Worked with a NATO group (British) and I had to quickly tell them where to regroup with me and other Americans later in the day. Oh shit, thought of a good quick story involving this : Prussia then formed the single Province of Schleswig-Holstein.Īfter World War I danish speaking Northern Schleswig was given back to Denmark, while german speaking Southern Schleswig and Holstein remained with Germany. But then also annexed Schleswig on the grounds of them being single entity as stated in the Treaty of Ribe. Austrian and Prussians took back Holstein in the name of the German Federation.
This resulted in the Second Schleswig War. In 1863 Denmark implemented the so called "November Constitution", which was deeply unpopular in german speaking Holstein and Southern Schleswig. The danish ruled Holstein then became a part of the German Federation after the Dissolution of the HRE. In that time period the king of Denmark inherited both duchies and promised in the Treaty of Ribe of 1460 to never split them again. With Schleswig being a part of Denmark and Holstein a Duchy in the HRE.ĭuring the early modern ages (Southern) Schleswig became majority german speaking as well. Historically the border between Denmark and Germany/HRE was the river Eider for centuries. Americans know this story very well, but many of us are hardly aware that France endured 4 years against a juggernaut Germany and won, losing more than twice as many troops dead in that war than the US has in all wars in it's history. Of course, France happened to shit the bed in WW2 in epic fashion. Since the US had an undeniably massive footprint on WW2, and because the belligerents made an absolutely perfect narrative to fit into our national identity (making the world safe for democracy, liberating the oppressed, and so on), WW2 gets probably 10x more attention than WW1 does between the books, movies, miniseries, etc.
My sense is that WW1 is a significantly more substantial part of French, British, German, and Russian history relative to the US, since the US entered towards the end of 1917 and largely avoided most of the biggest, most tragically painful battles of 1915-1917: Verdun, Somme, Passchendaele, etc. WW2 receives an overwhelming share of the celebration regarding American military history in foreign wars (really in all wars, but the civil war and revolutionary war are both well known too). Yeah I'm sure a large majority of that comes from America.
0 kommentar(er)
