11 ms·

Bismarck’s War

66 points by benbreen 3y ago

kensai 3y ago
"The Germans drew different lessons. Believing that unification had come about as a result of military competence, they mapped the future of the German Empire in terms of military power. Thus, Chrastil concludes, German victory in 1871 became catastrophic not just for Germany but ultimately for the rest of the world." This.
- ku-man 3y ago
  [dead]
- bell-cot 3y ago
  My impression is that that lesson was NOT drawn at the time by the German A-listers, and especially not by Bismark - the AAA-list genius behind both this victory, and Germany's long process of unification. Bismark was very public, both before and after the Fraco-Prussian War, in his general opposition to European wars. Especially larger or longer wars. And he was very opposed to risking Germany getting caught in a two-front war. But then Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm I got old and died, and was soon succeeded by his grandson, Wilhelm II - who didn't like Bismark's cautious foreign policy. 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. Note that both WWI and WWII stuck Germany in large, long, two-front European wars. And that Germany got into WWI under the same Kaiser (Wilhelm II) who had dumped Bismark for being too cautious and anti-war.
  - Entwickler 3y ago
    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.
    - jcranmer 3y ago
      > 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. I don't think so. The biggest mistake Germany made was letting its alliance with Russia lapse in 1891, in favor of trying to snag an alliance with the UK, which wasn't interested in one (Britain favored a policy of neutrality on the continent). This leads France to seize the opportunity and ally with Russia in 1894. A series of colonial issues leads the UK to realize around 1900 or so that not having any allies wasn't exactly a good thing, especially when you've got lots of people you're butting heads against. Wilhelm was an absolute wrecking ball when it came to diplomacy. His tendency to show support for anyone fighting the British in colonial ventures in the late 1890s (especially the Boer War) couldn't have helped any chance for a UK-German alliance. It's only after tentative attempts to come to an agreement break down in 1901 that the naval arms race actually becomes an issue in UK-Germany relations: indeed, it's not really until dreadnoughts make the existing fleets (lopsidedly in favor of the UK) obsolete that German navy buildup actually poses a threat to the UK. The treaties the UK does enter into are less military alliances than they are colonial tension defusing, and Wilhelm's tendency to do the opposite would have likely made any formal UK-Germany treaty rather short-lived. The naval arms race mostly takes place after the UK-German treaty attempts ended, and redirecting that money to a larger army would probably have pushed UK even harder into the Franco-Russian camp: during its period of continental isolation, its greatest fear is that of a second Napoleon, who conquers most of Europe and shuts the British out of it. A stronger German army makes that look more plausible, and aligning against Germany helps avert that catastrophe.
      - pyrale 3y ago
        > I don't think so. The biggest mistake Germany made was letting its alliance with Russia lapse in 1891 The alliance lapse was forced by then, the issue is that Russia and Austria-Hungary, the two historic German allies, were competing for influence over the Balkans. Bismarck, rather than taking a side or remaining neutral, tried to become the arbiter of that dispute, and led a duplicitous diplomacy towards Russia. That was largely due to his attempt to freeze Europe in a diplomatic state that benefited Germany, rather than acknowledging the changing nature of diplomacy and trying to find new allies and a new balance. By 1891, German diplomats were faced with a tough choice: either continuing a two-faced policy which was doomed anyway, since Russia was not stupid, or acknowledging that and letting the alliance lapse.
  - bsder 3y ago
    > 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_5DTz_FAbdQyXo9TZdx1hTWf 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.
    - pyrale 3y ago
      > To be fair, it wasn't clear that even Bismarck could have kept all the plates spinning indefinitely. The biggest plate (the Russian alliance) was already falling when Bismarck was replaced, it hit the floor when German diplomats decided Bismarck's two-faced policy was unsustainable.
- petsfed 3y ago
  I hear echoes of "every power is a prisoner of its last victory". You can see the same thing in Soviet and American Cold War doctrine, but also in the way that just about everybody started WWI (and why the casualties were so horrific). By the time WWI rolled around, German veterans still in service were almost exclusively veterans of colonial wars. However, just about everybody from the Kaiser and central command down to the rank and file believed that a war against other Europeans would (and should) be fought differently from those colonial wars. Thus, the military philosophy that they thought won the Franco-Prussian war was brought to the present with very little modification, but enacted by people who had never actually seen its use. 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.
  - Arrath 3y ago
    > 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.
    - wizerdrobe 3y ago
      I’m instead worried we will think air and armor are mostly impervious in consideration to a near-peer conflict with eastern enemies.
      - Arrath 3y ago
        I would hope that watching the war in Ukraine would disabuse such notions.
- goodbyesf 3y ago
  The quote is pure nonsense as is most historical narratives. > Believing that unification had come about as a result of military competence It did. > they mapped the future of the German Empire in terms of military power. All empires are created in terms of military power. In what terms was the german empire supposed to compete against the british, french, russian, american, japanese, etc empires? The statement cannot be dumb because it's devoid of substance. It's literally a meaningless statement. > Thus, Chrastil concludes, German victory in 1871 became catastrophic not just for Germany but ultimately for the rest of the world. How was it 'catastrophic' as without it, germany wouldn't have existed? Also, 'rest of the world'? Germany's rise and germany's role in ww1/ww2 primarily affected germany's neighbors. Just because it was catastrophic for parts of europe doesn't mean it was catastrophic for everyone else. It's the same nonsense like 'the world is against russia' when most of the world is on russia's side or neutral. Like they all read from the same propaganda manual.
  - ffhhttt 3y ago
    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
    - hef19898 3y ago
      It was not the Prussians and Germans that declared war first in WW1, that honour belongs to Austria-Hungary. There were too many people at the time who wanted that war for various reasons for it not to happen ine way or the other. Some French wanted Alssace-Lorraine back. Austria wanted the Balkans. Germany wanted to settle tensions with Russia before the latter cought up enough to make that impossible (again, history showed the reasoning was largely correct), Russia did want Austria to get the Balkans and Britian was bound by alliances they needed to maintain their colonies. Not to forget the Ottomans, they and the Russians wanted the same patches of land along the black sea. And the Ottomans and British wanted the same land across North Africa. WW1 was almost guaranteed to happen, if anything Bismarck's treaties might have delayed that.
DubiousPusher 3y ago
If you want to understand 20th and 21st century European history, you really do need some background in the Franco-Prussian war. There's obviously no specific moment when Germany became ascendant. It was a process that took several hundred years, going back to the efforts of Prussia to distinguish itself amongst the member polities of the Holy Roman Empire. But the war did solidify or make official many important features of 20th century Europe. Namely, Germany as a unified whole with a German speaking core that defines its contemporary borders, the centralization of the rivalry between France and Germany, Germany as the dominant military and economic power of Europe, the stabilization of French Republicanism sans monarchy, the relative irrelevance of the Austrians, the end of a common belief in great power stabilization as a long term objective in favor of a more manichean struggle for dominance, etc.
- mongol 3y ago
  I have read about it on Wikipedia and such, and am puzzled about how it started - by a perceived insult? There must be so much more to it that have not come across in my brief readings about it. Perhaps because it was so long time ago it os difficult to understand certain concepts that today seems insane to declare war for
  - jacquesm 3y ago
    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.
    - psunavy03 3y ago
      If you're willing to do everything up to war to gain power, why would you not be willing to go to war to keep it?
  - LAC-Tech 3y ago
    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.
usrusr 3y ago
Feels weirdly incomplete without any mention of this, even if "ostensibly on grounds of Prussian provocation" isn't really wrong, apparently leadership on both sides was in a state of preferring war over peace (please insert an appropriate amount of expletives while reading!). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ems_Dispatch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ems_Dispatch
- LAC-Tech 3y ago
  I never bought into the narrative that somehow the wily Prussians 'tricked' the poor French into declaring war on them. Yes the Ems Dispatch was editorialised - but at that point France had already decided they would declare war if Prussia didn't agree to their demands. I'm not entirely sure what other options Prussia had at this point, accept to humiliate themselves further by accepting all French demands (that no Hohenzollern would ever be permitted to be a candidate on the Spanish throne for the rest of time).
  - labster 3y ago
    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.
    - hef19898 3y ago
      If people really want to do something, they find reasons / excuses. And if people want to really believe something, thebdo so too. The latter quite often leads to BS conspiracy theories. The former to false flag operations, lies, propaganda and very real conspiracies (the Suez Crisis comes to mind).
amadeuspagel 3y ago
Nietzsche warned against taking the victory as evidence of cultural superiority after the war.
AlbertCory 3y ago
There aren't many books on that war, for sure. I recently read one of them. This sounds like a pretty weak history: > the Germans won because they were more effectively organised, better trained and mobilised more men than the French. That sounds like a non-military opinion. Most of the battles in that war were "battles of encounter," where some units just happened to fight, and then the local commanders escalated it. The Germans always devolved more power to their commanders to act based on local conditions, while the French had a sluggish, top-down organization. John Keegan in Six Armies in Normandy calls that art operativ, as the Germans put it. The Germans also had better artillery. It certainly did lead directly to WW I, though.
- dmix 3y ago
  The author doesnt seem to be a traditional "military" historian, her CV lists books related to war, but more focusing on mobilization and civilians. So that makes sense. https://www.rachelchrastil.com/ https://www.rachelchrastil.com/
  - AlbertCory 3y ago
    True, and maybe the military aspect of the war is the least interesting part.
    - psunavy03 3y ago
      As a war college graduate myself, I'd agree and disagree. Wars are ultimately won and lost in the terrain of the human mind. People are defeated when they believe in their collective minds that fighting is no longer worth it. That's straight from Clausewitz. But militaries in wars ultimately create the conditions which facilitate those thoughts, and are the primary drivers of who wins and who loses. To say that the military aspect of a war is the "least interesting part" betrays an anti-military bias. But it is true that the military aspect of a war is not the only aspect which is necessary to understand how and why a war was won and lost, and its long-term effects on the belligerent nations.
      - 3y ago
rossdavidh 3y ago
If anybody wants a better analysis of the Franco-Prussian War than this review, Real Time History did a top-notch series on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Od4lVhcvnxw&list=PLv_PcL5Ij4iCViFgH-WssNSmVuoCSYFwZ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Od4lVhcvnxw&list=PLv_PcL5Ij4...
woodpanel 3y ago
Since the author also released "How to be childless – A history and philosophy of life without children" I think I'll have to expect a lot of framing baked into this, including accidentally/intentionally leaving out contexts. Note the "fueling" of "Nationalism", "committed" atrocities on the German side, while the French side only gets confronted by "wild rumors" and "accusations". At that time Nationalism was a force for good throughout Europe demanding more egalitarian rights for citizens, democracy and separation of state powers, but also promoting independence of other nations as nationalists of one nation even travelled to other countries to support their Nationalists, for instance to Poland in support of their protests against Tsarist rule. She leaves out this context, as well as that the French state (throughout being an ancien regime as well as being run by Napoleon) was waging multiple anti-German wars, basically treating the lands to its east like its Hinterland in need of Franconization (E.g. At the end of the 18th century just about 1% of the Elsassians spoke French, and even in 1953 80% of Elasassians were in favor of German speaking public schools). She also seems to leave out the context, that Bismarck was an aristocrat and thus anything but a nationalist. And since she seems to be in need to see (or letting us see) the word nationalism in todays western liberal meaning, that whole differentiation seems inaccessible to her. Germany "refrained from ethnic cleansing" (written as if this was some sort of novelty for Germans) because they considered the occupants German. The mild peace-conditions were given by Germany because Bismarck knew that anything else would foster even more French resentment then there already was („Toujours y penser, jamais en parler"), which would then foster more German nationalism, which in turn would hurt his Juncker-Class.
- pyrale 3y ago
  I'm not sure how you relate this article to an unrelated book on being childless. Nevertheless, it is true that Prussian imperialism ultimately was a disaster for Germany. I'm not sure how that relates to a "French side", unless you also want to say that there was an "Austrian side", a "Polish side", a "Danish side", etc. > At that time Nationalism was a force for good throughout Europe demanding more egalitarian rights for citizens That aspect of nationalism was dead since 1848 in Germany, in no small part due to Prussia. In fact, the 2nd reich was illiberal, with a parliament which was mostly powerless. > She leaves out this context, as well as that the French state [...] The book is about 1870. France had been mostly powerless and diplomatically isolated since 1815. But yeah, nice irredentist propaganda.
niemandhier 3y ago
This perspective might be true for the Europeans and north Americans, but by the same ( imho stretched ) reasoning the Franco-German War lead to the downfall of colonial empires and therefore liberated significant parts of the world.
dustypotato 3y ago
Not to mention the parliamentarians, press , and the people in the streets in France who clamored for war. Napoleon III was actually hesitant to go to war
panick21_ 3y ago
I strongly recommend everybody who is interested to watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yF4INCn-sew https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yF4INCn-sew Its by amazing German Historian Adam Tooze on the 150th year of German Unification. It goes into a lot of detail and I learned a lot.

66 points by benbreen 3y ago

"The Germans drew different lessons. Believing that unification had come about as a result of military competence, they mapped the future of the German Empire in terms of military power. Thus, Chrastil concludes, German victory in 1871 became catastrophic not just for Germany but ultimately for the rest of the world." This.

ku-man 3y ago
[dead]
bell-cot 3y ago
My impression is that that lesson was NOT drawn at the time by the German A-listers, and especially not by Bismark - the AAA-list genius behind both this victory, and Germany's long process of unification. Bismark was very public, both before and after the Fraco-Prussian War, in his general opposition to European wars. Especially larger or longer wars. And he was very opposed to risking Germany getting caught in a two-front war. But then Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm I got old and died, and was soon succeeded by his grandson, Wilhelm II - who didn't like Bismark's cautious foreign policy. 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. Note that both WWI and WWII stuck Germany in large, long, two-front European wars. And that Germany got into WWI under the same Kaiser (Wilhelm II) who had dumped Bismark for being too cautious and anti-war.
- Entwickler 3y ago
  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.
  - jcranmer 3y ago
    > 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. I don't think so. The biggest mistake Germany made was letting its alliance with Russia lapse in 1891, in favor of trying to snag an alliance with the UK, which wasn't interested in one (Britain favored a policy of neutrality on the continent). This leads France to seize the opportunity and ally with Russia in 1894. A series of colonial issues leads the UK to realize around 1900 or so that not having any allies wasn't exactly a good thing, especially when you've got lots of people you're butting heads against. Wilhelm was an absolute wrecking ball when it came to diplomacy. His tendency to show support for anyone fighting the British in colonial ventures in the late 1890s (especially the Boer War) couldn't have helped any chance for a UK-German alliance. It's only after tentative attempts to come to an agreement break down in 1901 that the naval arms race actually becomes an issue in UK-Germany relations: indeed, it's not really until dreadnoughts make the existing fleets (lopsidedly in favor of the UK) obsolete that German navy buildup actually poses a threat to the UK. The treaties the UK does enter into are less military alliances than they are colonial tension defusing, and Wilhelm's tendency to do the opposite would have likely made any formal UK-Germany treaty rather short-lived. The naval arms race mostly takes place after the UK-German treaty attempts ended, and redirecting that money to a larger army would probably have pushed UK even harder into the Franco-Russian camp: during its period of continental isolation, its greatest fear is that of a second Napoleon, who conquers most of Europe and shuts the British out of it. A stronger German army makes that look more plausible, and aligning against Germany helps avert that catastrophe.
    - pyrale 3y ago
      > I don't think so. The biggest mistake Germany made was letting its alliance with Russia lapse in 1891 The alliance lapse was forced by then, the issue is that Russia and Austria-Hungary, the two historic German allies, were competing for influence over the Balkans. Bismarck, rather than taking a side or remaining neutral, tried to become the arbiter of that dispute, and led a duplicitous diplomacy towards Russia. That was largely due to his attempt to freeze Europe in a diplomatic state that benefited Germany, rather than acknowledging the changing nature of diplomacy and trying to find new allies and a new balance. By 1891, German diplomats were faced with a tough choice: either continuing a two-faced policy which was doomed anyway, since Russia was not stupid, or acknowledging that and letting the alliance lapse.
- bsder 3y ago
  > 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_5DTz_FAbdQyXo9TZdx1hTWf 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.
  - pyrale 3y ago
    > To be fair, it wasn't clear that even Bismarck could have kept all the plates spinning indefinitely. The biggest plate (the Russian alliance) was already falling when Bismarck was replaced, it hit the floor when German diplomats decided Bismarck's two-faced policy was unsustainable.
petsfed 3y ago
I hear echoes of "every power is a prisoner of its last victory". You can see the same thing in Soviet and American Cold War doctrine, but also in the way that just about everybody started WWI (and why the casualties were so horrific). By the time WWI rolled around, German veterans still in service were almost exclusively veterans of colonial wars. However, just about everybody from the Kaiser and central command down to the rank and file believed that a war against other Europeans would (and should) be fought differently from those colonial wars. Thus, the military philosophy that they thought won the Franco-Prussian war was brought to the present with very little modification, but enacted by people who had never actually seen its use. 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.
- Arrath 3y ago
  > 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.
  - wizerdrobe 3y ago
    I’m instead worried we will think air and armor are mostly impervious in consideration to a near-peer conflict with eastern enemies.
    - Arrath 3y ago
      I would hope that watching the war in Ukraine would disabuse such notions.
goodbyesf 3y ago
The quote is pure nonsense as is most historical narratives. > Believing that unification had come about as a result of military competence It did. > they mapped the future of the German Empire in terms of military power. All empires are created in terms of military power. In what terms was the german empire supposed to compete against the british, french, russian, american, japanese, etc empires? The statement cannot be dumb because it's devoid of substance. It's literally a meaningless statement. > Thus, Chrastil concludes, German victory in 1871 became catastrophic not just for Germany but ultimately for the rest of the world. How was it 'catastrophic' as without it, germany wouldn't have existed? Also, 'rest of the world'? Germany's rise and germany's role in ww1/ww2 primarily affected germany's neighbors. Just because it was catastrophic for parts of europe doesn't mean it was catastrophic for everyone else. It's the same nonsense like 'the world is against russia' when most of the world is on russia's side or neutral. Like they all read from the same propaganda manual.
- ffhhttt 3y ago
  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
  - hef19898 3y ago
    It was not the Prussians and Germans that declared war first in WW1, that honour belongs to Austria-Hungary. There were too many people at the time who wanted that war for various reasons for it not to happen ine way or the other. Some French wanted Alssace-Lorraine back. Austria wanted the Balkans. Germany wanted to settle tensions with Russia before the latter cought up enough to make that impossible (again, history showed the reasoning was largely correct), Russia did want Austria to get the Balkans and Britian was bound by alliances they needed to maintain their colonies. Not to forget the Ottomans, they and the Russians wanted the same patches of land along the black sea. And the Ottomans and British wanted the same land across North Africa. WW1 was almost guaranteed to happen, if anything Bismarck's treaties might have delayed that.

DubiousPusher 3y ago

If you want to understand 20th and 21st century European history, you really do need some background in the Franco-Prussian war. There's obviously no specific moment when Germany became ascendant. It was a process that took several hundred years, going back to the efforts of Prussia to distinguish itself amongst the member polities of the Holy Roman Empire. But the war did solidify or make official many important features of 20th century Europe. Namely, Germany as a unified whole with a German speaking core that defines its contemporary borders, the centralization of the rivalry between France and Germany, Germany as the dominant military and economic power of Europe, the stabilization of French Republicanism sans monarchy, the relative irrelevance of the Austrians, the end of a common belief in great power stabilization as a long term objective in favor of a more manichean struggle for dominance, etc.

mongol 3y ago
I have read about it on Wikipedia and such, and am puzzled about how it started - by a perceived insult? There must be so much more to it that have not come across in my brief readings about it. Perhaps because it was so long time ago it os difficult to understand certain concepts that today seems insane to declare war for
- jacquesm 3y ago
  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.
  - psunavy03 3y ago
    If you're willing to do everything up to war to gain power, why would you not be willing to go to war to keep it?
- LAC-Tech 3y ago
  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.

usrusr 3y ago

Feels weirdly incomplete without any mention of this, even if "ostensibly on grounds of Prussian provocation" isn't really wrong, apparently leadership on both sides was in a state of preferring war over peace (please insert an appropriate amount of expletives while reading!). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ems_Dispatch https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ems_Dispatch

LAC-Tech 3y ago
I never bought into the narrative that somehow the wily Prussians 'tricked' the poor French into declaring war on them. Yes the Ems Dispatch was editorialised - but at that point France had already decided they would declare war if Prussia didn't agree to their demands. I'm not entirely sure what other options Prussia had at this point, accept to humiliate themselves further by accepting all French demands (that no Hohenzollern would ever be permitted to be a candidate on the Spanish throne for the rest of time).
- labster 3y ago
  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.
  - hef19898 3y ago
    If people really want to do something, they find reasons / excuses. And if people want to really believe something, thebdo so too. The latter quite often leads to BS conspiracy theories. The former to false flag operations, lies, propaganda and very real conspiracies (the Suez Crisis comes to mind).

amadeuspagel 3y ago

Nietzsche warned against taking the victory as evidence of cultural superiority after the war.

AlbertCory 3y ago

There aren't many books on that war, for sure. I recently read one of them. This sounds like a pretty weak history: > the Germans won because they were more effectively organised, better trained and mobilised more men than the French. That sounds like a non-military opinion. Most of the battles in that war were "battles of encounter," where some units just happened to fight, and then the local commanders escalated it. The Germans always devolved more power to their commanders to act based on local conditions, while the French had a sluggish, top-down organization. John Keegan in Six Armies in Normandy calls that art operativ, as the Germans put it. The Germans also had better artillery. It certainly did lead directly to WW I, though.

dmix 3y ago
The author doesnt seem to be a traditional "military" historian, her CV lists books related to war, but more focusing on mobilization and civilians. So that makes sense. https://www.rachelchrastil.com/ https://www.rachelchrastil.com/
- AlbertCory 3y ago
  True, and maybe the military aspect of the war is the least interesting part.
  - psunavy03 3y ago
    As a war college graduate myself, I'd agree and disagree. Wars are ultimately won and lost in the terrain of the human mind. People are defeated when they believe in their collective minds that fighting is no longer worth it. That's straight from Clausewitz. But militaries in wars ultimately create the conditions which facilitate those thoughts, and are the primary drivers of who wins and who loses. To say that the military aspect of a war is the "least interesting part" betrays an anti-military bias. But it is true that the military aspect of a war is not the only aspect which is necessary to understand how and why a war was won and lost, and its long-term effects on the belligerent nations.
    - 3y ago

rossdavidh 3y ago

If anybody wants a better analysis of the Franco-Prussian War than this review, Real Time History did a top-notch series on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Od4lVhcvnxw&list=PLv_PcL5Ij4iCViFgH-WssNSmVuoCSYFwZ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Od4lVhcvnxw&list=PLv_PcL5Ij4...

woodpanel 3y ago

Since the author also released "How to be childless – A history and philosophy of life without children" I think I'll have to expect a lot of framing baked into this, including accidentally/intentionally leaving out contexts. Note the "fueling" of "Nationalism", "committed" atrocities on the German side, while the French side only gets confronted by "wild rumors" and "accusations". At that time Nationalism was a force for good throughout Europe demanding more egalitarian rights for citizens, democracy and separation of state powers, but also promoting independence of other nations as nationalists of one nation even travelled to other countries to support their Nationalists, for instance to Poland in support of their protests against Tsarist rule. She leaves out this context, as well as that the French state (throughout being an ancien regime as well as being run by Napoleon) was waging multiple anti-German wars, basically treating the lands to its east like its Hinterland in need of Franconization (E.g. At the end of the 18th century just about 1% of the Elsassians spoke French, and even in 1953 80% of Elasassians were in favor of German speaking public schools). She also seems to leave out the context, that Bismarck was an aristocrat and thus anything but a nationalist. And since she seems to be in need to see (or letting us see) the word nationalism in todays western liberal meaning, that whole differentiation seems inaccessible to her. Germany "refrained from ethnic cleansing" (written as if this was some sort of novelty for Germans) because they considered the occupants German. The mild peace-conditions were given by Germany because Bismarck knew that anything else would foster even more French resentment then there already was („Toujours y penser, jamais en parler"), which would then foster more German nationalism, which in turn would hurt his Juncker-Class.

pyrale 3y ago
I'm not sure how you relate this article to an unrelated book on being childless. Nevertheless, it is true that Prussian imperialism ultimately was a disaster for Germany. I'm not sure how that relates to a "French side", unless you also want to say that there was an "Austrian side", a "Polish side", a "Danish side", etc. > At that time Nationalism was a force for good throughout Europe demanding more egalitarian rights for citizens That aspect of nationalism was dead since 1848 in Germany, in no small part due to Prussia. In fact, the 2nd reich was illiberal, with a parliament which was mostly powerless. > She leaves out this context, as well as that the French state [...] The book is about 1870. France had been mostly powerless and diplomatically isolated since 1815. But yeah, nice irredentist propaganda.

niemandhier 3y ago

This perspective might be true for the Europeans and north Americans, but by the same ( imho stretched ) reasoning the Franco-German War lead to the downfall of colonial empires and therefore liberated significant parts of the world.

dustypotato 3y ago

Not to mention the parliamentarians, press , and the people in the streets in France who clamored for war. Napoleon III was actually hesitant to go to war

panick21_ 3y ago

I strongly recommend everybody who is interested to watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yF4INCn-sew https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yF4INCn-sew Its by amazing German Historian Adam Tooze on the 150th year of German Unification. It goes into a lot of detail and I learned a lot.