In European history, Napoleon and Hitler have been hailed as the two men most likely to unify Europe.
Coincidentally, after the unification of Western Europe, both men turned their guns on Russia for expansion.
And their hegemony also ended under the city of Moscow.
So many people think that this is a historical inevitability, and once Western Europe rises as a power, the eastward conquest of Russia is a compulsory course?
Is that really the case?
The ancestors of the Russians were the Slavs who were active in the early days of the four major ethnic groups in Europe.
The Slavs lived in the area around present-day Eastern Europe and the Balkans in southern Europe, and historically intersected with the Roman Empire.
However, due to its distance from the core area of Europe, it has been excluded from the main civilization of the European continent.
After the fall of Rome, the continent gradually became occupied by the Germanic peoples.
What makes people speechless is that the Germanic people, who are also barbarians, actually began to look down on this once poor relative after becoming a barbarian, and denounced him as a barbarian.
While the Germanic fiefdoms were all over Europe, the Slavs remained in a tribal union.
It was not until the ninth century AD that another barbarian Viking, which had been a headache for Western Europeans, landed in Eastern Europe, which brought the fire of civilization to the Slavs.
In 882 AD, Grand Duke Oleg, a Viking, conquered the tribal powers around Kiev and established the principality of Kievan Rus' there.
Since the principality of Kievan Rus was founded by foreign Viking conquering forces, it has always been in constant conflict with the native Slavs, and has been in constant conflict with the native Slavs, and has been in constant internal strife since the founding of the country.
With the rise of the Mongol Empire in the 13th century, Ögedei launched the second Mongol expedition to the west: the eldest son's expedition to the west.
The principality of Kievan Rus' was destroyed by the Western Expedition led by Batu, the eldest son of Jochi, and was included in the rule of the Golden Horde.
However, although the Mongols destroyed Kievan Rus', a series of small principalities were preserved.
One of them, Muscovy, was close to the Golden Horde and was given the right to conquer the region.
Relying on this sword, Muscovy began to annex a series of small surrounding states.
Finally, in 1480, under the leadership of Ivan III, he succeeded in overthrowing the independence of his old club, the Golden Horde.
At this time, Muscovy was a mixed barbarian mix of Vikings, Mongols and Slavs in the eyes of the people of Western Europe.
To this day, there is a proverb in Europe: Peel off the skin of a Russian and you will see a Tatar face.
However, looking down is looking down on it, and at this time, the Western Europeans who had a request for Muscovy had to pinch their noses and stretch out a big hand of friendship.
Originally from 1453, after the Eastern Roman Empire was destroyed by the Ottoman Turks, the Muslims began to invade along the Balkan Peninsula to the heart of Europe.
Under pressure from the Ottoman Empire, the Pope of Rome pondered a clever plan.
That is to unite with Muscovy and flank the Ottomans together, so that they can open another front in the Black Sea and help them share the pressure.
In order to form an alliance with Ivan III, the Pope planned to choose a woman of appropriate age among the European nobility to marry a distant Eastern European relative.
But at that time, Western Europeans regarded the Slavs as beasts of the flood, and no one wanted to marry that wild land.
Just when the Pope had a headache about this, there was a person who volunteered to take over this important task, and she was Princess Sophia.
Sophia is the princess of the Eastern Roman kingdom, and after the death of the country, she has been living in Western Europe and suffering a lot of white eyes.
This is a woman who is not willing to be lonely, and in her opinion, it is better to go to that wild place than to send people under the fence here.
Sophia's gamble completely changed the direction of history.
In 1054, there was a great Catholic Church represented by the Holy See in Western Europe and the Orthodox Church represented by the Eastern Roman Empire.
After the fall of Eastern Rome, Constantinople became a stronghold for Muslims, and Orthodox Christians became homeless children.
After Princess Sophia came to Muscovy, under her influence, all Russians converted to Orthodox Christianity.
Those remnants of the Eastern Roman Empire found an organization in an instant, and they came to take refuge one after another.
Their arrival has brought advanced science and technology, culture, and management systems to Russia.
More importantly, they also showed the Russians the direction to struggle.
Since then, Russia has regarded itself as the Third Rome, restored the castle of the king, and returned it to the old capital, which has become the dream of successive tsars.
But from this time on, the people of Russia and Western Europe also embarked on two completely different civilizational tracks, and the two sides inherited the traditions of Orthodoxy and Catholicism, and since then there have been endless disputes.
Those who say that Napoleon and Hitler's crusade against Russia was for the great unification of Europe are completely self-inflicted.
Europe is only a geographical concept, not a civilizational concept.
And the so-called great unification must be unified with civilization as the boundary.
Just like all the rulers of China, they will definitely include the Central Plains and Jiangnan, but for Qinghai-Tibet, Mobei, and the Western Regions, it is indispensable.
Western Europeans simply do not think that Russia, an extraterritorial civilization, is one family with them.
Even today, the European Union, which aims to pursue European unity, does not intend to play with Russia!
Some people may wonder, since you say that Russia and Western Europe are not in the same circle, how can you explain Napoleon and Hitler's two persistent attacks on Russia?
The author can only say that these two things really cannot be analyzed with the concept of unification.
Neither Napoleon nor Hitler went to war against Russia for the idea of unification, as Qin Shi Huang did for the idea of unification.
Qin Shi Huang, on the contrary, did so because of the entanglement of strategic interests.
To figure out these two things, we should analyze the specific problems and not be too idealistic!
Let's start with Napoleon! Before the unification of Western Europe, Napoleon's empire was originally incompatible with the Russian Empire.
But why did Russia join the anti-French alliance in 1805?
The reason is simple: although Napoleon was an emperor, his army preached the bourgeois ideas of the French Revolution, which was an invincible enemy of the feudal monarchy on the European continent.
That's why they, under the instigation of the British, repeatedly formed anti-French alliances to encircle and suppress Napoleon.
After Napoleon's War of the Three Emperors in 1805, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which dominated the continent, completely surrendered to Napoleon.
But the Tsar** was still unconvinced and wanted to fight Napoleon to the end.
Napoleon was well aware of the terrible potential of this guy, he always tried to avoid fighting with the ** people, and there was never any big unification of ideas.
In 1806, after Napoleon's defeat of Prussia at the Battle of Jena, the sphere of influence began to border Russia.
At this time, the first thing Napoleon did was to rush to give gifts to the loser Russia.
They signed the Treaty of Tillest, ceding the stolen Belostok region that belonged to Prussia to Alexander I, this groveling approach is very unNapoleonic!
Alexander I and Tsar Alexander I also reciprocated the favor after receiving the gift, promising in a reply that he would break with England in the future.
At that time, Napoleon, like Hitler in later generations, was faced with the dilemma of fighting on two fronts.
Britain in the west and ** in the east are both huge geopolitical threats.
The British, in particular, were the most reluctant to see the unification of the European continent and had been persistently forming an anti-French alliance.
This was Napoleon's primary threat, and he appeased Russia as much as he could, until he took Britain!
So why did the two countries turn against each other in the end?
The reason is the Polish problem.
After the Battle of Jena, Prussia was included in the French sphere of influence, and the territory of France and Russia began to border.
For the sake of the Eastern and Western Wars, Napoleon believed that it was necessary to establish a buffer zone between Russia and France, and this buffer zone was the internationally famous little master of death: Poland.
In 1772, Poland was divided by Tsar Catherine the Great, together with Austria-Hungary and Prussia.
Now Prussia and Austria-Hungary have been taken by Napoleon.
So Napoleon went to Alexander I to discuss, we good brothers for the rest of our lives, in order to never stop the conflict, or each of us spit out a part of the territory to rebuild the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, right?
Alexander I was naturally unwilling, how could there be any reason to spit out what he ate in his stomach?
Besides, once this Grand Duchy of Warsaw is established, the Poles will surely be grateful for Napoleon's reinvention and hate Russia for destroying the country! This is a pure loss-making business!
Alexander told Napoleon that the rebuilding of Poland would not have doors, nor windows.
As long as you do not fight Poland's ideas, I will persuade the British to abandon the formation of an anti-French alliance forever.
In order to calm the situation, Napoleon chose to tolerate it, and did not even allow the word "Polish" to be published in the newspapers to provoke the Russians.
Then Napoleon sent another man named Colancourt to negotiate with the Tsar, hoping to put aside the dispute and face the future together.
Unexpectedly, this man was a guy who had more than enough success and more than failure, and actually promised the tsar to give up the idea of Poland forever.
This made it difficult for Napoleon to ride the tiger, and if he recognized the treaty, he would lose his majesty in Europe.
If he does not agree, then this war with Russia is inevitable.
After the incident, he also wanted to make a final effort and wrote a letter to the Tsar:I know you're preparing for battle, and you're targeting me. But I am fighting against Britain for the common good of our two countries, and there is no need for France to attack **....I don't think you really want to start a war, is there no other way?
Unfortunately, there was really no other way, and the tsar issued an ultimatum: Poland and Russia could only choose one or the other, and Russia continued to send troops to the occupied territories of Poland.
What else did Napoleon have to do at this time? We can only adopt the method planned by the German Schlieffen in the future, first quickly defeat Russia in the east, and then turn back to clean up Britain!
As a result, we all know, Kutuzov burned Moscow and defeated Napoleon in the cold winter.
Unfortunately, if he could, Napoleon would never have been willing to wage this so-called war of unification.
Finally, let's talk about Hitler.
Hitler's single-minded desire to occupy Russia was also not motivated by the idea of European unification.
Hitler's Germany, as a defeated country in the First World War, lived really worse than death in the years after the end of the First World War!
The Great Powers propped up the German bourgeoisie and formed a weak Weimar Republic to rule Germany.
As a child emperor, in the early days of his reign, the Weimar Republic profoundly implemented the puppet regime's brutal and external governance philosophy, frantically printing currency, plundering the wealth of its own people to pay off the debts of the victorious countries.
So much so that inflation has set a world record that cannot be surpassed to this day.
In 1925, due to the resentment of the bourgeoisie, the former German ruling class Junkers landlords and aristocrats once again regained power from the capitalists, and Hindenburg, who was born in Junkers, became the first to take office.
Hindenburg was in the same year that the United States launched the Dawes Plan to inject money into the German economy.
Relying on the American market, Germany has lived a good life of cooking oil in four years.
But the good times did not last long, and in 1929 the Great Depression crisis broke out in the United States, and Germany, which was deeply bound to the United States, was the most seriously injured.
As a result of the loss of export markets, a large number of factories have closed down, workers have been laid off, and social complaints have abounded.
It was under these circumstances that Hitler came to power, and the cure that Hitler prescribed to Germany was militaristic economics.
Isn't there no market for German goods? Then we will not produce commodities, we will divert all our production capacity to the military industry, and my neighbor will store grain and I will store guns, and my neighbor will be my granary.
As long as enough interests can be plundered, all the problems of Germany will no longer be a problem.
Relying on this set of ways to quench thirst, Germany is invincible on the European continent.
As a result of the winning streak, the German war machine was able to receive a steady stream of war resources and provide positive feedback.
So the more you fight, the stronger you get.
But when Hitler unified Western Europe, he found himself in the same predicament as Napoleon.
Is it better to rob Britain from the West, or the Soviet Union from the East?
The answer, of course, is Britain, which is the hegemon of the setting sun, far less powerful than the Soviet Union, but the colonial system controlled behind it is far from being comparable to the Soviet Union in terms of resource endowment.
It's a pity that although Britain is weak, because of the protection of the English Channel, the German ** team will not be able to take him for a while.
The German team could not fight a protracted war, because although the Western European continent was the most industrially developed region in the world at that time, this land was barren in terms of land resources, and it was also one of the best in all geographical plates in the world.
Let's take industrial blood oil resources as an example! Without the supply of overseas colonies, with the oil resources of Western Europe at that time, it could only support the German war machine for three months without paralysis.
Hitler did not want to be finished, so he had to look for other oil-producing areas to fill his shortcomings.
The European continent is surrounded by the sea on three sides, and in addition to the Soviet Union in the east, there are oil-producing areas?
Through the above description, everyone must understand that whether it is Hitler or Napoleon, attacking Russia is just a coincidence due to different strategic needs.
It's not the kind of war that is fought specifically for the sake of unification.
Reference: Liu Junda, "Reasons for the Outbreak of the Franco-Russian War in 1812".
Wang Xiaohui, "Analysis of the Reasons for Napoleon's Attack".
Liu Dejun, "On the Formation and Evolution of Hitler's Policy Toward the Soviet Union Before World War II".
This article was originally written by "Literature and History", and has been opened for rights protection on the whole network.
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