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A leading historian of nineteenth- and twentieth-century history, Ullrich demonstrates that the “Founder of the Reich” was in fact an opponent of liberal German nationalism. After the wars of 1866 and 1870, Bismarck spent the rest of his career working to preserve peace in Europe and protect the empire he had created. Despite his reputation as an enemy of socialism, he introduced comprehensive health and unemployment insurance for German workers. Far from being a “man of iron and blood,” Bismarck was in fact a complex statesman who was concerned with maintaining stability and harmony far beyond Germany’s newly unified borders.
Comprehensive and balanced, Bismarck shows us the post-reunification value of looking anew at this monumental figure’s role in European history.
A new account of the life and policies of the first German chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, this concise historical-biography reflects, for the first time in English, the historical shift in emphasis from the traditional political-economic approach to the more complex social-economic one of post—World War II scholarship.
Since the middle of the 1950s, much new material on Bismarck and nineteenth-century Germany and new interpretations of existing material have been published in Germany, Great Britain, and the United States. Professor George O. Kent’s brilliant synthesis, drawing on this mass of material, examines changes in emphasis in post—World War II scholarship. The book, particularly in the historiographical notes and bibliographical essay, provides the serious student with an invaluable guide to the intricacies of recent Bismarckian scholarship. For the general reader, the main text presents a picture of the man, the issues, and the age in the light of modern scholarship.
The major shift in historical emphasis described in this new account is the importance scholars give to the period 1877–79, the years of change from free trade to protectionism, rather than to 1870–71 the founding of the Reich. Bismarck’s political machinations, particularly his willingness to explore the possibilities of a coup d’état, are more fully discussed here than in any other book.
Otto von Bismarck (1815–1898) has gone down in history as the Iron Chancellor, a reactionary and militarist whose 1871 unification of Germany put Europe on a path of disaster leading up to World War I. But, as this new edition of his accessible biography shows, the real Bismarck was a far more complex character.
A leading historian of nineteenth- and twentieth-century history, Volker Ullrich demonstrates that Bismarck—the “Founder of the Reich”—was, in fact, an opponent of liberal German nationalism. After the wars of 1866 and 1870, Bismarck spent the rest of his career working to preserve peace in Europe and to protect the empire he had created. Despite his reputation as an enemy of socialism, he introduced comprehensive health and unemployment insurance for German workers, and he was concerned with maintaining stability and harmony far beyond Germany’s newly unified borders. Comprehensive and balanced, Bismarck shows us the value of looking anew at this monumental figure’s role in European history.
Combining impeccable scholarship and literary elegance, David Wetzel depicts the drama of machinations and passions that exploded in a war that forever changed the face of European history.
The Armenian Genocide and the Nazi Holocaust are often thought to be separated by a large distance in time and space. But Stefan Ihrig shows that they were much more connected than previously thought. Bismarck and then Wilhelm II staked their foreign policy on close relations with a stable Ottoman Empire. To the extent that the Armenians were restless under Ottoman rule, they were a problem for Germany too. From the 1890s onward Germany became accustomed to excusing violence against Armenians, even accepting it as a foreign policy necessity. For many Germans, the Armenians represented an explicitly racial problem and despite the Armenians’ Christianity, Germans portrayed them as the “Jews of the Orient.”
As Stefan Ihrig reveals in this first comprehensive study of the subject, many Germans before World War I sympathized with the Ottomans’ longstanding repression of the Armenians and would go on to defend vigorously the Turks’ wartime program of extermination. After the war, in what Ihrig terms the “great genocide debate,” German nationalists first denied and then justified genocide in sweeping terms. The Nazis too came to see genocide as justifiable: in their version of history, the Armenian Genocide had made possible the astonishing rise of the New Turkey.
Ihrig is careful to note that this connection does not imply the Armenian Genocide somehow caused the Holocaust, nor does it make Germans any less culpable. But no history of the twentieth century should ignore the deep, direct, and disturbing connections between these two crimes.
A Long Goodbye to Bismarck? is the first study to provide an exhaustive comparative account of all welfare reforms in continental Europe during the past three decades, covering Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Slovakia, Spain, and Switzerland.
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