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?