Unlike England, industrialism arrived late in Germany. (Image: Everett Collection/Shutterstock)
In the 20th century, there were two dominant religious groups in Germany: the Catholics and the Protestants. Northern Germany was largely Protestant and southern Germany was largely Catholic.
Class division was also seen among the emerging German working class blue-collar workers in the factories and the coal mines in particular and their liberal, conservative, middle-class counterparts. This class division in the new German state became extremely important in the political landscape.
This is a transcript from the video series
The German Social Democratic Party
The most obvious domestic political development in Germany before the outbreak of the First World War was the rise of the German Social Democratic Party, the SPD. It was a labor party and its appeal was to blue-collar workers.