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175-429: This pan-Germanic Empire was expected to assimilate practically all of Germanic Europe into an enormously expanded Reich . Territorially speaking, this encompassed the already-enlarged German Reich itself (consisting of pre-1938 Germany proper, Austria , Bohemia , Moravia , Czech Silesia , Alsace-Lorraine , Eupen-Malmedy , Memel , Lower Styria , Upper Carniola , Southern Carinthia , Danzig , and Poland ),

350-498: A Greater Germany . This notion also led the way for an even more expansive state to be envisioned, the Greater Germanic Reich, which Nazi Germany tried to establish. This pan-Germanic empire was expected to assimilate practically all of Germanic Europe into an enormously expanded Greater Germanic Reich. Territorially speaking, this encompassed the already-enlarged Reich itself (consisting of pre-1938 Germany plus

525-617: A multi-ethnic state, but the German-speaking people there did not have an absolute numerical majority; its re-shaping into the Austro-Hungarian Empire was one result of the growing nationalism of other ethnicities—especially the Hungarians . Under Prussian leadership, Otto von Bismarck would ride on the coat-tails of nationalism to unite all of the northern German lands. After Bismarck excluded Austria and

700-553: A nation primarily located in Western Europe that share a common French culture , history , and language , identified with the country of France . The French people, especially the native speakers of langues d'oïl from northern and central France, are primarily descended from Romans (or Gallo-Romans , western European Celtic and Italic peoples ), Gauls (including the Belgae ), as well as Germanic peoples such as

875-769: A "pull towards the East" ( Drang nach Osten ) where that could be found and colonized , in a model that the Nazis explicitly derived from the American Manifest Destiny in the Far West and its clearing of native inhabitants. As the foreign volunteers of the Waffen-SS were increasingly of non-Germanic origin, especially after the Battle of Stalingrad , among the organization's leadership (e.g. Felix Steiner )

1050-593: A "racially pure community". It is for this reason that the German occupiers had no interest in transferring real power to the various far-right nationalist movements present in the occupied countries (such as Nasjonal Samling , the NSB , etc.) except for temporary reasons of Realpolitik , and instead actively supported radical collaborators who favored pan-Germanic unity (i.e. total integration to Germany) over provincial nationalism (for example DeVlag ). Unlike Austria and

1225-617: A German province but to instead become an allied seafaring partner of the Germans. The eastern Reichskommissariats in the vast stretches of Ukraine and Russia were also intended for future integration, with plans for them stretching to the Volga or even beyond the Urals . They were deemed of vital interest for the survival of the German nation, as it was a core tenet of Nazi ideology that it needed "living space" ( Lebensraum ), creating

1400-646: A community of French Huguenots settled in South Africa . Most of these originally settled in the Cape Colony , but have since been quickly absorbed into the Afrikaner population. After Champlain's founding of Quebec City in 1608, it became the capital of New France . Encouraging settlement was difficult, and while some immigration did occur, by 1763 New France only had a population of some 65,000. From 1713 to 1787, 30,000 colonists immigrated from France to

1575-459: A distinctly biological one , the superior "Germanic blood" that he wanted to salvage from the control of the enemies of the Aryan race. He stated that Germany possessed more of these "Germanic elements" than any other country in the world, which he estimated as "four fifths of our people". Wherever Germanic blood is to be found anywhere in the world, we will take what is good for ourselves. With what

1750-861: A fellow confederation . In the 20th century the German Nazi Party sought to create a Greater Germanic Reich that would include most of the Germanic peoples of Europe within it under the leadership of Germany, including peoples such as the Danes , the Dutch , the Swedes , the Norwegians , and the Flemish within it. Anti-German Scandinavism surged in Denmark in the 1930s and 1940s in response to

1925-505: A fool of itself." This was in reference to bringing Germans back to idol worship in what Hitler saw as an era of science that would reject it. The goal was first proclaimed publicly in the 1937 Nuremberg Rallies . Hitler's last speech at this event ended with the words "The German nation has after all acquired its Germanic Reich", which elicited speculation in political circles of a 'new era' in Germany's foreign policy . Several days before

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2100-570: A majority of French people had other first languages (local languages such as Occitan , Catalan , Alsatian , West Flemish , Lorraine Franconian , Gallo , Picard or Ch'timi and Arpitan ). Today, many immigrants speak another tongue at home. According to historian Eric Hobsbawm , "the French language has been essential to the concept of 'France'," although in 1789, 50 percent of the French people did not speak it at all, and only 12 to 13 percent spoke it fairly well; even in oïl languages zones, it

2275-512: A pan-Germanic Empire, the objective was not universally held in the Nazi regime. There were also disagreements within the NSDAP leadership on the spiritual implications of cultivating a 'Germanic history' in their ideological program. Hitler was highly critical of Himmler's esoteric völkisch interpretation of the 'Germanic mission'. When Himmler denounced Charlemagne in a speech as "the butcher of

2450-458: A power against which no-one in the world could stand up to. The countries which form the Germanic world have only to gain from this. I can see that in my own case. My birth country is one of the most beautiful regions in the Reich, but what could it do if were left to its own devices? There is no possibility to develop one’s talents in countries like Austria or Saxony , Denmark or Switzerland. There

2625-530: A return to the values of the Middle Ages, its establishment was to be " a push forward to a new golden age , in which the best aspects of the past would be combined with modern racist and nationalist thinking". The historical borders of the Holy Empire were also used as grounds for territorial revisionism by the NSDAP, laying claim to modern territories and states that were once part of it. Even before

2800-472: A sense of unity. For [Hitler] it is self-evident that Belgium and Flanders and Brabant will likewise be turned into German [provinces]. The Netherlands will also not be allowed to lead a politically independent life ... Whether the Dutch offer any resistance to this or not, is fairly irrelevant.      – Joseph Goebbels The German plans of annexation were more advanced for

2975-644: A speech given in April 1943 to the officers of the 1st SS Division Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler , the 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich and the 3rd SS Division Totenkopf : We do not expect you to renounce your nation. [...] We do not expect you to become German out of opportunism. We do expect you to subordinate your national ideal to a greater racial and historical ideal, to the Germanic Reich. The defeat of Germany in World War II brought about

3150-534: A visit to the Reich Chancellery in Berlin. He had wanted to address Hitler as Führer aller Germanen ("Führer of all Germanics"), but Hitler personally decreed the former style. Historian Loe de Jong speculates on the difference between the two: Führer aller Germanen implied a position separate from Hitler's role as Führer und Reichskanzler des Grossdeutschen Reiches ("Führer and Reich Chancellor of

3325-709: Is a pan-nationalist political idea . Pan-Germanists originally sought to unify all the German-speaking people – and possibly also non-German Germanic-speaking peoples – in a single nation-state known as the Greater Germanic Reich ( German : Großgermanisches Reich ), fully styled the Greater Germanic Reich of the German Nation ( German : Großgermanisches Reich der Deutschen Nation ). Pan-Germanism

3500-604: Is alleged to have further hoped to establish an SS Province of Holland in vacated Dutch territory, and to distribute all confiscated Dutch property and real estate among reliable SS-men. However this claim was shown to be a myth by Loe de Jong in his book Two Legends of the Third Reich . The position in the future empire of the Frisians , another Germanic people, was discussed on 5 April 1942 in one of Hitler's many wartime dinner-conversations . Himmler commented that there

3675-486: Is also widely spoken, arguably the largest minority language in France as of the 21st century (a spot previously held by Breton and Occitan ). Modern French society is a melting pot . From the middle of the 19th century, it experienced a high rate of inward migration , mainly consisting of Spaniards , Portuguese , Italians , Arab-Berbers , Jews , Sub-Saharan Africans , Chinese , and other peoples from Africa ,

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3850-563: Is estimated that 20,000 settlers were living in Saigon in 1945, and there were 68,430 European settlers living in Madagascar in 1958. 1.6 million European pieds noirs settlers migrated from Algeria , Tunisia and Morocco . In just a few months in 1962, 900,000 pied noir settlers left Algeria in the most massive relocation of population in Europe since the World War II . In

4025-399: Is happening as part of a background evolution and recent studies confirmed the results of their assimilation, showing that "North Africans seem to be characterized by a high degree of cultural integration reflected in a relatively high propensity to exogamy " with rates ranging from 20% to 50%. According to Emmanuel Todd the relatively high exogamy among French Algerians can be explained by

4200-487: Is mainly limited to a few nationalist groups, mainly on the political far right in Germany and Austria. The word pan is a Greek word element meaning "all, every, whole, all-inclusive". The word "German" in this context derives from Latin "Germani" originally used by Julius Caesar referring to tribes or a single tribe in northeastern Gaul . In the Late Middle Ages , it acquired a loose meaning referring to

4375-498: Is my home". Indeed, the country has long valued its openness , tolerance and the quality of services available. Application for French citizenship is often interpreted as a renunciation of previous state allegiance unless a dual citizenship agreement exists between the two countries (for instance, this is the case with Switzerland : one can be both French and Swiss). The European treaties have formally permitted movement and European citizens enjoy formal rights to employment in

4550-617: Is no foundation. That is why it is fortunate that potential new spaces are again opened for the Germanic peoples. The chosen name for the projected empire was a deliberate reference to the Holy Roman Empire (of the German Nation) that existed in medieval times, known as the First Reich in Nazi historiography. Different aspects of the legacy of this medieval empire in German history were both celebrated and derided by

4725-406: Is quoted as having said on 14 October 1941: "It seems to be inexpressibly stupid to allow a revival of the cult of Odin/Wotan. Our old mythology of the gods was defunct, and incapable of revival, when Christianity came...the whole world of antiquity either followed philosophical systems on the one hand, or worshipped the gods . But in modern times it is undesirable that all humanity should make such

4900-602: Is such a thing as a "French ethnic group". The discourse of ethno-nationalist groups such as the Front National (FN), however, advances the concept of Français de souche or "indigenous" French. The conventional conception of French history starts with Ancient Gaul, and French national identity often views the Gauls as national precursors, either as biological ancestors (hence the refrain nos ancêtres les Gaulois ), as emotional/spiritual ancestors, or both. Vercingetorix ,

5075-509: Is thought to have survived into the 6th century in France, despite considerable Romanization of the local material culture. Coexisting with Latin, Gaulish helped shape the Vulgar Latin dialects that developed into French, with effects including loanwords and calques (including oui , the word for "yes"), sound changes, and influences in conjugation and word order. Today, the last redoubt of Celtic language in France can be found in

5250-620: The Alldeutsche Bewegung , a political movement which sought to unite all German speaking people in one country, whereas "Pangermanismus" can refer to both the pursuit of uniting all the German-speaking people and movements which sought to unify all speakers of Germanic languages. The origins of Pan-Germanism began with the birth of Romantic nationalism during the Napoleonic Wars , with Friedrich Ludwig Jahn and Ernst Moritz Arndt being early proponents. Germans , for

5425-638: The Americas , with the exception of the Huguenots , due to a lower birthrate than in the rest of Europe. However, significant emigration of mainly Roman Catholic French populations led to the settlement of the Province of Acadia , Canada (New France) and Louisiana , all (at the time) French possessions, as well as colonies in the West Indies , Mascarene islands and Africa . On 30 December 1687,

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5600-661: The Austrian Empire . Pan-Germanism was widespread among the revolutionaries of 1848 , notably among Richard Wagner and the Brothers Grimm . Writers such as Friedrich List and Paul Anton Lagarde argued for German hegemony in Central and Eastern Europe, where German domination in some areas had begun as early as the 9th century AD with the Ostsiedlung , Germanic expansion into Slavic and Baltic lands. For

5775-856: The Austro-Hungarian Empire . There was also a rejection of Roman Catholicism with the Away from Rome! movement (ca 1900 onwards) calling for German-speakers to identify with Lutheran or Old Catholic churches. The Pan-German Movement gained an institutional format in 1891, when Ernst Hasse , a professor at the University of Leipzig and a member of the Reichstag , organized the Pan-German League , an ultra-nationalist political-interest organization which promoted imperialism , antisemitism , and support for ethnic German minorities in other countries. The organization achieved great support among

5950-501: The Austrofascist Federal State of Austria which imposed a distinct Austrian national identity and in accordance said that Austrians were "better Germans." Kurt Schuschnigg adopted a policy of appeasement towards Nazi Germany and called Austria the "better German state", but he still struggled to keep Austria independent. With " Anschluss " of Austria in 1938, the historic aim of Austria's German nationalists

6125-718: The Bavarian army and lost his Austrian citizenship. He thus remained stateless for seven years, during which, according to Mussert, he was "the Germanic leader and nothing else". The Swastika Flag was to be used as a symbol to represent not only the Nazi Party , but also the unity of the Nordic-Germanic peoples into a single state. The swastika was seen by many Nazis as a fundamentally Germanic and European symbol despite its presence among many cultures worldwide. Hitler had long intended to architecturally reconstruct

6300-765: The Belt ", i.e. as including East Prussia and South Tyrol . Reflecting upon the First Schleswig War in 1848, Karl Marx noted in 1853 that "by quarrelling amongst themselves, instead of confederating, Germans and Scandinavians, both of them belonging to the same great race, only prepare the way for their hereditary enemy, the Slav ." Defunct Defunct There is, in political geography, no Germany proper to speak of. There are Kingdoms and Grand Duchies, and Duchies and Principalities, inhabited by Germans, and each separately ruled by an independent sovereign with all

6475-525: The Danelaw in the region known today as Normandy in the 9th and 10th centuries. This later became a fiefdom of the Kingdom of France under King Charles III . The Vikings eventually intermarried with the local people, converting to Christianity in the process. The Normans, two centuries later, went on to conquer England and Southern Italy . Eventually, though, the largely autonomous Duchy of Normandy

6650-546: The Duchy of Limburg . After their invasion in Operation Weserübung , Hitler vowed that he would never again leave Norway, and favored annexing Denmark as a German province even more due to its small size and relative closeness to Germany. Himmler's hopes were an expansion of the project so that Iceland would also be included among the group of Germanic countries which would have to be gradually incorporated into

6825-719: The Finnish Volunteer Battalion of the Waffen-SS . Finland's Nordic status did not mean however that it was intended to be absorbed into the Germanic Empire, but instead expected to become the guardian of Germany's northern flank against the hostile remnants of a conquered USSR by attaining control over Karelian territory, occupied by the Finns in 1941. Hitler also considered the Finnish and Karelian climates unsuitable for German colonization. Even so,

7000-1169: The Franks , the Visigoths , the Suebi and the Burgundians who settled in Gaul from east of the Rhine after the fall of the Roman Empire , as well as various later waves of lower-level irregular migration that have continued to the present day. The Norsemen also settled in Normandy in the 10th century and contributed significantly to the ancestry of the Normans . Furthermore, regional ethnic minorities also exist within France that have distinct lineages, languages and cultures such as Bretons in Brittany , Occitans in Occitania , Basques in

7175-865: The French Basque Country , Catalans in northern Catalonia , Germans in Alsace , Corsicans in Corsica and Flemings in French Flanders . France has long been a patchwork of local customs and regional differences, and while most French people still speak the French language as their mother tongue , languages like Picard , Poitevin-Saintongeais , Franco-Provencal , Occitan , Catalan , Auvergnat , Corsican , Basque , French Flemish , Lorraine Franconian , Alsatian , Norman , and Breton remain spoken in their respective regions. Arabic

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7350-442: The French Constitution , according to which "French" is a nationality , and not a specific ethnicity. France sits at the edge of the European peninsula and has seen waves of migration of groups that often settled owing to the presence of physical barriers preventing onward migration. This has led to language and regional cultural variegation, but the extent to which this pattern of migrations showed up in population genetics studies

7525-418: The French West Indies ( French Caribbean ), and in foreign countries with significant French-speaking population groups or not, such as the United States ( French Americans ), Canada ( French Canadians ), Argentina ( French Argentines ), Brazil ( French Brazilians ), Mexico ( French Mexicans ), Chile ( French Chileans ) and Uruguay ( French Uruguayans ). To be French, according to

7700-429: The German entry into World War I , Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg authorized the Septemberprogramm proposing that the German Empire use the First World War to seek territorial annexations similar to the ones demanded by pan-German nationalists. The West German historian Fritz Fischer argued in his 1962 thesis Germany's Aims in the First World War that this and other documents indicated that Germany

7875-446: The German idea , so too must the Germanic peoples of continental Europe be steered towards the Germanic concept. He [Hitler] even considers it good that by renaming the Reich capital Berlin into 'Germania', we'll have given considerable driving force to this task. The name Germania for the Reich capital would be very appropriate, for in spite of how far removed those belonging to the Germanic racial core will be, this capital will instill

8050-428: The Germanic peoples of Europe as belonging to a racially superior Nordic subset of the larger Aryan race , who were regarded as the only true culture-bearers of civilized society. These peoples were viewed as either "true Germanic peoples" that had "lost their sense of racial pride", or as close racial relatives of the Germans. German Chancellor Adolf Hitler also believed that the Ancient Greeks and Romans were

8225-428: The Gleichschaltung policy pursued in these parts of occupied Europe was to destroy the very concepts of individual states and nationalities, just as the concept of a separate Austrian state and national identity was repressed after the Anschluss through the establishment of new state and party districts . The new empire was to no longer be a nation-state of the type that had emerged in the 19th century, but instead

8400-403: The Industrial Revolution . The pace of industrial growth attracted millions of European immigrants over the next century, with especially large numbers arriving from Poland , Belgium , Portugal , Italy , and Spain . In the period from 1915 to 1950, many immigrants came from Czechoslovakia , Hungary , Russia , Scandinavia and Yugoslavia . Small but significant numbers of Frenchmen in

8575-424: The Interior Ministry produced an initial memo for the planned annexation of a strip of eastern France in June 1940, stretching from the mouth of the Somme to Lake Geneva , and on July 10, 1940, Himmler toured the region to inspect its Germanization potential. According to documents produced in December 1940, the annexed territory would consist of nine French departments , and the Germanization action would require

8750-469: The Low Countries than for the Nordic states . Luxembourg and Belgium were both formally annexed into the German Reich during World War II, in 1942 and 1944 respectively, the latter as the new Reichsgaue of Flandern and Wallonien (the proposed third one, Brabant , was not implemented in this arrangement) and a Brussels District . On April 5, 1942, while having dinner with an entourage including Heinrich Himmler , Hitler declared his intention that

8925-425: The Low Countries , and Scandinavia . Although Bismarck had excluded Austria and the German Austrians from his creation of the Kleindeutschland state in 1871, integrating the German Austrians nevertheless remained a strong desire for many people of both Austria and Germany. The most radical Austrian pan-German Georg Schönerer (1842–1921) and Karl Hermann Wolf (1862–1941) articulated Pan-Germanist sentiments in

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9100-632: The Middle East and East Asia , and the government, defining France as an inclusive nation with universal values, advocated assimilation through which immigrants were expected to adhere to French values and cultural norms. Nowadays, while the government has let newcomers retain their distinctive cultures since the mid-1980s and requires from them a mere integration , French citizens still equate their nationality with citizenship as does French law. In addition to mainland France, French people and people of French descent can be found internationally, in overseas departments and territories of France such as

9275-414: The Netherlands , the Flemish part of Belgium , Luxembourg , Denmark , Norway , Sweden , Iceland , Liechtenstein , and at least the German-speaking parts of Switzerland . The most notable Germanic-speaking exception would have been the United Kingdom : the Nazis' New Order envisaged the role of Britain not as a German province but instead as a German-allied seafaring partner. Another exception

9450-404: The North Germanic -speaking Scandinavians into a Pan-German state, sometimes referred to as Pan-Germanicism , was promoted alongside mainstream pan-German ideas. Jacob Grimm adopted Munch's anti-Danish Pan-Germanism and argued that the entire peninsula of Jutland had been populated by Germans before the arrival of the Danes and that thus it could justifiably be reclaimed by Germany, whereas

9625-449: The Norwegian independence movement . Prominent supporters included Peter Andreas Munch , Christopher Bruun , Knut Hamsun , Henrik Ibsen and Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson . Bjørnson, who wrote the lyrics for the Norwegian national anthem , proclaimed in 1901: I'm a Pan-Germanist, I'm a Teuton , and the greatest dream of my life is for the South Germanic peoples and the North Germanic peoples and their brothers in diaspora to unite in

9800-434: The Pan-German League , had adopted openly ethnocentric and racist ideologies, and ultimately gave rise to the foreign policy Heim ins Reich pursued by Nazi Germany under Austrian-born Adolf Hitler from 1938, one of the primary factors leading to the outbreak of World War II . As a result of the Second World War, there was a clear backlash against Pan-Germanism and other related ideologies. Today, pan-Germanism

9975-469: The Pan-German Society demanded the annexation of all German-speaking territories under the rule of the Habsburg monarchy to the German Empire, and fervently rejected Austrian nationalism and a pan-Austrian identity. Schönerer's völkisch and racist German nationalism was an inspiration to Adolf Hitler 's Nazi ideology . In 1933, Austrian Nazis and the national-liberal Greater German People's Party formed an action group, fighting together against

10150-496: The Revolutions of 1848 in the Habsburg areas , in which the liberal nationalistic revolutionaries advocated the Greater German solution, the Austrian defeat in the Austro-Prussian War (1866) with the effect that Austria was now excluded from Germany, and increasing ethnic conflicts in the multinational Habsburg monarchy , a German national movement evolved in Austria. Led by the radical German nationalist and Austrian antisemite Georg Ritter von Schönerer , organisations such as

10325-433: The Saint-Domingue . In 1805, when the French were forced out of Saint-Domingue ( Haiti ), 35,000 French settlers were given lands in Cuba . By the beginning of the 17th century, some 20% of the total male population of Catalonia was made up of French immigrants. In the 18th century and early 19th century, a small migration of French emigrated by official invitation of the Habsburgs to the Austro-Hungarian Empire , now

10500-530: The Saxons ", Hitler stated that this was not a 'historical crime' but in fact a good thing, for the subjugation of Widukind had brought Western culture into what eventually became Germany , however he criticised the religious policies that came with it, claiming that even Islam would have been better than Christianity due to its meekness. He also disapproved of the archaeological projects which Himmler organized through his Ahnenerbe organization, such as excavations of pre-historic Germanic sites: "Why do we call

10675-540: The Sudetenland however, the process was to take considerably longer. Eventually these nationalities were to be merged with the Germans into a single ruling race, but Hitler stated that this prospect lay "a hundred or so years" in the future. During this interim period it was intended that the 'New Europe' would be run by Germans alone. According to Speer, while Himmler intended to eventually Germanize these peoples completely, Hitler intended not to "infringe on their individuality" (that is, their native languages ), so that in

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10850-409: The United States Census , French people are not asked to define their ethnic appartenance, whichever it may be. The usage of ethnic and racial categorization is avoided to prevent any case of discrimination; the same regulations apply to religious membership data that cannot be compiled under the French Census. This classic French republican non- essentialist conception of nationality is officialized by

11025-497: The Weerbaarheidsafdeling in the Netherlands. In the post-war Germanic Empire, these men were to form the new leadership cadre of their respective national territories. To emphasize their pan-Germanic ideology, the Norges SS was now renamed the Germanske SS Norge , the Nederlandsche SS the Germaansche SS in Nederland and the Algemeene-SS Vlaanderen the Germaansche SS in Vlaanderen . The men of these groups no longer swore allegiance to their respective national leaders, but to

11200-406: The West-Frisians to remain part of Holland, and that since they were "part of the exact same race as the people of East Frisia" had to be joined into one province. Hitler considered Wallonia to be "in reality German lands" which were gradually detached from the Germanic territories by the French Romanization of the Walloons , and that Germany thus had "every right" to take these back. Before

11375-415: The areas annexed into the Großdeutsche Reich ), the Netherlands , Belgium , areas in north-eastern France considered to be historically and ethnically Germanic, Denmark , Norway , Sweden , Iceland , at least the German-speaking parts of Switzerland , and Liechtenstein . The most notable exception was the predominantly Anglo-Saxon United Kingdom, which was not projected as having to be reduced to

11550-461: The germanischer Führer ("Germanic Führer "), Adolf Hitler: I swear to you, Adolf Hitler, as Germanic Führer, loyalty and bravery. I pledge you and the superiors which you appointed obedience until death. So help me God. This title was assumed by Hitler on 23 June 1941, at the suggestion of Himmler. On 12 December 1941 the Dutch right-wing nationalist Anton Mussert also addressed him in this fashion when he proclaimed his allegiance to Hitler during

11725-411: The major powers make such great sacrifices, but also profit from it. We will certainly make sure that this will not happen." The Swiss people were seen by Nazi ideologists as a mere offshoot of the German nation, although one led astray by decadent Western ideals of democracy and materialism . Hitler decried the Swiss as "a misbegotten branch of our Volk " and the Swiss state as "a pimple on

11900-426: The mid-Atlantic . There was preparation for the construction of a new German metropolis of 300,000 inhabitants called Nordstern (" North Star ") next to the Norwegian city of Trondheim . It would be accompanied by a new naval base that was intended to be Germany's largest. This city was to be connected to Germany proper by an Autobahn across the Little and Great Belts . It would also house an art museum for

12075-437: The "Germanic area" due to its situation at the mouth of the Rhine river . Himmler's personal masseur Felix Kersten claimed that the former even contemplated resettling the entire Dutch population , some 8 million people in total at the time, to agricultural lands in the Vistula and Bug River valleys of German-occupied Poland as the most efficient way of facilitating their immediate Germanization. In this eventuality he

12250-401: The 1789 French Revolution . It replaced the ancient kingdom of France, ruled by the divine right of kings . The 1870 Franco-Prussian War , which led to the short-lived Paris Commune of 1871, was instrumental in bolstering patriotic feelings; until World War I (1914–1918), French politicians never completely lost sight of the disputed Alsace-Lorraine region which played a major role in

12425-477: The 1970s, over 30,000 French settlers left Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge regime as the Pol Pot government confiscated their farms and land properties. In the 1960s, a second wave of immigration came to France, which was needed for reconstruction purposes and for cheaper labour after the devastation brought on by World War II . French entrepreneurs went to Maghreb countries looking for cheap labour, thus encouraging work-immigration to France. Their settlement

12600-641: The 7th century BCE or earlier, and non-Celtic peoples including the Ligures , Aquitanians and Basques in Aquitaine. The Belgae , who lived in the northern and eastern areas, may have had Germanic admixture; many of these peoples had already spoken Gaulish by the time of the Roman conquest. Gaul was militarily conquered in 58–51 BCE by the Roman legions under the command of General Julius Caesar , except for

12775-491: The Finnish state, government and its " masonic " leadership sooner, and transforming the country into a "National Socialist Finland with a Germanic outlook". The same implicit hostility toward neutral nations such as Sweden was also held towards Switzerland . Goebbels noted in his diary on December 18, 1941, that "It would be a veritable insult to God if they [the neutrals] would not only survive this war unscathed while

12950-937: The First World War, with vast portions of eastern Germany directly annexed by the Soviet Union and Poland . The scale of the Germans' defeat was unprecedented; Pan-Germanism became taboo because it had been tied to racist concepts of the " master race " and Nordicism by the Nazi party . However, the reunification of Germany in 1990 revived the old debates. 18th century and before 19th century 20th century Notes Further reading French people France: 67,413,000 French diaspora and ancestry : c.  30 million Asia Middle East Europe North America South America Oceania The French people ( French : Les Français , lit.   'The French') are

13125-598: The Franks, led by the Merovingian king Clovis I and his sons, had consolidated their hold on much of modern-day France. The other major Germanic people to arrive in France, after the Burgundians and the Visigoths , were the Norsemen or Northmen . Known by the shortened name " Norman " in France, these were Viking raiders from modern Denmark and Norway . They settled with Anglo-Scandinavians and Anglo-Saxons from

13300-540: The French Revolution, it divided social classes, with the peasants identifying with the native Gauls while the aristocracy identified with the Franks. During the early nineteenth century, intellectuals began using the identification with Gaul instead as a unifying force to bridge divisions within French society with a common national origin myth . Myriam Krepps of the University of Nebraska-Omaha argues that

13475-555: The Gaulish chieftain who tried to unite the various Gallic tribes of the land against Roman encroachment but was ultimately vanquished by Julius Caesar , is often revered as a "first national hero". In the famously popular French comic Asterix , the main characters are patriotic Gauls who fight against Roman invaders while in modern days the term Gaulois is used in French to distinguish the "native" French from French of immigrant origins. However, despite its occasional nativist usage,

13650-403: The Gaulish identity has also been embraced by French of non-native origins as well: notably, Napoleon III , whose family was ultimately of Corsican and Italian roots, identified France with Gaul and Vercingetorix, and declared that "New France, ancient France, Gaul are one and the same moral person." It has been noted that the French view of having Gallic origins has evolved over history. Before

13825-626: The German Austrians from Germany in the German war of 1866 and (following a few other events over the next few years), the unification of Germany , established the Prussian-dominated German Empire in 1871 with the proclamation of Wilhelm I as head of a union of German-speaking states , while disregarding millions of its non-German subjects who desired self-determination from German rule. After World War I

14000-542: The German capital Berlin into a new imperial metropolis, which he decided in 1942 to rename Germania upon its scheduled completion in 1950. The name was specifically chosen to make it the clear central point of the envisioned Germanic empire, and to re-enforce the notion of a united Germanic-Nordic state upon the Germanic peoples of Europe. Just as the Bavarians and the Prussians had to be impressed by Bismarck of

14175-608: The German military after the armistice with France , but it was definitively shelved after the start of Operation Barbarossa had directed the attention of the Wehrmacht elsewhere. In the aftermath of the Munich Agreement , Hitler and French Prime Minister Édouard Daladier in December 1938 made an agreement that officially declared that Germany was relinquishing its previous territorial claims on Alsace-Lorraine in

14350-479: The Germanic Reich of the German Nation would be racist and nationalist . Rather than a return to the values of the Middle Ages, its establishment was to be " a push forward to a new golden age , in which the best aspects of the past would be combined with modern racist and nationalist thinking". The historical borders of the Holy Roman Empire were also used as grounds for territorial revisionism by

14525-437: The Germans were unequivocally intended to remain the empire's "most powerful source of strength, from both an ideological as well as military standpoint". Even Heinrich Himmler , who among the senior Nazis most staunchly supported the concept, could not shake off the idea of a hierarchical distinction between German Volk and Germanic Völker . The SS 's official newspaper, Das Schwarze Korps , never succeeded in reconciling

14700-528: The Greater German Reich"), while germanischer Führer served more as an attribute of that main function. As late as 1944 occasional propaganda publications continued to refer to him by this unofficial title as well however. Mussert held that Hitler was predestined to become the Führer of Germanics because of his congruous personal history: Hitler originally was an Austrian national, who enlisted in

14875-482: The Japanese Shinto was seen as an almost perfect East Asian counterpart. For this purpose they had ordered the construction of sites for the worship of Germanic cults in order to exchange Christian rituals for Germanic consecration ceremonies, which included different marriage and burial rites. In Heinrich Heims' Adolf Hitler, Monologe im FHQ 1941–1944 (several editions, here Orbis Verlag, 2000), Hitler

15050-659: The Low Countries would be included whole into the Reich, at which point the Greater German Reich would be reformed into the Germanic Reich (simply "the Reich" in common parlance) to signify this change. In October 1940 Hitler disclosed to Benito Mussolini that he intended to leave the Netherlands semi-independent because he wanted that country to retain its overseas colonial empire after

15225-512: The NSDAP, laying claim to modern territories and states that were once part of it. Even before the war, Hitler had dreamed of reversing the Peace of Westphalia , which had given the territories of the Empire almost complete sovereignty. On November 17, 1939, Reich Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels wrote in his diary that the "total liquidation" of this historic treaty was the "great goal" of

15400-596: The Nazi regime, and that since it had been signed in Münster , it would also be officially repealed in the same city. Final solution Parties The Heim ins Reich ("Back Home to the Reich") initiative was a policy pursued by the Nazis which attempted to convince the ethnic Germans living outside of Nazi Germany (such as in Austria and Sudetenland ) that they should strive to bring these regions "home" into

15575-597: The Nazis were viewed as being racially more suitable than those who went along without objections, as according to Himmler "it was in the nature of German blood to resist". On the very first page of Mein Kampf , Hitler openly declared his belief that "common blood belongs in a common Reich", elucidating the notion that the innate quality of race (as the Nazi movement perceived it) should hold precedence over "artificial" concepts such as national identity (including regional German identities such as Prussian and Bavarian ) as

15750-953: The North and Northeast regions have relatives in Germany and Great Britain . Between 1956 and 1967, about 235,000 North African Jews from Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco also immigrated to France due to the decline of the French empire and following the Six-Day War. Hence, by 1968, Jews of North African origin comprised the majority of the Jewish population of France. As these new immigrants were already culturally French they needed little time to adjust to French society. French law made it easy for thousands of settlers ( colons in French), national French from former colonies of North and East Africa , India and Indochina to live in mainland France. It

15925-465: The Norwegian port of Kirkenes , although this suggestion was rejected by Finnish Foreign Minister Witting . Felix Kersten , claimed that Himmler had expressed regret that Germany had not occupied Sweden during Operation Weserübung, but was certain that this error was to be rectified after the war. In April 1942, Goebbels expressed similar views in his diary, writing that Germany should have occupied

16100-525: The Pan-Germanist philosophy changed drastically during Adolf Hitler's rise to power . Pan-Germanists originally sought to unify all the German-speaking populations of Europe in a single nation-state known as Großdeutschland (Greater Germany), where "German-speaking" was sometimes taken as synonymous with Germanic-speaking , to the inclusion of the Frisian - and Dutch -speaking populations of

16275-622: The Pan-Germanists, this movement was seen as a Drang nach Osten , in which Germans would be naturally inclined to seek Lebensraum by moving eastwards to reunite with the German minorities there. The Deutschlandlied ("Song of Germany"), written in 1841 by Hoffmann von Fallersleben , in its first stanza defines Deutschland as reaching "From the Meuse to the Memel / From the Adige to

16450-766: The Reich. He was also among the group of more esoteric Nazis who believed either Iceland or Greenland to be the mystical land of Thule , a purported original homeland of the ancient Aryan race . From a military point of view, the Kriegsmarine command hoped to see the Spitsbergen , Iceland, Greenland, the Faroe Isles and possibly the Shetland Isles (which were also claimed by the Quisling regime ) under its domination to guarantee German naval access to

16625-628: The Reich. We shall thereby win a province that so far as beauty and wealth are concerned compares more than favorably with any other German province. During the summer of 1940, Hitler considered the possibility of occupying the Portuguese Azores , Cape Verde and Madeira and the Spanish Canary islands to deny the British a staging ground for military actions against Nazi-controlled Europe. In September 1940, Hitler further raised

16800-478: The Roman army and obtained important commands. Their language is still spoken as a kind of Dutch ( French Flemish ) in northern France ( French Flanders ). The Alamans , another Germanic people immigrated to Alsace , hence the Alemannic German now spoken there. The Alamans were competitors of the Franks, and their name is the origin of the French word for "German": Allemand . By the early 6th century,

16975-682: The US and the UK) but as social conflicts born out of socioeconomic problems endangering proper integration. Historically, the heritage of the French people is mostly of Celtic or Gallic , Latin ( Romans ) origin, descending from the ancient and medieval populations of Gauls or Celts from the Atlantic to the Rhone Alps , Germanic tribes that settled France from east of the Rhine and Belgium after

17150-463: The allocation of adequate Lebensraum for the next one hundred years. Because this space can lie only in the East, the obligation of a naval power takes a back seat. Germany again attempts to fight for its interests by forming a decisive power on land. This goal corresponds equally to the highest national and ethnic requirements." — Adolf Hitler describing his agenda of German expansionism, Hitlers Zweites Buch p.159 The establishment of

17325-578: The authority of their respective pro-Nazi national commanders ( De Clercq , Mussert and Quisling ), and were intended to function within their own national territories only. During the course of 1942, however, the Germanic SS was further transformed into a tool used by Himmler against the influence of the less extreme collaborating parties and their SA -style organizations, such as the Hird in Norway and

17500-495: The basic pan-German visions with the Pan-German League , but differences in political style led the two groups to open rivalry. The German Workers Party of Bohemia cut its ties to the pan-German movement, which was seen as being too dominated by the upper classes, and joined forces with the German Workers' Party led by Anton Drexler , which later became the Nazi Party (National Socialist German Workers' Party, NSDAP) that

17675-460: The best course of action in that case would be to unite the two Frisian regions on both sides of the border into a single province, and would at a later point in time further discuss the topic with Arthur Seyss-Inquart , the governor of the German regime in the Netherlands. By late May of that year these discussions were apparently concluded, as on the 29th he pledged that he would not allow

17850-447: The centuries to France, creating a variegated grouping of peoples. Thus the historian John F. Drinkwater states, "The French are, paradoxically, strongly conscious of belonging to a single nation, but they hardly constitute a unified ethnic group by any scientific gauge." The modern French are the descendants of mixtures including Romans , Celts , Iberians , Ligurians and Greeks in southern France, Germanic peoples arriving at

18025-411: The coast were given the designation Festung ("fortress"; "stronghold") by Hitler, such as Le Havre , Brest and St. Nazaire , suggesting that they were to remain under permanent post-war German administration. However the war ends, France will have to pay dearly, for she caused and started it. She is now being thrown back to her borders of AD 1500. This means that Burgundy will again become part of

18200-529: The colonial link between France and Algeria. A small French descent group also subsequently arrived from Latin America ( Argentina , Chile and Uruguay ) in the 1970s. Most French people speak the French language as their mother tongue , but certain languages like Norman , Occitan languages , Corsican , Euskara , French Flemish and Breton remain spoken in certain regions (see Language policy in France ). There have also been periods of history when

18375-507: The contradiction between Germanic 'brotherhood' and German superiority. Members of Nazi-type parties in Germanic countries were also forbidden to attend public meetings of the Nazi Party when they visited Germany. After the Battle of Stalingrad this ban was lifted, but only if the attendees made prior notice of their arrival so that the events' speakers could be warned in advance not to make disparaging remarks about their country of origin. Although Hitler himself and Himmler's SS advocated for

18550-569: The country during its campaign in the north, as "this state has no right to national existence anyway". In 1940, Hermann Göring suggested that Sweden's future position in the Reich was similar to that of Bavaria in the German Empire . The ethnically Swedish Åland Islands , which were awarded to Finland by the League of Nations in 1921, were likely to join Sweden in the Germanic Empire. In

18725-448: The creation of a "Germanic Reich of the German Nation". It was the continent which brought civilization to Great Britain and in turn enabled her to colonize large areas in the rest of the world. America is unthinkable without Europe. Why would we not have the necessary power to become one of the world's centres of attraction? A hundred-and-twenty million people of Germanic origin – if they have consolidated their position this will be

18900-723: The deciding factor for which people were "worthy" of being assimilated into a Greater German racial state ( Ein Volk , Ein Reich , Ein Führer ). Part of the strategic methods which Hitler chose to ensure the present and future supremacy of the Aryan race (which was, according to Hitler, "gradually approaching extinction") was to do away with what he described as the "small state rubbish" ( Kleinstaatengerümpel , compare Kleinstaaterei ) in Europe in order to unite all these Nordic countries into one unified racial community. From 1921 onward he advocated

19075-549: The decision was made to include Wallonia in its entirety, several smaller areas straddling the traditional Germanic - Romance language border in Western Europe were already considered for inclusion. These included the small Lëtzebuergesh -speaking area centred on Arlon , as well as the Low Dietsch -speaking region west of Eupen (the so-called Platdietse Streek ) around the city of Limbourg , historical capital of

19250-506: The decline of Pan-Germanism, much as World War I had led to the demise of Pan-Slavism . Parts of Germany itself were devastated, and the country was divided, firstly into Soviet, French, American, and British zones and then into West Germany and East Germany . Austria was separated from Germany and the German identity in Austria was also weakened. The end of World War II in Europe brought even larger territorial losses for Germany than

19425-536: The decline of the Roman Empire in Western Europe, a federation of Germanic peoples entered the picture: the Franks , from which the word "French" derives. The Franks were Germanic pagans who began to settle in northern Gaul as laeti during the Roman era. They continued to filter across the Rhine River from present-day Netherlands and Germany between the 3rd and 7th centuries. Initially, they served in

19600-425: The definition of the French nation and therefore of the French people. The decrees of 24 October 1870 by Adolphe Crémieux granted automatic and massive French citizenship to all Jewish people of Algeria. Successive waves of immigrants during the 19th and 20th centuries were rapidly assimilated into French culture . France's population dynamics began to change in the middle of the 19th century, as France joined

19775-414: The educated middle and upper class; it promoted German nationalist consciousness, especially among ethnic Germans outside Germany . In his three-volume work, "Deutsche Politik" (1905–07), Hasse called for German imperialist expansion in Europe. The Munich professor Karl Haushofer , Ewald Banse , and Hans Grimm (author of the novel Volk ohne Raum ) preached similar expansionist policies. During

19950-575: The empire was to follow the model of the Austrian Anschluss of 1938, just carried out on a greater scale. Goebbels emphasized in April 1940 that the annexed Germanic countries would have to undergo a similar "national revolution" as Germany herself did after the Machtergreifung , with an enforced rapid social and political "co-ordination" in accordance with Nazi principles and ideology ( Gleichschaltung ). The ultimate goal of

20125-416: The end of the Roman Empire such as the Franks and the Burgundians , and some Vikings who mixed with the Normans and settled mostly in Normandy in the 9th century. According to Dominique Schnapper , "The classical conception of the nation is that of an entity which, opposed to the ethnic group, affirms itself as an open community, the will to live together expressing itself by the acceptation of

20300-637: The establishment of the Germanic Reich: "Just as the Bismarck Empire arose from the year 1866, so too will the Greater Germanic Empire arise from this day." " Germany decides [its future goal] to adopt a clear, farsighted policy of space. It thus turns away from all international industrial and international trade policy attempts and instead concentrates all of its strength on marking out a way of life for our people through

20475-443: The event Hitler took Albert Speer aside when both were on their way to the former's Munich apartment with an entourage, and declared to him that "We will create a great empire. All the Germanic peoples will be included in it. It will begin in Norway and extend to northern Italy . I myself must carry this out. If only I keep my health !" On April 9, 1940, as Germany invaded Denmark and Norway in Operation Weserübung , Hitler announced

20650-542: The face of Europe" deeming them unsuitable for settling the territories that the Nazis expected to colonize in Eastern Europe . Himmler discussed plans with his subordinates to integrate at least the German-speaking parts of Switzerland completely with the rest of Germany, and had several persons in mind for the post of a Reichskommissar for the 're-union' of Switzerland with the German Reich (in analogy to

20825-473: The fall of the Roman Empire such as the Franks , Burgundians , Allemanni , Visigoths , and Suebi , Latin and Roman tribes such as Ligurians and Gallo-Romans , Basques , and Norse populations largely settling in Normandy at the beginning of the 10th century as well as " Bretons " (Celtic Britons) settling in Brittany in Western France . The name "France" etymologically derives from

21000-560: The first article of the French Constitution , is to be a citizen of France, regardless of one's origin, race, or religion ( sans distinction d'origine, de race ou de religion ). According to its principles, France has devoted itself to the destiny of a proposition nation , a generic territory where people are bounded only by the French language and the assumed willingness to live together, as defined by Ernest Renan 's " plébiscite de tous les jours " ('everyday plebiscite') on

21175-704: The future they would "add to the diversity and dynamism" of his empire. The German language would be its lingua franca however, likening it to the status of English in the British Commonwealth . A primary agent used in stifling the local extreme nationalist elements was the Germanic SS , which initially merely consisted of local respective branches of the Allgemeine-SS in Belgium , Netherlands and Norway . These groups were at first under

21350-623: The government of Nazi Germany. Hitler admired the Frankish Emperor Charlemagne for his "cultural creativity", his powers of organization, and his renunciation of the rights of the individual . He criticized the Holy Roman Emperors however for not pursuing an Ostpolitik ( Eastern Policy ) resembling his own, while being politically focused exclusively on the south . After the Anschluss , Hitler ordered

21525-639: The historical border of the Holy Roman Empire. He stated that in order to ensure German hegemony on the continent, Germany must "also retain military strong points on what was formerly the French Atlantic coast" and emphasized that "nothing on earth would persuade us to abandon such safe positions as those on the Channel coast, captured during the campaign in France and consolidated by the Organisation Todt ." Several major French cities along

21700-521: The interest of maintaining peaceful relations between France and Germany and both pledged to be involved in mutual consultation on matters involving the interests of both countries. However at the same time Hitler in private advised the High Command of the Wehrmacht to prepare operational plans for a joint German–Italian war against France. Under the auspices of State Secretary Wilhelm Stuckart

21875-441: The island of Saint-Martin hold French nationality even though they do not speak French as a first language, while their neighbouring French-speaking Haitian immigrants (who also speak a French-creole) remain foreigners. Large numbers of people of French ancestry outside Europe speak other first languages, particularly English, throughout most of North America (with Quebec and Acadians in the Canadian Maritimes being notable, not

22050-560: The issue in a discussion with the Spanish Foreign Minister Serrano Súñer , offering now Spain to transfer one of the Canary islands to German usage for the price of French Morocco . Although Hitler's interest in the Atlantic islands must be understood from a framework imposed by the military situation of 1940, he ultimately had no plans of ever releasing these important naval bases from German control. Pan-Germanism Pan-Germanism ( German : Pangermanismus or Alldeutsche Bewegung ), also occasionally known as Pan-Germanicism ,

22225-446: The legacy of this medieval empire in German history were both celebrated and derided by the Nazi government . Hitler admired the Frankish Emperor Charlemagne for his "cultural creativity", his powers of organization, and his renunciation of the rights of the individual . He criticized the Holy Roman Emperors however for not pursuing an Ostpolitik ( Eastern Policy ) resembling his own, while being politically focused exclusively on

22400-415: The machinery of State. Yet there is a natural undercurrent tending to a national feeling and toward a union of the Germans into one great nation, ruled by one common head as a national unit. By the 1860s Prussia and Austria had become the two most powerful states dominated by German-speaking elites. Both sought to expand their influence and territory. The Austrian Empire—like the Holy Roman Empire —was

22575-474: The majority of its people being of Finnic origin, Finland was given the status of being an " honorary Nordic nation " (from a Nazi racial perspective , not a national one ) by Hitler as reward for its military importance in the ongoing conflict against the Soviet Union . The Swedish-speaking minority of the country, who in 1941 comprised 9.6% of the total population, were considered Nordic and were initially preferred over Finnish speakers in recruitment for

22750-405: The most part, had been a loose and disunited people since the Reformation , when the Holy Roman Empire was shattered into a patchwork of states following the end of the Thirty Years' War with the Peace of Westphalia . Advocates of the Großdeutschland (Greater Germany) solution sought to unite all the German-speaking people in Europe , under the leadership of the German Austrians from

22925-456: The name "German Austria" was forbidden by the Treaty of St. Germain and the name had to be changed back to Austria. It was in the Weimar Republic that the Austrian-born Adolf Hitler , under the influence of the stab-in-the-back myth , first took up German nationalist ideas in his Mein Kampf . Hitler met Heinrich Class in 1918, and Class provided Hitler with support for the 1923 Beer Hall Putsch . Hitler and his supporters shared most of

23100-490: The nations of Austria , Czech Republic , Hungary , Slovakia , Serbia and Romania . Some of them, coming from French-speaking communes in Lorraine or being French Swiss Walsers from the Valais canton in Switzerland , maintained for some generations the French language and a specific ethnic identity, later labelled as Banat (French: Français du Banat ). By 1788, there were eight villages populated by French colonists. The French First Republic appeared following

23275-440: The northern part of the Germanic empire, housing "only works of German artists ." Sweden 's future subordination into the ' New Order ' was considered by the regime. Himmler stated that the Swedes were the "epitome of the Nordic spirit and the Nordic man", and looked forward to incorporating central and southern Sweden to the Germanic Empire. Himmler offered northern Sweden , with its Finnish minority , to Finland , along with

23450-414: The northwestern region of Brittany , although this is not the result of a survival of Gaulish language but of a 5th-century AD migration of Brythonic speaking Celts from Britain . The Vulgar Latin in the region of Gallia took on a distinctly local character, some of which is attested in graffiti, which evolved into the Gallo-Romance dialects which include French and its closest relatives. With

23625-421: The occupied Netherlands who hoped to become the Gauleiter of this new province on Germany's western periphery stated that it could even be called Gau Holland , as long as the Wilhelmus (the Dutch national anthem ) and similar patriotic symbols were to be forbidden. Rotterdam , which had actually been largely destroyed in the course of the 1940 invasion was to be rebuilt as the most important port-city in

23800-455: The office that Josef Bürckel held after Austria 's absorption into Germany during the Anschluss ). Later this official was to subsequently become the new Reichsstatthalter of the area after completing its total assimilation. In August 1940, Gauleiter of Westfalen -South Josef Wagner and the Minister-President of Baden Walter Köhler spoke in favor of the amalgamation of Switzerland to Reichsgau Burgund (see below) and suggested that

23975-416: The old imperial regalia (the Imperial Crown , Imperial Sword , the Holy Lance and other items) residing in Vienna to be transferred to Nuremberg , where they were kept between 1424 and 1796. Nuremberg, in addition to being the former unofficial capital of the Holy Roman Empire, was also the place of the Nuremberg rallies . The transfer of the regalia was thus done to both legitimize Hitler's Germany as

24150-414: The only, exceptions), Spanish or Portuguese in southern South America , and Afrikaans in South Africa . The adjective "French" can be used to mean either "French citizen" or "French-speaker", and usage varies depending on the context, with the former being common in France. The latter meaning is often used in Canada, when discussing matters internal to Canada. Generations of settlers have migrated over

24325-473: The others have left, they will be unable to oppose the Germanic Empire. According to the Nazis, in addition to the Germanic peoples, individuals of seemingly non-Germanic nationality such as French , Polish , Walloon , Czech and so on might actually possess valuable Germanic blood, especially if they were of aristocratic or peasant stock. In order to "recover" these "missing" Germanic elements, they had to be made conscious of their Germanic ancestry through

24500-437: The pan-Germanic ambitions of Nazi Germany. World War I became the first attempt to carry out the Pan-German ideology in practice, and the Pan-German movement argued forcefully for expansionist imperialism. Following the defeat in World War I , the influence of German-speaking elites over Central and Eastern Europe was greatly limited. At the Treaty of Versailles , Germany was substantially reduced in size. Alsace-Lorraine

24675-446: The policy of Lebensraum required mass expansion of Germany and the settlement of Germans eastwards as far as the Ural Mountains (seizing territory from the Baltic states and the Soviet Union in the process). Hitler originally planned for the deportation of any "surplus" Russian population living west of the Urals to resettlement east of the Urals in Siberia . Final solution Parties Nazi racial ideology regarded

24850-420: The possibility of Finland's eventual inclusion as a federated state in the empire as a long-term objective was mulled over by Hitler in 1941, but by 1942 he seems to have abandoned this line of thinking. According to Kersten, as Finland signed an armistice with the Soviet Union and broke off diplomatic relations with her former brother-in-arms Germany in September 1944, Himmler felt remorse for not eliminating

25025-437: The process of Germanization (the term used by the Nazis for this process was Umvolkung , "restoration to the race"). If the "recovery" was impossible, these individuals had to be destroyed to deny the enemy of using their superior blood against the Aryan race. An example of this type of Nazi Germanization is the kidnapping of "racially valuable" Eastern European children . Curiously, those chosen for Germanization who rejected

25200-418: The proposition for a Greater Germanic Empire gave way to a concept of a European union of self-governing states, unified by German hegemony and the common enemy of Bolshevism . The Waffen-SS was to be the eventual nucleus of a common European army where each state would be represented by a national contingent. Himmler himself, however, gave no concession to these views, and held on to his Pan-Germanic vision in

25375-524: The racial ancestors of the Germans, and the first torchbearers of "Nordic–Greek" art and culture. He particularly expressed his admiration for Ancient Sparta , declaring it to have been the purest racial state: "The subjugation of 350,000 Helots by 6,000 Spartans was only possible because of the racial superiority of the Spartans." The Spartans had created "the first racialist state." Furthermore, Hitler's concept of "Germanic" did not simply refer to an ethnic , cultural , or linguistic group , but also to

25550-436: The regalia was thus done to both legitimize Hitler's Germany as the successor of the "Old Reich", but also weaken Vienna, the former imperial residence. After the 1939 German occupation of Bohemia , Hitler declared that the Holy Roman Empire had been "resurrected", although he secretly maintained his own empire to be better than the old "Roman" one. Unlike the "uncomfortably internationalist Catholic empire of Barbarossa ",

25725-416: The rest of Denmark should be incorporated into Sweden . This line of thinking was countered by Jens Jacob Asmussen Worsaae , an archaeologist who had excavated parts of Danevirke , who argued that there was no way of knowing the language of the earliest inhabitants of Danish territory. He also pointed out that Germany had more solid historical claims to large parts of France and England, and that Slavs —by

25900-421: The rules of a unified public domain which transcends all particularisms". This conception of the nation as being composed by a "will to live together," supported by the classic lecture of Ernest Renan in 1882, has been opposed by the French far-right , in particular the nationalist Front National ("National Front" – FN / now Rassemblement National - "National Rally" - RN) party which claims that there

26075-422: The same city. Despite intending to grant the other "Germanics" of Europe a racially superior status alongside the Germans themselves in an anticipated post-war racio-political order, the Nazis did not however consider granting the subject populations of these countries any national rights of their own. The other Germanic countries were seen as mere extensions of Germany rather than individual units in any way, and

26250-414: The same reasoning—could annex parts of Eastern Germany . Regardless of the strength of Worsaae's arguments, pan-Germanism spurred on the German nationalists of Schleswig and Holstein and led to the First Schleswig War in 1848. In turn, this likely contributed to the fact that Pan-Germanism never caught on in Denmark as much as it did in Norway. Pan-Germanic tendencies were particularly widespread among

26425-402: The seat of government for this new administrative territory should be the dormant Palace of Nations in Geneva . Operation Tannenbaum , a military offensive intended to occupy all of Switzerland, most likely in co-operation with Italy (which itself desired the Italian-speaking areas of Switzerland), was in the planning stages during 1940–1941. Its implementation was seriously considered by

26600-549: The settlement of a million Germans from " peasant families". Himmler decided that South Tyrolean emigrants (see South Tyrol Option Agreement ) would be used as settlers, and the towns of the region would receive South Tyrolean place-names such as Bozen, Brixen , Meran , and so on. By 1942 Hitler had, however, decided that the South Tyroleans would be instead used to settle the Crimea , and Himmler regretfully noted "For Burgundy , we will just have to find another [Germanic] ethnic group." Hitler claimed French territory even beyond

26775-403: The south . After the Anschluss , Hitler ordered the old imperial regalia (the Imperial Crown , Imperial Sword , the Holy Lance and other items) residing in Vienna to be transferred to Nuremberg , where they were kept between 1424 and 1796. Nuremberg, in addition to being the former unofficial capital of the Holy Roman Empire, was also the place of the Nuremberg rallies . The transfer of

26950-411: The south-east which had already been conquered about one century earlier. Over the next six centuries, the two cultures intermingled, creating a hybridized Gallo-Roman culture . In the late Roman era, in addition to colonists from elsewhere in the Empire and Gaulish natives, Gallia also became home to some immigrant populations of Germanic and Scythian origin, such as the Alans . The Gaulish language

27125-417: The speakers of Germanic languages some of whom spoke dialects ancestral to modern German . In English, "Pan-German" was first attested in 1892. In German various concepts can be included under the heading of Pan-Germanism, though often with slight or significant differences in meaning. For example adjectives such as "alldeutsch" or "gesamtdeutsch", which can be translated as "pan-german", typically refer to

27300-409: The spring of 1941, the German military attaché in Helsinki reported to his Swedish counterpart that Germany would need transit rights through Sweden for the imminent invasion of the Soviet Union, and in the case of finding her cooperative would permit the Swedish annexation of the islands. Hitler did veto the idea of a complete union between the two states of Sweden and Finland, however. Despite

27475-639: The state sector (though not as trainees in reserved branches, e.g., as magistrates ). Seeing itself as an inclusive nation with universal values, France has always valued and strongly advocated assimilation . However, the success of such assimilation has recently been called into question. There is increasing dissatisfaction with, and within, growing ethno-cultural enclaves ( communautarisme ). The 2005 French riots in some troubled and impoverished suburbs ( les quartiers sensibles ) were an example of such tensions. However they should not be interpreted as ethnic conflicts (as appeared before in other countries like

27650-458: The successor of the "Old Reich", but also weaken Vienna, the former imperial residence. After the 1939 German occupation of Bohemia , Hitler declared that the Holy Roman Empire had been "resurrected", although he secretly maintained his own empire to be better than the old "Roman" one. Unlike the "uncomfortably internationalist Catholic empire of Barbarossa ", the Germanic Reich of the German Nation would be racist and nationalist . Rather than

27825-448: The view of "a unified territory (one land since the beginning of civilization) and a unified people" which de-emphasized "all disparities and the succession of waves of invaders" was first imprinted on the masses by the unified history curriculum of French textbooks in the late 1870s. Since the beginning of the Third Republic (1871–1940), the state has not categorized people according to their alleged ethnic origins. Hence, in contrast to

28000-416: The war, Hitler had dreamed of reversing the Peace of Westphalia , which had given the territories of the Empire almost complete sovereignty. On November 17, 1939, Reich Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels wrote in his diary that the "total liquidation" of this historic treaty was the "great goal" of the Nazi regime, and that since it had been signed in Münster , it would also be officially repealed in

28175-419: The war. This factor was removed after the Japanese took over the Netherlands East Indies , the primary component of that domain. The resulting German plans for the Netherlands suggested its transformation into a Gau Westland , which would eventually be further broken-up into five new Gaue or gewesten (historical Dutch term for a type of sub-national polity ). Fritz Schmidt , a ranking German official in

28350-421: The whole world's attention to the fact that we have no past?", in reference to Germany's lack of urban civilisation historically. In an attempt to eventually supplant Christianity with a religion more amenable to Nazi racial theories , Himmler, together with Alfred Rosenberg , sought to replace it with Germanic paganism (the indigenous traditional religion or Volksreligion of the Germanic peoples), of which

28525-402: The willingness to live together, in Renan's 1882 essay " Qu'est-ce qu'une nation? "). The debate concerning the integration of this view with the principles underlying the European Community remains open. France has been historically open to immigration, although this has changed in recent years. Referring to this perceived openness, Gertrude Stein , wrote: "America is my country but Paris

28700-470: The word Francia , the territory of the Franks . The Franks were a Germanic tribe that overran Roman Gaul at the end of the Roman Empire . In the pre-Roman era, Gaul (an area of Western Europe that encompassed all of what is known today as France, Belgium, part of Germany and Switzerland, and Northern Italy) was inhabited by a variety of peoples who were known collectively as the Gaulish tribes . Their ancestors were Celts who came from Central Europe in

28875-425: Was achieved. After the end of Nazi Germany and the events of World War II in 1945, the ideas of pan-Germanism and an Anschluss fell out of favour due to their association with Nazism and allowed Austrians to develop their own national identity. Nevertheless, such notions were revived with the German national camp in the Federation of Independents and the early Freedom Party of Austria . The idea of including

29050-436: Was also influenced by the Francization after it returned to France. Austria-Hungary was split up. A rump Austria, which to a certain extent corresponded to the German-speaking areas of Austria-Hungary (a complete split into language groups was impossible due to multi-lingual areas and language-exclaves) adopted the name " German Austria " (German: Deutschösterreich ) in hope for union with Germany . Union with Germany and

29225-438: Was highly influential in German politics in the 19th century during the unification of Germany when the German Empire was proclaimed as a nation-state in 1871 but without Habsburg Austria , Luxembourg and Liechtenstein (Kleindeutsche Lösung/Lesser Germany) and the first half of the 20th century in the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the German Empire. From the late 19th century, many Pan-Germanist thinkers, since 1891 organized in

29400-425: Was incorporated back into the royal domain (i. e. the territory under direct control of the French king) in the Middle Ages . In the crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem , founded in 1099, at most 120,000 Franks, who were predominantly French -speaking Western Christians, ruled over 350,000 Muslims, Jews, and native Eastern Christians. Unlike elsewhere in Europe, France experienced relatively low levels of emigration to

29575-500: Was not usually used except in cities, and even there not always in the outlying districts . Abroad, the French language is spoken in many different countries – in particular the former French colonies . Nevertheless, speaking French is distinct from being a French citizen. Thus, francophonie , or the speaking of French, must not be confused with French citizenship or ethnicity. For example, French speakers in Switzerland are not "French citizens". Native English-speaking Blacks on

29750-588: Was officialized with Jacques Chirac 's family regrouping act of 1976 ( regroupement familial ). Since then, immigration has become more varied, although France stopped being a major immigration country compared to other European countries. The large impact of North African and Arab immigration is the greatest and has brought racial , socio-cultural and religious questions to a country seen as homogenously European, French and Christian for thousands of years. Nevertherless, according to Justin Vaïsse , professor at Sciences Po Paris , integration of Muslim immigrants

29925-494: Was ostensibly no real sense of community between the different indigenous ethnic groups in the Netherlands. He then stated that the Dutch Frisians in particular seemed to hold no affection for being part of a nation-state based on the Dutch national identity , and felt a much greater sense of kinship with their German Frisian brethren across the Ems River in East Frisia , an observation Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel agreed with based on his own experiences. Hitler determined that

30100-423: Was responsible for World War I and intended to fulfill pan-German aims, although other historians have since disputed this conclusion. After Naval Minister Alfred von Tirpitz resigned from the Cabinet under pressure from Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg over Tirpitz's push to introduce unrestricted submarine warfare , Tirpitz united pan-German nationalists under the German Fatherland Party in the Reichstag . After

30275-427: Was the German-populated territory in South Tyrol , an area which Germany assigned to its fellow- Axis power , Fascist Italy , in 1939. Aside from Germanic Europe, the Reich's western frontiers with France were to revert to those of the earlier Holy Roman Empire , which would have meant the complete German annexation of all of Wallonia , French Switzerland , and large areas of northern and eastern France. Additionally,

30450-461: Was to be headed by Adolf Hitler from 1921. Nazi propaganda also used the political slogan Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer ("One people, one Reich, one leader"), to enforce pan-German sentiment in Austria for an " Anschluss ". The chosen name for the projected empire was a deliberate reference to the Holy Roman Empire (of the German Nation) that existed in the Middle Ages , known as the First Reich in Nazi historiography. Different aspects of

30625-403: Was unclear until the publication of a study in 2019 that used genome wide data. The study identified six different genetic clusters that could be distinguished across populations. The study concluded that the population genetic clusters correlate with linguistic and historical divisions in France and with the presence of geographic barriers such as mountains and major rivers. A population bottleneck

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