“That’s easy. How many times in her history had France attacked her eastern neighbor since 876?
Twenty-two times until 1870, not counting 1914 and 1939.” [Menes, post 16]
Categorically erroneous on so many levels. Helps explain why you sound like a revisionist, praising the Hatfields & McCoys. Those clans eventually made up (by a formally signed “peace treaty” circa 1993).
France did not “attack” Germany in either 1914 nor 1939. They did respond pre-emptively - a few hours or minutes before the German onslaught. It wasn’t a case of unprovoked attack.
Complaining about France attacking “Germany” in the centuries before 1870 carries no weight. There was no German state to be attacked before 1871. For the historically uninformed, that was when the Prussians dragooned what statelets & minor principalities still existed into Imperial Germany - a process they’d worked at for decades.
Germany has existed since the 9th century as a kingdom, being one of the three successor states of the Frankish empire, being called the East Frankish Empire at first, analogous to the Western Frankish Empire, which would become France. The third of these successor realms, Lotharingia, would later be divided between the others.
It was during the 10th and 11th centuries that the various duchies which made up the East Frankish Empire, united under one King, began calling themselves Germans. In France, a similar process occurred unter the first Capetingians, roughly at the same time.
The idea that Germany sprang into existence in 1871 ist simple and nonetheless wrong, just as France did not begin to exist in 1789.
It was the Second Reich created in 1871 after the First, the Holy Roman Empire, which lasted from 962, when King Otto I. was crowned as the first German Emperor, until 1806, when it finally collapsed, weakened by the Prusso-Austrian dualism and its own age (when modern states, as we know them, were emerging, supplanting by and by the older polities composed of estates).
And by the way, the hereditary enemy, as many Germans call the western neighbor, has made an excellent job of peddling the idea that it has been a peacelike nation throughout history.
I concede that its culture is appealing to many people throughout the world, including the Anglo-Saxon countries, though I am unable to see where this appeal is supposed to stem from.