How far Engels was from the indifferent attitude to modern German annexations, so characteristic of certain doctrinaire distorters of Marxism among present-day German Social-Democrats, is evident from the following statement he made in 1893:
“We should not forget that twenty-seven years of Bismarck’s administration made Germany hated everywhere—and with good reason. Neither the annexation of the North Schleswig Danes, nor the non-observance, and subsequent swindling cancellation, of the Prague Peace Treaty Article relating to them, nor the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine, nor the shabby measures taken against the Prussian Poles, have had anything at all to do with establishing ‘national unity’” (Can Europe Disarm? Nuremberg, 1893, p. 27).[2] Under the Prague Treaty of August 23, 1866, Austria ceded Schleswig-Holstein to Prussia on condition that the northern districts of Schleswig should be ceded to Denmark if by a free vote their population pronounced in favour of union with Denmark. The swindling cancellation of this article was effected by the Vienna Treaty between Germany and Austria of October 11, 1878. Even after fifteen years, in 1893, Engels remembers this deception and brands it as such, stressing the distinction between the creation of German national unity and the series of coercive and swindling oppressive measures in relation to peoples dependent on the Germans....[1]
[1] The manuscript breaks off here.—Ed.
[2] See pp. 499-503 of this volume.
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