Death of a Nation
Page 87
* Six million European Jews were murdered during the Nazi Holocaust, with approximately 750,000 being shot and the remainder murdered by the use of gas, starvation or being worked to death. The largest number of Jews murdered came from Poland. There were 3 million Polish Jews, 1 million Russian Jews and 469,000 from Romania; the remainder came from Czechoslovakia, the Baltic States, Hungary, Germany, the Netherlands, France, Greece and all over occupied Europe.
11) Stalin’s bloody terror stats (Roy Medvedev):
2 million of 10 million kulaks forcibly resettled after 1929 forced collectivisation are estimated to have died, if not more.
6 million died in deliberate famine of 1933.
1 million arrested and killed in first wave of terror in 1934.
10 million of the 17 to 18 million arrested died in labour camps in second wave of terror by 1937.
Of the total 5 to 7 million interned, 1 million were shot and millions more died by 1939.
2 million died as result of 1939 Hitler-Stalin pact and the occupation by the Soviet Union of the Baltic States, eastern Poland, Finland, Bessarabia and Bukovina.
22 million dead as a result of Stalin’s terror, purges, collectivisation and occupations before war began with Nazi Germany.
More than one million died from 1941 onwards as a result of the forced deportations of ‘treacherous groups’ including the ethnic Germans in Russia, Crimean Tartars, Cossacks and Chechens.
5 to 6 million of the over 10 million sent to camps as part of Stalin’s ‘screening’ process died. Most were former Soviet POWs or Soviet citizens who were left alive in the areas occupied by the Germans. This was following Stalin’s order that they should kill themselves rather than allow themselves to be captured.
1 million victims in his final purge between 1947 and 1953.
30 to 40 million dead in total (not including war dead) as a result of Stalin’s murderous impulses.*
*The total for the number of people murdered during Stalin’s reign of terror remains a disputed figure. Controversy still surrounds the question of whether the famine was deliberate or an unintended consequence of the attempt to enforce collectivisation. The key point is that, as with the figures on the number of German civilians who were killed or shipped off to the Gulags, the Soviets were appalling record keepers and the true figures for those killed will probably never be known. Estimates for the number of Soviet citizens killed during Stalin’s rule continue to range from 10 to 60 million.
12) German territorial losses as a result of both World Wars:
Germany in 1912 = 540,740 sq. km
Germany in 1990 = 357,668 sq. km
183,072 sq. km* lost (34 per cent of territory)
* An area equivalent in size to Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Slovenia combined, with enough room left over for a couple of Luxembourgs.
Austria-Hungary in 1912 = 677,826 sq. km
Austria in 1990 = 83,855 sq. km*
Hungary in 1990 = 93,030 sq. km**
* German Austria lost 25 per cent of her German-speaking territories and over 45 per cent of her German-speaking population, stranded on the wrong side of newly drawn borders, including:
* 26,911 sq. km Sudetenland to Czechoslovakia
* 7,400 sq. km South Tirol to Italy.
* Plus a host of other non-geographically contiguous German-speaking regions in what became Yugoslavia and Romania.
If you add the territorial losses of ‘German Europe’, i.e. add German and Austrian German-speaking territories lost as a consequence of both world wars, you end up with a territory the size of the United Kingdom.
** Hungary lost near half its population to Romania, Slovakia and Yugoslavia and over half of its territory.
13) Famous Germans and German Jews:
The following is a partial list of some of the famous Germans and German Jews who originated from the eastern territories and what was once German-speaking Europe.
Bohemians include: Ferdinand Porsche, Oskar Schindler, Gustav Mahler, Baltasar Neumann, Rainer Maria Rilke, Sigmund Freud, Franz Kafka, Daniel Swarovski, Joseph Riedel, Gregor Mendel, Adalbert Stifter, Ernst Mach, Otfried Preußler, Martin Behaim, Ignaz von Biber & the family of Harald Schmidt.
Silesians include: Baron von Richthofen (the Red Baron), Carl von Clausewitz, Helmuth James Graf von Moltke, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ferdinand Lassalle, Fritz Stern, Fritz Haber, Karl Max Prince von Lichnowsky, Dieter Hildebrand, Wolfgang Thierse, Edith Stein, Paul Löbe, Gerhart Hauptmann, Joseph von Eichendorff, and the families of Guido Knopp, Thomas Gottschalk as well as Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck.
East Prussians include: Johann Gottfried Herder, Immanuel Kant, E.T.A. Hoffmann, Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel, Gustav Robert Kirchoff, David Hilbert, Adolf Lipmann, Hermann Sudermann, Käthe Kollwitz, Erich Mendelsohn, Otto Bauer, Hannah Arndt and Armin Mueller-Stahl.
From West Prussia, Province of Posen and Danzig: Werner von Braun, Arthur Schopenhauer, Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit, Günter Grass, Thomas Kielinger, Klaus Kinski, Andreas Schlüter, Kurt Schumacher, Heinz Guderian, Carl Friedrich Goerdeler and President Paul von Hindenburg
From Pomerania: Klaus von Bismarck, Alfred Döblin, Christa Wolf, Victor Klemperer, Uwe Johnson, Rudolf Virchow, Manfred Stolpe & Lothar Bisky.
From Elsaß (Alsace): Mattheus Greuter, Albert Schweitzer, Martin Schongauer, Conrad and Marcel Schlumberger, Hans Albrecht Bethe.
From former Austro-Hungarian territories before First World War: Herta Müller and the families of Joschka Fischer and Horst Köhler.
To name but a few…
14) UNESCO World Heritage Sites that were originally created by Germans beyond Germany/Austria’s post-war borders:
Marienburg Teutonic Crusader Fortress Castle (now in northern Poland).
Jahrhundert Halle – in Breslau/Wroclaw (in modern day Polish Silesia).
Silesian churches Jauer/Jawer and Schweidnitz/Swidnica (in modern day Polish Silesia).
Medieval town centre of Thorn/Torun (in modern day northern Poland).
Siebenbürgen churches and villages of the Transylvanian Saxons (in Romania).
Siebenbürgen Saxon town of Schäßburg/Sighisoara (in Romania).
Siebenbürgen Saxon capital of Hermannstadt/Sibiu (in Romania).
Sudeten towns of Krumau/Cesky Krumlov and Teltsch/Telc (in the Czech Republic).
Haus Tugendhat Brünn/Brno (in the Czech Republic).
The medieval town centres of Riga and Reval/Tallin (Latvia and Estonia respectively).
The medieval town centre of Straßburg/Strasbourg (in modern day French Alsace).2
The double natural UNESCO World Heritage Site divided between Lithuania and Russia – the Curonian Spit (Kurische Nehrung) with its stunning natural beauty and beautifully preserved villages including Nida (Nidden) where Thomas Mann once lived.
15) Historical timeline:
105 BC Teutons and Cimbri tribes encounter Roman legions at battle of Arausio
58 BC Julius Caesar begins conquest of Gaul and in 55 BC begins incursions into Germania
AD 166–180 Emperor Marcus Aurelius battles Germanic Marcommani (the Gladiator battles)
260 Alamanni breach the Limes frontier and push the Romans back on the Rhine/Danube
406 Germanic tribes destroy the northern frontier of the Roman Empire and cross the Rhine in force
410 Alaric, leader of the Visigoths, sacks Rome
455 Vandals sack Rome
476 Odaker, leader of the Ostrogoths, relieves Romulus, the last Roman Emperor, of his throne
568 Migration of the Germanic tribes ends with the Langobards conquering northern Italy
732 Charles Martel stops the Umayyad Muslim advance into Europe from Iberia
800 Charlemagne (Karl der Große) is crowned Emperor by the Pope in Rome
843 Treaty of Verdun (Wirten) – ‘the birth certificate of modern Europe’ – divides Charlemagne’s empire in three
936 Otto the Great proclaims himself Imperator Augustus, establis
hes the imperial coronation rights, defeats the Magyar invaders in 955 at the Battle of Lechfeld and becomes king of Lombardy in 962
1065 Emperor Heinrich IV’s high and low points in battle between Emperor and Pope
1189 Emperor Friedrich Barbarossa leads the Third Crusade to retake Jerusalem
1229 Emperor Friedrich II becomes King of Jerusalem
1346 Karl (Charles) IV becomes king of the Germans and subsequently Holy Roman Emperor
1495 Maximillian I reforms the Reich institutions at the Reichstag of Worms
1512 Reichstag of Cologne renames the Reich – the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation
1517 Martin Luther pins his ninety-five treaties to the door of a church in Saxon Wittenberg and unleashes the Reformation
1519 Charles V becomes Holy Roman Emperor and battles the Reformation, the Turks, the French and the New World
1529 Reichstag in Speyer, Lutherans and Calvinists ‘protest’ and the term ‘Protestants’ is born
1530 Charles V is the last Emperor to be crowned by the Pope
1648 Treaty of Westphalia ends the Thirty Years War and begins France’s push on the Rhine
1688 King Louis XIV of France begins his nine-year war, which devastates parts of western Germany
1803 Napoleon annexes all of the Holy Roman Empire west of the Rhine
1806 Marks the death of the 1000-year Reich – the Holy Roman Emperor lays down his crown
1813 Napoleon is defeated in the largest land battle to date at the Battle of Leipzig
1815 The Congress of Vienna establishes Prussia’s ‘Watch on the Rhine’ and Austria’s leadership over the newly constituted German Confederation
1834 Prussia establishes the German Customs Union – the Zollverein
1848 Revolution sweeps Europe and the battle for Germany between Austria and Prussia begins
1864 Second War of Schleswig Holstein sees the territory annexed to the German Confederation
1866 Austro-Prussian (German civil) War ends in defeat for Austria and has Prussia annex northern Germany
1870 Franco-Prussian War ends in defeat for France and the southern German states align with Prussia
1871 A new German Reich is proclaimed by the German Emperor Kaiser Wilhelm II
1914 The First World War begins
1918 The German Empire signs the armistice to end the First World War and Germany becomes a republic
1929 Great Depression sweeps the world and by 1932 there are over 6 million unemployed in Germany
1933 Adolf Hitler is appointed German Chancellor
1939 The Second World War begins with Nazi Germany’s invasion of Poland
1945 Nazi Germany is defeated and occupied and subsequently dismembered
1949 Division and dismemberment of Germany is finalised and two satellite states are created out of what is left of the German Reich, which then become part of their respective Cold War alliance systems until 1990
16) An Overview of Holy Roman Emperors from Charlemagne onwards: The Carolingians
Charlemagne (Karl der Große or Charles the Great): 742–814
Crowned Roman Emperor by the Pope in Rome on Christmas Day AD 800
Ludwig I (Louis the Pious): reigned as Emperor from 813–840
Reigning together with his son Lothar from 817
Lothar I: reigned from 817–855
His son Ludwig (Louis the German) would gain the eastern kingdom after the division of Charlemagne’s empire into three by the Treaty of Verdun
Karl II (Charles the Bald): reigned from 875–877
Karl III (Charles the Fat): reigned from 881–888
Wido (Guido of Spoleto): reigned from 891–894 – co-ruled with his son
Lambert at the end of his reign
Lambert (of Spoleto): reigned from 892–898 – disputed the throne with both the pope and Arnulf (von Kärnten)
Arnulf (von Kärnten): reigned from 896–899
Ludwig (Louis the Blind): reigned from 901–905
The Carolingian Dynasty ended with row of disputed successions, whereupon it was finally decided to opt for an outsider – the Franconian Duke
Konrad I: reigned from 911–918 – before abdicating in favour of Heinrich I.
The Ottonians (Saxons)*
Heinrich I – 919–936
Otto I (the Great) – 936–973 – defeated the Magyar threat and established new coronation rights
Otto II – 973–983
Otto III – 983–1002
Heinrich II – 1002–1024
*Dates from the Ottonian period begin with their coronation as Kings of Germany in the main, so as to keep an orderly chronological succession, as they feature in the gallery of the Roman Hall (Roemersal) in Frankfurt. Coronations as Holy Roman Emperors did not always follow in the same year.
Salians (Franconians)
Konrad II: 1024–1039
Heinrich III: 1039–1056
Heinrich IV: 1056–1106 – battled Popes for temporal authority within his lands – the ‘Canossa Emperor’
Heinrich V: 1106–1125
The Salian Dynasty died out with Heinrich V, which was followed by the brief interlude of another Saxon king/emperor
Lothar III: 1125–1137
Hohenstaufen (Swabians)
Konrad III: 1138–1152
Friedrich I: 1152–1190 – known as Kaiser Barbarossa – who led the Third Crusade
Heinrich VI: 1190–1197
Philip I: 1198–1208
(Otto IV: 1198–1215 – rival King and Emperor of the Welfen [Guelph] dynasty)
Friedrich II: 1215–1250 – Holy Roman Emperor, King of Germany, Italy, Burgundy & Jerusalem
The Interegnum followed by successions of emperors from various dynasties
The Interegnum: 1250–1273 – when there was no recognised emperor
Rudolf von Habsburg: 1273–1291
Adolf von Nassau Weilburg: 1291–1298
Albrecht I (Habsburg): 1298–1308
Heinrich VII (Luxemburg): 1308–1313
Ludwig IV (Wittelsbach-Bavaria): 1314–1347 and Friedrich the Handsome (Habsburg): 1314–30 – who played out a long rivalry for the imperial throne
House of Luxemburg
Karl IV (Charles IV): 1347–1378 – Prague and Bohemia at the centre of the Holy Roman Empire
Wenzel (Wenceslaus – the idle): 1376–1400 – Deposed 1400
Ruprecht (Rupert: an interlude by the House of Wittelsbach 1400–1410)
Sigismund: 1400–1437
House of Habsburg (Austria)
Who were to rule hence forth in a virtually unbroken line until the end of the empire in 1806:
Albrecht II: 1438–1439
Friedrich III: 1440–1493 – The longest reign of any Holy Roman Emperor
Maximillian I: 1493–1519 – The great reformer
Karl V (Charles V): 1519–1556 – Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire and the New World
Ferdinand I: 1556–1564 – His reign represents the split of the Habsburg dynasty into a German-Austrian and a Spanish line
Maximillian II: 1556–1576
Rudolf II: 1576–1612 – He again puts Prague at the centre of the Holy Roman Empire
Matthias: 1612–1619 – Moves the capital back to Vienna
Ferdinand II: 1619–1637 – Brutally suppresses the Reformation and historic freedoms of Bohemia and helps set the fires that start the Thirty Years War
Ferdinand III: 1637–1657 – The empire enters a period of decline following the Treaty of Westphalia
Leopold I: 1658–1705 – attempts to check the eastward expansion of France under Louis XIV and holds off the Turks at the siege of Vienna in 1683
Joseph I: 1705–1711
Karl VI: 1711–1740
Karl VII: 1742–45 Interlude of the House of Wittelsbach during the War of the Austrian Succession
House of Habsburg-Lothringen (Lorraine)
Franz (Francis) I: 1745–1765 – Husband of Empress Maria Theresa of Austria, th
e real power behind the throne
Joseph II: 1765–1790 – eldest son of Maria Theresa and Franz I
Leopold II: 1790–1792
Franz II: 1792–1806 – The last Kaiser (Emperor) of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation, who was forced to abdicate and lay down his imperial crown by Napoleon
17) List of Prussian and German Rulers, Kings and Emperors:
1525–1568 Albrecht Hohenzollern – Grandmaster of the Teutonic Knights and Duke of Prussia
1568–1618 Albrecht Friedrich – The Duchy of Prussia then falls to his son-in-law, Elector John Sigismund, Margrave of Brandenburg, when he marries Albrecht Friedrich’s daughter, Anna of Prussia – uniting the houses of Brandenburg-Prussia
1618–1619 Johann Sigismund – Elector of Brandenburg from 1608 and Prussia from 1618–19
1619–1640 Georg Wilhelm – Son of Johann Sigismund and Anna
1640–1688 Friedrich Wilhelm – Builds the Prussian army, victor of Northern War – and is termed the ‘Great Elector’ in his own lifetime
1688–1713 Friedrich I – Becomes the first King in Prussia in 1701
1713–1740 Friedrich Wilhelm I – ‘The Soldier King’ expands the army and fills the state’s coffers
1740–1786 Friedrich II – ‘The Great’, also termed ‘The Philosopher King’, greatly expands the power and size of Prussia through victory in the Silesian Wars and the first partition of Poland
1786–1797 Friedrich Wilhelm II – Leads the greatest territorial and cultural expansion of Prussia
1797–1840 Friedrich Wilhelm III – Defeat by Napoleon at Jena but victory at Leipzig and Waterloo
1840–1861 Friedrich Wilhelm IV – King of Prussia during the German Revolution of 1848–9