G

Galicia

[1] A region that became the northernmost province of the HABSBURG EMPIRE following the first partition of POLAND in 1772. Centered on Lemburg (Lwów), this area of very mixed ethnicity (Poles and Ukranians being the leading constituents) remained during the nineteenth century one of the poorest territories under Austrian rule and provided a major source of transatlantic MIGRATION in the years around 1900. After World War I, Galicia became part of the reconstituted Poland. However, in 1939 the region was occupied by the SOVIET UNION, and subsequently absorbed into the Ukrainian Soviet Republic. The frontier line settled at the end of World War II left only a limited area of Western Galicia in Polish hands. The bulk of the region remained within the Soviet empire until the latter fragmented in 1991, whereupon it became incorporated into the territory of a newly-independent UKRAINE.

[2] A region of northwestern SPAIN, where pressures for greater autonomy from the central government in Madrid rose during the nineteenth century. This aim was briefly achieved under the SECOND REPUBLIC (1931–6), only to be further frustrated as FRANCO triumphed in the ensuing SPANISH CIVIL WAR (1936–9). Though himself a native of Galicia, he banned any official use of its distinctive language and repressed all support for devolution. Only with his death in 1975 did the position change, and by 1978 Galicians had regained substantial regional autonomy.

Gallipoli campaign Attempt made between February 1915 and January 1916 by a joint British, Commonwealth, and French amphibious force to open the DARDANELLES, thus creating supply routes to Russia and forcing Turkey (see TURKEY AND EUROPE) out of WORLD WAR I. An initial naval assault, the brainchild of CHURCHILL as First Lord of the Admiralty, had to be abandoned when three battleships were lost and others damaged. Local commanders then commenced a land assault to take the Gallipoli peninsula. Turkish forces, under German operational command, had some local success, but could not prevent landings of the British 29^th Division (the only regular unit with the expedition) and French troops. Further north, the Anzac forces (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) were confronted by units led by Mustapha Kemal (see ATATÜRK). From May to July 1915, a grim and ultimately deadlocked struggle took place, with the Turks defending the heights and the Allies the shore. Cholera and dysentery as well as munitions took a heavy toll. In August, large reinforcements permitted renewed Allied assaults which came close to success, but the Turks held their ground and the campaign was abandoned. A brilliantly executed evacuation of Allied forces took place during December 1915 and January 1916, but overall the operation failed disastrously. It had cost the lives of some 46,000 Allied and 200,000 Turkish military personnel. Churchill resigned in disgrace, Asquith's hold on the premiership was broken, and BULGARIA now joined the Central Powers who, by the end of 1916, dominated the Balkans. Sometimes judged as a potential masterstroke in strategic terms, the Gallipoli campaign failed as a result of poor tactical and operational execution.

Gambetta, Léon (1838–82), French politician particularly noted for consolidating the new THIRD REPUBLIC. The son of a Genoese grocer, Gambetta trained as a lawyer before entering parliament in 1869 as deputy for Marseille. Fiercely critical of NAPOLEON III, he had a combative image that was enhanced by his beefy appearance, glass eye, and love of beer. With the fall of the Second Empire, Gambetta was one of those members of the Government of National Defense who declared a republic on September 4, 1870. As minister of the interior, he escaped the Prussian siege of Paris by hot-air balloon. He hoped to rally an army of national defense so as to relieve the capital, yet this was always going to be an uphill task. A devoted nationalist, he recoiled at the armistice that concluded the FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR, and especially at the loss of ALSACE-LORRAINE. Though he resigned his post in protest, Gambetta remained committed to the success of the new regime. He stood successfully for parliament in the 1871 elections, and later that year founded a newspaper, La République française. No friend of THIERS, he nonetheless reconciled his differences with this veteran politician after MACMAHON'S presidential election of 1873 seemed to be enhancing the prospects of royalist restoration. In 1875 Gambetta naturally campaigned throughout the provinces in favor of the republican constitution. On May 4, 1877, at a moment of political crisis, he gave the famous speech in which he declared that “cléricalisme, voilà l'ennemi” (see ANTICLERICALISM). That was followed on September 18, 1878 by another celebrated declaration, at Romans, where Gambetta attempted to rally republicans throughout France. Because of his outgoing personality, there were fears that he aspired to dictatorship, but he was cautious in embracing power, becoming prime minister only for a brief spell in 1881–2. Gambetta died accidentally after a revolver went off in his hand, though there was inevitable speculation about the precise circumstances. He was a great patriot, whose exuberant manner often obscured a prudence that helped consolidate the Third Republic during its most vulnerable early stages.

Gamelin, Maurice (1905–58), Commander-in-Chief of the French Army early in WORLD WAR II. A career soldier, he distinguished himself at the cadet school of St-Cyr and in 1914 was a close aide of JOFFRE. After becoming a general during WORLD WAR I, Gamelin then served in Brazil and the colonies. In 1935 he was appointed head of the army, a promotion partly prompted by his staunch republican values. He did much to overhaul the defensive strategy devised in the 1920s (see also MAGINOT LINE) and recognized the importance of tanks. However, he proved an incompetent field commander. When the Germans attacked western Europe on May 10, 1940, Gamelin dispatched crack French divisions to Holland and Belgium, not expecting the main assault to come through the Ardennes. On May 17 he was replaced by General Weygand. Arrested by the VICHY REGIME, Gamelin was unjustly accused at the RIOM TRIALS of having prepared inadequately for war. He spent the remainder of the conflict under German guard, writing his memoirs. These failed to dispel the widely-held notion that it was he above all who had lost “the battle of France.”

Garibaldi, Giuseppe (1807–82), patriot and soldier, whose exploits were central to ITALIAN UNIFICATION and made him the RISORGIMENTO'S greatest popular hero. A native of Nice, he joined the Piedmontese merchant navy and in Genoa encountered supporters of radical NATIONALISM. Inspired by MAZZINI, Garibaldi participated in the unsuccessful risings of 1833–4 against the monarchy of PIEDMONT-SARDINIA. He then spent the next decade or so heading a band of fellow-exiled “Redshirts,” waging guerrilla attacks on various dictatorships in South America. On his return to Europe he participated in the REVOLUTIONS OF 1848–9. When the Piedmontese government spurned his offer to assist in fighting the Austrians (see HABSBURG EMPIRE), he joined Mazzini's rising in Milan. During May–June 1849 they both played leading roles in defending the short-lived Roman republic. After further exile, Garibaldi returned to Italy in 1854 and showed thereafter more willingness than Mazzini to accept, albeit reluctantly, that the Piedmontese monarchy now offered the best prospect for promoting unification. In the war of 1859 against Austria (see FRANCO-AUSTRIAN WAR) Garibaldi distinguished himself as leader of a semi-independent volunteer force, while temporarily holding the rank of major-general in the king's army. Though by the spring of 1860 CAVOUR'S Piedmont had gained Lombardy and much of central Italy, Garibaldi was outraged that the price for NAPOLEON III'S support should turn out to be French annexation of Nice and Savoy. Thus relations with Cavour were already strained when, in May, Garibaldi and his “Thousand Redshirts” sailed from Genoa so as to exploit a Sicilian rebellion against Bourbon rule (see TWO SICILIES, KINGDOM OF). The speed and scale of the guerrillas' success both in Sicily and in the Neapolitan mainland over the next four months staggered observers everywhere. Many suspected that Garibaldi might now try to establish a Mazzinian republic in the south, even at the risk of triggering a foreign intervention that could endanger Piedmont's gains as well as his own. Thus Cavour was relieved when a southwards advance by the royal forces led to a peaceful link-up in which the leader of the Thousand refrained from challenging the king's overall authority. However, when Garibaldi was denied appointment as temporary viceroy of Naples, he withdrew in protest to his island home of Caprera. In 1862 he attempted a raid on the PAPAL STATES, but was blocked by Piedmontese troops. By then, not least because of his talents as a self-publicist, Garibaldi was regarded as a patriot-liberator of international stature (hugely fêted, for instance, during his English visit of 1864). In the AUSTRO-PRUSSIAN WAR of 1866 he contributed to the additional Italian involvement by commanding a virtually independent contingent that fought Habsburg forces in the Tyrol, and in 1867 he made another abortive incursion into papal territory. In 1870–1 he was active once more, joining the French republican resistance to Prussian occupation (see FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR). During his final years on Caprera, he became increasingly disillusioned with developments in newly “united” Italy, especially with regard to the division between north and south. In essence, Garibaldi (like Mazzini) regretted the lack of any deeply-felt rapport as between the portion of the peninsula which Cavour had unified and that other half which, through the extraordinary guerrilla campaign of 1860, had been liberated from Bourbon repression chiefly by his own inspirational leadership.

Gastein, Convention of Treaty signed between Prussia and Austria on August 14, 1865 concerning the disputed provinces of SCHLESWIG-HOLSTEIN which they had forcibly seized from DENMARK a year earlier and placed under their joint sovereignty. At Gastein it was agreed that Holstein should be administered by Austria and Schleswig by Prussia. A year later, however, Austria argued that the deeper issues of long-term sovereignty should be decided by the assembly of the GERMAN CONFEDERATION. This apparent breach of the Convention gave BISMARCK a pretext to start the AUSTRO-PRUSSIAN WAR, thus further promoting the particular version of GERMAN UNIFICATION that he had in mind. Had this dispute not arisen, Bismarck would probably have searched for some other reason to initiate a war aimed at excluding Prussia's chief rival from any form of united Germany.

Gaullism (see under DE GAULLE)

gender During the twentieth century the usage of this term was refined not simply to continue denoting the state of being male or female, but to do so now with primary reference to the cultural and social differences rather than to the more strictly biological and physiological ones that are all associated with sexual distinction (see also SEXUALITY). By the start of the twenty-first century gender was commonly regarded, alongside other variables such as CLASS, nationality, and race (see NATIONALISM; RACISM), as a major contributing element to social identity. Among the cited agents of this process of gender acculturation we find religion, the family, communities such as guilds and trade unions, and the media (see also CATHOLICISM; PROTESTANTISM; TRADE UNIONISM; COMMUNICATIONS). Although a stark division between male and female has long been seen as fundamental, the acknowledgment of gender as socially and culturally constructed has produced a more nuanced view, allowing such groups as male homosexuals, lesbians, and transsexuals to be readily included within the broader picture. What constitutes acceptable gender characteristics and behavior has varied both geographically and over time as social and cultural attitudes have shifted. Traditionally, particular attributes and roles have been attributed to each of the two main categories. Thus tenderness and frailty have been ascribed to women, while strength and valor have belonged to men; the former have been allocated duties connected to childrearing and the “private” domestic sphere, while males have dominated the “public” one of paid labor and political activity.

Such notions of radical gender disparity came under strong challenge from the mid-twentieth century onward. Largely as a reaction to the casual male-centered assumptions previously in vogue, conscious discourse about gender has increasingly tended to focus on female social roles. Though the topic had featured in the fifteenth-century writings of Christine de Pizan and had also surfaced in the debates surrounding the civil wars in the British Isles, the so-called “woman question” – centered on claims to sexual equality – did not become prominent until the nineteenth century, in the form later labeled “first-wave” FEMINISM. Over the long run, the FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1789 (which helped to inspire, for example, Mary WOLLSTONECRAFT'S Vindication of the Rights of Woman in 1792) would prove to be a powerful influence towards the eventual emergence of a distinctively feminist social critique. However, the immediate results were less favorable: though women had played a significant role in many of the journées of the revolution such as the fall of the BASTILLE and the OCTOBER DAYS, and though the Declaration of THE RIGHTS OF MAN and of the Citizen had proclaimed theoretical equality with men, females were not rewarded with the reality of active political rights. Similarly, the CIVIL CODE issued by NAPOLEON I was grounded in traditional concepts of their intellectual and emotional inferiority, and thus confirmed gendered notions of citizenship by defining women – as wives, mothers, sisters, and daughters – essentially in terms of their dependent relationship to men. Protests against exclusion from public life and power remained largely inchoate until the later nineteenth century, when middle-class women in particular succeeded in organizing themselves more effectively. For example, Aletta Jacobs founded the Association for Women's Suffrage in the Netherlands in 1894; the Society for the Demand for Women's Rights and the Society for the Improvement of Women's Lot were established in France in 1866 and 1870 respectively; and by 1896, when Marie Maugeret founded her monthly review, Féminisme chrétien, regular feminist congresses were being held in Paris calling for access to EDUCATION, reform of marriage contracts, property rights, equal pay, and the freedom to work. During the course of the nineteenth century there were also men prominent as ideologists of “progressive” LIBERALISM or SOCIALISM – figures such as J.S. Mill, FOURIER, SAINT-SIMON, MARX, and ENGELS – who added supporting voices. However, although some gains were registered (for instance, the British Factory Acts of 1842 and 1844 prescribed a maximum working day for women), movement towards gender equality before the law, in the workplace, or in public life was painfully slow. Even Marx and Engels paid little attention to unpaid domestic work performed by women, thus fostering the perception that labor could be chiefly defined in terms of waged employment. Moreover, working men's associations attempted to restrict women's entry into the industrial labor force and to ensure that they occupied only a subordinate role.

To be sure, changing patterns in the nineteenth-century labor market, especially those associated with INDUSTRIALIZATION, did offer new opportunities to women. Many of them were employed in factories; the scope of teaching positions for them was extended, especially in elementary education; they found work in the expanding retail sector; and they provided nearly all of the staffing for the newly-established nursing profession (see also NIGHTINGALE). However, the impact of these changes should not be exaggerated. The women who continued to be employed in the traditional agricultural and domestic sectors were still mainly servants. Those recruited into factories were chiefly the young and the single (the most mobile), thus reinforcing the tendency for wives to work within the home. Wage rates for female factory labor remained consistently below those for men, while the latter almost monopolized the supervisory posts. Women's work thus persisted as something subsidiary to that of men, whose superior right to employment went generally unquestioned. Within the teaching profession too women remained disadvantaged, with lower rates of pay and no proper career structure. Similarly, in the burgeoning retail trade they were employed merely as ill-paid shop assistants; and even nursing remained firmly under the control of the male medical profession. WORLD WAR I brought further changes, though it proved less of a breakthrough for women than is often imagined. The proportion of females in the workforce certainly increased: for example, in Germany they accounted for 55 percent of employees in 1918 compared with 35 percent at the outbreak of the conflict. However, even the improved pay rates generally available to women in Europe after the war remained below those of men; the war had facilitated the transfer of female labor from the rural and domestic sectors into industry rather than encouraging entirely new entrants to the employment market; and at the conclusion of the conflict many women found themselves replaced by the returning soldiers. Subsequently, the economic crisis of the late 1920s and 1930s (see GREAT DEPRESSIONS[2]) prompted calls for the removal of so-called “double earners” – that is, married women – from the workplace. The fascist regimes of the inter-war years (see FASCISM; NAZISM) also reasserted conventional gender roles, seeking to emphasize female domesticity through insistence on the duties of fecundity and child-rearing.

Yet, even if slow in coming, change was clearly under way. World War I helped to accelerate a trend towards the growth and acceptance of women's participation in the employment market. The process was subsequently furthered by the expansion of “office work” as an increasingly feminized area of labor, and by the role that women played on all the home fronts in WORLD WAR II (see also WARFARE). Moreover, following the RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONS OF 1917, the new BOLSHEVIK regime had proclaimed full gender equality. Though women's opportunities within the SOVIET UNION were often less extensive in practice than on paper, the gains were enough to inspire advocates of equal rights in the West to redouble their efforts. There women's campaigning movements had already been growing in scale and effectiveness. For instance, in 1905 Frenchwomen had gained control of their own earnings, and five years later had obtained the right to initiate paternity suits. By 1939 the French Feminine League for Catholic Action boasted a membership of over 2 million, almost four times greater than its predecessor the Patriotic League of French Women had mobilized in 1913. As for Britain, its Sex Disqualification Removal Act (1919) opened up jury service, the legal profession, and the higher levels of the civil service to women. Above all, the key goal of early twentieth century campaigners, the establishment of the female right to vote, was achieved (at least in some form) in 19 states between 1913 and 1922. Universal suffrage on terms identical to men took longer to attain, being delayed for example in Italy and France until the end of World War II and in Portugal and Switzerland until later still.

Postwar economic recovery brought even more women into the labor force during the 1950s and 1960s. Their employment rates were particularly high in the Eastern bloc, to the point where the German Democratic Republic had over 90 percent of its adult females so registered by 1970. Furthermore, access to education became gender-neutral across Europe at large. Yet despite such gains, a new critique of the treatment of women, generally referred to as “second-wave” feminism, emerged. It is sometimes dated from Simone de Beauvoir's famous statement in The Second Sex (1949): “One is not born, but one becomes, a woman.” This movement was also fed by broader currents from the 1960s, including campaigns for civil rights in the USA and international protests against the Vietnam War. Such feminism insisted that, despite the substantial progress towards political and legal equality, women were still not treated fairly in the employment market with respect to such issues as pay and promotion, nor were their ideas and contributions valued as highly as those of male colleagues. More generally, sexist oppression remained deeply entrenched in social habits and attitudes. The EUROPEAN REVOLUTIONS OF 1989–91 subsequently helped to stimulate a further, so-called “third-wave,” feminist critique that focused in part on the many ambiguities and contradictions that had characterized the treatment of women in the former Soviet bloc. Despite their paper freedoms, they had continued to suffer discrimination in the workplace, to be chiefly responsible for housework and childrearing even while sustaining a job, and to be required to perform additional unpaid civic duties. Many women in eastern Europe consequently welcomed the end of “state-supported feminism” and the opportunity for a return to traditional roles. Thereby they revealed just how much of the feminist analysis of gender was geographically and culturally specific to the West. This encouraged third-wave campaigners to become more aware that women were still far from constituting a single unified category, and that their experiences might be profoundly mediated by a variety of factors, with some (such as geographical location, class, and wealth) being shared with men while others (relating, for example, to child-bearing or to patterns of health) persisted as more gender-specific. Some have argued controversially that sexual identity, like gender, is socially constructed. In doing so, they have highlighted changing attitudes towards varieties of sexual practice, evidenced for example by alterations to laws regarding same-sex relations on the part both of men and women. A smaller number of commentators have even questioned whether, in the light of what was known by the early twenty-first century concerning the diversity of human experience, both gender and sexuality had now ceased to be useful categories of analysis.

Generalgouvernement German term for the area of POLAND which, following the partitioning secretly agreed by the 1939 NAZI–SOVIET PACT, lay between the western regions (especially the Wartheland) directly incorporated into Germany and the eastern ones annexed by the Soviet Union. Labeled as a “protectorate,” this territory was administered from Kraków with particular brutality by Hans Frank. It provided the location for the Third Reich's principal extermination centers (see CONCENTRATION CAMPS; FINAL SOLUTION).

Geneva Conventions Series of international agreements aimed principally at extending, under circumstances of WARFARE between or within states, proper protection to non-combatants (whether fighters who have become severely sick or wounded, or persons who have the status of prisoners of war, medical workers, or civilians). The first convention, formulated in 1864 and eventually backed by 48 states in and beyond Europe, was largely the work of Henri Dunant, the Swiss founder of the International RED CROSS. There were further conventions in 1907 and 1929. After WORLD WAR II a comprehensive overhaul produced the four conventions of 1949, which were very widely ratified and which served to toughen the civilian dimension especially. Two so-called “additional protocols” appeared in 1977. The significance of this whole pattern of development is best assessed alongside the debates conducted at the HAGUE CONFERENCES of 1899 and 1907. The actual or potential role of technological advance (e.g. in the nuclear and biological fields) and of ideological extremism (e.g. as found in NAZISM and various forms of TERRORISM) has affected our understanding of modern interstate and civil warfare in such a way that it has become increasingly difficult to maintain any major distinction between “Hague law” and “Geneva law.” The first category, focused largely on the weapons and methods that might be unacceptable for use, now looks virtually inseparable from the second. This aspires to isolate various classes of non-combatant from the worst effects of those weapons and methods that are capable of being used, whether legitimately or otherwise.

German Confederation Established in 1815, at the VIENNA CONGRESS, this lasted until 1866. It was designed by the great powers to replace the HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE and the Napoleonic CONFEDERATION OF THE RHINE and thus to constrain France. International security, rather than the rights of those petty rulers dispossessed by NAPOLEON I, was uppermost in the victors' minds. Nor did they have any truck with the new ideologies of LIBERALISM and NATIONALISM which, in any case, mustered as yet only limited public enthusiasm. Thus it was self-interested “reasons of state” that dominated the peacemakers' restructuring of Germany on confederal lines (see also FEDERALISM[1]).

The idea of a confederation was already being discussed by Austria (see HABSBURG EMPIRE), PRUSSIA, WÜRTTEMBERG, BAVARIA, and HANOVER in 1814. After becoming part of the wider peace deliberations, its precise form was settled by the so-called Federal Act as incorporated into the final Vienna accords of June 1815. Thus the powers guaranteed the survival and internal stability of the Confederation, in a way intended to lessen the fears of the Prussia and Austrian authorities concerning revolution. The initial membership of 38 states increased to 39 when Hesse-Homburg joined in 1817. Overall, the Confederation's political geography largely resembled that of the Holy Roman Empire, except for loss of the former AUSTRIAN NETHERLANDS. Use of this imperial template resulted in a series of anomalies. The parts of Prussia previously excluded from the Empire still remained outside, and similar treatment continued to be given to the Habsburgs' Hungarian lands. Inside its borders the Confederation contained a number of ethnic minorities (including Czechs, Slovenes, and Italians); but, conversely, there were also Germans living outside its territories, not just in parts of Prussia, but notably in Schleswig and Posen. Another oddity was that certain states (most obviously Hanover and Holstein) were ruled by foreigners. It was the individual princes who retained sovereign authority, while the Federal Diet, operating at Frankfurt under Austrian presidency, possessed few powers. During its history that assembly held only 16 plenary sessions, and it remained dominated by Austria and Prussia, whose rivalry often frustrated the workings of the many inner committees.

All this disappointed those nationalists and liberals who wished the Confederation to promote GERMAN UNIFICATION. Instead, its purpose was to stymie any such development; constitutional amendments needed the support of all 39 ambassadors, while declarations of war required a two-thirds majority. Some progress was made in 1821 when the Confederation permitted the creation of a federal army, largely drawn from Austria, Prussia, and Bavaria, yet the project was undermined by failure to agree upon a commander-in-chief and by the insistence of smaller states upon retaining control of their own troops. Even so, most Germans were long content with the Confederation, as were the great powers who witnessed the construct offering stability to central Europe for nearly half a century.

Certainly, in the eyes of METTERNICH, the Confederation was designed to sustain the existing order. In 1819 he had the Diet approve the CARLSBAD DECREES limiting the activities of the BURSCHENSCHAFTEN. A year later, it endorsed the Vienna Final Act restricting the growth of constitutions within member states. Neither measure prevented the outbreak of revolution in 1830, though in Germany only Brunswick, Hesse-Cassel, SAXONY, and Hanover were significantly affected (see REVOLUTIONS OF 1830–2). This did not stop Metternich from using the Diet to administer in 1834 a further dose of reactionary medicine to cure the rash of LIBERALISM. However, in that same year the greater threat to the Confederation was posed by the expansion of the Prussian-dominated customs union, or ZOLLVEREIN. This was the first time that the German states had put the greater good ahead of their separate sovereignties. This initiative was not lost on liberals and nationalists whose numbers were starting to include merchants and businessmen capable of appreciating the advantages of a more unified Germany. They also began to look towards Prussia as the state most capable of fulfilling their disparate aims.

In the REVOLUTIONS of 1848–9 the Confederation found itself temporarily dislodged by the FRANKFURT PARLIAMENT and by FREDERICK WILLIAM IV'S attempts to promote a Prussian-dominated Germany (see also ERFURT UNION). The OLMÜTZ AGREEMENT of 1850, followed by revival of the federal Diet, appeared to restore Austrian primacy. Remaining unreformed and yielding to Habsburg pressure, the Confederation now rescinded various constitutional gains made during the revolutions, even putting the federal navy up for auction. Nationalists and liberals increasingly reached the conclusion that the Confederation was beyond reform and that a new framework was required, although they were divided as to its nature. More crucially, Prussia was no longer prepared to cooperate so readily with Austria within the Diet, especially after BISMARCK became Berlin's representative at Frankfurt in 1851. Four years later, he thwarted Austrian plans for intervention in the CRIMEAN WAR on the side of France and Britain. As Prussian minister-president in 1862, Bismarck blocked yet further attempts to reform the Confederation, but used it as a means of exerting pressure on Austria, notably during the SCHLESWIG-HOLSTEIN crisis of 1864–5. When the AUSTRO-PRUSSIAN WAR erupted in 1866, a majority of the other member states supported the Habsburg side. Had Austria won, the Confederation might have lingered on in some form; in the event, it gave way to the Prussian-controlled NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION of 1867. (See also Maps 3 and 5)

German Democratic Republic (GDR) Sometimes known by the acronym DDR (Deutsche Demokratische Republik) or informally as “East Germany,” this state began its 40-year history in October 1949 shortly after the launching of the FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY (FRG, or “West Germany”). The GDR's borders, including a frontier with Poland running along the ODER-NEISSE LINE, matched those of the Soviet zone of occupation established after Germany's defeat in World War II. Thus, apart from an access “corridor” to the rest of the FRG, the three interconnected areas of Berlin under American, British, and French administration now remained surrounded by territory that continued to be effectively under Soviet control – a situation already prevailing during STALIN'S recent blockade which, for 11 months starting in June 1948, had left the city's Western-occupied zones accessible only by air (see BERLIN BLOCKADE). From the outset the SOVIET UNION maintained firm political and military hold over the GDR. The first leader of this repressive communist regime (see COMMUNISM) was ULBRICHT, who had returned from self-imposed exile in the USSR at the end of HITLER'S dictatorship and established the “socialist Unity Party.” He was rightly trusted by Stalin as an unquestioning follower of the Kremlin's policies for eastern Europe in the COLD WAR, and he developed a police-state whose STASI bore a strong resemblance to the Soviet NKVD as well as to the dissolved Nazi GESTAPO. The GDR duly joined COMECON in 1950 and the WARSAW PACT in 1955, two years after Ulbricht had collaborated with the Soviet authorities to suppress in East Berlin the beginnings of a dissident movement. His regime similarly supported KHRUSHCHEV'S crushing of the HUNGARIAN RISING OF 1956 and BREZHNEV'S military assault of 1968 against Czechoslovakia's PRAGUE SPRING. Between those dates Ulbricht had authorized, in 1961, construction of the BERLIN WALL, aimed at preventing a constant outflow of fugitives towards the West. Domestic repression continued into the era of his successor, HONECKER, who took over in 1971. By this stage, however, the GDR was also having to address the policies of OSTPOLITIK that were starting to find favor in the FRG. At the end of 1972 East and West Germany signed the so-called BASIC TREATY through which, without formally abandoning all aspirations towards eventual unity, they signaled mutual recognition of their separate and independent existences (a prerequisite for entry of each into the UNITED NATIONS in 1973). These improved relations offered significant benefits to the GDR, helping it to become the most developed economy within the sphere of Soviet “satellite” states. However, the far greater prosperity of West Germans was something that Honecker found it increasingly difficult to conceal or explain away. He weakened his position by refusing to heed the reformist promptings which, from 1985 onward, came with increasing urgency from the new Soviet leader, GORBACHEV. During 1989 (see EUROPEAN REVOLUTIONS OF 1989–91) the westwards exodus of East Germans as other Soviet-bloc border controls relaxed, and the internal mass demonstrations erupting in Leipzig and Berlin against Honecker's regime, reached the point where in mid-October he was forced to resign. After the breaching of the Berlin wall three weeks later, any real future for the GDR's independent survival rapidly disappeared. The free elections of March 1990 produced victory for the Christian Democrats (see CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY), who were now emerging to operate in ever closer liaison with their West German counterparts. For most practical purposes, the East German state (with a population of some 17 millions) was already dead by July. In that month the four leading victor-powers of 1945 reconvened to endorse a scheme of GERMAN REUNIFICATION based on the absorption of all GDR territory into an enlarged FRG under the leadership of KOHL. This became formally effective on October 3, 1990.

German empire This regime lasted from the time of victory in the FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR until defeat in WORLD WAR I, thus spanning the period 1871–1918 during which the German population rose from 41 to 68 million. Largely controlled by PRUSSIA and administered from Berlin, it was often called the Second Reich – a label that evoked memories of the medieval “HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE of the German Nation” (eventually led by the HABSBURG dynasty from the fifteenth century onward, and finally dissolved in 1806). The proclamation of the new HOHENZOLLERN Empire at Versailles in January 1871 needs evaluation within the broader framework of GERMAN UNIFICATION. In essence, though shallow interpretations frequently assume that 1871 marked the clear fulfillment of German NATIONALISM, issues of incompleteness deserve equal attention. These include the realization that the Second Reich embodied only a kleindeutsch (“little-German”) geographical solution. Mainly through excluding Austria, this left millions of German-speakers outside the new empire. Moreover, while WILLIAM I of Prussia had hoped to become “Emperor of Germany,” his fellow-princes offered nothing more compromising to their own continuing sovereignties than the title German Emperor. This subtle, yet vital, distinction underlined the FEDERALISM[1] of the imperial constitution. Though Prussia rapidly consolidated its political and economic pre-eminence, the new Kaiser's regime had to cope with 25 other German states as well.

This “Wilhelmine” empire's history until 1890 is barely separable from that of the career of BISMARCK, the principal architect of this version of German unity who then served for nearly two decades as the first imperial chancellor. Embodying the PROTESTANTISM and CONSERVATISM favored by the Prussian JUNKER landowning class, he campaigned vigorously against all whose loyalty to the new reich seemed questionable. These included the one-third or so of its subjects who were Catholics (see KULTURKAMPF), as well as the supporters of the rapidly growing SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC PARTY (SDP). Regarding the latter, a law of 1878 (which eventually lapsed in 1890) attempted with only limited success to restrict activities that promoted SOCIALISM. In the mid-1880s Bismarck sought further to limit the SPD's appeal by pioneering a rival version of WELFARISM based on a limited and paternalistic model of state-sponsored workers' insurance. Such social issues were to become increasingly important. In addition to generating rapid enlargement of the urban WORKING CLASS, the economic dynamism of the Second Reich (especially notable in its new electrical and chemical businesses) produced tensions between “iron” and “rye” – that is, between an increasingly vital cadre of industrial entrepreneurs and the representatives of a traditional Junker ascendancy. In matters of European diplomacy, the cautious policy of stabilization pursued by Bismarck after 1871 was exemplified in the DUAL ALLIANCE with Austria (1879) and more generally in the THREE EMPERORS' LEAGUE (1881–7) that involved Russia too. On the global scene, however, he yielded in the mid-1880s to expansionist pressures for the Reich to enhance its status by participating in the scramble for colonies that soon led to annexation of South-West Africa, Togoland, and Cameroon (see IMPERIALISM; BERLIN CONFERENCE).

Following the deaths in 1888 both of William I and of his immediate successor FREDERICK III, the era of Bismarckian control moved rapidly towards its conclusion. By 1890 the new Kaiser, WILLIAM II, had maneuvered the “Iron Chancellor” into resignation. The latter's determination to maintain positive relations with the tsarist regime was not shared by his replacement, CAPRIVI, under whose administration (1890–4) there developed instead precisely that FRANCO-RUSSIAN ALLIANCE which Bismarck had striven to frustrate. International tensions were further increased by William's impetuosity and by the general willingness of his subsequent chancellors – Hohenlohe (1894–1900), BÜLOW (1900–9), and BETHMANN HOLLWEG (1909–17) – to promote expansionist policies of WELTPOLITIK (see also PAN-GERMANISM). Some historians have argued that these were consciously devised to maximize unity between “iron” and “rye.” The Reich adopted a greatly enlarged armament program that included, through TIRPITZ'S naval ministry, the creation of a major battle-fleet. Germany's bid for maritime hegemony was a leading factor in driving Britain towards closer alliance with France and Russia. Although the Anglo-French accord held firm against pressures from the Reich in the MOROCCAN CRISES of 1905 and 1911, Russia came off less well when the Germans lent support to Austria-Hungary in the diplomatic confrontation that followed Vienna's annexation of BOSNIA- HERZOGOVINA in 1908. By mid-1914 the Berlin government, fearing “encirclement,” had largely accepted that some kind of general war could not be indefinitely avoided, and that German interests would be best served by embarking on this sooner rather than later. Thus, in the JULY CRISIS of that year, Bethmann Hollweg took the risk of spurring his Austro-Hungarian allies into unrelenting resistance to SERBIA'S ambitions.

Upon the outbreak of WORLD WAR I, Germans showed general enthusiasm for the conflict ahead. Even the SPD, the largest single party in the Reichstag after 1912, suspended its internationalist scruples and voted the necessary war-credits. The Reich was gambling, in effect, upon decisive victory in a short conflict. However, once the SCHLIEFFEN PLAN failed to produce this outcome, Germany found itself increasingly trapped in a two-front war of attrition, during which political as well as military leadership became increasingly dominated by HINDENBURG and LUDENDORFF. Despite the odds against them, their belief in victory survived into the early summer of 1918 – by which time they had imposed the BREST LITOVSK treaty on BOLSHEVIK Russia and launched a renewed offensive in the West. Against this background, the swift collapse of the German war effort during the autumn of that year was all the more devastating to an ill-prepared public. After the Kiel naval mutiny of October 29, the process of imperial dissolution became uncontrollable (see GERMAN REVOLUTION OF 1918–19). Two days before armistice was agreed on November 11, Kaiser William fled to Holland and a new regime was proclaimed in the form that soon developed into the WEIMAR REPUBLIC.

German Federal Republic (see FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY)

German reunification The complex history of GERMAN UNIFICATION itself helps to explain why this related term possesses two distinguishable meanings.

The earlier one, now often forgotten and certainly overshadowed by the later and still current usage, encapsulated the aspirations of those who, between 1871 and the later 1930s, believed that BISMARCK'S vision of territorial unity had involved splitting the nation through exclusion of the German-speaking Austrians. During the Wilhelmine era (see GERMAN EMPIRE) such desires for a “Greater Germany” (Grossdeutschland) were reflected in the movement of PAN-GERMANISM, and thereafter they remained central to HITLER'S quest for ANSCHLUSS with Austria, briefly fulfilled during the years 1938–45.

This same label is now applied, however, to the significantly different territorial objective supported by most Germans in the period after 1945, and attained in 1990. Here the aim focused no longer on Austria, but on removing the division (arising from the zonal occupation arrangements imposed by the Allied victors at the end of WORLD WAR II) that by 1949 had become formalized into the separate creations of the FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY (FRG) and the GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC (GDR), which were left confronting one another across the Iron Curtain. Also known respectively as “West Germany” and “East Germany,” these two states had no prospect of “reunification” while the COLD WAR prevailed, especially as NATO and WARSAW PACT forces continued to face each other along the shared border. Tensions arising from the deepening separation (see ABGRENZUNG) between their orientations towards CAPITALISM in the one case and COMMUNISM in the other were further accentuated by West Berlin's anomalous status as an enclave within GDR territory (see also BERLIN BLOCKADE). The sudden erection of the BERLIN WALL in 1961 symbolized the seeming permanence of division. From the later 1960s onward, however, there was some easing of relations due mainly to West Germany's pursuit of a new OSTPOLITIK. The 1972 BASIC TREATY between the two states, reflecting a growing rhetoric of “friendship,” involved mutual acknowledgment of their separate and independent status. Even so, neither party renounced the principle of reunification.

Realistic prospects for its implementation began to emerge only in the late 1980s, amidst the ferment of reform in the SOVIET UNION and its “satellite” bloc which was stirred by GORBACHEV and which led on to the REVOLUTIONS OF 1989–91. The collapse of Honecker's control over the GDR in mid-October1989, followed by the breaching of the Berlin Wall in early November, offered the possibility of absorbing the East German regions into the FRG, while also involving the challenge of molding into a single whole the two substantially different societies that had developed since the later 1940s. A de facto currency union, based on the West German mark, became swiftly operative. However, since many Europeans had long regarded “the German problem” as likely to be one problem the less so long as the postwar division survived, the issue of whether to proceed to a full political reunification founded on enlargement of the existing FRG was one of great international delicacy. With no ready alternative available to them, the four powers which in 1945 had constituted the principal Allies (the USA, the USSR, France, and the UK, now led by George Bush, Gorbachev, MITTERRAND, and a particularly skeptical THATCHER) eventually endorsed, in July 1990, the case argued by Chancellor KOHL of the FRG that reunification should be effected on this basis. Their hope was that the revived nation-state, with its large population of some 80 millions, would continue to embody the spirit of a European Germany rather than rekindle any threat of a German Europe. Within that context it was fortunate that Kohl did not persist in his initial reluctance formally to recognize that the ODER-NEISSE LINE should remain as the easternmost limit of the combined territories. This concession from him was a precondition for Gorbachev's promise to withdraw Soviet forces from the former GDR (a process completed by 1994 under YELTSIN, at the head of Russia's successor regime). As for timing of reunification, Kohl was keen to complete the swift annexation of East Berlin and of the other five new federal Llsquänder, and to engineer their speedy transition from a central command economy to one based on “the social market.” The effects of the chancellor's insistence on haste subsequently attracted bitter controversy within Germany, and also worried other members of the European Union, which itself became enlarged through this same eastward extension (see EUROPEAN INTEGRATION). After the reunification was formally proclaimed on October 3, 1990, the consequential costs falling on the former “Wessis,” together with the collapse of the version of communist WELFARISM to which the “Ossis” had become accustomed, undoubtedly provoked much ongoing tension between the two formerly divided areas of the country. Even so, it is doubtful whether (particularly amidst the unstable conditions prevailing across much of central and eastern Europe in 1990) any slower inauguration of a reunited Germany would have been feasible at that juncture, or would have proved less economically and socially painful to its people over the longer term. (See also Maps 11 and 12)

German Revolution of 1918–19 This erupted towards the end of WORLD WAR I, on October 29, 1918, when sailors at Kiel mutinied and refused to engage in a suicidal mission, the so-called “death ride,” against the British Navy in the North Sea. This was the cue for demonstrations across Germany in support of the sailors – protests which were accompanied by demands for an immediate cessation of war and for an expansion of recent political reforms that had turned Germany into a constitutional monarchy. Events quickly spiraled out of control. On November 7, the anarchist Kurt Eisner seized control in Munich and two days later Emperor WILLIAM II abdicated. Power was transferred to EBERT, leader of the SOCIAL DEMOCRATIC PARTY, who quickly formed a coalition government which agreed an armistice on November 11. This administration was initially supported by the many workers' and soldiers' councils that had sprung up across the country. Though these were seen as revolutionary by the middle classes and as a genuine threat by Ebert, they were dominated by social democrats and were far removed from the Russian SOVIETS. There was, however, an element of the left, represented by the Spartacus League, which wanted to press for a Marxist revolution and scupper the advent of liberal democracy. This led to the abortive SPARTACIST RISING of January 5–12, 1919 which was brutally crushed by the FREIKORPS. Elections on January 19 proved a disappointment to the left, but indicated that an overwhelming proportion of the population favored a parliamentary democracy. In February 1919 Ebert became the first president of the German Republic, and in late July the constitution of this so-called WEIMAR REPUBLIC was formally adopted.

German unification Treatment of this topic is usually concentrated on the period from 1848 to 1871, during which BISMARCK worked towards achieving for PRUSSIA the leadership of a unified German state (see Map 5). However, it is only within a wider chronological framework that historians can properly review the problems surrounding the defining geography of “Germany.”

Over many centuries it was particularism rather than shared identity that best characterized the regions which the French sometimes called les Allemagnes. The energies of those living there were often spent resisting pressures to turn the formal existence of a single Reich into a reality effective enough to reduce the independence enjoyed by its constituent states. Nor were the outer frontiers of Germanic settlement clearly defined by culture, language, or physical geography. All this mattered more sharply because of the one geographical fact that proved inescapable: Germans were in occupation of Mittelland, “center-territory” lying between two broad areas of contrasting Slav and Latin ethnicity. Thus any attempt at expanding, or even simply at internally consolidating, the German lands tended to arouse anxieties in much of Europe at large.

What became known as the First Reich, founded by Charlemagne, finally expired in 1806 amidst the NAPOLEONIC WARS. From 1438 (except for a brief interlude between 1740 and 1745) the imperial title had been monopolized by the Austrian HABSBURG dynasty, but by the eighteenth century this ruling house enjoyed only limited control over the 300-plus semi-autonomous units that comprised “the HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE of the German Nation.” Such was the condition of Kleinstaaterei (“small-stateness”) from which the Germanic world would need to escape if it wished to achieve unitary political nationhood. In this context Austria's position was further complicated by the extent of its non-German (including Magyar, Slav, and Italian) possessions, and by the emergence of Prussia as a potential rival from within the Teutonic sphere. It was NAPOLEON I who proved decisive in simplifying the German state-structure so as to ease the effectiveness of his own “protecting” policies. Only about thirty units survived to comprise the CONFEDERATION OF THE RHINE that he devised in 1806. Though excluded from that Napoleonic creation, Austria and Prussia then became the most powerful elements within its successor – the GERMAN CONFEDERATION of 39 states sanctioned by the VIENNA CONGRESS of 1814–15. It was natural that the permanent presidency of the new federal Diet in Frankfurt should fall to the Habsburg regime. However, this reacknowledgment of primacy for Austria was not something which METTERNICH, its chief minister, ever sought to convert into a nationalistic cause that might destabilize the rest of a multi-ethnic empire whose non-Germanic lands remained largely outside the Confederation. The Prussian authorities too were suspicious of the populist NATIONALISM that had been aroused during the later stages of the war against France. Moreover, in “the third Germany,” those who ruled such medium-sized states as HANOVER, SAXONY, BAVARIA, and WÜRTTEMBERG were generally unenthusiastic about any schemes of unification that might threaten their own freedom of action. Thus many German nationalists of the Metternich epoch believed that the Confederation was serving chiefly to frustrate their objectives.

The REVOLUTIONS OF 1848–9 revealed disarray on every side. The German rulers survived because their vacillations proved less damaging than the divisions that weakened their opponents. Moderates and radicals squabbled over constitutional issues, including the balance between federal and central authority (see FEDERALISM[1]). Above all, just when the responsibility for defining Germany seemed to be passing from international to national control, those seeking to redraw the map failed to agree upon its outlines. Disputes over regions of mixed ethnicity showed how limited was the LIBERALISM of the popularly-elected FRANKFURT PARLIAMENT, which resisted ceding areas already belonging to the Confederation. Territorial issues were also vital to the fundamental controversy over Grossdeutschland versus Kleindeutschland – “great Germany” with Austria, or “little Germany” without. Leadership of some form of nation-state was on offer to Vienna, but only on terms that imperiled Habsburg control over the dynasty's non-Germanic lands. The alternative was supremacy of HOHENZOLLERN Prussia within a smaller, but arguably divided, Germany. Procrastination by the nationalists at Frankfurt eventually allowed the rulers to regain control of events. By April 1849 it was clear not only that FRANCIS JOSEPH I, the new Habsburg emperor, would refuse to pay the grossdeutsch price but also that FREDERICK WILLIAM IV of Prussia would spurn a kleindeutsch imperial title picked from the “gutter” of a popular assembly.

Following the OLMÜTZ AGREEMENT of 1850, Austria resumed its formal primacy within the restored Confederation. With hindsight, especially focused on Prussian INDUSTRIALIZATION and domination of the ZOLLVEREIN (the German customs union), it might seem plain that the days of Habsburg pre-eminence were now strictly numbered. But many contemporaries thought otherwise, and the eventual outcome owed much to the domestic and diplomatic blunders that the Austrian government went on to commit even after 1848–9. The issue was still unsettled when in 1862 Bismarck became Prussian premier. It remained open even as he urged his king to resist Austrian proposals about tightening the federal bonds under Habsburg authority (1863), and even while the two powers were fighting jointly against Denmark over SCHLESWIG-HOLSTEIN (1864). Matters were resolved only through a form of German civil war waged in 1866, when Austria (aided by most of the Confederation's smaller states) and Prussia came directly to blows. Bismarck used his swift victory in this AUSTRO-PRUSSIAN WAR not to annex Habsburg territory but, most crucially, to exclude the rival power from the new NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION of 1867. He also completed the absorption of Schleswig-Holstein, and made the Prussian domain continuous from east to west by dissolving such buffer states as Hanover. It was only after the FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR of 1870 that Bavaria and the other minor states south of the Main – areas of largely Catholic political culture which Bismarck wished to secure perhaps less for their positive allure than because of the continuing dangers generated by their distrust of Prussia – became integrated into a new reich which also included the captured territory of ALSACE-LORRAINE.

It is often supposed that, once the princes had acclaimed WILLIAM I of Prussia as “German emperor” at Versailles in January 1871, the aims of national unification were fulfilled. However, subsequent history makes little sense unless the elements of incompleteness are properly recognized. Although Prussia was now the leading force in German politics, the existence of 25 other states (including three further monarchies) within the federal structure of the Second Reich (see GERMAN EMPIRE) was not without significance. There was no national anthem, and only belatedly an imperial flag. Nor were the north–south tensions between areas of Protestant and Catholic predominance readily resolved. Others strains resulted from the fact that nearly 3 million French-speakers and 2.5 million Poles – as well as smaller ethnic minorities – were now living inside a Reich that strongly privileged the principle of Germanic nationhood. Even more important was the converse problem of the 15 million German-speakers who still remained outside its boundaries, whether in Austria or elsewhere. Under these circumstances Bismarck's reluctance to risk further expansion within Europe became increasingly challenged. Many critics viewed his version of unification not as the fulfillment of German territoriality, but rather as one stage in a wider program. Those to whom the nation-state meant Grossdeutschland could hardly be satisfied with the 1871 settlement, and it was their advocacy of PAN-GERMANISM that became increasingly prominent after Kaiser WILLIAM II'S dismissal of Bismarck in 1890 and through to the epoch of WORLD WAR I.

Even at the end of that conflict the victors' anxiety about the grossdeutsch project remained sharp enough for them to write into the Treaties of VERSAILLES and ST GERMAIN an explicit veto on merger between Germany and the little that was left of post-imperial Austria. One early result was the opening page of HITLER'S Mein Kampf, where the future leader of the Third Reich proclaimed his commitment to precisely such an ANSCHLUSS. Under his dictatorship Grossdeutschland was indeed achieved, surviving from 1938 to 1945. Defeat in WORLD WAR II, however, led not simply to the downfall of Hitler's version of German unity but even to an erasure of Bismarck's less ambitious brand of national consolidation. By the later 1940s the partition of Germany, East and West, constituted one of the most striking features on the map of COLD WAR Europe. A remolded rhetoric of GERMAN REUNIFICATION would eventually develop in response to this new division, but not until 1989–90 was it possible to convert this objective into an internationally acceptable reality.

Germany (see, principally and in broad chronological sequence, HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE; HABSBURG EMPIRE; CONFEDERATION OF THE RHINE; GERMAN CONFEDERATION; BISMARCK; AUSTRO-PRUSSIAN WAR; NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION; GERMAN UNIFICATION; GERMAN EMPIRE; WEIMAR REPUBLIC; HITLER; NAZISM; FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY; GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC; GERMAN REUNIFICATION; and note particularly Maps 5 and 10)

Gestapo Acronym from the German term Geheimestaatspolizei (Secret State Police). This instrument of Nazi oppression (see NAZISM) was established under GOERING in 1933. It was transferred to the control of HIMMLER as leader of the SCHUTZSTAFFEL (SS) in 1934, and within that context was merged into Reinhard Heydrich's SICHERHEITSDIENST (SD) in 1939. By 1943 the Gestapo had some 45,000 members, alongside a host of informers. Its main function was to identify and eliminate opponents of HITLER'S regime, by brutal methods freed from any conventional legal checks. Its operations (e.g. in regard to the Nazi slave-labor program and to the administration of CONCENTRATION CAMPS) became increasingly indistinguishable from those of the SS at large. At the NUREMBERG TRIALS the Gestapo was successfully prosecuted as a criminal organization.

Gheorghiu-Dej, Gheorghe (1901–65), General Secretary (1945–55) and First Secretary (1955–65) of the Communist Party of ROMANIA, and Head of State (1961–5). Having been imprisoned from 1933 to 1944 for fomenting labor unrest, he emerged towards the end of World War II as an activist suspicious of those fellow-communist politicians who had been learning their trade in Moscow. As general secretary, he supervised the purges that secured one-party control over the republic inaugurated in 1948. By 1958 he had succeeded in negotiating with KHRUSHCHEV a removal of Soviet troops from his country. This also encouraged Gheorghiu-Dej to pursue, until his death in office, positive INDUSTRIALIZATION policies that were often at odds with COMECON'S strategy of maintaining a predominantly agrarian Romania. Such tensions with Moscow continued after he was succeeded by his longstanding protégé CEAUŞESCU.

Gibraltar A promontory of the Iberian peninsula at the strategically vital western entrance into the Mediterranean. By the 1713 Peace of Utrecht Spain ceded it to Britain, but on terms giving the former the right of retrieval in the event of any relinquishment of sovereignty by the latter. Since then this tiny territory – some 6 sq km (2.5 square miles) in area – has remained a British colony. Though German plans to capture it during World War II received a lukewarm response from FRANCO, the Spanish leader sustained a long campaign (involving e.g. border restrictions) aimed at reclaiming Gibraltar. His more democratic successors continued this even when Spain followed the UK into membership of the European Community (see EUROPEAN INTEGRATION). At the beginning of the twenty-first century the Gibraltarian community itself (now numbering some 30,000) remained the principal bastion of resistance to any extension of Spanish sovereignty, even in the compromise form of a condominium with the UK. By then the Gibraltar issue had become something of a paradox – a case where, with any first option of independence formally negated by the 1713 provisions, the principle of self-determination had blocked, rather than spurred, DECOLONIZATION even within Europe itself.

Gierek, Edward (1913–2001), First Secretary of the Communist Party of POLAND (1970–80). Born in Austrian Silesia, he joined the Party after emigrating to France. During World War II Gierek served in the Belgian RESISTANCE. He returned to Silesia (now Polish) in 1948, and entered the POLITBURO in 1959. He succeeded GOMUŁKA as party and government leader in 1970, pursuing thereafter policies closely aligned to the SOVIET UNION'S requirements. His regime became increasingly dependent upon excessive borrowing of hard currency, which was then squandered by perpetuating rather than reforming the structural inefficiencies of the Polish communist economy. In 1980 Gierek resigned (soon to be replaced by JARUZELSKI), when confronted by the workers' protests against high inflation that were now being orchestrated through the newly emergent SOLIDARITY movement.

Gioberti, Vincenzo (1801–52), Prime Minister of PIEDMONT-SARDINIA(1848–9). This Catholic priest became a court chaplain early in the reign of CHARLES ALBERT. Though Gioberti never joined YOUNG ITALY, he did share MAZZINI'S hostility to continued Austrian influence over the peninsula. Suspected of political intrigue, he resigned his position in 1833 and suffered a short jail sentence. Thereafter he travelled to Paris and Brussels, subsisting as a philosophy tutor while also campaigning for ITALIAN UNIFICATION. At this stage he promoted FEDERALISM[1], in the “neo-Guelf” version envisaging papal political leadership. His most famous work, The Moral and Civil Primacy of the Italians (1843), argued for this solution as the means of restoring the nation's historic authority. Though wary of a royal amnesty granted in 1846, Gioberti returned to Piedmont early in the REVOLUTIONS OF 1848–9 and was elected a deputy for Turin. Disappointed by Pope PIUS IX'S hesitancy, he welcomed the constitution accepted by the Piedmontese monarchy in April 1848 and towards the end of that year he assumed the premiership. However, the accession of VICTOR EMMANUEL II in March 1849 effectively ended Gioberti's political career. Having exiled himself to Paris, he continued as an advocate of the RISORGIMENTO – albeit as one who had now abandoned papal-controlled federalism in favor of the creation of a united state based broadly on liberal-democratic principles.

Giolitti, Giovanni (1842–1928), Prime Minister of Italy (1892–3, 1903–6, 1906–9, 1911–14, 1920–1). A native of Piedmont, he trained as a civil servant before entering parliament as a liberal in 1882. The first of the five administrations that he headed as premier collapsed as the result of a financial scandal. Giolitti resumed his cabinet career in 1901 as interior minister, reclaiming the premiership two years later. He showed mastery of the politics of TRASFORMISMO, and during the pre-1914 period promoted progressive measures that laid the foundations for WELFARISM. So as to integrate socialists within the parliamentary system, Giolitti adopted a policy of strict government non-intervention in labor disputes, enabling TRADE UNIONISM to improve salaries in both the industrial and agricultural sectors. In 1911 he supported the ITALO-TURKISH WAR, resulting in the gain of Libya, as a means of uniting the nation. The troubled conduct of that conflict may have influenced his advocacy of Italian non-intervention at the outbreak of WORLD WAR I. In 1920, despite his venerable age, he was viewed as the one man with the necessary gravitas to restore order in an Italy convulsed by strikes and nationalist agitation. Though he ousted D'ANNUNZIO from Fiume, his political abilities were deserting him. He mistakenly believed that MUSSOLINI could be brought to heel, and offered assistance to fascist candidates in the 1921 elections. After the MATEOTTI murder in 1924, Giolitti belatedly denounced FASCISM.

Girondins Associated with the development of the FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1789, this political faction operated within the Legislative Assembly and the early CONVENTION. Its members gained their name because of the prominence of certain deputies from the department of the Gironde (such as Vergniaud, Gensonné, and Guadet), but they were also often referred to as Brissotins or Rolandins, by reference to the notable role played by Jacques-Pierre BRISSOT and M. and Mme Roland. Based initially upon a network of friendships, the Girondins solidified around the call for a war (eventually declared in April 1792), which rallied further support from independent deputies. A bitter struggle for control of the Assembly developed between them and the more radical JACOBINS, generally referred to as the Montagnards (or Mountain) because of their occupation of the highest tier of seats. The two factions were divided as much by personal animosity as by issues of principle. Both were anticlerical, republican, and supportive of LAISSEZ-FAIRE economics. However, the Girondins were greater advocates of the provinces' right to run their affairs without interference from Paris (see also FEDERALISM[2]). Conversely, the Montagnards were more successful in currying popular support within the capital, using this to orchestrate the expulsion of 29 Girondin deputies from the Convention on June 2, 1793. Together with two ministers, all of them were subsequently arrested and executed in the course of THE TERROR.

Giscard d'Estaing, Valéry (1926–), first non-Gaullist President of the French FIFTH REPUBLIC (1974–81). Born into a well-off family with aristocratic connections, he fought in the Liberation (1944) and entered parliament in 1951. After DE GAULLE'S return to power Giscard served as finance minister from 1961 to 1966 and again, under POMPIDOU, from 1969 to 1974. In 1962 he had formed his own conservative political grouping, the Républicains-Indépendants, which maintained a certain distance from the Gaullists even while helping to keep them in office. The failure of the latter to produce a strong candidate in the presidential contest of 1974 enabled Giscard himself to rally the right and register victory over the socialist MITTERRAND. The new president's early legislation was liberal, notably the 1975 Veil Law which legalized abortion during the first ten weeks of pregnancy. Yet the reforming impulse evaporated due to the global recession (see OIL CRISES), as well as to Giscard's own limited political vision and lack of a strong parliamentary base. While he turned increasingly to the promotion of EUROPEAN INTEGRATION, the president's domestic standing suffered from his austerity measures, his high-handed attitudes, his disputes with the Gaullist CHIRAC, and his acceptance of a gift of diamonds from the African dictator Jean-Bédel Bokassa. Not even his restructuring of center-right party support, through formation of the Union pour la Démocratie Française (UDF) in 1978, could avert Mitterrand's electoral revenge in the polls of 1981. Giscard continued to preside over the UDF until 1996. As a senior international statesman, he later headed the Convention on the Future of Europe (2002–3), whose proposals for a European Constitution became the object of widespread controversy.

glasnost (see under GORBACHEV)

Gleichschaltung German term often translated as “coordination,” used to describe the rapid and brutal nazification (see NAZISM) of politics and civil society that occurred following HITLER'S accession to power in January 1933. Leading examples included the abolition of provincial state governments and of all rival political parties, the replacement of trade unions by the Labor Front, the purging of the civil service, and the creation of a Reich Chamber of Culture. (See also ENABLING ACT)

Gneisenau, Count August von (1760–1831), Prussian soldier and military reformer. The son of a Saxon army officer, Gneisenau was destined from birth for a military career. He served initially in the Austrian cavalry, then with the British forces in North America, before joining the Prussian army in 1786. His career was boosted when SCHARNHORST appointed him to the Military Reorganization Committee, charged with the reform of Prussian forces after the defeat at JENA-AUERSTLSQUÄDT in 1806. Intelligent and clear-sighted, Gneisenau helped to introduce compulsory military service, remove incompetent officers, and base promotion upon talent. In 1813–15 he served as an outstanding chief-of-staff with BLÜCHER in the final campaigns of the NAPOLEONIC WARS, and was ennobled after the battle of LEIPZIG. A liberal in political outlook, he resigned in 1816 when FREDERICK WILLIAM III reneged on promises to institute a constitution. Gneisenau died as a victim of the cholera epidemic, like CLAUSEWITZ, whom he resembled in many respects.

Goebbels, Joseph (1907–45), Germany's Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda (1933–45). Possessing a doctorate from Heidelberg University, he joined the Nazi party (see NAZISM) in 1922. Four years later HITLER appointed him as its Gauleiter in Berlin. Having entered the Reichstag in 1928, Goebbels served from 1929 onwards as the Nazis' propaganda chief. Assuming ministerial responsibility for that domain in 1933, he played a leading role in the implementation of GLEICHSCHALTUNG and in exerting an increasingly totalitarian control (see TOTALITARIANISM) over all the media of COMMUNICATIONS and culture. Though unimpressive in physique, he proved to be one of the party's best orators. He was an especially astute student of crowd pyschology (see MASS SOCIETY), and his manipulative talents were perhaps most evident in the famous call for “total war” that he made to a rally in the Berlin sports palace early in 1943. He remained alongside Hitler to the end, and was named chancellor in the Führer's final testament. However, within hours of the latter's suicide in the Berlin bunker, it was there too that Goebbels poisoned his six children and then (as previously arranged) had himself and his wife shot by an orderly. His diaries survived, now ranking amongst the most revealing primary sources for the study of Nazism.

Goering, Hermann (1893–1946), one of the leading champions of NAZISM. Goering emerged from WORLD WAR I as a celebrated German air-hero. He joined HITLER'S party in 1922, and, as the first leader of the SA (see STURMABTEILUNG), participated in the BEER HALL PUTSCH of 1923. Having fled abroad after its failure, he returned home in 1928 and entered the Reichstag. He was already president of that body when Hitler came to power. Goering's first cabinet appointment was as Prussian minister of the interior and chief of police and GESTAPO. He had an important role in the early development of the Nazi CONCENTRATION CAMPS, and in planning the party purge known as the NIGHT OF THE LONG KNIVES. In 1935 he became supreme commander of the Luftwaffe, and in the following year assumed additional responsibility for the Four-Year Plan that aimed to prepare the German economy for territorial expansion and war. He was also directly involved in the ANSCHLUSS of 1938. Such was his protean pluralism that, by the outbreak of WORLD WAR II, he had the status of Hitler's acknowledged successor. In July 1940 Goering was given the title of reich marshal, but from that pinnacle his career went into steep decline. He was blamed particularly for the Luftwaffe's failure to register victory against the RAF in 1940 (see BATTLE OF BRITAIN), and then for inadequacies of air-supply during the siege of STALINGRAD and for Germany's increasing vulnerability to Anglo-American bombing. Rivals for Hitler's favor – especially HIMMLER, GOEBBELS, BORMANN, and SPEER – constantly undermined Goering's position by highlighting his personal vanity, drug addiction, and greed for loot. Having become increasingly marginalized, he tried during the final phase of the war to enter into dialogue with the Western Allies about some form of negotiated peace. Hitler's final testament expelled him from the party, and transferred the succession to Admiral Doenitz. However, when Goering eventually stood at the head of those in the dock at the first of the NUREMBERG TRIALS, he attempted a spirited defense of the Führer's achievements as well as his own. The tribunal sentenced him to death for conspiracy, crimes against peace, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. Even then, Goering managed a final act of defiance by taking cyanide and thus cheating the hangman.

gold standard System by which the issue and redemption of domestic currency, chiefly paper money, is regulated through reserves of gold held by government. It originated from Britain in 1821. By the late nineteenth century, versions of it had been adopted by most European states: Germany, France, Belgium, Italy and Switzerland (1873), the Nordic states (1875), Austria (1879), and eventually the Russian empire (and the USA) in the 1890s. Until that epoch, silver had been the main unit of exchange, yet the discovery of vast quantities of gold ended its pre-eminence. Supporters of the gold standard argued that it brought financial stability, and it certainly facilitated the growth of a global economy by providing an agreed means of settling international payments. On the outbreak of WORLD WAR I the European belligerents were forced off gold so as to pay for much of their military effort by printing extra money. After the PARIS PEACE SETTLMENT of 1919 they generally believed that reversion to it was imperative, even though the international economy had changed significantly with New York now rivaling London as the world's chief financial centre. Britain succeeded in returning to gold in 1925, and France shortly after. However, because of the relative scarcity of the metal, most nations adopted a standard which also involved the accumulation of US dollars and British sterling, convertible into gold at fixed rates of exchange. In the event, the GREAT DEPRESSION[2] forced further retreats: Britain came off in 1931, the USA in 1933, and France in 1936. Even so, the USA's willingness to guarantee a minimum dollar price for gold meant that it was not entirely abandoned as an international currency regulator until a new regime of exchange was established by the 1944 BRETTON WOODS agreement.

Gömbös, Gyula (1886–1936), Prime Minister of HUNGARY (1932–6). While serving with the Austro-Hungarian army in World War I, Gömbös became a fervent advocate of Magyar independence. He was instrumental in forming a Nationalist Army which, having overthrown KUN'S communist government in 1919, helped put HORTHY DE NAGYBÁNYA into power as Regent in 1920. Their alliance was uneasy. Both wished to revise the terms of the TRIANON TREATY and restore the lands of historic Hungary, but Horthy distrusted Gömbös's strident ANTISEMITISM and his desire to establish a one-party state run broadly on the model of FASCISM. Nevertheless, the Regent was eventually obliged to accept Gömbös as premier. The latter used that position to establish an alliance with MUSSOLINI'S Italy, but he could secure only a trade agreement with Germany, as HITLER distrusted his plans for reviving Hungarian military power. Gömbös's political ambitions were cut short by death from kidney disease.

Gomułka, Władisław (1905–82), First Secretary of the Communist Party of POLAND (1945–8, 1956–70). Having been jailed in the 1930s for his left-wing activism, he spent WORLD WAR II fighting in the communist RESISTANCE to German occupation. Becoming party leader in 1945, he served until 1947 in BIERUT'S government of national unity as minister for the territories recently annexed from Germany. In 1948, following the communist takeover, STALIN engineered Gomułka's dismissal as party chief. The latter was denounced for the “nationalist deviation” embodied in his efforts at adapting COMMUNISM to Polish circumstances, and was imprisoned again from 1952 to 1955. Rehabilitated under KHRUSHCHEV, Gomułka returned to power following the anti-Soviet Poznań riots of 1956. He handled the ongoing crisis in a manner that saved Poland from the retribution soon inflicted by Moscow on Hungary (see HUNGARIAN RISING OF 1956). Until the mid-1960s he pursued policies of modest liberalization (e.g. in matters of policing and church–state relations, as well as in opposition to agrarian COLLECTIVIZATION). Thereafter his hardening of attitude included support for the WARSAW PACT'S suppression of the PRAGUE SPRING of 1968. Two years later, food riots in a number of Polish cities precipitated his replacement by GIEREK.

González, Felipe (1942–), Prime Minister of SPAIN (1982–96). Originally an academic lawyer, he became towards the end of the FRANCO period a leading figure within the outlawed Socialist Party. During the transition to democracy after the CAUDILLO's death, he swiftly established his movement as the principal opposition to the right-wing administration of SUÁREZ. In the 1982 polls a clear victory for González gave Spain its first left-wing government since the 1930s. He also won the elections of 1986 and 1990, before emerging from the 1994 contest in a weaker position that prompted reliance on support from BASQUE and Catalan (see CATALONIA) nationalists. When another election was called in 1996, José María Aznar's more conservative Popular Party at last ousted the Socialists from power. The 14-year ascendancy of González had been marked particularly by Spain's entry into the European Community in 1985 (see EUROPEAN INTEGRATION), as well as by moves towards greater regional autonomy and improved labor conditions.

Gorbachev, Mikhail (1931–), General Secretary of the Communist Party of the SOVIET UNION (1985–91) and Head of State (1988–91). As the most reformist leader of the USSR, he was also largely responsible for its dissolution. Becoming a member of the POLITBURO in 1980, he advanced rapidly under the patronage of ANDROPOV, and then succeeded to the post of general secretary after CHERNENKO'S brief tenure. From that power base he sought to defuse COLD WAR tensions, not least by eventually relaxing the so-called BREZHNEV doctrine. He was similarly courageous in urging a less authoritarian refurbishment of COMMUNISM according to his guiding principles of glasnost (“openness”) and perestroika (“restructuring”). The result within the USSR was growing criticism not simply from hardliners who wanted little or nothing of either but also from still more radical modernizers such as YELTSIN, who craved much more of both and viewed Gorbachev's continuing attachment to the Communist Party as a crucial obstacle. Having opened Pandora's box, Gorbachev was unable to control the wave of anticommunist sentiment that now spread across the whole Soviet bloc and culminated in the REVOLUTIONS OF 1989–91. Humiliated in August 1991 by a hardliners' coup whose failure was attributable largely to the brave counter-measures taken by Yeltsin, Gorbachev resigned at the end of the same year. At that point the USSR itself was replaced by the COMMONWEALTH OF INDEPENDENT STATES, within which Yeltsin became the first president of the newly-sovereign RUSSIA. Though increasingly fêted in the West (e.g. as a Nobel prizewinner in 1990), Gorbachev had become ever more vulnerable at home. He attempted a comeback against the increasingly autocratic Yeltsin in the presidential elections of 1996, but gained only 0.51 percent of the vote.

Gottwald, Klement (1896–1953), Prime Minister (1946–8) and President (1948–53) of CZECHOSLOVAKIA. Having become general secretary of his country's Communist Party in 1927, he exiled himself to Moscow following the MUNICH AGREEMENT of 1938. At the end of World War II he returned to become premier of a coalition government, and then played a leading role in the coup of 1948 that displaced BENEŠ. The new president's efforts to consolidate one-party domination imitated STALIN'S repressive methods. Gottwald also yielded to Soviet pressure by permitting the USSR to exploit Czechoslovak industrial resources principally for its own benefit. He died in office just after returning from Stalin's funeral.

Gramsci, Antonio (1891–1937), Italian communist leader and theorist of Marxism (see MARX; COMMUNISM). Gramsci was a native of Sardinia, who became prominent in left-wing politics while studying at Turin University shortly before World War I. During the BIENNIO ROSSO of 1918–20 he participated in workers' occupation of factories. Having condemned the Socialist Party for failing properly to exploit a potentially revolutionary situation, he helped launch a rival Italian Communist Party in 1921. Three years later he became, at Moscow's behest, its leader. However, from 1926 down to his death in 1937 he languished in one of MUSSOLINI'S jails – and it is for the revisionism found in his necessarily fragmented Prison Notebooks, unpublished till the late 1940s, that Gramsci has become best known. There he developed a critique of LENIN'S elitist approach to revolutionary governance and of the excessively deterministic versions of Marxism nurtured by dialectical materialism. In essence, Gramsci urged communist intellectuals towards mediating, not imposing, an “hegemony” that would reflect the ascendancy of the superior cultural order which ought to be the natural and spontaneous accompaniment to proletarian triumph. His aspirations to encourage a less dogmatic and more consensual ideological atmosphere than the one fostered by Moscow became, posthumously, a major influence on Western Marxist thinking during the era from the 1950s to the 1980s. (See also EUROCOMMUNISM)

Great Depressions

[1] The earlier of the two economic downturns generally labeled in this way occurred over the period 1873–96. It was caused by a series of factors, including the end of the mid-nineteenth-century industrial boom (see INDUSTRIALIZATION) especially in railway building, a scarcity of gold prompted by the widespread adoption of the GOLD STANDARD, and cheap imports of grain from the Americas. Indeed, the recession was an illustration of the ways in which trade and transportation were integrating the global economy (see also CAPITALISM; COMMUNICATIONS). The effects of the downturn included a fall in cereal prices, unemployment, bank failures, a run on gold, and a general sense of panic. Though Britain persisted with LAISSEZ-FAIRE economics, in Germany industrialists abandoned their earlier attachment to free trade and, alongside the JUNKERS, supported in 1879 a tariff law that created an alliance between “iron” and “rye.” Protectionism also proved popular in France. Some historians doubt, however, whether this slump was truly a depression, since it generally reflected merely a slowing in rates of growth, especially in the case of Britain which had been the first power to industrialize. It was also a time of modernization in which new industries (e.g. chemicals, dyestuffs, electricals, and rubbers) took off.

[2] Though the labeling of the second Great Depression (1929–34), triggered by the Wall Street Crash in October 1929, is far less disputable, its origins have still been much debated. Some argue that it was essentially the product of a cyclical downturn, albeit one of exceptional severity. Others place more emphasis on the upheavals of WORLD WAR I which disrupted the relationship between Europe and the USA and created an unstable economic structure dominated by war debts, REPARATIONS, and anxieties over currency exchanges. Such instability left Europe all the more vulnerable to further shocks. In the event, these came from the USA, where the end of the postwar housing and consumer boom, alongside an agricultural downturn and over-speculation in the financial markets, led to the massive withdrawal of investments from Europe and the imposition of tariffs. European BANKING failures followed in 1931, beginning with the Credit Anstalt in Austria. Because of its dependency on American loans, Germany was especially affected, defaulting on reparation payments and experiencing widespread bankruptcies, which together with high unemployment did much to destabilize the WEIMAR REPUBLIC.

High unemployment, falling prices, and a shortage of capital were characteristics of the Depression throughout Europe, though different places were hit at different times. Britain felt the pinch in 1931, whereas the slump arrived relatively late in France in 1932, possibly because its industries were relatively small and less prone to fluctuations in the international system. Large gold reserves may also have cushioned the initial effects, as was true of the Netherlands and Belgium. Whatever the case, until the ideas of KEYNES began to make an impression later in the 1930s, there was reluctance among the liberal democracies to emulate the New Deal pioneered in the USA. Cuts in government spending, as well as protectionism, were the most characteristic initial responses. It was the totalitarian regimes of HITLER and STALIN which developed massive public works programmes, and eventually rearmament – though it should be noted that Germany was already beginning to recover by the time the Nazis came to power, and that the Soviet economy operated in relative isolation from the capitalist system prevailing elsewhere. Since that epoch, the severity of successive cyclical difficulties within this system has regularly been measured against the exceptionally grave slump of the early 1930s. It still constitutes the principal point of comparative reference used by economic historians in assessing, for example, the gravity of the European and global recession which followed on from the international banking crisis that erupted in autumn 2008, as well as the efficacy of responses thereto.

Great Fear Series of local but linked panics which affected some areas of France at the start of the FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1789. Most regions were touched by insubordination and a degree of collective violence between December 1788 and March 1790, born out of famine, unemployment, and the expectation of reform. These factors fed into the Great Fear, but the latter was distinguished from this more generalized unrest by its more restricted geographical scope, by its relative brevity (lasting from around July 20 until August 6, 1789), and by the unfounded conviction that brigands in the service of the nobility were being paid to destroy the harvest. This belief in an aristocratic conspiracy meant that sightings of beggars, soldiers, and travelers became the signal for the tocsin to be sounded, for local militias to assemble, and for villagers to arm themselves and warn their neighbors. The Great Fear contributed to a breakdown of all forms of authority in the countryside, and drove the CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY towards meeting peasant demands in its AUGUST DECREES.

Great Purges Campaigns of repression conducted in the SOVIET UNION under STALIN'S leadership. During the 1930s the BOLSHEVIKS, who already had much blood on their hands, brought state-sponsored violence to unprecedented levels. This was especially the case in the years 1936–8, often known as the Yezhovshchina (or “era of Yezhov,” named after the then head of the secret police, or NKVD). The Purges began around the time of the introduction of the FIVE-YEAR PLANS and of COLLECTIVIZATION, which resulted in the persecution of countless KULAKS who were deemed to be the class enemy. In the early 1930s the NKVD also launched a drive both against “undesirables” (e.g. petty thieves, prostitutes, tramps, and beggars) and against former opponents of the regime as well. This operation reached a new intensity following the assassination of KIROV in 1934, which prompted the arrest, trial, and execution of several prominent party members, including KAMENEV, ZINOVIEV, and BUKHARIN. As directed by Yezhov, and later BERIA, state-sponsored terror (see also TERRORISM) reached deep into the ranks both of the party and of the RED ARMY. Nearly half of the officer class was exterminated. After the signing of the 1939 NAZI-SOVIET PACT and the outbreak of WORLD WAR II, the range of the Purges was enlarged to persecute Poles, who were rounded up and either transported to the GULAG or simply shot (see, for example, KATYN MASSACRE). In the “Great Patriotic War” from 1941 onward anyone suspected of COLLABORATION with the enemy faced death or the labor-camp system, which often amounted to the same thing. By 1945 the victims included German prisoners of war, workers forcibly conscripted by the Nazis, and opponents of the new extension of Soviet hegemony across eastern Europe. Only with the death of Stalin in 1953 did the Purges come to an end. It remains unclear how many were killed overall, but most estimates vary between 3 and 10 million. Some historians have argued that the slaughter was part of a crusade designed to eliminate all opposition to the creation of “the new socialist man.” Others have claimed that the terror sprang from Stalin's paranoia and developed a self-sustaining momentum. More recent studies have suggested that Soviet bureaucracy was so ramshackle that the Purges were driven not so much from the top as by local and regional agents keen to please the Kremlin. In truth, the violence sprang from both above and below, consistently conditioned by Stalin's obsession with party obedience and supposed ideological purity.

Great War (see WORLD WAR I)

Greece Located in the southern BALKANS, this country (with a current population of some 11.2 million) comprises a mainland bounded by the Ionian, Mediterranean, and Aegean Seas together with numerous islands. Assisted by PHILHELLENISM, it broke away from Ottoman Turkey (see TURKEY AND EUROPE) during the 1820s through the GREEK WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. It was ruled by a Bavarian (Otto I) from 1832 to 1862, and by a Dane (George I) from 1863 to 1913. Under the latter the territory of Greece grew to include the Ionian Islands and Thessaly, and, as a result of the BALKAN WARS of 1912–13, also Crete together with parts of Macedonia and Thrace. It entered WORLD WAR I only in 1917, when the pro-Allied urgings of VENIZELOS at last prevailed. Wrangles over the spoils of victory led on to the GREEK-TURKISH WAR of 1921–2 (see also PARIS PEACE SETTLEMENT; SÈVRES TREATY; LAUSANNE TREATY). The republic instituted in 1924 was led for most of its existence by Venizelos, but from 1935, when the monarchy was restored, METAXAS became the dominant figure. Though he operated a style of military dictatorship imitative of FASCISM, he did not side with the AXIS powers at the outbreak of WORLD WAR II. When Italy invaded Greece in October 1940, Metaxas led (until his death early the next year) a spirited defensive action. After the Germans overran the country in April 1941, the Greek RESISTANCE movement was increasingly split between rival groupings of monarchists and communists. Thus the liberation of the country by British forces in 1944 turned out to be the trigger for a GREEK CIVIL WAR that lasted until 1949. The eventual monarchist victory permitted a return to civilian government, and in 1952 enabled Greece to obtain entry into NATO. However, in 1967 the so-called GREEK COLONELS seized power and established a further military dictatorship (from which King Constantine II fled after mounting an abortive counter-coup). Their regime collapsed in 1974 after a failed attempt at annexing CYPRUS (see also ENOSIS) – a bid that gave Turkey the opportunity to occupy the northern part of the island. Greece then voted to end the monarchy, and instituted a new civilian Hellenic republic initially led by KARAMANLIS. In 1981 the consolidation of this form of governance was exemplified by Greek entry into the European Community (see EUROPEAN INTEGRATION) and by a peaceful transition to the country's first Socialist administration, under the premiership of Andreas Papandreou. However, the longstanding tensions with Turkey continued to be a worrying feature of Greece's external relations. So too were the newer anxieties arising from the establishment in 1993 of the Former Yugoslav Republic of MACEDONIA (see also YUGOSLAVIA), which thus incorporated a territorial label that the Greeks sought to reserve exclusively for one of their own northern provinces. In addition, during the first decade of the twenty-first century Greece developed a level of public debt that threatened to cause national bankruptcy. By May 2010 the crisis had reached such a point that fellow-members of the euro currency zone (see ECONOMIC AND MONETARY UNION), together with the International Monetary Fund, felt compelled to agree a three-year plan of ‘bailout’ loans amounting to €120 billion in return for the prompt introduction of severe austerity measures.

Greek Civil War This conflict, which followed the expulsion of German forces from GREECE in 1944, was at its height from 1946 to 1949. Liberation sharpened the divisions that had existed during WORLD WAR II within the RESISTANCE movement as between communist and anticommunist elements. Open hostilities were at first intermittent, but in March 1946 the communists, with material support from TITO'S regime in YUGOSLAVIA, began a sustained military campaign against the moderate coalition government in Athens. The latter was initially reliant on British protection, but it soon became evident that the exhausted UK was unable to guarantee Greece against a communist takeover. Within the overall context of growing COLD WAR tensions, this particular danger triggered the declaration of the TRUMAN DOCTRINE in March 1947. US military and economic aid (see MARSHALL PLAN) then made a major contribution to the Greek government's victory over the communists, completed in August 1949. Meanwhile, the insurgents had also been weakened by the fact that a majority within their divided leadership had chosen to support STALIN in the dispute that had arisen between the SOVIET UNION and Yugoslavia. Thus they had forfeited continuation of the supplies that Tito had been able to provide from Belgrade much more directly than anything potentially available from Moscow.

Greek colonels Label for the junta that ruled GREECE from 1967 to 1974. Led by Georgios Papadopoulos and Stylianos Pattakos, it seized power to avert the likelihood of a return to the premiership by the moderate socialist Georgios Papandreou. Depicting themselves as a shield against COMMUNISM, the colonels worked briefly with Constantine II before the monarch launched an abortive counter-coup and fled to Rome. Over the following years the junta operated a repressive regime, in which censorship and torture bulked large. In 1972 Papadopoulos declared himself Regent, and then in the following year proclaimed a republic under his own presidency. Towards the end of 1973 he was replaced by General Phaidon Gizikis. In July 1974 the junta tried to effect union (see ENOSIS) with CYPRUS by ousting MAKARIOS. The main outcome amply demonstrated the incompetence of the colonels' preparations, as Turkey (see TURKEY AND EUROPE) mounted a swiftly successful invasion and partition of the island. With the junta thoroughly discredited as well as unpopular, Gizikis then felt compelled to negotiate with KARAMANLIS the return of Greece to civilian democratic rule. After a trial of the military regime's leadership cadre in 1975, Papadopoulos and Pattakos received death sentences that were then commuted to life imprisonment.

Greek War of Independence Actively waged against Ottoman Turkey (see TURKEY AND EUROPE) from 1821 to 1829, this struggle for GREECE proved to be one of the most striking manifestations of the continuing importance of the ideas generated by the FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1789, and particularly of the growing significance of NATIONALISM within early-nineteenth-century Europe. In 1814 a secret Greek revolutionary organization, the Hetairia Philiké (Society of Friends), was founded in Athens and among expatriates in Odessa. It was soon fomenting popular uprisings both in mainland Greece and in the Aegean islands. Early in 1821, under the leadership of YPSILANTIS who was a major-general in Russian service, it provoked an anti-Turkish rebellion in the DANUBIAN PRINCIPALITIES. Though his particular initiative was denounced by the tsarist regime and soon suppressed by Ottoman forces, it proved to be the inspiration for a more general war of liberation. The wider patriotic movement (assisted by foreign volunteers inspired with PHILHELLENISM and encouraged by widespread sympathy from Christian Europe at large) registered gains that spurred the so-called National Congress of Epidauros to proclaim independence in January 1822. Before long, however, the Ottoman forces were regaining the upper hand, aided by the intervention of Sultan Mahmud II's Egyptian vassal-ally Muhammad Ali. By the time that the fortress of Missolonghi (crucial to navigation through the Gulf of Corinth) eventually fell to the Turks in April 1826, Russia and Britain had become increasingly inclined towards offering protection to the Greeks. Though METTERNICH as chief minister of Austria continued to regard the national uprising as a regrettable symptom of European disorder, the French government then moved towards supporting the Anglo-Russian demands for an armistice and for negotiations aimed at securing some form of Greek autonomy. In October 1827, after the sultan refused to comply, squadrons from the British, Russian, and French navies entered the bay of Navarino off the western Peloponnese aiming to overawe the main Turkish-Egyptian fleet. After the latter chose to open fire rather than withdraw, it was decisively defeated in the last major battle dating from the age of sail. In April 1828 Tsar NICHOLAS I went on to make a unilateral declaration of war upon Turkey, pursuing thereafter a successful campaign on land that in September 1829 enabled Russia to impose the ADRIANOPLE TREATY. Its terms included a Turkish promise of autonomy for Greece. Early in 1830, following an international conference in London, this was converted into a confirmation of full independence – albeit operative only within borders so limited as to make expansionist IRREDENTISM a central feature of the Greeks' future agenda. In 1832 the powers agreed that the kingship of the new state should be assigned to a Bavarian prince, who took the title of Otto I. (See also Map 7)

Greek–Turkish War Lasting from March 1921 until September 1922, this conflict arose from dispute about the 1920 SÈVRES TREATY imposed on TURKEY by the victorious Allies after WORLD WAR I. This had prescribed territorial concessions to GREECE that were now being repudiated by Turkish nationalists under ATATÜRK. The first stage of the war involved the Greeks occupying Smyrna and advancing towards Ankara. By September 1921, however, Atatürk's forces had begun to gain the upper hand. In March 1922, the Allies sought to restore peace by agreeing to consider reducing the losses to Turkey demanded in 1920. However, the conflict did not conclude until the Turks themselves had driven the Greek forces out of Smyrna. After an interim settlement made at Mudania in October 1922, the Allies replaced Sèvres with the LAUSANNE TREATY of July 1923. Within months, it was clear that the war had contributed to the introduction of republican regimes both in victorious Turkey and in defeated Greece, confirmed in October 1923 and May 1924 respectively. The conflict also produced large-scale transfers of population involving forms of ETHNIC CLEANSING(see also MIGRATION) that featured westward movement of around 1.3 million Greeks and eastward relocation of some 400,000 Turks.

Greenland (see under DENMARK; SCANDINAVIA)

Gregory XVI (1756–1846), Pope (1831–46). Born in Venetia to aristocratic parents, Bartolomeo Alberto Cappellari entered the strict Benedictine Camaldolese order at age 18. His experience of the foreign occupation of Rome during the FRENCH REVOLUTIONARY WARS led him to publish The Triumph of the Holy See (1799) defending papal infallibility and temporal independence. His election as Pope was supported by METTERNICH, who strongly desired such a firmly conservative outcome. Insurrection soon broke out in the PAPAL STATES and Gregory was obliged to obtain Austrian assistance, leading to a seven-year military occupation of the territories. His encyclicals Mirari vos (1832) and Singulari nos (1834) denounced liberty of conscience, press freedom, and separation of church and state, as well as the Catholic LIBERALISM associated with LAMENNAIS and Georg Hermes. More positively, Gregory reformed many of the regular religious orders and put enormous effort into overseas missions. (See also CATHOLICISM)

Gromyko, Andrei (1909–89), Foreign Minister of the SOVIET UNION (1957–87). His diplomatic career advanced under STALIN through the patronage of MOLOTOV, who appointed him ambassador to the USA in 1943. During WORLD WAR II Gromyko attended the TEHRAN, YALTA, and POTSDAM CONFERENCES. In 1946 he became Soviet representative at the UNITED NATIONS. After two spells as deputy minister for foreign affairs, he was promoted to replace Molotov in 1957. Doggedly loyal first to KHRUSHCHEV and then to BREZHNEV, he oversaw Soviet external policy during three decades of COLD WAR. His depth of experience became particularly important as a stabilizing factor during the brief leadership tenures of ANDROPOV and CHERNENKO. He also supported the succession of the reformist GORBACHEV in 1985, albeit without appreciating the extent of the transformation in world affairs that this would soon unleash. After relinquishing his ministerial post, Gromyko ended his career as chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet.

grossdeutsch/Grossdeutschland (see under GERMAN UNIFICATION)

Guderian, Heinz Wilhelm (1888–1954), German military theorist and general during WORLD WAR II. A professional soldier, he served as a signals officer in World War I, and later took an interest in motorized armor. Alongside other analysts, including Liddell Hart in Britain and DE GAULLE in France, he came to see the tank as an offensive weapon, rather than merely an appendage to the infantry, thus helping to lay the foundations of BLITZKRIEG. He was instrumental in establishing three tank divisions in 1935, and his views on modern WARFARE were articulated in Achtung-Panzer! (1937). In 1939 he was in charge of the 19th Panzer Corps in the Polish campaign, before heading the armored assault on France in May-June 1940. Both invasions illustrated the power of fast-moving tanks, supported by low-flying aircraft and dive-bombers. Promoted to general, Guderian participated in Operation BARBAROSSA against the Soviet Union where he enjoyed several successes, though his criticism of HITLER'S tactics led to his dismissal in late 1941. He was recalled in 1943 as Inspector-General of Armored Troops and took charge of Panzer Command. Never a full-blown convert to NAZISM, he knew of the 1944 JULY PLOT to kill Hitler, but kept apart from the conspirators. Made chief of the army general staff shortly afterwards, he had a stormy relationship with the Führer who again sacked him on March 28, 1945. Guderian was subsequently captured by US forces, but escaped prosecution at the NUREMBERG TRIALS because his actions were deemed to have been consistent with those of a professional soldier. However, both the Poles and the Soviets provided evidence that his troops had committed atrocities against prisoners of war.

Guernica Scene of a devastating German bombing raid during the SPANISH CIVIL WAR. This ancient capital of the BASQUES was viewed as strategically important in the Republican defense of Bilbao. In late afternoon on market day, April 26, 1937, the town was bombed for several hours by aircraft from the Condor Division. Those attempting to flee were machine-gunned by surrounding Italian expeditionary troops, and Guernica itself was razed to the ground. No official death toll was recorded at the time, though the Basque authorities claimed that around 1,600 had been killed. Recent scholarship has suggested a figure of between 250 and 300, though hundreds more were wounded. FRANCO'S Nationalists claimed that the town's destruction was the work of the communists, yet the world's press was aware that the Germans were responsible. Along with Rotterdam, Coventry, and Dresden in WORLD WAR II, Guernica came to symbolize civilian suffering under aerial bombardment, and its own particular horror was encapsulated in one of Picasso's most celebrated paintings.

Guesde, Jules (1845–1922). left-wing politician who promoted MARX'S ideas among French socialists. Son of a schoolteacher, he worked in the Paris prefecture before taking up journalism. After supporting the PARIS COMMUNE, he fled to Italy where he came under the influence of ANARCHISM. He then converted to Marxism in 1876. Returning home he founded the Parti des Travailleurs Socialistes which, in 1881, became the Parti Ouvrier Français, widely acknowledged as the first centralized party in France. A passionate orator, Guesde had little success in winning over the trade unions (see TRADE UNIONISM), but established a sizeable power base in the industrial north and several municipalities. By 1898 the Guesdistes, with 13 parliamentary seats, formed the largest socialist faction in France, and the one most feared by the bourgeoisie. Guesde himself was a deputy between 1893 and 1921, and a cabinet member during World War I. Yet he did not possess the tact, inclination, or vision necessary to reconcile the ideological differences of the French left, hence the earlier split with BROUSSE in 1881–2. The task of unifying French SOCIALISM fell to JAURÈS in 1905, though Guesde remained influential in the new party, the Section Française de l'Internationale Ouvrière. Thus he helped to nurture a Marxist tradition which survived well into the epoch of the FIFTH REPUBLIC.

Guizot, François (1787–1874), Prime Minister of France (1847–8). Born into a bourgeois Protestant family, Guizot was raised by his mother after his father's execution during the FRENCH REVOLUTION OF 1789. In 1812 he became professor of history at the Sorbonne before serving briefly on LOUIS XVIII'S council of state. He opposed the reactionary policies of CHARLES X and, following the REVOLUTIONS OF 1830–2 and the establishment of Louis Philippe's JULY MONARCHY, he was minister of public instruction from 1832 to 1837. In that capacity he dramatically increased the number of elementary and secondary schools and teacher training colleges. He served as foreign minister from 1840 to 1847 when, despite his broadly liberal outlook, a concern with French national interest led him to form closer ties with METTERNICH'S Austria. In 1847 he supported the conservative Swiss SONDERBUND. During his brief tenure as premier, Guizot refused to extend the suffrage, and this domestic IMMOBILISME helped to trigger the REVOLUTIONS OF 1848–9. Their outbreak caused him to flee into exile, and thereafter he devoted himself to completing a history of the seventeenth-century English Revolution and to the major autobiographical project of his Mémoires (9 vols, 1858–68).

Gulag Russian acronym for the Chief Directorate of Corrective Labor Camps and Colonies, administered first by the CHEKA and eventually by the NKVD. The term is now synonymous with the worst internal oppression inflicted by the SOVIET UNION. The camps were initiated during the RUSSIAN CIVIL WAR (1918–20), but then grew dramatically during the period of the GREAT PURGES. In 1932 the Gulag population had reached possibly 200,000. By 1939 nearly a tenth of the Russian population may have been interned – a figure including common criminals, but primarily comprising innocent men and women who had fallen foul of the Purges and been sentenced to long periods of hard labor. During WORLD WAR II inmates became conscription fodder for the RED ARMY, with their places being taken by civilians and prisoners of war from Soviet-occupied territories such as Finns, Latvians, Poles, Germans, and Japanese. Contributing to the labor for state projects, the camps of the Gulag were always a key part of the Soviet economy. They were generally located in remote areas (especially Siberia), yet close to natural resources. Given the loss of the economically valuable UKRAINE to Germany in 1941, they proved vital to the war effort. Conditions in the camps were appalling: sub-zero temperatures, paltry rations, disease, and overwork may have cost the lives of some 20 million people by the time of STALIN'S death in 1953. Though the Gulag system never included extermination centers as such, even more victims perished there than in the Nazi camps involved in the so-called FINAL SOLUTION (see NAZISM; CONCENTRATION CAMPS). The scale of the USSR's state-sponsored terror (see also TERRORISM) became evident only in the 1950s and 1960s, when it emerged as the subject of several memoirs, including Slavomir Rawicz's The Long Walk (1956). However, it was the publication of Alexander Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago in 1973 which did most to scandalize the wider world. After Stalin's death, the camps were massively scaled down, though they persisted into the GORBACHEV era and beyond. The Russian authorities have remained secretive about them, refusing to release records establishing their full human cost.