Blood and Iron: The Rise and Fall of the German Empire

Wilhelm quickly found out that the perpetual dividing factors of religion, class, geography, culture and ethnicity – to name but a few – could not just be erased by the sheer force of personality and royal charisma he undoubtedly thought he possessed. Socialists kept on striking, Catholics still looked at the Prussian king with suspicion, and Polis

The change at Vienna that had the most momentous consequences for the future formation of the German Reich was the allocation of a large block of territory along the River Rhine to Prussia. Britain wanted to ensure that there was a secure and reliable German bulwark in central Europe to keep potential French aggression at bay and to fill the power

The volunteers that the Prussian king had called up in his 1813 appeal were called Landwehr units, and they made up 120,565 of the 290,000 men in the land army. They were further supported by various Freikorps units and additional volunteers from Prussia and the other German states. What made this the stuff of legend was not only the fact that thes

On the bright, cold winter morning of 17 January 1871, Wilhelm I, King of Prussia, had a moment of crisis. Eventually, the old man lost what self-control he still had and began to sob, ‘Tomorrow will be the unhappiest day of my life! We are going to witness the burial of the Prussian monarchy and this, Count Bismarck, is all your fault!’ The 73-yea

When Queen Louise tragically died in 1810 at the young age of 34, she became the icon of a German patriotic movement that would pressurise successive Prussian governments to rally all Germans behind a common cause. The image of the young Louise standing up for Prussia and Germany, not afraid to confront…

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The new state now encompassed many ethnic minorities such as Polish, Danish and French communities, against which Bismarck could create the contrast of German citizenship. When compared to a Frenchman, Germans would see…

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When the First World War broke out in 1914, Kaiser Wilhelm was initially shocked. The Balkan war he had hoped for had suddenly turned into a large-scale European conflict. Nonetheless, he still saw an opportunity to finally bring all Germans together. On 1 August 1914, he declared, ‘today we are all German brothers and only German brothers’. While

The ‘Old Fritz’ had earned his affectionate nickname in a series of successive military victories (including against France in 1757), often leading his men into battle in person, putting himself in such danger that several horses were shot from under him.

The Iron Chancellor was an astute politician, perhaps one of the greatest statesmen of all time, and he understood how fragile the so-called Concert of Europe was in 1871. To introduce a new major power into the very heart of it was akin to placing a child with a trumpet into the midst of a world-class symphony orchestra. He knew the newcomer had t