Word: germane
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...empires dissolved into nation-states, these spectacles of power swapped their air of mysticism for a more tangible tone of aggression. The military parade entered the modern era with the crack Prussian army, famed for its lockstep discipline. Armies around the world copied the German kingdom's methods of mustering and marching, its salutes and drills. Some of the strict measures applied to troops marching in Beijing on Oct. 1 - like the precisely prescribed distance between an infantryman's nose and that of his colleagues on either side - can be traced to the diktats of Prussian tacticians...
...Prussians also bequeathed to the world the notorious goose step, first strutted by arrogant officers in the 17th century. As Britain faced the prospect of German invasion during World War II, George Orwell wrote the following of what he had seen of the gait from footage of Nazi parades: "[The goose-step is] one of the most horrible sights in the world ... It is simply an affirmation of naked power; contained in it, quite consciously and intentionally, is the vision of a boot crashing down on a face." The iconography was made all the more powerful by its sheer scale...
...Coalitions are, after all, not marriages of love." - Merkel, telling a German broadcaster that ruling Germany by coalition should prove interesting (Deutsche Welle, Sept...
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