The Middle Kingdoms: A New History Of Central Europe, Rady - B+

                     "Central  Europe rests on its western edge against the Rhine River, which joins the North Sea to the Alps, but its eastern boundary has no obvious physical marker. The Carpathian Mountains, which start northeast of Vienna, in modern-day Slovakia, curl around Hungary and Transylvania, forming a border in the southeast. But further north there is just open country."

                    "Broadly, the book covers the area now included in modern-day Germany, Poland, Hungary, Austria, Slovenia, and western Romania or Transylvania, but its scope is as fluid as Central Europe's historical parts, venturing at times into the territory of today's Ukraine, Croatia, Switzerland, and the Baltic states."

                     At its height, the Roman Empire encompassed much of Central Europe.  In the fourth century, the peoples of the east began to enter the empire, not as raiders, but as occupiers. They were fleeing the Huns, who remade Central Europe by reducing it to poverty. The Franks influenced the east by introducing the "code of kingship, Catholic Christianity, law, knighthood, and chivalry." Charlemagne was the monarch who pushed the Franks east to the Elbe River, and made Aachen the capital of his empire. Further to the east, the Slavs became the predominant ethnic group. Notwithstanding competition from Constantinople, the Latin church succeeded in bringing Bohemia, Croatia, Poland and Hungary into the fold by the end of the millennium. "By embracing Catholicism and rejecting Orthodoxy, Central Europe was drawn culturally westward. Russia and the Balkans went off in a quite different direction." The region began to divide between French and German speaking regions, and soon added Hungarians, who arrived around the 10th century. 

                    Beginning with Charlemagne in 800, Europe's leading monarchs sought to be crowned Roman Emperor by the pope. This tradition continued for decades, until eventually there coalesced in Europe the concept of the Holy Roman Empire. In England and France, power became concentrated at the top. In the HRE, this was not the case as hundreds of duchies, principalities and kingdoms retained their identity and privileges. The empire did not have a capital and its monarchs journeyed from place to place. The empire pushed east of the Elbe and absorbed portions of newly converted Poland.  

                  In the thirteenth century, Central Europe was threatened by the arrival of the Mongols. They occupied and ransacked Hungary, killing a third of the population. After they departed, Hungary welcomed German immigrants, who settled in significant numbers in Transylvania. Hungary and the other lands to the east westernized by encouraging heavy cavalry, allowing the construction of castles and requiring a feudal military structure to help strengthen the community from further attack. The death of the last Hohenstaufen led to the election, by the established seven electors, of Rudolf of Hapsburg in 1273 as HRE. A century later, the King of Bohemia established Prague as a major metropolitan center and Bohemia as the the most important elector in the empire.

                Further to the east there lay hundreds of miles of marshes and forests between the lands of the Latin church and Russia. The area we know now as the Baltics was then called Old Prussia. Conquest and conversion required military skills and Conrad, a Polish duke, called on the Teutonic Knights to civilize the east. By the end of the thirteenth century, Prussia was conquered and under the undisputed control of the Knights, who had negotiated with the emperor and the pope that they would have a free hand. German immigration soon overwhelmed the indigenous locals. The Knights would spend the next century and a half conquering Lithuania. The Knights freedoms and independence eventually succumbed to the merger of Poland and Lithuania in a new Commonwealth. 

              In the early sixteenth century, Frederick III and Maximilian cemented the empire and the Hapsburgs in power to such an extent that their line would rule for another four centuries. Utilizing aggressive marriages of their heirs, they were able to bring their family to power in the Netherlands and Spain, and then in Hungary. They also manipulated the electoral process to the point that an emperor could have a king appointed who would succeed him as emperor. 

              Martin Luther and his preachings survived because Frederick the Wise and his son, John, Duke of Saxony felt obligated to protect him because he taught at a university Frederick sponsored. Luther penned over 80,000 pages over four decades, breathing life into his ideas and helping them spread. Lutheranism was soon established in Northern Europe, and was beyond the capabilities of the Catholic Hapsburgs to control. "Luther's reformation was not only a German Reformation but also a Central European one. It struck deep roots in Transylvania, ...in northern Hungary and in Poland." Only Bavaria and Austria remained Catholic. The Peace of Augsburg in 1555 left it to the local ruler to determine the religion in his realm. Throughout the realm there was toleration of different religions particularly as Protestantism fractured into various different sects. As the region entered the 17th century, toleration was the dominant political approach. However, Catholic reformers began to vigorously push back against the Protestants. A Counter-Reformation was on the horizon. Catholicism's champion was Ferdinand II, who initiated the Thirty Years War in 1618 by crushing Bohemia and Prague. It "was a Central European Civil War that became continental and even global. It was a harbinger of other, more modern conflicts, which started in Central Europe and had consequences for the whole world." Ferdinand was successful for the first decade until Sweden invaded. The war became one of "comprehensive slaughter. On top of casual slaughter came dislocation, famine, and the plague." The war became less about religion and became a political contest between France and the Hapsburgs. Seven million died before the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. The northwestern sections of the empire were primarily Protestant and the southeast Catholic.

              The Muslim world and its encroachments in Europe were at the forefront of Christian thought for centuries. And after the Turks took Constantinople in 1453, Europe knew they would threaten again. The Sultan's wealth allowed him to raise armies of more than 100,000 men and supply them over a thousand miles away. In 1521, they conquered Belgrade. Hungary and Buda fell next. The Turks would occupy Hungary for 140 years. In 1683, the Turks invaded Austria and besieged Vienna. A Polish army saved Vienna at a crucial point and the Hapsburgs began to push back the Turks. Both Buda and Belgrade were recovered within five years. The Hapsburgs continued to push the Turks as far south as they could for they recognized that the Russians would attempt to take the Balkans if they didn't.

            In 1701, Frederick crowned himself as King of Prussia. His grandson, Frederick II, known to history as 'The Great' became king in 1740 and immediately embarked on a course of conquest by seizing Silesia. Three wars with Hapsburg Austria ensued. Frederick prevailed with considerable financial assistance from the UK. Prussia grew and Frederick created a highly regulated state, one that most of Central Europe tied to emulate. Indeed, "the state was swallowing society, through regulation, taxation, and conscription..." The state that did not centralize and modernize was Poland and Lithuania. The Commonwealth weakened in the later years of the 18th century as Russia, Prussia, and Austria began to intervene and carve off pieces of the country. In 1772, the three countries took over one-fourth of the Commonwealth's land and a third of its citizens. The rump state created a new constitution, Europes first, but partitions in 1793 and 1795 eliminated the country from the map.  "The partition of Poland and Lithuania was a disaster for Central Europe." It made the carving up of countries and the moving of boundaries  acceptable diplomatic activities. And it brought Russia 600 kms. west.

          "From 1792 to 1815, Central Europe was almost continually at war." The Hapsburgs "bore the brunt of French and Napoleonic fury." The Holy Roman Empire was abolished. Napoleon defeated, humiliated, and stripped Austria of territory. The Congress of Vienna reinstated the status quo ante. "Napoleon released the genies of nationalism and liberalism on Central Europe, but, unlike Napoleon, they could not be exiled." The Revolutions of 1848 turned Central Europe into a firestorm. Galicia was the first to attempt an insurrection when the peasants attacked noblemen and women before the state crushed them. The French overthrew King Louis-Philippe. Riots in Vienna led to the resignation of Count Metternich, and the ascendancy of twenty-one year old Franz Joseph to the throne. In the end though, the forces of tradition and suppression prevailed, particularly in Hungary. Hungary declared its independence from Austria, and with the assistance of Russian troops, independence was crushed. History may have "failed to turn" but the forces of nationalism were now in the forefront of everyone's minds. 

           "The rise of Prussia and its eventual transformation into the German Empire was by no means a foregone conclusion." The booming economy and the ambitions of Otto von Bismarck were the driving forces. He lured Austria into war in 1866, and crushed the outmaneuvered and outgunned Hapsburg army. "He dissolved the German Confederation and annexed to Prussia most of the territory north of the River Main." Four years later, the Germans humiliated the French, captured Louis-Napoleon, and announced the creation of an empire. Bismarck never addressed the issue of what role in Prussia the ten million Germans in the Austrian Empire should play. The combination of military defeats and financial stress led Franz Joseph to allow a parliament and the duality of the Austro-Hungarian Empire with a partially liberated Hungary. "Hungary was given complete home rule but would pool military matters and foreign policy with the rest of the empire." Although Germany, Austria, and Hungary now had parliaments, power remained where it had always been - in the bureaucracy and the monarch.

         The economic, demographic, and military rise of Germany in the later portion of the 19th century threatened the world order. Central Europe was no longer a backwater, but rather threatened Britain and France. Germany was tethered to the Austro-Hungarians, regarded as the 'sick man' of Europe. Britain, France and Russia had agreed to an entente. In August, 1914, tensions spiraled out of control into a world war. The war in the west was stalemated by the fall of 1914. In the east, the Germans pushed deep into Poland and Russia, and defeated the Serbs and Romanians. The 1918 peace treaty with Russia gave Germany a massive amount of land and allowed them to move forces to the west. But it was too late. The Wehrmacht was exhausted and the American push proved its frailty. Armistice came in November. "The Versailles Conference of 1919-1920 reordered Central Europe, but in its attempt to balance principle with expediency it did so at the expense of an enduring peace." The interwar years were filled with violence and  poverty. "Across Central Europe, democratic politics buckled."

          War returned in September 1939. Germany and the USSR re-partitioned Poland and both counties subjected it to unspeakable racial, ethnic and class violence. Two years later, Germany invaded the USSR. Slavs, Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, the intelligentsia, alcoholics, and the disabled were put to death by the invaders. The Holocaust claimed six million murdered Jews. Additionally, the Germans murdered an estimated three million Poles. "By the time of Germany's surrender in May 1945, the Soviet Union was in possession of a large part of Central Europe..."  Within a few years, every occupied country was run by a Communist. After decades of immeasurable suffering, the people of Central Europe were subject to Soviet communism and the harsh imposition of want and poverty. The Soviets enforced their dominion by putting down nascent freedom movements in Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968. Poland was the first country to move back the restrictions communism imposed. With the support of a Polish pope, the Solidarity movement proved communism to not be monolithic. The whole Soviet artifice collapsed in Europe in November 1989.

         The transition to a free market economy was not easy. Communism was an extremely destructive force.  By the new century, Central Europe was moving forward economically and socially. Many former communist states are in the EU and NATO. Historically, threats to Central Europe have come from the east, and in Putin's Russia that has not changed.  I love long well-written broad stroke histories and this one qualifies.