The German (Second) Empire’s “Drang nach Osten” Policy and South-East Europe Around 1900
The unified German (Second) Empire, proclaimed in Versailles in January 1871, contemplated balancing the division of the world’s colonies, the markets, and the sources of the world’s raw material. Exceptionally, the pan-Germanic movement, established in 1891, propagated the making of a powerful German global empire. To do it, a new distribution of the world’s colonies was the first necessity [...]
The unified German (Second) Empire, proclaimed in Versailles in January 1871, contemplated balancing the division of the world’s colonies, the markets, and the sources of the world’s raw material.[1] Exceptionally, the pan-Germanic movement, established in 1891, propagated the making of a powerful German global empire. To do it, a new distribution of the world’s colonies was the first necessity.[2] The Balkans were one of the regions in the world that had to be “redistributed” in the German favor.[3] In the spirit of such a policy, the German Parliament (Reichstag) issued the law regarding the enlargement of the German navy in 1898 for the reason “to secure the maritime interests of Germany”. In the next year (1899), during the First International Conference in The Hague (dealing with global security-peace issues), the German Kaiser (Emperor) Wilhelm II Hohenzollern (1888−1918) openly stated that “the sharpened sword is the best guarantee for peace”.[4]
The pan-Germanic imperialism after the German unification in 1871 was primarily directed towards the East under the motto “Drang nach Osten”(“Penetration into the East”). One of the aims of this policy was to make the Ottoman Empire subservient in economic and political points of view to exploit this multicontinental country’s natural potential. However, in order to do this, the French and the British influence in South-East Europe, Asia Minor (Anatolia) and the Middle East had to be diminished while, at the same time, the Russian penetration into the Balkans and the Straits should be made as impossible as by supporting the political status quo in the region. In the German concept of “Drang nach Osten” foreign policy, the Suez Canal was to be under Berlin’s domination for the purpose that Great Britain would be cut off from its overseas colonies in Asia, Africa, and the region of the Pacific Ocean. Around the year 1900, the German capital investment in the Ottoman Empire had already pressed back the French and the British. It was 45% of the German capital out of total foreign capital investment in the Ottoman Empire just before the Balkan Wars started in 1912.[5] The Ottoman trade was financed in the first place by the German Deutsche Orientbank.[6] The Ottoman army was provided with war material and techniques, especially by the artillery, from the German military factories (Krupp, Mauzer). The Ottoman army was restructured and modernized according to the German war strategy, primarily due to the German military mission in the Ottoman Empire led by General von der Goltz.
The German financial-political expansion in the Ottoman Empire reached its peak when the German building companies got a concession to construct the Baghdad Railway (Konia-Baghdad-Basra) – the railway line which had an extremely significant economic and military-strategic importance for the Middle East. In this context, it is not so surprising that the German Middle East’s and Balkan policies were very close to each other. Namely, as between Germany and the Ottoman Asia Minor was located the Balkan Peninsula, it was as plain as day clear to the German diplomats that South-East Europe might be under the German financial, economic, political, and even military domination and control. The creators and proponents of the “Drang nach Osten” policy saw the Balkan railways as the natural link between the railways in Mitteleuropa (Central Europe) under Germanic rule and those in Anatolia and further in the Persian Gulf.[7] Shortly, the railway network connecting Berlin and the Persian Gulf, running throughout South-East Europe (the Orient Express), should be financially dominated and controlled by the German banks. For that reason, the German foreign policy did not support any political changes in the Balkans, and, therefore, the Ottoman Empire should avoid the destiny of further disintegration after the 1878 Berlin Congress.[8] However, the Ottoman Empire would surely be dissipated by the creation and enlargement of the Christian Balkan states at the expense of the Ottoman Balkan territories.[9]
The projected German imperialism was directed towards the Middle East, but via Austria-Hungary and the Balkans. Practically, in order to realize the policy of “Drang nach Osten”, Berlin might put under its own control the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary and the rest of South-East Europe. Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Sofia, and Edirne were the main railway’s ties on the path to Istanbul, Baghdad, and Basra, while Pola (Pula), Trieste, Dubrovnik (Ragusa), and Kotor (Cattaro) should be transformed into the chief German basis for Berlin’s domination over both the Adriatic Sea and the Mediterranean Sea. It was exactly the Russian newspaper Новое время from April 29th, 1898, which warned the Russian diplomacy that as a result of the German political-military-economic penetration into the Ottoman Empire, “Anatolia will become the German India”.[10]
The Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary was imagined as the forerunner of the German interests in South-East Europe, and, in this respect, the Viennese imperialistic policy in the Balkans was welcomed and supported by Berlin and the pan-Germanic politicians in Potsdam.[11] The reason for the German political supervision of the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary was a strong Austro-Hungarian economic and financial dependence on German capital and financial investments. Such Austro-Hungarian subjection to the German economic-financial control and, therefore, its inability to act politically as an independent state was seen from the fact that 50% of the Austro-Hungarian export was directed to the German market. Even before the Bosnian-Herzegovinian crisis in 1908−1909, the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary was financially dependent on the German banks (the Dresdner Bank, the Deutsche Bank, the Darmschterer Bank, and the Diskontogezelschaft Bank). At the same time, the Balkan states were becoming gradually as well as more financially subjected to the control of the same German capital. For instance, the main German investor in Serbia was Berlin’s Trade Society (the Berliner Handelsgezelschaft), while Serbia’s export to Germany in 1910 reached 42%.[12] A similar situation, for instance, was with Bulgaria, too. Her import from Germany and Austria-Hungary was 45%, while 32% of Bulgaria’s total exports were directed toward Germany and the Dual Monarchy of Austria-Hungary.[13]
The principal aim of such German financial-economic Balkan policy was to transform the Ottoman Empire into “its own India” and for that reason Berlin became the chief protagonist of the Balkan status quo policy, helping to “Bosporus’ sick man” to redeem. Subsequently, Berlin and Vienna aimed to prevent the creation of an anti-Ottoman Balkan Alliance under the Russian umbrella.[14]
Nevertheless, there were two crucial points of the Austro-German disagreement in relation to their collective Balkan policy:
While the Habsburg Emperor-King wanted to see only Bulgaria as a new member state of the Central Powers, for the German Emperor, Serbia could be included in this political-military bloc, too. For Vienna, Serbia and Montenegro should be kept out of the Central Powers in order not to influence the Austrian South Slavic population against the Viennese court.
The German Kaiser was not willing to support the Austrian policy to enlarge Bulgaria at the Greek and Romanian territorial expense because of the family links between Germany’s Hohenzollerns and Greece’s King George and King Constantine, Romania’s King Karol respectively.
However, despite these disputes, both Berlin and Vienna reached, for instance, a common agreement on the question of Albania: in the case of the Ottoman withdrawal from the Balkans, as greater as Albanian independent state was to be created and to exist under the Germanic protectorate and support (i.e., of Germany and Austria).[15] That exactly happened in November 1912 when an independent Albania was proclaimed during the First Balkan War at the ruins of the Ottoman Empire.
Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirović
Ex-University Professor
Vilnius, Lithuania
Research Fellow at the Center for Geostrategic Studies
[1] On the German unification in 1871, see in [Darmstaedter F., Bismarck and the Creation of the Second German Reich, London, 1948; Pflanze O., Bismark and the Development of Germany. Volume I: The Period of Unification, 1815−1871, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1962; Medlicott E., Bismarck and Modern Germany, Mystic, Conn., 1965; Pflanze O., (ed.), The Unification of Germany, 1848−1871, New York: University of Minnesota, 1969; Rodes J. E., The Quest for Unity. Modern Germany 1848−1970, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1971; Michael J., The Unification of Germany, London−New York: Routledge, 1996; Williamson G. D., Bismarck and Germany, 1862−1890, New York: Routledge, 2011; Headlam J., Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire, Didactic Press, 2013].
[2] Paul Rorbach became the most influential German proponent of the creation of the great German overseas empire. He was writing that creation of a great German empire in the world cannot be fulfilled without the great world war, i.e. without “the blood and the lead”. About the concept and practice of colonialism, see in [Berger S., (ed.), A Companion to Nineteenth-Century Europe 1789‒1914, Malden, MA‒Oxford, UK‒Carlton, Australia: Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 2006, 432‒447].
[3] On the creation of the mass nationalism in Germany, see in [Mosse G. L, The Nationalization of the Masses: Political symbolism and mass movements in Germany from the Napoleonic wars through the Third Reich,Ithaca, NY: Cornel University Press, 1991].
[4] Kautsky K., Comment s’est déclanchée la guerre mondiale, Paris, 1921, 21. Attempts to reach disarmament by some kind of international agreement and/or treaty began at the Conferences of The Hague in 1899 and 1907. However, both of them ended without any significant result [Palmowski J., A Dictionary of Twentieth-Century World History, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998, 171].
[5] On the foreign investment in the Ottoman Empire at the eve of the Great War in the context of political domination over the country, see in [Готлиб В. В., Тайная дипломатия во время первой мировой войны, Москва, 1960].
[6] On the penetration of the German financial capital in the Ottoman Balkans in the first decade of the 20th century, see in [Вендел Х., Борба Југословена за слободу и јединство, Београд, 1925, 553−572].
[7] On the German geopolitical concept of Mitteleuropa, see in [Naumann F., Mitteleuropa, Berlin: Georg Reimer, 1915; Meyer C. H., Mitteleuropa in German Thought and Action, 1815−1945, The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1955; Katzenstein J. P., Mitteleuropa: Between Europe and Germany, Berghahn Books, 1997; Lehmann G., Mitteleuropa, Mecklemburg: Mecklemburger Buchverlag, 2009].
[8] In 1878, the Berlin Congress, where the Great European Powers redraw the political map of South-East Europe after the Great Eastern Crisis and the 1877‒1878 Russo-Ottoman War, placed the Ottoman province of Bosnia-Herzegovina under the administration of Austria-Hungary (which annexed it in 1908) and recognized an independence of Romania, Serbia, and Montenegro while tributary Principality of Bulgaria received an autonomous status. Greece, Montenegro, Serbia, and Romania got territorial enlargements at the expense of the Ottoman Empire [Ference C. G. (ed.), Chronology of 20th-Century Eastern European History, Detroit‒Washington, D. C.‒London: Gale Research Inc., 1994, 393].
[9] Hobus G., Wirtschaft und Staat im südosteuropäischen Raum 1908−1914, München, 1934, 139−151.
[10]Архив Србије, Министарство Иностраних Дела Србије, Политичко Одељење, 1898, Ф-IV, Д-I, поверљиво, № 962, “Српско посланство у Петрограду – Ђорђевићу”, Петроград, April 18th [old style], 1898.
[11] The German Prime Minister (Kanzellar) stated during the crisis upon the Austro-Hungarian annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1908 that the German Balkan policy will strictly follow the Austro-Hungarian interests in the region.
[12] Алексић-Пејковић Љ., Односи Србије са Француском и Енглеском 1903−1914, Београд, 1965, 35−42.
[13] Жебокрицкий В. А., Бьлгария накануне балканских войн 1912−1913 гг., Кийев 1960, 59−61.
[14] Huldermann V., La Vie d’Albert Ballin, Payot, Paris, 1923, 207−213; Die Grosse Politik der Europäischen Kabinette 1871−1914, Vol. XXXIV, № 13428, № 12926, Berlin, 1926. About the Serbian endeavor to create the Balkan Alliance in the mid-19th century, see in [Пироћанац М. С., Међународни положај Србије, Београд, 1893; Пироћанац М. С., Кнез Михаило и заједнићка радња балканских народа, Београд, 1895].
[15] Pribram A. F., DiepolitischenGeheimverträge Österreich–Ungarns 1879−1914, Wien−Leipzig, 1920; Преписка о арбанаским насиљима,Службено издање, Београд, 1899; Documents diplomatiques français, Vol. II, Paris, 1931; Архив министарства иностраних дела, Извештај из Цариграда од 25.-ог септембра, 1902, Београд; Ilyrisch-albanische Forschungen, Vol. I, 1916, 380−390; Neue Freie Presse, 02−04−1903; British documents on the Origins of the War, 1899−1914, Vol. V, London, 68−72.
Origins of images: Facebook, Twitter (X), Wikimedia, Wikipedia, Flickr, Google, Imageinjection, Public Domain & Pinterest.
Read our Disclaimer/LegalStatement!
DonatetoSupportUs
We would like to ask you to consider a small donation to help our team keep working. We accept no advertising and rely only on you, our readers, to keep us digging the truth on history, global politics, and international relations.
While the US claims recent sanctions targeting Russia are based on alleged Russian interference in last year’s US elections, a careful examination of US policy post-Cold War reveals a systematic campaign aimed at undermining Moscow, encircling Russia and attempting to overturn the current, prevailing political order there in favor of one dominated by US interests.At each step, various excuses are concocted, mainly to mesh with current political narratives embedded within public perception at any given time. Currently, playing left and right-leaning Americans against one another regarding the 2016 election and still-unproven allegations that Russia played a hand at tipping the ...
Šį straipsnį paskatino parašyti JAV specialiųjų tarnybų bei Lietuvos politinio elito sukelta ir eskaluojama plataus masto karo su Rusija propaganda ir tautinės nesantaikos kurstymas visame pasaulyje ir ypač Lietuvos viešoje erdvėje. Masinės Vakarų informacinės agresijos prieš Rusiją pretekstu tapo globalinė JAV-NATO karo nusikaltėlių gaujos klastotė 2014-03-16 Krymo pusiasalio gyventojų referendumo rezultatai ir jų pagrindu įvykęs Krymo prisijungimas prie Rusijos, savo istorinės, etninės Tėvynės. Vakarų reakcija į šį absoliučiai teisėtą Krymo gyventojų pasirinkimą, Vakarų inicijuotas ekonominis karas prieš Rusiją yra absoliučiai neteisėti tarptautinės teisės požiūriu – Vakarų sankcijos Rusijai už Krymo prisijungimą yra tik dar vienas globalinis JAV-NATO valstybių tarptautinis nusikaltimas. ...
A map of the wanted territories of the Balkan states in 1915There are many talks about nationalism among the peoples from the former Yugoslavia during the last three decades what is quite understandable taking into consideration the post-Cold War conflicts and atrocities, as a continuation of WWII crimes based on certain political ideologies,[i] committed on the territory of ex-Yugoslavia.Historia est magistra vitaeI want to argue that there is a direct link between contemporary nationalism(s) among the Yugoslavs and their national ideologies, which are developed in the previous decades and even centuries. What happened with the Yugoslavs from 1991 to 1999 ...
2015 has become a year of living dangerously. Wars are spreading across the globe. Wars are escalating as new countries are bombed and the old are ravaged with ever greater intensity.Countries, where relatively peaceful changes had taken place through recent elections, are now on the verge of civil wars.These are wars without victors, but plenty of losers; wars that don’t end; wars where imperial occupations are faced with prolonged resistance. There are never-ending torrents of war refugees flooding across borders. Desperate people are detained, degraded and criminalized for being the survivors and victims of imperial invasions. Now major nuclear powers ...
An idea of effective collective security is the foundation of the Organization of the United Nations (OUN). Fundamentally, collective security has to be a system to protect global peace and security through the common agreement and activity of all nations. Therefore, the focal idea of the concept of collective security is to institutionalize a permanent arrangement of the balance of power in which the whole international community has to agree to oppose any armed aggression by any member state. The very theoretical logic of the concept of collective security is double: 1) No state can stand up to all of ...
If the Trump phenomena showed anything, it showed the consensus reality the mainstream media attempted to create concerning Hillary’s certain victory, as well as the consensus reality erected for decades, is not omnipotent.In fact, the earliest days of mass print media were erected on a famous fraud known as the “Great Moon Hoax” of 1835 – something researcher Chris Kendall has long called attention to – wherein the “educated,” “elite” widely accepted the mainstream publications’ claim bat people inhabited the lunar surface.In our day, a similar hoax still reigns, as mainstream media is literally as credible as Weekly World News’ Bat Boy ...
What is wrong with the American people? After several years of horrific policy toward the waking world, democracy’s standard bearers seem to be drowning in a lake of selfishness. Distracted, apathetic, or simply dumbed and numbed by unrelenting propaganda, the most admired society on Earth has turned to a wriggling mush of diverging ideals. I fear that American have become what we ultimately deplored, just another despicable cultural hegemony. Here’s a short brief on the matter.A recent article by James Carden at The Nation prompted me to discuss this unsavory truth today. The title of the piece, “Trump’s Syria Policy: ...
TerminologyA meaning of the term Great Power(s) (GP) in global politics from the beginning of the 16th century onward refers to the most power and therefore top influential states within the system of the international relations (IR). In other words, the GP are those and only those states who are modelling global politics like Portugal, Spain, Sweden, France, the United Kingdom, united Germany, the USA, the USSR, Russia or China. During the time of the Cold War (1949−1989) there were superpowers[1] as the American and the Soviet administrations refered to their own countries and even a hyperpower state – the ...
IntroductionThe fundamental aim of the text below is to deal with the concept and models of global security as one of the crucial topics of global political studies. We have to keep in mind that a term and notion of security usually imply a kind of sense of protection and safety from different possible harms coming from „outside“. Therefore, it can be generally acceptable and understandable that the states want to protect their own territories by expanding great resources in making their territorial safe. Security topics are of a very different kind, ranging from the causes of conflict between states ...
I was trying to think a few hours ago – after his shameful, outrageous, insane breaking of a solemn international treaty – just who Donald Trump reminded me of. I used to think about the boastful, gung-ho racist Theodore Roosevelt, the ‘Rough Rider’ who enjoyed war (and threats). But Theodore Roosevelt actually did win the Nobel Peace Prize. And then I realised.The political leader who most resembles Trump is the late Colonel Gaddafi of Libya.The parallels are quite creepy. Gaddafi was crackers, he was a vain, capricious peacock of a man, he was obsessed with women, he even had a ghost writer invent a ‘Green Book’ ...
“Whenever the government of the United States shall break up, it will probably be in consequence of a false direction having been given to public opinion. This is the weak point of our defences, and the part to which the enemies of the system will direct all their attacks. Opinion can be so perverted as to cause the false to seem true; the enemy, a friend, and the friend, an enemy; the best interests of the nation to appear insignificant, and trifles of moment; in a word, the right the wrong, and the wrong, the right. In a country where ...
It is a historical law that each state in the world changes with time. However, only a few states experienced dramatic change during the short period of time as Russia did over the last 33 years. Russia has changed as a state, nation, and military power followed by her fluctuating position in global politics and international relations. Since 1991 up today Russia transformed peacefully its entire political and economic system which is relatively rare in history. When the USSR dissolved in 1991, Russia left to be one of its 15 constituent republics which proclaimed independence forced to overwhelmingly redefine her role in ...
The stage is being set in the Republic of Srpska for what in Texas they call a double whammy.There is a Serbian saying that when an idle priest can think of nothing better to do he entertains himself by baptising goats. Bosnia’s High Representative Valentin Inzko apparently finds himself in a similarly absurd position. Oblivious to the Great Reset issues gripping the world around him and even of the dire condition of his own Bosnian raj, Inzko was busy over the last couple of days composing a letter to Nedeljko Čubrilović, speaker of parliament in the Republic of Srpska, Bosnia’s ...
The concept of human security is a controversial approach by a certain group of post-Cold War 1.0 academicians (after 1990) for the purpose of redefining and at the same time making broader the meaning of security in global politics and the studies of international relations (IR). We have to keep in mind that up to the end of the Cold War 1.0, security as both political phenomena and academic studies exclusively were connected only with the protection of the independence (sovereignty) and territorial integrity of states (national polities) from the military threat (war, aggression) by external factors (players) but in ...
IntroductionThe aim of this article is to shed new light on the question of how the configuration of post-war Central and South-East Europe was shaped during WWII by the USSR through its relations with the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (the CPY). Relationships between the CPY and the Soviet Union in 1941−1945 depended on the concrete military situation in Europe, and on the diplomatic relationships between the Soviet Union and the other members of the anti-fascist Alliance. For that reason, the Soviet Union and the CPY were cooperating in two directions during WWII. The concrete military situation in the battleground of ...
QASEM SULEJMANI FOUGHT IN BIH AGAINST SERBS?! A Croatian journalist discovers who was killed by the Iranian general! It was important for James Bond the Middle East, turning the WAR on in SYRIA!Hasan Haidar Diab (56) is a prominent Croatian journalist and war reporter. However, his link to the Balkans is in the Eighties of the last century, when from native Beirut to study in the then SFR Yugoslavia, and that is due thanks to the character and part of Josip Broz Tito, or his role in the Non-Aligned MovementOver the years of the war, primarily because of the knowledge ...
Protests against racism sparked by the police killing of George Floyd continue to sweep the globe, including in Belgium, where activists have demanded the removal of statues of King Leopold II, and an acknowledgement of the horrors he inflicted on the Democratic Republic of Congo.Pointing to a statue of King Leopold II, an activist told Reuters,“We won’t accept this until the government understands that this belongs in a museum, not in public space. Because it is a shame.”Leopold’s descendant King Philippe expressed regret in a letter amid the protests, and as Congo celebrated 60 years of independence on June 30.“Our ...
The Russian Revolution of 1917 terrified the capitalist world. In my last article based on the first volume of D.F. Fleming’s classic “The Cold War and It’s Origins 1917-1960” I traced the story of the attempt to destroy the world’s first communist revolution. 14 Nations attacked the Soviet Union attempting to carve out territory and crush the revolution. They also launched a massive wave of repression at home. Then they attempted to isolate the USSR while they built up Hitler’s Germany as a bulwark against Communism. This lead to World War 2 and an alliance between the USSR, Britain and ...
Bijeljina, Bosnia in 1992: Serb Volunteer Guard (Arkan's Tigers) led by Željko Ražnjatović Arkan after the action of "cleaning the town from the Muslim jihadists" (official Arkan's explanation). The victims are local Muslim family members. The guard was composed by volunteers of all moral kinds being independent on the front line and in fact waging its own private war. Bosnia is a neighbouring republic to Serbia with 1/3 of Serbian population. Bosnian Muslims (Bosniaks) and (Roman Catholic) Croats committed terrible crimes of genocide against the local (Orthodox) Serb population during the WWII (the so called Magnum Crimen) while during the ...
Here it comes again. As the enemies of peace continue to pressure a new US President into deeper war commitments overseas, and as Washington’s Deep State works relentlessly opposing Russian moves in Syria at every turn, the war drums have started again – beating harder than ever now, clamouring for a new US-led attack on Syria. This morning we saw the familiar theme emerge, and just in time to provide a convenient backdrop to this week’s Brussels’ ‘Peace Talks’ and conference on “Syria’s Future”.The US-led ‘Coalition’ prepares to make its end-run into Syria to ‘Retake Raqqa,’ and impose its Safe Zones in order ...
