What was this country like? Leading progress in science, industry, healthcare; are these memes true...

What was this country like? Leading progress in science, industry, healthcare; are these memes true, or was it no better in anything than France or Britain?

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youtu.be/B-m9A8mY-U0
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussian_three-class_franchise
youtube.com/watch?v=PuxgMGBymos
youtube.com/watch?v=GnEnpyAu6hw
twitter.com/NSFWRedditVideo

Bump. Vid related. Seemed comfy as fuck.

youtu.be/B-m9A8mY-U0

Living conditions & wages for the working Joe were somewhat better than in most neigbouring countries (Denmark, Austria-Hungary, Russia). In terms of science and industry Germany was at the forefront of the European chemical & pharmaceuticals industry, since they pretty much managed to invent chemical synthesis of medicines (aspirin) and also had huge dye-manufacturing/petro chemicals sectors located in industrial hotspots (primarily Ruhr and Upper Silesia). The Eastern Areas of Germany (Mecklenburg, Pomerania, East & West Prussia, Posen) were generally more rural whilst the West (Ruhr, Lower Saxony, Saar) thrived on industry.

In what ways could Germany have been considered backward at the time? Certainly in some respects, like giving workers healthcare, they appear positively progressive.

Probably the militaristic Prussian traditions, even though the western powers empires were significantly larger they liked to put on airs of civility and paint the Germans as evil imperialists

Honestly the peak of European civilization.
It combined the very best aspects of Europe's past history, with the best aspects of the modern world.

The world would have been far better off if they had won a crushing victory in the first (and if they had won, the only) weltkrieg.

And the authoritarianism? Was it really despotic as some claim? They certainly had democratic elements to their government.

>The world would have been far better off if they had won a crushing victory in the first (and if they had won, the only) weltkrieg.
20 bucks say this is a muh heritage american

>In what ways could Germany have been considered backward at the time?
It was relatively authoritarian. Although not nearly as much as Russia. How it compares to Britain I'm not sure.

Voting rights were only reserved for male voters over the age of 24 and votes were weighted depending on how much tax you paid.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussian_three-class_franchise

>Leading progress in science,
This was before they killed the Jews for fun

Seems similar to Britain, with elected representatives and non elected nobility, but with less of a base of ensured protections like in the English Bill of Rights. World War 1 really screwed up our perceptions of the losing states.

Depends on when you're talking. It was best between 1885 and 1900 or so. After 1900 there's a lot of internal strife and push/pull to determine the future of Germany. Add the external pressure from the competing great powers of Europe and it's amazing that Germany didn't implode before 1918 (although they almost did in 1907).

It's not super complex, but it is a little bit of a complicated question. Basically, the Kaiser held absolute power. Below him, the Chancellor (who was appointed by the Kaiser) had the absolute power second to the chancellor. The upper house of the Reichstag was subservient to the Chancellor, but drafted and voted most of the legislation into law. The upper house was appointed by the Kaiser, but usually fell under the popular vote, or at least close to what the popular vote was (exceptions exist, such as the 1907 election). The lower house was democratically voted in, but they didn't have the sway really necessary for such a thing. Voting was not universal as notes. Overall, the executive monarchical system of Germany was set up extremely well compared to most other European states of the era.

Second generation Australian actually.
My grandparents fled the Fatherland at the close of WW2.

Germany should have been balkanized after WW1, but alas, the British irrational fear of communism prevented that. Leaving Germany in tact was a crime against humanity.

What's with all the anti-German shitposting around here?

Is it just to be contrarian to /pol/?

France should have been castrated after the Franco-Prussian war.
Not also annexing the frog industrial centers of Champagne, Bourgogne and Franche-Comte (plus stripping them of their colonies) was a crime against humanity.

Veeky Forums is just full of ouiaboos

Plenty of people hate Germany on /pol/ too and I even read a thread on Veeky Forums shitting on a guy wanting to learn German. Honestly its a phenomenon that likely originated in France's "Revanchism" and how the French used their good standing with other nations to portray the Germans are stupid, white n*ggers. barbarians that want to destroy the continent they happen to share with other Europeans. How many normal and casual people have you heard say "ahh that German, its such a weird language", "its ugly, why does it sound like Germans are shouting all the time", or the amazing anonymous quote I used to see on fakebook before I deleted my account, "life's too short to learn German" . Its funny how people think German is such a weird language when it makes more sense than English. I'll just let these guys explain this because I got to leave and i write this in haste

youtube.com/watch?v=PuxgMGBymos
youtube.com/watch?v=GnEnpyAu6hw

And to get back to your question, YES, Veeky Forums hates Germany more than any other board and all other boards put together. Its like every autist that gets triggered when someone has the audacity to say something nice about Germans on /pol/ once a while, come here and circle jerk like Reddit fags. People are just simply bigoted and ignorant about Germany and take pride in this.

It was like a normal western constitutional democracy.

Germany was just about to become a superpower without an empire. Mind that Germany didn't have a vast colonial empire to support its economy, thus relying completely on its people. In this respect, Germany truly was the pinnacle of late 19th/early 20th century civilization. It was proof that for the success of ones nation one wouldn't need to rely on imperial ambitions but rather on education, duty and diligence.

>Haha why couldn't Germany just have been left to fulfill its imperialist designs my dude :^D not cool!
>damn I wish this board was more like /pol/!

The German language is autism. Just look at any philosophy book written by a German.

There's a weird trend of people irrationally hating Germany on Veeky Forums and /int/. It probably has to do with how Germans are associated with evil and hate in the media.

you mean like everything you grew up with nourishes a feeling that German = evil? Like Imperial helmets in Star Wars?
It's not a weird trend. It has been like this for a century. It has its upsides though. Screaming at anglos in German is great fun.

>>damn I wish this board was more like /pol/!
pol hates Germany too, retard

Like you ever read one, oh yeah, Veeky Forumstorians are famous readers

Same can be said about the British accent like how all the imperials in Star Wars speak it

holy shit, idiot BTFO

Because that's the only example, simpleton. Right.
Has there been a single week in your life when you have not been reminded of German war crimes and the holocaust? Is there a single week without the mentioning of Hitler? Now compare this to your obvious anglo background. Is there a critical reflection of anglo past and present?

>Has there been a single week in your life when you have not been reminded of German war crimes and the holocaust? Is there a single week without the mentioning of Hitler?

Wow you just described the average normie and their understanding of history and humanity because humans have never been as evil as the nazi's I'm reminded of Hitler every fucking day from morons, probably like you, who describe anybody they don't like or Trump as literally Hitler. Or how people try to funny with making Holocaust jokes or how people think concentration camps are the only historical sites in Germany (fuck Carolingian sites like Lorsch, who can be bother with that shit) People are pathetic.

No, it's a legitimate reaction to the years of trolling from Germanboos, Prussianboos, Naziboos, especially ignorant Americans, who keep spewing their stupidity in every history related discussion.
What you should be asking is why do so many history nurds despise and are totally ignorant of anything other than Prussia and Germany.

>Has there been a single week in your life when you have not been reminded of German war crimes and the holocaust? Is there a single week without the mentioning of Hitler?
Yes? Is this sarcasm or cereal?

>Wow you just described the average normie
of course I did, German evilness is part of pop culture.
And for the rest, you're evading the question and deflect. How about answering, Nigel? The topic was the association German = evil in media, not how you surround yourself with morons.

Where are you from? Kiribati?

>Nigel
I'm American

>Is there a critical reflection of anglo past and present?
I wasn't raised in the UK but the looks of it liberals and young people hate the British empire and colonialism in general

Yeah because Prussia is literally as evil as Nazi Germany. "history nurds" especially those with English as a first language learn whats considered reverent to them. I have a book titled "Live in a Medieval Castle" and they took the most boring fucking castle they could pick (Dover castle) and now I want to learn German because I bet its common to read any history of any castle along the Rhine because its reverent to them

No, you're overthinking it. A large amount of people on Veeky Forums come from /gsg/, and Grossgermania is babby's first blob (hence the REMOVE KEBAB!!! also in the pic that other user posted)

Where the fuck do you live?

>be german
>constant Media barrage

>go to the netherlands on a school trip
>their fucking City Hall is plastered with pictures depicting how they were raped by the wehrmacht

>go to london on a vacation
>whole City is full off monuments how GB has won against germany (in wars which were won by the USA and Russia)
>turn on TV: full BBC ebil Kraut coverage

>greeces economy collapses after decades off acting like a medieval country, crushing corruption and leeching off cheap euromoneyz
>muh pay greece 300 billion euros of War reparations for a war that happened 70 years ago
>german political establishment has the audacity off expecting reforms to prevent this from happening again in 5 years
>literally depicted as Hitler in greek Media

Just from the top of my head.

Handel mit es. You're evil.

Flags would easily solve this issue since it would become apparent that you're talking to a minority. Most people don't give a shit about Germany.

In all brutal honesty we would have seen a number of those German states turned over to communism. The one thing that stopped us from having a Spartacist Germany in the first place were the nationalist organizations.

>2053350
The first part is I'm a bit of an Francoboo and Angloboo. The second part is that I've simply never been that impressed by Germany. Yeah, late 19th century/early 20th century Germany was fairly impressive, but when I compare it it to other nations during their golden ages it never really measures up, in my opinion.

And the final part is a bit of this

>mfw even Americans nowadays agree the world would be better off had the nazis won

Colored people in the USA wouldn't have started to complain if WWII didn't happen. Instead, they fought in the war and started to demand rights, and the government caved because how could they justify that when they had just fought a war in part to stop racial dominance?

The Nazis were uppity rabble with a silly, godless and all together laughable ideology.

It is not a real German nation if it is not lead by a Kaiser.

Literally every single thing in this post is wrong.

The Emperor didn't have absolute power, he was mostly a figurehead (Wilhelm I) or a buffoon (Wilhelm II). Monarchy was already obsolete at this time, and Willy II spent his long reign trying to find a niche for himself (and failed).

The Chancellor was even weaker, as he had to both please the Emperor and work with parliament. Even mighty Bismarck spent a great deal of time and energy fighting domestic enemies and getting very little done.

The Reichstag was never subservient to the Chancellor. The Chancellor had no means to compel the representatives except with the threat of dissolving parliament, and even that didn't always work. Since there was no coalition government, he had to suck up to the majority ever time he wanted something done.

The upper house (you mean the Bundesrat, I assume) was not appointed by the Kaiser; it consisted of the German kings and princes that made up the Empire. They managed to avoid fucking things up mostly by doing nothing at all.

Voting for the Reichstag was in fact universal (expecting women, obviously); you are confusing it with the Prussian lower house, where the vote of the rich counted for a lot more.

Overall, the monarchical system of Germany was a fucking mess. Its constitution never worked the way it was meant to; it suffered from an Emperor with no clear role; it had a burgeoning civil society with little need for a monarch; a parliament that made some fine laws (many of them still in effect today), but could never participate in government; an extremely independent and powerful military; a massive imbalance between the power of Prussia and the other German states; a barebones government that didn't even have a proper cabinet and relied on several Prussian ministers to function; and so on. It's a miracle Germany did as well as it did, all things considered.

Despite meager colonial holdings, they were arguably more successful than its neighbors

B-but muh pincer tactics!

*komm damit klar neger

ich mach sogar mit!

This + actually putting a Hohenzollern on the throne of Spain, which the public was told as the reasoning for the war

Thought that was 'nam tho?

Korea was the first war where blacks and whites were truly integrated in the US armed forces.

The civil rights movement was already well on its way (civil rights act of 64 and voting rights act of 65, marches and shit) well before American involvement Vietnam started to REALLY escalate.
The I Have a Dream speech was all the way back in 63

>The Emperor didn't have absolute power
The Kaiser DID have absolute power. They could and did veto any law they wanted. Hell, Wilhelm II was so upset over the 1907 election he completely dissolved the Reichstag and when he reformed it just appointed whichever parties he saw fit. The Chancellor had the same ability, but was second to the Kaiser. You are fucking stupid.

that picture works on several levels because it was actually the nazis who abolished the fraktur script

>aerial view
>1900