The German Empire, 1870-1918 by Michael Stürmer

To that end, the Prussian Minister-President appointed in 1862, Otto von Bismarck, began a series of machinations that would culminate in that result, doing so with “blood and iron.” Through a series of carefully staged and swift wars, Bismarck’s plan was put into action. Steeled by its military resolve in the Seven Years War and flush with the territories granted to it on the Rhine by the Congress of Vienna, Prussia looked to unite its own territories and even all of those little Germany’s not under the Habsburg crown (or perhaps even parts of those) into one national German empire. Prussia was the largest and most dominant of the fractured German states, save the multi-national empire of Austria. Some five decades prior to the assassination of the Archduke of Austria, Franz Ferdinand, and the events put into motion by that act, including the German invasion of France, the quest for expansion and hegemony was preparing to embark from the halls of Prussia. However, looking back even further in time it is possible to perhaps ascribe to Germany a special level of blame.

Yes, Germany was very much responsible, but she was not alone in that responsibility. While Germany was far from being an innocent bystander in the outbreak of the Great War and was undeniably a central player, indeed a Central Power, in the unfolding drama, it should be remembered that the geopolitical atmosphere of the day was ripe for the tragic harvest that was ultimately reaped. When the Versailles Treaty was signed in Paris in 1919 formally ending the First World War, there were some forwarding thinking observers who saw in the document the “seeds of the next war.” These foreign policy soothsayers saw the punitive measures of economic sanctions and harsh military restrictions leveled against The Second Reich, not to mention the infamous “War Guilt Clause”, as the fostering agents of German resentment.

The German Empire, 1870-1918 by Michael Stürmer