The Rest Is History - 31. The Second Reich

Episode Date: March 11, 2021

It emerged from the Prussian victory over France in 1870 and was destroyed by the First World War less than fifty years later. German historian Katja Hoyer joins Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook to discuss the short but explosive life of the German Second Reich. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. hello and welcome to our podcast the rest is Geschichte well that burst of fluent German may well be leading you to worry that you've downloaded the wrong podcast hello and welcome to beginners German is our new. When Sacha Baron Cohen played a character called Bruno, a kind of Austrian. Yes, of course. Yes.

Yes. Fashion designer, wasn't he? Yes, he was. Yeah, well, thanks, Dominic. Of course, with me is, I'm Tom Holland, with me is Dominic Sandbrook. And why the birth of Deutsche? We may be wondering.

Well, because today our subject is Prussia, Germany, why the birth of the Deutsche? We may be wondering. Well, because today our subject is Prussia, Germany and the birth of the nation, which would become the most powerful European state of the 20th century. And Dominic, before we get into this, I think we should try and establish the parameters because obviously the beginnings of Prussia, you know, we've got to go back to Teutonic Knights. We've got, you know, the pagan Prussians on the shores of the Baltic. So that's where I think we should begin. Well, Tom, my policy is we should, of course, you should, of course, talk about those things. But I think you should talk about them probably on your own after the podcast is finished.

And in order to bolster my case that basically we should talk about what I think is the most interesting period in German history, which is when Germany's just created. So between, let's say, 1870 and the Second World War, we have got an excellent guest who has written a book on just this period called Blood and Iron, Katja Heuer. We have Katja Heuer. How exciting that is. So Katja was born in Germany. She studied at the Friedrich Schiller University. And her book, Blood and Iron, is basically all about, I guess, the Kaiser's Germany. So welcome, Katja. You're now based in Britain. Is that right? I am. Yes. So I'm in Sussex. I've lived here for about 10 years now and I've got dual citizenship as well. So I feel very much part of both countries really now and feel very much at home here too. Well, Katja, Dominic is going to love you because we actually did a we did a podcast earlier on the the causes of the first

world war and dominic was rooting massively um for an anglo-german alliance against the french i'm currently reaching for that so i'm sure that's something we'll come on to and catch it are you do you agree with dominic that um we shouldn't be looking at the the pagan prussians or even frederick the great or napoleon we should be going straight into i guess really the franco-prussian war is where we begin is it um always lead back to the 19th century as far as i'm concerned okay okay okay well could i could i begin just by we've got a question here from ben um de salt de salt um who asked what the hell is Prussia so I think that's

as good a place to start as any I've never been able to find a concise easy to understand explanation that my America-centric mind can comprehend so I guess Ben is Ben is American but we in England as well are often very ignorant about um Prussian history so um can you just what the hell is Prussia? You started for 10. I think in many ways, even though, you know, that isn't clear because of its geography, really. When you look at how distributed the territory was

throughout its history, that's part of its problem. What the hell is Prussia was probably asked by, you know, people that were trying to reign over it themselves. When you look at either this dualism between Brandenburg and Prussia, which then kind of merged via various alliances and marriages and dynasticism and other issues, even those two territories, the fact that they are miles apart from each other with huge gaps in the middle and later only merge into kind of one big block there

in the north of Germany is in itself a problem. And then, of course, you've got so many different ethnicities there in the Baltic region, you know, trying to later on live all under one political entity, really. I think that in itself explains why there's such problems in understanding, I think, Prussia. And then, of course, the fact that it vanished in the 20th century and is now an entity that doesn't exist anymore makes it more difficult as well so in a nutshell it's an area in the Baltic region in what is now the north of Poland where it sort of originated and the area in Brandenburg that it merged with is in what is now northern Germany so geographically that's where we're sort of located.

The name comes from the sort of original Prussian people that... Let's hear about that. You want to go there? Or the sort of Pulsin people as they're called in German

who were then sort of in quite a horrific and bloody conquest, conquered by the Teutonic Knights as they came back from Crusade, and the Polish king asked them for help to deal with these people in his northern realm that he was

struggling with, and that's where the name stuck, although of course the Germanic people that then settled there weren't the same as the original Prussians, if you will, but their geographical name stuck. Yeah, and then via various different, as I was saying earlier, marriage alliances, inheritances,

conquests and so on, that territory slowly merged closer and closer together there in the north. And the first sort of Prussian well, I suppose once it becomes a kingdom in 1701 you can really see it sort of all merge together. But even then you could argue, you know, if Frederick the Great was still concerned have a kind of densely populated german populated um area there to reign over so that

question is very justified in many ways because it isn't one homogenous nice block where people speak the same language look and talk the same are the same but it's quite a messy um block of different kind of entities before it all gets merged together. And Katya, that raises a slightly different question. I mean, obviously, if we were doing this podcast in 1850, our listeners would have known, kind of had a sense of what Prussia was and Prussian history and all the rest of it. But obviously, Prussia then was subsumed within what was the key actor in creating something called Germany, which we are now very familiar with. One of the things that your book, so your book starts with basically the creation of Germany in 1870, 71. And one of the questions that kind of nags at me, and is there kind of underlying your whole book is it to the

extent to which Germany was basically an artificial creation. So that there was, you know, there was an England, there was clearly a France, but how much do you think Germany was real? And how much was it imagined and invented by Bismarck and the first Kaiser? Well, I think the question is sort of split into fragments. If you ask a liberal or democratic-minded person in the 19th century whether Germany is real, them, it was. I would say certainly since the liberation wars against Napoleon, you know, this idea that the German lands were kind of one entity, and then you've got it contrasted against, say, the French

people or the English people. That idea was there, certainly amongst the sort of liberal elements in the German speaking lands. And there's always this phrase, you know, as far as the German tongue is heard, you know, there should be a Germany. So there was a sense, I think, via linguistic similarities that people felt, you know, they were the same people and ought to be in the same state. And then contrasted to that, you've got all of the people who have an interest in keeping, you know, the separate German states.

So people like Bismarck himself, actually, who were very much kind of minded that they were Prussians, Bavarians, Rhinelanders, Hamburgers, whatever. You always laugh at the hamburger thing, but never mind. So there's all of these different people who had a vested interest in keeping their own political power and their kingdoms and their duchies intact. And certainly didn't didn't feel a sense of kind of German-ness, as it were. So throughout the 19th century, I would say it becomes more real as there are more conflicts of the German speaking lands where they're kind of in one pot against somebody else. And I think that's what defines, in the end, Germany is that it contrasts itself against other peoples because

catchy presumably the reason why um there isn't a kind of a sense of a german state in the way that you have england or france is because all these various german states principalities bishop whatever for centuries and centuries are part of the Holy Roman Empire. And that then gets abolished by Napoleon. And even though Napoleon is defeated, it doesn't get reanimated. And so is there a sense between the ending of the Holy Roman Empire and the emergence of what becomes the German Empire, that in a sense, people are looking around for a way to kind of re-establish a sense of unity? Or are most of the states happy now to kind of re-establish a sense of unity or are most of the states happy to now to kind of basically be independent i think it's a slightly because the the german

empire that emerges of the second reich if you will and it's called the second reich because it's trying to create some sort of um i suppose a sense of continuity between the holy roman empire and that but it's much more unified in you know that it actually becomes a nation state um with the centralized government so when you look at the holy roman emperor and the way that he had to like almost haggle every time he wants to go to war you know will people actually join him will they actually be with him because there wasn't a sense that people say in prussia were necessarily directly um in the same like you know construct or unit as people say Bavaria were, and their interests quite often diverge completely.

Whilst I think from 1871 there is more of a sense of they are now in one state and need to pull together, and I think that's of course, as I was trying to say in my book as well, that's of course perpetuated with this kind of constant conflict that people are trying to create almost artificially to try and keep the Germans together. But I don't think the Holy Roman Empire had that to the same extent. I think that was more of a loose kind of conglomerate whilst 1871 actually creates a nation sense in the actual sense of the word.

In your book, though, that moment is – so you basically describe how the Second Reich is created through war, don't you? You have three wars. They fight the Danes, the Austrians, who are German-speaking, but are basically shut out of the new German creation, and then the French. And you sort of, I mean, the title Blood and Iron is from Bismarck, but it's obviously, you know, imbued with this sort of sense that it's all a very militaristic project

and the army is crucial and a sense of fighting other people and all the rest of it. Do you think that makes – I don't know how – I don't think you do kind of sign up to the Sonderweg idea, which is that basically Germany had this weird special path that explains what happened to it in the 20th century. But do you think Germany's beginnings were more bloody, more militaristic, and that the

essence of the nation was you know to do with fighting in a way that it wasn't of other european nations i certainly don't subscribe to the whole sondervik theory in the sense that you know i find it slightly too deterministic for my own liking like this idea that it was failed from the start i think that's something i tried tried to sort of contrast in the book or kind of question in the book. But I do think the problem, the inherent problem in this 1871 creation is indeed that it's based at that moment, it's based on blood and iron. I think as Bismarck was saying it was, I think he was completely,

you know, he's a very observant man and I think realised that that was the problem with it. And he himself actually, even still as late as 1868, he still said he doesn't think the creation of a German state is possible within this century. He was still saying three years before he did it, you know, it's going to take another three decades to do it. And that tells you everything you need to know. I think in that moment, it's a forced way of doing it because you wouldn't have been able to get, say, the southern states in particular, Bavaria and Baden on board because they were politically there and say we didn't want to be Prussian either. But I think, you know, in this kind of northern bloc, I think it was easier to achieve for cultural reasons than, say,

getting the very liberal people in Baden on side or the very arch Catholic people in Bavaria. So it took conquest at that point, I think. Katja, just to turn that on its head. Could you not also argue that in a way, Germany kind of wills itself into being, not because it's a land of soldiers, but because it's a land of philosophers and the kind of the dream of nationalism, the kind of the idealism that you'd associate with Kant, you know, probably after Frederick the Great, the most famous Prussian before Bismarck, and the Brothers Grimm, the idea that, you know, the kind of identity that

is deep in the forest and the soil and everything. I mean, that's also a very important part of how Germany kind of imagines itself into being, isn't it? Or have I got that wrong? No, I completely agree. I think that that's exactly that dualism, you know, that I was trying to describe earlier between the sort of liberal elements and the elites. I think it's exactly the same if you contrast the soldiers and the philosophers with each other. So there are, of course, people like Hegel,

Arndt, Kant, as you mentioned, kind of where there's a long German tradition, really, of thinking in a particular way or political thought and philosophical thought in that sense. And people like Hegel, for instance, were actively pushing to have germany unified as well and were part of the um unifying forces but i think without then the middle class is joining in without because they wanted unification for economic reasons really um and were then buying into all of those philosophical

ideas um you know alongside their economic interests, really, you get a kind of growing sense of something needs to happen, something needs to, or somebody needs to basically join Germany. But I think the fact that it happened, or the reason why it happened then when it happened in 1871 was down to Blood and Iron and Bismarck and the conquest. I think eventually it would have happened in any case and probably in a different way.

But as Bismarck says, probably 30, 40 years on rather than at that particular point in time. A regular listener to this podcast will not be surprised. Tom asks about philosophers. I want to ask a question about, I don't know, plumbers. So at what point do... You asked about soldiers, Dominic. I did, I did. Soldiers first, plumbers second. That's the way my mind works. So at what point does the sort of common man and woman, at what point do they start thinking of themselves as Germans? And the one reason I ask is because I've recently been reading a lot of stuff about the First World War. And it's really striking there how, you know, when there's sort of Christmas truces or whatever, and people are fraternizing with the British, people from Baden or something will say, oh, we're really nice and we're just like you, but the Prussians are complete monsters.

And it's clear there are big divisions, and they think of themselves sometimes state first, country, maybe not country second, but their state identity is really important to them. At what point did those things cross over? So at what point did Germans think of themselves as Germans first and Württembergers or Bavarians or Prussians second, if at all? Yeah, I would say it started once again with the Napoleonic Wars. So when you look at, you know, when Frederick Wilhelm III comes out and actually calls first on all Prussians and then on all Germans to join him, and this actually works. And then you've got really kind of unifying moments,

like, you know, what is now called the Battle of the Nations, like the Battle of Leipzig, where there's a sense that this is like a national effort almost, even though, of course, the Austrians and other sort of nations, if you will, joined in with that as well. But there is a sense that if Germans fight together, they can do this. They can even drive somebody, you know, like the mighty Napoleon out.

So in a way, the paradox is that Napoleon, in a sense, is the godfather of a united Germany. Absolutely. And that is one of the great, you know, sort of really momentary tricks played by history. Yeah, indeed. Well well it started already when you think that you know there were over 400 little states in the holy roman empire and napoleon unified them into the 39 states that were then still left after the congress of vienna in 1815 so in many ways he is he is a great lever of unification if you will um and the other thing is because that this was largely a or kind of certainly to large elements, a volunteer force. So you got the famous Lützer volunteers who then gave Germany the colours, the black, red and gold colours on their uniforms, that kind of stuff.

So the fact that this is like the people fighting, you know, rather than the state telling them they have to, they volunteer. There's lots of, even at that point, women, children, civilians that join in by, you know, huge volunteer campaigns and donating metal and all that kind of stuff. So I think Germans began to feel at the beginning of the 19th century that, you know, if they rally together, if they pull together against somebody distinctly foreign by their language, by their culture and so on, that there is a sense of unity and you see that again in the 1840 french scare when when the french king louis philippe thought you know he's gonna say he was gonna sort his own internal problems out by doing a bit of saber rattling and he was you know disputing various territories along the river rhine and so on and all of a sudden you get demonstrations all over germany and that answers perhaps your question uh dominic, about ordinary people, that this wasn't instigated by the state. There's ordinary people in 1840 going out in Baden, in Bayern, in, you know, everywhere, basically all over Germany, going out on the street saying, this is our River Rhine. And,

you know, this kind of myth of the watch on the Rhine and all that, you know, is beginning to emerge then as a kind of German concept. There are now Bavarians somehow worried about what's going on, you know, at the River Rhine, which gives you some sort of idea that they feel a sense of connection to the people that live there, even though they're not traditionally speaking, historically speaking in the same territory. So I think it's those moments of conflict again, you know, going back to the same idea that brings ordinary people out um and kind of gets them on on side with the middle classes and the and the liberals and those

kind of social classes that have from an intellectual point argued for can i ask a question sorry tom i know i'm jumping in again uh can i ask a question though about a bit of germany or a bit of german-speaking europe that doesn't fit in um which is austria so obviously they fight against the austrians in order to set up Germany. But Austria has this weird place because, I mean, if you'll forgive me for saying, the single best known German of all time was Austrian. And the single greatest, you know,

the man who talked more loudly anyway and more stridently about German unity and German-ness was an Austrian. And that's always kind of puzzled me that sort of hitler must have had an accent and he must have seemed to some germans surely like an outsider didn't or not i mean where does what do how does austria fit into the kind of german imagination well just briefly on the hitler thing um again it seems all discussion leads all discussions lead back to him

um but he was acutely aware of that and actually trained himself to have a kind of quite over the top bavarian accent so that that kind of really harsh accent that you hear in you know those speeches and things that that you see um you know mostly now on on tv and documentaries and stuff that's a bavarian accent and he's deliberately gone out of his way to try and acquire that, you know, and make sure that he sounds German, German rather than Austrian German. So that's one thing maybe on that one. He was quite, you know, himself quite consciously aware of that fact.

And then Austria is a weird one because they've always got, you know, with the Austro-Hungarian Empire, they've always got one foot in the East in that sense. that sense and if you know from a german unification point of view um and with this whole like you know as far as the german tongue is heard you could have maybe had the german-speaking part of austria eventually joined that in the way that hitler did as well with with the angeles but the fact that they would have never given up the other side, you know, the sort of Eastern European side with a multitude of different peoples and languages and cultures in that, I think would have made this kind of intellectual German-ness thing that underpinned German unification to some extent, I think difficult to, you know, to sell. And certainly

in terms of real political terms, I think it would have been difficult unless you create a mahoos of German empire in the centre of Europe, which, again, you know, would have encompassed a lot of millions of non-German, ethnically and linguistically non-German people. So I think that's part of what made it so difficult. And then, of course, the dualism between Austria and Prussia wouldn't have been solved within a German unit. Well, so much still to talk about. I think we should take a break here. But when we come back, we've got lots of questions and lots more Prussian history to explore. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment.

It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip and on our q a we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works we have just launched our members club if you want ad-free listening bonus episodes and early access to live tickets head to the rest of the entertainment.com that's the rest is history we're talking prussia emergence of germany uh all such things like that um catch up we would we were talking about austria and um germany i could i just ask you a question about prussia as a state that is kind of more recent than many of the uh you know the cities that line the rhine that often go back to the kind of more recent than many of the, you know, the cities that line the Rhine,

often go back to the kind of Roman times. And those cities must have a sense of their antiquity, perhaps of their cultural superiority, and a sense of Prussia as a kind of parvenu. Is that an issue for Germans in the 19th century, the sense that, do they feel perhaps rather as the French and the British do, that the Prussians are kind of upstarts? I think so, to some extent. I mean, Bismarck himself uses this metaphor. I think I talk about that in the book as well, if I haven't cut it out. No, and compares it to the old Austrian ship that's much kind of slower, grander, bigger, but also about to sink. And so in many ways, there's this idea that Prussia is a trim, modern, industrialized

entity, whilst the other powers are old and crumbling. And I think they deliberately make use of that kind of lack of ancient history in that sense, because it fits in, doesn't it, with industrialisation, with the military and with all of those things. And I'm right. I mean, basically, Britain is the first industrial nation. But over the 19th century, the British seem to spend all their time worrying that actually, Germany is massively overtaking them, presumably because Germany is. Germany is by far the most industrially sophisticated country in Europe. It's the speed of the catch up as well that worries everyone. So when you look at just how quickly they overtake Britain in things like steel production,

obviously, which Britain hasn't naturally got all that much of, all of these kind of in coal and things like that. So all of the elements really that you need for, you know, industry and for military as well, or for the economy and so on. It's that that worries people. So by 1914, pretty much, you know, you've got the second largest Navy, for instance, in the world out of nothing within just a few decades. So people were looking at that, wondering, you know,

give it another 10, 20 years and see where that's going. So yes, I think that's very much a concern. It's basically, it goes back once again to the Napoleonic Wars when the Rhineland was given to Prussia in 1815. And I don't know why, but nobody seems to have thought much of it. The Austrians certainly completely underestimated that. They thought, oh, good, we got rid of that problem of having to look after the pesky Belgians, which, you know, had been annoying the Habsburg for ages.

And they always needed to send troops up there to keep them at bay. And they were kind of thinking, oh, let Prussia do that. That's fine. And give them the Rhineland. And all of a sudden, you know, they get all the coal, iron ore and everything else and end up being an industrial superpower. We have a question on that very theme from Nicholas Walton, who asked, was Prussia's influence over Western Germany and the subsequent 20th century misadventures all britain's fault

for its post-napoleonic settlement dominic shaking his head at that yeah that's always britain's fault isn't it yeah i'd agree with that so it most definitely is and i mean britain was i mean you know you got to put that into context of napoleon just having you know literally gone over the entire continent and conquered it in no time and there was certainly a sense that the balance of power in europe needed to be restored and then you look at austria and austria hasn't actually changed you know like basically people sat there wondering well you couldn't keep napoleon at bay in the state that you were in then what's changed now you know what's going to happen if the french do it again and so there was a sense that prussia had now emerged as a valid trustworthy reliable

ally on the continent bear in mind that they fought on the same side as well you know there was no reason whatsoever to suspect the prussians of the later catastrophes that would eventually ensue, you know, like literally a century later. So to sit there and go, oh, this is all Britain's fault seems a bit odd. So the idea that there was another strong stabilising force on the continent to counterbalance French power was appealing to all sides, really, in Europe. There are lots of questions about this and about Prussia. And basically, hanging over a lot of these questions is World War I. So for example, somebody called Pharaoh Man says, Prussian militarism is a well-worn cliche. So obviously, it was a huge British newspaper cliche in the 1910s. As a society, he says, was Prussia really

that militaristic? And was it militaristic in ways that were completely different from other countries? And just to sort of follow up on his question, I think France proportionately had more men under arms in 1914 than Germany did. You know, France was a more obviously militaristic country, I would argue, than Germany was, even though we don't really remember it that way. But anyway, Katya, you'll have your own answer. I think you may disagree with me, actually. You think it was very militaristic, don't really remember it that way but anyway katya you'll have your own answer i think you may disagree with me actually you think it was very militaristic don't you fairly i think the problem is that it's uh culturally a slightly different thing and again that stems from those landwehr and volunteer units in the and the napoleonic wars so the moment you have a significant proportion

of your country you know as a like effectively like a militia force, it seeps into society in a much more deep-seated way, I think. And that, I think, is part of Prussia's problem, is that where it's located in the centre of Europe and where it's completely vulnerable throughout its history to the surrounding powers, there has always been a huge sense of the people need to defend this or else you know they had the experience of things like um the well obviously the you know the the napoleonic wars but also before that um you get the 30 years war for example completely ravaging the country and so i think the sense of people need to be soldiers is much much more deep-seated psychologically i think in prussia than it is in other countries necessarily.

Where in France, of course, you've got a longstanding and fine military tradition, but it's not necessarily part of society in the same way, I think, that it is in Prussia. Having said that, Prussia is also, on the other hand, an extremely liberal and tolerant state, and that's often forgotten. And this is something I wanted to raise, you know, with the book as well is that you get religious tolerance to a degree that you hardly see anywhere else in Europe, you know, with the,

obviously starting with the, or you could argue basically is constantly in that state because it has got Protestant and Catholic elements within its realm and needs to deal with that. So, you know, you get Frederick the Great, obviously, even his father as well. There's huge religious tolerance there that leads to a flourishing of culture. You get this whole, you know, refugee movement from France with French Protestants, with the Huguenots fleeing and, you know, masses of them coming to Britain. And again, largely intellectuals and tradespeople and people like that bringing their own culture with them.

So I think the fact that Prussia is also a very cultural, very intellectual, very philosophical state is often overlooked, but I don't think that necessarily takes away from the role that the military plays. The Prussian king or all of the Prussian kings really themselves in the 19th century are hugely concerned about that about this um element of like landfail units and and um militia element basically within their armed forces at each point it makes up something between 10 and 20 percent i think of the prussian forces are always volunteer forces and they're mega liberal mega conscious of their germanness and they're loyal to what they see as the fatherland, i.e. some construct of Germany and not Prussia. And that's kind of something

that they worry about. Brismac actually says that blood and iron speech in the context of military reforms that the Prussian king is trying to push through parliament where he wants to eradicate those volunteer units and completely restructure the Prussian military into a kind of professional force that is largely consistent

of just professional soldiers rather than volunteers because he's so concerned about their mindset and their loyalties that he doesn't see them as a professional armed force basically, but as something that might potentially be a problem if you get another 1848-type revolution. So I think it's a bit of both and and it seems a contrast but or a kind of conflict between the two but it's not necessarily one okay well kind of on that theme we've got a question from robert gowers who asks how much merit is there to the

idea held by conrad at an hour that germany could only become a truly democratic country if its prussian influences or prussianism were removed. And just to kind of slightly put a spin on that question, it's almost impossible, isn't it, to look at the history of 19th century Germany and Prussia specifically without an awareness of what happens with Nazi Germany. And do you think without that catastrophe, our sense of Prussia would be different? That we would kind of emphasise perhaps a bit more the way that, you know, the incredible liberal strains within it, its incredible intellectual and cultural achievements, rather than the image of, you know, spiked helmets and

goose stepping and so on, which is what certainly in this country, and you must be more than very aware of this, is what tends to get emphasised. Yeah, indeed. I think we're partially falling into the trap of listening to Nazi propaganda with that as well, I think. I mean, the way that Hitler directly tried to put himself,

just with the very word, the Third Reich, going there and sort of saying, oh, this is now the successor state to the Second Reich, which in turn is the successor state to the first. And quite famously, you know, he had that portrait of Frederick the Great down in the bunker with him in the last days in Berlin in 1945 and all of that. So I think to some extent it's the Nazis' own propaganda that sought to draw a line there, basically a straight line from Prussia to the Nazis. You have the Day of Potsdam of course, which Hitler again uses as a means of drawing continuity between Prussia and

his term. So what is that? I don't know about that. So the Day of Potsdam was Hitler's way of getting Hindenburg's approval for his reign in public um and so they basically meet up um in public and hindenburg's shaking hitler's hands um and you have this this kind of prussian insignia everywhere so rather than having the nazi flags kind of you know plastered all over the place they're using a lot of sort of iron crosses and and sort of prussian insignia really to try and draw a similarity there. And this is somewhat ironic given that Franz von Papen had actually abolished,

practically abolished Prussia in the so-called Prussian coup in 1932, where he literally integrated it using Article 48, literally integrated it into the German kind of federal system in a way that practically abolished it. So in many ways, people always talk about the abolishment of Prussia in 1947. In many ways, it got abolished in 1932. And yet Hitler is keen to, he doesn't restore that. So Hitler sticks with the centralized state, you know, and doesn't allow Prussia any power back itself. But nonetheless, likes the idea of, you know, there was always militarism there. So we are a militaristic society. So let's stick with that. And I think that's stuck because of Hitler's brilliant propaganda in the sense of it, you know, its effect on people.

I think that's echoed through the ages and we still have that now, I think. But the military opposition to Hitler, I mean, that was kind of prussian as well wasn't it yeah i think both both the loyalty and the um you know this kind of misplaced misplaced sense of loyalty that prussian officers officers felt due to their you know sense of obedience and duty and all of that basically to them their kind of ethos as a military is they're like the watchdog basically of the state they don't get involved in politics they do what they're what they're told and they do it well. And that's, I think, partially, you know, responsible for the devastation caused in the Second World War.

And then on the flip side, you've also got, of course, huge Prussian opposition as per July plot in 1944. So in many ways, you can see both elements there. I think a Prussian conscience and the Prussian sense of duty and obedience, both leading to, you know, what we see in the Second World War. I want to just follow up Katya on Tom's question. I agree, by the way, that with what Tom said, I mean, it's impossible really to talk about German history without the, even if you try to banish it, you know, that the specter of Nazism is kind of hanging over you to some extent as a historian. But also, I think, the First World War too, because, you know, the sort of the discussion about Germany being flawed from the outset and Germany being militaristic, I mean, that didn't

begin in the Second World War. That was all there in British propaganda, particularly in the middle of the First World War, that the Germans were uniquely, you know, rapacious or greedy and sort of enslaved by their generals and all this sort of stuff. And hanging over a lot of the questions from the listeners is basically Prussian and German responsibility for World War I. Now, we had a podcast that generated tons of discussion about the causes of World War I. And I'm wondering, in your book, you seem to go along with the idea that ultimately you think it's Germany's fault or that Germany bears a huge share of the responsibility for the war, that it is the blank check, the Kaiser's ambitions, all this sort of stuff.

Do you want to say a bit more about that? Do you think it was Germany's fault, the First World War? Well, I was trying to see it from a German perspective, and I think I wouldn't go as far as to say it is Germany's fault in the sense that they were deliberately causing a world war. But I do think they were taking the view that conflict was helpful for the internal divisions that were still there so bismarck had tried his best obviously for better or worse with his various different policies to unite germans but it was blatantly obvious by the time that willem came into power that socially culturally religiously germans were still hugely divided and that realm was constantly at risk of breaking

apart and i think when in when it became more obvious that that conflict in some shape or form could be lived again you know bearing in mind that there hadn't been a war since the franco-prussian war and and that was by that time what four decades more than four decades away they needed something um otherwise that that realm was breaking apart there was this you know famous period that's often called, well, you can see it as stagnation really if you want to, but it was certainly almost a crisis from about 1912 to 1914. Whilst it didn't seem that way,

there were no great uprisings or anything like that, but there was complete standstill in the Reichstag. The trade unions were swelling in ranks. There was some sort of sense that a crisis internally was about to erupt. And I think Wilhelm and the militaries accepted that they needed something to deal with that, and the war seemed a good idea in that sense. So bearing in mind as well that the First World War is on a scale

that people just hadn't anticipated, they literally just thought they were going to have another, I think, sort of 1870 or maybe a bit bigger in the Balkans and that would be the end of that. Willem in particular was so deluded about the fact that Britain wouldn't get involved, surely not his family and all the rest of it, that I think, you know, if you want to put the blame on them for that, yes,

but I don't think they were willingly walking into a world war with the possible exception actually of Moltke maybe, because he had this thing about being Moltke the Younger and needing to step into the footsteps of his famous uncle, Moltke the Elder, who'd kind of made his name in the Franco-Prussian War. So I think with him, there's a bit more ambition there. And do you think we're too hard generally on the Kaiser, on Wilhelm II? Do you think we, you know, he's basically a slightly pitiful comic figure,

isn't he? Rather than this sort of all-conquering, spiked helmet kind of... I'd go with that, yeah. I mean, that's not to absolve him from his responsibility and from what he effectively did. I mean, the buck stops with him ultimately.

He's not only the head of state, but also the commander-in-chief of the armed forces. So he could have put his foot down, I suppose. But then when you look at just intellectually, I think he neither had the capability nor the patience to actually sit there and work it all out. So I think in many ways, I wouldn't say he was played by the militaries,

but he was certainly not, I think, capable of seeing the bigger picture of this and just allowed himself to be, I don't know, kind of intrigued, I guess, by the prospect of war and by being able to try all of his new shiny toys that he'd been developing in the last 10, 20 years. I think that's a huge aspect, his childlike fascination for all things technological and military and things.

Not only military, but he loved his technology as well. And to sit there with all of those new, know dreadnought class ships and whatever and he sits there and and wonders you know what will they actually do what will it be like and you know that i wouldn't underestimate as a psychological factor that he just wanted to see it live and in an action and and he wore the wrong yachting shoes to cows, didn't he? Which I'm sure had a devastating psychological effect. This is something deeply rooted in your own subconscious, clearly. This is the second time in these podcasts that you've mentioned the issue of yachting shoes. I'll tell you what it is.

I had a friend who's at school, whose father was a captain to ship in the Falklands. And one of the perks is that you could get a yacht and sail around the Isle of Wight and it was one of the worst four days of my life and I remember we pulled into the harbour at cows and I looked at people kind of walking up and down the uh the quay and I've never felt as jealous of anyone and I've always felt some fellow feeling with the Kaiser who turned up and had a miserable time at Cows. But enough of me and the Kaiser. One person who I think we perhaps haven't talked about enough is Bismarck. And I wonder how influential is Bismarck on this?

We have a question from Pat Cooper who says, if Bismarck had come 30 years earlier, would we have been talking about a global Prussian German empire rather than a British empire? I mean, I guess that's kind of bundling into the idea of German ambitions overseas that perhaps we could also look at. But more generally, you know, is Bismarck an illustration of the great man theory? Or is he born on a kind of hegelian tide of you know the spirit of these he's merely the spokesman for the spirit of the agent it will if you were talking about hegelian tides at cows tom i'm not surprised that you didn't fit in with the yachting yes i was debagged um i think if ever there was an example that that theory, the great man theory still has any validity, I think Bismarck must surely be it.

I mean, it's hard to see how things would have panned out the same way without him. It's just a sheer audacity to do what he did, I think, when everybody else looked at it and went, no, that's not possible. You can't do it. And, you know, starting with that speech, with that blood and iron speech, when you look at Willem had struggled with... So tell us about that, for those who may not be familiar with it, among which is me.

In 18... So Bismarck was actually in France. He was the ambassador to France in 1861. And there's a reason for that, because Willem I, who would later become the German Kaiser, had only just become the king of Prussia and was a bit frightened of this kind of quite outrageous you know Prussian aristocrat who's very outspoken and very direct and didn't seem to have any respect for anyone really and so he sent him off first to St.

Petersburg and then to France as the ambassador you you know, so he'd be kind of safely tucked away. But he was good at diplomacy. So it kind of worked both ways. But he struggled with Parliament internally, with the Prussian Parliament, because he needed to reform the army, as I was saying, to get rid of those volunteer units who seemed quite dangerous. And Parliament was obviously at that point, you know, full of liberals. So they were sat there going, absolutely not, because these people are on our side and they're kind of our lever to get the king to do what we want the king to do. So that led to such desperation that Wilhelm was actually on the brink of abdicating and thought at that point, you know, I can't do this. I need to hand over to Frederick, what will later become Frederick III, much in this in his mindset married to queen victoria's oldest daughter vicky so that would have worked because parliament would

have you know got on with them and they would have kind of pulled in the same direction and it's at that point when you look at the influence that bismarck has he pulls him back from from france he comes back and just tells parliament well no we are reforming the military whether you want to or not and illegally goes ahead against the constitution goes ahead and just does it and parliament just sit there and go you can't do that it's against the law and he goes well try and stop me what are you going to do and just does it you know it is in that context that he tells them with that blood and iron speech i'm sorry but it's not your speeches not your niceties not your legalities that people will respect about prussia

it's force it's blood and. We need to have this army. And so he just does it. He actually reigns without parliamentary approval for that budget until I think it's 1874, I think, when he finally actually goes back to parliament after Germany had been created and says, oh, can you just approve my budget in hindsight, please, for all of those years that I reigned without it? And at that point, they haven't got a choice. They just go with it. And it's kind of made legal in hindsight afterwards. And so there, for instance, you know, the king is in despair. The king sits there and thinks he has to listen to parliament. And it's Bismarck that comes back

and goes, well, what are they going to do? Let's just not bother. And builds that army and fights those unification wars. and it's the same with with the Franco-Prussian war it's hard to see how anybody else would have had the audacity to provoke the French to the degree that he did so that they would actually attack knowing full well they can't win the war I mean how do you provoke a country in attacking another country when that country is perfectly aware of the fact that they have two-thirds as they phrased it of everything that that Germany had one-third sorry they had this kind of weird fact that they have two thirds, as they phrased it, of everything that Germany had. One third, sorry, they had this kind of weird idea that everything that the French have,

the Germans have two things of, be that people, money, anything. So, you know, those two things alone, I think, just show his individual actions and the consequences that they had, for better or worse, however you want to see that. But he's certainly an influential figure. And without him, I think the wars wouldn't have happened then and how they happened and germany wouldn't have been unified in 1871 with all the consequences that that had katya we're running a bit out of time i reckon um but i really wanted to ask um because it's a huge question about germany's relationship now with its past um When most ordinary Germans, I'm not talking about historians or intellectuals, but most ordinary Germans look at their own past or think about Germany, do they still do so with any sense of sort of trauma or guilt?

Or do they now regard it as other European countries regard their own past as something that is, you know, is gone, belongs to somebody else, and they don't need to sort of beat themselves up about it anymore. What specifically about Prussia or just all of it? Well, I mean, Germany's history, you know, defeated in two world wars incredibly traumatically, you know, revolution in 1919, the Weimar Republic, which we haven't really talked about at all, which is a fantastic, interesting subject, but obviously so difficult and conflicted and then of course the experience of the Third Reich I mean that's so utterly different from how Britain thinks about the

20th century I mean that's the story of uh very contrasting relationships with Europe to some extent um and I'm wondering do Germans now contemplate that story with equanimity rather than with sort of breast beating and shame and all the rest of it? Well I think I mean in a recent article I called the Second World War this like black hole in German history that sucks everything into it that came before and after and I think that's still very much the case and everything seemingly before 1933 leads up to that and everything after 1945 goes back to it and i think that's still very much the case when i was at school i had to learn about the nazis like three times so we started at

some point in year eight and then revisited it at gcc level and then again at a level and at some point you're like well i know everything about that now can we do something else please um so there there is that sense that i think that it needs to be explained needs to be explored needs to be um reminded of what people need to be reminded of it um and i think you know when you look at the fact that this year is the 150th anniversary of of 1871 of the effectively the beginning of the german state there's no i wouldn't you know i wouldn't have expected like celebrations or anything but there isn't even sort of any, you know, like you'd normally expect, say with the Russian revolution, there was loads of museums and speeches and books and publications and whatnot.

And there's very, very little in Germany. There's a little bit on the Franco-Prussian war specifically, but not on the fact that Germany was founded then, because people don't really know what to do with that legacy. The moment you commemorate it, you've got to interpret it in some way. And then what you do, as you say, always lead back to both of those wars and you end up once again discussing it in that light. And Bismarck is perhaps a good example of that. He's very, very difficult for a lot of Germans to deal with because, yes, on the one hand side, you know, you created the welfare state and you've got all of those kind of achievements.

But then people sit there and go, oh, but he only did it because of, you know, the threat of socialism and all the rest of it. So there's always, you know, even with Bismarck, there's a huge amount of ambiguity there and people don't really know what to do with him. So he's just got ignored more and more, I find, certainly in the 90s and early 2000s. It seems to be coming back a little bit now, again, the attention on Bismarck. But Wilhelm as well, you know, you've got two big Wilhelm biographers. One is Roel, who's British.

The other one is Christopher Clarke, who's Australian. Roel hates Wilhelm, doesn't he? I mean, he absolutely hates him. I find that a bit interesting with Clarke who's Australian. And Roel hates Wilhelm, doesn't he? I mean, he absolutely hates him. I find that a bit interesting with Clarke as well when both in this Prussia book and in the Wilhelm biography he starts off not wanting to like both of them, I feel. And then kind of as he did his research and as he carried on writing about them

becomes a little bit more sympathetic towards them. But I find it interesting that no German historian wants to touch Wilhelm with a barge pole. That's, you know, yes, there is a lot of Prussian history, but that always focuses on Frederick the Great and those supposedly good Prussian days and years. And then

it's again, you know, let's go back to Prussian militarism and see how it led to the First World War and then the Second World War. Well, Katja, I can't thank you enough. I mean, you said the Second World War is a kind of black hole in German history, but I think you've really done brilliantly in keeping us from falling too deeply into that black hole. It's been so interesting to try and look at Prussia kind of through the eyes of 19th century, I guess, rather than the mid-20th century.

So I can't thank you enough. I can't thank everyone. Thanks to everyone else for listening today uh at the moment we're releasing podcasts twice a week on mondays and thursdays and i hope with subjects broad enough to appeal to most tastes so auf wiedersehen thanks for listening to The Rest Is History. For bonus episodes, early access, ad-free listening, and access to our chat community,

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