This essay analyzes Otto von Bismarck's political strategy during the second half of the nineteenth century, focusing on his skillful manipulation of nationalism and liberalism to achieve Prussian dominance and German unification. The paper examines Bismarck's pragmatic approach to diplomacy through concrete examples—his treatment of Poland as a buffer state, his domestic triangulation of competing ideologies, and his masterful orchestration of the Franco-Prussian War. The essay argues that Realpolitik, characterized by realistic assessment of costs without moral constraint, allowed Bismarck to leverage both nationalist sentiment and liberal idealism instrumentally, ultimately enabling the creation of a unified Germany while revealing the limitations and dangers of purely pragmatic statecraft.
Bismarck's unification of Germany in the second half of the nineteenth century had to reckon with the legacy of the century's rough midpoint. In 1848, the "year of revolutions" that would awaken tremendous political sentiments across Europe, Bismarck was also at the very beginning of his political career. The nationalism and liberalism that were unleashed in 1848 would take the form of powerful but inchoate political yearnings across the continent, and Bismarck's great genius was in playing these sentiments off one another to achieve Prussia's continental goals.
Bismarck's political style has been remembered as one of "Realpolitik," which notoriously involved "realistic assessment of the costs and consequences of action" alongside the "absence of moral or ethical considerations" in statecraft. This is essentially a pragmatic approach that reveals Bismarck had no fixed ideological allegiances. He could accommodate either liberalism or nationalism to the extent that they helped accomplish his specific achievable goals. Unlike ideologically committed statesmen, Bismarck viewed both ideologies as tools to be deployed strategically rather than principles to be honored.
As an example of Bismarck's Realpolitik in handling nationalism, we may note the way in which he regarded those small nations incorporated within larger imperial schemes. Poland offers the perfect example, since Poland in the nineteenth century had been termed "The Christ of Nations" because of its repeated partitions at the hands of its larger neighbors, Tsarist Russia and Bismarck's Prussia. We can see this even in modern times: the former Prussian capital of Königsberg, city of the great German philosopher Immanuel Kant, is now the Russian city of Kaliningrad, in a Russian-owned territory that is not connected via land with any other Russian territories.
From Bismarck's standpoint, an ethical concern about the "rights of small nations"—the sort of liberal idealism about sovereignty and self-determination that we associate with liberal politicians like Woodrow Wilson—was pointless. Poland was only a bargaining chip that Prussia could use to keep Russia at bay. So in 1863, when nationalism and liberalism reared their heads in Poland as a protest against Russian imperial domination, Bismarck took the opportunity to speak against the Poles: "Hit the Poles so hard they despair for their lives," Bismarck would tell the Tsar. In reality, Bismarck wanted Poland maintained as a buffer zone and wanted stability with the Tsar, because his real ambitions were focused on Austria. So the end result of Bismarck's stance was that Austria found its relations with Russia soured, precisely as Bismarck intended.
At home, meanwhile, Bismarck would play nationalism and liberalism against each other. The somewhat restrictive and autocratic form of government that reigned in Prussia was hardly the sort of representative politics that classic liberalism endorsed. Yet Bismarck was able to quell any domestic opposition to his policies by basically playing German nationalism against German liberalism. After the prolonged annexation of Schleswig-Holstein from Denmark to Prussia, Prussia's "liberal newspapers willingly accepted the triumphs of foreign policy and military might." Foreign policy victories thus became the substitute for domestic political reform, neutralizing liberal demands for constitutional government and representation.
The triumph of Bismarck's strategy of triangulation came with the Franco-Prussian War in 1870–1871, which managed to complete Bismarck's own Realpolitik goal of unifying Germany. But it is curious to see how Bismarck managed both nationalism and liberalism in approaching the war. Liberalism, which would traditionally condemn the aggressor-state in conditions of hostility, was easily quieted by the fact that Bismarck essentially provoked Napoleon III into starting the war. The appearance of French aggression allowed liberal opinion to view Prussian action as defensive rather than expansionist, a crucial rhetorical move.
Bismarck's unparalleled skill with diplomacy also managed to keep larger nations from intervening. By revealing to Great Britain that Napoleon III's territorial plans threatened British homeland security—as Napoleon III planned annexation of Belgian ports like Ostend and Zeebrugge which could launch an invasion of England—Bismarck "played his real trump card." France would not only provoke the war against Prussia but would find no allies in the fight, and the Prussians won the war easily.
This led to an increase in German nationalism which Bismarck maneuvered into demanding and receiving additional territorial concessions from the French, including Alsace-Lorraine, "where German speakers predominated (although they did not necessarily want to be incorporated into a united Germany)." The nationalist sentiment generated by victory thus became the vehicle for territorial acquisition that might otherwise have faced international or domestic resistance. German unification was thus achieved not through ideological conviction but through the orchestration of nationalist fervor.
"Repression and persecution following the achievement of unification"
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