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WARS
Wars - the reason for today's borders
Many wars have been fought in the history of mankind. These wars often have had different motivations, such as the desire for independence, racial freedom, which was the reason for the American civil war, or, as was often the reason in Europe, area extension. And with wars there are often territorial changes. Some were bigger, some were smaller. In this article, we want to look at those changes in Europe and track them back to the 17th century.
At the beginning of the 17th century the Thirty Years War was held which began in 1618 and ended in 1648. After the war, the borders approximately looked like this:
In this time the Holy Roman Empire of German Nation existed, which consisted of 382 different territories, as long as the kingdom of the french, that was ruled by the house of Bourbon, the Austrian Habsburg Empire, the Republic of Poland-Lithuania known as the Union of Lublin or Rzeczpospolita and the Spanish Kingdoms and Dependencies. These borders remained more or less the same until the Campaigns of Napoleon in the beginning of the 19th century. In the time from 1803 to 1815 the French Empire conquered nearly whole Europe, as it is shown here:
After Napoleon and his army were defeated by the Russians in 1815, the borders returned to “normal”. Germany formed the German as well as the North German Confederation led by Prussia. Austria and Hungary formed the Austrian-Hungarian monarchy in 1866 and Poland was split between Germany and Russia. These borders remained like this until the beginning and the end of World War I. After this dreadful war, some borders, especially in the east, changed.
The German Empire was rebuilt into the Weimarer Republic and the Austrian-Hungary monarchy was also split into, as to day known, Austria, Hungary and Yugoslavia, which later split up into smaller countries. Again under the reason of war. France territory has remained the same since Napoleon's defeat.
These borders remained until the outbreak of World War II (1939) and the Campaign of Nazi Germany. During the war, Austria was connected to Germany. From 1939 to 1945 Nazi Germany conquered almost the whole east as well as France and Norway. The widest extension of the German Reich was in the year 1942 and is shown here:
At this time Spain also had an ongoing civil war between democrats and nationalists.
With the fall of Berlin and the capitulation of Nazi Germany the borders were defined newly and are almost like the borders we know today. Poland was established again, as well as other countries. Except for Germany and Austria. These two countries were split up into four occupation zones. In Germany the three western zones were united to the BRD (Bundesrepublik Deutschland). With the reunion of Austria 1955 and Germany 1989, as well as the fall of the USSR, the borders were finally almost like we know them today.
So you can see that Europe lived through most of all pivotal events in history. Nearly every big war or confrontation was held in Europe. As mentioned above, the biggest wars were the “Thirty Years War” (1618-1648), the Campaigns of Napoleon (1803-1815) and the first (1914-1918) and second (1939-1945) World War. To add: Most of the territorial changes were in the middle and east of Europe. But since then there has been peace in Europe, at least until a few months ago. And for this peace the European Union got the nobel prize of peace in 2012 for many decades of peace, reconciliation and democracy.
Pictures sources:
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Europe_map_1648.PNG
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Europa_1815.svg
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Europa_1929.svg
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Second_world_war_europe_1941-1942_map_de.png
https://pixabay.com/de/vectors/europa-karte-l%C3%A4nder-zust%C3%A4nde-grau-297168/
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