Pan-Germanism

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Pan-German nationalism
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Pan-Germanism (

nation-state known as the Greater Germanic Reich (German: Großgermanisches Reich), fully styled the Greater Germanic Reich of the German Nation (German
: Großgermanisches Reich der Deutschen Nation).

.
1908 map of the Continental West-Germanic dialect continuum

Pan-Germanism was highly influential in German politics in the 19th century during the

Austro-Hungarian Empire and the German Empire. From the late 19th century, many Pan-Germanist thinkers, since 1891 organized in the Pan-German League, had adopted openly ethnocentric and racist ideologies, and ultimately gave rise to the foreign policy Heim ins Reich pursued by Nazi Germany under Austrian-born Adolf Hitler from 1938, one of the primary factors leading to the outbreak of World War II.[1][2][3][4]
As a result of the disaster of World War II, Pan-Germanism was mostly seen as a
postwar period in both West and East Germany. Today, Pan-Germanism is mainly limited to some nationalist groups, primarily of the extreme political right
in Germany and Austria.

Etymology

The word pan is a

Teuton') most of whom spoke dialects ancestral to modern German
. In English, "Pan-German" was first attested in 1892.

In German, the Greek pan is known but hardly in this context. A German translation would depend on the meaning: alldeutsch or gesamtdeutsch. Alldeutsch, like in the chauvinist movement "Alldeutsche Bewegung", refers to a political program[5] uniting all German speaking people in one country (maybe even with the inclusion of Dutch speaking people).[6]

Origins (before 1860)

The German Confederation in 1820. Territories of the Prussian crown are blue, territories of the Austrian crown are yellow, and independent German Confederation states are grey. The red border shows the limits of the Confederation. Both Prussia and Austria controlled non-Confederation lands.

The origins of Pan-Germanism began with the birth of

Reformation, when the Holy Roman Empire was shattered into a patchwork of states following the end of the Thirty Years' War with the Peace of Westphalia
.

Advocates of the Großdeutschland (Greater Germany) solution sought to unite all the

German-speaking people in Europe, under the leadership of the German Austrians from the Austrian Empire. Pan-Germanism was widespread among the revolutionaries of 1848, notably among Richard Wagner and the Brothers Grimm.[3] Writers such as Friedrich List and Paul Anton Lagarde argued for German hegemony in Central and Eastern Europe, where German domination in some areas had begun as early as the 9th century AD with the Ostsiedlung, Germanic expansion into Slavic and Baltic lands. For the Pan-Germanists, this movement was seen as a Drang nach Osten, in which Germans would be naturally inclined to seek Lebensraum
by moving eastwards to reunite with the German minorities there.

The

Memel / From the Adige to the Belt", i.e. as including East Prussia and South Tyrol
.

Reflecting upon the First Schleswig War in 1848, Karl Marx noted in 1853 that "by quarrelling amongst themselves, instead of confederating, Germans and Scandinavians, both of them belonging to the same great race, only prepare the way for their hereditary enemy, the Slav."[7]

The German Question

Anti-German Scandinavism surged in Denmark in the 1930s and 1940s in response to the pan-Germanic ambitions of Nazi Germany.[26]

Administrative division of Nazi Germany, following the annexing of Austria, Sudetenland and others to form the Greater German Reich as of 1944
Sudeten Crisis as part of an intimidation process. Re-published in the British socialist newspaper Daily Worker
on 29 October 1938.
Boundaries of the planned "Greater Germanic Reich" based on various, only partially systematised target projections (e.g. Generalplan Ost) from state administration and the SS leadership sources[27]

1918 to 1945

World War I became the first attempt to carry out the Pan-German ideology in practice, and the Pan-German movement argued forcefully for expansionist imperialism.[28]

Following the defeat in

German Austria" (German: Deutschösterreich) in hope for union with Germany. Union with Germany and the name "German Austria" was forbidden by the Treaty of St. Germain
and the name had to be changed back to Austria.

It was in the

Heinrich Class in 1918, and Class provided Hitler with support for the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch. Hitler and his supporters shared most of the basic pan-German visions with the Pan-German League, but differences in political style led the two groups to open rivalry. The German Workers Party of Bohemia cut its ties to the pan-German movement, which was seen as being too dominated by the upper classes, and joined forces with the German Workers' Party led by Anton Drexler, which later became the Nazi Party (National Socialist German Workers' Party, NSDAP) that was to be headed by Adolf Hitler from 1921.[29]

Nazi propaganda also used the political slogan

Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer ("One people, one Reich, one leader"), to enforce pan-German sentiment in Austria for an "Anschluss
".

The chosen name for the projected empire was a deliberate reference to the

the Holy Lance and other items) residing in Vienna to be transferred to Nuremberg, where they were kept between 1424 and 1796.[31] Nuremberg, in addition to being the former unofficial capital of the Holy Roman Empire, was also the place of the Nuremberg rallies. The transfer of the regalia was thus done to both legitimize Hitler's Germany as the successor of the "Old Reich", but also weaken Vienna, the former imperial residence.[32]

After the

a push forward to a new golden age, in which the best aspects of the past would be combined with modern racist and nationalist thinking".[33]

The historical borders of the Holy Roman Empire were also used as grounds for territorial revisionism by the NSDAP, laying claim to modern territories and states that were once part of it. Even before the war, Hitler had dreamed of reversing the

Reich Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels wrote in his diary that the "total liquidation" of this historic treaty was the "great goal" of the Nazi regime,[34] and that since it had been signed in Münster, it would also be officially repealed in the same city.[35]

The

allied seafaring partner of the Germans.[38]

The eastern

and its clearing of native inhabitants.

As the foreign volunteers of the Waffen-SS were increasingly of non-Germanic origin, especially after the

3rd SS Division Totenkopf:

We do not expect you to renounce your nation. [...] We do not expect you to become German out of opportunism. We do expect you to subordinate your national ideal to a greater racial and historical ideal, to the Germanic Reich.[39]

History since 1945

The defeat of Germany in

reunification of Germany in 1990 revived the old debates.[40]

See also

References

Notes

  1. ^ a b "Pan-Germanism (German political movement) – Britannica Online Encyclopedia". Britannica.com. Retrieved 24 January 2012.
  2. ^ Origins and Political Character of Nazi Ideology Hajo Holborn Political Science Quarterly Vol. 79, No. 4 (Dec. 1964), p.550
  3. ^ a b c d "Slik ble vi germanersvermere – magasinet". Dagbladet.no. 7 May 2009. Retrieved 24 January 2012.
  4. ^ .
  5. ^ Kruse, Wolfgang (27 September 2012). "Nation und Nationalismus". Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung. Retrieved 21 April 2023.
  6. ^ Toni Cetta; Georg Kreis: "Pangermanismus", in: Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz (HLS), Version of 23.09.2010. Online: https://hls-dhs-dss.ch/de/articles/017464/2010-09-23/, last seen 21.04.2023.
  7. .
  8. ^ "The Situation of Germany" (PDF). The New York Times. 1 July 1866. Retrieved 21 August 2017.
  9. ^ Nationalism and Globalisation: Conflicting Or Complementary. D. Halikiopoulou. p51.
  10. ^ "Das politische System in Österreich (The Political System in Austria)" (PDF) (in German). Vienna: Austrian Federal Press Service. 2000. p. 24. Archived from the original (PDF) on 23 April 2014. Retrieved 9 July 2014.
  11. . Retrieved 22 March 2011.
  12. ^ Drummond, Elizabeth A. (2005). "Pan-German League". In . Retrieved 15 July 2016.
  13. . Retrieved 20 January 2023.
  14. ISBN 978-1-4058-2471-2.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link
    )
  15. .
  16. ^ Thomas Pedersen. Germany, France, and the integration of Europe: a realist interpretation. Pinter, 1998. P. 74
  17. ^ Ian Adams. Political Ideology Today. Manchester, England, UK: Manchester University Press, 1993. P. 95.
  18. S2CID 163132775
    .
  19. ^ NRK (20 January 2005). "Drømmen om Norge". NRK.no. Retrieved 24 January 2012.
  20. ^ Larson, Philip E. (1999). Ibsen in Skien and Grimstad: His education, reading, and early works (PDF). Skien: The Ibsen House and Grimstad Town Museum. p. 143.
  21. ^ Germany: The Long Road West: Volume 2: 1933–1990. Digital version. Oxford, England, UK: Oxford University Press, 2007.
  22. ^ Stephen Barbour, Cathie Carmichael. Language and Nationalism in Europe. Oxford, England, UK: Oxford University Press, 2000. P. 111.
  23. Institut für Zeitgeschichte. 1999. Archived from the original
    on 14 December 2013. Retrieved 24 January 2012.
  24. ^ a b World fascism: a historical encyclopedia, Volume 1 Cyprian Blamires ABC-CLIO, 2006. pp. 499–501
  25. ^ Antisemitism: A Historical Encyclopedia of Prejudice and Persecution, Volume 1, Richard S. Levy, 529–530, ABC-CLIO 2005
  26. ^ a b c Hattstein 2006, p. 321.
  27. .
  28. ^ Haman 1999, p. 110
  29. ^ a b c Brockmann 2006, p. 179.
  30. ^ a b Sager & Winkler 2007, p. 74.
  31. ^ Goebbels, p. 51.
  32. ^ Elvert 1999, p. 325.
  33. ^ Rich 1974, pp. 401–402.
  34. ^ Strobl 2000, pp. 202–208.
  35. ^ Stein 1984, p. 148.
  36. ^ Zeilinger, Gerhard (16 June 2011). "Straches "neue" Heimat und der Boulevardsozialismus". Der Standard (in German). Retrieved 28 June 2011.

Further reading