This is the first in a series of lectures we are going to do on German history. Our specific focus is the geopolitical strategy of Germany starting with the creator of the modern German Empire German Empire, Otto von Bismarck, one of the most brilliant geopolitical strategists the world has ever seen. Bismarck came to power in Prussia in the 1860’s. Things were not going well. In fact the country was in such a state of instability there was a fear that the whole government could collapse when he was appointed. Bismarck fought a series of wars and conducted a series of very brilliant diplomatic strategies that enabled Prussia to become the ruler basically of the modern German Empire. Now we won’t go into all the details of how this happened and all that but we do need to stress a number of major points. Which perhaps have not been adequately understood.
One is the central role of Russia in Bismarck's plans. Bismarck had been a Prussian ambassador to Russia and this played a very critical role. Without the neutrality shall we say of Russia, Bismarck's actions would not have been possible. So in other words let's look at it this way, Prussia was surrounded by three major powers: the Habsburg Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Russian Empire and France. France in particular most definitely did not want to see Prussia end up dominating Germany, nor did the Habsburg's in Austria. So Bismarck was facing two enemies right off the bat. By a series of very clever diplomatic maneuvers Bismarck was able to unite Germany.
Now let's fast-forward to 1871 after Germany had been created. There's a big debate among German historians, of why, when Bismarck had crushed Austria in the previous war, why he didn't absorbed the German territories in Austria. This would have huge implications relating to Nazi Germany years later. No one really knows the answer to that question because the Austrians got a very generous peace from Bismarck. However this would set up a long-standing controversy in German history that the Germans in Austria would feel that they had been left out of the greater German Empire.
Now from 1871 to 1890 Bismarck basically ruled and organized the new German state. That's a long period of time. So this is a man who - most of the histories of Bismarck cover the period of creating Germany and sort of skim over the period of him being in power up to the point where he was dismissed by Kaiser Wilhelm the second. This is a very a foolish way look at German history. Bismarck reorganized the German state and put in institutions over this long period of time that reflected his point of view.
In the victory of 1871 Bismarck humiliated the German liberals and completely discredited them and by being in power for such a long time and using his political power to shape German universities, many aspects of German life; Bismarck was able to foster shall we say and intellectual renaissance and intellectual situation where ideologies of authoritarian rule became very popular and sophisticated, in the German intellectual world. There is an attempt to sort of after World War II to sort of look back and try to pretend that Germany really wanted to be a democracy and so on and so forth. That - and of course it was a democracy - but a democracy in the Western mold and nothing could be further from the truth. The German liberals were basically totally discredited in 1871 and it was a long history of authoritarian ideology going back to Hegel in many ways going back to Frederick the Great and his father Frederick William I.
So this attempted to reinterpret German history to make the current Bundesrepublik look like some kind of logical extension of German history is basically a complete artifice. It's a complete illusion. Now Bismarck put in reforms in Germany that would be very important for the future, particularly national health insurance and Social Security. Bismarck was a leader in terms of social reform. Now on a global stage a big problem emerged because Germany emerged as a world-class power in the center of Europe. Yet Germany was a late comer to the game of global empire. You have to understand that as the 19th century evolved four giant empires emerged. Two were sort of land settler empires: America and Russia. Two were giant overseas colonial empires: France and England. Germany came late to this game of Empire and they ended up, to a certain extent, with the scraps. Their colonial empire was a pale shadow of the other four and this would be a long-standing source of instability in world politics.
Now in 1890 a very disastrous event occurred, Kaiser Wilhelm the second fired Bismarck. Now Kaiser Wilhelm the second has to go down as one of the most catastrophic people in German history and we will go over why. Now after he fired Bismarck, Kaiser Wilhelm refused to renew what was known as the reinsurance treaty between Germany and Russia. Now this would have absolutely cataclysmic consequences because there were growing tensions in some ways between Germany and Russia and we won't get into all the details here, but the point is that that was the cornerstone of Bismarck's policy. It was the cornerstone of German security. The end result of the Kaiser's foolish and disastrous action, was that Russia would sign a defense and military treaty with Germany's number one enemy France.
So that created as Bismarck very correctly observed at the time a geopolitical catastrophe for Germany facing a war on two fronts by two major powers. Germany's only real key ally was Austria-Hungary a very dubious ally and an ally that was constantly getting into conflict with Russia in the Balkans. So this was a very dangerous situation from day one. However the Kaiser wasn't content with engineering a disaster like that. He then provoked tremendous hostility from a longtime friend of Prussia, England by his adoption of an aggressive navel policy and also a highly confrontational public attitude towards England. Perhaps one of the stupidest and most disastrous decisions of all the stupid disastrous decisions of the Kaiser came in 1906 when Von Bulow, the Kaiser's unscrupulous and incompetent Chancellor, publicly insulted Joseph Chamberlain, the leader of the faction in England that sought good relations and possibly a treaty with Germany. That completely undermined and destroyed pro German factions in England.
The Kaiser's obnoxious personality also helped alienate Edward VII and push England into a position of hostility towards Germany. The end result was the emergence of what was known before World War I as the Triple en Taunt. England, France, Russia, against Germany. Germany meanwhile was still stuck with Austria-Hungary as an ally. Supposedly Italy is an ally but Italy would later turn against Germany and most people in Germany saw that they aren't policy so that alliance is a farce and a potential ally in terms of the Ottoman Empire. Now fast forward to the beginning of World War I.
Very important to understand that in 1914 Germany was facing a total and complete geopolitical catastrophe as result of the policies of the Kaiser. Germany was in an absolutely impossible situation. Russia was rearming tremendously. People portray Imperial Russia is a total basket case, a mess and so forth. That's simply not true. Russia was growing economy, was booming before World War I, but very important militarily, Russia was involved in an enormous military buildup and certainly by 1916 as the Russian army became equipped with heavy guns, the Russian Navy expanded so on and so forth. If there’d been war Germany would of just been wiped out. No question whatsoever. So Germany was facing an absolutely impossible situation and there are some historians believe that Germany wanted war in 1914, we don't believe that, but it's very important understand that Bismarck's foreign policy system was in ruins and Germany was facing an absolutely hopeless situation.
Now the whole handling of the outbreak war was another series of disasters by Kaiser Wilhelm where Germany basically took the initiative in going to war partly because of the treaties and so on. We will go into all the details on that but that was another series of disasters by Germany's probably worst leader in terms of competence, Kaiser Wilhelm. Now the fact that Germany didn't get crushed in 1914 or 1915 can only be considered a miracle and their variety of military reasons for that. One of the most is the amazingly bizarre situation where the Ottoman Empire under very bizarre circumstances ended up joining Germany and Austria Hungary; Thereby cutting off the access of Russia to Western supplies and also opening up another front for Russia. Now we need to understand some very, very important things about World War I to understand the rise of Hitler.
Germany successfully defeated Russia on the Eastern front. A lot of people don't realize that: the treaty of Brest-litovsk. Very, very important this was in the process of Hindenburg and Ludendorff, the warlords Germany, developing very, very sophisticated plans for the development of their empire in Russia. This was not a minor affair. Now as everybody knows, Germany ended up losing the war after America entered the war. Of course the American entrance of the war was spurred by another Kaiser Wilhelm disaster, the Zimmerman telegram, an act of truly unbelievable stupidity. So once America entered the war, Germany was basically finished.
Now at, at the Versailles Treaty Germany faced nothing short of a national catastrophe. The scale of the defeat for Germany was just mind-boggling. The German Army was reduced to 100,000 men, which meant that the Polish army or the Czech army could successfully invade Germany and probably conquer it. It, it's hard for Americans to conceive of what, of what the treaty meant. The entire German navy was scuttled, just sent to the bottom. All that effort gone. Huge reparations were placed against Germany. So Germany in 1919 was a kind of mad house, a kind of shattered nation beyond anything few people could imagine. On top of that the hunger blockade was kept up by the allies to pressure the Germans to sign the treaty which meant that there was literally mass starvation in Germany. So this is the Germany that Adolf Hitler found when he got out of the Army. Now we will then discuss in the next lecture the emergence of Hitler.