Graduation Year

2019

Date of Submission

5-2019

Document Type

Campus Only Senior Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

History

Reader 1

Jonathan Petropoulos

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Jacob A Eynon

Abstract

This study focuses on an analysis of militarism in German culture from the end of the Thirty Years’ War in 1648 to the Fall of the Third Reich in 1945. Its focuses on the effects of the military, its presence, needs, personnel, values and activities on the four main groups of relevance to this topic within the German populace; The rulers of Germany and its various states prior to unification, the aristocracy, the common solidres and the common people who comprise the remainder of the populace. The differences in the specificity between the first three categories and the last one is that the rulers, nobility and soldiery each have unique and intense connections with the military and its structures as they are either directly a part of its traditions and hierarchies or are deeply intertwined with its functioning. The rest of the German populace, the common man, experience the structures of the military second hand, they are affected by it but not directly connected to it.

This study focuses on an analysis of militarism in German culture from the end of the Thirty Years’ War in 1648 to the Fall of the Third Reich in 1945. Its focuses on the effects of the military, its presence, needs, personnel, values and activities on the four main groups of relevance to this topic within the German populace; The rulers of Germany and its various states prior to unification, the aristocracy, the common soldiers and the common people who comprise the remainder of the populace. The differences in the specificity between the first three categories and the last one is that the rulers, nobility and soldiery each have unique and intense connections with the military and its structures as they are either directly a part of its traditions and hierarchies or are deeply intertwined with its functioning. The rest of the German populace, the common man, experience the structures of the military second hand, they are affected by it but not directly connected to it.

This study will also focus primarily on the history and military tradition a German state, Brandenburg-Prussia later the Kingdom of Prussia. This is for two reasons; first, that Russia's hegemony over the other German states and its eventual role in unifying them into the German Empire in 1871 give its traditions and structures a primacy amongst its neighbors; second, that the history of Prussia is so deeply entwined with their army, which made them famous at the time and is still the main contributor to their notoriety in history today, that its military culture has the strength and recognition amongst the other German states.

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