
Some Traits of Bismarck (1882) - wholeness
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1882/02/some-traits-of-bismarck/376172/
======
smacktoward
_> The greatest statesman of the age, he was also recognized as the most
characteristic of Germans, — the type as well as hero of the nation; a
combination of Luther, Goedtz von Berlichingen, and Marshal Vorwaerts_

If the "Marshal Vorwaerts" bit of this seems obscure, it's a reference to a
common nickname for one of the German generals who had fought against and
eventually defeated Napoléon, Gebhard von Blücher
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gebhard_Leberecht_von_Bl%C3%BC...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gebhard_Leberecht_von_Bl%C3%BCcher)).

Blücher was an aggressive, the-best-defense-is-a-good-offense general, so his
troops, whom he was always urging to move _forwards, forwards,_ nicknamed him
"Marshal Forwards."

~~~
michalu
Marshal Blücher was an impressive figure. At the time of Waterloo he was 72
years old, right at the beginning of the encounter he instantly launched a
cavalry attack on Napoleon which he led himself in the front!

Think of the average 72 year old today.

He got injured and pushed back, only to later save Wellington from defeat.
Wellington later called Waterloo the "the nearest run thing you ever saw in
your life."

------
smacktoward
Bismarck also had the good sense to realize that if Germany expanded too much
too fast, it would prompt the rest of Europe to join together in order to cut
it down to size, the same way as had been done to Napoléon's France. The logic
of Europe's multipolar balance of power would not allow any one state to grow
too dominant, at least not without it having to first win a hell of a fight.

Two world wars would later be fought because Bismarck's successors did not
understand this fact as well as he had.

~~~
pasabagi
If your code base requires a genius to keep it running, it's shitty code. I
don't know how much Bismark is to blame for this (probably not very), but I
don't really see it as a point in his favour that the whole thing fell apart
the minute he left the building.

~~~
nn3
Replace the minute with 30 years.

Also I think it was more a case of William II being a moron, and his advisors
just not being very good.

And I don't think for WW1 (unlike WW2) anybody's goal was to expand. It was
more a case of everybody being too fearful of each other, creating a vicious
circle of more and more armament, which eventually developed its own dynamic
and finally spiraled out of control, leading to the war.

~~~
smacktoward
_> I don't think for WW1 (unlike WW2) anybody's goal was to expand_

Wilhelm II deliberately set the German Empire on the path of building a navy
strong enough to challenge Britain's command of the seas and support an
overseas colonial empire. The British, quite correctly, saw losing command of
the seas as an existential threat to their survival as an island nation, and
felt forced into a ruinous naval arms buildup in order to maintain their
position (see [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-
German_naval_arms_race](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-
German_naval_arms_race)). German naval expansion also drove the British to
forge alliances with the French and Russians (see
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_Entente](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_Entente))
to try and contain the German threat. These alliances would end up dragging
them all into World War I.

It was quite counterintuitive that the British and Germans should end up at
each others' throats in this period -- the British royal family was ethnically
German, after all; in the 19th century both countries had seen themselves as
rooted in a common Northern European, Anglo-Saxon civilization; and there was
no real economic logic in the idea of essentially landlocked Germany as a
colonial power. If Wilhelm had been willing to live with Germany's status as
the dominant land power in Europe and leave Britannia ruling the waves, it's
unlikely they would have ever come to blows. But he wasn't, he wanted
battleships and colonies and all the other trappings of world empire ("
_weltpolitik_ ":
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weltpolitik](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weltpolitik))
as opposed to Bismarck's more cautious policy of _realpolitik_
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realpolitik](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realpolitik)).
And in reaching for all that he made enemies that would end up destroying
Bismarck's empire.

~~~
hollerith
You don't seem to realize how different world trade was before the end of
WWII. Before the end of WWII, a nation needed a navy (and probably colonies)
to import significant amounts of raw materials or to export significant
amounts of manufactured goods. During the 19th Century and the first 45 years
of the 20th Century, Germany was prohibited from trading with the colonies of
any nation with a navy because a nation with a navy used it to make war on any
manufacturing nation who dared trade with its colonies.

~~~
smacktoward
Germany never got any real economic value out of its colonies. The logic that
led them to go after them wasn’t fundamentally economic, it was about more
nebulous things like national prestige. The Germans felt slighted by the fact
that Europe’s other powers had colonies and they did not. The German foreign
minister von Bülow expressed this plainly in a famous statement he made in
1897: _“Wir wollen niemand in den Schatten stellen, aber wir verlangen auch
unseren Platz an der Sonne.”_ (“We wish to throw no one into the shade, but we
also want our own place in the sun.”)

Germany didn’t _need_ battleships and colonies; she _wanted_ them, because
they were how Great Powers measured themselves in those days.

In 1914 Germany had the largest and fastest-growing economy in Europe. They
produced twice as much steel as Britain; 63% of their exports were finished
goods (see [https://www.britannica.com/place/Germany/The-
economy-1890-19...](https://www.britannica.com/place/Germany/The-
economy-1890-1914)). All this prosperity came from the industrialization of
continental Germany, not from their few tiny colonies. And all Wilhelm’s navy
ended up accomplishing was soaking up absolutely mind-boggling amounts of
money and making more enemies than even Germany could afford to fight.

------
ghaff
(1882) Sorry :-)

One salient thing that the article touches on in various ways that would
become extremely relevant about 30 years later is that Bismarck spun an
extremely complicated web of alliances and relationships that arguably he
perhaps uniquely could hold together.

And he wasn't around any longer when things ultimately broke down.

~~~
nf05papsjfVbc
This sounds very much like a few programmers I know/knew except that the
alliances and relationships were between bits of code and/or infrastructure.

