North German Confederation Supplanting the GERMAN CONFEDERATION founded in 1815, this union of 23 states north of the River Main was formally established in 1867, the year after BiSMARCK’s victory in the austro-prussian war. It confirmed Austria’s removal from schemes of GERMAN UNIFICATION, thus prompting FRANZ JOSEPH I to undertake a separate reorganization of his own HABSBURG EMPIRE via the AUSGLEICH. The new Prussian-led confederation also excluded the other predominantly Catholic states of southern Germany, most notable bavaria, wUrttemberg, and Baden. Given the choice of creating their own union, they nonetheless retained close links with the north through the zollverein and were soon part of an elaborate set of offensive-defensive alliances orchestrated by Bismarck. As for the Confederation itself, this reflected certain annexations that enlarged Prussia’s own territory and also featured a constitution weighted in favor of
Berlin. Within the federal framework (see feder-alism[1]), the Prussian monarch was to be president and commander-in-chief, charged with the conduct of foreign policy and declarations of war. He was also entrusted with the appointment of the chief minister. so as to satisfy particularist sentiments, each member state retained its own government and sent representatives to the Bun-desrat (Federal Council), but this was a body of limited authority with its voting fixed to ensure Prussian predominance. As a gesture towards LIBERALISM, Bismarck consented to the creation of a Reichstag elected on the basis of universal male suffrage, yet he allocated it few significant functions beyond budgetary debate. In the words of his king, william i, the North German Confederation was little more than “the extended arm of Prussia.” it provided the vehicle for Bismarck to move towards challenging France in 1870. Victory in the franco-prussian war enabled him to dispense with the Confederation as such. However, its constitutional arrangements did influence the replacement structure. This still left Austria aside, but reintegrated the smaller southern states into what now became a federal german empire (further enlarged by annexation of alsace-lorraine), as inaugurated under prussian leadership in January 1871.
Norway This country, with an estimated current population of 4.8 million, lies along the northern and western coastline of continental SCANDINAVIA and has borders with Sweden, Finland, and RUSSIA. Its sovereignty also extends to the spitsbergen archipelago, deep inside the Arctic region. Having come under the rule of Denmark in 1523, the Norwegians successfully claimed in 1807 the right to have their own parliament. When the Vienna congress of 1814-15 endorsed a union of crowns involving transfer of sovereignty to Sweden (see also bernadotte), Norway managed to preserve a significant measure of autonomy for its own liberal institutions. In the course of the nineteenth century it became the scene for a vigorous cultural nationalism. By the 1880s parliamentary governance was firmly entrenched, and universal male suffrage was achieved in 1898. This served to fuel pressure for independence, and in 1905 the link with Sweden was peacefully dissolved. A dynasty of Danish origin now provided, in the person of Haakon
VII, the first modern monarch of independent Norway. In 1913 his country was among the first to introduce universal female suffrage (see feminism; gender). Having maintained neutrality during World War I, it hoped to avoid direct involvement in world war ii as well. However, in April 1940 Norway found itself under invasion from Germany, which was keen to control vital mineral resources and to exert a tighter strategic hold over neutral Sweden. hitler’s forcesswept aside an Anglo-French attempt at intervention, established a military occupation, and (with the ageing Haakon VII beginning a wartime exile in London) instituted a puppet regime nominally controlled by the Norwegian Nazi sympathizer, quisling.
After the war Norway abandoned its neutralist stance, and in 1949 became a founding member of NATO. Three years later it helped to create the NORDIC COUNCIL. In 1960 it participated in the inauguration of the European free trade association, but in 1963 failed in its bid to join the European Community (EC). Thereafter the issue of deepening Norway’s involvement in the project of European integration continued to be a live one. However, in 1972 the Norwegians voted by quite a close margin against their government’s recommendation to enter the EC, and in 1994 they produced a similar referendum result spurning the opportunity of admission into what had meanwhile become the European Union. By settling simply for association with the looser European Economic Area, they showed themselves content to follow policies divergent from those adopted by Denmark at the earlier point as well as by Sweden and Finland at the later one. The Norwegians’ inclination to take this distinctive line was enhanced by the prosperity that had started to flow from the exploitation of major sources of oil and natural gas lying under their areas of the North Sea. This was the basis on which a marginal majority of voters hoped to maintain a higher degree of state intervention than “Brussels” seemed likely to allow - one which in Norway had become deeply influenced by models of social democracy and welfarism and which had proved capable ofsubsidizing the more traditional economic sectors of agriculture, fishing, and maritime trade.
Novara, Battles of Situated some 45 km (28 miles) west of Milan at a strategically significant
COMMUNICATIONS point, Novara has been the site of several military engagements. In the nineteenth century two of these occurred in the context of an emerging Italian nationalist sentiment.
[1] 1821. Faced by a mutiny in the army of piedmont-sardinia and by demands for a constitution, Victor Emmanuel I abdicated and his brother, Charles felix, became due to replace him. CHARLES albert, his more liberal-minded cousin, stepped in as temporary regent but Charles Felix appealed to Austria for tougher help. on April 8 Austrian forces crushed the rebellion at Novara.
[2] 1849. The second engagement occurred during the revolutions of 1848-9 as part of the widening struggle for Italian unification. In 1849, following their victory the previous year at cus-TOZZA, Austrian forces under radetzky occupied Lombardy. A piedmontese army, led by Charles Albert (king since 1831), opposed them but was roundly defeated at Novara on March 22-23. This battle brought to a close the first Italian War of unification. piedmont was obliged to pay an indemnity and Charles Albert abdicated in favor of his son victor emmanuel ii.
Novi Pazar, Sanjak of Administrative region (sanjak) of the Ottoman empire (see turkey and EUROPE), forming a mountainous corridor of separation between Montenegro and Serbia. Though it remained under formal Turkish sovereignty even after the Berlin congress of 1878, the Austrians were permitted to occupy the sanjak as a strategically vital obstacle to the growing territorial ambitions of the newly-independent Serbs. Only after annexing bosnia-herzegovina in 1908 did Austria withdraw. During the Balkan wars of 1912-13 Serbia and Montenegro at last managed to partition Novi Pazar between them, and following World War I it was incorporated into
YUGOSLAVIA.
Novotny, Antonin (1904-75), First Secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (1953-68), and State President (1957-68). As an advocate of communism, he was imprisoned during WORLD WAR II by the Nazis (see Nazism) in the CONCENTRATION CAMP at Mauthausen. He joined his party’s central committee in 1946, and participated in the successful Communist coup of 1948. After the internal purges of discredited comrades that started in 1951, he succeeded GOTTWALD as party leader. Having added the headship of state in 1957, he then dominated national politics for a further decade. He remained an unreconstructed Stalinist (see stalin), but also opposed Moscow’s demands for permanent stationing of Soviet troops within Czechoslovakia’s borders. Novotny’s rule was ended by the Prague SPRING of 1968. Even when that brief period of liberalization was reversed by Soviet invasion, he was not reinstated.
Nuremberg laws Two decrees proclaimed by hitler’s regime at the Nazi party rally on September 15, 1935. The first deprived Germany’s jews of the full citizenship that was now reserved for “Aryans.” The second sought “protection of German blood and honor” by prohibiting marriage or any other sexual liaison between Jews and non-jews. These laws, which provided early public confirmation of the centrality of racism to the practice as well as the theory of Nazism, constituted a major landmark in the escalation of antisemitism under the Third Reich.
Nuremberg trials Criminal proceedings against the principal surviving representatives of the former Nazi regime (see Nazism) that were conducted in Bavaria from November 1945 to April 1949. In the opening phase, lasting until October 1946, those cases accorded highest priority were amalgamated into a single set of hearings before a specially-constituted International Military Tribunal (IMT). The membership of this unprecedented body, like that of the prosecuting teams, was supplied by the four powers occupying Germany at the end of world war ii. Despite having begun by advocating merely some form of summary execution, the British government eventually agreed with the USA, the Soviet Union, and France about mounting a full-scale judicial action. Together they pressed charges concerning conspiracy, crimes against peace, and war crimes, as well as ones newly categorized as “crimes against humanity.” The final roster of 22 defendants included goering, hess, ribbentrop, papen, and speer, together with bormann who was tried in absentia. The concluding judgment produced twelve sentences of death and seven of imprisonment, together with three acquittals. The court also formally proclaimed the criminality of certain Nazi organizations (e. g. the schutzstaffel (SS) and the gestapo). During the hearings most of the accused had unconvincingly denied any significant knowledge of the worst excesses of the HITLER regime. They had also generally sought to exploit every opportunity of highlighting the unfairness of “victors’ justice.” While there was certainly scope for embarrassing the Western allies (e. g. over Anglo-American saturation bombing of civilian targets), the defendants’ counter-claims looked more plausible still when aimed at the Soviet Union over issues such as the KATYN MASSACRE and the secret protocol to the NAZI-SOVIET pact. By late 1946 cold war tensions had advanced to the point where there was no longer any real prospect of fulfilling earlier expectations about a continuing role for four-power judicial collaboration at Nuremberg. Thus the trials of the second phase were conducted there not by the IMT but simply by US military tribunals. The 12 separate sets of so-called “subsequent proceedings” focused on different areas of criminal conduct within the Third Reich (as perpetrated, for example, by industrialists, civil servants, military doctors, or SS units). Death sentences were implemented against 24 of the 185 charged by the US prosecutors, while 20 were condemned to jail for life and 87 to shorter terms of imprisonment. Viewed overall, the iMT and the American proceedings each did a great deal to illuminate the horrors of the Nazi dictatorship and thus to create better prospects for democratic stability in at least the western half of occupied Germany. in the wider context of aspirations to strengthen the mechanisms ofglobal justice, however, much of the potential legacy of the initial four-power phase of collaboration was slow to be exploited. Not until the civil war of the early 1990s was well under way in Yugoslavia would Europe witness the creation of another international criminal court, based at The Hague (see hague tribunals), possessing at least some features comparable to those of the Nuremberg IMT.
World History
