First of all, i love this subreddit. I am currently seeking answers here to questions i had since a long time but never got an answer to from my history teacher.
So, my last 2 recent threads about Germany and WW1 sparked another question from me about Imperial Germany.
How good or bad was the German Empire for the people living in it? It did many bad things like killing the Hereros, contributing much to the outbreak of The Great War, mass rape in Belgium, inventing of gas weapons, very agressive diplomacy and so on. So it was certainly a bad country for the rest of the world.
But how good or bad was it for the people living in Germany? How was the quality of life, the freedom of speech, how happy were the people with their absolute monarchy and so on. I am german myself, but we only covered the German Empire very short in history class and it was mostly about Bismarck, the scramble of africa and how WW1 started.
mass rape in Belgium
While it's likely that war rapes were committed by the invading German forces, the 'Rape of Belgium' was more of a metaphor than an actual instance of mass rape. There were mass shootings however, and the occupation would grow increasingly more draconian as the war went on.
very aggressive diplomacy and so on. So it was certainly a bad country for the rest of the world.
Aggressive diplomacy was pursued under the aegis of Weltpolitik, but I would qualify the statement "bad for the rest of the world." Germany was the second largest economy in the world in 1914, having only just been outstripped by the United States. It was certainly more advanced at least than that of the United States, dominating European coal and steel production, and possessing burgeoning electrical, pharmaceutical, automobile and aeronautical industries. Germans (and Austrian Germans) dominated the list of Nobel Laureates for science, including Max Planck and Fritz Haber, the latter of whose 'Haber Process' being what has enabled agricultural production to sustain our planet's huge population. The Mark was vying with the Dollar and the Pound Sterling as the currency of international commerce, while Hapag and Norddeutscher Lloyd were among the largest, if not the largest, shipping companies in the world.
Germany did pursue an aggressive foreign policy prior to WWI, but it ebbed and flowed as a consequence of the way in which foreign policy was decided, by the Kaiser and his closest advisors. The Kaiser was infamous after the Moroccan Crises for sabre-rattling and the 'toppling' short of war, with the French press dubbing him Guillaume le Timide. This almost schizophrenic policy direction did leave openings for cooperation. Thanks to the land arms race with Russia and France after 1912, the Naval Arms Race with Britain was postponed, while both countries cooperated to achieve a peaceful solution to the Balkan Wars in 1912 and 1913. Even when the Germans were preparing, in earnest, for a future war after December 1912, there was a loosely defined "window of opportunity", roughly 1914 to 1917-18 as opposed to a set date. Had the Archduke not been assassinated, there need not have been a July Crisis, and in fact the 3rd Hague Peace Conference would have convened that fall, including representatives from all European powers.