Pax Germanica

Pax Germanica, Latin for "German peace", described the peace in Germany after its foundation in 1871 by Otto von Bismarck, the Unification of Germany; it coincided with the Pax Britannica. Bismarck's alliance system was designed to preserve the new, powerful Germany by ensuring a European peace and diffusing conflict among other European powers. As a coinage, Pax Germanica is analogous to Pax Romana. Moreover, as a usage, the term "Pax Germanica" appears in the Latin text of the Peace of Münster treaty of 1648.

Fiction

In fiction, Pax Germanica also refers to the different world order that would have followed an Imperial German victory in World War I or the New Order following a Nazi German victory in World War II. The term is used in the literature, art, and cinema of alternate history and counterfactual history that are mixtures of researched fact and imagination.

Literature

• When William Came written in 1913 as a future history, this is among the earliest of the genre
• Swastika Night, written by Katharine Burdekin and one of the earliest treatments of the theme of a possible Nazi victory.
• Virtual History, written by Niall Ferguson
• The Man in the High Castle, written by Philip K. Dick
• SS-GB: Nazi Occupied Britain 1941, written by Len Deighton
• Fatherland, written by Robert Harris
• 1945, written by Newt Gingrich and William R. Forstchen
• Curious Notions, written by Harry Turtledove, explores the less common variant of a world where Imperial Germany won the First World War.

Movies

• It Happened Here (1966), a British film directed by Kevin Brownlow

See also

• Axis victory in World War II

Further reading

• Tighe, C., "Pax Germanica in the future-historical" in Amsterdamer Beiträge zur neueren Germanistik, pp. 451–467.