German Empire

(today: Germany, Silesia in Poland, Elsas and Lorraine in France, parts of Africa)

Germany itself is making great advances in technology, building rail infrastructure, building state-of-the-art and most efficient port equipment across Europe, and expanding its shipping presence worldwide, with German universities becoming leaders in chemistry and biochemistry. Then they begin to establish their first colonies in Africa, with particular emphasis on brutality, such as the extermination of the Herre people in southwestern Africa, or, like the Spaniards in Cuba or the British in South Africa, the opening of concentration camps aimed at gathering an incomprehensibly large the number per colonist of a potentially dangerous native population. It is precisely the German and Belgian presence in Africa that will stimulate the British and French in their colonization of the African interior, which until then was confined only to the coastal areas where maritime stations and trading centers were established.

Already at the end of the 19th century. the plan of the German Empire nationalists to expand the German population, and thus the language and culture, into the uninhabited and sparsely populated areas of the Slavic countries, from the Baltic to the Adriatic (Drang nach Osten), became more pronounced. It was because of these plans that Bismarck did not, after the expulsion of Austria from the German Union (1866), take over its territory or end its power since it was needed as an ally in the planned expansion to Eastern and Southeastern Europe. An expansion to the Dardanelles, the Mediterranean and Central Asia was also planned, which was intended to achieve greater economic and political rapprochement with the Ottoman Empire, which was best reflected in the planned construction of the Berlin-Baghdad railway.