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Pan-Germanism

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The following article is from The Great Soviet Encyclopedia (1979). It might be outdated or ideologically biased.

Pan-Germanism

 

a political doctrine reflecting the aggressive aspirations of the German bourgeoisie and Junker class. Pan-Germanism originated in the early 1880’s in Austria-Hungary, where G. von Schönerer and his followers worked out a program for Germany’s annexation of the Austrian regions of the country. The ideas of Pan-Germanism took final shape at the end of the 19th century, when the Pan-German League was organized.

The proponents of Pan-Germanism inspired the policy goals of seizing Polish, Ukrainian, Byelorussian, and Baltic lands and establishing the world dominance of German imperialism. They promoted an arms race, the country’s militarization, and the building of a powerful navy. In its fervent nationalism, chauvinism, racism, and hostility to socialism, Pan-Germanism was an ideological predecessor of German fascism.

The Great Soviet Encyclopedia, 3rd Edition (1970-1979). © 2010 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
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The common type of anti-Semitism, ranging from the religious to the ethnic or racist variant, was often "naturally" combined with the adherence to Pan-Germanism or some (not all) strands of Catholic conservatism.
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Most important of all were the Pan-Germanism of Georg Schonerer and the racial theories of Guido von List, Lanz von Liebenfels, Hans Goldzier and Otto Weininger.
The new German-Russian rapprochement could now take place by reaching further back in time to the traditions of pan-Slavism and pan-Germanism of the nineteenth century.
German writer whose works were popular expressions of Pan-Germanism and helped to prepare the climate of opinion in Germany that embraced the nationalist and expansionist policies of Adolf Hitler.
Coined by the New York Evening Post in its March 5, 1988, edition (Pepin, 1938: 11), the term "Pan-Americanism" did more than recall currents such as Pan-Slavism and Pan-Germanism, which propped up new imperialist proposals in Europe; it borrowed from the latter the idea of trade as a tool of unification.
What had gone was the racism, pan-Germanism, the anti-modernism of pre-1945 Volksgeschichte.
Nor was this totally lost on contemporary statesmen, for as a representative of Chile observed in 1916: |Pan-Americanism as applied by Wilson aims at United States domination just as Pan-Germanism aims at Prussian control over Germany and even a larger area of Europe.' Yet, the chief feature of Wilson's policy was not its success, but its failure, and this underlines his failure to appreciate that the application of limited force is only of utility if its diplomatic and political goals are also limited in scope.
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