cooperation with Ferdinand Lassalle, who played a key role in the emergence of the German union movement and of socialism as a political force. The weakness of German middle class liberalism was a major factor contributing to the rise of Marxist Social Democracy as the main opponent of traditional German autocracy and hierarchical order.

Marginalized by the success of Bismarck’s unification policy, German liberals could not play the role of effective mediators between left-wing socialists and right-wing conservatives. This failure of liberal mediation in Germany contrasts with the prominent role of late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century French and British liberals and democrats in the political life of their respective countries. While in England and France liberals were responsible for the important advances of the social welfare state, in Germany Bismarck’s own initiative brought about similar policies, which accordingly contributed to the social importance and prestige of the political autocracy and militarism through which he launched them.

These circumstances influenced the disastrous course of German politics during the Weimar era, when Prussian militarism increasingly allied itself with the nationalist extremism of the Nazi movement and paved the way for a Nazi takeover in 1933 and for Hitler’s aggressive policy of European expansion and, ultimately, for World War II, which began in 1939.

Prior to 1871, when Otto von Bismarck unified the disparate German states under Prussian leadership, there was no single nation state of Germany. Instead, there existed dozens of principalities of various political and religious persuasions, under a loose and unwieldy federation. Unlike England, France and Russia, which had each been unified under a central government for hundreds of years, the German states had operated under an uneasy alliance that had existed since the Reformation. Yet Prussia had long been the strongest, richest and most militarily capable state of the German Federation, so talk of a unification under Prussian military leadership had been discussed for some time.

In 1862, King Wihelm I appointed Bismarck as Minister President of Prussia, and Bismarck quickly orchestrated a series of short, decisive wars against Denmark, Austria and France, taking from each German-speaking territories (with brute force and cunning diplomacy). Then he proceeded to set up a unified German superstate as a counterweight to France. With his unparalleled skill as a negotiator, Bismarck used a carrot and stick approach to getting friends and foes to bend to his iron will, so that by the time he stepped down in 1890, Germany had become an economic and military powerhouse that would soon rival France and seek to unseat Britain as the top power on the continent. Just as importantly, Germany began to build an empire outside of Europe, making inroads in West and East Africa, as well as Islands in the Pacific.