“Hatched from a Cannonball” | The Unification of Germany

Across the city, soldiers finally rested after two weeks of forced marches and battle. Small fires burned in camps set up along dusty roads, and men stood at attention as their leader and his cohort of marshals moved through the streets. Their destination was a grand church near the city center. On reaching it, the Emperor of the French descended into the crypt and stood before an enameled tomb bearing the inscription “Friedrich der Grosse.” His grey eyes moved over the words, then he turned to the men who had led France’s armies to the gates of Berlin. “Hats off, gentlemen,” he said in a low voice resonant with emotion. “If he were alive, we wouldn’t be here today.”

For much of the 18th century, the Kingdom of Prussia was a small nation in the backwaters of Eastern Europe. Its poor land made the Prussians hardy and proud. Prussia’s kings looked to their army as the source of national pride, especially during the reign of Friedrich Wilhelm I. He built up a large bureaucracy to administer every aspect of the Prussian Army from weapons and marching standards down to the size of shirt buttons and shoe buckles. Though his men saw little combat in those years, Prussia’s austere militarism impressed some outsiders but worried others.

Friedrich Wilhelm died in 1740, and his son succeeded him as Friedrich II. The man who would become “Fredrick the Great” took Prussia to the heights of military glory in three wars against the Austrian Empire over the next 23 years. His armies marched back and forth defending Prussian soil and won great victories over foes both near and far. Friedrich cemented Prussia’s standing as one of the great powers and won his country respect in the courts of Europe. His rule at home was mostly benign, and he took care to improve his subjects’ lives whenever he could. But Prussia was, and would always be, as the French revolutionary Mirabeau later said, “An army with a state.”

Disaster then struck Prussia at the century’s end. It joined other great powers in war against revolutionary France, only to be forced to sign a ten-year peace after its defeat in 1795. Friedrich II’s nephew Friedrich Wilhelm II had neglected the army’s training regime and was unprepared for the fury of battle with the larger conscript armies of the French Republic. When he died in 1797, his son took the throne as Friedrich Wilhelm III and intended to restore Prussian greatness. But his haste to attack France, now ruled by Napoleon Bonaparte, led to humiliation at the Battle of Jena-Auerstadt in 1806. The Prussian Army, though in better shape than a decade earlier, simply could not contend with Napoleon’s innovative strategies and use of artillery on the battlefield. Berlin, citadel of Prussian militarism, became an occupied French town, and Prussia spent seven years as Napoleon’s vassal. Only after the French suffered catastrophic losses in Russia did the Prussians rise against their occupiers, and their soldiers defeated the French emperor at Leipzig in 1813 and then at Waterloo in 1815. With Napoleon in exile and France prostrate, Prussia would now rise again.

The clamor of revolution filled the streets of Berlin as the king and his generals sat discussing recent events. Some hoped to use the army to send these reform-minded rebels into the next world, while others urged caution. Revolution was sweeping Europe only seventy years after France had come apart and unleashed continent-wide war. If the king acted in haste, he might lose his throne. As the men in uniform watched their sovereign rise from the table, a messenger burst through the door. “My emperor,” he said breathlessly, “A message from Frankfurt.”

The great revolution in France of 1789 had unleashed tidal waves of new ideas that reshaped Europe’s political and intellectual climate. Conservatives who clung to pre-revolutionary ideas like the divine right of kings and clerical or noble privilege now faced off against liberal reformers spouting ideas of natural rights, the equality of man, and—worst of all—democracy and popular government. Added to this toxic brew was Napoleon Bonaparte’s bizarre idea that ethnic groups deserved to have their own independent countries. Nationalism spread rapidly in Italy, Poland, and the hinterlands of Austria as Napoleon redrew the map of Europe again and again. It also grew like a virus in German-speaking central Europe, where authors like Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Friedrich Schiller dreamed of a unified German Reich replacing the small independent German kingdoms, duchies, and principalities.

The Congress of Vienna, a group of conservative statesmen who put Europe back together after the Napoleonic Wars, ignored outright or downplayed the threats of nationalism and liberalism to their Old Order. Rather than unite the German world, they reorganized the hundreds of tiny states into a confederation of 39 nations presided over by the Austrian emperor. Prussia chafed at playing second fiddle to their rival to the south, but King Friedrich Wilhelm III agreed to this plan in the end be-cause it strengthened all of Germany against their foe across the Rhine in France. Prussia also grew closer to Great Britain in those days. The two nations had been allies against Napoleon, and the British royal family was ethnically German. Intermarriage between the Houses of Hohenzollern and Hanover were common, and Prussia’s small but growing liberal movement looked to Parliament’s reform legislation and dreamed that they could bright democracy to Germany. For them, the greatest barrier was ultra-conservative Austria, who with its myriad ethnic minorities and tendency to suppress reform movements by the sword made it a threat to German liberalism.

In Prussia, the army and the king resisted nationwide liberalization but allowed some minor local reforms. When he came to the throne in 1840, King Friedrich Wilhelm IV agreed to let the Prussian people elect town councils, and growing turbulence in France and Austria led him to support the creation of a confederation-wide German parliament in 1848. Meeting at the Paulskirche in Frankfurt, the liberal majority set about writing a constitution for the German Confederation with the Prussian king as a hereditary monarch who would rule on the British model. They hoped to push Austria out of the confederation peacefully, believing that its emperor would never accept restrictions on his authority.

But liberal Germans, especially those in Prussia, underestimated the power of conservatives and nationalists in their society. These two factions, though with different ends in mind, agreed on one principle: a liberal Prussia would be too weak to stand toe-to-toe with the other great powers. A leader in the conservative delegation at Frankfurt, Otto von Bismarck, worked with his colleagues and a small group of nationalists to frustrate the liberals’ planned constitution. He contacted the Prussian king’s military advisors and urged them to do whatever they could to stall a liberal uprising in Berlin—even if that meant temporary concessions—while simultaneously presenting himself to the Frankfurt liberals as someone he could work with. A master of manipulation, he agreed to the expulsion of Austria from Germany to satisfy the liberals while simultaneously doing everything he could to stop their reform program in its tracks.

When the Frankfurt Parliament completed its constitution, liberals rejoiced at their work. It enshrined democracy in law, gave voting rights to all German males, and protected basic rights like freedom of speech and trial by jury. All the constitution needed was King Friedrich Wilhelm’s consent, and delegates rushed to Berlin to get it. The city was in a revolutionary furor, and the king—a staunch conservative who believed his throne came from God—was in a foul mood. When the messenger arrived with the delegates to present the constitution for a liberal, Austria-free Germany, the king refused to accept the German crown. He worried about war with the Austrians, and the restraints on his power were more than he would tolerate. He later wrote in a letter that the offer was “an imaginary hoop baked from dirt and weeds.” With this act, the hope of a free, democratic Germany perished.

The hall was stunning, like nothing most of the kings, princes, and soldiers had ever seen. These men had destroyed an empire, vanquished and old foe with a familiar face, and now the reward was at hand. Though the air outside was bitterly cold, the electricity of the moment seemed to warm the hall. Here, at last, in the nexus of French glory, the dream of German unity would burst into reality. The King of Prussia, resplendent in military regalia and with pride on his mutton-chopped face, stood before his minister-president and the sovereigns of the German states, took an oath before God, and was hailed as “Deutsches Kaiser.”

Friedrich Wilhelm IV died without an heir in 1861, so his brother became the next king of Prussia. Wilhelm I did not dream of unity for Germany, so the men who surrounded him did it for their king. Shortly after his coronation, Wilhelm appointed Otto von Bismarck to be his minister-president, head of the Prussian government. Bismarck was not the king’s first choice as he was, in the monarch’s view, too bloody-minded. But the new Prussian parliament had refused the king’s military budget unless he granted more liberal reforms, and Bismarck was the only man who could break the deadlock. His solution was simple: the king should dissolve parliament and spend the money as he wished. It worked, and Bismarck became Prussia’s true master almost overnight.

A year later, the minister-president spoke before the newly-reelected and now-compliant parliament to outline his vision of German unity. His peroration ended with these words: “Not through speeches and majority decisions will the great questions of the day be decided…but by iron and blood.” Bismarck hoped to work diplomatically to unify Germany but, as events would soon show, he would not hesitate to reach for the sword. He still agreed with the old liberal idea of a Germany free of Austrian influence, as this would elevate Prussia (and himself), showing that he intended to create a German Reich that would embody Prussian conservatism and, more dangerously, its militarism.

To expel Austria from Germany’s future, Bismarck masterminded a propaganda campaign worthy of later German rulers against the tiny nation of Denmark. In 1815, the Congress of Vienna had given the Danes two small ethnic German territories, Schleswig and Holstein. The Prussians accused Denmark of denying their German subjects equal treatment under the law and asked Austria—whose emperor, Franz Josef, still presided over the Confederation—to lead a war of liberation for Schleswig and Holstein. The Austrians agreed, and the war was both quick and decisive for the Germans. Their swift victory ended liberal opposition to Bismarck’s government in the Prussian parliament and, more importantly, swelled the already-inflated egos of Austria’s generals. Three years later, Bismarck pulled the same propaganda trick on his former allies by accusing the Austrians of mistreating their new subjects in Holstein. This conflict included a religious element; Catholic Austria had never been popular in the Protestant states of northern Germany. Again the Prussians mobilized for war, and again the results were never in doubt. Prussian soldiers crushed the Austrians at Königgrätz in 1867 but, vitally, did not march on to Vienna. Bismarck knew that Germany would need Austria to balance the scales of power in Europe. He wanted the Austrians out of Germany but not humiliated.

In the wake of this second Prussian victory, Bismarck expelled the Catholic states of southern Germany and absorbed all Protestant lands into a new North German Confederation. He still wanted the Catholic nations like Bavaria in the Reich but needed a cause that would separate them from their Austrian friends. He got one in 1870 with help from the old enemy across the Rhine: France. A diplomatic dispute over the vacant Spanish throne allowed Bismarck to push French public opinion into a war fervor. Emperor Napoleon III, nephew of the revolutionary leader, was determined to check Prussia’s growing might. Bismarck edited a telegram sent to Paris by the French ambassador in Berlin and made it appear that Prussia had treated him dishonorably in a meeting. This seems like a minor issue in the days when leaders insult one another by tweet, but it was just the excuse Napoleon III needed to declare war. Thus began what Bismarck hoped would be Germany’s last war.

The Franco-Prussian War utterly destroyed the post-Napoleonic balance of power in Europe. The French, calling on memories of the great emperor who had once stood triumphant before Frederick the Great’s tomb, flocked to their battle standards convinced they would scatter their German foes to the wind. But Prussia, now backed by the Catholic states of south Germany (who hated France far more than they did Bismarck) obliterated the French Army in two battles at Metz and Sedan. Napoleon III was captured at Sedan, a mortal blow to his empire, and the Germans then surrounded and besieged Paris. As the war drew to a close, Bismarck’s time now came. He summoned all Germany’s ruling kings, princes, dukes, and counts to the Palace of Versailles—now Germany’s military headquarters—in January 1871. There in the Hall of Mirrors amidst the majesty of French history, King Wilhelm I of Prussia received the crown of Germany from his fellow monarchs, who then bowed before the first emperor of the Second Reich.

The meeting had gone badly for both men. The old chancellor, whose record of success had made him arrogant, was frustrated and had lost his temper. The young emperor had as well, but his self-confident nature and weight of his own ego blinded him to the chancellor’s wise counsel. “Your resignation is expected and will be accepted,” he said sharply as he left the room. Color drained from the Iron Chancellor’s face. Thirty years of work lay broken at his feet. He called after the departing emperor, “But Your Majesty!” Then, with all the anger his ninety-year-old body could summon, he flung the papers off his desk and cursed in a last act of impotent rage. The emperor did not turn back but remarked to an aide who walked beside him, “Now is the time, Leopold. Now Germany will find its place in the sun.”

Neither those who witnessed the last meeting of Kaiser Wilhelm II and Otto von Bismarck nor anyone who read of the latter’s dismissal from power in 1890 could have predicted the course German history would take in the next half-century. Imperial squabbles in Africa and the Far East, a world war lost, a shattered country turning to a racist madman for hope, and another world war that utterly destroyed the German state—these were in a future shrouded in darkness. The legacies of Bismarck and the others who united and led the Second German Reich are forever clouded by the monstrous crimes committed in what Winston Churchill called Europe’s “second Thirty-Years’ War.” The lives and livelihoods of ordinary Germans benefitted from unification. Germany’s industrial might created millions of jobs, transformed a fragmented confederation into a technological and economic juggernaut, and offered opportunities for wealth and security beyond the liberal dream of 1848. But the cost in lives paid at the Somme and Verdun, at Stalingrad and Bastogne overshadowed these undoubted benefits. Was a unified, powerful Germany a good idea or a bad idea? Tune in next week for our discussion, send us your thoughts, and then you get to decide.

Anton von Werner, Proclamation of the German Empire