French–German (Franco–German) enmityJulius Weis Friend: The Linchpin: French–German Relations, 1950–1990, (, ) was the idea of unavoidably hostile relations and mutual revanchism between Germans (including Austrians) and French people that arose in the 16th century and became popular with the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871. It was an important factor in the unification of Germany (excluding Austria), World War I, and ended after World War II, when under the influence of the Cold War, West Germany and France both became part of NATO and the European Coal and Steel Community.
France and the Habsburgs
In 1477, the Habsburg archduke Maximilian I of Austria, son of Emperor Frederick III, married Mary the Rich, the only child of the Burgundian duke Charles the Bold. Frederick and Charles had arranged the marriage, shortly before the duke was killed at the Battle of Nancy.
His ancestors of the French House of Valois-Burgundy over the centuries had acquired a collection of territories on both sides of the border of France with the Holy Roman Empire. It stretched from Burgundy proper in the south to the Low Countries in the north, somewhat resembling of early medieval Middle Francia. He had plans to raise Burgundian lands to the status of a kingdom (recreating the Kingdom of Lotharingia), but died at the Battle of Nancy (1477). Upon the duke's death, King Louis XI of France attempted to seize his heritage as reverted fiefs but was defeated by Maximilian at Battle of Guinegate (1479), who by the 1493 Treaty of Senlis annexed the Burgundian territories, including Flanders as well as French-speaking Artois and asserted the possession of the County of Burgundy (Franche-Comté).
Maximilian, Holy Roman Emperor from 1493, was also able to marry his son Philip the Handsome to Joanna of Castile, heiress to both the Crown of Castile and the Crown of Aragon. His grandson, Emperor Charles V, inherited the Low Countries and the Franche-Comté in 1506; when he by his mother also inherited Spain in 1516, France was surrounded by Habsburg territories and felt under pressure. The resulting tension between the two powers caused a number of conflicts, such as the Italian Wars or the War of the Spanish Succession, until the Diplomatic Revolution of 1756 made them allies against Prussia.
The Thirty Years War (1618–1648), was a complex conflict that took place in and around the Holy Roman empire, with religious, structural, and dynastic causes. France intervened in this conflict both indirectly, largely but not exclusively, on the side of various intervening Protestant powers, as well as directly from 1635 on. The 1648 Peace of Westphalia gave France limited control over Alsace and Lorraine. The 1679 Treaties of Nijmegen consolidated this result by bringing the towns under French control. In 1681, France occupied Strasbourg.
Meanwhile, the expanding Muslim Ottoman Empire became a serious threat to Christian Austria. The Vatican initiated a so-called Holy League against the "hereditary enemy" of Christian Europe ("Erbfeind christlichen Namens"). Far from joining or supporting the common effort of Austria, Brandenburg-Prussia, the other German states and Poland, France under Louis XIV of France invaded the Spanish Netherlands in September 1683, a few days before the Battle of Vienna. While Austria and the other German states were occupied with the Great Turkish War (1683–1699), France initiated the War of the Grand Alliance (1688–1697). The attempt to conquer large parts of southern Germany ultimately failed, when German troops were withdrawn from the Ottoman border and moved to the region. However, following a scorched earth policy that caused a large public outcry at the time, French troops, under notorious General Ezéchiel du Mas, Comte de Mélac, devastated large parts of the Palatinate, Baden and Württemberg burning down and levelling numerous cities and towns in southern Germany.
In the course of the Seven Years' War and in view of the rising Kingdom of Prussia, which had concluded the neutrality Treaty of Westminster with Great Britain, France under Louis XV realigned their foreign policy. The Diplomatic Revolution instigated by the Austrian chancellor Wenzel Anton Kaunitz in 1756 ended the French-Habsburg enmity.
France and Prussia
The Diplomatic Revolution as an alliance between France, the Habsburg Empire and Russia manifested in 1756 in the Treaty of Versailles and the following Seven Years' War against Prussia and Great Britain. Although an overall German nation-state was on the horizon, the loyalties of the German population outside of Prussia were primarily with smaller states. The French war against Prussia was justified through its role as guarantor of the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, and France was fighting on the side of the majority of German states, including Habsburg Austria.
The civil population still regarded war as a conflict between their authorities and distinguished between troops less according to the side on which they fought than according to how they treated the local population. The personal contacts and mutual respect between French and Prussian officers did not stop entirely while they were fighting each other, and the war resulted in a great deal of cultural exchange between the French occupiers and the German population.
The perception of war began to change after the French Revolution. The levée en masse for the Revolutionary Wars and the beginning formation of nation states in Europe made war increasingly a conflict between peoples rather than a conflict between authorities carried out on the backs of their subjects.
At the battle of Austerlitz (1805), Napoleon I put an end to the millennium-old Holy Roman Empire the next year. A year later, at the battle of Jena, French forces crushed the Prussian armies. Within two weeks of Jena, Napoleon had conquered almost all of Prussia except the area around Königsberg. The Prussian army, previously thought invincible, had been fought to almost the point of total liquidation. This humiliation led German philosophers (such as Clausewitz, Fichte, Arndt...) to play an important role for the development of German nationalism. It led politicians (such as Stein and Hardenberg) to reform Prussia in order to adapt their country to the new world brought about by the French Revolution.
The Continental System led Napoleon to directly incorporate German-speaking areas such as Hamburg into his First French Empire. Napoleon reshaped the map of Germany by the creation of the Confederation of the Rhine, which included vassal States ruled directly by members of the Bonaparte family (such as the Kingdom of Westphalia, and the Grand Duchy of Berg) and allied States who took advantage of the French protectorate to increase their territory and power (such as the Kingdom of Bavaria and the Kingdom of Saxony).
The Napoleonic Wars, often fought in Germany and with Germans on both sides, as in the Battle of the Nations at Leipzig, also marked the beginning of what was explicitly called French–German hereditary enmity. Modern German nationalism was born in opposition to French domination under Napoleon. In the recasting of the map of Europe after Napoleon's defeat, most of the German-speaking territories in the Rhineland adjoining France were put under the rule of Prussia and the remainder were ruled by Bavaria and Grand Duchy of Hesse.
19th century
During the first half of the 19th century, many Germans looked forward to a unification of most or all of the German states, but most German leaders and the foreign powers were opposed to it. The German nationalist movement believed that a united Germany (even without Austria) would replace France as the dominant land power in Western Europe. This argument was aided by demographic changes: since the Middle Ages, France had had the largest population in Western Europe, but in the 19th century, its population stagnated (a trend that continued until the second half of the 20th century), and the population of the German states overtook it and continued to rapidly increase. Following the Congress of Vienna in 1815, France had lost territories on the left bank of the Rhine, which had been annexed during the Revolutionary Wars.
The Rhine Crisis emerged from a combination of French imperial ambitions and the nationalist sentiments that were growing in both France and Germany. In 1840, French Prime Minister Adolphe Thiers reignited claims to these territories, asserting that the Rhine should be reinstated as France's natural eastern border. This demand was met with strong resistance from the other German states, particularly Prussia, which had regained control of these areas. This also significantly fueled German nationalism, as the defense of the Rhine became a symbol of national pride and unity among the German states. Nationalist songs, such as "Die Wacht am Rhein," gained popularity, reflecting the growing sentiment against French claims. This period marked a shift towards a more aggressive and mass-oriented German nationalism, as various social classes rallied to defend what they considered their "most German river".
Franco-Prussian War
The unification of Germany, excluding Austria, was triggered by the Franco-Prussian War in 1870 and the French defeat. The military forces of Prussian and the other German states (excluding Austria) crushed the French armies at the Battle of Sedan. Finally, the Treaty of Frankfurt, reached after a lengthy siege of Paris forced France to cede the Alsace-Lorraine territory (consisting of most of Alsace and a quarter of Lorraine), of which most of the inhabitants spoke German dialects. France had to pay an indemnity of five billion francs to the newly declared German Empire. Thereafter, the German Empire had replaced France as the leading land power. Under Otto von Bismarck Germany was content--it had all it wanted so that its main goal was peace and stability. However, when it appeared Germany would decisively win in late 1870, German public opinion demanded it to humiliate France; the German Army favoured annexation to create more defensible frontiers. Bismarck reluctantly gave in--the French would never forget or forgive, he mistakenly calculated, so he might as well take the provinces. Germany's foreign policy fell into a trap with no exit. The only policy that made sense was trying to isolate France so it had no strong allies. However, France complicated Berlin's plans when it became friends with Russia. In 1905 a German plan for an alliance with Russia fell through because Russia was too close to France.John Keiger, France and the World since 1870 (2001) pp 111-117.
Late 19th and early 20th centuries
Immigrant tensions In the late 19th century and early 20th century, resentment existed between many nearby populations of French and German Americans, reflecting ethnic tensions on the European continent.
Nearly looming conflict between France and Germany