Marx and Engels on reactionary Prussianism, Quotes

“Engels’ Conditions in Germany, one of his early works, contains an excellent pen-portrait of this king.

‘The Kingdom of Prussia […] was then governed by Frederick William III, nicknamed The Just, one of the greatest blockheads to ever grace a throne. Born to be a corporal and to inspect the buttons of an army; dissolute, without passion, and a morality-monger

”
― Mark Borisovich Mitin, Marx and Engels on reactionary Prussianism,

“the troops were composed of peasant serfs and poor burghers who were forcibly compelled to enlist. Recruiting frequently degenerated into sheer manhunts which led to bloody clashes. The whole system of military training was of a piece with these acts of cruelty and violence.

‘A soldier should fear his officer more than his enemy.’

Such was the principle laid down by Frederick II.”
― Mark Borisovich Mitin, Marx and Engels on reactionary Prussianism,

“Prussia, which was not a German region, had long before been a scene of activity of the Knights of the Teutonic Order. For a hundred years these ‘cur- knights’, as Marx called them, waged a war of extermination against the native population, the Prussians.”
― Mark Borisovich Mitin, Marx and Engels on reactionary Prussianism,

“in the historic Battle of Lake Peipus, Alexander Nevsky, in 1242, routed the cohorts of the Teutonic Order which had invaded Russian territory”
― Mark Borisovich Mitin, Marx and Engels on reactionary Prussianism,

“The history of Prussia is not a history of the genesis of a nation. Having arisen originally as a military colony of the Teutonic Order”
― Mark Borisovich Mitin, Marx and Engels on reactionary Prussianism,

“in the outcomes of the greatest movements in German history—the Reformation and the Peasant War, the events of the period of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars, the Revolution of 1848 and the movement for the national unification of Germany. In all these major events the scales turned, in the long run, in favour of the reactionary classes.”
― Mark Borisovich Mitin, Marx and Engels on reactionary Prussianism,

“The vast Lumpenproletariat, the product of the devastating Thirty Years’ War, the masses of morally depraved people, of beggars and tramps, accustomed to easy pickings—such was the reservoir from which the Prussian army recruited its soldiers.”
― Mark Borisovich Mitin, Marx and Engels on reactionary Prussianism,

“The Prussian Junkers in league with reactionary Austria instituted their rule in Germany with the aim of converting the whole country into a barracks whose inmates would obey implicitly the orders of the drill-sergeant.”
― Mark Borisovich Mitin, Marx and Engels on reactionary Prussianism,

“The policy of the Prusso-German Empire was actually laid down by the reactionary magnates of big monopoly capital and the big landowners. Krupp, Stumm, Thiessen and other imperialists, who worked hand in glove with the Junkers, actually ruled the country.”
― Mark Borisovich Mitin, Marx and Engels on reactionary Prussianism,