Großdeutschland

"Großdeutschland" (German for "Greater Germany" or "Large Germany") is a term referring to the concept of one German nation-state encompassing most or all of the Germanophone and/or Germanic population of Europe.

An extreme variation was the Greater Germany proposed by the Nazis in which adequate "living space" ("Lebensraum") would be provided all of the Germanic peoples. The counter-concept is known as "Small Germany", or "Little Germany" ("Kleindeutschland").

History

Overview

The idea of "Großdeutschland" translates the idea of nationality based on a common heritage, culture and language, instead of the idea of nationality based on being born on the national territory, such as in the USA, France and the People's Republic of China.

Initially, the "Großdeutschland" movement can be understood as part of a more general nation-building process in Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries when the multi-national Austro-Hungarian, Russian, and Ottoman empires were replaced by nation-states. The German nation-building process can be compared to similar movements in Italy (Italia irredenta), Hungary, Serbia, and in pre-1914 Poland. A century later, with the Nazi movement in power, it became a propaganda screen to dominate other, non-German countries.

Creating a German national state integrating the German-speaking territories in Austria, i.e. "Großdeutschland", was also an attempt to balance the power of the authoritarian Prussian monarchy within a future Germany by a larger weight of the more liberally-minded South German states. In fact, the large weight of Prussia within Germany became a political problem for all German governments up to 1933Fact|date=July 2008. Ever since Martin Luther's 1500s reformation and the Thirty Years' War a century later, Germany remained culturally divided between a Protestant, Prussian-dominated north and a Catholic south and south-west dominated by Austria and Bavaria. By the time of the German Empire's unification in 1871 by Otto von Bismarck, these cultural and confessional differences were connoted with political differences and strongly remained so during the first half of the 20th century.

All these cultural, religious, and political differences between the north and the south were partly responsible for the fact that Germany and Austria-Hungary remained two different states in the 19th century, as well as the fact that a "Großdeutschland" back then would have been dominated by Austria instead of Prussia, which Bismarck, a conservative, loyal subject to the Prussian king, intended to prevent.

19th century: Prussia vs. Austria

, which did not include Austria, the "Kleindeutschland" solution favoured by Prussian conservatives was put into practice.

Others proposed a unified Germany including all lands of the Austrian Empire. One of the main obstacles to this vision was the large Hungarian and Slavic component of the Austrian Empire (including Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Rusyns, Ukrainians, Slovenians, Croatians, and Serbs) that had no desire to be united with the German speaking lands. For this reason, the liberals of 1848 proposed an alternative "Großdeutschland" vision which would include Austria proper, Bohemia-Moravia-Silesia and the Austrian Slovenian lands, but not the lands of the Kingdom of Hungary (Hungary and Croatia) or Galicia. However, this would have required the dismantling of the Austrian Empire, and the Czechs anyway rejected the ideaFact|date=June 2008.

20th century: Interwar period, "Anschluß", and World War II

After World War I, the Austrian National Assembly and the German National Assembly supported the unification of the successor-states of the two nations ("reichs"), but this was prohibited by the Allies. In a reference to the earlier concept of "Großdeutschland", after the 1938 annexation of Austria into Germany ("Anschluss") to form a new German nation ("Deutsches Reich"), the state was (first informally and, from 1943, formally) renamed to the Greater Germany ("Großdeutsches Reich").

"Großdeutschland" became a reality after the "Anschluss" with Austria by Nazi Germany in 1938. During the war, Nazi Germany directly annexed Alsace-Lorraine and Eupen-Malmedy which were lost in 1919 but also took over Luxembourg, the Sudetenland portions of the present-day Czech Republic, and large parts of Poland. The areas annexed by Germany were considered part of a Greater German state, in contrast to parts of Poland under the General Government and the Protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia, both of which were German controlled, but not part of Greater Germany. This came to an end with the Surrender of Germany to the Allies in 1945.

Legacy

Because of its association with Nazi Germany there are no mainstream political groups in Austria or Germany that endorse the concept of Greater Germany today, and those that do are often regarded as Fascist or Neo-Nazi.

ee also

*Germania
*

References