Железное королевство. Взлет и падение Пруссии, 1600-1947 гг. - Christopher Clark

15 Four Wars

1. The Times, 23 October 1860, cited in Raymond James Sontag, Germany and England. Background of Conflict 1848–1898 (New York, 1938, reprint, 1969), p. 33.

2. Ernst Portner, Die Einigung Italiens im Urteil liberaler deutscher Zeitgenossen (Bonn, 1959), pp. 65, 119–22, 172–8; Angelow, Von Wien nach Königgrätz, pp. 190–200.

3. Mosse, The European Great Powers, pp. 49–77.

4. See, with literature, Dierk Walter, Preussische Heeresreformen 1807–1870. Militärische Innovation und der Mythos der “Roonschen Reform” (Paderborn, 2003).

5. English reprint in Helmut Böhme (ed.), The Foundation of the German Empire. Select Documents, trans. Agatha Ramm (Oxford, 1971), pp. 93–5.

6. Börner, Wilhelm I, pp. 17, 21.

7. Crown Prince William to General O. von Natzmer, Berlin, 20 May 1849, in Ernst Berner (ed.), Kaiser Wilhelm des Grossen Briefe, Reden und Schriften (2 vols., Berlin, 1906), vol. 1, pp. 202–3. Citation from May 1850 in Börner, Wilhelm I, p. 115. On William’s nationalism generally, see pp. 96–101.

8. Craig, Politics of the Prussian Army, pp. 136–79. For a powerful revisionist account of the military reforms, which explodes many longstanding myths (among others, the view that the mobilization of 1859 was an utter fiasco) see Walter, Heeresreformen.

9. On Manteuffel, see Otto Pflanze, Bismarck and the Development of Germany (2nd edn, 3 vols., Princeton, NJ, 1990), vol. 1, The Period of Unification, 1815–1871, pp. 171–3, 182–3, 208; Ritter, Staatskunst, vol. 1, pp. 174–6, 231–4; Craig, Politics of the Prussian Army, pp. 149–50, 232–5.

10. Craig, Politics of the Prussian Army, pp. 151–7.

11. Sheehan, German History, p. 879.

12. For a discussion of this letter, see Lothar Gall, The White Revolutionary, trans. J. A. Underwood (2 vols., London, 1986), vol. 1, p. 16.

13. Ibid., vol. 1, pp. 3–34; cf. Ernst Engelberg, Bismarck. Urpreusse und Reichsgründer (2 vols., Berlin, 1998), vol. 1, pp. 39–40, which makes the point that the Mencken connection in no way undermined the status pretensions of the Bismarcks and finds little trace of a ‘self-consciously bourgeois’ mentality among the Bismarck ancestors.

14. Cited in Gall, White Revolutionary, vol. 1, p. 57.

15. Letter to his cousin, 13 February 1847, cited in ibid., pp. 18–19.

16. Cited in Pflanze, The Period of Unification, p. 82.

17. Allen Mitchell, ‘Bonapartism as a Model for Bismarckian Politics’, Journal of Modern History, 49 (1977), pp. 181–99.

18. Bismarck to Crown Prince Frederick, 13 October 1862, in Kaiser Friedrich III, Tagebücher von 1848–1866, ed. H. O. Meisner (Leipzig, 1929), p. 505.

19. Craig, Politics of the Prussian Army, p. 167.

20. After the German-Danish war of 1848 had ended in the stalemate of Malmö, the issue was settled (or so everyone thought) by a series of international treaties signed in 1851 and 1852. These acknowledged the right of Frederick VII’s prospective successor, Crown Prince Christian of Glücksburg, to reign as sovereign over the Kingdom of Denmark and the duchies; in return, the Danes had to promise not to annex Schleswig or tamper with the constitutional status of the duchies without first consulting the (largely German) Estates of the two disputed principalities.

21. For a full analysis of Bismarck’s reasoning, see Pflanze, Bismarck, vol. 1, pp. 237–67. For a useful overview of the run-up to the war, see Dennis Showalter, The Wars of German Unification (London, 2004), pp. 117–22; Craig, Politics of the Prussian Army, pp. 180–84.

22. Showalter, Wars of German Unification, p. 126.

23. Wolfgang Förster (ed.), Prinz Friedrich Karl von Preussen, Denkwürdigkeiten aus seinem Leben (2 vols., Stuttgart, 1910), vol. 1, pp. 307–9.

24. Albrecht von Roon, Denkwürdigkeiten, (5th edn, 3 vols., Berlin, 1905), vol. 2, pp. 244–6.

25. Pflanze, Bismarck, vol. 1, pp. 271–9.

26. Siemann, Gesellschaft im Aufbruch, pp. 99–123; Wehler, Deutsche Gesellschaftsgeschichte, vol. 3, Von der ‘Deutschen Doppelrevolution’ bis zum Beginn des Ersten Weltkrieges 1849–1914, pp. 66–97.

27. Pflanze, Bismarck, vol. 1, p. 290.

28. Bismarck to Baron Karl von Werther, Berlin, 6 August 1864, in Böhme (ed.), Foundation of the German Empire, pp. 128–9.

29. Cited in Mosse, European Powers, p. 133.

30. On this meeting, see Pflanze, Bismarck, vol. 1, p. 292; Ernst Engelberg, Bismarck, p. 570. Bismarck did not, as has often been claimed, adduce the need to defeat the liberals as a reason for going to war. This argument was put forward by another participant in the conference and explicitly rejected by Bismarck.

31. Heinrich von Srbik, ‘Der Geheimvertrag Österreichs und Frankreichs vom 12. Juni 1866’, Historisches Jahrbuch, 57 (1937), pp. 454–507; Gerhard Ritter, ‘Bismarck und die Rheinpolitik Napoleons III.’, Rheinische Vierteljahrsblätter, 15–16 (1950–51), pp. 339–70; E. Ann Pottinger, Napoleon III and the German Crisis. 1856–1866 (Cambridge, MA, 1966), pp. 24–150;Pflanze, Bismarck, vol. 1, pp. 302–3.

32. On the Russian perspective, see Dietrich Beyrau, Russische Orientpolitik und die Entstehung des deutschen Kaiserreichs 1866–1870/71 (Wiesbaden, 1974); id., ‘Russische Interessenzonen und europäisches Gleichgewicht 1860–1870’, in Eberhard Kolb (ed.), Europa vor dem Krieg von 1870 (Munich, 1987), pp. 67–76; id., ‘Der deutsche Komplex. Russland zur Zeit der Reichsgründung’, in Eberhard Kolb (ed.), Europa und die Reichsgründung. Preussen-Deutschland in der Sicht der grossen europäischenMächte 1860–1880 (= Historische Zeitschrift, Beiheft New Series, vol. 6; Munich, 1980), pp. 63–108.

33. On the run-up to the war of 1866, see Showalter, Wars of German Unification, pp. 132–59; Sheehan, German History, pp. 899–908;Pflanze, Bismarck, vol. 1, pp. 292–315.

34. Frank J. Coppa, The Origins of the Italian Wars of Independence (London, 1992), pp. 122, 125.

35. Walter, Heeresreformen.

36. On this point see Voth, ‘The Prussian Zollverein’, pp. 122–4.

37. Showalter, Wars of German Unification, p. 168.

38. Wawro, Austro-Prussian War, pp. 130–35, 145–7.

39. Ibid., p. 134.

40. Communiqué to von der Goltz, Berlin, 30 March 1866, in Herman von Petersdorff et al. (eds.), Bismarck: Die gesammelten Werke (15 vols., Berlin 1923–33), vol. 5, p. 429.

41. Cited in Koppel S. Pinson, Modern Germany (New York, 1955), pp. 139–40. On Siemens, see Jürgen Kocka, Unternehmerverwaltung und Angestelltenschaft am Beispiel Siemens, 1847–1914. Zum Verhältnisvon Kapitalismus und Bürokratie in der deutschen Industrialisierung (Stuttgart, 1969), pp. 52–3.

42. Rudolf Stadelmann, Moltke und der Staat (Krefeld, 1950), p. 73; Sheehan, German Liberalism, pp. 109–18.

43. For an English translation of the text of William I’s Landtag speech