GERMAN HISTORY BEGAN at no specific place or date. Its
origins cannot be traced exclusively to those Germanic
tribes whose descendants later merged into the modern Ger-
man people. The terms German, Germanic, Teuton, and Teu-
tonic -- though often used interchangeably -- are by no means
synonymous. Among the Germanic peoples were not only the
East Franks and Alemanni, many of whom settled in what is
now Germany, but also, for example, the Angles and Saxons
who landed in England. Their language was an ancestor of
modern English, no less a Germanic tongue than the Danish,
Dutch, Norwegian, and Swedish spoken in other areas perma-
nently settled by Germanic tribes.

The case of the Teutons was different; they did not settle
where their descendants could establish themselves perma-
nently as an identifiable group. But before migrating to obliv-
ion, they left their mark in history; toward the end of the second
century B.C., they and their allies, the Cimbri and the Am-
brones, mounted so formidable an attack on the Romans that
their very name became a byword for the barbarian menace
from the north. Subsequent Germanic invaders were identified
with them, so that the term Teuton came to be applied to the
Germanic peoples in general and, in modern times, to the Ger-
mans in particular.

-3-