The War for Germania

 

In the year 52 BC, after Caesar had “pacified” Gaul by completely conquering and converting it to a Roman province, Rome’s expansionist policies turned eastward. Several Germanic tribes crossed the Rhine in 16 BC and confronted the Roman Fifth Legion, defeating it and even capturing its eagles. To the horror of the Romans, this event demonstrated that the Rhein border was not nearly as secure as they had assumed. Augustus was so concerned by this development that he adopted a new global strategy as a defensive measure against the “German menace.” He decreed that Rome’s eastern boundary against non-Romanized Germans, which until then had been the Rhine, should be moved eastward to the Elbe. As had been the case with Gaul, the entire area between Rhine and Elbe would have to be completely subjugated and integrated into the Empire.

 

The first step of the plan was moving in a pincers operation from the Rhine and Danube in order to encircle and overpower the entire area south of the Danube, that is, Raetien, Noricum and Pannonien/Illyrien.* After this, the Romans intended to subdue the German tribes in the northwest and the Markomanns in Bohemia. They considered the Markomanns their most dangerous opponents. In addition to advancing from the Rhine and Danube, the Romans intended to invade from the north as well, by using their fleet to transport forces on the North Sea. It was a gigantic military undertaking corresponding to the sweeping expansionist policies of Augustus. He entrusted the execution of the plan to his sons-in-law Drusus and Tiberius, both outstanding military leaders.

 

*Footnote: This would correspond to today’s Bavaria, Austria, Hungary, and Dalmatia.

 

During the years 15 --13 BC, the Romans reinforced their Rhine front as a preparatory measure. There were no fewer than fifty military camps along the great river, connected to each other by a network of roads. They were supposed to serve as supply depots for stabilizing the border area as well as bases for the subsequent invasion of the region east of the Rhine.

 

By the year 14 BC the Romans had positioned themselves along the Danube as well, building a chain of forts that were connected by a network of roads.

 

Drusus and Tiberius embarked simultaneously on a campaign through the Alps, in which they compelled 46 tribes between Helvetia and the Bodensee to join the Empire.

 

In four campaigns between the years 12 and 9 BC, Drusus attempted to capture the Elbe border region.

 

The first campaign was transported by the fleet through the “Drusus Canal” that he had constructed in the present Dutch region of Arnhem-Nijmegen, then over the Zuider Sea to the mouth of the Ems River. Such a demonstration of Roman power had a profound effect on the Germanic tribes of the North Sea, compelling the Frisian, Chaukian and Batavian tribes to enter into an alliance with Rome.

 

In 11 BC a second advance led from Castra Vetera (Xanten) up the Lippe River, where the Romans built a mighty fortress at Aliso. An additional advance brought them to the Weser. During the return march through Cheruskan territory to the Rhine, the Romans were under constant attack, and Drusus narrowly escaped annihilation. Because of their lack of military discipline and their ignorance of proper tactics, the Germans were unable to convert their gains into a real victory. At that time Arminius was about seven years old -- old enough to understand the warriors as they discussed the weaknesses of the Roman army in rough terrain, old enough to understand the implications of this insight, and old enough to remember it for future reference.

 

In a third campaign in 10 BC, Drusus attacked the Chatten (in the area of today’s Hessen) from Mogontiacum (Mainz) by way of the Taunus fortress in today’s Saalburg. This campaign was not particularly successful.

 

In a fourth campaign a year later he reached for the first time the River Elbe, which was supposed to form the new eastern border. He had to return without completing his mission, however, probably for lack of food and supplies. Shortly after that he was killed by a fall from a horse, at age 30, and this caused the collapse of the entire offensive.

 

His brother Tiberius succeeded him as commander of the campaign and was honored by a triumphal procession in Rome in 9 BC.

 

In the following year, Tiberius broke the resistance of the Sugambrer in what is today Sauerland.

 

He forcibly resettled 40,000 of them in a region west of the Rhine. In the following three years the Lippe line was reenforced by the construction of several permanent camps.

 

In the year 6 BC the Roman legate Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus (“Golden Beard”) became supreme commander of the occupied Germanic regions. He succeeded in reaching the Elbe and Havel in 3 BC and he probably saw the Baltic as well.

 

Ahenobarbus was the builder of the Pontes longi, that arrow-straight dam across the moor between the Ems and the Rhine that would become the site of a major battle in the year 15 AD .

 

In the year 2 BC Ahenobarbus apparently planned a forced resettlement of the rebellious Cheruskans similar to Tiberus’ resettlement of the Sugambrern. The planned resettlement did not succeed, however, and he was replaced as supreme commander by the legate M. Vinicium.

 

During the years 4 – 6 AD, Tiberius again took command of the Army of the Rhine, fighting against six northwestern tribes, including the Cheruskans. In the year 4, however, he declared the Cheruskans to be allies and “friends of the Roman people.”

 

Arminius, who was 21 at this time, served with his brother Flavius in Tiberius’ army as a commander of auxiliary troops. In 5 AD Tiberius completed a carefully planned, large-scale maneuver of naval and land forces in which both military branches simultaneously converged on the Elbe. This was a great feat of coordinated actions by several large contingents, which was meant to intimidate the remaining non-Romanized tribes

Did Tiberius attempt his much-touted pincers attack against the Markomanns in the year 6 AD? If Arminius was a member of his staff at that time, he most certainly learned a great deal about Tiberius’ leadership skills.

 

The last blow to determine the future destiny of Germany was supposed to fall in the southeast in the year 6 AD. Before that, however, Marbod, the king of the Markomanns in Bohemia, had to be defeated. Marbod commanded a standing army of 74,000 men. By means of an extensive pincer offensive of two armies and 150,000 men, the Romans hoped to crush Marbod’s army. This would allow them to close the gaps in the still incomplete Danube border, straighten and shorten it considerably.

 

At this moment, as the Romans were only a few days’ march from the upcoming battle, a generalized uprising broke out among the Pannonian-Ilyrian peoples. In the entire region between the Danube and Save Rivers and the Alps, the tribes began to rebel. Tiberius was forced to break off the general offensive against the Markomanns and direct his attention at the new center of unrest, which was unexpected good fortune for Marbod. Tiberius and his military forces were tied down for almost four years and suffered heavy losses.

Meanwhile, Arminius had returned to his homeland in the year 7 AD, long before the end of the Pannonic War. In the same year the newly appointed governor in Germania, Publius Quinctilius Varus, began a rigorous Romanization of the areas between the Rhine and Elbe rivers. His drastic and hasty policies, conducted with inappropriate means, ran into ever-stronger Germanic resistance. At the head of this resistance stood Arminius.

 

In considering Rome’s foreign policies, we note that in its arrogant domination it was firmly convinced that it had a special and unique claim to introduce order into the world. The citizens of the Empire were as firmly convinced of this as were the rulers. Non-Romans were dismissed as “barbarians” and considered somewhat less than human: they were denied all rights to autonomy and independence.

 

From such political presumptuousness naturally ensued the demand for a constant expansion of Roman influence; and this demand subordinated everything that did not act or think like a Roman -- militarily, economically and culturally. A similar claim to hegemony has been raised by imperialistic powers in recent times.

 

The Romans were always able to find some pretext to appear as “mediators,” “pacifiers” or “liberators.” The best way to justify a pacification campaign was to have the lesser nation “ask for assistance.” Such a “request” was most easily achieved by demonstrating to the country’s ruling classes the advantages that could ensue to them if they went along with Rome. It was an ancient yet eternally effective political ploy.

 

And if the foreign nation did not want to give up its freedom and voluntarily submit to “emancipation from barbarism,” or actively opposed such “liberation,” this was interpreted as a hostile act against the global Roman empire. In that case, a pretext was at hand to impose on such unruly recreants “civilization, progress, law and order” through fire and sword, utter devastation of homeland, deportation, enslavement, re-education and an eternal obligation to pay “reparations.” By such harsh treatment the foreign country and its people could easily be exploited and integrated into the Empire.

 

The forced uprootings of entire national groupings were particularly devastating.

 

Such mass deportations, with their unceasing streams of slave transports into the Roman areas of jurisdiction, were far more destructive for the subjugated peoples than were immediate bloody losses from war, which could be replaced in the next generation. Large-scale ejections and deportations affected not only the biological substance of a nation, but its cultural and social substance as well. Such measures often brought about the complete dispersion and annihilation of the conquered nation.

 

In subsequent centuries it would be the alleged “idolatry” of the “heathen” peoples that the imperialist nations, under the aegis of Christian missionizing, would give as the pretext for expanding their own territories. Ambitious church leaders then set about “liberating” the targeted peoples from their “dark superstition,” with the “religion of love”. And if the heathen did not want to be “set free”, they were forcibly “redeemed” by means of the same drastic measures that Caesar and Varus used in their time.

 

Rome’s stubborn attempt to “pacify” the Germanic tribes were a complete failure. The Romans treated the major independent tribes as though they were herds of wild animals that could be tamed and forced into subordination by brute force -- as though they had neither honor nor love of freedom, neither culture nor their own deeply rooted social structures developed over many centuries.

 

Rome was finally forced to realize, just as in our own time the American Empire has thrice had to learn the painful lesson, that technologically and militarily superior armies cannot defeat even inadequately equipped guerrilla forces when these are fighting for their freedom on their home turf and are able to impose on the invader their own kind of warfare.

 

Emperor Tiberius, a wise and knowledgeable strategist as well as experienced campaigner, finally learned that difficult lesson.

 

Rome’s endless and increasingly brutal wars led to ever-greater losses of men and material, and these losses resulted in an unsustainable ratio to its few real successes. Tiberius finally relented, and the Germans remained free. Freedom was what Arminius achieved.