Comments by "Nattygsbord" (@nattygsbord) on "Full History of Prussia - Documentary" video.

  1. Russia wanted to steal German land, and it did so because it could. Germany did lose the war after all. And the allies in the west didn't mind seeing Germany getting cut into pieces so it would pose a threat anymore. The unification of Germany in 1989 was not a popular idea, because it posed a threat to France. And adding Prussia to Germany would be way too much for the same reason. And the Poles didn't like the idea of being ruled from Germany or being forced to leave their homes and move to Poland for understandable reasons. So no country except Germany would have supported the idea of giving Prussia to Germany. Poland, France and UK did not like idea. France only agreed to letting west and east Germany unite if Germany agreed to give up their D-mark currency and lend out its economic power to the EU project by joining the Euro currency - which was an idea that France pushed for, while Germany was more skeptical of it.
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  2. And now they live forever in the history books as the Prussian army have a legendary reputation :^)
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  3. The yellow and red areas are places which Sweden took from Denmark during wars in the 1600's. Denmark was the aggressor in those wars and got its balls kicked, despite Sweden already was exhausted after years of wars in Germany and Poland. Jämtland, Ösel, Halland and Gotland are the names of those provinces. And the first two were pretty worthless in terms of population numbers and economic strength. But Halland (the red province on the map) was extremely important both economically and strategically. It did cut off the connection between Denmark and Norway so they would get trouble helping each other in war. And it gave Sweden access to the North sea - so Sweden no longer had to pay tolls to Denmark in times of peace or having to get its trade with France, Britain, Spain and the Netherlands cut off by the Danes in times of war. So trade benefited greatly and Sweden's strategic position improved greatly as it would be easy to do trade in times of war. Sweden was already one of the greatest naval powers in the world, so this was out of great importance. Many hundreds of British and Dutch merchant ships would enter service under Swedish flag during the 1600 to avoid becoming a victim of the many Dutch-British (and French) wars. When you look at a map of Sweden from the late 1600s you will probably understand why Sweden was a naval power unlike today - Sweden had provinces all over the baltic that needed to be defended in Germany, Finland and the Baltics. Reval was the biggest city in the Swedish empire. And Germany and the Baltics had oak trees which were considered the best form of tree to build warships from. And they were also important strategic land bridges into continental Europe. Swedish Pommerania was also a perfect backdoor into Danish heartlands for a military offensive. Gotland (the little island) in the middle was rich Hanseatic trade center during the middle ages. And a modern military strategist today would regard it as Sweden's unsinkable aircraft carrier in the middle of the Baltic sea. And from a naval point of view in pre-modern times did this place also have a little bit of the same strategic importance as today.
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  4. I guess it is more easy to research places which speaks the same language and have ties to your own country. As a Swede I would love research the history of Poland and Russia in the 1700's.. but the language barrier makes it very hard :(
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  5. Uganda
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  6. Many other countries also protested against Williams attempt to murder his son. I guess that Frederick held some bitterness against Austria after all conspiracies it had done behind the scenes before he had become King. For example was it Austrias fault that he had to marry his ugly wife because she represented the political interests of Austria - while Frederick was in love and attracted to a princess of England.
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  7. King of Prussia is a cooler title than elector of Brandenburg, so doing a re-branding was all this title change was. Prussia suffered harshly from the 30-years war and lost much of its population, so it took in immigrants from other countries to compensate some of the losses and took a pragmatic policy of religious tolerance to accomplish this. Frederick the Great conquered Silesia from Austria - which was a small but very rich province. Austria didn't like the idea of losing a province which contributed 25% of their country's tax revenues, so two wars was fought about this place. Frederick would also expand into Poland and give Prussia better control over its trade routs as well as linking together his scattered territories. Frederick also fostered the industrial revolution and created the most well ordered economy in all of Germany. He created the first modern education system and runned his country according to enlightenment ideals and introduced press freedom, abolished torture and went further with religious tolerance than any other country. The Prussian bureaucracy became the most well runned in the world. And the Prussian military got an excellent reputation after its performance in the wars. It was a conscription army, but very well trained and capable of swiftly performing complex maneuvers on a battlefield which no other army could accomplish without getting their formations turning into disorganized chaos. The rate of fire of Fredericks infantry was also superior and thanks to much training was Prussian troops able to reload and aim their muskets so fast that it happened reflexively. But Frederick left no heir, and his successor was a useless weak King - which meant that noblemen took could take over the country and run it for their own special interests rather than caring about what was best for the country. And the result became that the gigant budget surpluses Frederick had used decades to build up was squandered in only a few years. And the large army turned into shit and got humiliated in its wars against France. Prussia would however rise again and become one of the winners of the Napoleon wars. Many tiny German states got merged into larger units when the French took over Germany. And when the Napoleon wars was ended did many states merge once again. And Prussia would thereby expand its territories much. And tiny Baden which nobody had heard of or cared about in the 1700s, had now become one of the largest German states. Prussia continued with its state-led industrial revolution in the 1800s. And it wanted the tiny German states to agree to letting Prussia building railroads into their lands so that Prussia could could connect her heartlands with the Prussian provinces in the Rhineland. But the tiny states refused to agree to railroads and removed trade barriers, so the 2nd best solution was therefore considered - the Zollverein - which turned all of Germany into a free trade zone so that Prussia indirectly could connect all her provinces economically to each other. And Germany started to merge more and more and become one economy instead of multiple ones scattered all over all corners of the country. The Napoleon wars had also created nationalist feelings. Many wanted a united Germany. The nationalist movement also wanted to create a large unprofessional army - a militia (a Landwehr). And it was a democratic movement. But this movement was opposed by the rich and powerful establishment of conservatives which hated democracy and wanted a small professional army which they considered more politically reliable (and thus less of revolutionary threat) and they also considered it as more military effective since the Landwehr often had gotten slaughtered and humiliated in the Napoleonic wars. And the conservatives cared more about preserving their own titles and privileges than creating a new order and a new united Germany. And some conservatives cared more about things like serving God than about serving the national interest. Much of the 1800s would be a power struggle between those two factions, the democratic nationalists vs. the Conservatives. Germany would however get created in 1871 under Conservative Bismarck which preserved much of the established order. Then did the established order fall in 1918 as the Kaiser was removed after the loss of world war 1. But the power struggle continued. Many Germans hated the new Weimar democracy and wanted to go back to an authoritarian rule under the Kaiser - like for example Ludendorff, Ernst Jünger, Spengler and others. Hitler also hated the new democracy, but he did not want to restore the monarchy, but instead he wanted to create his own dictatorship. And when Hitler got into power, then he solved power struggle between nationalists and conservatives once and for all. He simply combined the worst ideas of both movements. He borrowed the anti-democratic authoritarianism and fascism from the Conservatives. While he borrowed the intolerance nationalists had against ethic groups like Poles (which refused to assimilate and become Germans) and the intolerance against religious minorities like jews. So Hitler basically just embraced outdated politics which were so typical of the 1800's. His race theories and views on women were also pretty outdated - even by the standards of the 1930's.
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  8. They were wasting their time on superstition, worked long hours, and had some sex and got drunk from time to time, and then they often died from wars, starvation or infectious diseases... but in more peaceful times people could often live until they got 50 or 70 years old. I don't think there are much interesting things to tell here. Unless you are talking about economic history which is a totally other kind of subject.
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  9. https://youtu.be/Ql4Zywfus0Y?t=172
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