Blood and Iron was a great book, and especially good considering its size at about 200 pages in my kindle version. In this really concise book, Katja Hoyer gives the reader a quick and dirty introduction to the Second German Empire that left me both feeling more knowledgeable and also wanting more. The Second Reich accomplished a lot, but we're essentially looking at a state that was made subject to the whims of a king and then destroyed by its third king, Wilhelm II. For all that Bismarck is heralded as a genius (and he is), his ultraconservative monarchism killed the state he created. And this is why monarchies are not legitimate. What works with one king fails with another and it creates an inherently unstable state that was bound to get torn apart eventually.
The really interesting parts of the book for me were about Bismarck, and I plan on reading a biography about him soon. As a young, obscure nobleman, Otto von Bismarck ran a conservative newspaper in the 1840s and was elected to the Prussian parliament in 1849, just after the failed revolutions of 1848. In return for his unfailing support of King Wilhelm I, the king named Bismarck the Prussian envoy to the parliament of the German Confederation in 1851. In that position, Bismarck successfully defeated Austrian power grabs, which was critical because Austria and Prussia were the two rival German powers that sought to control central Europe. Bismarck became the Minister President of Prussia, and it was in that position that he gave his famous "Blood and Iron" speech in September 1862. In it, he announced that he would go ahead with planned military reforms without parliamentary approval, increasing the number of peacetime troops from 150,000 to 220,000. In a summation of his philosophy, he said:
Germany is not looking to Prussia's liberalism, but to its power; Bavaria, Wurttemburg, Baden may indulge liberalism, and yet no one will assign them Prussia's role... it is not by speeches and majority resolutions that the great questions of our time are decided - that was the big mistake of 1848 and 1849 - but by iron and blood."
It's also a great summation of why the Second Reich failed in just half a century. The German Empire's legitimacy was based purely on its ability as an extension of Prussia to win wars and crush its enemies. When it lost World War One, there was no reason for it to exist anymore. On the other hand, America's legitimacy is based on its promise of rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for its citizens. If that is gone, then so is the United States.
Bismarck was able to take advantage of events as they unfolded. In a blunder, Christian IX, King of Denmark, signed a document in 1863 that annexed Schleswig to Denmark. Bismarck was able to convince the German Confederation to send a force to Schleswig and Holstein to seize it before the Danes, making sure the northern German region would remain in Germany. When Austria argued that the German Confederation should reconsider the Schleswig-Holstein question, Bismarck called foul and sent Prussian troops into Austrian-controlled Holstein in 1866, triggering the Austro-Prussian war, which the Prussians won. Prussia annexed a huge amount of German territory, and now that Prussia held land from the River Memel to the Rhine, it declared the constitution of the German Confederation to be null and void. Since the Habsburgs of Austria had led the Confederation, this was a huge moment in European history, as Prussia triumphed over Austria to lead Germany.
In 1869, Bismarck sought to unify Germany, but needed a unifying conflict that would spur the Germans to act together. He found it when the Spanish Queen, Isabella II, was toppled, and he floated Prince Leopold of the Hohenzollern dynasty (the Prussian ruling house) as a replacement since he was married to the Portuguese princess. Of course the French objected to being surrounded by Prussians. They objected in a letter to King Wilhelm I, but Bismarck cleverly wrote a flippant response to the French, which he then leaked, inflaming French passions and provoking Napoleon III into declaring war on Prussia. Prussia won a decisive victory in September 1870, capturing Napoleon III and seizing Paris in December 1870. Through this conflict, the German states worked together under Prussian leadership, and Bismarck convinced Wilhelm I to declare a unified German state in the beginning of 1871 in the Hall of Mirrors in Versailles, since it would have been difficult to declare in German territory, showing favoritism. And so the Second Reich was made by the bullet and declared its existence in the palace of its vanquished enemy.
The Second Reich was headed by the Kaiser, Wilhelm I, who had the powers under the constitution to lead foreign policy, represent the empire, give royal assent to bills, appoint and dismiss imperial officials, convene the Bundesrat, convene and dissolve the Reichstag, command the military, and declare war with approval of the Bundesrat. The Kaiser also appointed the Imperial Chancellor (Bismarck), who was the chairman of the Bundesrat, the upper house that introduced bills to the Reichstag, which could approve or reject them. The Bundesrat was like the Senate, with one representative from each of Germany's 25 states, while the Reichstag was more like the House, with direct election with a secret ballot. But the "democracy" was heavily tilted in favor of Prussia and in favor of agricultural, rural areas. The result was a disproportionately conservative state with large powers given to the Kaiser and his Chancellor.
As Chancellor, Bismarck now ruled over a united Germany, and I put a map of it above. One major policy he initiated was the cultural war, Kulturkampf, to eliminate the Catholic Church from the German state. While much of it had to be repealed in the Catholic backlash, he was successful in creating a secular state, and religion has been weaker than the national identity of Germans ever since. As part of that secularization, Bismarck allowed Jews to serve in the army and public positions as long as Jews were invisible as a minority and well-integrated. Despite this "toleration," or perhaps because of it, 15,000 Jews converted to Christianity to gain higher office at this time.
Economically, the Panic of 1873 had a weak effect on Germany, and while other states struggled, Germany switched from free trade to protectionism, developing into a modern industrial giant to rival its Western European neighbors. Bismarck cracked down on socialist organization, trade meetings, and publications, arresting many while others fled abroad. But in a "carrot and stick" approach to deal with the poverty that came with industrialization, Bismarck allows the creation of social insurance through the Sickness Insurance Act in 1883, giving up to thirteen weeks of sick pay, and the Accident Insurance Act of 1884, paid by employers, therefore giving them a good reason to improve health and safety in the workplace. The 1889 Old Age and Disability Act have pensions to people over 70 and those who could not work. But don't get it twisted- Bismarck did not support these programs, he tolerated them as a way to placate the working classes who demanded them so that he and Wilhelm I could remain in power.
As Wilhelm I aged, difficulties came about in the transition of power. His son, Friedrich, who would eventually rule as Friedrich III, was a liberal, openly critical of his more conservative father and Bismarck. He had advocated drawing closer to Britain and France than Russia. But he himself was outmaneuvered by his own son, Wilhelm, who would become Wilhelm II. This understandably created confusion at court, and is an obvious weakness of the Second Reich system. Wilhelm II created his own cabal at court, which grew much stronger in 1887, when it was revealed that his father had incurable throat cancer. 1888 was the year of three Kaisers, as Wilhelm I died at 90 on March 9th, and was then followed to the grave by his son Friedrich III 99 days later. Wilhelm II would rule the Second Reich until its collapse in 1918.
In March 1890, Wilhelm II decided to go his own way and forced Bismarck to resign. The new Kaiser was enthusiastic about modern innovations and spent most of his reign travelling the country and giving speeches, spending on average less than 100 days per year in Berlin. Hoyer writes that, "where Wilhelm I had been old, modest, and Prussian, Wilhelm II was young, audacious, and German," From already accelerated levels of economic growth, German industrial production increased by 33% in 1895-1900 alone, and the total value of the German economy had risen 75% by 1913. German exports increased from 2.9 billion marks in 1880 to 10.1 billion in 1913. At the dawn of the First World War, Hamburg was the third largest port in the world by the value of goods passing through it, behind only Antwerp and New York.
Wilhelm II, who had spent much of his childhood with his English cousins, was desperate to match the English fleet with a German one. The plan he shared with Admiral Tirpitz was to build a fleet two-thirds the size of Britain's, which would force Britain into an alliance with Germany. But this was not to come. While Britain was happy to support German naval ports in East Asia and Africa, it was not willing to risk its relationship with France by forming an open alliance with Germany. In 1902, cooperation broke down, and in 1904, Britain established the Entente Cordiale with France over North African Policy. To try to drive a wedge between the two, Wilhelm went to Morocco, where he rode a white horse and declared that the Sultan had his support to declare independence from France. But this isolated him further. He often hurt Germany by being undiplomatic.
From 1906 to 1909, Wilhelm was forced to deal with the Eulenberg scandal, in which several of his minsters were accused of homosexuality. Wilhelm was shaken by the whole thing, and fell into a depression. To try to cheer him up, his friends hosted a hunting party, but it only led to him being pushed over the edge. In the most bizarre thing I read in the whole book, General of the Infantry Dietrich bon Hulsen-Haeseler tried to lighten Wilhelm's mood by dressing up as a ballerina and dancing. But in the middle of the laughter of the guests, the General collapsed and died in front of them all from a heart attack, traumatizing everyone. Even worse, since he was wearing a tutu, they had to remove it from him before anyone could know. But obviously someone found out because here I am reading about it. From 1910 onwards, Wilhelm II withdrew, gave fewer speeches, and left the country drifting. Without any great Chancellor at the helm (because Wilhelm II had dominated power and centralized everything in himself), it was the military establishment that took over.
German war strategy was based on the Schlieffen Plan, which prescribed a quick strike against France, knocking it out of the war before having to face Russia. It feels like a plan from another time when wars were shorter. The idea was that Germany would need to defeat France in three weeks before turning to Russia, which was estimated would take four weeks to mobilize. However, in 1914, Russian mobilization came early (in just two weeks with nearly 400,000 against Germany's 153,000 troops), and Germany never knocked France out of the war. Instead, Belgians and Brits came to France's aid and knocked Germany out after four years. Germany caught a break when it knocked Russia out of the war and (temporarily) seized a huge amount of territory, but it only prolonged the inevitable. Germany was not going to win the war from the beginning. There was little lasting support for it, and it was funded through loans and bonds, as the people could not support higher taxation like in Britain and France. The famous hyperinflation of the post-war years in reality began during the war, with German marks eight times cheaper in terms of US dollars at the war's end.
In conclusion, the German state that achieved so much under Bismarck was really an abysmal state. It depended entirely on talented leadership, and so it wasn't really a state at all, just a vessel for ambition men. And so the Second Reich was destroyed where it was born 48 years earlier, in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles.
Miscellaneous Facts:
- Not really a "fact" but it's strange that Prussia and Austria, the two great powers that fought to control Germany, are today not really in Germany.
- The German Confederation was formed at the Congress of Vienna in 1815 as a replacement for the Holy Roman Empire, which was dissolved in 1806.
- This is sad. The day Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie were assassinated was their 14th anniversary. They didn't usually get to appear together publicly because she was considered "beneath his station" but they married for love. He renounced his claims to the throne for his children with her, ending his own royal bloodline. When he was shot, he exclaimed to her, "Sophie! Don't die! Live for our children!" But she was shot too and they were both dead within the hour.
- Wilhelm II initially commanded German bombing zeppelins not to attack London to avoid harming his relatives there. This really stuck out to me as so messed up that tens of millions could die in the battlefields of his war but that he felt he should get a special exception for his relatives that ruled his enemy's country.
- The death blow to Germany in WWI came when Austria and Romania fell, cutting off Germany's oil supply.
- Of German men between 19 and 22 when the Great War broke out, 35% were dead by the war's end.
- German soldiers had bad headgear in WWI. The pickelhaube had a big spike on it, sticking out to make soldiers into targets, and many of their helmets were made of leather, stretched felt, or even paper. Only in 1916 did Germany start to make helmets out of steel.
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