Military history of Germany
Germanic tribes are thought to have originated during the Jastorf culture in Iron Age in northern Germany and Denmark, their land was later called "Germania" by the Romans.
The Germanic peoples often had a fraught relationship with their neighbours, leading to a period of over two millennia of military conflict over various territorial, religious, ideological and economic concerns.
[1] The military history of Germany during the Middle Ages was full of siege warfare and the technological changes that come from fighting that kind of war.
The following year in 908, the Hungarians scored another victory at the Battle of Eisenach and continued to ravage the German countryside and demand tribute from local lords.
[17] Henry I and his son Otto I inherited their administrative qualities from their Carolingian ancestors and thus were able to field armies much larger than medieval military historiography believed was capable at that time.
Shortly after the end of the rebellion of the three Henries, Otto fought a brief war with King Lothair of France, who invaded Lotharingia and attacked the imperial city of Aachen with 20,000 men.
The struggle of the civil war broke German military and political power so that later the kingdom and empire would dissolve into hundreds of autonomous states for some time.
The result was a conflict that lasted almost 17 years before the son of Henry VI, Frederick II, was able to regain his title and power as Holy Roman Emperor.
It was the master of the Teutonic Knights, Konrad von Jungingen that besieged and conquered the Vitalienbrüder base at Gotland that finally ended their reign of terror as the remainder of the pirates were forced to move into other seas.
[34] In 1410, the Teutonic Order or (Deutscher Ordensstaat) in German, situated in modern-day Poland, was dealt a defeat by the Polish-Lithuanian forces by King Władysław II Jagiełło.
Emperor Sigismund, a firm adherent of the Roman Catholic Church, obtained the support of Pope Martin V who issued a papal bull in 1420 proclaiming a crusade.
[37] The imperial general Prince Eugene of Savoy faced the Ottoman Turks on the battlefield, first coming to prominence during the last major Turkish offensive against the Austrian capital of Vienna in 1683.
By the closing years of the 17th century, he was already famous for securing Hungary from the Ottoman Empire, and soon rose to the role of principal Austrian commander during the War of the Spanish Succession.
Clausewitz espoused a romantic or Hegelian conception of warfare, stressing the dialectic of how opposite factors interact, and noting how unexpected new developments unfolding under the "fog of war" called for rapid decisions by alert commanders.
[48] After a period of constitutional deadlock between crown and parliament in Prussia, a crisis arose in 1863 over the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein, disputed between Denmark and the German Confederation.
Instead, the southern German monarchs of Bavaria, Württemberg, and Baden honoured their secretly negotiated treaties of mutual defence with Berlin, while Austria remained neutral.
New tactics in 1918 opened up the war, but a series of massive German offensives failed in spring 1918, and Germany went on the defensive as fresh American soldiers arrived at the rate of 10,000 a day.
Although Russia's initial advance into Galicia was largely successful, it was driven back from East Prussia by the victories of the German generals Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff at Tannenberg and the Masurian Lakes in August and September 1914.
The fleet was to consist of at most six battleships, six cruisers, and twelve destroyers, and the Washington Naval Treaty established severe tonnage restrictions for German warships.
The government secretly trained soldiers in the Soviet Union, but otherwise generally followed the Versailles restrictions while retaining a strong cadre of officers and senior non-coms.
Farrell argues that the historiography of the army in World War II has been "extremely difficult" because of the stark dichotomy between its superb combat performance and the horrors of its destruction and crimes against civilians and prisoners.
[citation needed] In September 1939, Germany invaded Poland using new tactics that combining the use of tanks, motorised infantry, and air support – known as Blitzkrieg – caused Polish resistance to collapse within weeks especially once the soviets attacked later that same month from the East.
[69][70] Weinberg (1994) argues that decisions concerning the invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 must be understood in the broader context of Hitler's ideological motivations and long-term goals.
Although Hitler had decided to invade the Soviet Union as early as 1940, German resources never reflected this; armaments production, tank and aircraft construction, and logistical preparations focused on the West.
The harsh Russian winters and long supply lines worked in Russia's favour and German armies were decisively defeated in early 1943 at Stalingrad and later in the gigantic tank battle at Kursk.
[75] In early 1943 the Soviet victory at Stalingrad marked the beginning of the end, as Germany was unable to cope with the superior manpower and industrial resources of the Allies.
Hitler committed suicide in his underground bunker in Berlin as his last soldiers were overwhelmed by Soviet armies in intensely bloody battles overhead.
[76] From 1944 on, the Nazis' imagination of a final battle at any cost created conditions for the loss of the eastern quarter of pre-war Germany at immeasurable harm to the German civilians.
[81] The NVA synthesized Communist and Germanic symbolism, naming its officers' academy after Karl Marx's coauthor Friedrich Engels, and its highest medal after Prussian General Gerhard von Scharnhorst.
As part of Operation Enduring Freedom as a response to those attacks, Germany deployed approximately 2,250 troops including KSK special forces, naval vessels and NBC cleanup teams to Afghanistan.
