Blood and Iron: The Rise and Fall of the German Empire

the rise of Germany must be a principal explanation for the war. The modern country that the great Prussian chancellor Otto von Bismarck created in the second half of the nineteenth century out of what had been literally hundreds of states and principalities became strong and ambitious, inclined to risk and aggression in the less judicious hands of

By then, Germany was in control of most of continental Europe. It would take more than three years, but ultimately the full participation of the United States, by then a great economic and military power—alongside Britain, Russia, and others in…

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After the First World War, the newly established Weimar Republic was impoverished by inflation and economic crises and considered itself abused by the punitive provisions included in the postwar Treaty of Versailles. Under Hitler after 1933, Germany sought to impose its totalitarianism on all of Europe. In short, throughout the first half of the tw

The second Thirty Years’ War began with World War I. At the end of World War I, the Treaty of Versailles was supposed to be the peace to end all wars. To later historians, it has become known as the peace to end all peace. The agreements reached in Versailles were so cynical and destabilizing that Europe failed to recover its economic vitality, and

Meanwhile, Germany was moving up the hierarchical ladder, and the German leaders were gripped by the testosterone high that makes a nation belligerent. Friedrich Naumann was typical of those who gloated over Teutonic good fortune. He said, “The German race brings it. It brings army, navy, money and power. . . . Modern, gigantic instruments of power