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Germany is bounded at its extreme north on the Jutland peninsula by Denmark . East and west of the peninsula , the Baltic Sea (Ostsee) and North Sea coasts, respectively, complete the northern border. To the west, Germany borders The Netherlands , Belgium , and Luxembourg ; to the southwest it borders France . Germany shares its entire southern boundary with Switzerland and Austria . In the southeast the border with the Czech Republic corresponds to an earlier boundary of 1918, renewed by treaty in 1945. The easternmost frontier adjoins Poland along the northward course of the Neisse River and subsequently the Oder to the Baltic Sea, with a westward deviation in the north to exclude the former German port city of Stettin (now Szczecin , Poland) and the Oder mouth. This border reflects the loss of Germany’s eastern territories to Poland, agreed to at the Yalta Conference (February 1945), mandated at the Potsdam Conference (July–August 1945) held among the victorious World War II Allies , and reaffirmed by subsequent governments.
The major lineaments of Germany’s physical geography are not unique. The country spans the great east-west morphological zones that are characteristic of the western part of central Europe . In the south Germany impinges on the outermost ranges of the Alps . From there it extends across the Alpine Foreland (Alpenvorland), the plain on the northern edge of the Alps. Forming the core of the country is the large zone of the Central German Uplands, which is part of a wider European arc of territory stretching from the Massif Central of France in the west into the Czech Republic, Slovakia , and Poland in the east. In Germany it manifests itself as a landscape with a complex mixture of forested block mountains, intermediate plateaus with scarped edges, and lowland basins. In the northern part of the country the North German Plain , or Lowland, forms part of the greater North European Plain , which broadens from the Low Countries eastward across Germany and Poland into Belarus , the Baltic states , and Russia and extends northward through Schleswig-Holstein into the Jutland peninsula of Denmark. The North German Plain is fringed by marshes, mudflats, and the islands of the North and Baltic seas. In general, Germany has a south-to-north drop in altitude, from a maximum elevation of 9,718 feet (2,962 metres) in the Zugspitze of the Bavarian Alps to a few small areas slightly below sea level in the north near the coast.
It is a common assumption that surface configuration reflects the underlying rock type; a hard resistant rock such as granite will stand out, whereas a softer rock such as clay will be weathered away. However, this assumption is not always borne out. The Zugspitze, for example, is Germany’s highest summit not because it is composed of particularly resistant rocks but because it was raised by the mighty earth movements that began some 37 to 24 million years ago and created the Alps, Europe’s highest and youngest fold mountains. Another powerful force determining surface configuration is erosion , mainly by rivers. In the Permian Period (some 290 million years ago) an earlier mountain chain—the Hercynian , or Variscan, mountains—had crossed Europe in the area of the Central German Uplands. Yet the forces of erosion were sufficient to reduce these mountains to almost level surfaces, on which a series of secondary sedimentary rocks of Permian to Jurassic age (about 300 to 145 million years old) were deposited. The entire formation was subsequently fractured and warped under the impact of the Alpine orogeny . This process was accompanied by some volcanic activity , which left behind not only peaks but also a substantial number of hot and mineral springs. Dramatic erosion occurred as the Alpine chains were rising, filling the furrow that now constitutes the Alpine Foreland. The pattern of valleys eroded by streams and rivers has largely given rise to the details of the present landscape. Valley glaciers emerging from the Alps and ice sheets from Scandinavia had some erosive effect, but they mainly contributed sheets of glacial deposits. Slopes outside the area of the actual ice sheets—those under tundra conditions and unprotected by vegetation—were rendered less steep by the periglacial slumping of surface deposits under the influence of gravitation. Winds blowing over unprotected surfaces fringing the ice sheets picked up fine material known as loess ; once deposited, it became Germany’s most fertile soil-parent material. Coarser weathered material was carried into alluvial cones and gravel-covered river terraces, as in the Rhine Rift Valley (Rhine Graben).
The detailed morphology of Germany is significant in providing local modifications to climate, hydrology, and soils, with consequent effects on vegetation and agricultural utilization.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Administered by the League of Nations
Annexed or transferred to neighbouring countries by the treaty, or later via plebiscite and League of Nation action
^ Jump up to: a b c Timeline: Germany - BBC News
^ Ritter, Gerhard (1974). Frederick the Great: A Historical Profile. Berkeley: University of California Press. pp. 179–180. ISBN 0-520-02775-2 .
^ Andrzej Chwalba, Historia Polski 1795-1918, Wydawnictwo Literackie 2000, Kraków, pages 175-184, and 307-312. ISBN 830804140X .
^ Cf. the report "Vor 50 Jahren: Der 15. April 1950. Vertriebene finden eine neue Heimat in Rheinland-Pfalz" Archived 31 July 2013 at the Wayback Machine of the Central Archive of the State of Rhineland-Palatinate on the first expellees arriving in that state in 1950 to be resettled from other German states.
^ International Boundary Study Office of the Geographer Bureau of Intelligence and Research
^ Autocrat's Adieu Time Magazine , 8 October 1956.
^ Cf. Bundesgesetzblatt (Federal Law Gazette), part III, no. 181-1.
The territorial changes of Germany include all changes in the borders and territory of Germany from its formation in 1871 to the present. Modern Germany was formed in 1871 when Otto von Bismarck unified most of the German states , with the notable exception of Austria , into the German Empire . [1] After the First World War , Germany lost about 10% of its territory to its neighbours and the Weimar Republic was formed. This republic included territories to the east of today's German borders .
The period of Nazi rule from the early 1930s through the end of the Second World War brought significant territorial losses for the country. Nazi Germany initially expanded the country's territory dramatically and conquered most of Europe , though not all areas were added to Germany officially . The Nazis' fortunes changed after the failure of the invasion of Soviet Union . The Nazi regime eventually collapsed, and the Allies occupied Germany.
The former eastern territories of Germany were ceded to Poland and the Soviet Union and the Oder and Neisse Rivers became Germany's new eastern boundary. This territory became Poland's so-called " Recovered Territories ", while approximately one-third of East Prussia became the Russian Federation 's Kaliningrad Oblast ; virtually the entire German population in these areas was expelled or fled . In the west, the Saar area formed a French-controlled protectorate with limited autonomy, but its own citizenship laws.
With the onset of the Cold War , the western part of Germany was unified as the Trizone , becoming the Federal Republic of Germany in May 1949 ("West Germany"). Western-occupied West Berlin declared its accession to the Federal Republic of Germany in 1949 but was denied by the occupying powers. The Soviet zone, including the Soviet sector of Berlin , became the communist German Democratic Republic ("East Germany") in October the same year. [1] Effective 1 January 1957 the Saar Protectorate declared its accession to the Federal Republic of Germany, as provided by its Grundgesetz (constitution) article no. 23 (" Little Reunification "). Following the end of the Cold War , East Germany, including East Berlin, and West Berlin used the same West German constitutional clause and declared their accession to the Federal Republic of Germany effective 3 October 1990 – an event referred to as German reunification . [1]
Part of the motivation behind the territorial changes is based on historical events in Germany and Western Europe . Migrations that took place over more than a millennium led to pockets of Germans living throughout Central and Eastern Europe as far east as Russia. The existence of these enclaves was sometimes used by German nationalists, such as the Nazis, to justify territorial claims.
The territorial changes of Germany after World War II can be interpreted in the context of the evolution of global nationalism and European nationalism.
The latter half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century saw the rise of nationalism in Europe. Previously, a country consisted largely of whatever peoples lived on the land that was under the dominion of a particular ruler. As principalities and kingdoms grew through conquest and marriage, a ruler could wind up with many different ethnicities under his dominion.
The concept of nationalism was based on the idea of a "people" who shared a common bond through race, religion, language and culture. Furthermore, nationalism asserted that each "people" had a right to its own state. Thus, much of European history in the latter half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century can be understood as efforts to realign national boundaries with this concept of "one people, one state". Many interior conflicts were a result of more or less pressurising citizens of alternative ethnicities and/or other native languages to assimilate to the ethnicity dominant in the state. Switzerland was the exception, lacking a common native language.
Much conflict would arise when one nation asserted territorial rights to land outside its borders on the basis of an ethnic bond with the people living on the land. Another source of conflict arose when a group of people who constituted a minority in one nation would seek to secede from the nation either to form an independent nation or join another nation with whom they felt stronger ties. Yet another source of conflict was the desire of some nations to expel people from territory within its borders because people did not share a common bond with the majority of people of that nation.
Following the capture of Silesia in 1742 by Frederick the Great during the Silesian Wars with the Habsburg monarchy , the territorial expansion of the Kingdom of Prussia continued with the annexation of lands belonging to the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth . During the Partitions of Poland between 1772 and 1795, Prussia seized 141,400 km2 (54,600 sq mi) of the Commonwealth's western territory, including the regions of Greater Poland , Pomorze , Mazovia and the Duchy of Siewierz . Subsequently, renaming them as South Prussia, West Prussia, New East Prussia and New Silesia. After the annexation of the Polish territories, Frederick the Great immediately sent 57,475 German families to the newly conquered lands in order to solidify his new acquisitions, [2] and abolished the use of the Polish language. [3]
Following the Napoleonic wars and the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire the North German Confederation , led by Prussia, was combined with the southern states of Baden , Württemberg , Bavaria and Hesse and the formerly French newly annexed Alsace-Lorraine to form the German Empire in 1871. In some areas of Prussia's eastern provinces , such as the Province of Posen , the majority of the population was Polish. Many Lorrainians were by native language French. Many Alsatians and Lorrainians of German language clung to France (see Député protestataire [ fr ] ), despite their native languages.
Britain ceded Heligoland to Germany in 1890 in accordance with the terms of the Heligoland–Zanzibar Treaty . The Heligolanders, then still prevailingly fluent in their Heligolandic dialect of North Frisian , adopted German citizenship, like many other Frisians of Germany along the North Sea coast.
As part of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk , Russia's new Bolshevik ( communist ) government renounced all claims to Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Belarus , and Ukraine .
Most of these territories were in effect ceded to the German Empire, intended to become economically dependent on and politically closely tied to that empire under different German kings and dukes .
Regarding the ceded territories, the treaty stated that "Germany and Austria-Hungary intend to determine the future fate of these territories in agreement with their population" with few other effects than the appointment of German rulers to the new thrones of Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland .
The provisions of the Treaty of Versailles at the end of World War I obliged Germany to cede some territory to other countries. Besides the loss of the German colonial empire the territories Germany lost were:
The Sudeten Germans had attempted to prevent the German language border areas of former Austria-Hungary from becoming part of Czechoslovakia in 1918. Once part of Bohemia , they had proclaimed the German-Austrian province of Sudetenland in October 1918, voting instead to join the newly declared Republic of German Austria in November 1918. However, this had been forbidden by the victorious allied powers of the First World War (the Treaty of Saint-Germain ) and by the Czechoslovak government, partly with force of arms in 1919. Many Sudeten Germans rejected an affiliation to Czechoslovakia, since they had been refused the right to self-determination promised by US president Woodrow Wilson in his Fourteen Points of January 1918.
The Silesian Uprisings ( Polish : Powstania śląskie ) were a series of three armed uprisings (1919–1921) of Poles in the Upper Silesia region against Weimar Republic in order to separate the region (where in some parts Poles constituted a majority) from Germany and join it with the Second Polish Republic .
By World War I, there were isolated groups of Germans or so-called Schwaben as far southeast as the Bosphorus ( Turkey ), 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. [ clarification needed ]
German nationalists used the existence of large German minorities in other countries as a basis for territorial claims. Many of the propaganda themes of the Nazi regime against Czechoslovakia and Poland claimed that the ethnic Germans ( Volksdeutsche ) in those territories were persecuted.
The Nazis negotiated a number of population transfers with Joseph Stalin and others with Benito Mussolini so that both Germany and the other country would increase their ethnic homogeneity. However, these population transfers were not sufficient to appease the demands of the Nazis. The Heim ins Reich rhetoric of the Nazis over the continued disjoint status of enclaves such as Danzig and East Prussia was an agitating factor in the politics leading up to World War II, and is considered by many to be among the major causes of Nazi aggressiveness and thus the war. Adolf Hitler used these issues as a pretext for waging wars of aggression against Czechoslovakia and Poland.
On 7 March 1936, Hitler sent a small expeditionary force into the demilitarized Rhineland. This was a clear violation of the Treaty of Versailles (1919, official end of World War I), and as such, France and Britain were within their rights, via the Treaty, to oust the German forces. British public opinion blocked any use of military force, thus preventing French action, as they were internally divided and would not act without British support.
In 1933, a considerable number of anti- Nazi Germans fled to the Saar, as it was the only part of Germany left outside the Third Reich 's control. As a result, anti-Nazi groups campaigned heavily for the Saarland to remain under control of League of Nations as long as Adolf Hitler ruled Germany. However, long-held sentiments against France remained entrenched, with very few sympathizing openly with France. When the 15-year-term was over, a plebiscite was held in the territory on 13 January 1935: 90.3% of those voting wished to join Germany .
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