Historical-political figure rating thread #2: Otto von Bismarck:

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

This time we have someone completely different from the other guy. Lenin, the bloody, violent, dangerous revolutionary who created the core of global Communism was the last choice, this time we have the most triumphant conservative militarist in the history of conservative militarism: Otto von Bismarck, minister of Prussia, founder of the German Empire.

First, the bad of Otto von Bismarck's legacy: the German Empire he created was the one that made the USSR and Nazi Germany both possible. His military-political system was inherently flawed and unworkable. His handling of issues other than war was not always entirely adept. Otto von Bismarck created a system with the worst of all worlds: a military that was answerable only to the Kaiser, a Chancellor answerable only to the Kaiser, and a parliament elected on universal suffrage. Meaning that the Germans had no control over their military and political leadership, and elected a bunch of listening ears, not useful political leaders.

Second, Otto von Bismarck's reliance on war as a means of state policy created an example for Germany and for Germany's opponents and showed war was a reasonable, workable means of resolving political disputes and could be a creative force. To blend this with nationalism was a heady, fatal, poisonous link. It was the means whereby the entire world would be plunged decades later into two holocausts of utterly unprecedented proportions and much more brutalized than had ever been imagined before.

Now for the good: under Otto von Bismarck the united Germany that he created was the first European state with a welfare state, as well as one of the first to enshrine a full, proper civil service system. This gave united Germany a population healthier, wealther, and better-cared for than existed in the rest of Europe. This underlay the dramatic, exponential rise of the German Empire to the most powerful single industrial state in Europe. As intended this was a reactionary, conservative, backwards state where Prussia was the predominant political and cultural force, not anything like an equal or democratic system.

In my view Otto von Bismarck's the man who ruined European geopolitical hegemony and helped replace it with US superpower status, and his legacy's evils far, far outweigh anything good attached to them. I think he was a total, epic, major disaster for both Europe and the entire world. Your thoughts?

Comments

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

The pickelhaube certainly looks more badass than the Stalhelm. That one looks like the bastard lovechild of a football helmet and a bowling ball.

[luzribeiro.livejournal.com]

Ja, ich (fast) verstehe.

[terminator44.livejournal.com]

You can actually get a pickelhaube for your Xbox 360 avatar if you play Toy Soldiers, a WWI wargame themed (the action takes place on a game board) Xbox Live Arcade game. Mine's still wearing it.

[luzribeiro.livejournal.com]

My thoughts are that he had an awesome helmet.



WANT...

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

Most important comment of the post.

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

Well he did his best to split my country into tiny bits, so I have no sympathy for him and the other crooks out there who sat at the table on the Berlin Congress.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

That was the flip-side of him being overly ccnservative: he didn't like the precedent of dismantling the Ottoman Empire. Which for people who *wanted* new states, well.....it wasn't a very good thing.

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

He didn't want Russia to have a huge ally on the Balkans. He preferred them to have "Balkanized" Balkans to deal with and keep them occupied. Divide and rule.

[peamasii.livejournal.com]

he was afraid you'd start WWI ;-)

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

Or WW3!

[peamasii.livejournal.com]

that's right, you slavic terrarist

[paedraggaidin.livejournal.com]

I have very mixed feelings about how German unification came about. The Thirty Years War basically ensured that Germany would stay disunited and, collectively, weak for the next two centuries. Which, all in all, was a better outcome for everyone, including the Germans themselves (give me a big mass of petty, feuding little states over militaristic nationalism any day).

Bismarck was, no one could deny, a brilliant man, and he did do good things (e.g. welfare), but the good is far outweighed by the bad, by expanding the martial craziness of Prussia to the whole of non-Hapsburg Germany and creating a giant, industrialized war machine with the express aim of dominating the continent.

I have never believed that Wilhelm II was a bad or evil man; he was simply a bad autocrat, in a similar mold to Nicholas II of Russia. Both were men ill-suited to being the (more or less) absolute ruler of a vast, multi-ethnic, militaristic empire, in contrast to, say, Franz Josef I of Austria-Hungary, who did about as well as could be expected given the situation. Europe as a whole was, at the time, a giant exercise in ugly hypocrisy. Britain and France are perfect examples, being "democracies" that enslaved, exploited, and oppressed hundreds of millions of people in vast overseas colonies. This is why I think the First World War claim by America as "fighting for democracy" is absolute bullshit. Who were we fighting for?

Britain (Hundreds of millions of oppressed colonials the world over, and don't forget Ireland, then in its third century of thoroughly repressive anti-Catholic rule).
France (more millions virtually enslaved, primarily in Africa)
Italy (a state whose entire interest in the war involved wanting to steal land from Austria and which was happy to break treaties to do so)
Brave Little Belgium (which ran one of the nastiest colonial systems ever seen in the Congo)


...against enemies who were not demonstrably any more evil than the "democracies" we were supposedly fighting for. Oh, and America was hardly a beacon of freedom and goodness at the time, either.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

I agree that the Westphalia solution was ultimately the wiser option, though Otto von Bismarck's successes indicates there was enough enthusiasm among the powerful, at least, for nationalism too ultimately triumph.

I think you're quite right that WWI is far more grey and grey morality than was ever the case in WWII, though I think Wilhelm II's weakness was different: he was a tolerable autocrat in peacetime but both he and his cousin were some of the most abysmal wartime leaders human history has ever produced.

[lai-choi-san.livejournal.com]

Your post sums up exactly his part in History. It's not often that his legacy, WW1 and WW2, is brought to light.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Thank you. ^.^

[terminator44.livejournal.com]

Didn't he warn Germany against getting involved in a continent-wide war, as Germany was geographically surrounded by powerful rivals?

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Not exactly. He warned against going too much into colonialism for that reason, but not against a continental war per se.

[devil-ad-vocate.livejournal.com]

No. It was Obama's fault... clearly.

[kardashev.livejournal.com]

"In my view Otto von Bismarck's the man who ruined European geopolitical hegemony and helped replace it with US superpower status, and his legacy's evils far, far outweigh anything good attached to them. I think he was a total, epic, major disaster for both Europe and the entire world. Your thoughts?"

I think if he had a secret lair with all kinds of death rays, robots, genetic mutation chambers, and a femme fatale second in command he would have made a damn fine supervillain.

[onefatmusicnerd.livejournal.com]

His welfare system was brilliant. Designed to end class warfare with the assumption that people were essentially lazy. It works very well, even Hayek throws government welfare props.