3

The Age of BismarckGerman Unification and the Growth of German

Power

Otto von Bismarck

Bismarck’s creation

A judgment on Napoleon III“The First Mountebank Dictator”

“The careers of Napoleon III and Hitler have shown how far even a bare minimum of ideas and resources, when backed by a nation’s reminiscences or passions, can carry a man in the political desert of “direct democracy”; and the books written about Napoleon III show how loath posterity is to accept the stark truth about such a man.”

Source: Sir Lewis Namier, Vanished Supremacies (London, 1958): 83.

Empire proclaimed

Dreikaiserbund

Disraeli & Gladstone

Alexander II

Congress of Berlin

Francesco Crispi

Bismarck goes

Bismarck’s SuccessorsWilliam II, von Tirpitz, von Caprivi

Railways