The German Question, Part Thirty-Nine

"Aftermath of Napoleon" Conclusion

For quite some time, right up into and through the end of World War Two, the Germans have been noted for their military prowess. Some of this is exaggerated, as prior to true German unification, a point which we are now approaching in this series, not all German states had efficient military forces. Some of you may recall from your history class days, that during the American Revolution, the British brought German troops from "Hessen" to help suppress the rebellion in the Colonies, but they didn't really perform well in America. Certainly part of the reason for their poor performance was that they were mercenaries, and therefore they weren't fighting for anything except money. For most people, it's one thing to risk your life for your own country, but it's another matter entirely to risk your life purely for money.

The competitive situation between the German states, as well as, powerful non-German neighbors; typically, France (west), Russia (east), Sweden (north), and the Turks (south) out of the Balkans, made having viable military forces pretty much of a necessity for survival for many German states. Remember, even when the Holy Roman Empire (the German Empire) was in existence, the German emperor was actually dependent upon the states to provide "imperial forces," a situation which increasingly fell to Austria as the centuries passed. The Prussian kings finally began to organize and train their armies in an effort to keep their (initially small) kingdom from being nibbled away by other German states. As Prussian forces improved, Prussia became a northern competitor with Austria (southern) for influence within the German Empire. This all ended when Napoleon defeated both Prussia and Austria on the battlefield, thus giving him control of Germany. This control proved only to be temporary, as some Prussian officers saw the need to reform Prussia's army, having learned some lessons from their walloping by Napoleon, and indeed it was Prussia that helped lead the Germans in their effort to remove Napoleon's hold over Germany.

This era began the march to a time when many people in Europe and America saw the Germans as having disciplined and efficient armies. Prussia established military schools and a "general staff" composed of highly trained military officers, whose whole life revolved around military matters and what might be termed "the science of warfare." These officers studied and developed plans and theories, not only in what most people see as "strategy and tactics" for the battlefield, but also in those most necessary functions not considered by the average lay person, like how to supply forces in the field and how to keep a pool of trained replacements available to step in for the inevitable casualties. All of this "devotion to duty" gradually came to personify "German military efficiency," but it certainly wasn't true of all Germans, as for instance, Austria did not reform its military in the same way as Prussia, a failure which eventually brought about Austria's defeat, a point we will be dealing with shortly.*

Napoleon exposed how weak the German Empire really was, since the hundreds of German states at that time were not under any central government, but rather the true power was in the hands of the individual states. By the time of Napoleon, the German emperor was merely a figurehead, and even in that role he could not rally Germans in a united effort to keep the French from overrunning German territory. Without reforms and giving ALL Germans a stake in a truly national government and a united country, German unity remained elusive. The forces of reform were gathering strength, but could they bring about changes in a system dominated by nobles of many titles?

* Austria's military had numerous problems, not the least of which was that the Habsburg possessions  contained so many non-Germans.

WORD HISTORY:
Federation-This goes back to the Indo European root "bhoidh," a variant of "bheidh," which had the notion of "trust." This gave the Latin offshoot "foedus," which meant "treaty, covenant, league" (that which is formed and based upon trust), as the "bh" of Indo European was rendered as 'f' in Latin. A verb was derived from "foedus" as "foederare," meaning "to agree to a treaty or covenant," and this brought about the Late Latin noun "foederatio," meaning "alliance, two or more nations or states bound by treaty." This was taken by French as "fédération," with the same meaning and English borrowed the word in the mid 1600s, and by the early 1700s it took on the meaning "a state entity formed by treaty among independent states." Later it took on the broader meaning of "groups (of varying types, not just government) banding together in agreement to form a single entity."