AWA: Academic Writing at Auckland

Otto von Bismarck is rightly regarded as the father of modern Germany and stands, alongside Adolf Hitler, as one of the most complex and controversial figures in the nation’s history. Bismarck has long been the subject of vigorous historiographic debate, and has come to be seen in the light of two different myths. Firstly, orthodox historians claim that he was solely and almost exclusively responsible for the creation of the modern German state – a so-called ‘Great Man’ of history. Secondly, revisionists writing after the Second World War assert that his authoritarian manner of rule led inevitably to the rise of the Third Reich. Both of these myths deserve much scrutiny, and this essay will examine them in light of Bismarck’s role in the unification of Germany, his foreign policy, his social legislation, and finally his disdain for liberal democracy. In analysing the accuracy of these two theses we are able to gain a fuller grasp of Bismarck’s relevance to Germany’s development as a nation.

Historians from the end of the 19^th Century till the end of the Second World War stressed Bismarck’s seminal role in the unification of Germany. W.N. Medlicott notes that the common view during the time of Kaiser Wilhelm II was that ‘Germany, the land of immemorial disunity, had been pushed, cajoled, disciplined, and manoeuvred into greatness by one man [Otto von Bismarck].’[1] Yet after the Second World War, it became fashionable amongst historians to be sceptical of the real extent of Bismarck’s role in creating Germany. Economic and social factors were given more weight than the contribution of any one individual.[2] The idea that one man, rather than a multitude of cultural forces and pressures, had achieved the creation of Germany was seen as outdated and inaccurate. But while Bismarck cannot have been solely responsible for Germany’s formation, is it overly revisionist to relegate his role to a merely peripheral one?

The birth of Germany during the series of wars prosecuted by Bismarck in the 1860s and 1870s was largely due to Bismarck’s skilful diplomacy and manipulation of public opinion. Bismarck, an ultra-conservative Prussian aristocrat, was determined to create a German state with Prussia at the helm, an aim that necessitated the marginalisation of Austrian power in the German lands.[3] With this achieved by 1866, Bismarck then needed another conflict to ‘forge cooperation and unity among all German states’.[4] He thus carefully engineered a diplomatic spat with France that led to the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, from which Prussia and its North German Confederation emerged triumphant. The victory against a common enemy led to a groundswell of support amongst the previously independent southern German statelets, who, in 1871, agreed to join a Prussian-led German nation.[5] Of course Bismarck could not have achieved this had there not been favourable social circumstances – notably popular pan-German nationalism – but it was his  ‘genius and decisiveness to exploit the favourable international situation’ that led to Germany becoming a state.[6] Thus, while Bismarck did not unify Germany by himself, he certainly had the greatest influence of any one individual in bringing about this end.

In assessing Bismarck’s relevance to German history many historians often attribute to Bismarck the forging of the state apparatus of the modern German nation.[7] Of particular interest is Bismarck’s creation of a revolutionary social welfare program in Germany, a radical and seemingly inexplicable move for a reactionary Junker aristocrat. But did Bismarck institute these measures out of some sense of civic duty or even altruism? It would appear not. The primary intention of this legislative program, which included workers’ insurance and pension Bills, argues the German historian Lothar Gall, was to ‘to cut the ground from under the feet’ of the many socialist political parties that he felt threatened his grip on power.[8] Bismarck was fundamentally opposed to political pluralism, and preferred to gain popular support through direct measures from the government rather than by working with political parties.[9] Bismarck’s social program thus must not be seen as a manifestation of any form of progressive ideology, but rather as a pragmatic step to secure his own power as Chancellor.

It is in light of this that we must examine the second myth concerning Bismarck: that his policies laid the structural foundations for the rise of Nazism. His clear desire to maintain his power as the foremost statesman in Germany can be seen in the less savoury aspects of his domestic legislation: the anti-socialist laws and the anti-Catholic Kulturkampf project. Bismarck used an attempted assassination of the Kaiser in 1878 to push through a raft of repressive laws severely curtailing the political rights of the socialist parties whom he saw as potential threats to German stability. Likewise the Kulturkampf laws, designed to nullify Papal power over Germany’s large Catholic population, consolidated Bismarck’s grip on power.[10] Williamson notes the arguments of the Bielefeld (German structuralist) school of historiography who claim that the Kulturkampf ‘was a classic example of Bismarck’s technique of negative integration, whereby he hoped to unite the Protestant majority in Germany against the Catholic ‘enemy’ within…’[11] This theory of ‘negative integration’ – the unification of one group of people by the vilification of another – bears striking similarities to Hitler’s anti-Semitic measures in the 1930s. Indeed, the passage of Bismarck’s anti-socialist legislation after an assassination attempt has uncanny echoes of Hitler’s crackdown on socialists after the Reichstag fire of 1933. In this respect then, Bismarck’s repressive social policy certainly may have created a social paradigm which Hitler adopted and, importantly, significantly distorted.

But in order to test the veracity of this charge against Bismarck we must also consider the other facet of his rule: his foreign policy. Bismarck pursued an undeniably brilliant foreign policy that maintained an international stability in Europe not seen again till the end of the Cold War. Bismarck, aware of Germany’s vulnerable position in between the Great Powers of Russia, France and Austria-Hungary, formulated his foreign policy on the core tenets of assuring other European nations that ‘Germany was a satiated power with no further territorial ambitions [… and that] it was of overriding importance to avoid the creation of a hostile alliance against the Reich.’[12] He thus manufactured a web of alliances with the other Great Powers that suspended Europe in a delicately poised state of peace. This policy certainly bears little resemblance to the expansionist and openly antagonistic foreign policy of the Nazis, and it is hard to accept that Bismarck’s modus operandi can have laid the groundwork for Hitler’s aggression towards other European states. One historian has claimed that Bismarck’s system of alliances was ‘so complicated and contradictory’ that it was bound to fail; however this cannot be proved as Kaiser Wilhelm II dropped Bismarck’s carefully managed foreign policy when he came to the throne in 1888.[13] Indeed Wilhelm’s military-focused, expansionist policy bears more similarities to Hitler’s policy than Bismarck’s does.

Perhaps the most complex question about Bismarck’s legacy to Germany’s development is to what extent his strident militarism and anti-democratic tendencies accounted for the collapse of German democracy and the advent of the Third Reich. It is almost unanimously agreed upon that Bismarck was never a proponent of democracy in Germany; as one scholar notes, his conservative background and traditional Prussian worldview meant that he ‘abhorred the idea of collective government’.[14] Gall states that Bismarck’s primary guiding principle was to maintain the supremacy of the Government over any dissenting political forces, often in the face of ‘the thrusting forces and trends of development’.[15] This authoritarian mode of leadership and the lack of ‘fully democratic participation’ in German politics seem superficially to provide a compelling explanation for the emergence of the Nazi dictatorship.[16]

After the Second World War in particular, a time in which Germans felt compelled to reassess the comfortable myths of their history,  revisionist historians like Friedrich Meinecke questioned whether Bismarck’s militarism and authoritarian rule had indirectly led to the ‘disease’ of the Third Reich.[17] But if Bismarck did create the structural conditions in which Nazism flourished, it was Hitler who exploited them and distorted Bismarck’s example for his own ends. For there was a fundamental difference between the two men that surely lessens Bismarck’s liability for Hitler’s deeds: Bismarck was always a political pragmatist, ‘unmoved by the fanaticism of [nationalism]’ in the way that the Austrian was.[18] So while Bismarck kept a lid on true democracy in Germany, he did not use his authoritarian power to carry out external conquest – he simply tried to maintain internal stability and order. Bismarck may have brought the fuel, but he surely would not have foreseen (nor intended) the fire that ensued.

So how relevant is Otto von Bismarck to German history? An analysis of the first myth about Bismarck – that he almost single-handedly created modern Germany – helps provide an answer. While important social forces provided the context in which Bismarck carried out unification, we should not discount the immense role of such a determined and domineering personality as Bismarck in Germany’s formation. The second myth, of Bismarck’s culpability for the creation of a political system in which Nazism could arise, is still hotly contested. While his repressive social measures and anti-democratic principles lend some credence to this myth, his cautious and measured foreign policy, alongside his fundamental political pragmatism indicate that his was a reactionary state, quite different from the dangerously visionary Germany that Hitler wished to create. Thus Bismarck is central to German history because, as the creator of the nation, he built the structure that would ultimately facilitate some of the most momentous events in world history.

Bibliography

Blackbourn, D., Germany, 1780-1918, London, 1997.

Feuchtwanger, Edgar, Bismarck, London, 2002.

Gall, Lothar, Bismarck: the White Revolutionary, London, 1986.

Kent, George, Bismarck and his times, Carbondale and Edwardsville, 1978.

Kishlansky, M., Geary, P., and O’Brien, P., Civilization in the West, Volume II, 7^th edn, New York, 2008.

Medlicott, W.N., Bismarck and Modern Germany, London, 1967.

Turk, Eleanor, the History of Germany, Connecticut, 1999.

Waller, Bruce, Bismarck, Oxford, 1985.

Williamson, David, Germany since 1815, Houndmills, 2005.

[1] W.N. Medlicott, Bismarck and Modern Germany, London, 1967. p. 178.

[2] Edgar Feuchtwanger, Bismarck, London, 2002. p. 11.

[3] Eleanor Turk, the History of Germany, Connecticut, 1999. p. 75.

[4] Mark Kishlansky et al., Civilization in the West, Volume II, 7^th edn, New York, 2008. p. 694.

[5] David Williamson, Germany since 1815, Houndmills, 2005. p. 84.

[6] Ibid., p. 85.

[7] Bruce Waller, Bismarck, Oxford, 1985. pp. 76-77.

[8] Lothar Gall, Bismarck: the White Revolutionary, London, 1986. p. 128.

[9] Ibid., p. 129.

[10] Williamson, p. 112.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Ibid., pp. 127-128.

[13] George Kent, Bismarck and his times, Carbondale and Edwardsville, 1978. p. 131

[14] D. Blackbourn, Germany, 1780-1918, London, 1997, p. 361, in Williamson, p. 110.

[15] Gall, p. 235.

[16] Kishlansky, p. 721.

[17] Medlicott, p. 183.

[18] Ibid., p. 184.