German Genocide - Thirty Years War

[Loki]

A fact not many modern people know about these days, but in a period of only 30 years roughly HALF of all Germans were killed. They could have been almost totally exterminated, were it not for the Dutch Revolt and the Ottoman Empire.

There is not much info online - in fact, German culture and civilization lost at least a century during that time, and its racial composition was forever changed.

Not a lot is known about it either - since half of Germany was wiped out. I have a 1,500 page historical book about it. Small excerpt - will post more later:

During the Thirty Years War (1618-48), almost half of all Germans were killed. That's right:

Germany lay desolate. The population had fallen from 21 million to perhaps 13 million. Between a third and a half of the people were dead. Whole cities, like Magdeburg, stood in ruins. Whole districts lay stripped of their inhabitants, their livestock, their supplies. Trade had virtually ceased. A whole generation of pillage, famine, disease, and social had wreaked such havoc that in the end the princes were forced to reinstate serfdom, to curtail municipal liberties, and to nullify the progress of a century. The manly exploits of Spanish, Swedish, Italian, Croat, Flemish, and French soldiers had changed the racial composition of the people. German culture was so traumatised that art and literature passed entirely under the spell of foreign, especially French, fashions.

From Europe - A History by Norman Davies

[Flintlocke]

And it all started because a monk posted a complain on a church door. Crazy stuff!

[Loki]

It comes as no surprise that the Ottoman Empire sided with Germany in WW1 - but in fact this allegiance was detrimental to Turkey and resulted in the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.

[Flintlocke]

[The Lawspeaker]

Les Grandes Misères de la guerre - Jacques Callot.

De Droeve Elendigheden van dr Oorloogh (The Miseries of War ) after 18 prints by Jacques Callot engraved by Leon Schenk 90 x 185 mm.
The sequence begins with the drilling and recruitment of an army, which moves swiftly to battle. The following plates show the slaughter and torture of civilians and opponents generally with the locale changing from highway to hamlet to market town. Prisoners are taken, interrogated, and then executed in a number of barbarous ways hanging, shooting and burning being particularly favourite. The pace of slaughter slackens and the last print shows the King rewarding officers responsible for the campaign.

Born in Nancy in 1592 , Callot died there in 1635. His parents were opposed to his becoming an artist and he left home on two separate occasions for Florence and Rome where he studied against their wishes.
His art became synonymous with a certain kind of grotesque figure which he could effortlessly combine in crowds of energy and movement. His series of prints The Miseries of War was immensely influential in the original format and in subsequently pirated and reproduced form. One distinguished admirer was the Spanish artist Francisco Goya who published a similar exercise in the recording of human folly and cruelty.

A Personal Account of the Destruction of Magdeburg
“…General Pappenheim collected a number of his people on the ramparts by the New Town and brought them from there into the streets of the city. Fires were kindled in different quarters; then indeed it was all over with the city, and further resistance was useless. Nevertheless some of the soldiers and citizens did try to make a stand here and there, but the imperial troops kept bringing on more and more forces – cavalry, too – to help them, and finally they got the Krockenthor open and let in the whole imperial army and the forces of the Catholic League – Hungarians, Croats, Poles, Walloons, Italians, Spaniards, French.

Thus it came about that the city and all its inhabitants fell into the hands of the enemy, whose violence and cruelty were due in part to their common hatred of the adherents of the Augsburg Confession, and in part to their being embittered by the chain shot which had been fired at them and by the derision and insults that the Magdeburgers had heaped upon them from the ramparts.

Then was there naught but beating and burning, plundering, torture, rape and murder. Most especially was every enemy bent on securing much booty. When a marauding party entered a house, if its master had anything to give he might thereby purchase respite and protection for himself and his family till the next man, who also wanted something should come along. It was only when everything had been brought forth and there was nothing left to give that the real trouble commenced. Then, what with blows and threats of shooting, stabbing and hanging, the poor people were so terrified that if they had had anything left they would have brought it forth if it had been buried in the earth or hidden away.

In this frenzied rage, the great and splendid city that had stood like a fair princess in the land was now, in its hour of direst need and unutterable distress and woe, given over to flames, and thousands of innocent men, women and children, in the midst of a horrible din of heartrending shrieks and cries, were tortured and put to death in so cruel and shameful a manner that no words would suffice to describe, not no tears to bewail it…

Thus in a single day this noble and famous city, the pride of the whole country, went up in fire and smoke; and the remnant of its citizens, with their wives and children, were taken prisoners and driven away by the enemy with a noise of weeping and wailing that could be heard from afar, while the cinders and ashes from the town were carried by the wind to Wanzleben, Egeln, and still more distant places…

In addition to all this, quantities of sumptuous and irreplaceable house furnishings and movable property of all kinds, such as books, manuscripts, painting, memorials of all sorts,…which money could not buy, were either burned or carried away by the soldiers as booty. The most magnificent garments, hangings, silk stuffs, gold and silver lace, linen of all sorts, and other household goods were bought by the army sutlers for a mere song and peddled about by the cart load all through the archbishopric of Magdeburg and in Anhalt and Brunswick. Gold chains and rings, jewels and every kind of gold and silver utensils were to be bought from the common soldiers for a tenth of their real value…”

Sack of Magdeburg - 20 May 1631.

[Loki]

Some of my ancestors came from Magdeburg - the few who managed to survive.

[The Lawspeaker]

Some of my ancestors came from Magdeburg - the few who managed to survive.

Magdeburg became synonymous with the war. It was cruel and disgusting and in scale very much like the Spanish Sack of Antwerp, many years earlier.

[The Lawspeaker]

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Songs dating back to that period. The last one is Dutch and is about the unsuccessful Spanish Siege of Bergen op Zoom (that is also being mentioned in the second German song).

[RagnarLodbrok666]

War over christianity...between the Prots and Catholics?

The Germans were almost exterminated by this conflict and the Brits and Irish bombed and fought each other for years over the same conflict?

Oh Jesus!

[The Lawspeaker]

The Germans were almost exterminated by this conflict and the Brits and Irish bombed and fought each other for years over the same conflict?

To be honest, I don't think that the Troubles and the Thirty Years War can be compared in any way.