Question:
What happened between France and Germany in the 1871 war?
Brandon N
2009-12-18 14:28:02 UTC
What happened b/t france & germany in the 1871 war?
Five answers:
Columbo
2009-12-18 15:12:23 UTC
Germany kicked France's rear in less than a year, toppled their government, and called for the creation of a new French government which became the Third French Republic.



The tension between France and Germany had been caused, in large part, because of disputes over land around the Rhine river and valley. There were quite a few areas in this area that were inhabited by predominately German speakers and people of German background under French Rule.



The Germany of the late 19th century was very clear about their desire to unite Germans once again. Because of this, there was a lot of tension between the two sides.



The deciding issue happened when a French Ambassador was sent to negotiate with the Prussian King. The meeting was relatively unsuccessful with neither side achieving their goals.



Bismark, who was dead set on going to war, summarized the encounter in such a way that it appeared that a short and curt conversation had occurred between the ambassador and the king. This summary, referred as the Ems Dispatch, was then made public.



From the summary, the French believed that their ambassador had been snubbed and the Germans believed that their king had been insulted. This turning of popular opinion was enough to persuade the politicians on both sides who had originally been unwilling to go to war to change their minds.



Other than that, it was a pretty standard war as far as the time went. Some notable events were the usage of universal conscription (basically, the equivalent of a modern draft), the usage of the telegraph and usage of railroads to move troops around (first time these two had been used on a moderate scale had been in the American Civil War but this war was the first time in which both were used on a large scale.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franco-Prussian_War#Summary_of_Military_Events
2017-01-18 19:04:38 UTC
What Happened In 1871
?
2016-05-26 09:37:25 UTC
What? 1871 was when Bismark successfully unified the various principalities into the nation of Germany. He (Bismark) fought a war with France in that year to establish the right of the new nation. In 1914 World War I broke out in part because of the alliances built after the 1871 Franco Prussian Wars. Is it the history you are looking for?
Smitty
2009-12-18 14:38:45 UTC
The conflict was a culmination of years of tension between the two nations, which finally came to a head over the issue of a Hohenzollern candidate for the vacant Spanish throne, following the deposition of Isabella II in 1868. The public release of the Ems Dispatch, which played up alleged insults between the Prussian king and the French ambassador, inflamed public opinion on both sides. France mobilized, and on 19 July declared war on Prussia only, but the other German states quickly joined on Prussia's side. The superiority of the Prussian and German forces was soon evident, due in part to efficient use of railways and impressively superior Krupp steel artillery. Prussia had the fourth most dense rail network in the world; France came fifth. A series of swift Prussian and German victories in eastern France culminated in the Battle of Sedan, at which Napoleon III was captured with his whole army on 2 September. Yet this did not end the war, as the Third Republic was declared in Paris on 4 September 1870, and French resistance continued under the Government of National Defence and later Adolphe Thiers. Over a five-month campaign, the German armies defeated the newly recruited French armies in a series of battles fought across northern France. Following a prolonged siege, Paris fell on 28 January 1871. The siege is also notable for the first use of anti-aircraft artillery, a Krupp piece built specifically to shoot down the hot air balloons being used by the French as couriers. Ten days earlier, the German states had proclaimed their union under the Prussian king, uniting Germany as a nation-state, the German Empire. The final Treaty of Frankfurt was signed 10 May 1871, during the time of the Paris Commune uprising of 1871.
jaber
2009-12-18 14:40:16 UTC
german took two or three lands from france and france take them back in WWI


This content was originally posted on Y! Answers, a Q&A website that shut down in 2021.
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