Blood and Iron: The Rise and Fall of the German Empire 1871–1918

Ms Hoyer’s refreshing overview of 19th Century Germany springs from her very 21st Century question that echoes Richard Wagner’s “Was ist deutsch?”“I was born in Germany and have always found it difficult to make sense of my own national identity. In Germany, regional, cultural and historical differences do not just divide but shape the sense of who you are. I was born in East Germany, which added yet another layer of identity over the top. Does that make me a German, an East German, a Prussian, a Brandenburger? There was no national narrative. The very same history teachers who told me in the 1990s that Germany had finally arrived at its natural place as a Western European nation would have told the students a few years above me that Germany had finally defeated the evils of imperialism, the highest stage of capitalism. My nation did not make any sense to me.”Her choice of a hundred year period is very sensible as history seems to have cycles that last 70 and 100 years. This leaves us with a readable and manageable 230 pages to read in contrast to Christopher Clark’s nearly 700 pages of narrative on the Rise and Downfall of Prussia from 1600 to 1947. Conveniently she parallels Sir Richard Evans masterly “The Pursuit of Power: Europe, 1815-1914” in her timescale and overlaps the perceptive and didactic Eric Hobsbawm’s “Age of” series, Revolution, Capital and Empire.Starting with the resistance to the Emperor at the Battle of the Nations in Leipzig in 1813, where the Confederation of the Rhine changed sides, abandoning the Emperor. The Congress of Vienna led to division of Germany into 39 states but also gave rise to the idea of a United Germany, either GrossDeutschland or KleinDeutschland.The decline of agriculture and the rise of mechanisation which brought people to the cities led to the 1848 uprisings and the counter-revolution and oppression by the existing powers.Bismarck saw the opportunity to unify the German states and take advantage of technological progress. The maps in the book illustrate the difficulty of combing the Kingdoms, Grand Duchies, Duchies, Principalities, Hansa Cities, and Imperial Territories, and justify Bismarck’s cunning and ruthlessness in overcoming the legacy of the Peace of Westphalia and the congress of Vienna. His use of the war against the French to unify Germany is masterful, based as it is on industrial and railway superiority to deliver a rapid victorious outcome.Ms Hoyer’s book provides an introduction to the complexity of unification ranging from getting the buy in of smaller European states to further EU unification to the process of Zollverein within the pan African Free Trade Area.The Chancellor was hampered in his ambitions by the Prussian Royal Family’s lukewarm support for a German Reich, and by the nature of the successor, Wilhelm II who lacked character, judgement and education and was surrounded by sycophants. Ms Hoyer’s pen picture of Wilhelm has enjoyable parallels to characters in the 21st century.Wilhelm’s admiration of England, his Imperial Ambitions, and Naval fantasies after reading Mahan allowed him to fall into many traps and errors. Ms Hoyer’s description of Wilhelm’s Diplomatic Errors and of Statecraft, and Military Strategy clarifies much of how Wilhelm laid the seeds of Germany’s defeat in WWI. She absolves all however from the need to understand the logistic problems that contributed to civilian starvation and eventual revolution.The book has a number of omissions, the most striking of which is the dispatch of VI Lenin in a sealed train to St Petersburg and in so doing sowing the seeds of defeat in the second round of European warfare in the 1940s.The drowning of King Ludwig of Bavaria is omitted too.The mention of the decline of German agriculture adds to the enjoyment of Thomas Mann’s "Buddenbrooks", and the whole story of the post Bismarck period to the stark impact of the "Magic Mountain".Another aspect that is overlooked is of the generation of the great German marches “Preußens Gloria Marsch” which is now globally adopted and the “Der Königgrätzer Marsch” along with the great “Alte Kameraden”No insight is given to the production of newspapers and censorship, and formation of popular opinion.The saddest omission is a Glossary. It is frustrating to have to go and search online for the meaning of OHL to discover it is Oberste HeeresleitungOverall this is a most enjoyable book, even down to the origin of “Kafee und Kuchen”. It deserves to be one of at least three volumes, giving us an insight into how Germany recovered and was unified in the 20th century at the end of the Russian and American occupations in the wake of the widely documented Weimar and Nazizeit. Wolfgang Ischinger has given his views on how Europe is in danger so a third volume might speculate on the different paths that might be followed by today's Germany at the end of the Merkelzeit.

I would highly recommend this.As someone who studied history in college, I have read my fair share of tedious, stuffy academic books. This, however, is written in a clear and concise manner which makes it a pleasure to breeze through. It’s a must read for anyone with a passing interest in late 19th/early 20th-century European history.

I have read many books on the period just prior to the First World with all the different views of what happened and those involved if the decision making. This book written from the German perspective fills in many of the "cracks" and gives a broader view of the German / Prussian view of the subject.

A really intelligent and fresh take on Germany 1871-1918; balanced on Bismarck, sensible on the scale of the challenges facing Germany, and clear in describing the fissure between German military authoritarianism and emergent democracy that constrained intelligent decision making in the later years of the 2nd Reich. Balanced and fair on Wilhelm II. Her prose is superb, with the odd Germanism to tease the reader. The only weakness is a scamper through Wilhelm's position on the outbreak of the First World War; not wrong but too superficial. And on the war itself she is again broadly sensible while placing far too much weight on the "Schlieffen Plan": even were Zuber (2008) to have overstated his case, any idea of a single monolithic Schlieffen Plan is surely gone - and so Moltke and the Kaiser were making choices, and assumptions, that were high risk. Schlieffen had in effect told them the war was unwinnable: so what had they really planned?

Yes, this book is short, but I think it serves as an excellent introduction to the Kaiser Reich.Hoyer manages to show the many contradictions within the Empire; systemic, cultural and people that required an almost impossible balancing act, that few if any could manage. This is shown in the difficult balancing acts managed by Bismarck but not Wilhelm II. What the former set his sights on, he usually managed it. When the latter tried it, even if he succeeded, the trouble it caused was impressive. That said, Wilhelm was not the bloodthirsty warlord often depicted and not desiring a world war (even if some of his officials were willing to risk it).From a slightly negative aspect (and this is where it would lose half a star), the lack of clear footnotes at times was frustrating, as otherwise seems as though the author was just making sweeping statements. That said, this is excellently written, cogently argued and a real pleasure to read. Whilst not suggesting the German Empire was a utopia (indeed with the many contradictions, it could be far from it), Hoyer, with an incredibly balanced approach, does successfully free it from being the linear antecedent of the undoubtedly evil empire that came after it and so deserves this place in the sun.