French-German enmity

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The term French-German (hereditary) enmity (German: Deutsch-französische Erbfeindschaft) describes the often hostile relations between France and its eastern neighbors, the German states, that eventually became the German Empire. Many of the events born of this enmity, often one or more per generation, were significant in the history of Europe and the world, ultimately leading to two world wars.

1 Historical Context
2 France-Habsburg rivalry
3 French-Prussian enmity
4 French-German enmity
5 List of events
6 References

[edit] Historical Context

France and Germany can both trace their history as kingdoms to the division of the Holy Roman Empire of Charlemagne in the Treaty of Verdun in 843. Ambitions to the senior imperial status and the implicit role of leadership over Western Europe that it held were a continual source of friction between France and the states of Germany throughout the medieval and early renaissance periods.

[edit] France-Habsburg rivalry

The sequence of events started in 1516 with the France-Habsburg rivalry between the kingdom of France and the House of Habsburg, the rulers of the Holy Roman Empire and, by marriage, of Spain. The Thirty Years' War left large parts of southern Germany devastated, a situation France took advantage of to expand its territories, for example by annexing Alsace and Strasbourg. As a result of this aggression, the League of Augsburg and finally the international Grand Alliance was formed to defend the Palatinate against France.

[edit] French-Prussian enmity

The rise of a new German power, Prussia, forced Austria to ally with France in the Seven Years' War.

In the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars, the leaders of both Prussia and Austria now fought not only against a fellow monarch, but against a people, which carried the conflict to new levels.

Napoleon put an end to the Holy Roman Empire in the early 19th century and reshaped the political map of the German states which were still divided. The wars, often fought in Germany, and with Germans on both sides such as in the Battle of Leipzig, also marked the beginning of the French-German hereditary enmity. Napoleon directly incoporated German-speaking areas such as the Rhineland and Hamburg into his First French Empire, and treated the monarchs of the remaining German states as his vassals. Modern German nationalism was born in opposition to French domination under Napoleon. In the recasting of the map of Europe after Napoleon's defeat, the German-speaking teritories in the Rhineland adjoining France were put under the rule of Prussia, one of the most militarily powerful of the German states.

[edit] French-German enmity

During the first half of the 19th century, many Germans looked forward to a unification of the German states, though some German leaders and most foreign powers were opposed to any such unification. The German nationalist movement believed that a united Germany would replace France as the dominant land power in Western Europe. This argument was aided by demographic changes; since the middle ages, France had had the largest population in Western Europe, but in the nineteenth century its population stagnated (a trend which contined until the second half of the twentienth century), and the population of the German states overtook it, and continued to rapidly increase.

In 1840, to distract attention from other problems, French leaders like Victor Hugo and Adolphe Thiers claimed that France should own the left bank of the Rhine (described as France's "natural boundary"), as it had under Napoleon, even though both banks had always been inhabited by German speakers. This Rhine crisis (de:Rheinkrise) gave birth to "Rhine songs" like Das Lied der Deutschen and Die Wacht am Rhein which express the defensive German sentiments of the time.

Ironically, the eventual unification of Germany was triggered by France itself, with its declaration of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870 and subsequent quick defeat of Napoleon III. Yet, the French people carried on with warfare for several months, including guerilla warfare by francs-tireurs fighting outside the laws of war. Finally forced to admit defeat, the French lost the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine to the Germans, and Germany replaced France as the leading land power in Europe.

The desire for revenge (la revanche) against Germany, and in particular for the recovery of the "lost provinces" of Alsace and Lorraine (whose importance was summed up by the French politician Gambetta in a famous phrase: "Never speak of them (i.e, the lost provinces); never forget them!"), remained strong in France over the next forty years, and was the key French war aim in World War I. The Allied victory saw France regain Alsace-Lorraine and briefly resume its old position as the leading land power on the European continent. France was the leading proponent of harsh peace terms against Germany at the Paris Peace Conference, understandably since the war had been fought on French soil, the German army had destroyed much French infrastructure and industry, and France had suffered the highest number of casualties proportionate to population. Much French opinion wanted the Rhineland, the section of Germany adjoining France and the old focus of French ambition, to be detached from Germany as an independent country; in the end they settled for a promise that the Rhineland would be demilitarised, and heavy German reparation payments. Operating under the Treaty of Versailles, France responded to German failure to pay reparations under the treaty by occupying the Ruhr area of Germany, the centre of German coal and steel production, from 1923 to 1925.

However, Germany soon recovered its old strength and under Adolf Hitler pursued an aggressive policy in Europe. Meanwhile France in the 1930s was tired, politically divided internally and above all dreaded another war, which the French feared would again be fought on their soil and again destroy a large percentage of their young men. France's stagnant population meant that it would find it difficult to withhold the sheer force of numbers of a German invasion; it was estimated Germany could put two men of fighting age in the field for every one France could. Thus in the 1930s the French, with their British allies, pursued a policy of appeasement of Germany, failing to respond to the remilitarisation of the Rhineland, although this put the German army on the French border. Finally, however, Hitler pushed France and Britain too far, and they jointly declared war when Germany invaded Poland in September 1940.

But France remained exhausted and in no mood for a re-run of 1914–18. There was little enthusiam and much dread in France at the prospect of war. When the Germans launched their Blitzkrieg invasion of France in 1940, the French Army crumbled, and a catastrophic atmosphere of humilation and defeat swept the country.

A new government under Marshal Philippe Pétain surrendered, and German forces occupied most of the country. A minority of the French forces escaped abroad and continued the fight under General de Gaulle (the "Free French" or "Fighting French"), and the French Resistance conducted sabotage operations within German-occupied France. When France was liberated in 1944 by British, American, Canadian and Free French forces, national rejoicing broke out, as well as a maelstrom of hatred directed at those French who had collaborated with the Germans (most famously, the shaving of the heads of French girls who had gone out with German soldiers).

There was debate among the other Allies as to whether France should share in the occupation of the defeated Germany, due both to fears that the long Franco–German rivalry might interfere with the rebuilding of Germany and to France's less effective contribution to the Allied victory. However, it was decided to give the French a share in the occupation, and from 1945 to 1955 French troops were stationed in the Rhineland and Baden-Württemberg, and the area was under a French military governor.

In the 1950s, the French and the Germans finally discontinued the 400-year sequence of committing cruelties against one another, transforming their old enmity and the cycle of revenge into the French–German amity that led to the formation of European Union. Since that time, France and Germany (formerly West Germany) have generally co-operated in the running of the European Union, and also, often, in their foreign policy. For example, they jointly oppossed the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 (leading U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to lump them together as "Old Europe," a characterization that indicates how little many Americans understand Europeans' disgust with war—a result of the historical experience manifest in their old but now anachronistic mutual enmity.