An Army With A Nation

"Not a nation with an army,but an army with a nation."

The European state of Prussia exemplified this phrase.Created from the states of the Teutonic Order,Prussia became the archetypical German people.Hard working,solid,obedient, nationalistic,these were the virtues of the people of the Prussian state. This country would rise to be the premier military of Europe,and the unifier of modern Germany.

In 1308 A.D. Old Prussia was the target of a crusading order,The Teutonic Knights.The Teutons invaded the backward tribes that made up Old Prussia and were able to conquer them.
The Order then proceeded to exterminate remnants of any but their own culture;they did this using two means:(1)the Order destroyed all temples and all remaining old seats of power,(2)the Order opened their border for a massive migration of German settlers.Through these methods the Old Prussia faded into extermination,and Prussia was born.
Due to loss of Papal support and Polish attack,Teutonic Prussia was forced to secularize their remaining lands and shift the seat of power to the Hohenzollern dynasty.Although the Prussian state was no longer the religious Order of the Teutons,the Teutons values of strict governance, stoicism,martial supremacy,and their lust for the Lands of Eastern Europe would be handed down through all of Germany.
Prussia was silent among the nations for the years of 1525-1618,silent but not non-active.The Kingdom of Prussia was annexing and solidifying it's territory,organizing it's government,and creating an immense army.In 1619,when the Thirty Years War broke out,Prussia was eager to flex it's muscle as a nation,but defeats at the hands of the Swedish forced the Prussians to take stock and reorganize all their efforts.The new king not only reorganized the military and defended his nation from the Swedes,but created a virtual stranglehold of power for himself and his line.The successive rulers of this nation continued to expand both their powers(internal,and external)and the powers of the military;the striving of these kings was fully realized in Fredrick the Great.
Prussia,for the years of 1714-1784,can be summed up in the character of Frederick the Great,and although you would not tell it from his childhood,which consisted of an effeminate demeanor,a love of music,and a dislike of authority ,young Frederick II was destined to be the ultimate Prussian. After an ill-planned attempt to run away from his country,his disciplinarian father lost patience with his heir.The King first ordered that the young Frederick watch his co-conspirator and best friend,Hans Hermann Von Katte,executed,then Frederick was rigorously forced to work, learn, and be profitable in almost every position of the civil and military administrative duties for two years.When the time came for him to take control of Prussia Frederick was,as one of his deputies described,"Obsessed with the smallest detail of every administration,infinitely knowledgeable in every study,and relentless in pursuing efficiency in every endeavor".
Frederick led Prussia into economic, military, and political dominance of central Europe. Prussia, under Frederick, transformed from the backwater of Europe into a country with an organized bureaucracy, an economy nearly independent from other countries, a Military that was larger than the population and perhaps the only force capable of unifying the disparage parts of Germany.
Unfortunately, for a unified Germany, Prussia's rulers after Frederick the Great were but a shadow of his prowess. It was just 29 years from when Frederick had brought Prussia into dominance that it was brought down in bitter defeat by Napoleon.The Prussian nation once again was forced to reform and reorganize, but was a crucial assist in defeating Napoleon at Waterloo.
It was not until 1860s,when King Wilhelm I appointed Bismarck as the Prime Minister of Prussia,that the furor for reunification of Germany set in again.Bismarck was a pragmatist,and he had an insatiable vision for a united Germany under the Prussian king.Through a masterful manipulations of neighboring countries he was able to wage wars,gain territory,and create a sense of foreign predation that caused the German states to unite with Prussia in a state.
The unified German country in reality was a Prussian Protectorate in which the Kingship was a hereditary position for the Prussian Hohenzollern dynasty,the Imperial military was an enlarged Prussian army(even though the other states could manage their own militia),and the civil administration was completely dominated by the Prussian Prime Minister.The accomplishment of a unified Germany had sated Bismarck's lust for territory;he realized that his newly created Germany was in a most tenuous situation of being surrounded by hostile countries and still in the process of unifying the other German nations closer together.Bismarck sought to buy time by creating entangling alliances and building up the military machine.But Bismarck was a German patriot above all,and he had always maintained that he was serving Germany(and by extension the Kaiser of Germany),this policy back-fired when the stubborn prince,Wilhelm II, became the new Kaiser,and demanded more control over the government,and when Bismarck balked Wilhelm dismissed the Chancellor.
Without Bismarck to guide him,Wilhelm II committed many rash decisions,the largest of which would be World War 1.The World War's results were the defeat of Germany,but even more it was the demise of the Prussian state.Due to the treaty of Versailles,Prussia lost it's continuity,it's place of preeminance among the other German states,and it's Kaiser.The kingdom of Prussia died,but it imprinted itself on the national psyche and created the common perception of Germany.


(That is it.Sorry if I bored you all to death,but I wanted to write something "historical for the blog:)