Questions tagged [germany]
For questions on German Empire, Weimar Republic, German Democratic Republic and the modern Federal Republic of Germany. Questions regarding the Third Reich should be tagged with Nazi-Germany.
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Did West Germany build or mandate bomb shelters for ordinary civilians?
I know they had a government bunker (AdVB) next to Bonn, mostly dismantled [but partly turned into a museum] after moving the capital.
And they probably inherited a number of air raid shelters for ...
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Could healthy young men avoid Wehrmacht conscription before 1939?
The path for men in Nazi Germany seemed to be being part of the Hitlerjugend until the age of eighteen, then serving in the Reichsarbeitsdienst for six months, and then doing two years in the ...
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Why would people join a bloc party?
In the former Soviet Union satellite states in Central and Eastern Europe, apart from the ruling Communist Party, there were bloc parties, to give a façade of democracy. I can understand the interest ...
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When and how was West/East-German citizenship determined in the early years of post-war Germany? [duplicate]
In the post-war period of Germany, before the Wall was built in 1961, many people crossed the border between East and West. Later on, this was obviously not possible anymore, as the GDR famously ...
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Was there a German embassy open in 1941 Lisbon?
I'm researching Lisbon, 1941, for a historical novel. I've searched for info on the web already, and so far found nothing specific.
I need to know if there was a German embassy: thus, other than ...
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How long did it take approximately for a person to travel from Basel to Hanover (1753) by any means of transport?
I am writing a short story on someone's journey from Basel to Hanover and was wondering if it was a reasonable amount of time to do so, if not I would love some other now day German city that would be ...
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Were members of SA or SS paid - especially before 1933?
I understand that the SA and SS already were pretty large organizations with tens of thousands of members, even before the NSDAP took over the rule in 1933.
Have the SA and SS been volunteer ...
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What was the culture context for having close relationship between boss and workers in early 1900s Germany?
I'm reading Die Verwandlung by Franz Kafka. In the beginning parts of it, the story involves the protagonist Gregor's manager visiting him a few times, to figure out why he wasn't coming to work (...
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What was life like in Korbach, Hesse, Germany during the 1700s?
I have been trying to learn about Korbach, Hesse relative to my family history. I have an ancestor who was born there around 1728. He married in Efferen (close to Cologne) in 1765 as a Catholic and ...
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How did 19th century Germany pull so far ahead of its contemporaries? [closed]
I'm not well-read, but I got the impression that Europeans (e.g. Gilbert and Sullivan, Bizet, Smetena) rejected German art while they pulled ahead in engineering and mathematics. Stephenson may have ...
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How could people hear the proclamations of the republic in Germany in 1918?
On November 9th, 1918 both Philipp Scheidemann and Karl Liebknecht made their proclamations (see Wikipedia). In many TV documentaries one can see a huge crowd of thousands of people listening. ...
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"We, who've been connected by blood to Prussia's throne and people since Düppel"
I was listening to an old German song on Youtube and heard the following mysterious lines:
wir, die seit Düppel durch des Blutes Bande
an Preußens Thron und Volk gekettet sind
My translation of ...
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Where did Friedrich Schumann work?
I am working on a project regarding the German serial killer Friedrich Schumann (*1893 in Spandau; †August 1921, executed JVA Plötzensee). In my research I found that he supposedly worked at the "...
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Are Luther and Calvin responsible for executing more humans than the Catholic Inquisition?
Here is a quote from one Russian Orthodox priest:
"The number of witches burned by Luther is way greater then the number
of those burnt by any (Catholic) Inquisition within one hundred years.
...
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Why didn't the early chancellors of the German Empire belong to any political party?
I was checking the political party affiliations of the chancellors of the 2nd Reich, and it appears that until the later years of World War 1, all of them were politically independent. This is in ...
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Who is 'Chlodebaudo/Chlodebaud' in the Merovingian-era Clovis I genealogy & Charlemagne ancestry, supposedly mentioned in a Salic Law manuscript?
In Henry H. Howorth's The Ethnology of Germany.-Part VI. The Varini, Varangians, and Franks.-Section II (1884), p.228 he writes:
We must remember also that in a genealogical table attached to an old ...
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When did Silesia become a part of the Holy Roman Empire?
As the question says, when did Silesia become a part of the HRE?
The wikipedia article on Silesia claims some of them entered into a fiefdom relationship with Bohemia, therefore becoming a part of the ...
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What was the extent of Kohl's government opposition to the independence of Ukraine?
There's a (paywalled) piece in Der Spiegel summarized as
In 1991, the Helmut Kohl government wanted to prevent the eastward expansion of NATO and the independence of Ukraine - this is shown by ...
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How could a man be made a bishop of a place while not having received major orders?
This article on Franz Wilhelm von Wartenberg, which cites this Catholic Encyclopedia article describes von Wartenberg as having been made a bishop of two different places before even being ordained a ...
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Is the story of Peter Niers brutal execution authentic?
Okay, so I asked a similar question to this on the Medical Stack Exchange. It's not doing too well (2 downvotes), and I can kind of get it. Medical professionals want nothing to do with the harm of ...
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Was the unemployment rate in the Nazi regime lower than the Weimar Republic?
We know that the Nazis didn't count women, Jews, and National Labour Service in the unemployment statistics, which was called 'invisible unemployment',
Putting the 'invisible unemployment' scenario ...
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How culturally different were the small German states within the late HRE? [closed]
I was reading online about the formation of the German Empire and encountered the phrases:
At [the time the HRE came to an end] German identity only existed in a somewhat basic and symbolic form.
...
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Did a British civilian row across the channel and shoot 6 Luftwaffe pilots?
As we were studying WWII, our history teacher told us a story that, to me at least, seemed apocryphal. But given that she didn't provide any citations, I was unable to confirm our falsify her story. ...
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Were there luxury restaurants in East Germany?
I was recently reading the excellent book Mac B, Kid Spy: Mac Saves the World by Mac Barnett.
It is set in 1989, and Mac crosses the Berlin Wall to infiltrate the Television Tower in East Berlin.
I ...
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Have any non-German NATO forces been stationed in Eastern Germany since reunification? [closed]
What, if any, non-German NATO forces have been stationed in Eastern Germany (i.e. the former GDR territory) since reunification?
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Was there an East German counterpart to the Goethe-Institut?
The Goethe-Institut is a cultural association founded by the Federal Republic of Germany in 1951. It established offices all over the FRG, as well as in foreign countries, to offer German language ...
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How long would a letter take to arrive in Geneva from Ingolstadt? (Georgian era)
The two cities are ~300 miles (488 km) apart as the crow flies. In the late 1700s/early 1800s, how long would it take to send a letter from Ingolstadt to Geneva, and vice versa?
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In the coat of arms of Georg von Frundsberg, where does the ostrich come from?
Georg von Frundsberg (24 September 1473 – 20 August 1528) and all his successors had a dual coat of arms - one part with a black mountain, the other with a white or silver ostrich.
Some heraldry ...
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What do the last four digits of this postal cancellation stamp mean?
How does one interpret the last digits "10-11"? The ones after the date?
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Why did the number of Nazis in the Bundestag increase significantly in 1953?
Looking at the list of former Nazi party members who were politically active after '45, we can see that there was a significant increase in '53 (from 17 to 45, so almost three times as many). That is ...
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What were Nazi policies around converts to Judaism?
While Judaism is not a missionary religion, it is possible to convert to Judaism. I can only assume (although I've not found any sources on this), that practicing converts were treated like any other ...
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Why were some German and Japanese cities bombed more than others during WW2? Is there a scientific consensus?
I'm trying to study the long-run effects the strategic bombing of German and Japanese cities had on urban and economic development.
Reading some articles about it I get contradictory information about ...
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How and why was the boundary between West and East Berlin decided to be where it was?
I have been trying to find detailed explanations (and, if available, references in English or German about it) to the following about the division of Berlin into West and East sides after WW2:
how ...
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What did the Germans believe were the causes of WWI during the war and after?
Did the Germans en masse believe they were waging a defensive war or a war for colonies, or a war for living space, or preventive war or a war in support of allies?
I have read about some opinions of ...
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Was "Nobody intends to build a wall" Machiavellian? [closed]
When Ulbricht said in 1961: "Nobody intends to build a wall", is there any truth to the idea that he was being deliberately Machiavellian, knowing that most East Germans would read the signs ...
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West Berlin: who else fled besides East Germans?
When the Iron curtain descended across Europe, and Berlin was the only hole unplugged, did large numbers of other Eastern Europeans flee that way as well? I know that East Europeans could across into ...
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Are there any good books in English about the mechanics of German reunification?
Are there any good books in English about the mechanics of German reunification? I'd be interested to know how such things as:
Criminal justice. Who was released and who remained in prison? Did ...
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Why were the kingdom of Prussia's territorial ambitions focused in Saxony?
If I have remembered it correctly the Hohenzollerns tried several times to annex the electorate/kingdom of Saxony.
From the reign of Frederick II (the great) to the aftermath of Napoleonic wars where ...
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Does city-specific economic data for the pre-WW2 decades exist for Japan and Germany? How do I find out?
I'd like to the an analysis using historical economic data of Japan and Germany.
For that I'm trying to figure out, if data exists from before 1945 of economic production in different japanese and ...
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How were the West Berlin air corridors negotiated?
This grew out of a question I asked on the Politics SE, which I'm moving here because it's tangential to that question.
As far as I can tell, after World War 2, the Western powers negotiated air ...
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Which place in Europe and/or Russia had its catenary lines removed/replaced several times for political reasons?
I could swear I remember reading about a city or rail line -- maybe in Germany? Maybe in Poland? -- that had the overhead electrical wires for trains removed, exported to another city or country, and ...
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What are the 'mushroom trusts' referenced in Churchill's "Second World War"?
It is in a section where he is referring to the collapse of the German economy during and after hyperinflation…
p.10 The Gathering Storm – The Follies of the Victors 1919–1929
Here is the passage that ...
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What does this acronym and the symbol in the middle represent?
One of my Polish friends just bought a ruined old brick house in a village in Poland, which was supposedly reigned by Germany during the second world war (I didn't ask the name nor the location of the ...
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Were there German bomb disposal units in WW2?
There is lots of information about British bomb disposal units in Britain during WW2. Britain dropped a lot of bombs in Germany. Many of them didn't explode - they're still digging them up now.
The ...
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Have Germans expelled from Eastern Europe been re-enfranchised?
After World War II, large numbers of ethnic-Germans who had lived in Eastern Europe were expelled - by the local (post-Nazi-occupation) government, by the USSR and even with some Western power ...
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Post WWII Munich- U.S.occupation
Is there any way to find out which unit of the US army of occupation took control of US HQ in Munich after April 30th, 1945?
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Which 1848 German revolutionaries became key players in the US Republican party?
Gillian Brockell wrote in an article at the WP:
In 1860, two major factors helped to propel Lincoln — a one-term
congressman and country lawyer most known for losing a Senate campaign
— to the ...
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Was the 1977 sale of a submarine to Indonesia controversial in Germany at the time?
In April 2021, the Indonesian submarine KRI Nanggala sunk with all hands. The submarine was sold by Germany in 1977 (contract signed, manufacture finished in 1981).
Just two years before order, ...
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Did the Prussian army commit atrocities?
We know the German armed forces, all of it, during WW2 committed atrocities. Same for the German army during WW1. I also found some references the Prussian army committed atrocities during the Franco-...
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Why did East Germany fail? And why did DDR need hard currency 1986-1989?
Sometime back I saw Deutschland 83 then Deutschland 86 and finally Deutschland 89. The sad part is even though you see the series, you don't really understand why did East Germany fail? Why exactly ...
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