Germany is one of the most powerful countries
in the world, with the fourth largest economy on Earth and the second largest population
in Europe. The geography of this general area has helped give the modern country the power
it has today, however the same geography that made Germany into what it is today also kept
it fractured among hundreds of tiny kingdoms until only 150 years ago. So what exactly
are Germany’s geographic strengths and weaknesses, and how did they work both to its advantage
and its detriment, and how do they continue to do so in the present? [This video was brought to you by Ground News] With a population of more than 80 million,
Germany is the most populous country entirely in Europe, with a similar population to that
of Turkey or Iran, or about ¼ of the United States… or like 6% of China… or about
1,064 Andorra's. Germany also shares borders with nine different countries: Belgium, Denmark,
the Netherlands, Poland, France, Austria, Luxembourg, Switzerland, and Czechia, although
since these countries and Germany now form part of the Schengen Area, this now means
Germany is surrounded on all sides by friendly countries, something that certainly was not
the case throughout history. Germany contains parts of some of the most
important rivers in Europe, including the Rhine, Danube, and Elbe, whose tributaries
and watersheds encompass a massive chunk of Central and Southeastern Europe. The first
of these two are also connected via the Rhine-Main-Danube Canal, allowing passage from the Black Sea
to the North Sea (well, I suppose without going through Turkish or Spanish/British/Moroccan
waters, if you somehow managed to get on all those countries’ bad sides, but not these
countries‘ as well). However this is just one of the newest among a whole series of
canals traversing the country. The Mittellandkanal for instance connects France with Poland through
internal waterways. So if you’re a French or Belgian or Dutch or even British shipping
company and you want to trade with eastern Europe…you could go all the way north through
Schleswig-Holstein, or you could just send a small barge through Germany’s other canals.
This interconnectedness between so many of these rivers throughout the entire country
serves as the lifeblood of Germany and made port cities like Hamburg economic powerhouses.
With railroads too this is a similar case. Even before Germany was unified, its kingdoms
invested a lot of money in railroads. Railroads were invented in England with the idea of
speeding up transit from town-to-town, but Germany was the first to build a long-distance
railway. It opened in 1847 and connected the Rhine river all the way at the western border
to the Weser all the way to the east. Most German railways were also either public or
heavily regulated, so there were strict rules about equal access to railroads. That meant
that even small towns in remote areas got train stations, and people from those areas
had access to industrial jobs or education in big cities. Compare that to the U.S., which
didn’t build interstate highways until the 50s, and… yeah we won’t even talk about
the U.S. rail system, at least not these days. Looking at a topographic map, one of the key
divisions within the country becomes clear, not the Cold War division between east and
west (believe me, we will get into that later on), but the division between the flat north
and mountainous south. This division in fact explains why the dialects spoken in the north
are called Plattdeutsch, (for low or “flat” German) while those in the mountainous south
are called Hochdeutsch (or High German, not to be confused with the Standard German that
you might learn on Duolingo). To this day this difference in topography affects virtually
all of Central Europe, from Austria being separate from Germany, to which form of Aldi
your country might have. But before we learn more about Germany’s geography and how it
affected its development over the centuries, let me first talk to you about the people
making videos like this possible. [AD] Strawman1: Hey did you hear what happened
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Jesus, guys, is there anything you can agree on these days?
Both: Probably. | God no. You know, it‘s not a good sign if you‘re
getting vastly different headlines for the same news story.
That‘s why I‘m super happy to be sponsored by Ground News! See, I’m a big fan of not
just learning about the world but truly understanding it and how everything works, and Ground News
is the best news aggregator out there that can help you expand your horizons a little
bit. And Ground News has a few tricks up its sleeve that I think you might like.
For example, and keeping with the theme of Germany’s geography, one thing I haven’t
really touched upon is Germany’s dependence on Russian oil and natural gas. It is thus
pretty big news that a 50-meter section of the ruptured Nord Stream 1 pipeline seems
to be missing. You can see how it’s being covered in left or right-wing newspapers,
how they phrase their headlines, whether the sources are international or local, and how
factual these sources generally are. You can view Ground News in the international dashboard
like I am to get a world view of top stories or stories being under reported, or in The
US, UK or Canada. You can also use the map feature to see what stories are being covered
in specific countries across the world. To stay fully informed on issues around the
world, go to ground.news/khanubis. [END AD] Germany’s economic core is largely situated
in the west near the Rhine River, mostly in the state of Nordrhein-Westfalen. While many
of Germany’s economic centers however– including the likes of Frankfurt, Stuttgart,
Karlsruhe, and the Rhine-Ruhr megaregion– all lie in the west of the country, within
the so-called Blue Banana megaregion, the capital and largest city Berlin lies all the
way out in the middle of the east. Germany is a much less centralized country than a
country like France, which in comparison is dominated by Paris.
When Julius Caesar led the Roman army against the Gauls, they encountered many of their
numerous Germanic neighbors, such as the Suebi, the Angles and Saxons, who eventually became
English, the Goths, and the Vandals. Caesar described these tribes as very decentralized,
with patriarchs who would settle disputes between families. Eventually a few of these
families became a kind of ruling class, but there was still no single monarch to unite
all the tribes. Being so disconnected and located right near the center of Europe meant
that outsiders often found themselves interacting with different groups, such as the Alemanni,
the Saxons, or those people too dumb to speak like us, hence all the different names the
modern country has in different languages. After this guy named Charlie (or who the history
nerds know as Charlemagne) conquered the area and was given the frankly amazing Christmas
present of being crowned Emperor of the Romans [Byzantium: Excuse me?], a new entity called
the Holy Roman Empire came into power over the region (or as HistoryTubers like to call
it, the Godless Germanic Union). In fact, that’s part of the reason countries like
Luxembourg and Liechtenstein still exist, as the Holy Roman Empire that ruled this area
for 1,000 years wasn’t a kingdom but a weird sort of confederacy between all these smaller
kingdoms. German and French rulers constantly fought over the “Holy Roman Emperor” title,
but as the centuries went by and memories of charismatic emperors like Charlemagne faded,
the individual kingdoms got harder and harder to control. Finally, Napoleon took over France,
steamrolled through Europe, declared himself the Holy Roman Emperor… and got defeated,
which was the final nail in the coffin for the Empire.
After that, a few of the bigger kingdoms, especially Prussia, led an effort to unify
the Germanic peoples into one country. See, Prussia– with its capital being Berlin–
and its neighbors were right in the middle of the Northern European plain, a region infamous
in the eyes of anyone who knows what Poland is. However in the south another kingdom had
also been expanding its hegemony: Austria. By the mid-19th century, Austria and Prussia
were the clear dominant powers over Central Europe, however with Prussia dominating more
traditional German lands and Austria’s realm spread out over the much more varied groups
to the southeast, mostly down the Danube River. But long story short, especially since I’ve
already talked about the politics and history of all this in greater detail in past videos,
Germany finally became a unified country in 1871, blah blah blah enough backstory let’s
get back to the geography! Of course, after World War II, the Cold War
made the now re-split Germany a potential passageway for someone western Europe did
not want in the area, the Soviet Union. The Fulda Gap, this lowland area on the border
between NATO-aligned West Germany and Soviet-Aligned East Germany became one of the easiest targets
for a Russian invasion. Thus Fulda became a key location for NATO and Soviet forces
to watch over each other. Germany and its capital were divided between the NATO and
Soviet spheres of influence, and a stark division still exists between the East and the West.
While not the poorest region in Europe, Eastern Germany still lags behind their brethren in
the West. For the West however, West Berlin found itself entirely surrounded by the German
Democratic Republic, effectively cut off by not-so-friendly territory. This by the way,
for those of you not familiar with Berlin, is why the Berlin Wall didn’t split Berlin,
but encircled West Berlin. Three different highways in the east became ‘Transitstrecken’,
which West German citizens could use to drive between the two parts of the Federal Republic
through East German territory, though with the East restricting whether its citizens
could leave, naturally these routes also became a way for Easterners to try to get smuggled
to the West. Of course, nowadays it’s the 21st century,
with a now reunited Germany surrounded by nine fellow Schengen Area countries, eight
of which being in the European Union. With the aftermath of WWII, being split between
NATO and the Warsaw Pact in the latter half of the 20th century, and the rise of the European
Union, Germany’s priorities today are those which might seem almost nonsensical to those
who led the country only a century earlier.
