I have been examining Germany’s political role in relation to its population (I have long supported the thesis that one of the key factors of a country’s power is demography; the three most populous countries in the world are India, China, and the United States). Demography must be assessed in proportion to other countries, especially those within the same region. Germany’s political success in Europe stemmed from the fact that, for over a thousand years, it was the most populous country on the continent, excluding the European Russians, who surpassed the Germans in the nineteenth century. Of course, the concept of “Russians” was highly fluid due to the Russification of Slavic nations.
In any case, Germany constituted the dominant share of Europe’s population. A thousand years ago, one in eight inhabitants of our continent was German, although it must be remembered that national identity was only beginning to take shape. It was a period of tremendous expansion for that community. The peak of Germany’s demographic dominance occurred at the turn of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when nearly one in five Europeans was German. What prevented them from completely dominating Europe? The Thirty Years’ War, fought largely on their own territory. That conflict led to Germany losing approximately one-third of its population and blocking the unification of the individual German states for roughly 200 years. Over the next two centuries, Germany rebuilt a substantial portion of its population. At the beginning of the twentieth century, roughly one in six Europeans was German. As often happened when things were going particularly well for them, they led themselves into war, this time a great war, in fact, two. After losing the world wars, only one in eight Europeans was German. This proportion is no longer increasing and shows no signs of doing so, even considering the demographic difficulties faced by other European countries. Of course, there are still very many Germans on our continent, but they face two problems: first, they sustain their population numbers through migration; second, their society is rapidly aging.
Yet this is probably not Germany’s only problem today. Three or four hundred years ago, they did not have to reckon with developments on other continents. Today, that factor is becoming increasingly important. Contemporary German strategies for maintaining dominance (at least on our continent) will prove just as effective as past German ideas of military conquest. Maintaining demographic potential through migration has resulted in efforts to share that migration with neighboring countries. Attempts to isolate competition from other continents through initiatives such as SAFE will lead to sanctions against German economic activity and will strengthen centrifugal tendencies within the European Union. In the past, Germany could claim to constitute nearly 20 percent of the population of the known world. Today, it accounts for just over 1 percent of the global population, and within that 1 percent, half are either people of non-working age or individuals originating from countries that wish to associate with Germany primarily through its extensive welfare system.