1.
Gustav Stresemann
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Gustav Stresemann was a German politician and statesman who served as Chancellor in 1923 and Foreign Minister 1923–1929, during the Weimar Republic. He was co-laureate of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1926 and his most notable achievement was the reconciliation between Germany and France, for which he and Aristide Briand received the Nobel Peace Prize. During a period of instability and fragile, short-lived governments. During his political career, he represented three successive liberal parties, he was the dominant figure of the German Peoples Party during the Weimar Republic, Stresemann was born on 10 May 1878 in the Köpenicker Straße area of southeast Berlin, the youngest of 7 children. His father worked as a bottler and distributor, and also ran a small bar out of the family home. The family was middle class, but relatively well-off for the neighbourhood. Stresemann was an excellent student, particularly excelling in German literature, thus, he entered the University of Berlin in 1897 to study political economy. Through this course of studies, Stresemann was exposed to the principal arguments of his day. His editorials for the paper were often political, and dismissed most of the political parties as broken in one way or another. In these early writings, he set out views that combined liberalism with strident nationalism, in 1898, Stresemann left the University of Berlin, transferring to the University of Leipzig so that he could pursue a doctorate. He completed his studies in January 1901, submitting a thesis on the beer industry in Berlin. In 1902 he founded the Saxon Manufacturers Association, in 1903 he married Käte Kleefeld, daughter of a wealthy Jewish Berlin businessman, and the sister of Kurt von Kleefeld, the last person in Germany to be ennobled. At that time he was also a member of Friedrich Naumanns National-Social Association, in 1906 he was elected to the Dresden town council. Though he had worked in trade associations, Stresemann soon became a leader of the National Liberal Party in Saxony. In 1907, he was elected to the Reichstag, where he became a close associate of party chairman Ernst Bassermann. However, his support of expanded social-welfare programs didnt sit well with some of the more conservative members. Later that year he lost both his Reichstag and town council seats and he returned to business and founded the German-American Economic Association. In 1914 he returned to the Reichstag and he was exempted from war service due to poor health
2.
Austen Chamberlain
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Sir Joseph Austen Chamberlain KG was a British statesman, son of Joseph Chamberlain and half-brother of Neville Chamberlain. He stood for the Liberal Unionist party, which merged with the Conservatives in 1912, as Foreign Secretary, he negotiated the Locarno Pact, aimed at preventing war between France and Germany, for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. He was one of the few MPs supporting Winston Churchills appeals for rearmament against the German threat in the 1930s and his mother, the former Harriet Kenrick, died in childbirth, leaving his father so shaken that for almost 25 years he maintained a distance from his first-born son. In 1868, his father married Harriets cousin, Florence, and had further children, Austen was educated first at Rugby School, before passing on to Trinity College, Cambridge. While at Trinity College, he became a friend of F. S. Oliver, a future advocate of Imperial Federation and, after 1909. Chamberlain made his first political address in 1884 at a meeting of the universitys Political Society and was vice-president of the Cambridge Union Society. For nine months, he was shown the brilliance of Paris under the Third Republic, from Paris, Austen was sent to Berlin for twelve months, to imbibe the political culture of the other great European power, Germany. Among others, Austen met and dined with the Iron Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, Austen returned to England in 1888, lured largely by the prize of a parliamentary constituency. He was first elected to parliament as a member of his fathers own Liberal Unionist Party in 1892 and that was highly significant, given the bad blood existing between Joseph Chamberlain and his former leader. Appointed a junior Whip of the Liberal Unionists after the general election, in the wake of the struggle between his father and Balfour, Austen Chamberlain became Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1903. While Austen supported his father’s programme, his influence within the cabinet was diminished following the departure of the senior Chamberlain to become backbenchers, with the Unionists in disarray after two successive electoral defeats in 1910, Balfour was forced from his position as party leader in November 1911. Chamberlain was one of the candidates to succeed as Conservative leader even though he was still technically a member of the Liberal Unionist wing of the coalition. Chamberlain was opposed by Canadian-born Andrew Bonar Law, Walter Long, after a short period of internal party campaigning, Chamberlain determined to withdraw from the contest for the good of the still-divided party. He succeeded in persuading Long to withdraw him in favour of Bonar Law. In the last years before the outbreak of World War I, Chamberlain was concerned with one issue above all others, Chamberlain was resolutely opposed to the dissolution of the Union with Ireland. Chamberlain joined the cabinet as Secretary of State for India and he was widely acclaimed for such a principled act. Later, he returned to government and became a member of the War Cabinet in April 1918 as Minister without Portfolio, replacing Lord Milner, citing ill health, Bonar Law retired from the leadership of the Conservative branch of the Lloyd George government in the spring of 1921. He was succeeded at the Exchequer by Sir Robert Horne, it seemed that after ten years of waiting, Austen would again be given the opportunity of succeeding to the premiership
3.
London
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London /ˈlʌndən/ is the capital and most populous city of England and the United Kingdom. Standing on the River Thames in the south east of the island of Great Britain and it was founded by the Romans, who named it Londinium. Londons ancient core, the City of London, largely retains its 1. 12-square-mile medieval boundaries. London is a global city in the arts, commerce, education, entertainment, fashion, finance, healthcare, media, professional services, research and development, tourism. It is crowned as the worlds largest financial centre and has the fifth- or sixth-largest metropolitan area GDP in the world, London is a world cultural capital. It is the worlds most-visited city as measured by international arrivals and has the worlds largest city airport system measured by passenger traffic, London is the worlds leading investment destination, hosting more international retailers and ultra high-net-worth individuals than any other city. Londons universities form the largest concentration of education institutes in Europe. In 2012, London became the first city to have hosted the modern Summer Olympic Games three times, London has a diverse range of people and cultures, and more than 300 languages are spoken in the region. Its estimated mid-2015 municipal population was 8,673,713, the largest of any city in the European Union, Londons urban area is the second most populous in the EU, after Paris, with 9,787,426 inhabitants at the 2011 census. The citys metropolitan area is the most populous in the EU with 13,879,757 inhabitants, the city-region therefore has a similar land area and population to that of the New York metropolitan area. London was the worlds most populous city from around 1831 to 1925, Other famous landmarks include Buckingham Palace, the London Eye, Piccadilly Circus, St Pauls Cathedral, Tower Bridge, Trafalgar Square, and The Shard. The London Underground is the oldest underground railway network in the world, the etymology of London is uncertain. It is an ancient name, found in sources from the 2nd century and it is recorded c.121 as Londinium, which points to Romano-British origin, and hand-written Roman tablets recovered in the city originating from AD 65/70-80 include the word Londinio. The earliest attempted explanation, now disregarded, is attributed to Geoffrey of Monmouth in Historia Regum Britanniae and this had it that the name originated from a supposed King Lud, who had allegedly taken over the city and named it Kaerlud. From 1898, it was accepted that the name was of Celtic origin and meant place belonging to a man called *Londinos. The ultimate difficulty lies in reconciling the Latin form Londinium with the modern Welsh Llundain, which should demand a form *lōndinion, from earlier *loundiniom. The possibility cannot be ruled out that the Welsh name was borrowed back in from English at a later date, and thus cannot be used as a basis from which to reconstruct the original name. Until 1889, the name London officially applied only to the City of London, two recent discoveries indicate probable very early settlements near the Thames in the London area
4.
England
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England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west, the Irish Sea lies northwest of England and the Celtic Sea lies to the southwest. England is separated from continental Europe by the North Sea to the east, the country covers five-eighths of the island of Great Britain in its centre and south, and includes over 100 smaller islands such as the Isles of Scilly, and the Isle of Wight. England became a state in the 10th century, and since the Age of Discovery. The Industrial Revolution began in 18th-century England, transforming its society into the worlds first industrialised nation, Englands terrain mostly comprises low hills and plains, especially in central and southern England. However, there are uplands in the north and in the southwest, the capital is London, which is the largest metropolitan area in both the United Kingdom and the European Union. In 1801, Great Britain was united with the Kingdom of Ireland through another Act of Union to become the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. In 1922 the Irish Free State seceded from the United Kingdom, leading to the latter being renamed the United Kingdom of Great Britain, the name England is derived from the Old English name Englaland, which means land of the Angles. The Angles were one of the Germanic tribes that settled in Great Britain during the Early Middle Ages, the Angles came from the Angeln peninsula in the Bay of Kiel area of the Baltic Sea. The earliest recorded use of the term, as Engla londe, is in the ninth century translation into Old English of Bedes Ecclesiastical History of the English People. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, its spelling was first used in 1538. The earliest attested reference to the Angles occurs in the 1st-century work by Tacitus, Germania, the etymology of the tribal name itself is disputed by scholars, it has been suggested that it derives from the shape of the Angeln peninsula, an angular shape. An alternative name for England is Albion, the name Albion originally referred to the entire island of Great Britain. The nominally earliest record of the name appears in the Aristotelian Corpus, specifically the 4th century BC De Mundo, in it are two very large islands called Britannia, these are Albion and Ierne. But modern scholarly consensus ascribes De Mundo not to Aristotle but to Pseudo-Aristotle, the word Albion or insula Albionum has two possible origins. Albion is now applied to England in a poetic capacity. Another romantic name for England is Loegria, related to the Welsh word for England, Lloegr, the earliest known evidence of human presence in the area now known as England was that of Homo antecessor, dating to approximately 780,000 years ago. The oldest proto-human bones discovered in England date from 500,000 years ago, Modern humans are known to have inhabited the area during the Upper Paleolithic period, though permanent settlements were only established within the last 6,000 years
5.
United Kingdom
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The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom or Britain, is a sovereign country in western Europe. Lying off the north-western coast of the European mainland, the United Kingdom includes the island of Great Britain, Northern Ireland is the only part of the United Kingdom that shares a land border with another sovereign state—the Republic of Ireland. The Irish Sea lies between Great Britain and Ireland, with an area of 242,500 square kilometres, the United Kingdom is the 78th-largest sovereign state in the world and the 11th-largest in Europe. It is also the 21st-most populous country, with an estimated 65.1 million inhabitants, together, this makes it the fourth-most densely populated country in the European Union. The United Kingdom is a monarchy with a parliamentary system of governance. The monarch is Queen Elizabeth II, who has reigned since 6 February 1952, other major urban areas in the United Kingdom include the regions of Birmingham, Leeds, Glasgow, Liverpool and Manchester. The United Kingdom consists of four countries—England, Scotland, Wales, the last three have devolved administrations, each with varying powers, based in their capitals, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast, respectively. The relationships among the countries of the UK have changed over time, Wales was annexed by the Kingdom of England under the Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542. A treaty between England and Scotland resulted in 1707 in a unified Kingdom of Great Britain, which merged in 1801 with the Kingdom of Ireland to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Five-sixths of Ireland seceded from the UK in 1922, leaving the present formulation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, there are fourteen British Overseas Territories. These are the remnants of the British Empire which, at its height in the 1920s, British influence can be observed in the language, culture and legal systems of many of its former colonies. The United Kingdom is a country and has the worlds fifth-largest economy by nominal GDP. The UK is considered to have an economy and is categorised as very high in the Human Development Index. It was the worlds first industrialised country and the worlds foremost power during the 19th, the UK remains a great power with considerable economic, cultural, military, scientific and political influence internationally. It is a nuclear weapons state and its military expenditure ranks fourth or fifth in the world. The UK has been a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council since its first session in 1946 and it has been a leading member state of the EU and its predecessor, the European Economic Community, since 1973. However, on 23 June 2016, a referendum on the UKs membership of the EU resulted in a decision to leave. The Acts of Union 1800 united the Kingdom of Great Britain, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have devolved self-government
6.
Paris Peace Conference, 1919
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It took place in Paris during 1919 and involved diplomats from more than 32 countries and nationalities. The main result was the Treaty of Versailles with Germany, which in section 231 laid the guilt for the war on the aggression of Germany and this provision proved humiliating for Germany and set the stage for the expensive reparations Germany was intended to pay. They met together informally 145 times and made all the major decisions, the conference opened on 18 January 1919. Key recommendations were folded into the Treaty of Versailles with Germany, the five major powers controlled the Conference. Amongst the Big Five, in practice Japan played a small role, the four met together informally 145 times and made all the major decisions, which in turn were ratified by other attendees. The open meetings of all the approved the decisions made by the Big Four. The conference came to an end on 21 January 1920 with the inaugural General Assembly of the League of Nations, the main result was the Treaty of Versailles, with Germany, which in section 231 laid the guilt for the war on the aggression of Germany and her allies. This provision proved humiliating for Germany and set the stage for very high reparations Germany was supposed to pay, republican Germany was not invited to attend the conference at Versailles. Representatives of White Russia were present, a central issue of the Conference was the disposition of the overseas colonies of Germany. The British dominions wanted their reward for their sacrifice, Australia wanted New Guinea, New Zealand wanted Samoa, and South Africa wanted South West Africa. Wilson wanted the League of Nations to administer all the German colonies until such time as they were ready for independence, Lloyd George realized he needed to support his dominions, and he proposed a compromise that there be three types of mandates. Mandates for the Turkish provinces were one category, they would be divided up between Britain and France, Wilson and the others finally went along with the solution. The dominions received Class C Mandates to the colonies they wanted, Japan obtained mandates over German possessions north of the equator. Wilson wanted no mandates for the United States, his top advisor Colonel House was deeply involved in awarding the others, Wilson was especially offended by Australian demands. He and Hughes had some clashes, with the most famous being, Wilson, But after all. Hughes, I represent sixty thousand dead, prior to Wilsons arrival in Europe in December 1918, no American president had ever visited Europe while in office. High hopes and expectations were placed on him to deliver what he had promised for the post-war era, in doing so, Wilson ultimately began to lead the foreign policy of the United States toward interventionism, a move strongly resisted in some domestic circles. Once Wilson arrived, however, he found rivalries, and conflicting claims previously submerged and he worked mostly trying to sway the direction that the French and British delegations were taking towards Germany and its allies in Europe, as well as the former Ottoman lands in the Middle East
7.
League of Nations
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The League of Nations was an intergovernmental organisation founded on 10 January 1920 as a result of the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War. It was the first international organisation whose mission was to maintain world peace. Its primary goals, as stated in its Covenant, included preventing wars through collective security and disarmament, at its greatest extent from 28 September 1934 to 23 February 1935, it had 58 members. The diplomatic philosophy behind the League represented a shift from the preceding hundred years. The League lacked its own armed force and depended on the Great Powers to enforce its resolutions, keep to its economic sanctions, however, the Great Powers were often reluctant to do so. Sanctions could hurt League members, so they were reluctant to comply with them, after a number of notable successes and some early failures in the 1920s, the League ultimately proved incapable of preventing aggression by the Axis powers in the 1930s. Germany withdrew from the League, as did Japan, Italy, Spain, the onset of the Second World War showed that the League had failed its primary purpose, which was to prevent any future world war. The League lasted for 26 years, the United Nations replaced it after the end of the Second World War on 20 April 1946 and inherited a number of agencies and organisations founded by the League. As historians William H. Harbaugh and Ronald E. Powaski point out, the organisation was international in scope, with a third of the members of parliaments serving as members of the IPU by 1914. Its aims were to encourage governments to solve disputes by peaceful means. Annual conferences were held to help refine the process of international arbitration. Its structure consisted of a council headed by a president, which would later be reflected in the structure of the League, at the start of the 20th century, two power blocs emerged from alliances between the European Great Powers. It was these alliances that, at the start of the First World War in 1914 and this was the first major war in Europe between industrialised countries, and the first time in Western Europe that the results of industrialisation had been dedicated to war. By the time the fighting ended in November 1918, the war had had an impact, affecting the social, political and economic systems of Europe. Anti-war sentiment rose across the world, the First World War was described as the war to end all wars, the causes identified included arms races, alliances, militaristic nationalism, secret diplomacy, and the freedom of sovereign states to enter into war for their own benefit. Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, a British political scientist, coined the term League of Nations in 1914, together with Lord Bryce, he played a leading role in the founding of the group of internationalist pacifists known as the Bryce Group, later the League of Nations Union. The group became more influential among the public and as a pressure group within the then governing Liberal Party. In Dickinsons 1915 pamphlet After the War he wrote of his League of Peace as being essentially an organisation for arbitration and conciliation
8.
Article 231 of the Treaty of Versailles
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The article did not use the word guilt but it served as a legal basis to compel Germany to pay reparations for the war. Article 231 was one of the most controversial points of the treaty, Germans viewed this clause as a national humiliation, forcing Germany to accept full responsibility for causing the war. The Allied leaders were surprised at the German reaction, they saw the article only as a legal basis to extract compensation from Germany. The article, with the name changed, was also included in the treaties signed by Germanys allies who did not view the clause with the same disdain as the Germans did. American diplomat John Foster Dulles—one of the two authors of the article—later regretted the wording used, believing it further aggravated the German people, the historical consensus is that responsibility or guilt for the war was not attached to the article. Rather, the clause was a prerequisite to allow a legal basis to be out for the reparation payments that were to be made. Historians have also highlighted the unintended damage created by the clause, on 28 June 1914 the Bosnian-Serb Gavrilo Princip assassinated the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, in the name of Serbian nationalism. This caused a crisis, resulting in Austria-Hungary declaring war on Serbia. Due to a variety of reasons, within weeks the major powers of Europe—divided into two known as the Central Powers and the Triple Entente—went to war. As the conflict progressed, additional countries from around the globe became drawn into the conflict on both sides, fighting would rage across Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia for the next four years. On 8 January 1918, United States President Woodrow Wilson issued a statement that became known as the Fourteen Points, during the northern-hemisphere autumn of 1918, the Central Powers began to collapse. The German government attempted to obtain a settlement based on the Fourteen Points. Following negotiations, the Allied Powers and Germany signed an armistice, on 18 January 1919 the Paris Peace Conference began. The conference aimed to establish peace between the belligerents and to establish the post-war world. The Treaty of Versailles resulting from the conference dealt solely with Germany and this treaty, along with the others that were signed during the conference, each took their name from the suburb of Paris where the signings took place. The Americans, British, and French all differed on the issue of reparations settlement, the Western Front had been fought in France, and that countryside had been heavily scarred in the fighting. Frances most industrialized region in the north-east had been laid to waste during the German retreat, hundreds of mines and factories were destroyed along with railroads, bridges and villages. Georges Clemenceau, the Prime Minister of France, thought it appropriate that any just peace required Germany to pay reparations for the damage they had caused
9.
Hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic
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Hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic was a three-year period of hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic of Germany between June 1921 and January 1924. It caused considerable internal political instability in the country, the occupation of the Ruhr by foreign troops as well as misery for the general populace, to pay for the large costs of the ongoing First World War, Germany suspended the gold standard when the war broke out. The government believed that it would be able to pay off the debt by winning the war, also, it would be able to impose massive reparations on the defeated Allies. The exchange rate of the mark against the US dollar thus steadily devalued from 4.2 to 7.9 marks per dollar, the strategy backfired when Germany lost the war. The new Weimar Republic was now saddled with a war debt that it could not afford. That was made worse by the fact that it was printing money without the economic resources to back it up. The Treaty of Versailles further accelerated the decline in the value of the mark so 48 paper marks were required to buy a US dollar by late 1919, German currency was relatively stable at about 90 marks per dollar during the first half of 1921. Because the Western Front was mostly in France and Belgium, Germany came out of the war with most of its industrial infrastructure intact and it was, in fact, in a better position to become the dominant economic force on the European continent. The first payment was made, when it came due in June 1921 and it marked the beginning of an increasingly rapid devaluation of the mark, which fell in value to approximately 330 marks per dollar. The total reparations demanded were 132 billion gold marks, but Germany had to pay only 50 billion marks and that greatly exacerbated the inflation of the paper mark. From August 1921, Germany began to buy foreign currency with marks at any price, as the mark sank in international markets, more and more marks were required to buy the foreign currency that was demanded by the Reparations Commission. In the first half of 1922, the mark stabilized at about 320 marks per dollar, international reparations conferences were being held. One, in June 1922, was organized by US investment banker J. P. Morgan, the meetings produced no workable solution and so inflation changed to hyperinflation, and the mark fell to 7,400 marks per US dollar by December 1922. The cost-of-living index was 41 in June 1922 and 685 in December, by fall 1922, Germany found itself unable to make reparations payments since the price of gold was now well beyond what it could afford. Also, the mark was by now practically worthless, making it impossible for Germany to buy foreign exchange or gold using paper marks, instead, reparations were to be paid in goods such as coal. In January 1923, French and Belgian troops occupied the Ruhr, inflation was exacerbated when workers in the Ruhr went on a general strike and the German government printed more money to continue paying for their passive resistance. By November 1923, the US dollar was worth 4,210,500,000,000 German marks, the hyperinflation crisis led prominent economists and politicians to seek a means to stabilize German currency. In August 1923, an economist, Karl Helfferich, proposed a plan to issue a new currency, the plan was rejected because of the greatly fluctuating price of rye in paper marks
10.
Causes of World War II
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Some long-term causes of World War II are found in the conditions preceding World War I and seen as common for both World Wars. Supporters of this view paraphrase Clausewitz, World War II was a continuation of World War I by the same means, in fact, World Wars had been expected before Mussolini and Hitler came to power and Japan invaded China. The immediate cause was Britain and France declaring war on Germany after it invaded Poland in September 1939, problems arose in Weimar Germany that experienced strong currents of revanchism after the Treaty of Versailles that concluded its defeat in World War I in 1918. The most serious internal cause in Germany was the instability of the political system, tensions created by those ideologies and the dissatisfactions of those powers with the interwar international order steadily increased. The stage was set for the Danzig crisis to become the immediate trigger of the war in Europe started on 1 September 1939. This provoked the then neutral United States to respond with an embargo, the internationalist-minded, radical Bolsheviks seized power in Russia in November 1917, with the goal of overthrowing capitalism across the world. They supported communist parties in countries and helped set up similar regimes in Hungary and Bavaria, Azerbaijan. By 1920 there was a corridor of anti-communist border states just west of Russia, however, these states feuded among themselves, and such alliances they formed, like the Little Entente, were unstable. Both Italian and German fascism were in part a reaction to international communist and socialist uprisings, a further factor in Germany was the success of Freikorps in crushing the Bolshevik Bavarian Soviet Republic in Munich in 1919. Many of these veterans became early components of the Nazis SA, the street violence would help shift moderate opinion towards the need for Germany to find an anti-communist strongman to restore stability to German life. Expansionism is the doctrine of expanding the base of a country. In Europe, Italy under Benito Mussolini sought to create a New Roman Empire based around the Mediterranean and it invaded Albania in early 1939, at the start of the war, and later invaded Greece. Italy had also invaded Ethiopia as early as 1935 and this provoked angry words and an oil embargo from the League of Nations, which failed. Under the Nazi regime, Germany began its own program of expansion, as a prelude toward these goals the Rhineland was remilitarized in March 1936. In Asia, the Empire of Japan harbored expansionist desires towards Manchuria, militarism is the principle or policy of maintaining a large military establishment, with the view that military efficiency is the supreme ideal of a state. A highly militaristic and aggressive national ideology prevailed in Germany, Japan, twentieth-century events marked the culmination of a millennium-long process of intermingling between Germans and Slavs. Over the centuries, many Germans had settled in the east, such migratory patterns created enclaves and blurred ethnic frontiers. The rise of nationalism in the 19th century made race a centerpiece of political loyalty, the rise of the nation-state had given way to the politics of identity, including Pan-Germanism and Pan-Slavism
