Germany

The German Republic (commonly known as Germany) was a human nation located on Earth in the Sol System. It was located in Central Europe, with its territory stretching from the Alsace-Lorraine region in the west (bordering France) to its border with Poland in the east. Germany also controlled the territory of East Prussia, an exclave on the Baltic Sea coast surrounded by Poland and Lithuania, and administered an interplanetary colony on the planet Venus in the Sol System.

The German Republic was established in 1917, shortly after the German Empire collapsed following the end of the Great War. The German Empire, an earlier federation of German-speaking principalities, had fought on the side of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the war, opposing Great Britain, France and the Russian Empire. The war ended in 1916 with a massive exchange of orbital weapons and long-range rockets. The German Empire was a target for most of the Allies' orbital bombardment and long-range rocket attacks, and as such it was one of the hardest hit countries in the exchange. The German capital of Berlin was heavily bombed and destroyed, killing Kaiser Wilhelm II - German Emperor and King of Prussia - and much of his line of succession. Discontent with the war had been growing in Germany due to the conscription, rationing and poor economic conditions the population was subjected to during the conflict, and the power vacuum resulting from the Kaiser's death led to a wave of civil unrest erupting across the country. The unrest ultimately led to the proclamation of the establishment of the German Republic by leftist revolutionaries in 1917 to replace the German Empire, and the remaining constituent monarchies of Germany were abolished. The former constituent states of the German Empire - such as Prussia - were reorganised into constituent republics within the German Republic, with each receiving a democratic constitution.

The revolutionaries, although inspired by liberalism and socialist ideas, did not hand over power to Soviet-style councils as the Bolshevik revolutionaries had done in Russia at around the same time. Instead, a national assembly was established that would form the basis for a parliamentary system of government. Fearing an all-out civil war in Germany between militant workers and reactionary conservatives, the leaders of the revolution did not plan to strip the old German upper classes completely of their power and privileges. Instead, they sought to peacefully integrate them into the new social democratic system.

The German Empire had made substantial advances on both the Western and Eastern fronts before the end of the Great War. It ended the war occupying most of Belgium and all of Luxembourg. In addition, German forces had advanced as far as Belarus in the former Russian Empire. After the German Empire was dissolved and a ceasefire was declared, most German troops in the east simply abandoned their posts and returned to Germany. The withdrawal of German troops from these areas of the former Russian Empire, coupled with the ongoing Russian Revolution, led to several former Russian territories (such as Poland and Ukraine) declaring independence. However, the new government of the German Republic, worried about Great Britain and France launching another war against Germany in the near future, maintained control of Alsace-Lorraine (which Prussia had captured from France in the 1870 Franco-Prussian War) as well as most of Belgium and all of Luxembourg for a few years after the war to act as buffer zones.

The years immediately after the end of the Great War were challenging for Germany. Nearly thirty of the German Empire's largest cities had been destroyed in Allied orbital weapon attacks, and many of these large metropolitan areas were simply left abandoned for several years. Practically the only large German metropolis that had been unhit was Straßburg in the disputed territory of Alsace-Lorraine, which had been spared due to Allied hopes that the historically French city could be recaptured. The new government of the German Republic temporarily moved its seat from the destroyed capital of Berlin to the spa town of Wiesbaden, which had also escaped destruction during the war. Millions were left homeless and with unreliable access to food, water and medicine. Crime skyrocketed - in many towns and villages, armed gangs of bandits and looters roamed the streets, with very few police officers and soldiers being available to stop them. Germany's population shrank at least 30 per cent and its economy 90 per cent from prewar levels, with the country largely reverting to a rural agrarian economy due to the destruction of industry in urban areas. Political instability also continued for several years after the new government was founded. In 1918, German communists - who had wanted a council republic similar to the one which had been established by the Bolsheviks in Soviet Russia - launched general strikes, paralysing the agricultural and food distribution sectors of the economy. Attempts by authorities to break the strikes led to some street battles. The year-old German Republic very nearly collapsed, until the government raised Freikorps militias of German Great War veterans to help them put down the spontaneous uprisings. A "Red Scare" was taking place in the United States at the time following the Russian Revolution, and the near-collapse of Germany to a communist uprising heightened American concerns. This led the United States government to provide significant financial aid to Germany and other countries in Western Europe, to help these nations rebuild from the devastation of the war and strengthen their institutions against communist influence. Meanwhile, almost immediately after the end of the Great War, Polish paramilitary forces engaged the remnants of the German military in German territories east of the Oder and Neisse rivers, attempting to capture German cities which had historically belonged to Poland and integrate them into the newly-formed Polish Republic. Because the cities of Danzig, Breslau and Stettin had all been destroyed by Allied orbital weapon strikes, most ethnic Germans in these areas who had survived emigrated to the relative safety of German territories west of the Oder-Neisse line. The greatly weakened German military found itself unwilling and unable to defend these areas, and they soon fell to the Polish uprising. However, German forces were successful in preventing major offensives by partisan groups into East Prussia. Now cut off from the rest of Germany, East Prussia had to be resupplied by sea and air. The German government did not immediately recognise the Polish acquisition of former German territories east of the Oder and Neisse rivers.

As the successor state of the German Empire, representatives of the German Republic participated in the negotiations with the former Great War combatants in Switzerland, leading to the signing of the Treaty of Geneva in 1918. In 1919, the German Republic became a founding member of the League of Nations.

The historically German-speaking country of Austria had split from the Austro-Hungarian Empire following the empire's dissolution after the end of the Great War, becoming an independent state. In 1924, after several years of negotiations and a national referendum in Austria, Austria was formally integrated into Germany as one of its constituent republics. The newly-unified German-Austrian state continued to be known as the German Republic. Many of the former Allied Great War combatants such as Great Britain and France, as well as Poland and the Soviet Union, were politically opposed to the unification of Germany and Austria. However, the event did not have a major long-term impact on relations between Germany and the rest of Europe.

Unlike the militaristic German Empire that had preceded it, the new German Republic sought to preserve peace in Europe and rebuild the economy of the continent by pursuing European integration. Relations between Germany and other European countries remained strained in the years immediately following the Great War until, in a sincere effort to achieve a lasting peace, in 1923 Germany voluntarily relinquished control over the parts of Belgium and Luxembourg which it had occupied since the Great War. This led to a dramatic improvement in relations between Germany, Great Britain and France. By 1925, Germany had also reconciled its territorial disputes with Poland, recognising Polish sovereignty over former German cities including Wrocław, Gdańsk and Szczecin. In exchange, Poland and the international community recognised the continuation of German sovereignty over the exclave of East Prussia.

In 1939 Germany launched its first interplanetary spaceflight in more than twenty years, when a fleet of ships carrying around 2,000 settlers was launched to establish a new colony in the Utopia Planitia region of Mars. This was followed by the establishment of another colony in the Alpha Regio region of Venus in 1944. The German Empire had previously maintained colonies on both Mars and Venus, but these had been annexed by Allied forces operating on those planets during the Great War.

In 1950, Germany surprised the global scientific community by successfully demonstrating a spacecraft powered by a plasma rocket. The rocket was capable of propelling a spacecraft to 10% of the speed of light, temporarily making Germany the leading nation in space technology development at the time. The engine had been reverse engineered from two spaceships of the Venusian Empire which had been found preserved in ice in Antarctica by the German Empire in 1912, following a decades-long effort by German scientists. The plasma rocket was the most advanced form of spacecraft propulsion available to humanity until the Soviet Union successfully tested a spacecraft powered by a fusion rocket in 1955.

Germany was the driving force behind the formation of the European Union (EU), a supranational political and economic union of several European countries, in 1951. The EU established a monetary union using a single currency (the Euro), which replaced the Reichsmark as Germany's currency.

In 1956, Germany became the first nation to launch a manned mission to Saturn, landing astronauts on Saturn's moon of Titan for the first time in human history.

In 1957, after the reconstruction of Berlin had been largely completed following its destruction at the end of the Great War, the German government moved its seat to the city from Wiesbaden.

In 1961, the resources of the German civil space research agency were folded into the newly-formed European Space Agency (ESA), a unified space agency formed by the members of the European Union. In 1962, the ESA successfully tested a ship powered by a gravity drive.

In 1962 Germany became the second nation in Europe (after Great Britain) to test a nuclear weapon. The German nuclear weapons program was primarily motivated by the military threat posed by the communist Soviet Union.

By the early 1960s the German economy had surpassed pre-Great War size, with Germany now being the largest national economy in Europe. Although the German Republic was never as globally influential or militarily powerful as the German Empire that preceded it, it was still largely considered to be the most powerful nation in the political system of the European Union. By the 1960s European integration had advanced rapidly. The foreign policy of European nations had become largely directed by the foreign policy of the European Union, a political institution in which Germany had a great deal of influence.

In 1965, the member states of the European Union made the decision to unify their military forces under a single European command. The German Armed Forces were dissolved, and the resources of the German Earth and space military forces were integrated into the newly-formed European Union Defense Force.

In 1967, Germany established the first human colony on Titan and began conducting asteroid mining operations in the asteroid belt.

In 1968, the supranational political and economic structures of the European Union and the Commonwealth of Nations were combined to form the United Commonwealth. The resources of the European Space Agency and the separate space agencies of Commonwealth of Nations member states were combined to form the United Commonwealth Space Agency. The European Union Defense Force of the former European Union and the separate Earth and space military forces of Commonwealth member states were also reorganised into the United Commonwealth Defence Force. The Euro was replaced as the currency used in Germany by the newly-established currency of the United Commonwealth, the Commonwealth credit.

When the Cramori Empire launched its opening round of attacks on the Sol System using biological weapons in 1976, more than three million German settlers were among nearly 130 million humans killed on Mars. The attack also resulted in the destruction of Germany's mining infrastructure in the asteroid belt.

In the wake of the start of the Allied-Cramori War and the Cramori Empire's attempted invasion of the Sol System in 1976, in 1988 the citizens of the member states of the United Commonwealth voted to give the United Commonwealth Parliament and the United Commonwealth Secretariat the powers of a federal government, effectively transforming the United Commonwealth from a supranational political and economic union to a single federal republic. It was thought that granting the United Commonwealth greater economic, political and military control over the resources of its constituent states would be more effective for planetary defence against the Cramori. The German government was therefore effectively absorbed into the United Commonwealth Government in 1988, and Germany is largely regarded to have ceased to exist as a separate nation-state on that date.