The PanGerman Plot Unmasked: Berlin's formidable peace-trap of "the drawn war"Chéradame, André
History
The PanGerman Plot Unmasked: Berlin's formidable peace-trap of "the drawn war"
Chéradame, André
Europe -- Politics and government -- 1871-1918; Pangermanism; World War, 1914-1918
The Balkans 499,275 22,000,000
Turkey 1,792,900 20,000,000
--------- ----------
Total 2,292,175 42,000,000
Therefore Berlin’s preponderant influence would be wielded, directly
or indirectly, over 3,462,199 square kilometres and over 150 million
inhabitants.
We now see clearly that in the end the dodge of the “Drawn Game” would
lead in reality to an enormous increase of the German Empire, and to the
achievement of the principal part of the Pangerman plan summarized in the
formula “from Hamburg to the Persian Gulf” (p. 109 of original). What
then would be the general position of Great Germany thus constituted?
“Having cut Europe in two, mistress of the Adriatic as well as of the
North Sea, secure in her fleets and in her armies, Great Germany would
be an incubus on the world. Trieste, the Hamburg of the South, would
feed her in peace and revictual her in war. Her industry, equipped with
plant of incomparable power, would flood with her wares those very
countries which she now schemes so artfully to monopolize:—Holland and
Belgium, which are already penetrated; Hungary, her client; Roumania,
her satellite; Bulgaria, a broken barrier; Bosnia and Herzegovina, the
portals of the East. And, beyond the Bosphorus, Germany would reach
Asia-Minor, that immense quarry of wealth. The huge German railroad
projected to run from Hamburg to the Persian Gulf without a break,
would link Berlin to the Far East. Then would the Emperor William’s
Brobdingnagian dream be fulfilled. Germany would rule the world by her
might and by her commercial wealth. The state of things which then would
exist might be described by slightly modifying what Metternich wrote
of Napoleonic France: ‘The German system which to-day is triumphant is
directed against all the great states in their entirety, against every
power able to maintain its own independence.’”
Such are the words which I published fifteen years ago in my book,
_L’Europe et la Question d’Autriche au seuil du XXᵉ siècle, p. 353 (Plon,
Nourrit, editeurs, Paris)_. A careful study of the Pangerman plan of
1895 had then convinced me that the whole future policy of Berlin would
tend to carry out the plan laid down in the formula “from Hamburg to the
Persian Gulf.” In what I then wrote a few minute discrepancies may now be
detected, but, unfortunately, the facts of to-day show that still on the
whole my words correspond exactly with events. The dodge of the “Drawn
Game,” which the Germans keep up their sleeve, hoping still to profit by
the ignorance or the weariness of some of the Allies, would indeed have
for its indisputable object the achievement of that huge plan.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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