buying and selling of ecclesiastical privileges and benefits). The king, excommunicated and repentant, traveled to Canossa (Italy) where he spent three days barefoot in the snow waiting for the papal pardon. He was acquitted, but as a result his kingdom was shaken by a civil war nearly 20 years, finally settled in a treaty that was signed in the city of Worms (Rhineland-Palatinate state) in 1122. The graves of Henry and other Salian monarchs are now in the great cathedral of neighboring Spira.
During the reign of Frederick I [1152-1190], Aachen became the capital of the kingdom, and in 1165, the year of the canonization of Charlemagne, was awarded the rights to freedom. Meanwhile, Henry the Lion, Guelph with special interest in Saxony and Bavaria, extended its influence to the east by germanizar and campaigns to convert the Slavs who populated much of the current East Germany, which today can still be a minority Slavic Sorbs, settled in the Spreewald region. Henry, who was well connected (his second English wife, Matilda, was the sister of Richard Lionheart), not only founded Braunschweig (where his tomb now lies), but also Munich, Lübeck and Lüneburg. In his heyday, his kingdom stretched from the North and the Baltic coast to the Alps, and from Westphalia to Pomerania (Poland).
The kingdom gained territory east and Italy, but soon fell apart as a result of premature deaths, disputes among aspirants to the throne Guelphs and Hohenstaufen, and the election of a king and a king-backed anti-Pope. At that time, the kings chose the Kurfürsten (Electors) but it was the Pope who crowned emperors the system that the emperors became reluctant lackeys. In 1245, the kingdom was plunged into the Great Interregnum or Antique called Terrible, when Pope Innocent IV deposed his own emperor, kings multiplied and central authority collapsed.
Although the central kingdom was now only a shadow of its former power, the eastward expansion was not affected at all. In the middle of s. XII, the lands east of the Oder River (now the eastern border of Germany) were occupied by peasants and German citizens. In the s. XIII, the Teutonic Knights continued to advance eastward passage lifting his fortress cities like Königsberg (now Kaliningrad). At its peak, the knights unified state stretching from the Oder to Estonia. Later, in the s. XVII, a strip significant of these lands became part of Brandenburg-Prussia.
THE HOUSE OF Hapsburg
In 1273, the Habsburg dynasty called, emerged from among the many medieval monarchs, managed to put together a timely arranged marriage earned him the domain of European affairs to the s. XX. The accession to the throne of Rudolph [1273-1291] Period ended the Terrible, and the Declaration of Rhense (1338) was omitted from the Pope finally at the coronation of the emperor. Thereafter, the king, chosen by the Kurfürsten, automatically became emperor. With the Golden Bull, passed in 1356, established precise electoral rules and defined the relationship between the emperor and the princes, which was an improvement, but the emperor was dancing to the princes.However, ordinary Germans did not think precisely in dance: lynchings faced indiscriminate anti-Semitic persecution and labor shortages, all triggered by the plague (1348-1350), who finished with 25% of the population Europe. While death was a dent in the German common people, universities were created throughout the country. The first was that of Heidelberg, who turned the town into the oldest university town (and supposedly more spectacular) of Germany.
A MATTER OF FAITH
German Religion is cut pattern s Reform. XVI. In 1517, in the university town of Wittenberg, theology professor Martin Luther (1483-1546) published his Ninety-Five Theses questioning papal practice of selling indulgences for the remission of sins. Luther, threatened with excommunication, he would not recant, renounced the Catholic Church was outlawed by the emperor, after which he hid in Wartburg Castle (on the outskirts of Eisenach, in Thuringia) where he translated the New Testament into German . Currently you can see a mask Marktkirche Luther in Halle, and another in the Luthers Sterbehaus of Eisleben.The Catholic and Lutheran churches coexisted not equal to 1555, when Charles V [1520-1558] signed the Peace of Augsburg, which the princes could choose the religion of their rulers. The more secular northern Lutheran teaching adopted, while clerical lords south, southwest and Austria remained faithful to Catholicism.
However, the religious problem was not extinguished, but degenerated into the bloody Thirty Years War, which joined Sweden and France around 1635. Calm returned to the Peace of Westphalia (1648), signed in Münster and Osnabrück, although the rule, then made more than 300 states and 1000 smaller territories, was turned into a nominal and helpless nation. Switzerland and the Netherlands achieved independence, France took fragments of Alsace and Lorraine, and Sweden took over the mouths of the Elbe, Oder and Weser.
ILLUSTRATION OF THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
In the s. XVIII, the Enlightenment gave new life to Germany and inspired many autocratic rulers building magnificent palaces and gardens throughout Germany. The Schloss Charlottenburg in Berlin, the Sanssouci Park in Potsdam and Dresden Zwinger are good examples of the spirit of this new era. Meanwhile, unveiled Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel, and a wave of Hochkultur (hyperculture) minority seized the upper class, while the common people remained illiterate.As a result of the acquisition of the territories of the former Teutonic Knights and the support of the Hohenzollern monarchs, Frederick William I, nicknamed The Soldier King, and his son, Frederick II [1740-1786], Brandenburg-Prussia became an entity weight, after the Seven Years' War (1756-1763) against Austria, annexed Silesia and Poland fragmented.
Between 1801 and 1803, during the Napoleonic wars, a delegation secularized and reconstituted Imperial German territory by order of the French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. In 1806, the Confederation of the Rhine eradicated a hundred principalities. The Emperor Francis II [1792-1806], which smelled so Holy Roman Empire, he moved to Austria, where he proclaimed Francis I of Austria abdicated the throne. That same year, Brandenburg-Prussia fell to the French, but the humiliating defeat prompted reforms that approached statehood, and the granting of equal status to the Jews or the abolition of slave labor.
In 1813, the advance of Russian troops on the French at Leipzig caused most of the defeats of Napoleon. At the Congress of Vienna, Germany was recognized as a federation of 35 states, after which he settled in Frankfurt an ineffective legislative assembly (Reichstag), unsatisfactory solution slightly better than the Holy Roman Empire. The assembly, which only represented the most populous states, failed to stem the Austro-Prussian rivalry.
By the middle of s. Century, modern engines purring industrial era and throughout the country and a new urban proletarian movement demanded the government centralization while writers called Young Germany published leaflets in which censored the powerful at the time and required the creation of a central state.
In 1848, Berlin, like most of the Southwest, became a hotbed of riots that prompted the German leaders meet in the church of San Pablo (Paul's Church) in Frankfurt to the first freely elected parliamentary delegation. Meanwhile, Austria and Germany split drafted its own constitution, but soon returned to monarchism. In revolutionary effervescence, in 1850 the Prussian king Friedrich Wilhelm IV drafted a constitution would remain in force until 1918.
THE OBJECTIVE OF BISMARCK
The creation of a unified Germany with Prussia in charge was the glorious ambition of Otto von Bismarck (1815-1898), former member of the Legislative Assembly (Reichstag) and Prussian prime minister. Bismark, military old guard, he used complex diplomatic wiles and a series of wars with neighboring Denmark and France to achieve its objectives. Germany was unified in 1871 (later than most European countries) and Berlin became the proud capital of the largest state in Western Europe. At that time, Germany was extended from Memel (now Klaipeda in Lithuania) to the Dutch border, and included Alsace-Lorraine (to the southwest) and Silesia (southeast) in present France and Poland, respectively. The January 18, 1871, at Versailles, the Prussian king was crowned emperor of a bicameral state with a constitutional monarchy, and Bismarck became the Iron Chancellor. In the new state, only men could vote, and black, red white and became the national colors.Bismarck's power was based on the support of merchants and junker, Prussian aristocracy formed by landowners without knighthood. Otto, skillful diplomat and political mediator, achieved many of its objectives with Otto Honored false face, which allowed him to fix deals between European powers and encourage colonial vanity to distract the rest of their own actions. After 1880, belatedly gave the rule of William I to the acquisition of valuable colonies in Central Africa, southwestern and eastern as well as many offshore in the Pacific, such as Tonga Islands, where the Prussian prince could one day, and fatigued, take the steel hull and lie in the sun.
Under pressure and against his true nature, Bismarck made some concessions to the growing and increasingly antagonistic socialist movement, and launched the first modern social reforms in Germany.
By 1888, the nation was suddenly ruled by a new emperor, Wilhelm II, ready to expand social reform, and Iron Chancellor determined to enact stricter anti-socialist. Two years later, the mighty hand imperial dismissed Bismarck and after unraveling the legacy of this brilliant diplomacy, Germany, rich, unified, industrially mighty, stepped into the new century led by incompetents.
WORLD WAR I
Technological advances and the strengthening of Europe through their colonial empires were the first global confrontation anything but a "great war". The conflict began with the assassination of the heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914, but soon expanded to Europe and the Middle East: Germany, Austria-Hungary and Turkey against Britain, France, Italy and Russia. In 1915, a German submarine attack a British passenger ship killing 120 U.S. citizens, two years later, the United States had entered the war also.The seeds of bitterness and humiliation which later would lead to the Second World War were sown in peace conditions of the First World War. Russia, paralyzed by revolution, Germany accepted a shameful peace terms, and this destroyed his army, on the brink of revolution and trapped between the monarchy and modern democracy, signed the Treaty of Versailles (1919), which made responsible for the losses suffered by his enemies. Retracted its borders and was forced to face high financial compensation. To facilitate negotiations, was appointed first chancellor who was answerable to parliament. In 1919, a mutiny of sailors in the bustling port of Kiel sparked a workers' revolt and a revolution in Berlin, German Emperor bitter end, who abdicated the throne and fled to the Netherlands.
Weimar AND THE RISE OF HITLER
The end of the war did not mean stability (or peace) for Germany. Socialist and social democratic parties fought bitterly while radical Spartacus League (from which sprang the German Communist Party, KPD, with the addition of other political groups in 1919) intended to create a republic based on Marxist theories of the proletarian revolution. After neutralizing a bloody revolt in Berlin, was arrested the founders of the League, Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919) and Karl Liebknecht (1871-1919), a native of Leipzig. The Freikorps (right-wing war volunteers) the way to prison killed and their bodies thrown into Berlin's Landwehr Canal. Months after the bodies were recovered and given burial in Berlin.Meanwhile, in July 1919, was adopted in Weimar (Thuringia state city where the constitutional assembly took refuge during the chaos of Berlin) the creation of a new federal democratic republic.
The government called the Weimar Republic (1919-1933) was formed by a coalition of left and center headed by Friedrich Ebert Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD; German Social Democratic Party) until 1925 and then by quarterback Paul von Hindenburg, courageous monarchy of 78. However, the republic did not please either the communists or supporters of the monarchy.
The new government suffered its first blow in 1920 when right-wing militants forcibly occupied the government district of Berlin during the failed "Kapp Putsch". In 1923, hyperinflation shook the republic. That same year, Adolf Hitler (1889-1945), Austrian volunteer German Army in World War I prepared the "coup de Munich" with help from members of his National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP). Hitler ended up in prison, where he served a sentence of two years, his work began to write nationalist and anti-Semitic: Mein Kampf. Upon leaving, he began to rebuild the party.
Hitler's NSDAP obtained 18% of the vote in the 1930 elections, which led him to compete against Hindenburg for the presidency in elections in 1932, with a final score of 37%. A year later, Hindenburg appointed Hitler chancellor and put at the head of a coalition cabinet formed by nationalist (conservative, old aristocrats and industrialists powerful) and National Socialists (Nazis). When the Berlin legislature mysteriously caught fire in March 1933, Hitler found the excuse to ask for emergency powers allow him to arrest all communists and liberal opponents and force through its Training Act through which they could enact their own decrees and change the constitution without consulting Parliament. The Nazi dictatorship had begun. A Hindenburg's death a year later, Hitler merged the offices of President and Chancellor to become Führer of the Third Reich.
NAZIS IN POWER
Germany was subjected to a slow death. In just 12 years what Hitler was conceived as "a thousand years" regime were murdered opposition politicians, intellectuals and artists, or were forced into hiding or exile, the culture of terror and denunciation flooded almost the entire German society, and the rich European Jewish heritage was considerably decimated.In April 1933, Joseph Goebbels, head of the Ministry of Propaganda efficient, announced a boycott of Jewish businesses. Soon after, they were expelled from the Administration and prohibited the presence of individuals of "non-Aryan race" in many professions, business and industry. By the Nuremberg Laws (1935) were non-Aryans deprived of German citizenship and prohibited from marrying or having sexual relations with Aryans, anyone who breach these laws racist faced the death penalty and also had to run with the expenses of his trial and execution.
Hitler received much support from the middle classes by injecting large sums of money in employment programs, many of them designed to meet the evolving needs of heavy industries and rearmament. In Wolfsburg (Lower Saxony), the first Volkswagen factory, founded in 1938, began producing affordable vehicles.
That same year, Hitler's troops were well received in Austria. In order to avoid another bloody war, international governments accepted the annexation of Austria. In this line of appeasement, in September 1938, Hitler, Mussolini (Italy), Neville Chamberlain (United Kingdom) and Edward Daladier (France) signed the Munich Agreement which gave Hitler the southern portion of Czechoslovakia, mostly ethnic Germans. In March 1939 and also had annexed Moravia and Bohemia.
WORLD WAR II
The early yearsIn August 1939, Hitler and Stalin's USSR signed a nonaggression pact whereby the axis Berlin-Rome-Tokyo expanded to include Moscow (Hitler had already signed agreements with Italy and Japan). A Soviet-German secret protocol dividing eastern Europe into spheres of interest guarantee Soviet neutrality.
In late August, the false attack on a German radio station in Gleiwitz (Gliwice, Poland) organized by the SS gave Hitler an excuse to invade Poland, incident that triggered World War II, three days later, on September 3 1939, France and the United Kingdom declared war on Germany.
Poland fell quickly to the German giant, and soon Belgium, the Netherlands and France. In June 1941, Germany violated the nonaggression pact signed with Stalin and attacked the USSR. However, Operation Barbarossa, initially successful, ultimately led to the withdrawal of troops from Hitler. The defeat of the German Sixth Army at Stalingrad (now Volgograd) rose significantly following winter Soviet morale.
The final solution
At the request of Hitler, at the Wannsee Conference (Berlin) in January 1942, a protocol was devised involved in administrative jargon which laid the foundations for the murder of millions of Jews. The Nazi Holocaust was a genocide systematic, bureaucratic and meticulously documented, carried out by 100 000 Germans, but with the tacit agreement of many more.
The SS troops and executed systematically terrorized the Jewish population of the occupied areas. Hitler sent Jews to concentration camps in Germany (Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald and Mittelbau Dora, among others) and eastern Europe. Also Roma minorities, political opponents, priests, homosexuals, those who fought in the resistance and habitual offenders were incarcerated in a network of 22 fields, mostly in Eastern Europe. 165 labor camps (such as Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland) provided labor to large industries, including IG Farben AG, producer of the named Zyclon B, hydrocyanic acid compound used in the gas chambers to exterminate more three million Jews. The former headquarters of this conglomerate is now part of the university campus of Frankfurt Main. Of the approximately seven million people sent to Nazi camps, only 500,000 survived.
The powerful Nazi terror machinery immediately crushed any resistance to Hitler, but it never completely vanished. The July 20, 1944, Claus Schenk Graf von Stauffenberg and other high-ranking officers staged a failed attempt to assassinate the Führer for which they were executed. The extermination of Jews and other atrocities of the regime were contained in the anti-Nazi leaflets distributed in Munich and other cities by "White Rose" college group most resistance which cost them their lives.
DEFEAT AND OCCUPATION
After the invasion of the French region of Normandy in June 1944 and the return of the Allies in Europe, took place the systematic bombing of German cities. The main attack on the civilian population fell, the church of Our Lady (Frauenkirche) in Dresden, the largest Protestant church in Germany, was destroyed during British air attack in February 1945 that killed 35 000 people, many of them refugees. Today the church has been thoroughly reconstructed ruins after his long constituted a symbol of the destructiveness of war.In the Soviet advance on Berlin, the Führer, defeated and paranoid, and his new bride, Eva Braun, committed suicide on April 30, 1945 in Hitler's Berlin bunker, and May 7, 1945 Germany capitulated, peace is signed U.S. headquarters in Rheims and again in Berlin in the current Museum Berlin-Karlshorst.
At the Yalta Conference (February 1945), Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin agreed to divide Germany and Berlin into four occupation zones controlled by the UK, USA, USSR and France. In July 1945, Stalin, Clement Attlee (who replaced Churchill after a surprising electoral victory) and Roosevelt's successor, Harry S. Truman met at the Schloss Cecilienhof Potsdam (Brandenburg) to detail the plan carefully. Stalin's insistence, France received their piece of land, and the areas to the east of the Oder and Neisse rivers (where it is today the border) were delivered to Poland as compensation for the earlier loss of territories to the USSR.
THE GREAT DEPRESSION
In 1948 the Allies launched an economic aid package, the Marshall Plan, with which laid the foundations of Wirtschaftswunder (economic miracle) of West Germany. Meanwhile, the German cities were reborn from the rubble and were taking the first steps to restore the elected government. These developments increased the gap between the Allied and Soviet zones, in the latter, inflation was straining local economies, food shortages affecting the population, and the German Communist Party (KPD) and the German Social Democrats (SPD) were forced to join the Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands (SED Socialist Unity Party).The turning point took place in June 1948, when the Allies introduced the Deutschmark (DM) in their zones of occupation. The USSR interpreted as a violation of the Potsdam agreement, whereby all the powers occupying Germany should consider a single economic zone, so it was circulated its own currency and immediately announced an absolute economic blockade West Berlin. To ensure the provision of food in this part of Berlin, the Allies responded with the famous Berlin Airlift, by which some riders Americans, British, Canadians, Australians and even managed to take daily to Berlin's Tempelhof airport (where it is today the memorial of that feat) content of 22 freight trains 50 cars in 90 seconds.
Two Germanys, THE EAST AND WEST
In September 1948, amid the cold relationship between East and West, the City of Bohn, on the Rhine, brought together representatives of the West German Government in order to draft a new constitution for the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG ). A year later, Konrad Adenauer (1876-1967), mayor of Cologne during the years of the Weimar Republic, was elected, at 73, first chancellor of the FRG. Bonn, Adenauer's hometown, was the natural candidate as the provisional capital of the new state.East Germany adopted its own constitution corresponded to the German Democratic Republic (GDR). On paper, guaranteed its citizens freedom of press and religion, and the right to strike, but in practice such freedoms were severely limited. In Berlin, the capital, was established a bicameral system (one of the cameras was later abolished) and Wilhelm Pieck became the country's first president. However, from the beginning, the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED), led by Walter Ulbricht, dominated economic policy, justice and security.
As a result of centralized policy, the eastern states of Saxony, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia were divided into 14 administrative regions, and in 1950 he created the famous State Security Service (Ministerium für Staatssicherheit, also known as Stasi) to ensure loyalty to the SED. Workers began to depend economically on the State due to the collectivization of farms and the nationalization of production, as was the case with the Horch automobile factory in Zwickau, near Leipzig (who later produced Trabants East in response to Volkswagen of RFA).
In the Soviet zone, the Nazi concentration was generally fast and cruel. In the west, the Allies conducted war crimes trials in Nuremberg court 600 (now open to visitors).
1950 DECADE
The economic vision cigar aficionado Bavarian Ludwig Erhard (1897-1977) sparked the economic miracle of the RFA. Between 1951 and 1961, the economy reached an average annual growth rate of 8%.Erhard was economy minister and then deputy foreign minister during the government of Konrad Adenauer. Their actions encouraged investment and boosted economic activity in order to sustain the system of the capitalist Western welfare state. He helped create the European Coal and Steel, designed to regulate the production of coal and steel in France, Italy, West Germany and the Benelux countries, and earned the support of the FRG, in 1958, the European Economic Community (now the EU). The Adenauer deep fear of the Soviet Union led him to pursue a relentless policy of integration with the West.
In the GDR, the death of Stalin in 1953 raised hopes of reform never met. Extreme poverty and economic tensions only encouraged the Government to establish higher production targets. The simmering discontent resulted in violence on June 17, 1953, when 10% of the RDA workers took to the streets. Soviet troops crushed the revolt, resulting in hundreds of deaths and the arrest of 1,200 people. Economic differences became military when the FRG joined NATO in 1955 and the GDR joined the Warsaw Pact, which belonged from 1956 to 1990.
THE BERLIN WALL
The exodus of well-trained young workers of the GDR to the FRG in search of better fortune and shook both the GDR economy battered the government, with Soviet consent, decided to build a wall to contain them. The Berlin Wall, the most striking symbol of the Cold War, divided Berlin into two halves on the night of August 12, 1961. The inner German border was fenced and mined.After grounding behind the Wall to the rest of his restless population (330 000 East Germans fled west side only in 1953), the RDA issued a new economic policy to improve their situation. And he succeeded. The level of national life peaked at Eastern bloc and the GDR became its second largest industrial power (after the USSR).
The appointment of Erich Honecker (1912-1994) in 1971 marked the beginning of rapprochement with the West and improving international acceptance of the GDR. Honecker was akin to Soviet policy (replaced reunification clauses of the Constitution of the GDR by a statement of irrevocable alliance with the USSR in 1974), but their economic policies favored an economic revival which continued until the late stagnation 1980s.
COALITION GOVERNMENT IN WEST GERMANY
Meanwhile, the FRG remained dependent elderly but firm hands of Konrad Adenauer, chancellor from 1949-1963, the Minister of Economics, Ludwig Erhard, "father of the economic miracle" had begun importing foreign labor, as later would also make him the father of German multiracial society. Some 2.3 million Gastarbeiter (guest workers) were coming to Germany until the early 1970s, mainly from Spain, Italy, Turkey, Portugal, Morocco and the former Yugoslavia, and injecting new life into German culture, which numbness slowly woke caused by the constraints of the Nazi era. While foreign workers arrived, the young Germans who were children during the years of Nazi rule out holiday to Italy in their import scooters bring home your own piece of Europe.In 1963, Ludwig Erhard, the then Vice Chancellor Adenauer also, did the latter leave his post, but in 1966 the economy began to fluctuating significantly impair the credibility of Erhard, a result formed the first grand coalition government of Christian Democrats (CDU / CSU) and Social Democrats (SPD), Kurt Georg Kiesinger (CDU, 1904-1988) and chancellor Willy Brandt (SPD, 1913-1992) as vice chancellor. The absence of parliamentary opposition encouraged the growth of radical demands for social reform by the student movement.
The turning point came in 1969 when Willy Brandt's SPD formed a new government with the Liberal Democratic Party (FDP). The Nobel Peace Prize (1971), born in Lübeck, had spent the years of Hitler's power working as a journalist in exile in Scandinavia, where he was denied citizenship by Nazi writings. His priority was the normalization of relations with the GDR (policy approach that became known as Ostpolitik), and in December 1972 signed the Basic Treaty, which paved the way for the incorporation of both Germanys to the United Nations in 1973 . The treaty guaranteed the sovereignty in national and international affairs, but did not solve the problem of formal recognition because it precluded the formation of the RFA.
In 1974, Brand Helmut Schmidt replaced as a result of monumental public scandal (one of the main advisers proved Brandt Stasi spy). During the 1970s the movement gained strength antinuclear and environmentalist (Greens), which was opposed by the new Chancellor and finally got Bohn representatives to parliament in 1979. In 1974, West Germany became part of the group known as G8 industrialized nations. But this decade was also a time of terrorism, in which the Red Army Faction anticapitalist killed several prominent figures from the political and business world.
Entente Dream Brand East West continued with Chancellor Helmut Kohl, with the help of his conservative coalition government 1982, polished relations between East and West while some gains dismantled the welfare state. In 1987, Kohl received in the capital of the FRG to his counterpart in the GDR, Erich Honecker, with honors.
THE UNIFICATION
It was clear that in his heart, the Eastern Europeans had long yearned for a change, but the events that led to German reunification took by surprise even the most seasoned political observers.The call Wende of Germany (the change which saw the fall of communism) and reunification came from the German way possible: progressive development culminating in a big bang. The East Germans, who remembered the situation in Berlin in the 1950s, began leaving the country in droves. This time I had to cross that line of concrete and barbed wire separating East from West, but they crossed the open borders of Austria and Hungary. The SED could not stem the tide of citizens who wanted to leave, some of whom sought refuge in the Embassy of the Federal Republic in Prague. At about the same time, the East Germans began to take to the streets and demonstrate the Monday after the Mass at St. Nicholas Church in Leipzig, and other churches in the GDR, knowing that the Church supported their demand greater respect for human rights.
The spread and intensification of Erich Honecker made demonstrations accept the inevitable and cede his post to Egon Krenz. And in the decisive night of November 9, 1989, the party official Günter Schabowsky informed of GDR citizens could travel directly west; 10,000 jubilant East Germans crossed the border at various venues in Berlin and elsewhere the country and put an end to the cold stage of the German division.
Unified Germany today, with 16 states (five of which are located in eastern Germany, the so-called "new states"), was achieved after a fleeting national political debate and a series of treaties for the suppression of the areas resulting occupation of the Second World War. The days of four-power occupation passed into history. Berlin acquired its current status as an independent city-state, and immediately after reunification, the October 3, 1990, recovered the capital of Germany.
The most prominent figure certainly the reunification and 1990s was Helmut Kohl, whose coalition of CDU / CSU and FDP was re-elected in the first elections of unified Germany, held in December 1990.
Under the leadership of Kohl, were privatized East German properties and supersubvencionadas state industries suffered significant cuts were sold or liquidated in full; also modernized infrastructure (in some cases even sobreinvirtió in them) to generate the boom of unification by which this country grew by up to 10% annually until 1995. However, this boom fell sharply in the second half of the decade, and the result was divided into East Germany winners and losers as a result of unification. To those who had jobs did well, but the unemployment rate was high and the lack of opportunities in regions like Harz Mountains or in cities like Magdeburg and Halle (both in Saxony-Anhalt) are causing many young people in eastern Germany seek luck in the west or in rapidly developing cities as Leipzig (Saxony). Berlin is the exception, despite its instability. Bohn Many public officials have moved to the capital to similar administrative positions, and a vibrant cultural scene attracts young people from around the country.
Helmut Kohl also strove to bring to justice the leaders of the GDR, and Erich Honecker, who fled after resigning and died in Chile in 1994. His case was dismissed before his death due to his poor health.
The legacy of Helmut Kohl regarding unification is unquestionable. However, his involvement in the bribery scandal with party funds in the late 1990s almost financially ruined his own party and deprived him of the position of honorary life president of the CDU. In 1998, a coalition of the SPD and Bündnis 90/Die Grünen (Alliance 90/The Greens) defeated Christian-liberal coalition (CDU-CSU/FDP) until then in power.
THE NEW MILLENNIUM
With the formation of a coalition government with the SPD and Alliance 90/The Greens in 1998, Germany reached a new milestone. It was the first time I accessed the Green Party national government (in Germany and around the world). Two figures dominated the coalition government of seven years, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and the Greens Vice Chancellor and Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer. The behavior model Schröder was Willy Brandt, that of Fischer, as was the first of his party to be minister, he was out of necessity. Despite having a background in the scene leftist occupation of houses in Frankfurt am Main in the 1970s, enjoyed broad popularity among the German population of all political stripes.Under the leadership of Gerhard Schröder, Germany began to adopt a more independent foreign policy, categorically rejecting participation in the invasion of Iraq, but U.S. support, historically its closest ally in the war in Afghanistan and Kosovo. His stance on Iraq, reflecting the sentiments of the majority of Germans, led to tension in relations with the U.S. administration of George W. Bush.
In a sense, Germany is concentrated both reunification that disregarded the changes that occurred in the global economy during the 1990s. Nationally, trying to adapt the social market economy to what he perceived as new needs in a global economy, especially through a series of labor market reforms. The fourth of these reforms, popularly known as "Hartz IV", intended to streamline the unemployment and other social benefits systems and assist long-term unemployed to find work. However, in practice, the reform measures Hartz IV Schröder government (still in force) were inflexible, bureaucratic and sometimes severe for beneficiaries, contributing to a gradual shift from traditional voters smaller parties SPD towards the center. In the elections of 2009, the Hartz IV laws and law approving the State retirement pension for the Germans after 67 years, causing many voters gravitate toward games that in his opinion had social policies fair. One of these parties was Die Linke (The Left), from the ancient oriental SED, and later successor party would join a left-wing grouping in western Germany. All together as the Left, question social policies and labor market and social democratic Labour Party traditional SPD.
A key reform to the environment and the energy of the government of the SPD and Alliance 90/The Greens 1998-2005 was a law providing for the closure of all German nuclear plants by 2020. There is controversial and there will be pressure to override this decision in a coalition government formed by early CDU / CSU and FDP. All these parties support extending the life of nuclear power plants, saying it is necessary to cover the lack of energy until renewable energies are seated.
FIRST WOMAN THE CHANCELLOR
The rise of the Greens and, most recently, of The Left has dramatically changed the country's political scene, so now even more difficult to obtain the absolute majority of the "big two". In 2005, the CDU / CSU and SPD formed a coalition led by Angela Merkel, the first woman (in the former GDR, Russian speaking and quantum physics studies) to hold the post.When the financial crisis came in 2008-2009, the German government injected hundreds of millions of euros into the financial system to support the banks. Other measures allowed enterprises to shorten shifts without losing salary workers and injecting money into the economy by encouraging citizens to change your old car for a new one.
Export industries that depend both Germany for wealth (world's third largest economy, behind Japan and the U.S., and the largest exporter) have suffered greatly during the crisis and, if the predictions of the OECD are good, unemployment in Germany will increase to about five million (11.8% of the workforce) over 2010. Other predictions are less drastic.
The elections of 2009 confirmed the trend towards smaller parties and political system of five games. The CDU / CSU won second worst result in the party's history (about 34% of the vote) and the SPD had the worst result in its nearly 150 years of history, with nearly 23% of the vote. Support Left has remained strong in eastern Germany over the years, but success in the federal elections of late 2009 enabled him to establish himself at the federal level. The Left won about 12% of the votes and is the second strongest party in the opposition, after the SPD. It came very close to the FDP (below 15%), while Alliance 90/The Greens, despite some voters get disillusioned SPD won about 11% and became the smallest party in the opposition.
Despite having lost support, the CDU / CSU governs in coalition with the FDP, with Angela Merkel again in the position of chancellor. It is likely that the influence of a strong FDP in Germany to focus heavily on the neo-liberal economic policies, but also on the rights of citizens, traditionally part of the FDP program. Their leader, Guido Westerwelle, is the current Minister of Foreign Affairs.
Predictably, the five-party system will become a lasting peculiarity of the political scene in Germany, and the SPD will continue to accept the prospect of having to conclude agreements coalition with the Left in a future government led by the SPD. He has refused so far, but is likely to change, especially if the current mayor of Berlin, Klaus Wowereit is a candidate for chancellor (believed to have many possibilities) in the next election, scheduled for 2013. Currently, Wowereit leads a coalition of the SPD and the Left in Berlin. Sigmar Gabriel and Olaf Scholz (both ministers in the previous grand coalition may also appear on any renewal of the SPD.
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