Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The Treaty of Versailles of 1871 ended the Franco-Prussian War and was signed by Adolphe Thiers of the Third French Republic and Otto von Bismarck of the newly formed German Empire on 26 February 1871. A preliminary treaty, it was used to solidify the initial armistice of 28 January between the powers. [1]
The process symbolically concluded when most of south German states joined the North German Confederation with the ceremonial proclamation of the German Empire i.e. the German Reich having 25 member states and led by the Kingdom of Prussia of Hohenzollerns on 18 January 1871; the event was later celebrated as the customary date of the German ...
When the great crisis of 1914 arrived, Italy left the alliance and the Ottoman Empire formally allied with Germany. In the First World War, German plans to capture Paris quickly in the autumn of 1914 failed, and the war on the Western Front became a stalemate. The Allied naval blockade caused severe shortages of food and supplements.
By World War I, there were isolated groups of Germans or so-called Schwaben as far southeast as the Bosphorus , Georgia, and Azerbaijan. After the war, Germany's and Austria-Hungary's loss of territory and the rise of communism in the Soviet Union meant that more Germans than ever constituted sizable minorities in various countries.
The French more than tripled their forces during the war, while the Germans did not increase theirs as much; the number of 888,000 mobilized by the North German Union in August increased by only 2% after 3 + 1 ⁄ 2 months, and by the end of the war, six months later, only by 15%, which did not even balance the losses incurred. Prussia was ...
3 March – German federal election, 1871; 21 March – Otto von Bismarck is appointed as the first Imperial Chancellor of the German Empire and his Bismarck cabinet was sworn in. 16 April – Constitution of the German Empire, the basic law of the German Empire of 1871–1918, passed by German Reichtstag and coming into effect on 4 May 1871.
In referring to the entire period between 1871 and 1945, the partially translated English phrase "German Reich" (/-ˈ r aɪ k /) is applied by historians in formal contexts; [3] although in common English usage this state was and is known simply as Germany, the English term "German Empire" is reserved to denote the German state between 1871 and 1918.
German Instrument of Surrender: World War II ends in Europe . 23 May The Flensburg Government around Karl Dönitz and Lutz Graf Schwerin von Krosigk is detained by British forces. Heinrich Himmler commits suicide. 26 June: The Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU) was founded. 2 August