Galicia

[1]  A region that became the northernmost province of the habsburg empire following the first partition of Poland in 1772. Centered on Lemburg (Lwow), this area of very mixed ethnicity (Poles and ukranians being the leading constituents) remained during the nineteenth century one of the poorest territories under Austrian rule and provided a major source of transatlantic migration in the years around 1900. After World War I, Galicia became part of the reconstituted Poland. However, in 1939 the region was occupied by the SOVIET UNION, and subsequently absorbed into the ukrainian Soviet Republic. The frontier line settled at the end of World War II left only a limited area of Western Galicia in Polish hands. The bulk ofthe region remained within the Soviet empire until the latter fragmented in 1991, whereupon it became incorporated into the territory of a newly-independent Ukraine.

[2]  A region of northwestern Spain, where pressures for greater autonomy from the central government in Madrid rose during the nineteenth century. This aim was briefly achieved under the SECOND republic (1931-6), only to be further frustrated as franco triumphed in the ensuing SPANISH CIVIL WAR (1936-9). Though himself a native of Galicia, he banned any official use of its distinctive language and repressed all support for devolution. Only with his death in 1975 did the position change, and by 1978 Galicians had regained substantial regional autonomy.

Gallipoli campaign Attempt made between February 1915 and January 1916 by a joint British, Commonwealth, and French amphibious force to open the Dardanelles, thus creating supply routes to Russia and forcing Turkey (see turkey and Europe) out of world war i. An initial naval assault, the brainchild of churchill as First Lord of the Admiralty, had to be abandoned when three battleships were lost and others damaged. Local commanders then commenced a land assault to take the Gallipoli peninsula. Turkish forces, under German operational command, had some local success, but could not prevent landings of the British 29th Division (the only regular unit with the expedition) and French troops. Further north, the Anzac forces (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) were confronted by units led by Mustapha Kemal (see atatUrk). From May to July 1915, a grim and ultimately deadlocked struggle took place, with the Turks defending the heights and the Allies the shore. Cholera and dysentery as well as munitions took a heavy toll. In August, large reinforcements permitted renewed Allied assaults which came close to success, but the Turks held their ground and the campaign was abandoned. A brilliantly executed evacuation of Allied forces took place during December 1915 and January 1916, but overall the operation failed

The Wiley-Blackwell Dictionary of Modern European History Since 1789  Nicholas Atkin, Michael Biddiss and Frank Tallett

© 2011 Nicholas Atkin, Michael Biddiss, Frank Tallett. ISBN: 978-1-405-18922-4

Disastrously. It had cost the lives of some 46,000 Allied and 200,000 Turkish military personnel. Churchill resigned in disgrace, Asquith’s hold on the premiership was broken, and Bulgaria now joined the Central Powers who, by the end of 1916, dominated the Balkans. Sometimes judged as a potential masterstroke in strategic terms, the Gallipoli campaign failed as a result of poor tactical and operational execution.

Gambetta, Leon (1838-82), French politician particularly noted for consolidating the new third REPUBLIC. The son of a Genoese grocer, Gambetta trained as a lawyer before entering parliament in 1869 as deputy for Marseille. Fiercely critical of NAPOLEON iii, he had a combative image that was enhanced by his beefy appearance, glass eye, and love of beer. With the fall of the Second Empire, Gambetta was one of those members of the Government of National Defense who declared a republic on September 4, 1870. As minister of the interior, he escaped the Prussian siege ofParis by hot-air balloon. He hoped to rally an army of national defense so as to relieve the capital, yet this was always going to be an uphill task. A devoted nationalist, he recoiled at the armistice that concluded the franco-prussian war, and especially at the loss of ALSACE-LORRAINE. Though he resigned his post in protest, Gambetta remained committed to the success of the new regime. He stood successfully for parliament in the 1871 elections, and later that year founded a newspaper, La Republique franqaise. No friend of thiers, he nonetheless reconciled his differences with this veteran politician after macmahon’s presidential election of 1873 seemed to be enhancing the prospects of royalist restoration. In 1875 Gam-betta naturally campaigned throughout the provinces in favor of the republican constitution. On May 4, 1877, at a moment of political crisis, he gave the famous speech in which he declared that “clericalisme, voila I’ennemi” (see anticlericalism). That was followed on September 18,1878 by another celebrated declaration, at Romans, where Gambetta attempted to rally republicans throughout France. Because of his outgoing personality, there were fears that he aspired to dictatorship, but he was cautious in embracing power, becoming prime minister only for a brief spell in 1881-2. Gambetta died accidentally after a revolver went off in his hand, though there was inevitable speculation about the precise circumstances. He was a great patriot, whose exuberant manner often obscured a prudence that helped consolidate the Third Republic during its most vulnerable early stages.

Gamelin, Maurice (1905-58), Commander-inChief of the French Army early in world war ii. A career soldier, he distinguished himself at the cadet school of St-Cyr and in 1914 was a close aide of joffre. After becoming a general during WORLD WAR I, Gamelin then served in Brazil and the colonies. In 1935 he was appointed head of the army, a promotion partly prompted by his staunch republican values. He did much to overhaul the defensive strategy devised in the 1920s (see also maginot line) and recognized the importance of tanks. However, he proved an incompetent field commander. When the Germans attacked western Europe on May 10, 1940, Gamelin dispatched crack French divisions to Holland and Belgium, not expecting the main assault to come through the Ardennes. On May 17 he was replaced by General Weygand. Arrested by the VICHY REGIME, Gamelin was unjustly accused at the RIOM TRIALS of having prepared inadequately for war. He spent the remainder of the conflict under German guard, writing his memoirs. These failed to dispel the widely-held notion that it was he above all who had lost “the battle of France.”

Garibaldi, Giuseppe (1807-82), patriot and soldier, whose exploits were central to Italian UNIFICATION and made him the risorgimento’s greatest popular hero. A native of Nice, he joined the Piedmontese merchant navy and in Genoa encountered supporters of radical nationalism. Inspired by mazzini, Garibaldi participated in the unsuccessful risings of 1833-4 against the monarchy of piedmont-sardinia. He then spent the next decade or so heading a band of fellow-exiled “Redshirts,” waging guerrilla attacks on various dictatorships in South America. On his return to Europe he participated in the revolutions of 1848-9. When the Piedmontese government spurned his offer to assist in fighting the Austrians (see HABSBURG empire), he joined Mazzini’s rising in Milan. During May-June 1849 they both played leading roles in defending the short-lived Roman republic. After further exile, Garibaldi returned to Italy in 1854 and showed thereafter more willingness than Mazzini to accept, albeit reluctantly, that the Piedmontese monarchy now offered the best prospect for promoting unification. In the war of 1859 against Austria (see FRANCO-AUSTRIAN war) Garibaldi distinguished himself as leader of a semi-independent volunteer force, while temporarily holding the rank of major-general in the king’s army. Though by the spring of 1860 cavour’s Piedmont had gained Lombardy and much of central Italy, Garibaldi was outraged that the price for NAPOLEON iii’s support should turn out to be French annexation of Nice and Savoy. Thus relations with Cavour were already strained when, in May, Garibaldi and his “Thousand Redshirts” sailed from Genoa so as to exploit a Sicilian rebellion against Bourbon rule (see two Sicilies, kingdom OF). The speed and scale of the guerrillas’ success both in Sicily and in the Neapolitan mainland over the next four months staggered observers everywhere. Many suspected that Garibaldi might now try to establish a Mazzinian republic in the south, even at the risk of triggering a foreign intervention that could endanger Piedmont’s gains as well as his own. Thus Cavour was relieved when a southwards advance by the royal forces led to a peaceful link-up in which the leader of the Thousand refrained from challenging the king’s overall authority. However, when Garibaldi was denied appointment as temporary viceroy of Naples, he withdrew in protest to his island home of Caprera. In 1862 he attempted a raid on the PAPAL STATES, but was blocked by Piedmontese troops. By then, not least because of his talents as a self-publicist, Garibaldi was regarded as a patriot-liberator of international stature (hugely feted, for instance, during his English visit of 1864). In the austro-prussian war of 1866 he contributed to the additional Italian involvement by commanding a virtually independent contingent that fought Habsburg forces in the Tyrol, and in 1867 he made another abortive incursion into papal territory. In 1870-1 he was active once more, joining the French republican resistance to Prussian occupation (see franco-prussian war). During his final years on Caprera, he became increasingly disillusioned with developments in newly “united” Italy, especially with regard to the division between north and south. In essence, Garibaldi (like Mazzini) regretted the lack of any deeply-felt rapport as between the portion of the peninsula which Cavour had unified and that other half which, through the extraordinary guerrilla campaign of 1860, had been liberated from Bourbon repression chiefly by his own inspirational leadership.

Gastein, Convention of Treaty signed between Prussia and Austria on August 14,1865 concerning the disputed provinces of schleswig-holstein which they had forcibly seized from Denmark a year earlier and placed under their joint sovereignty. At Gastein it was agreed that Holstein should be administered by Austria and Schleswig by Prussia. A year later, however, Austria argued that the deeper issues of long-term sovereignty should be decided by the assembly of the german confederation. This apparent breach of the Convention gave BISMARCK a pretext to start the austro-prussian WAR, thus further promoting the particular version of german unification that he had in mind. Had this dispute not arisen, Bismarck would probably have searched for some other reason to initiate a war aimed at excluding Prussia’s chief rival from any form of united Germany.

Gaullism (see under de gaulle)

Gender During the twentieth century the usage of this term was refined not simply to continue denoting the state of being male or female, but to do so now with primary reference to the cultural and social differences rather than to the more strictly biological and physiological ones that are all associated with sexual distinction (see also sexuality). By the start of the twenty-first century gender was commonly regarded, alongside other variables such as class, nationality, and race (see nationalism; racism), as a major contributing element to social identity. Among the cited agents of this process of gender acculturation we find religion, the family, communities such as guilds and trade unions, and the media (see also Catholicism; Protestantism; trade unionism; communications). Although a stark division between male and female has long been seen as fundamental, the acknowledgment of gender as socially and culturally constructed has produced a more nuanced view, allowing such groups as male homosexuals, lesbians, and transsexuals to be readily included within the broader picture. What constitutes acceptable gender characteristics and behavior has varied both geographically and over time as social and cultural attitudes have shifted. Traditionally, particular attributes and roles have been attributed to each of the two main categories. Thus tenderness and frailty have been ascribed to women, while strength and valor have belonged to men; the former have been allocated duties connected to childrearing and the “private” domestic sphere, while males have dominated the “public” one of paid labor and political activity.

Such notions of radical gender disparity came under strong challenge from the mid-twentieth century onward. Largely as a reaction to the casual male-centered assumptions previously in vogue, conscious discourse about gender has increasingly tended to focus on female social roles. Though the topic had featured in the fifteenth-century writings of Christine de Pizan and had also surfaced in the debates surrounding the civil wars in the British Isles, the so-called “woman question” - centered on claims to sexual equality - did not become prominent until the nineteenth century, in the form later labeled “first-wave” feminism. Over the long run, the french revolution of 1789 (which helped to inspire, for example, Mary woLLSTONECRAFT’s Vindication of the Rights of Woman in 1792) would prove to be a powerful influence towards the eventual emergence of a distinctively feminist social critique. However, the immediate results were less favorable: though women had played a significant role in many of the journees of the revolution such as the fall of the BASTILLE and the October days, and though the Declaration of the rights of man and of the Citizen had proclaimed theoretical equality with men, females were not rewarded with the reality of active political rights. Similarly, the civil code issued by napoleon i was grounded in traditional concepts of their intellectual and emotional inferiority, and thus confirmed gendered notions of citizenship by defining women - as wives, mothers, sisters, and daughters - essentially in terms of their dependent relationship to men. protests against exclusion from public life and power remained largely inchoate until the later nineteenth century, when middle-class women in particular succeeded in organizing themselves more effectively. For example, Aletta Jacobs founded the Association for Women’s Suffrage in the Netherlands in 1894; the Society for the

Demand for Women’s Rights and the Society for the Improvement of Women’s Lot were established in France in 1866 and 1870 respectively; and by 1896, when Marie Maugeret founded her monthly review, Feminisme chretien, regular feminist congresses were being held in paris calling for access to education, reform of marriage contracts, property rights, equal pay, and the freedom to work. During the course of the nineteenth century there were also men prominent as ideologists of “progressive” liberalism or socialism - figures such as J. S. Mill, fourier, saint-simon, marx, and ENGELS - who added supporting voices. However, although some gains were registered (for instance, the British Factory Acts of 1842 and 1844 prescribed a maximum working day for women), movement towards gender equality before the law, in the workplace, or in public life was painfully slow. Even Marx and Engels paid little attention to unpaid domestic work performed by women, thus fostering the perception that labor could be chiefly defined in terms of waged employment. Moreover, working men’s associations attempted to restrict women’s entry into the industrial labor force and to ensure that they occupied only a subordinate role.

To be sure, changing patterns in the nineteenth-century labor market, especially those associated with industrialization, did offer new opportunities to women. Many of them were employed in factories; the scope of teaching positions for them was extended, especially in elementary education; they found work in the expanding retail sector; and they provided nearly all of the staffing for the newly-established nursing profession (see also nightingale). However, the impact of these changes should not be exaggerated. The women who continued to be employed in the traditional agricultural and domestic sectors were still mainly servants. Those recruited into factories were chiefly the young and the single (the most mobile), thus reinforcing the tendency for wives to work within the home. Wage rates for female factory labor remained consistently below those for men, while the latter almost monopolized the supervisory posts. Women’s work thus persisted as something subsidiary to that of men, whose superior right to employment went generally unquestioned. Within the teaching profession too women remained disadvantaged, with lower rates of pay and no proper career structure. Similarly, in the burgeoning retail trade they were employed merely as ill-paid shop assistants; and even nursing remained firmly under the control of the male medical profession. world war i brought further changes, though it proved less of a breakthrough for women than is often imagined. The proportion of females in the workforce certainly increased: for example, in Germany they accounted for 55 percent of employees in 1918 compared with 35 percent at the outbreak of the conflict. However, even the improved pay rates generally available to women in Europe after the war remained below those of men; the war had facilitated the transfer of female labor from the rural and domestic sectors into industry rather than encouraging entirely new entrants to the employment market; and at the conclusion of the conflict many women found themselves replaced by the returning soldiers. Subsequently, the economic crisis of the late 1920s and 1930s (see great depressions[2]) prompted calls for the removal of so-called “double earners” - that is, married women - from the workplace. The fascist regimes of the inter-war years (see fascism; Nazism) also reasserted conventional gender roles, seeking to emphasize female domesticity through insistence on the duties of fecundity and child-rearing.

Yet, even if slow in coming, change was clearly under way. World War I helped to accelerate a trend towards the growth and acceptance of women’s participation in the employment market. The process was subsequently furthered by the expansion of “office work” as an increasingly feminized area of labor, and by the role that women played on all the home fronts in WORLD WAR II (see also warfare). Moreover, following the RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONS OF 1917, the new BOLSHEVIK regime had proclaimed full gender equality. Though women’s opportunities within the SOVIET UNION were often less extensive in practice than on paper, the gains were enough to inspire advocates of equal rights in the West to redouble their efforts. There women’s campaigning movements had already been growing in scale and effectiveness. For instance, in 1905 Frenchwomen had gained control of their own earnings, and five years later had obtained the right to initiate paternity suits. By 1939 the French Feminine League for Catholic Action boasted a membership of over 2 million, almost four times greater than its predecessor the Patriotic League of French Women had mobilized in 1913. As for Britain, its Sex Disqualification Removal Act (1919) opened up jury service, the legal profession, and the higher levels of the civil service to women. Above all, the key goal of early twentieth century campaigners, the establishment of the female right to vote, was achieved (at least in some form) in 19 states between 1913 and 1922. Universal suffrage on terms identical to men took longer to attain, being delayed for example in Italy and France until the end of World War II and in Portugal and Switzerland until later still.

Postwar economic recovery brought even more women into the labor force during the 1950s and 1960s. Their employment rates were particularly high in the Eastern bloc, to the point where the German Democratic Republic had over 90 percent of its adult females so registered by 1970. Furthermore, access to education became gender-neutral across Europe at large. Yet despite such gains, a new critique of the treatment of women, generally referred to as “second-wave” feminism, emerged. It is sometimes dated from Simone de Beauvoir’s famous statement in The Second Sex (1949): “One is not born, but one becomes, a woman.” This movement was also fed by broader currents from the 1960s, including campaigns for civil rights in the USA and international protests against the Vietnam War. Such feminism insisted that, despite the substantial progress towards political and legal equality, women were still not treated fairly in the employment market with respect to such issues as pay and promotion, nor were their ideas and contributions valued as highly as those of male colleagues. More generally, sexist oppression remained deeply entrenched in social habits and attitudes. The EUROPEAN REVOLUTIONS OF 1989-91 subsequently helped to stimulate a further, so-called “third-wave,” feminist critique that focused in part on the many ambiguities and contradictions that had characterized the treatment ofwomen in the former Soviet bloc. Despite their paper freedoms, they had continued to suffer discrimination in the workplace, to be chiefly responsible for housework and childrearing even while sustaining a job, and to be required to perform additional unpaid civic duties. Many women in eastern Europe consequently welcomed the end of “state-supported feminism” and the opportunity for a return to traditional roles. Thereby they revealed just how much of the feminist analysis of gender was geographically and culturally specific to the West. This encouraged third-wave campaigners to become more aware that women were still far from constituting a single unified category, and that their experiences might be profoundly mediated by a variety of factors, with some (such as geographical location, class, and wealth) being shared with men while others (relating, for example, to child-bearing or to patterns of health) persisted as more gender-specific. Some have argued controversially that sexual identity, like gender, is socially constructed. In doing so, they have highlighted changing attitudes towards varieties of sexual practice, evidenced for example by alterations to laws regarding same-sex relations on the part both of men and women. A smaller number of commentators have even questioned whether, in the light of what was known by the early twenty-first century concerning the diversity of human experience, both gender and sexuality had now ceased to be useful categories of analysis.

Generalgouvernement German term for the area of Poland which, following the partitioning secretly agreed by the 1939 nazi-soviet pact, lay between the western regions (especially the Wartheland) directly incorporated into Germany and the eastern ones annexed by the Soviet Union. Labeled as a “protectorate,” this territory was administered from Krakow with particular brutality by Hans Frank. It provided the location for the Third Reich’s principal extermination centers

(see CONCENTRATION CAMPS; FINAL SOLUTION).

Geneva Conventions Series of international agreements aimed principally at extending, under circumstances of warfare between or within states, proper protection to non-combatants (whether fighters who have become severely sick or wounded, or persons who have the status of prisoners of war, medical workers, or civilians). The first convention, formulated in 1864 and eventually backed by 48 states in and beyond Europe, was largely the work of Henri Dunant, the Swiss founder of the International red cross. There were further conventions in 1907 and 1929. After WORLD war ii a comprehensive overhaul produced the four conventions of 1949, which were very widely ratified and which served to toughen the civilian dimension especially. Two so-called “additional protocols” appeared in 1977. The significance of this whole pattern of development is best assessed alongside the debates conducted at the Hague conferences of 1899 and 1907. The actual or potential role oftechnological advance (e. g. in the nuclear and biological fields) and of ideological extremism (e. g. as found in NAZISM and various forms of terrorism) has affected our understanding of modern interstate and civil warfare in such a way that it has become increasingly difficult to maintain any major distinction between “Hague law” and “Geneva law.” The first category, focused largely on the weapons and methods that might be unacceptable for use, now looks virtually inseparable from the second. This aspires to isolate various classes of noncombatant from the worst effects of those weapons and methods that are capable of being used, whether legitimately or otherwise.

German Confederation Established in 1815, at the VIENNA CONGRESS, this lasted until 1866. It was designed by the great powers to replace the holy ROMAN EMPIRE and the Napoleonic confederation OF THE RHINE and thus to constrain France. International security, rather than the rights of those petty rulers dispossessed by napoleon i, was uppermost in the victors’ minds. Nor did they have any truck with the new ideologies of liberalism and NATIONALISM which, in any case, mustered as yet only limited public enthusiasm. Thus it was self-interested “reasons of state” that dominated the peacemakers’ restructuring of Germany on confederal lines (see also federalism[1]).

The idea of a confederation was already being discussed by Austria (see habsburg empire), Prussia, wUrttemberg, BAVARIA, and HANOVER in 1814. After becoming part of the wider peace deliberations, its precise form was settled by the so-called Federal Act as incorporated into the final Vienna accords of June 1815. Thus the powers guaranteed the survival and internal stability of the Confederation, in a way intended to lessen the fears of the Prussia and Austrian authorities concerning revolution. The initial membership of 38 states increased to 39 when Hesse-Homburg joined in 1817. Overall, the Confederation’s political geography largely resembled that of the Holy Roman Empire, except for loss of the former Austrian NETHERLANDS. Use of this imperial template resulted in a series of anomalies. The parts of Prussia previously excluded from the Empire still remained outside, and similar treatment continued to be given to the Habsburgs’ Hungarian lands. Inside its borders the Confederation contained a number of ethnic minorities (including Czechs, Slovenes, and Italians); but, conversely, there were also Germans living outside its territories, not just in parts of Prussia, but notably in Schleswig and Posen. Another oddity was that certain states (most obviously Hanover and Holstein) were ruled by foreigners. It was the individual princes who retained sovereign authority, while the Federal Diet, operating at Frankfurt under Austrian presidency, possessed few powers. During its history that assembly held only 16 plenary sessions, and it remained dominated by Austria and Prussia, whose rivalry often frustrated the workings of the many inner committees.

All this disappointed those nationalists and liberals who wished the Confederation to promote GERMAN UNIFICATION. Instead, its purpose was to stymie any such development; constitutional amendments needed the support of all 39 ambassadors, while declarations of war required a two-thirds majority. Some progress was made in 1821 when the Confederation permitted the creation of a federal army, largely drawn from Austria, Prussia, and Bavaria, yet the project was undermined by failure to agree upon a commander-inchief and by the insistence of smaller states upon retaining control of their own troops. Even so, most Germans were long content with the Confederation, as were the great powers who witnessed the construct offering stability to central Europe for nearly half a century.

Certainly, in the eyes of METTERNICH, the Confederation was designed to sustain the existing order. In 1819 he had the Diet approve the CARLSBAD DECREES limiting the activities of the BURSCHENSCHAFTEN. A year later, it endorsed the Vienna Final Act restricting the growth of constitutions within member states. Neither measure prevented the outbreak of revolution in 1830, though in Germany only Brunswick, Hesse-Cas-sel, SAXONY, and Hanover were significantly affected (see REVOLUTIONS OF 1830-2). This did not stop Metternich from using the Diet to administer in 1834 a further dose of reactionary medicine to cure the rash of liberalism. However, in that same year the greater threat to the Confederation was posed by the expansion of the Prussian-dominated customs union, or zollverein. This was the first time that the German states had put the greater good ahead of their separate sovereignties. This initiative was not lost on liberals and nationalists whose numbers were starting to include merchants and businessmen capable of appreciating the advantages of a more unified Germany. They also began to look towards Prussia as the state most capable of fulfilling their disparate aims.

In the REVOLUTIONS of 1848-9 the Confederation found itself temporarily dislodged by the Frankfurt PARLIAMENT and by Frederick william iv’s attempts to promote a Prussian-dominated Germany (see also erfurt union). The olmUtz agreement of 1850, followed by revival of the federal Diet, appeared to restore Austrian primacy. Remaining unreformed and yielding to Habsburg pressure, the Confederation now rescinded various constitutional gains made during the revolutions, even putting the federal navy up for auction. Nationalists and liberals increasingly reached the conclusion that the Confederation was beyond reform and that a new framework was required, although they were divided as to its nature. More crucially, Prussia was no longer prepared to cooperate so readily with Austria within the Diet, especially after bismarck became Berlin’s representative at Frankfurt in 1851. Four years later, he thwarted Austrian plans for intervention in the Crimean war on the side of France and Britain. As Prussian minister-president in 1862, Bismarck blocked yet further attempts to reform the Confederation, but used it as a means of exerting pressure on Austria, notably during the SCHLESWIG-HOLSTEIN crisis of 1864-5. When the austro-prussian war erupted in 1866, a majority of the other member states supported the Habsburg side. Had Austria won, the Confederation might have lingered on in some form; in the event, it gave way to the Prussian-controlled NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION of 1867. (See also Maps 3 and 5)

German Democratic Republic (GDR) Sometimes known by the acronym DDR (Deutsche Demokratische Republik) or informally as “East Germany,” this state began its 40-year history in October 1949 shortly after the launching of

The FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY (FRG, or “West Germany”). The GDR’s borders, including a frontier with Poland running along the oder-NEISSE LINE, matched those of the Soviet zone of occupation established after Germany’s defeat in World War II. Thus, apart from an access “corridor” to the rest of the FRG, the three interconnected areas of Berlin under American, British, and French administration now remained surrounded by territory that continued to be effectively under Soviet control - a situation already prevailing during stalin’s recent blockade which, for 11 months starting in June 1948, had left the city’s Western-occupied zones accessible only by air (see Berlin blockade). From the outset the SOVIET UNION maintained firm political and military hold over the GDR. The first leader of this repressive communist regime (see communism) was ULBRICHT, who had returned from self-imposed exile in the USSR at the end of hitler’s dictatorship and established the “socialist Unity Party.” He was rightly trusted by Stalin as an unquestioning follower of the Kremlin’s policies for eastern Europe in the cold war, and he developed a police-state whose stasi bore a strong resemblance to the Soviet nkvd as well as to the dissolved Nazi gestapo. The GDR duly joined COMECON in 1950 and the Warsaw pact in 1955, two years after Ulbricht had collaborated with the Soviet authorities to suppress in East Berlin the beginnings of a dissident movement. His regime similarly supported khrushchev’s crushing of the HUNGARIAN RISING OF 1956 and BREZHNEV’s military assault of 1968 against Czechoslovakia’s Prague spring. Between those dates Ulbricht had authorized, in 1961, construction of the Berlin wall, aimed at preventing a constant outflow of fugitives towards the West. Domestic repression continued into the era of his successor, honecker, who took over in 1971. By this stage, however, the GDR was also having to address the policies of OSTPOLITIK that were starting to find favor in the FRG. At the end of 1972 East and West Germany signed the so-called basic treaty through which, without formally abandoning all aspirations towards eventual unity, they signaled mutual recognition of their separate and independent existences (a prerequisite for entry of each into the united nations in 1973). These improved relations offered significant benefits to the GDR, helping it to become the most developed economy within the sphere of Soviet “satellite” states. However, the far greater prosperity of West Germans was something that Honecker found it increasingly difficult to conceal or explain away. He weakened his position by refusing to heed the reformist promptings which, from 1985 onward, came with increasing urgency from the new Soviet leader, gorbachev. During 1989 (see European REVOLUTIONS OF 1989-91) the westwards exodus of East Germans as other Soviet-bloc border controls relaxed, and the internal mass demonstrations erupting in Leipzig and Berlin against Honecker’s regime, reached the point where in mid-October he was forced to resign. After the breaching of the Berlin wall three weeks later, any real future for the GDR’s independent survival rapidly disappeared. The free elections of March 1990 produced victory for the christian Democrats (see Christian democracy), who were now emerging to operate in ever closer liaison with their West German counterparts. For most practical purposes, the East German state (with a population of some 17 millions) was already dead by July. In that month the four leading victor-powers of 1945 reconvened to endorse a scheme of german reunification based on the absorption of all GDR territory into an enlarged FRG under the leadership of kohl. This became formally effective on October 3, 1990.

German empire This regime lasted from the time of victory in the franco-prussian war until defeat in world war i, thus spanning the period 1871-1918 during which the German population rose from 41 to 68 million. Largely controlled by PRUSSIA and administered from Berlin, it was often called the Second Reich - a label that evoked memories of the medieval “holy roman empire of the German Nation” (eventually led by the habs-BURG dynasty from the fifteenth century onward, and finally dissolved in 1806). The proclamation of the new hohenzollern Empire at Versailles in January 1871 needs evaluation within the broader framework of german unification. In essence, though shallow interpretations frequently assume that 1871 marked the clear fulfillment of German NATIONALISM, issues of incompleteness deserve equal attention. These include the realization that the Second Reich embodied only a kleindeutsch (“little-German”) geographical solution. Mainly through excluding Austria, this left millions of German-speakers outside the new empire. Moreover, while william i of Prussia had hoped to become “Emperor of Germany,” his fellow-princes offered nothing more compromising to their own continuing sovereignties than the title German Emperor. This subtle, yet vital, distinction underlined the federalism[1] of the imperial constitution. Though Prussia rapidly consolidated its political and economic pre-eminence, the new Kaiser’s regime had to cope with 25 other German states as well.

This “Wilhelmine” empire’s history until 1890 is barely separable from that of the career of BISMARCK, the principal architect of this version of German unity who then served for nearly two decades as the first imperial chancellor. Embodying the PROTESTANTISM and conservatism favored by the Prussian junker landowning class, he campaigned vigorously against all whose loyalty to the new reich seemed questionable. These included the one-third or so of its subjects who were Catholics (see kulturkampf), as well as the supporters of the rapidly growing social democratic PARTY (SDP). Regarding the latter, a law of 1878 (which eventually lapsed in 1890) attempted with only limited success to restrict activities that promoted socialism. In the mid-1880s Bismarck sought further to limit the SPD’s appeal by pioneering a rival version of welfarism based on a limited and paternalistic model of state-sponsored workers’ insurance. Such social issues were to become increasingly important. In addition to generating rapid enlargement of the urban working CLASS, the economic dynamism of the Second Reich (especially notable in its new electrical and chemical businesses) produced tensions between “iron” and “rye” - that is, between an increasingly vital cadre of industrial entrepreneurs and the representatives of a traditional junker ascendancy. In matters of European diplomacy, the cautious policy of stabilization pursued by Bismarck after 1871 was exemplified in the dual alliance with Austria (1879) and more generally in the THREE EMPERORS’ LEAGUE (1881-7) that involved Russia too. on the global scene, however, he yielded in the mid-1880s to expansionist pressures for the Reich to enhance its status by participating in the scramble for colonies that soon led to annexation of South-West Africa, Togoland, and Cameroon (see imperialism; Berlin conference).

Following the deaths in 1888 both of William I and of his immediate successor Frederick iii, the era of Bismarckian control moved rapidly towards its conclusion. By 1890 the new Kaiser, WILLIAM II, had maneuvered the “Iron Chancellor” into resignation. The latter’s determination to maintain positive relations with the tsarist regime was not shared by his replacement, caprivi, under whose administration (1890-4) there developed instead precisely that franco-russian alliance which Bismarck had striven to frustrate. International tensions were further increased by William’s impetuosity and by the general willingness of his subsequent chancellors - Hohenlohe (1894-1900), BJJLOW (1900-9), and bethmann HOLLWEG (1909-17) - to promote expansionist policies of weltpolitik (see also pan-germanism). Some historians have argued that these were consciously devised to maximize unity between “iron” and “rye.” The Reich adopted a greatly enlarged armament program that included, through TiRPiTZ’s naval ministry, the creation of a major battle-fleet. Germany’s bid for maritime hegemony was a leading factor in driving Britain towards closer alliance with France and Russia. Although the Anglo-French accord held firm against pressures from the Reich in the moroccan CRISES of 1905 and 1911, Russia came off less well when the Germans lent support to Austria-Hungary in the diplomatic confrontation that followed Vienna’s annexation of bosnia-HERZOGOVINA in 1908. By mid-1914 the Berlin government, fearing “encirclement,” had largely accepted that some kind of general war could not be indefinitely avoided, and that German interests would be best served by embarking on this sooner rather than later. Thus, in the july crisis of that year, Bethmann Hollweg took the risk of spurring his Austro-Hungarian allies into unrelenting resistance to Serbia’s ambitions.

Upon the outbreak of world war i, Germans showed general enthusiasm for the conflict ahead. Even the SPD, the largest single party in the Reichstag after 1912, suspended its internationalist scruples and voted the necessary war-credits. The Reich was gambling, in effect, upon decisive victory in a short conflict. However, once the SCHLIEFFEN PLAN failed to produce this outcome, Germany found itself increasingly trapped in a two-front war of attrition, during which political as well as military leadership became increasingly dominated by hindenburg and ludendorff. Despite the odds against them, their belief in victory survived into the early summer of 1918 - by which time they had imposed the Brest LITOVSK treaty on bolshevik Russia and launched a renewed offensive in the West. Against this background, the swift collapse of the German war effort during the autumn of that year was all the more devastating to an ill-prepared public. After the Kiel naval mutiny of October 29, the process of imperial dissolution became uncontrollable (see GERMAN REVOLUTION OF 1918-19). Two days before armistice was agreed on November 11, Kaiser William fled to Holland and a new regime was proclaimed in the form that soon developed into the weimar republic.

German Federal Republic (see federal republic OF Germany)

German reunification The complex history of GERMAN UNIFICATION itself helps to explain why this related term possesses two distinguishable meanings.

The earlier one, now often forgotten and certainly overshadowed by the later and still current usage, encapsulated the aspirations of those who, between 1871 and the later 1930s, believed that BiSMARCK’s vision of territorial unity had involved splitting the nation through exclusion of the German-speaking Austrians. During the Wilhel-mine era (see german empire) such desires for a “Greater Germany” (Grossdeutschland) were reflected in the movement of pan-germanism, and thereafter they remained central to hitler’s quest for ANSCHLUSS with Austria, briefly fulfilled during the years 1938-45.

This same label is now applied, however, to the significantly different territorial objective supported by most Germans in the period after 1945, and attained in 1990. Here the aim focused no longer on Austria, but on removing the division (arising from the zonal occupation arrangements imposed by the Allied victors at the end of world WAR ii) that by 1949 had become formalized into the separate creations of the federal republic

OF GERMANY (fRg) and the GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC (gdr), which were left confronting one another across the Iron Curtain. Also known respectively as “West Germany” and “East Germany,” these two states had no prospect of “reunification” while the cold war prevailed, especially as nato and Warsaw pact forces continued to face each other along the shared border. Tensions arising from the deepening separation (see abgrenzung) between their orientations towards CAPITALISM in the one case and communism in the other were further accentuated by West Berlin’s anomalous status as an enclave within GDR territory (see also Berlin blockade). The sudden erection of the Berlin wall in 1961 symbolized the seeming permanence of division. From the later 1960s onward, however, there was some easing of relations due mainly to West Germany’s pursuit of a new ostpolitik. The 1972 BASIC TREATY between the two states, reflecting a growing rhetoric of “friendship,” involved mutual acknowledgment of their separate and independent status. Even so, neither party renounced the principle of reunification.

Realistic prospects for its implementation began to emerge only in the late 1980s, amidst the ferment of reform in the soviet union and its “satellite” bloc which was stirred by gorbachev and which led on to the revolutions of 1989-91. The collapse of Honecker’s control over the GDR in mid-October1989, followed by the breaching of the Berlin Wall in early November, offered the possibility of absorbing the East German regions into the FRG, while also involving the challenge of molding into a single whole the two substantially different societies that had developed since the later 1940s. A de facto currency union, based on the West German mark, became swiftly operative. However, since many Europeans had long regarded “the German problem” as likely to be one problem the less so long as the postwar division survived, the issue of whether to proceed to a full political reunification founded on enlargement of the existing FRG was one of great international delicacy. With no ready alternative available to them, the four powers which in 1945 had constituted the principal Allies (the USA, the USSR, France, and the UK, now led by George Bush, Gorbachev, Mitterrand, and a particularly skeptical THATCHER) eventually endorsed, in July 1990, the case argued by Chancellor kohl of the FRG that reunification should be effected on this basis. Their hope was that the revived nation-state, with its large population of some 80 millions, would continue to embody the spirit of a European Germany rather than rekindle any threat of a German Europe. Within that context it was fortunate that Kohl did not persist in his initial reluctance formally to recognize that the oder-NEISSE LINE should remain as the easternmost limit of the combined territories. This concession from him was a precondition for Gorbachev’s promise to withdraw Soviet forces from the former GDR (a process completed by 1994 under yeltsin, at the head of Russia’s successor regime). As for timing of reunification, Kohl was keen to complete the swift annexation of East Berlin and of the other five new federal L'cinder, and to engineer their speedy transition from a central command economy to one based on “the social market.” The effects of the chancellor’s insistence on haste subsequently attracted bitter controversy within Germany, and also worried other members of the European Union, which itself became enlarged through this same eastward extension (see European integration). After the reunification was formally proclaimed on October 3, 1990, the consequential costs falling on the former “Wessis,” together with the collapse of the version of communist welfarism to which the “Ossis” had become accustomed, undoubtedly provoked much ongoing tension between the two formerly divided areas of the country. Even so, it is doubtful whether (particularly amidst the unstable conditions prevailing across much of central and eastern Europe in 1990) any slower inauguration of a reunited Germany would have been feasible at that juncture, or would have proved less economically and socially painful to its people over the longer term. (See also Maps 11 and 12)

German Revolution of 1918-19 This erupted towards the end of world war i, on October 29, 1918, when sailors at Kiel mutinied and refused to engage in a suicidal mission, the so-called “death ride,” against the British Navy in the North Sea. This was the cue for demonstrations across Germany in support of the sailors - protests which were accompanied by demands for an immediate cessation of war and for an expansion of recent political reforms that had turned Germany into a constitutional monarchy. Events quickly spiraled out of control. on November 7, the anarchist Kurt Eisner seized control in Munich and two days later Emperor william ii abdicated. Power was transferred to ebert, leader of the SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC PARTY, who quickly formed a coalition government which agreed an armistice on November 11. This administration was initially supported by the many workers’ and soldiers’ councils that had sprung up across the country. Though these were seen as revolutionary by the middle classes and as a genuine threat by Ebert, they were dominated by social democrats and were far removed from the Russian soviets. There was, however, an element of the left, represented by the Spartacus League, which wanted to press for a Marxist revolution and scupper the advent of liberal democracy. This led to the abortive spartacist rising of January 5-12, 1919 which was brutally crushed by the freikorps. Elections on January 19 proved a disappointment to the left, but indicated that an overwhelming proportion of the population favored a parliamentary democracy. In February 1919 Ebert became the first president of the German Republic, and in late July the constitution of this so-called weimar republic was formally adopted.

German unification Treatment of this topic is usually concentrated on the period from 1848 to 1871, during which bismarck worked towards achieving for Prussia the leadership of a unified German state (see Map 5). However, it is only within a wider chronological framework that historians can properly review the problems surrounding the defining geography of “Germany.”

Over many centuries it was particularism rather than shared identity that best characterized the regions which the French sometimes called les Allemagnes. The energies of those living there were often spent resisting pressures to turn the formal existence of a single Reich into a reality effective enough to reduce the independence enjoyed by its constituent states. Nor were the outer frontiers of Germanic settlement clearly defined by culture, language, or physical geography. All this mattered more sharply because of the one geographical fact that proved inescapable: Germans were in occupation of Mittelland, “center-territory” lying between two broad areas of contrasting Slav and Latin ethnicity. Thus any attempt at expanding, or even simply at internally consolidating, the German lands tended to arouse anxieties in much of Europe at large.

What became known as the First Reich, founded by Charlemagne, finally expired in 1806 amidst the Napoleonic wars. From 1438 (except for a brief interlude between 1740 and 1745) the imperial title had been monopolized by the Austrian habsburg dynasty, but by the eighteenth century this ruling house enjoyed only limited control over the 300-plus semi-autonomous units that comprised “the holy roman EMPIRE of the German Nation.” Such was the condition of Kleinstaaterei (“small-stateness”) from which the Germanic world would need to escape if it wished to achieve unitary political nationhood. In this context Austria’s position was further complicated by the extent of its non-German (including Magyar, Slav, and Italian) possessions, and by the emergence of Prussia as a potential rival from within the Teutonic sphere. It was napoleon i who proved decisive in simplifying the German state-structure so as to ease the effectiveness of his own “protecting” policies. Only about thirty units survived to comprise the CONFEDERATION OF THE RHINE that he

Devised in 1806. Though excluded from that Napoleonic creation, Austria and Prussia then became the most powerful elements within its successor - the german confederation of 39 states sanctioned by the Vienna congress of 1814-15. It was natural that the permanent presidency of the new federal Diet in Frankfurt should fall to the Habsburg regime. However, this reacknowledgment of primacy for Austria was not something which METTERNICH, its chief minister, ever sought to convert into a nationalistic cause that might destabilize the rest of a multi-ethnic empire whose non-Germanic lands remained largely outside the Confederation. The Prussian authorities too were suspicious of the populist nationalism that had been aroused during the later stages of the war against France. Moreover, in “the third Germany,” those who ruled such medium-sized states as hanover, saxony, bavaria, and wUrttemberg were generally unenthusiastic about any schemes of unification that might threaten their own freedom of action. Thus many German nationalists of the Metternich epoch believed that the Confederation was serving chiefly to frustrate their objectives.

The revolutions of 1848-9 revealed disarray on every side. The German rulers survived because their vacillations proved less damaging than the divisions that weakened their opponents. Moderates and radicals squabbled over constitutional issues, including the balance between federal and central authority (see federalism[1]). Above all, just when the responsibility for defining Germany seemed to be passing from international to national control, those seeking to redraw the map failed to agree upon its outlines. Disputes over regions of mixed ethnicity showed how limited was the liberalism of the popularly-elected Frankfurt PARLIAMENT, which resisted ceding areas already belonging to the Confederation. Territorial issues were also vital to the fundamental controversy over Grossdeutschland versus Klein-deutschland - “great Germany” with Austria, or “little Germany” without. Leadership of some form of nation-state was on offer to Vienna, but only on terms that imperiled Habsburg control over the dynasty’s non-Germanic lands. The alternative was supremacy of hohenzollern Prussia within a smaller, but arguably divided, Germany. Procrastination by the nationalists at Frankfurt eventually allowed the rulers to regain control of events. By April 1849 it was clear not only that francis Joseph i, the new Habsburg emperor, would refuse to pay the grossdeutsch price but also that Frederick william iv of Prussia would spurn a kleindeutsch imperial title picked from the “gutter” of a popular assembly.

Following the olmUtz agreement of 1850, Austria resumed its formal primacy within the restored Confederation. with hindsight, especially focused on Prussian industrialization and domination of the zollverein (the German customs union), it might seem plain that the days of Habsburg pre-eminence were now strictly numbered. But many contemporaries thought otherwise, and the eventual outcome owed much to the domestic and diplomatic blunders that the Austrian government went on to commit even after 1848-9. The issue was still unsettled when in 1862 Bismarck became Prussian premier. It remained open even as he urged his king to resist Austrian proposals about tightening the federal bonds under Habsburg authority (1863), and even while the two powers were fighting jointly against Denmark over schleswig-holstein (1864). Matters were resolved only through a form of German civil war waged in 1866, when Austria (aided by most of the Confederation’s smaller states) and Prussia came directly to blows. Bismarck used his swift victory in this austro-prus-SIAN WAR not to annex Habsburg territory but, most crucially, to exclude the rival power from the new NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION of 1867. He also completed the absorption of Schleswig-Holstein, and made the Prussian domain continuous from east to west by dissolving such buffer states as Hanover. It was only after the franco-prussian WAR of 1870 that Bavaria and the other minor states south of the Main - areas of largely Catholic political culture which Bismarck wished to secure perhaps less for their positive allure than because of the continuing dangers generated by their distrust of Prussia - became integrated into a new reich which also included the captured territory of alsace-lorraine.

It is often supposed that, once the princes had acclaimed william i of Prussia as “German emperor” at Versailles in January 1871, the aims of national unification were fulfilled. However, subsequent history makes little sense unless the elements of incompleteness are properly recognized. Although Prussia was now the leading force in German politics, the existence of 25 other states (including three further monarchies) within the federal structure of the Second Reich (see german empire) was not without significance. There was no national anthem, and only belatedly an imperial flag. Nor were the north-south tensions between areas of Protestant and Catholic predominance readily resolved. Others strains resulted from the fact that nearly 3 million French-speakers and 2.5 million Poles - as well as smaller ethnic minorities - were now living inside a Reich that strongly privileged the principle of Germanic nationhood. Even more important was the converse problem of the 15 million German-speakers who still remained outside its boundaries, whether in Austria or elsewhere. Under these circumstances Bismarck’s reluctance to risk further expansion within Europe became increasingly challenged. Many critics viewed his version of unification not as the fulfillment of German territoriality, but rather as one stage in a wider program. Those to whom the nationstate meant Grossdeutschland could hardly be satisfied with the 1871 settlement, and it was their advocacy of pan-germanism that became increasingly prominent after Kaiser william ii’s dismissal of Bismarck in 1890 and through to the epoch of

WORLD WAR I.

Even at the end of that conflict the victors’ anxiety about the grossdeutsch project remained sharp enough for them to write into the Treaties of VERSAILLES and ST GERMAIN an explicit veto on merger between Germany and the little that was left of post-imperial Austria. One early result was the opening page of hitler’s Mein Kampf, where the future leader of the Third Reich proclaimed his commitment to precisely such an Anschluss. Under his dictatorship Grossdeutschland was indeed achieved, surviving from 1938 to 1945. Defeat in world war ii, however, led not simply to the downfall of Hitler’s version of German unity but even to an erasure of Bismarck’s less ambitious brand of national consolidation. By the later 1940s the partition of Germany, East and West, constituted one of the most striking features on the map of cold war Europe. A remolded rhetoric of GERMAN REUNIFICATION would eventually develop in response to this new division, but not until 1989-90 was it possible to convert this objective into an internationally acceptable reality.

Germany (see, principally and in broad chronological sequence, holy roman empire; habsburg empire; confederation of the Rhine; german confederation; Bismarck; austro-prussian war; north GERMAN confederation; GERMAN UNIFICATION; GERMAN empire; WEIMAR REPUBLIC; HITLER; NAZISM; FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY; GERMAN DEMOCRATIC

Republic; german reunification; and note particularly Maps 5 and 10)

Gestapo Acronym from the German term Geheimestaatspolizei (Secret State Police). This instrument of Nazi oppression (see Nazism) was established under goering in 1933. It was transferred to the control of himmler as leader of the SCHUTZSTAFFEL (SS) in 1934, and within that context was merged into Reinhard Heydrich’s sicher-HEITSDIENST (SD) in 1939. By 1943 the Gestapo had some 45,000 members, alongside a host of informers. Its main function was to identify and eliminate opponents of hitler’s regime, by brutal methods freed from any conventional legal checks. Its operations (e. g. in regard to the Nazi slave-labor program and to the administration of CONCENTRATION CAMPs) became increasingly indistinguishable from those of the SS at large. At the NUREMBERG TRIALS the Gestapo was successfully prosecuted as a criminal organization.

Gheorghiu-Dej, Gheorghe (1901-65), General Secretary (1945-55) and First Secretary (1955-65) of the Communist Party of Romania, and Head of State (1961-5). Having been imprisoned from 1933 to 1944 for fomenting labor unrest, he emerged towards the end of World War II as an activist suspicious of those fellow-communist politicians who had been learning their trade in Moscow. As general secretary, he supervised the purges that secured one-party control over the republic inaugurated in 1948. By 1958 he had succeeded in negotiating with Khrushchev a removal of Soviet troops from his country. This also encouraged Gheorghiu-Dej to pursue, until his death in office, positive industrialization policies that were often at odds with comecon’s strategy of maintaining a predominantly agrarian Romania.