this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2025
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Explanation: Germany, in the 19th century AD, was not a single country, but a massive collection of independent states which, over the course of the century, became increasingly closer as modern nationalism propelled the idea of a 'German nation'. One of the key actors in bringing this disparate group of polities under a single umbrella was the Prussian Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, whose power, de facto if not de jure, often exceeded that of the Prussian monarch.
He also orchestrated a little silliness with France in the Franco-Prussian War, both to gain Alsace-Lorraine and to give the German states a common enemy to get that good, wholesome nationalist feeling really going! The Germans won that war, so obviously it would have no repercussions down the line.
Silly you. Are you perhaps talking about Elsaß-Lothringen?
well, he wasn't able to stop Wilhelm from doing a litte fucky wucky in 1914
Well, Bismarck was a little dead by that point. But the headstrong Wilhelm II clashing with Bismarck was what led Bismarck to retire.
Bismarck predicted it, though - the next great European war, he said, would come of some damn foolish thing in the Balkans!
Napoleon III surrounds himself with yes-men before the Franco-Prussian War. Result: defeat.
Wilhelm II surrounds himself with yes-men before the Great War. Result: defeat.
Current US President surrounds himself with yes-men. [YOU ARE HERE].
That sounds quite similar to how the European Nation wasn't a single country back in the 21st century.