Death of a Nation

by Stephen R A'Barrow

  BISMARCK STEERS A COURSE FOR GERMANY

  Bismarck is now of course remembered most for the three successful wars he initiated so as to forge first a Greater Prussia and then a new German Reich. Bismarck did not shrink from using war as a political tool but only as long as the risks were minimal. His raison d’être became practising the ‘art of the possible’. The image that comes down through history of Bismarck as a man of ‘blood and iron’, who relished war, is far from accurate. Upon seeing the grim reality of death on the battlefield at Koniggratz, Bismarck displayed none of the romantic illusions about war common to nineteenth-century statesmen. Thinking first of his beloved son, he said, ‘It makes me sick at heart to think that Herbert may be lying like this some day.’ And he added, ‘No one who has looked into the eyes of a man dying on the battlefield will again go lightly into war.’(11) Above all, Bismarck remained a pragmatist for whom war was only an option ‘when all other means had been exhausted,’ and even then, ‘only for a prize worthy of the sacrifice which every war demands.’(12) Bismarck was also extremely reluctant to relinquish control over matters as important as the future of the state to the uncertainties of war, even more so when Helmuth von Moltke, one of Prussia’s greatest generals, told Bismarck, ‘Nothing is ever certain in war.’

  It is all too easy to believe that strong characters lead events based on a clear linear vision and a grand design. But this is not always the case. Bismarck willed Germany into existence and then set about plotting the wars that were necessary to ensure that eventuality. That is certainly the way his role has been portrayed by nationalist histories as they were written right up to the end of the Second World War. But this image did not fit with his own belief in how the forces of history worked. He once famously said, ‘Man cannot create the current of events. He can only float with it and steer.’(13) Bismarck simply believed events were stronger than the plans of men. But no one could be his equal in his time for steering them so decisively. German nationalism for him nevertheless remained a double-edged sword, one that was useful to Prussia in its dealings with France and Austria, but also potentially dangerous to her future existence.

  A greater Prussia would upset the delicate balance of power in Europe, raising consequences and reshaping alliances in a way that was hard to foresee, but for now there were no alliances directed against Prussia, and Bismarck seized his moment. Three quick and successful wars changed the future of Germany and that of the Continent forever, in ways that not even Bismarck could have predicted. In 1863, the Schleswig issue erupted again. The Peace of London, which had resolved the last crisis in 1848 when Prussia had marched in only for the Concert of Europe to force her to withdraw, had concluded that the territory was only held to the Danish throne through a personal union and that once the monarch and his male line died out, it was to return to the German Confederation. Yet when the male line died out, Denmark again claimed sovereignty and German nationalists cried foul.

  Bismarck, to demonstrate his strength of purpose to the king, did not even consult parliament in preparing Prussia for war. He hoped that popular opinion would carry him and return a more favourable coalition to parliament in the forthcoming elections. He agreed terms with Austria, for them both to uphold the Peace of London, and jointly invade Denmark. The war was over in two weeks, and Schleswig-Holstein were jointly occupied by Austrian and Prussian forces. The territories were subsequently ceded to the German Confederation by Denmark in 1864. Bismarck having wooed the Austrians with terms of endearment now sought out opportunities to pick fights with them over the administration of the territories at every turn. The relationship soon soured. Bismarck was now leading military and foreign policy decisions as though he were king. No Chancellor had ever wielded such power or been allowed to act with such impunity before. Bismarck was targeting Austria for a fall and in that he had the full support of Wilhelm I. The prize was worth the risk. Bismarck did not risk war with Austria merely for control of Schleswig–Holstein but for the far greater prize of consolidating Prussia’s already substantive economic hold on the northern half of the German Confederation. Austria had long refused to contemplate Prussia’s equality within the German Confederation so she was even less willing to contemplate Prussia’s annexation of northern Germany and thereby accept the end of her own primacy in German affairs. The battle lines for this German civil war had been long in the making and they had last flared during the German revolution. German liberals and nationalists now looked to Prussia to complete the failed national revolution of 1848 and overturn the humiliation by Austria at Olmütz, with the rallying cry, ‘Free Germany of Austrian domination.’(14)

  In 1866, Bismarck made a secret alliance with Italy, Austria’s natural foe. At the time, Austria still controlled part of northern Italy, which Italian nationalists wished to see liberated. As conflict loomed, both Austria and Prussia bought France’s neutrality. It seemed a profitable bargain to Napoleon III as it appeared France was sure to gain, no matter who won the coming war. Bismarck had promised him compensation in Belgium, whilst the Austrians had promised him the same plus the Rhineland as a French satellite state. Russia was not about to commit itself in favour of Austria after her treachery during the Crimean War, and Britain remained disengaged. The German Confederation was being befuddled by a Bismarckian ruse of suggesting elections based on universal male suffrage to the German parliament (anathema to the Habsburgs and their multinational empire), and amidst all the confusion the Italians began their mobilisation against Austria.

  For the last time, Austria tried to raise the German Confederation in her defence and with some success. A majority of the smaller states sided with her, but only Saxony and Hanover sent any troops. Bismarck then declared the German Confederation dissolved and sent an ultimatum to the smaller German states warning them against siding with Austria. When war came, both sides were relatively evenly matched in terms of manpower. What tipped the balance in favour of Prussia was that even though she had to fight on several fronts, and split her army into four to fight Austrian and Confederation troops, Austria had the more substantial two-front war — against Prussia in the north and then against Italy in the south. Prussia was also the first, and at that time, the only, European army to have breech loading riflescx (as opposed to front loaded muskets) which were fired lying down or kneeling, and thus presented a smaller target than the standing Austrian troops. The Prussians were also arguably better trained and led. Above all, Prussia’s forces were more reliable. Many Italian and Hungarian elements fighting in the Austrian army were less than enthusiastic for the cause they were fighting for, let alone the army they were serving in. During the battle, Wilhelm I and Bismarck had come under fire whilst observing the fighting. Bismarck entreated Wilhelm to retreat but the old soldier refused, even when Bismarck shouted at him that he was endangering the life of his civilian Prime Minister. Eventually Bismarck had to kick Wilhelm’s horse, forcing it and his king to obey his will. It was a symbolic gesture of an oft to be repeated performance between these two elder statesmen.(15)

  The ‘German civil war’ was all over in seven weeks. On 3rd July 1866 in the biggest land battle of the century to date, Prussia defeated the combined armies of Austria and Saxony at the Battle of Königgrätz. Napoleon III wanted immediate ‘compensation’ to ‘help redress the balance of power’. Bismarck therefore made the fastest and most generous peace terms Austria could possibly have imagined after such a crushing defeat. These were accepted after a mere three days of negotiations at Nikolsburg.cxi Prussia consolidated her territories in the north by annexing Hesse Darmstadt, Schleswig-Holstein, Hanover, Kurhessen and Frankfurt. Austria suffered no annexations but had to agree to the dissolution of the German Confederation and to the establishment of a new North German Federation north of the river Main. She also had to pay the relatively small indemnity of 40 million Florins.

  France had wanted to play broker in the peace between them and had been hinting at the price it wanted, namely Belgium, Luxemburg a
nd the Saar. But the war was over, and the peace terms agreed so quickly that Napoleon III’s services were not required. Whilst Bismarck had, prior to the conflict, contemplated the division of Belgium with France along the ‘national principal’, with the French-speaking regions going to Napoleon and the Flemish speaking areas to the Netherlands or Prussia, after his victory he was not prepared to countenance giving any ‘German-speaking’ territory to France. The issue closed in on Luxemburg. Bismarck, finally tiring of Napoleon’s demands, released them to the press. German national opinion was suitably outraged and, rather than face the indignity of being horse traded, Luxemburg, which had been a long-standing member of the Holy Roman Empire, declared its independence in 1867, leaving France empty-handed and Napoleon humiliated.

  Significantly, the southern German states, upon seeing France seek expansion yet again at the expense of German-speaking territories, put their armies at the call of Prussia should it come to war with France. This was an unforeseen eventuality prior to the war, as Bismarck then had no ambitions south of the river Main. Bismarck had gambled successfully that he would be carried on a wave of public support following a successful war, and for the first time since the Prussian parliament was founded, it returned a larger number of conservatives than liberals. Bismarck now had an effective support base of moderate liberals and conservatives with which to rule. He made good on the promise he made before the war; that a North German Confederation would receive its own parliament elected on the principal of universal male suffrage — a far more liberal franchise than that of the Prussian parliament. In fact the only nation on earth to have a federal constitution with a similarly expansive franchise was the United States.

  Prusso-Austrian dualism within the German Confederation now gave way to Prusso-German dualism and no one came to embody that inner conflict more than Bismarck himself. He became President and Foreign Minister of the Northern German Federation whilst remaining Minister President and Foreign Minister of Prussia. This conflict of interests found its partial solution in the next diplomatic crisis. When the question of the Spanish succession arose, Bismarck encouraged a member of the Swabian Hohenzollern branch of the Prussian dynastic family to become the next King of Spain. Napoleon III, eager to avenge his and France’s humiliation threw caution to the wind, demanding the Hohenzollern candidate be withdrawn. King Wilhelm I agreed to withdraw the claim, but when pressed further by the French Ambassador to forever renounce support for any future claim, Bismarck redrafted the King’s response in a way bound to provoke France. Bismarck then left the French King the honour of declaring war on Prussia.

  The war lasted a mere 180 days and Prussia fulfilled her role of watchman on the Rhine so crushingly that it became clear the balance of power was permanently altered. French power had been killed off at Waterloo but her continued pretensions to it were dealt a mortal blow at Sedan. Prussia’s pre-eminence on the continent of Europe was as sudden as it was overwhelming.

  In comparison to the crippling indemnity Napoleon I had imposed on Prussia in 1807 and the fact that Prussia had lost half her territory to his whims, France did not have much to complain about. She only lost Alsace and a small part of Lorraine, which she herself had annexed after the Thirty Years War. Her indemnity was based on the size of her population and calculated on the same formula as Napoleon’s had been on Prussia. And whilst the Napoleonic army of occupation had remained in Prussia for years, stripping the land bare, the Prussian army withdrew quickly. Beyond that, France also managed to pay the indemnity off in four years. Nevertheless, for the nation that had always assumed its predominant position in Europe was a God-given birthright, it was a humiliation that was too much to bear — one from which France never recovered and, more importantly, one she was determined to repay. Bismarck knew that Prussia would have a permanent enemy on her western flank, but then she always had. The French had wanted the Rhine as their natural frontier, and to that end had built military and strategic hubs along her eastern frontier as jump off points for further campaigns in the Rhineland. Bismarck now rolled these back, reclaiming Alsace Lorraine as a buffer before the Rhine and stating, ‘Straßburg is the key to our house… and for that reason I prefer it to be in my pocket.’(16) The French army had been utterly crushed at Sedan on 2nd September 1870 with 140,000 prisoners taken, including the king himself. The chaos of humiliation and retribution that resulted in the Paris Commune was not finally brought under control until May 1871, after which the final peace terms could be signed at the Treaty of Frankfurt.

  One would have expected Wilhelm I, who had regarded German unification as inevitable and had worked for it hand in glove with Bismarck, to express joy at the day of its inauguration. However, when Bismarck prepared Wilhelm I for his coronation as German Kaiser, Wilhelm burst into in tears saying, ‘Tomorrow is the saddest day of my life. As we are carrying the Kingdom of Prussia to her grave.’(17)

  On 18th January 1871, 170 years to the day after Frederick I crowned himself King in Prussia at Königsberg, the Prussian King was proclaimed Kaiser of the new German Reich, symbolically at Louis XIV’s palace at Versailles. Bismarck regarded his work as complete. Before 1871 the great powers had been able to make adjustments to the European balance of power at the expense of the German-speaking lands. That era was now at an end.(18) Bismarck also shut the door on Austria and united the northern and southern German federationscxii under Prussian leadership in a new empire, with the King of Prussia as its new emperor. His life’s work now became protecting what he had established and trying to dampen down desires for further expansion. Germany, united under Prussia, was a formidable force in Europe and one he knew the other Concert powers would grow to fear. He felt it was best not to agitate or provoke them unnecessarily. Bismarck readily accepted Frederick the Great’s dictum; that as long as Prussia did not provoke all her neighbours at the same time, she would endure. Denmark, Austria and France had not only been humbled but humiliated. It was essential now to build bridges and ensure that Russia and Britain remained friends, or at least neutral, for a Prussian Second Reich to prosper.cxiii

  THE END OF THE CONCERT

  The Vienna settlement of 1815 had sought to render France impotent and secure the future balance of power. In a little over six years this settlement was swept aside. The fragmented heart of Europe, which the great powers — in particular France and Austria — had used as their stomping ground, was gone. In its place had emerged a European colossus. France had been supplanted and the balance of power had been permanently altered. Bismarck was acutely aware of his new Germany’s geopolitical and strategic vulnerability. It was a state bereft of natural borders, save for the Alpine German-speaking states to the south. He soon set about cementing alliances through diplomacy that would keep his Prussian-Germany secure. His dictum became that German security now depended on maintaining peace in Europe.(19)

  In 1872, Bismarck brought together Alexander II of Imperial Russia, Franz Joseph of Austria-Hungary and Wilhelm I, establishing the Three Emperors’ League to enforce France’s continued isolation. It was also an attempt to heal the rift between Russia and Austria, in the hope that this would stave off conflict between them over the Balkans and the eastern question (the demise of the Ottoman Turkish Empire). Bismarck sought to exploit royal ties of blood between Russia and Prussia. Alexander II’s mother had been the daughter of King Frederick Wilhelm III of Prussia, and his wife was the German princess, Marie of Hesse. Beyond that they were bonded in their hostility towards Polish nationalism and socialism in all its forms. But the relationship remained a tightrope act. The alliance was not popular in Germany with socialists, who regarded Imperial Russia as the most despotic state in Europe. The east Elbian agrarians feared cheap Russian grain exports, the Catholics resented the repressive measures of the Tsars against their Polish Catholic cousins and there were those in the military who feared Russian expansionism.

  Bismarck, who aimed to keep on good terms with the two great powers on the periphery of Europe,
had a difficult balancing act to perform. The Russians oft regarded him as pro-British whilst the British thought him too pro-Russian. In 1876, the Eastern Question exploded again in the Balkans. After prolonged attempts at mediation, the Turks simply went ahead and massacred the rebels, in what became known as the ‘Bulgarian horrors’. Russia declared war on Ottoman Turkey in 1877 ostensibly to protect its Slav brethren, but in practice to carve out a larger part of the Balkans for herself. To try and bring all sides to a resolution, Bismarck called the Congress of Berlin in 1878, which aimed to resolve the turmoil in the Balkans and prevent it from developing into a full-scale European war. He played the role of ‘honest broker’ and Germany played the pivotal role in European diplomacy to prevent a further escalation in the crisis. It was at this conference he made his famous statement about ‘the Balkans not being worth the bones of a single Pomeranian Grenadier’. He again managed to conjure a resolution to a complex crisis even though it did not do away with the problem. Russia was forced to make concessions to the Treaty of San Stefano that she had imposed on Turkey, much to her dissatisfaction. The provisions sought again to reconcile the interests of Austria and Russia, whilst satisfying Britain that her strategic interests were not threatened, namely that Russia would not take control of the straits at Constantinople. Even if the Congress had not resolved the underlying issues, it was still a triumph for peace and diplomacy.