From: imbibe@mindspring.com   
      
   QUORA: Why was Germany historically so warlike?   
   by Jose Marco Bisnar, Lives in Davao City, Philippines, July, 2021   
   The Thirty Years’ War.   
   The 30 Years’ War was a real trauma for Germany in that it cost the land   
   some 3 to 8 million innocent individuals who had nothing to do with the   
   geopolitical squabbling between the Austrians, the Spanish, the French and the   
   Swedes, all of which during    
   that time possessed formidable empires and armies and all of which fought all   
   across the German realm to do some bloodletting in deciding which religion is   
   the one being truly legitimized by God.   
      
   Germany included the lands of the Electorate of Brandenburg, the core region   
   of what would later be the Kingdom of Prussia, the prime-mover and the beating   
   heart of Germany that this question is asking. And it too as well, though it   
   eventually gained    
   lands in the aftermath, was not spared from the brutality of the 30 Years’   
   War; in fact, it was one of the most devastated regions by the twilight of the   
   war. The destruction wrought by war was so immense that on average as much as   
   one of every two    
   persons living within the Electorate was dead.   
      
   Electorate of Brandenburg within the German realm.  [MAP #1]   
      
   So the Elector of Brandenburg, Friedrich Wilhelm, decided that for his domain   
   to avoid such a horrid fate again, a full-time professional army in defense of   
   the realm is needed. Thus began the birth of one of history’s most   
   formidable armies: the    
   Prussian Army.   
      
   The Great Elector of Brandenburg-Prussia, Friedrich Wilhelm. Having founded   
   the Prussian Army, he was also sometimes considered the “Father of the   
   German Army”. [painting]   
      
   With blood, iron and sweat all through effort for a hundred years, the   
   Prussian Army rose from a tiny army of royal confidantes of no meaningful   
   military proficiency, to a huge army manned by competent officers and infantry   
   that shoots muskets as doubly    
   as fast as their contemporaries could. The army was so huge that aristocrats   
   during the era were easy to mock Prussia as having “an army that owns a   
   kingdom”. They were never wrong to poke compliments at it, but it was due to   
   past geopolitical and    
   national trauma that cost so many lives that which army is now trying to   
   prevent from happening again.   
      
   Over the many years that passed, from Friedrich der Grosse’s colorful   
   victories during the Seven Years’ War through the mixed bag of black and   
   white record of the Napoleonic Wars till the great spectacle of 1870–1, the   
   Prussian Army grew both in    
   size and influence that it turned Prussia from this…   
   [MAP #2]   
   to this.[MAP #3]   
      
   There was simply no state within the German realm that could oppose such a   
   highly militarized state that Voltaire once called the modern-day Sparta, not   
   even the mighty Austrians who barely lasted seven weeks against it before   
   being eventually humbled    
   and brought to the negotiating table on losing terms. With Austria out it was   
   only a matter of time before the steely chancellor Otto von Bismarck could   
   unite Germany under Prussian domination, and it was from there in which   
   Germany pre-1945 was finally    
   associated with being warlike and militaristic — the fact that the new   
   empire was being led by Prussia, the fact that before the war of 1870 against   
   France the armies of Bavaria and Wurttemberg copied the Prussian military   
   system, and the fact that the    
   whole new Imperial German Army have to be modeled after the Prussian Army, the   
   best the world could have.   
      
   Really, the atrocity of the Thirty Years’ War is what led to the birth of   
   the modern German Army, and with it, Germany’s association with militarism.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)