German Memoirs - German Strike on Romans and Invasion into the Roman Empire

Whatever the persecution Germans faced historically what Dietmar Doering was telling me came into mind as to how the Germanic tribes under the command of Arminius (Hermann) by one stroke against the Roman Forces in Germania and the subsequent Germanic tribes invasion into the Roman Empire changed the trend of the world.


The remains of the Temple of Saturn in the Roman Forum [Credit: Andreas Tille]

As one historian said: "If the Romans could not have been defeated and the Germanic tribes had accepted the Roman culture and language like the Gauls (today's France) did, the largest percentage of today's Europe would likely consist of Latin languages. Germanic-based German would be as extinct as the Celtic language of Gaul. The Germans of today would probably speak a language similar to French.

If Britain had not been conquered by the Germanic Anglians and Saxons, today's world language English would never have come into existence. Instead they would still speak a variety of Latin, or again Celtic. Maybe North America would have been conquered and settled by the British nevertheless, but then still today's U.S. citizens would speak modern Latin or maybe even Celtic. The same would have occurred to many peoples in Africa and India, who were subdued by the English and assumed their language.

If the Romans had succeeded to integrate the Germanic people, maybe the continuing Roman rule would have merged the European peoples into a permanent nation of Roman citizens. Possibly, Europe then might even have remained politically united in a single state.

Maybe even the history of North and South America would have run a different course. A large European empire, with domestic trade from the Atlantic to the Euphrates river in the Middle East, would likely have had less interest in colonizing remote areas than the two national states that were rivaling with their neighbors, Spain and England.

However, perhaps it was especially the fragmentation of Europe into many rivaling states that spurred European peoples to their greatest achievements, by fanning, striving and competing with each other. These often led to bloody wars, but more often to fast technological progress, business-friendly politics and wealth, military might, explorations and conquests, and glorious achievements of culture and art - whereby the leading nations of each period were not held back by the slower ones or by a torpid central government."

By destroying the ailing Roman Empire, the Germanic tribes ultimately made possible for the peoples of the western world a much brighter development and greatness, which contributed, spirally to the development of the entire world.

German Memories in Asia