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.
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
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.
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.
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
Frederick the Great of Prussia advanced the ideas of the Enlightenment by adapting them to his scenario politically and socially to propitiate his subjects after his father’s reign. He was rightly branded as the first “servant to the state” because of his firm belief that all of his decisions as a monarch should be to benefit his subjects not to force his subjects to benefit him. Some of his most important enlightened decisions include abolishing torture and requiring the death penalty to be used in only extreme cases, advocating general education, enforcing agricultural reforms, establishing complete religious toleration, the professional construction of buildings that housed the arts, and the removal of guilds. Agricultural reforms were necessary in order to feed the vast population of his empire. Enacting religious toleration was not hard for Frederick because he did not have a religion and it improved immigration giving him more men to place in his army. The buildings that housed the arts, such as the Opera House, were very imp...
The war was the result of a succession dispute over the Spanish crown. What was seemingly a Prussian-Spanish alliance made the French feel encircled. Bismarck was able to entice Napoleon III into quick, aggressive action through the manipulation of Ems Telegram. This prompt action from Napoleon III led to growing anti-French and pro-German sentiment and led to the southern German states aiding the Prussian cause. William Carr has argued that South Germany’s involvement in Prussia’s cause meant that they had to come to terms with the new political situation. Although numerous southern states were reluctant to join the German Confederation, Bismarck therefore had to make numerous concessions. None the less the German Empire was born on the 18th January 1871. Harry Hearder argues that the North German Confederation already signified a unified German State. The declaration of the German Empire in 1871 re-emphasized the creation of a unified Germany and included the southern states. This would suggest that the Seven Weeks War with Austria had more significance in the eventual unification of
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.
aggressive added to the expansion in his forces. These reasons lead to the World War 2.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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;