I need to write a paper on Germany's role in Central Europe and its impact on its neighbors (Austria, Hungary, Czecho/Slovakia, and Poland) between 1870 and the 2000's and was wondering if anyone here were particularly well versed in European history and could suggest some bullet points I could use to direct my research.

Read everything you can get your hands on about Otto von Bismark. He was the power behind the throne and the one who did the most to secure the 'Second Reich' after its origin. His fundamental principles of diplomacy were the basis of Germany's stability in a very precarious position in central Europe.

Only when he was dismissed did Germany begin to lose both their status and their advantage as a 'central power'. By forming unreliable and strategically inept alliances (thereby alienating Russia and Britain) Kaiser Whilhelm upended Bismark's carefully structured balance of power.

That imbalance and poor diplomatic position between two rival powers (France, Russia) without Britain's goodwill led to two world wars, the loss of historically and culturally 'German' regions (Czechoslovakia, Danzig, Alsace, Lorraine, the DDR) and the establishment of a near permanent alliance specifically against a powerful unified state of 'Germany' as it existed in 1870.

Even after the unification of 1989, Germany is in many ways a very marginal state compared to what it was in 1870. While industrialized and modern in the West, the Eastern portion remains well behind due to nearly 45 years under Soviet domination (and economic stagnation).

Currently, this situation is changing, and Germany is increasingly competative in world markets (it is the second leading trading rival to the US after Japan), but it still has yet to achieve the level of wealth and power it had relative to it's neighbors that it did in 1870-1900.

As for its relationship on its neighbors, many of them weren't even nations in 1870, but part and parcel of the German Reich or (in the case of Eastern Poland) the Russian Empire until 1918. Austria and Hungary were the dual monarchy (actually containing nearly 20 distinct ethnic groups with a dozen 'official' languages).

In this light, Hitler's Third Reich must be viewed. To many germans, the idea of 'Gross Deutchland' (Greater Germany) was not a conquest, but a return to the old Imperial state with the minor addition of German-speaking Austria.

What the Czechs, Slovaks, Poles and Alsatians thought of the idea was another matter.

Sullivan013

Good Post Sullivan !

I would add that many folks spoke/speak the German language at their moms dinner table, but the country of Germany is the "new kid" on the block.

Appreciate it!

Please see the post "Tinkering with history" elsewhere on this board - then please keep in mind that almost nothing you read about German history in the period you are investigating, is fact. History is written invariably by the victors and after the defeat in 1918 one of the casualties - other than the German nation - was the story of the facts surrounding the events leading up to that war

I don't quite agree with this last comment. Get a copy of The Arms of Krupp by William Manchester. He's very fair and unbiased in his reporting and writing of the book. It is not only a history of Krupp but of the German union and continues up until the dissolving of the firm.