La pénétration germanique dans les Balkans aux xixe et xxe siècles

At the beginning of the 20th century, the Habsburg Empire has to face the concurrence of other great powers which are also interested in the economic potential of the Balkan Peninsula. In the meantime, the national movements succeed progressively in pushing back the Turkish domination and the nations acquire their independence under the protection of one or another great power. That is why the fate of the Balkans states depends from the international situation and from the positions of the great powers. The industrialization and the construction of the infrastructures in these backward countries are possible only with foreign investment and loans, which enables the great powers to increase their influence in the region. On the eve of the First World War, the real conqueror of the Balkans has emerged: Germany is from then on an important economic and political actor. The Balkans are a suitable territory for the German economic expansion, mainly against France. This ambition survived the First World War and war carried on in the interwar period as a permanent feature of the German foreign policy, favored by the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, in order to neutralize the Soviet Union, Germany satellizes Romania and Bulgaria and later attacks and conquers Greece and Yugoslavia. In the countries inhabited by German minorities, the Nazis enlist the men for their armed forces. After the fifteen years following immediately the war, Germany, together with Austria to some extent, came back in the economy of the region, mainly in Romania and Yugoslavia, and this early presence led the way to new investments after the transition of the 1990’s and the disappearing of Yugoslavia. But this process has almost nothing to do with the ancient German colonization of the region, since the German population has practically vanished and is for the present day investors only a vague remembrance