Germany’s kind of a big deal, right?
Sort of the unofficial point person of the EU, biggest economy in Europe by a substantial
margin, I didn’t even realize how much of a heavyweight they were until I started fact
checking for this video, not to mention it was at the center of two world wars.
The weird thing is, unlike England and France which have been around for what, a thousand
years?
Germany is younger than the United States; for most of history, Germany didn’t exist.
There were Germans, but no Germany.
The closest thing was the Holy Roman Empire, which if we’re talking about Charlemagne
and his successors, it was sort of synonymous with a great big mostly German kingdom, but
by the beginning of the 1800s the map of Europe looked like this.
Northern Europe looks almost identical to today, Western Europe as well if you ignore
France getting a little glommy with the low countries and Italy, oh this is a little spicy
the Ottomans are still in the Balkans and Austria’s got a big ol’ empire, and then
oh my God what happened here?
Someone made scrambled eggs out of Germany and Italy!
That was the Holy Roman Empire, a thousand tiny independent states loosely united under
the emperor, but look at these two: Prussia and Austria were both doing the hokey pokey
with one foot in and one foot out, and despite being part of the same “empire” they spent
the last sixty years as each others’ arch nemesis.
So when Napoleon came along in 1806 and broke apart the Holy Roman Empire, even though Napoleon
eventually lost, no one really cared enough to put it back together, not even the emperor
himself.
But Napoleon did lose, and so what we’re left with in 1815 is the German Confederation,
which was kind of like the Holy Roman Empire, except even weaker.
The question was: who was really going to be in charge of the Germans?
Austria was an ancient power with a network of alliances stretching the continent, but
Prussia was the up-and-coming great power with one of the most effective militaries
in the world, thanks in part to the efforts of one sporting young man in a dapper jacket
and a penchant for war who decided to keep living long enough to become one of the most
influential men of the century.
But the man who invented Germany, Frederick’s spiritual successor of sorts, wasn’t an
ambitious king who made up his mind to conquer everything, or a forward-thinking revolutionary
who found a way to make everybody get along… he was a conservative politician who originally
wanted nothing to do with it.
[intro]
“Alas, oh boo-hoo!
Boo-hoo-hoo!”
“What’s the matter, Bismarck old chum?”
“I was born in the wrong generation, Gottfried.
I yearn for the good old medieval days” “But you’re a politician, not a king,
your job didn’t exist back then” “Yes, those were the days!
Now I can only take solace in old books and Kingdom Maker, my favorite free-to-play app
on iOS and Android.
Whatever became of the good old days when players - I mean royalty could battle, boink,
and betray their way to glory” “boink, sir?”
“Oh yes, any old fool can send young men to die on the battlefield, it takes a real
strategist to make war and love.
Back when you could breed noblemen and send them dungeon-crawling for fat loot, and sacrifice
the ones you didn’t like into a volcano.
Alas, these days the only place one can find a combination of grand real-time strategy,
RPG, and Sim gameplay in a charming goofy package is in the hours of unfolding content
of Kingdom Maker available for free in the link below.”
Bismarck’s story begins in 1848, which is probably one of the biggest single years in
European history, not because of any singular event, but because of a lot of little events
and some kinda big events.
All around Europe the middle and working class were kinda like “Hey, it’s 1848, we’ve
got steam engines and junk, what’s all this feudalism still doing here?”
and so there’s all these revolutions everywhere where people are rising up for democracy and
freedom of the press and an end to serfdom and worker’s rights and Bismarck is sort
of this little brown-nosed kid who was actually 33, living in his private countryside estate
trying to rally all his peasants, declaring “You don’t want democracy anyway!
Come, let’s rise up against the tyranny of the working class!
Let’s go to Berlin and quash those naughty rabble-rousers in the name of the king!”
The liberal movement in 1848 kind of runs out of steam because they got a few concessions
from the king, which ultimately amounted to a limited constitution and a three-estates
style parliament where 80% of the population gets one third of the vote because they watched
my video on Louis XVI and saw how well that idea worked for France.
And also they fell short because they wanted to create a united Germany and it turns out
that’s really hard, actually.
But that meant Bismarck got elected to parliament, and got a bunch of brownie points with the
king, which was a great start to his political career.
Then the king died and got replaced by a liberal-er king who sidelined Bismarck for a few years,
but then he died and a conservative-er king came to power.
The conservative-er king Wilhelm I got into a shouting match with parliament over the
annual budget, basically he wanted more money going to the army and he wanted to keep the
service length at three years instead of two.
And he thought to himself if only I had a conservative ally in parliament that I could
give a boat load of political power to push through my agenda for me.
Oh wait!
So Bismarck becomes Minister President and walks into parliament like “Hey.
So if you don’t approve a budget this year, we’re gonna be forced to keep using the
old one, which also means three-year service.”
“So give us a better budget!”
“Oh no.
This is the budget.
You can take it or leave it.”
“...Gimme the stupid budget.”
Bismarck: “How was that?”
Wilhelm: “Legally dubious, but very clever!
I don’t know how I can ever thank you enough” Bismarck: “Complete control over foreign
policy for the next thirty years.”
Wilhelm: “What.”
Luckily for the king, Bismarck was still a devout monarchist and wasn’t about to pull
a coup or anything, he mostly got his way by just being the best at his job and threatening
to quit if the king didn’t do things his way.
Now at this point he had actually warmed up to the idea of German unification as long
as Prussia got to be more important than Austria.
Within his first year in office he quite famously gave a speech saying that words failed to
unite Germany in 1848.
Now he would unite Germany with blood and iron.
He teamed up with a guy named Roon, who reorganized the army, and a guy named Moltke, the military
strategist who thought real good about how to kill people.
With their powers combined Bismarck wanted to take advantage of the fact that the traditional
alliances that had held Europe together since the defeat of Napoleon were a little shaky
ever since the Crimean War.
But instead of pulling a Napoleon going “This is-a the way the world is gonna be, you got
a problem with that?
Come at me bro!”
Bismarck was going to be very careful in picking his fights.
He began with a simple succession dispute in Denmark over who should inherit the duchies
bordering what would eventually become Germany.
Nothing wrong with that, right?
Look, even Austria is helping him!
Bismarck wins the war for one side, but makes a bunch of impossible demands and takes over
the land for Prussia but aw look, they’re sharing with Austria!
Look at them, isn’t that cute?
Prussia’s such a good friend!
But oh no, Austria’s land is farther away from their empire and they have to cross through
Prussia to get to it, and oh jeez things are getting real tense, who could have predicted
this?
Well Austria got real mad and broke their promise and so now poor Prussia has to declare
war because they’re the ones being swindled, surely the rest of Europe can understand.
Now you might be wondering what does a war with Austria over land in Denmark have to
do with Germany?
Good question.
Remember the German Confederation?
Although the little German states were split between who supported Prussia and who Supported
Austria, officially the German Confederation was supposed to all declare war on Prussia,
So Bismarck said “Bugger that, you’re not allowed to attack me, in fact, you’re
not allowed to exist anymore.”
Seven weeks later Prussia won the war, the Confederation was gone and replaced by the
North German Confederation.
The states that allied with Prussia were technically independent, while the states that fought
against Prussia all got annexed.
And then there was Luxembourg and Lichtenstein, who stayed neutral and are still out there
vibin to this day.
So now we’ve got kinda-sorta-Germany, big mega-block of German states all smooshed together
and controlled by Prussia, but it looks like this, and the Germany you’ve probably seen
in World War One looks like this.
And this time, Bismarck would take over Germany, this time by attacking France.
Or, technically, by getting France to attack him.
It went like this: King Wilhelm is going for his morning stroll before visiting the spa
and a French diplomat walks up to him.
He says,
Count Vincent Benedetti: “Pardon me, your majesty, but as you know a distant cousin
of yours was briefly considered for the throne of Spain.
He’s since renounced any claim, but the foreign minister would like your assurance
that you won’t be supporting any members of your house for the Spanish crown”
Wilhelm I: “I beg your pardon, sir, of course I’m sympathetic to his concerns but I’m
afraid I’m not in a position to bind myself to a particular course of action for the indefinite
future, you must understand.”
Benedetti: “Of course.
I’ll bring him your answer.”
Now it was Bismarck’s job to inform the press of what went on that day, and the way
he told it was more like this:
Benedetti: “Alors, you hobgoblin, listen up.
We get to say what happens in Spain and if you don’t like it you can eat my pants!
Back off before we flatten your silly little country into the stinky German dirt!”
Wilhelm I: “Pack my lunch you slug-guzzling stocking-sniffer!”
So all the French were mad at the Germans, and all the Germans were mad at the French.
Then when Bismarck and friends kicked the French’s butts the Germans states in the
South all said “Wow, you’re so cool, I wish we were part of Germany!”
and they all hopped on board and the North German Confederation became the Empire of
Germany and King Wilhelm became Emperor Wilhelm.
And just to add insult to injury they named him emperor in Versailles, just a few months
after the French Emperor lost his job.
Now all that was left was to turn Germany into a major player.
I mean Prussia was already a great power, but y’know, a major-er player.
He tried to get German Catholics to stop voting by arresting all their bishops, that went
about as well as you’d expect, he tried to Germanise the non-Germans living in his
Empire, and there’s a whole debate to be had over the pros and cons of nationalism
and the idea of the nation-state, he cracked down on socialism while at the same time creating
the first modern welfare state, an achievement which I am entirely downplaying in the interest
of time because foreign policy is Bismarck’s bread and butter.
Bismarck was exceptional at eyeing when other states were weak and ready to be taken advantage
of, and still convincing them into being the ones to declare war on him, but he was just
as good at determining when another states’ best interests were in line with his and avoiding
war.
It feels very prophetic that when a crisis in the Balkans emerged in 1885, Bismarck had
the foresight to warn about quote, “plunging Europe from Moscow to the Pyrenees, and from
the North Sea to Palermo, into a war whose issue no man can foresee.
At the end of the conflict we should scarcely know why we had fought.”
And remember that time Europe got together and decided to carve up Africa?
That was Bismarck’s doing when he all of a sudden decided that colonies weren’t a
waste of money anymore.
There was just one thing Bismarck hadn’t counted on.
King Wilhelm I died in 1888, and his successor, Friedrich III, was sixteen years younger than
Bismarck, and Bismarck was already a seventy-three-year-old man, so he would be working with this new
king for the rest of his life - nope, the king died in 99 days.
And his successor, one Kaiser Wilhelm II, shared Bismarck’s passion for participating
in government… but not his aptitude.
The two fought frequently and Bismarck was politely asked to resign while Wilhelm II
led the empire towards WW1.
With nothing else to do in his old age, Bismarck wrote memoirs with the primary objective of
dissing the emperor, and then died.