Chancellor of Germany from to
Otto, Prince of Bismarck, Count of Bismarck-Schönhausen, Duke of Lauenburg[a] (; born Otto Eduard Leopold von Bismarck; 1 April – 30 July ) was a Prussian statesman and diplomat who oversaw the unification of Germany. Bismarck's Realpolitik and firm governance resulted in him being popularly known as the Iron Chancellor (German: Eiserner Kanzler).
From Junker landowner origins, Otto von Bismarck rose rapidly in Prussian politics under King Wilhelm I of Prussia. He served as the Prussian ambassador to Russia and France and in both houses of the Prussian parliament. From to , he held office as the minister president and foreign minister of Prussia. Under Bismarck's leadership, Prussia provoked three short, decisive wars against Denmark, Austria, and France. After Austria's defeat in , he replaced the German Confederation with the North German Confederation, which aligned the smaller North German states with Prussia while excluding Austria. In , Bismarck secured France's defeat with support from the independent South German states before overseeing the creation of a unified German Empire under Prussian rule. Following Germany's unification, he was given the aristocratic title, Prince of Bismarck (German: Fürst von Bismarck). From onwards, his balance-of-power approach to diplomacy helped maintain Germany's position in a peaceful Europe. While averse to maritime colonialism, Bismarck ultimately acquiesced to elite and popular opinion by building an overseas empire.
Throughout his career as Chancellor, Prince Bismarck remained loyal to German Emperor Wilhelm I who steadfastly supported his policies against the advice of his wife, Empress Augusta, and son, Crown Prince Frederick. As the architect of Germany's domestic policies, Bismarck created the first modern welfare state, which also had the effect of undermining his socialist opponents. In the s, he allied himself with the anti-tariff, anti-CatholicLiberals while repressing the Catholic Church in the Kulturkampf ("culture struggle"). Additionally, under his governance, the Imperial Reichstag was elected by universal male suffrage but did not control government policy. A staunch monarchist, Bismarck inherently distrusted democracy and ruled through a strong, well-trained bureaucracy with power concentrated in the hands of the Junker elite. After being dismissed from office by Wilhelm II, he retired to write his memoirs.
Otto von Bismarck is most famous for his role in German unification. He became a hero to German nationalists, who built monuments honouring him. While praised[by whom?] as a visionary who kept the peace in Europe through adroit diplomacy, he is criticised for his persecution of Poles and Catholics as well as the immense power centralised within his office as Chancellor. He is also criticised by opponents of German nationalism, as it became engrained in German culture, galvanising the country to aggressively pursue nationalistic policies in both World Wars.
Bismarck was born in at Schönhausen, a noble family estate west of Berlin in Prussian Saxony. His father, Karl Wilhelm Ferdinand von Bismarck (–), was a Swabian-descendant Junker estate owner and a former Prussian military officer; his mother, Wilhelmine Luise Mencken (–), was the well-educated daughter of a senior government official in Berlin whose family produced many civil servants along with academics. In , the family moved to its Pomeranian estate, Kniephof (now Konarzewo, Poland), northeast of Stettin (now Szczecin), in the then-Prussian province of Farther Pomerania. There, Bismarck spent his childhood in a bucolic setting.[1] Despite the assets they held, their financial affairs were average; Ferdinand's below adequate agricultural skills led to a decreased salary, with Bismarck having never obtained any significant wealth before die Einigung, given the lack of such received from his father.[2]
Bismarck had two siblings: his older brother Bernhard (–) and his younger sister Malwine (–). Others saw Bismarck as a typical backwoods Prussian Junker, an image that he encouraged by wearing military uniforms. However, he was well educated and cosmopolitan with a gift for conversation. Bismarck also knew English, French, Italian, Polish, and Russian.[3]
Bismarck was educated at Johann Ernst Plamann's elementary school, and the Friedrich-Wilhelm and Graues Kloster secondary schools. From to , he studied law at the University of Göttingen, where he was a member of the Corps Hannovera, and then enrolled at the University of Berlin (–). In , while stationed as an army reservist in Greifswald, he studied agriculture at the University of Greifswald.[5] At Göttingen, Bismarck befriended the American student John Lothrop Motley. Motley, who later became an eminent historian and diplomat while remaining close to Bismarck, wrote a novel in , Morton's Hope, or the Memoirs of a Provincial, about life in a German university. In it he described Bismarck as a reckless and dashing eccentric, but also as an extremely gifted and charming young man.[6]
Although Bismarck hoped to become a diplomat, he started his practical training as a lawyer in Aachen and Potsdam, and soon resigned, having first placed his career in jeopardy by taking unauthorised leave to pursue two English girls: first Laura Russell, niece of the Duke of Cleveland, and then Isabella Loraine-Smith, daughter of a wealthy clergyman. In , Bismarck began a shortened compulsory military service in the Prussian Army; actively serving as a one-year volunteer before becoming an officer in the Landwehr (reserve). Afterwards he returned to run the family estates at Schönhausen on his mother's death in his mid-twenties.
Around age 30, Bismarck formed an intense friendship with Marie von Thadden-Trieglaff, newly married to one of his friends, Moritz von Blanckenburg. A month after her death, Bismarck wrote to ask for the hand in marriage of Marie's cousin, the noblewoman Johanna von Puttkamer (–);[7] they were married at Alt-Kolziglow (modern Kołczygłowy) on 28 July Their long and happy marriage produced three children: Marie (b. ), Herbert (b. ), and Wilhelm (b. ). Johanna was a shy, retiring and deeply religious woman, although famed for her sharp tongue in later life.
In , Bismarck, aged thirty-two, was chosen as a representative to the newly created Prussian legislature, the Vereinigter Landtag. There, he gained a reputation as a royalist and reactionary politician with a gift for stinging rhetoric; he openly advocated the idea that the monarch had a divine right to rule. His selection was arranged by the Gerlach brothers, fellow Pietist Lutherans whose ultra-conservative faction was known as the "Kreuzzeitung" after their newspaper, the Neue Preußische Zeitung, which was so nicknamed because it featured an Iron Cross on its cover.[8]
In March , Prussia faced a revolution (one of the revolutions of across Europe), which completely overwhelmed King Frederick William IV. The monarch, though initially inclined to use armed forces to suppress the rebellion, ultimately declined to leave Berlin for the safety of military headquarters at Potsdam. Bismarck later recorded that there had been a "rattling of sabres in their scabbards" from Prussian officers when they learned that the king would not suppress the revolution by force. He offered numerous concessions to the liberals: he wore the black-red-gold revolutionary colours (as seen on the flag of today's Germany), promised to promulgate a constitution, agreed that Prussia and other German states should merge into a single nation-state, and appointed a liberal, Gottfried Ludolf Camphausen, as Minister President.[10]
Bismarck had at first tried to rouse the peasants of his estate into an army to march on Berlin in the king's name.[11] He travelled to Berlin in disguise to offer his services but was instead told to make himself useful by arranging food supplies for the Army from his estates in case they were needed. The king's brother, Prince Wilhelm, had fled to England; Bismarck tried to get Wilhelm's wife Augusta to place their teenage son Frederick William on the Prussian throne in Frederick William IV's place. Augusta would have none of it, and detested Bismarck thereafter,[12] despite the fact that he later helped restore a working relationship between Wilhelm and his brother the king. Bismarck was not yet a member of the House of Representatives, the lower house of the new Prussian legislature. The liberal movement perished by the end of amid internal fighting. Meanwhile, the conservatives regrouped, formed an inner group of advisers—including the Gerlach brothers, known as the "Camarilla"—around the king, and retook control of Berlin. Although a constitution was granted, its provisions fell far short of the demands of the revolutionaries.
In , Bismarck was elected to the Landtag. At this stage in his career, he opposed the unification of Germany, arguing that Prussia would lose its independence in the process. He accepted his appointment as one of Prussia's representatives at the Erfurt Parliament, an assembly of German states that met to discuss plans for union, but he only did so to oppose that body's proposals more effectively. The parliament failed to bring about unification, for it lacked the support of the two most important German states, Prussia and Austria. In September , after a dispute over the Electorate of Hesse (the Hesse Crisis of [14]), Prussia was humiliated and forced to back down by Austria (supported by Russia) in the so-called Punctation of Olmütz;[15] a plan for the unification of Germany under Prussian leadership, proposed by Prussia's Foreign Minister Joseph von Radowitz, was also abandoned.
In , Frederick William IV appointed Bismarck as Prussia's envoy to the Diet of the German Confederation in Frankfurt. Bismarck gave up his elected seat in the Landtag but was appointed to the Prussian House of Lords a few years later. In Frankfurt, he engaged in a battle of wills with the Austrian representative Count Friedrich von Thun und Hohenstein. He insisted on being treated as an equal by petty tactics such as imitating Thun when Thun claimed the privileges of smoking and removing his jacket in meetings.[16] This episode was the background for an altercation in the Frankfurt chamber with Georg von Vincke that led to a duel between Bismarck and Vincke with Carl von Bodelschwingh as an impartial party, which ended without injury.[17]
Bismarck's eight years in Frankfurt were marked by changes in his political opinions, detailed in the numerous lengthy memoranda, which he sent to his ministerial superiors in Berlin. No longer under the influence of his ultraconservative Prussian friends, Bismarck became less reactionary and more pragmatic. He became convinced that to countervail Austria's newly restored influence, Prussia would have to ally herself with other German states. As a result, he grew to be more accepting of the notion of a united German nation. He gradually came to believe that he and his fellow conservatives had to take the lead in creating a unified nation to keep from being eclipsed. He also believed that the middle-class liberals wanted a unified Germany more than they wanted to break the grip of the traditional forces over society.
Bismarck also worked to maintain the friendship of Russia and a working relationship with Napoleon III's France, the latter being anathema to his conservative friends, the Gerlachs,[18] but necessary both to threaten Austria and to prevent France from allying with Russia. In a famous letter to Leopold von Gerlach, Bismarck wrote that it was foolish to play chess having first put 16 of the 64 squares out of bounds. This observation became ironic, as after , France indeed became Germany's permanent enemy, and eventually allied with Russia against Germany in the s.[19]
Bismarck was alarmed by Prussia's isolation during the Crimean War of the mids, in which Austria sided with Britain and France against Russia; Prussia was almost not invited to the peace talks in Paris, where Russia notably regained access to the Black Sea, much to his chagrin. In the Great Eastern Crisis of the s, fear of a repetition of this turn of events would later be a factor in Bismarck's signing the Dual Alliance with Austria-Hungary in
In October , Frederick William IV suffered a paralysingstroke, and his brother Wilhelm took over the Prussian government as Regent. Wilhelm was initially seen as a moderate ruler, whose friendship with liberal Britain was symbolised by the recent marriage of his son Frederick William to Queen Victoria's eldest daughter. As part of his "New Era", Wilhelm brought in new ministers, moderate conservatives known as the Wochenblatt after their newspaper.
The Regent soon replaced Bismarck as envoy in Frankfurt and made him Prussia's ambassador to the Russian Empire.[20] In theory, this was a promotion, as Russia was one of Prussia's two most powerful neighbours. But Bismarck was sidelined from events in Germany and could only watch impotently as France drove Austria out of Lombardy during the Italian War of Bismarck proposed that Prussia should exploit Austria's weakness to move her frontiers "as far south as Lake Constance" on the Swiss border; instead, Prussia mobilised troops in the Rhineland to deter further French advances into Venetia.
Bismarck stayed in St Petersburg for four years, during which he almost lost his leg to botched medical treatment and once again met his future adversary, the Russian Prince Alexander Gorchakov, who had been the Russian representative in Frankfurt in the early s. The Regent also appointed Helmuth von Moltke as the new Chief of Staff of the Prussian Army, and Albrecht von Roon as Minister of War with the job of reorganising the army. Over the next twelve years, Bismarck, Moltke and Roon transformed Prussia.[21]
Despite his lengthy stay abroad, Bismarck was not entirely detached from German domestic affairs. He remained well-informed due to Roon, with whom Bismarck formed a lasting friendship and political alliance. In May , he was sent to Paris to serve as ambassador to France, and also visited England that summer. These visits enabled him to meet and take the measure of several adversaries: Napoleon III in France, and in Britain, Prime Minister Palmerston, Foreign Secretary Earl Russell, and Conservative politician Benjamin Disraeli.
Further information: Bismarck-Roon cabinet
Prince Wilhelm became King of Prussia upon his brother Frederick Wilhelm IV's death in The new monarch often came into conflict with the increasingly liberal Prussian Landtag. A crisis arose in when the Landtag refused to authorise funding for a proposed re-organisation of the army. The King's ministers could not convince legislators to pass the budget, and the king was unwilling to make concessions. Wilhelm threatened to abdicate in favour of his son Crown Prince Frederick William, who opposed his doing so, believing that Bismarck was the only politician capable of handling the crisis. However, Wilhelm was ambivalent about appointing a person who demanded unfettered control over foreign affairs. It was in September , when the Abgeordnetenhaus (House of Representatives) overwhelmingly rejected the proposed budget, that Wilhelm was persuaded to recall Bismarck to Prussia on the advice of Roon. On 23 September , Wilhelm appointed Bismarck Minister President and Foreign Minister.[22]
Bismarck, Roon and Moltke took charge at a time when relations among the Great Powers (Great Britain, France, Austria and Russia) had been shattered by the Crimean War and the First Italian War of Independence. In the midst of this disarray, the European balance of power was restructured with the creation of the German Empire as the dominant power in continental Europe apart from Russia. This was achieved by Bismarck's diplomacy, Roon's reorganisation of the army and Moltke's military strategy.
Despite the initial distrust of the king and crown prince and the loathing of Queen Augusta, Bismarck soon acquired a powerful hold over the king by force of personality and powers of persuasion. Bismarck was intent on maintaining royal supremacy by ending the budget deadlock in the king's favour, even if he had to use extra-legal means to do so. Under the constitution, the budget could be passed only after the king and legislature agreed on its terms. Bismarck contended that since the constitution did not provide for cases in which legislators failed to approve a budget, there was a "legal loophole" in the constitution and so he could apply the previous year's budget to keep the government running. Thus, on the basis of the budget, tax collection continued for four years.
Bismarck's conflict with the legislators intensified in the coming years. Following the Alvensleben Convention of , the House of Representatives resolved that it could no longer come to terms with Bismarck; in response, the king dissolved the Landtag, accusing it of trying to obtain unconstitutional control over the ministry—which, under the constitution, was responsible solely to the king. Bismarck then issued an edict restricting the freedom of the press, an edict that even gained the public opposition of the crown prince. Despite (or perhaps because of) his attempts to silence critics, Bismarck remained a largely unpopular politician. His supporters fared poorly in the elections of October , in which a liberal coalition, whose primary member was the Progress Party, won over two-thirds of the seats. The House made repeated calls for Bismarck to be dismissed, but the king supported him, fearing that if he did dismiss the Minister President, he would most likely be succeeded by a liberal.
Main article: Blood and Iron speech
German unification had been a major objective of the revolutions of , when representatives of the German states met in Frankfurt and drafted a constitution, creating a federal union with a national parliament to be elected by universal male suffrage. In April , the Frankfurt Parliament offered the title of Emperor to King Frederick William IV. Fearing the opposition of the other German princes and the military intervention of Austria and Russia, the king renounced this popular mandate, citing his concerns over the legitimacy of the parliament to offer him the crown without the consent of the various German rulers. Thus, the Frankfurt Parliament ended in failure for the German liberals.[citation needed] On 30 September , Bismarck made a famous speech to the Budget Committee of the Prussian Chamber of Deputies in which he expounded on the use of "iron and blood" to achieve Prussia's goals:
Prussia must concentrate and maintain its power for the favorable moment which has already slipped by several times. Prussia's boundaries according to the Vienna treaties are not favorable to a healthy state life. The great questions of the time will not be resolved by speeches and majority decisions &#; that was the great mistake of and &#; but by iron and blood.
Main article: Second Schleswig War
Prior to the s, Germany consisted of a multitude of principalities loosely bound together as members of the German Confederation. Bismarck used both diplomacy and the Prussian military to achieve unification, excluding Austria from a unified Germany. This made Prussia the most powerful and dominant component of the new Germany but also ensured that it remained an authoritarian state and not a liberal parliamentary democracy.[27]
Bismarck faced a diplomatic crisis when King Frederick VII of Denmark died in November The succession to the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein was disputed; they were claimed by Christian IX, Frederick VII's heir as king, and also by Frederick von Augustenburg, a Danish duke. Prussian public opinion strongly favoured Augustenburg's claim, as the populations of Holstein and southern Schleswig were primarily German-speaking.[citation needed] Bismarck took an unpopular step by insisting that the territories legally belonged to the Danish monarch under the London Protocol signed a decade earlier. Nonetheless, Bismarck denounced Christian's decision to completely annex Schleswig to Denmark. With support from Austria, he issued an ultimatum for Christian IX to return Schleswig to its former status.[28] When Denmark refused, Austria and Prussia invaded, sparking the Second Schleswig War. Denmark was ultimately forced to renounce its claim on both duchies.
At first this seemed like a victory for Augustenburg, but Bismarck soon removed him from power by making a series of unworkable demands, namely that Prussia should have control over the army and navy of the duchies. Originally, it had been proposed that the Diet of the German Confederation, in which all the states of Germany were represented, should determine the fate of the duchies; but before this scheme could be effected, Bismarck induced Austria to agree to the Gastein Convention. Under this agreement signed on 20 August , Prussia received Schleswig, while Austria received Holstein. In that year Bismarck was given the title of Count (Graf) of Bismarck-Schönhausen.[29]
Main article: Austro-Prussian War
In , Austria reneged on the agreement and demanded that the Diet determine the Schleswig–Holstein issue. Bismarck used this as an excuse to start a war with Austria by accusing them of violating the Gastein Convention. Bismarck sent Prussian troops to occupy Holstein. Provoked, Austria called for the aid of other German states, who quickly became involved in the Austro-Prussian War.[30] Thanks to Roon's reorganization, the Prussian Army was nearly equal in numbers to the Austrian Army. With the strategic genius of Moltke, the Prussian army fought battles it was able to win. Bismarck had also made a secret alliance with Italy, who desired Austrian-controlled Veneto. Italy's entry into the war forced the Austrians to divide their forces.
Meanwhile, as the war began, a German radical named Ferdinand Cohen-Blind attempted to assassinate Bismarck in Berlin, shooting him five times at close range. Bismarck had only minor injuries.[32] Cohen-Blind later committed suicide while in custody.
The war lasted seven weeks. Austria had a seemingly powerful army that was allied with most of the north German and all of the south German states. Nevertheless, Prussia won the decisive Battle of Königgrätz. The king and his generals wanted to push onward, conquer Bohemia and march to Vienna, but Bismarck, worried that Prussian military luck might change or that France might intervene on Austria's side, enlisted the help of Crown Prince Frederick Wilhelm, who had opposed the war but had commanded one of the Prussian armies at Königgrätz, to dissuade his father after stormy arguments. Bismarck insisted on a "soft peace" with no annexations and no victory parades, so as to be able to quickly restore friendly relations with Austria.[33]
Prussia had only a plurality (17 out of 43 seats) in the Bundesrat despite being larger than the other 21 states combined, but Bismarck could easily control the proceedings through alliances with the smaller states. This began what historians refer to as "The Misery of Austria" in which Austria served as a mere vassal to the superior Germany, a relationship that was to shape history until the end of the First World War.[34]
Jonathan Steinberg says of Bismarck's achievements to this point:
The scale of Bismarck's triumph cannot be exaggerated. He alone had brought about a complete transformation of the European international order. He had told those who would listen what he intended to do, how he intended to do it, and he did it. He achieved this incredible feat without commanding an army, and without the ability to give an order to the humblest common soldier, without control of a large party, without public support, indeed, in the face of almost universal hostility, without a majority in parliament, without control of his cabinet, and without a loyal following in the bureaucracy. He no longer had the support of the powerful conservative interest groups who had helped him achieve power. The most senior diplomats in the foreign service were sworn enemies and he knew it. The Queen and the Royal Family hated him and the King, emotional and unreliable, would soon have his 70th birthday. With perfect justice, in August , he punched his fist on his desk and cried "I have beaten them all! All!"[35]
Main article: Franco-Prussian War
Prussia's victory over Austria increased the already existing tensions with France. The Emperor of France, Napoleon III, had tried to gain territory for France (in Belgium and on the left bank of the Rhine) as a compensation for not joining the war against Prussia and was disappointed by the surprisingly quick outcome of the war. Accordingly, opposition politician Adolphe Thiers claimed that it was France, not Austria, who had really been defeated at Königgrätz. Bismarck, at the same time, did not avoid war with France, though he feared the French for a number of reasons. First, he feared that Austria, hungry for revenge, would ally with the French. Similarly, he feared that the Russian army would assist France to maintain a balance of power.[37] Still, however, Bismarck believed that if the German states perceived France as the aggressor, they would then unite behind the King of Prussia. To achieve this, he kept Napoleon III involved in various intrigues, whereby France might gain territory from Luxembourg or Belgium. France never achieved any such gain, but it was made to look greedy and untrustworthy.[38]
A suitable pretext for war arose in when the German Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen was offered the Spanish throne, vacant since a revolution in France pressured Leopold into withdrawing his candidacy. Not content with this, Paris demanded that Wilhelm, as head of the House of Hohenzollern, assure that no Hohenzollern would ever seek the Spanish crown again. To provoke France into declaring war with Prussia, Bismarck published the Ems Dispatch, a carefully edited version of a conversation between King Wilhelm and the French ambassador to Prussia, Count Benedetti. This conversation had been edited so that each nation felt that its ambassador had been slighted and ridiculed, thus inflaming popular sentiment on both sides in favour of war. Langer, however, argues that this episode played a minor role in causing the war.[39]
Bismarck wrote in his Memoirs that he "had no doubt that a Franco-German war must take place before the construction of a united Germany could be realised".[40] Yet he felt confident that the French Army was not prepared to give battle to Germany's numerically larger forces: "If the French fight us alone they are lost". He was also convinced that the French would not be able to find allies since "France, the victor, would be a danger to everybody – Prussia to nobody". He added, "That is our strong point".[41]
France mobilized and declared war on 19 July. The German states saw France as the aggressor, and—swept up by nationalism and patriotic zeal—they rallied to Prussia's side and provided troops. Both of Bismarck's sons served as officers in the Prussian cavalry. The war was a great success for Prussia as the German army, controlled by Chief of Staff Moltke, won victory after victory. The major battles were all fought in one month (7 August to 1 September), and both French armies were captured at Sedan and Metz, the latter after a siege of some weeks. Napoleon III was taken prisoner at Sedan and kept in Germany for a time in case Bismarck had need of him to head the French regime; he later died in exile in England in The remainder of the war featured a Siege of Paris, the city was "ineffectually bombarded"; the new French republican regime then tried, without success, to relieve Paris with various hastily assembled armies and increasingly bitter partisan warfare.
Bismarck quoted the first verse lyrics of "La Marseillaise", amongst others, when being recorded on an Edison phonograph in , the only known recording of his voice. A biographer stated that he did so, 19 years after the war, to mock the French.[43]
Main article: Unification of Germany
Bismarck acted immediately to secure the unification of Germany. He negotiated with representatives of the southern German states, offering special concessions if they agreed to unification. The negotiations succeeded; patriotic sentiment overwhelmed what opposition remained. While the war was in its final phase, Wilhelm I of Prussia was proclaimed German Emperor on 18 January in the Hall of Mirrors in the Château de Versailles. The new German Empire was a federation: each of its 25 constituent states (kingdoms, grand duchies, duchies, principalities, and free cities) retained some autonomy. The King of Prussia, as German Emperor, was not sovereign over the entirety of Germany; he was only primus inter pares, or first among equals. However, he held the presidency of the Bundesrat, which met to discuss policy presented by the Chancellor, whom the emperor appointed.
In the end, France had to cede Alsace and part of Lorraine, as Moltke and his generals wanted it as a buffer. Historians debate whether Bismarck wanted this annexation or was forced into it by a wave of German public and elite opinion.[45] France was also required to pay an indemnity; the indemnity figure was calculated on the basis of population, as the precise equivalent of the indemnity that Napoleon I had imposed on Prussia in
Historians debate whether Bismarck had a master plan to expand the North German Confederation of to include the remaining independent German states into a single entity or simply to expand the power of the Kingdom of Prussia. They conclude that factors in addition to the strength of Bismarck's Realpolitik led a collection of early modern polities to reorganise political, economic, military, and diplomatic relationships in the 19th century. Reaction to Danish and French nationalism provided foci for expressions of German unity. Military successes—especially those of Prussia—in three regional wars generated enthusiasm and pride that politicians could harness to promote unification. This experience echoed the memory of mutual accomplishment in the Napoleonic Wars, particularly in the War of Liberation of – By establishing a Germany without Austria, the political and administrative unification in at least temporarily solved the problem of dualism.[citation needed] Historian Robert K. Massie has noted Bismarck's popular image was as "gruff" and "militaristic", while in reality "Bismarck's tool was aggressive, ruthless diplomacy."[47]
Jonathan Steinberg said of Bismarck's creation of the German Empire that:
the first phase of [his] great career had been concluded. The genius-statesmen had transformed European politics and had unified Germany in eight and a half years. And he had done so by sheer force of personality, by his brilliance, ruthlessness, and flexibility of principle. [It] marked the high point of [his] career. He had achieved the impossible, and his genius and the cult of genius had no limits. When he returned to Berlin in March , he had become immortal [48]
Main article: Bismarck cabinet