Bismarck’s War

I think because advocating for not having children is often something that progressives do and as such the author could be biased against nationalism, no matter the historical context.

It's heavily coded for one side of the culture war.

I don’t care much about the downvotes, so please go ahead, but that was not a loaded question.

I’m genuinely curious, I’m not intentionally obtuse and I’m not implying anything.

It's just plain old sexism.

> Nevertheless, it is true that Prussian imperialism ultimately was a disaster for Germany.

As long as Germany had a competent leader, they could engage in smart offensive moves and improve its standing. And they could have continued doing so.

The problem was strategic leadership fell into the hands of idiots and they backed the Austrians without a clear strategy beyond 'our armies smash'.

> In fact, the 2nd reich was illiberal, with a parliament which was mostly powerless.

Not really. Bismark had to spend huge amount of effort on managing the parliament. And they were constantly pushing into things and increasing their own power.

Even during WW1 the importance of the parliament is underestimated.

Adam Tooze has some good research on that.

It‘s a problematic logic.

These kinds of causality creations usually only work if you - like i said - leave out details, which is the moment when someone leaves the historical factual and enters the creation of histography, something that has always flourished around the french revolution.

By this logic we get a clear causality by which Napoleon gave us Hitler.

Well, Prussian Imperialism went well until 1918. Quite a run, if you ask me. Not saying it was a good thing, but at the time it achieved Prussias goals.

There is a tendency to paint one beligerent of any given war as evil and the other(s) as good. That didn't even work for WW1, it does for WW2, the evil side clearly is the axis. When looking closer so, no side in WW2 was truely good. On the allied side there was Stalins USSR, bombing of civilians and the like. On the Axis nothing to defend so, especially the Germans started a world war with a planned and intentional mass tenocide at its core fornno other reason than murdering all jews in Europe.

1870, and in 1914, things were different. War was still an accepted way of conducting state business. And those used to be way less devastating than WW1 turned out to be.

> What allowed WW1 to happen, among a lot of other reasons, was Wilhelm II's dismanzling of Bismarks alliances and treaties.

That's a commonly held view, but Bismark is partly responsible for the inability of Germany to win WW1. He was the one that set up pre-WW1's alliances, and especially, he was the one that alienated Russia with duplicitous diplomacy. That policy, which culminated at the Berlin conference is, ultimately, the thing that allowed France to break from its diplomatic isolation.

Maybe if you interpret it generously. "more effectively organized" could mean almost anything.

Very true; Napoleon was quick.

This is also the story of the second italian war of independence, a few years earlier , where the same Napoleon III and French army were successful against Austria-Hungary.

True, and maybe the military aspect of the war is the least interesting part.

People will believe anything they want about casus belli, so long as it suits their politics. A week ago, someone here on HN was trying to convince me that the US State Department had a conspiracy to start the Ukraine war.

If you read up on how wars historically got started the only thing you can conclude is that the people that somehow gravitate towards positions of power in autocratic countries are the last people that you want to have with such power. War is essentially inevitable once such a character takes over.

For most of European history people needed a reason not to fight. Warfare was endemic.

A Hohenzollern (ruling house of Germany at the time) had been offered candidacy to a Spanish throne. France agitated that this should not happen, Prussia relented, than France pushed the issue even further saying that not only was it disallowed this time, but that it should be disallowed for any Hohenzollern to do this until the end of time. That was a bridge too far for Prussia - who refused - so France declared war.

The revisionism that somehow Bismarck tricked France into war with the Ems Dispatch comes from people trying to backport Hitlerism 60 years into the past.

It's complicated but most of it comes down to two things. First, was Napoleon III's domestic situation. He had fashioned himself as a second Bonaparte and there were two main aspects to Bonapartian politics, domestic modernization and foreign domination through military victory. While Napoleon III had succeeded quite well at the former (really exceeding his uncle) he had only moderate foreign successes and a few blunders to his name. Napoleon III and his ruling clique became convinced that a good old fashioned European land war was the only thing that could keep France united and legitimize the second French Empire. And there may have been some truth to this. Regardless, they saw it as vital to maintaining the "Empire" which they believed had brought France out of a dark historical period.

Second, was what about what German unification did to what we call "The Balance of Powers". "The Balance of Powers" is a concept that things are good when there are several European powers who have relatively balanced economic and military powers. But that things get very bad when one power becomes dominant and seeks to annihilate or mortally wound its counterparts. It was a concept favored by the high born, elite educated aristocrats who made up the ministers in Europe's Empiral bureaucracies. To this view, things which might disturb his balance are bad and things which maintain the balance are good.

For over a century, the unification of Germany had been one of those "bad" things which might come to pass. It loomed as a boogieman over the old European, "Balance of Powers". Independently, the German speaking states of Northern Europe had become the most economically developed parts of the continent. There was a feeling that if they joined together, their economic power and as a consequence, their military power would eclipse all of Europe. And this was not just the feeling of the French. The Russians were concerned about this question. And the Austrians too. They had the most complicated situation of all because many of the German states had been part of The Holy Roman Empire which had Austria had dominated. As the German states rose, many Austrian aristocrats benefited but they also understood this rise as a threat. Thus they had worked against German unification for decades.

I think the French figured that smashing an infant German state before it had time to develop cohesion was there best chance to avoid German domination. This of course was a blunder. The war pushed Southern German States into unification and created the popular basis for a cohesive German nation.

Now, regarding the infamous "insult" which was the French excuse for war. The insult itself is not really important. The French and Germans both were eager for the war. France for the reasons stated above, Germany for the reason that they figured it would bring the South German states into their union. The French were looking for a reason and Bismarck with his publication of the Ems Dispatch obliged them. In the end, it could've been almost anything.

As a foot note, there is a ton of debate about whether "The Balance of Powers" was really the product of the magnanimous wisdom of conservative ministers or whether it was just an inescapable reality which they accepted, it being simply too hard to project power at the scale necessary to dominate all of Europe at this time. Regardless of its root intention, "The Balance of Power" is something we see at work in European politics. The treaties that ended European wars from the thirty years war until the Franco-Prussiian war were rarely very punitive. Usually they attempt to give the victor some kind of upper hand but they don't usually involve measures that another power might feel they truly cannot accept. They indeed often look as though they are trying to create some kind of stable peace.

> Wilhelm II wanted vigorous & rapid expansion, to enlarge Germany's (and his) place in the sun. Bismark, who was getting a bit old & unsteady himself, was replaced in 1890 with a new German Chancellor, more to the young Kaiser's liking.

Otto von Bismarck was very adept at putting together treaties and alliances to hold things at bay or in stasis until Prussia could benefit. Bismarck understood to have limited objectives--Bismarck had a plan--Bismarck always had a plan.

"Twisted History--Otto von Bismarck" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zc3Y-dU_GjM&list=PLhyKYa0YJ_...

Wilhelm II, alas, was an idiot. Anything with subtlety was doomed.

To be fair, it wasn't clear that even Bismarck could have kept all the plates spinning indefinitely. And Bismarck was getting old.

This aligns with what I've read in Robert K Massie's "Dreadnought". It feels odd to title the book "Bismarck's War" and then come to that lesson. It should really have been titled "Wilhelm's Lunacy".

Wilhelm's obsession with a massive fleet to compete with England lost any hopes of forming an alliance with them and resulted in Germany being seen as a threat. Having a large fleet puts you at odds against England no matter what - that is their last line of defense. It's interesting to think what might have happened had Germany abandoned any aims on a massive navy and focused all those resources on it's army instead. My hunch is no mis-alignement with England and a very different looking world today if that happened.

> This still happens today, too. Look at the volume of tanks that NATO countries shipped to Iraq and Afghanistan. What tank losses occurred were predominantly from infantry, because there were simply no enemy tanks available to engage.

"Fighting the last war" has been another way I've heard it referred to. It is why, for instance, I didn't agree with the US DoD curtailing the F-22 purchase plans in favor of more counter-insurgency focused efforts.

As to tanks in Iraq/Afghanistan, lets not get tricked into thinking they were useless because there were no tanks for them to fight. They proved supremely useful as mobile pillboxes or observation posts, that could sit somewhere and use their sensor suites that were far and away better than the binoculars or nvg's a solider could put to their face.

Germany being divided in South and North Germany (or eventually forming a somewhat loose federation) wouldn’t exactly have been a tragedy for the German nation.

And it likely would’ve meant no WW1