Episode 9: The Iron Chancellor: Otto von Bismarck's Unification of Germany

Otto von Bismarck, Prussian Chancellor and – after 1871 – the leading political figure of the Second German Empire after the Kaiser, hated to be bullied but managed to manipulate and bully all around him into following his complex strategic plan. This involved not only keeping German democrats at bay but also Denmark, Austria, and France. Tricking Denmark and France into breaking conventions and declaring war on Prussia and its allies respectively, he got the other German states to close ranks and back the Prussian claim for leadership in a newly united German State.

By putting Prussia on the defensive, the other European great powers – the United Kingdom and Russia – did not intervene, even though the emergent German superstate changed the balance of powers in Europe. Stopping short of aiming for overseas territories, taking on the role of the honest broker of the quarrels among others, Bismarck avoided pushing Britain and Russia over the brink into coalescing against Germany – which his immoderate successors did not.

We are joined by Michael Epkenhans, Beatrice Heuser’s successor as Director of Research at the Bundeswehr’s Military History Research Office, and specialist on 19th century German and Prussian history.

John Bew, Realpolitik: A History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016).

Lothar Gall, Bismarck: The White Revolutionary, 2 volumes, transl. by J. A. Underwood (London: Allen & Unwin, 1986)

Jonathan Steinberg, Bismarck: A Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011)

John Lowe, The Great Powers, Imperialism and the German Problem 1865–1925 (Hoboken NY: Florence Taylor and Francis, 2013)

Dennis E. Showalter, The wars of German unification (2nd ed., London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015)