Why Prussia Needed Fredrick the Great
Before Frederick took charge Prussia was not a country. It was broken into separate territories. France and England had become very powerful in the 1600's and Prussia felt endangered. Frederick's father Frederick the I was the elector of Prussia. When Frederick came to power his goal was to make Prussia a country. He believed that good government was rational but also authoritarian. Frederick was the first modern organizer. He put most of the country's wealth intro the military. He believed that the key to a country's wealth was through its military. 80% of Prussia's income went to the military. Prussia selected people for the military through the draft. Eventually Frederick died and left the kingdom to his son. Frederick the great was left with a 72,000 person military. This was a great deal of people for such a little country. Prussia only had 2,000,000 people.
Frederick the great believed that the idea of Prussian buacracy was that if you pay people well you would get loyalty. Frederick saw government as a contract with his people. Frederick was a very enlightened ruler. He believed that God had not chosen him to be Prussia's ruler. This was shocking because in Frederick's time kings were thought to be chosen from God. Frederick was enlightened in three ways. He didn't allow government officials to take money. He didn't allow his subjects to be tortured. Finally, he had religious toleration. Frederick found that it was time to expand Prussia into a great nation so he conducted a series of wars. These wars were called the Silesian Wars. Frederick started these wars for three reasons. The first reason was to show the rest of Europe how powerful Prussia was. The second reason was Frederick had an ambition to expand Prussia. The final reason was that silesia had over 1,000,000 people. This was half the size of his nation. More people meant more money for his army.
First Germany lost lots of land bordering Poland, France, and Denmark. East Prussia was still a part of Germany, but was like an island, disconnected from the homeland. This weakened Germany very much, having land be stripped from her. In Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf he says, “No nation can remove the hand from it’s throat except by the sword” (Document A). Hitler is saying in order to stop the unfair treatment, war is inevitable. He said this to help him come to power. He inspired people to not get pushed around by other countries with the Versailles Treaty. Hitler promised redemption and glory if he was put to
He brought in the Carlsbad Decree, banning the teaching of nationalism and liberalism. Lecturers were expelled for teaching nationalism and students were not allowed to talk about liberal and nationalist ideas. On the other hand, the second most powerful Germanic state, Prussia was open to the idea of liberalism and nationalism. Prussia welcomed the idea of one German nation. Other states grew closer to Prussia and an economic union called Zollverein was created that did included Austria in it. This economic union allowed Prussia to improve its economic situation and its military. An attempt to unify Germany was made in 1848, which ended up in a partial failure. The 1848 attempt made it clear that the German’s wanted Germany without Austria. The attempt was partially a failure because Prussian king did not take the title of German Emperor since the commoners were giving it and it made the Prussian King feel
Prussia had been a relatively conservative nation for a while with the monarch as the central point of power and Fredrick William did not want to change that at all, he spent years passing constitutions and electing representative bodies to keep his control. When in 1848 when rebellion began in Berlin to avoid upsetting many he refused to send in troops hoping the rebellion would fissile out. He even made concessions in their liberal favor and allowed a re-election. When the rebellion didn’t diminish a few days after his announcement of concessions he sent in troops to clear out the square, which ending in killing a few people. When angry protestors surrounded the palace Fredrick William IV showed respect to those who had died in the clearing of the square the day before and made even more concessions allowing an assembly to form. However soon the assembly soon revealed it was full of strong liberal radicals and he soon dismissed the assembly and filled it with more conservatives, showing just how deeply conservative Fredrick William was and how unwilling he was to change.
The Prussia Army increased state power through economic and social policies under the leadership of Frederick the Great. His economic and social policies were ever changing thus leaving other states questioning how this unlikely king become one of Europe’s major powers. Parker stated, “ through both argument and naked military force, Frederick wrung concessions from his territories that allowed him to collect taxes from each to support a single army and to recruit that force in all his lands.” As a result, he began to conceptualize that economy as operating under its autonomous laws and saw individual enterprise as the deregulation of production as the key to the growth of his army. In addition to a tax system, Frederick “compelled his young aristocrats to serve as an officer, and once they joined the army, only debility or death could release them.” Through this action the officer corps was created with a male of royalty and rich inheritance, thus increasing the economic power of
Bismarck believed that Germany should be united under Prussian leadership and that Austria should have nothing to do with Germany. Bismarck was chosen as chancellor by the Prussian king as he had a proven record as a monarchist and had little time for liberal and excessive parliamentary ideas. Bismarck helped his long term plan to unite Germany and to be the ruler by getting in a strong position with the king. The king owned Bismarck a 'favour´ as Bismarck had solved the king´s constitutional crisis. Bismarck played a crucial part in the unification of Germany as he helped to set up the Northern German Confederation after defeating Austria in the second of three wars.
Rulers of areas in Europe (including Germany) attended the ‘Wiener Kongress’ from October 1814 to June 1815 in order to adjust Europe post Napoleon. (Only the states of Germany that survived Napoleon attended Vienna.) The main aim of this conference was to reward the states and countries which were most successful in defeating Napoleon, not to consider democratic ideas. The areas rewarded were Russia, Prussia, Austria and Great Britain. These countries/states were rewarded by gaining land/territories. As well as gaining territories some areas also lost and e.g. although it expanded Prussia lost areas of Poland to Russia however the outcome of this loss was that Prussia became ‘a more coherently German state.’ (Mark Allinson 2002) Once the conference was over Germany was made up of 39 states, markedly fewer than before. Each state kept their own independence in the form of currency, laws and Armies.
But what would ultimately lead to the outbreak of the first world war was Germany’s ever-increasing belief in militarism. The German military power had continued to grow as their industrial sector did the same; such power was seen as a symbol of national pride by the government. Other nations had built up their arms stockpiles as well, though they did not glorify it nearly as much as the Germans did. Nevertheless, the availability of arms, when combined with other political and economic factors, meant that a full-scale conflict was all but unavoidable.
World War I was a very complicated war. It goes back as far back as 1870. Of course the was didn’t last for that many years, but it had many casues. Not just one spark that started it off. The Franco-Prussian War was one of these casues. There were sevral Franco-Prussian Wars. The last Franco-Prussian War started in 1870. Prussia was in a confederation. A confederation is a group of states that are loosly joined together and have more power than the government of the whole country. Prussia was the biggest state. France and Prussia always fought over Alsace-Lorraince. It was land with very rich soil. It was on the border between France and Prussia. They kept fighting over the land. One time Prussia would win and would take the land. The the next time France would win and would take the land. This kept happening, but in the last war, which started in 1870, Germany finally won Alsace-Lorraine. They signed a treaty in Versailles, France. The Franco-Prussian War ended in 1871. After the Franco-Prussian War, Bismarck, who was Prussia’s leader made the unification of Germany. That meant that all the separate states joined together to be one counrty. After this, Bismarck became the leader of Germany.
The stronger country would attack weaker countries and in the end the weaker would usually lose. This caused a lot of tension just like militarism. The last of the ideas, was the idea of jingoes. These were people who lived for war. All they wanted was to go to war. Jingoes where very aggresive talkers and they caused a lot of friction between many countries. These ideas where some of the main reasons Europe was pushed to the brink of war.
Before 1917 in Russia there was one supreme ruler with full autocratic power, there were no elected policies by law and the tsar was seen to have been put into his position by god. Between 1894-1917 the tsar came under pressure generally not suffered by any of his predecessors. The opposition came from four main sides;
All in all, the Great War was caused by a multitude of reasons including the many alliances that brought other countries into the war, a great amount of nationalism, and also tensions over colonies and technological advances. Many people can attribute the alliances for advancing and growing the amount of countries into the war. Nationalism is something missing in this time period in America, but it was still a leading factor in everybody entering the war and advancing it in the way that it did. tensions in colonies that fed the greater powers with valuable resources crucially changed the way that they felt about each other and helped to start and escalate it. The Great War was brutal and was started by many factors that added a great deal of tensions all around the world.
While the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand was the initial flame, there were four underlying causes that worked to trigger the commencement of the First World War. Militarism, Alliances, Nationalism and Imperialism played colossal roles in Europe at the time, thus being aspects that could certainly have blame placed upon. Militarism is the nation’s build up of a strong army due to the belief that a country should maintain a strong military capability and use it aggressively to defend or promote national interests. Alliances are bonds created between countries for mutual benefit. Nationalism is the spirit of a nation, often referred to as an extreme form of patriotism. Imperialism is the policy of extending the rule and influence
The first main reason the war started was because the south believed in owning slaves and the north did not. The south wanted to have every nation to join the cause of owning African American slaves but President Abraham Lincoln did not approve. No one in the south who owned slaves, really didn’t want Abraham Lincoln elected as President. They knew if he was elected the chances of continuing to own slaves would soon come to an end.
Frederick II, the Great, overcame the resource limitations within Prussia by mastering three aspects of the western way of war: the ability to finance war, possessing a highly disciplined military, and an aggressive mindset toward achieving quick decisive victory, which established Prussia as a major European power. Frederick II accomplished this feat while being surrounded by powerful neighbors that possessed larger populations, armies, and financial excess. His initial assessment on the state of his Prussian inheritance from his personal writings follows:
April of 1792, the newly elected Legislative Assembly declared war on Austria and Prussia, because it was believed that the French emigres were building counterrevolutionary alliances; it was also said to spread its revolutionary ideals across Europe through warfare.