William Tyler
Bismarck’s Rule

William Tyler - Bismarck’s Rule

- Welcome, welcome to our second session on Bismarck. I was thinking as I was preparing what I was going to say and I put it on my blog. And my blog read, I wrote on my blog, “Bismarck in most people’s minds "conjures up a picture of a militarist "who brought about German unification in 1871.” And that, of course, is a story that I told last week. And frankly, you would think that was enough for one lifetime. Yet that is only part of the story of this extraordinary man, Bismarck. In home affairs first in Prussia and then in Germany as a whole, he proved to be a reformer and a pioneer, and that sits oddly with his conservative aristocratic background and his military achievements in gaining unification for Germany. By the time he left office in 1890, and one can say that Germany had become a country of the first rank both in industry and infrastructure, but also significantly in social welfare and, of course, in military matters, although, as we shall see in a later talk, not in naval matters. And the centre of my talk today is about industrial and infrastructural changes in Germany and social welfare changes in Germany. And throughout the talk today, there are many connections with the Germany and the Europe of 2023. And I hope I will draw some of those out for you, but just be aware that there are some rather good connections in sense of understanding the present. But I’m going to begin the story in London in 1833. Well, he was only, what, 18 years of age, then? That’s nothing to do with Bismarck. It is about Germany. There was a report made in London to the Committee of the Privy Council for Trade. And the report said, amongst other things, this.

And it’s very interesting what it said. And it goes like this. The Zollverein, you remember the customs unions that Prussia first set up, and then Germany set up as a whole? The Zollverein said this report to the Privy Council. Quote, “As an alliance conceived in a spirit of hostility "to British industry and British commerce.” It’s the first indication of a break with British pro-German policy, and that’s as early as 1833. It’s very much a example that Britain is always concerned about threats to its own future. I had a chair of governors on one occasion who used to tell me, “Let’s take the wide view, William. "How does it affect us?” And that’s what Britain did. How does German expansionism in industry and commerce because of the customs unions in Germany affect Britain? And they went ballistic about it. And you could well say that that’s been Britain’s position vis-a-vis continental Europe ever since. And all the difficulties when we were in the European Union and now that we’re out of the European Union mirror that view right back in 1838. In 1833, I’m sorry. But it was the events of 1870 and ‘71, the defeat of France and the proclamation of the King Wilhelm of Prussia as the new Kaiser, or emperor, of Germany in 1871 that really began to see a change in British attitudes from being pro-German, after all, our royal family was German, and in being anti-French, all the Napoleonic stuff. We’re now on the moment of shift. And it begins at that point when Bismarck unifies Germany following the defeat of France.

The historian Michael Balfour has written this. He writes, “Germanophilia,” love of Germany, “Lasted into the opening weeks of the Franco-Prussian War, "but began to change into doubt "when Germany was seen to emerge "as the strongest military power in the world.” So, we’re worried as early as 1833 about German industrial clout and we’re worried in 1871 by German military clout, exemplified in the unification of Germany by Bismarck. Our views in Britain are changing. And it’s very difficult, I think, to tell people who’ve lived through the 20th Century and don’t know the history that anti-German views in Britain are very much coloured first by the First World War, and then, of course, by the war with Hitler’s Germany. And we forget. We forget that Blucher helped the British win the Battle of Waterloo, helped destroy the power of France. It was a long, long time before when Elizabeth I said, “If the Channel ports are in the hands of the enemy, "England will be next.” And England’s foreign policy was based upon the view that no Western European power should dominate the continent, because if they did so, it would inevitably in the end, as in World War I and World War II, affect us here in Britain. Well, in short, the balance of power in Europe which had been established at Vienna, at the Congress of Vienna in 1814, 1815, was now firmly out of joint because no one expected in 1815 to see a unified Germany. It’s put out of kilter, as I’ve said, both militarily and economically by the rise and unification of Germany. Let’s have a look at a few statistics.

You don’t need to remember the statistics themselves, but remember the gulf that emerges. In 1871, Britain’s population was 32 million and Germany’s was 41 million, a 10 million or so gap between the populations of both countries. By 1913, the year before war came, the gap had had lengthened to 20 million, the German population being 67 million and the British, 46. Now, populations are important and there are historians of populations that look at the changing relationship of populations between Britain, Germany, and France. And at this point, Germany is accelerating. Why? Well, the answer’s fairly clear why, because of greater financial stability in Germany, particularly for the working class. Better standards of health in Germany than in Britain, and the story goes on in that same way. But there were other statistics, too. You can take what statistics you like and measure German statistics against British. And almost on every count is Germany in the lead. So, if we take railways, in which, of course, Britain led the world. In the middle of the century, 1850, there were 10,000 miles of railway track in Britain and only 6,000 miles in Germany, for obvious reasons, because Germany wasn’t united. By 1910, with all the efforts put into the infrastructure of railways in Germany, railways in Germany had increased tenfold from 6,000 miles to 61,000 miles, whereas British rails only increased by a mere 40%, from 10,000 miles in Britain in 1850 to 38,000 in 1910. So, the figures are wherever you look. There is a very disturbing figure for steel. Steel is a necessary component if you’re fighting a war. In 1880, Britain was producing 980,000 tonnes per annum and Germany was producing just over 1.5 million tonnes per annum. By 1913, the year before war, Britain had expanded its production of steel to nearly just under 7 million, 6.9 million tonnes per year.

But Germany had expanded to over 18.5 million tonnes. That’s serious. It led, of course, all these comparisons led at the time in Britain to talk about the decline of Britain. Now, if you’re not British, or if you’re British as well, but if you’re listening and you’re not British, you might say to yourself, “But Britain has always talked itself down!” Because if you come to Britain today from abroad, some of you Americans may have come to Britain in the last year or so, you will have noticed, you can’t fail to have noticed in the newspapers signs which are exactly the same as they were in the 1880s, “The decline of Britain.” We rather relish being in decline. But we’ve been in decline a long time. And that’s also important to note. As we were first with the Agricultural Revolution and first with the Industrial Revolution, by the outbreak of the first war, we were falling well behind. Of course, those of you listening in America will say, “Well, of course, American industry has really taken off.” Yes, it has, and that was inevitable, given the population size of America. But in European terms, Germany having expanded in these fields was a major blow not just to British prestige, but to the British ability to fight a war. We were spending less GDP on military matters than the Germans were.

The Germans had been cranking it up, and we shall talk more about that next week. Geoff Layton, the historian, sums this up about the economy in this way. “When Kaiser Wilhelm II,” that’s the grandson of the Kaiser at Versailles in 1871. Wilhelm II is, of course, Little Willy, the Kaiser of the First World War. “When Wilhelm II came to the throne in 1888, "the German economy had already completed "what economic historians called a takeoff "into sustained economic growth. "By 1890,” the year that Wilhelm II sacked Bismarck, “By 1890, further economic developments had led "to the dominance of industry over agriculture.” Now, one of the important points to note in the period from 1871, German unification, to 1914, the outbreak of war, is that Germany as a country is not only formed, but transformed. It’s transformed from a largely agricultural society to a largely industrial society, the process that Britain had gone through decades before. There was a lot of tension with such a change. Wherever you’ve moved from an agricultural to industrial societies, there are difficult decisions that have to be made by politicians, difficult transitions. We faced it in Britain, but we faced it with a democratic political system that we had grown used to since the beginning of the 18th Century and the arrival of George of Hanover. We had a system that worked. Germany had to find a system and that became an issue, an issue that was not finally resolved until the fall of the Berlin Wall at the end of the 20th Century. And so, Germany’s transition to a unified state and to an industrialised state carried enormous problems. It carried problems more than simply urbanisation. It carried problems in terms of religion. The Catholic areas of Germany, roughly a third of the population, towards the Protestant, two thirds.

The Protestants are in the North, as we know, around Prussia. Most of the Catholics are in the South, around Bavaria. And the South was more agricultural, more poorer, and behind the Protestant North. Moreover, Bismarck was a devout Protestant and very anti-Catholic. And that tension between Protestantism and Catholicism was one that continued through to the war, and you might argue afterwards. So, there was a problem which was not a problem in Britain. Catholic emancipation in Britain was 1829. There’s a further problem that Britain strangely did not have. I’m sure those of you in Canada, America, or wherever you’re listening from, Israel, think of Britain as a very class-based society. That’s actually not borne out by statistics. Britain was a very entrepreneurial society in the 19th Century and going on into the 20th, 21st. You could begin wherever and you could rise up. You could rise up the social classes. You only have to think of the membership, for example, of the House of Lords today. It is by no means aristocratic. You can find all sorts of people from all sorts of backgrounds and all sorts of ethnicities and all sorts of religions, whereas in the Bismarckian period, well, right up until 1914 in Germany, the class you were born into really determined your place in German society. There are exceptions, and we’ll come to one extraordinary exception later on in my talk, but mainly, you stayed where you were. It didn’t mean that you couldn’t make large sums of money, but you couldn’t take the top jobs in the civil service and in government. It didn’t work like that. Whereas in 1920s, we had a Labour prime minister in Britain who had been born a bastard and didn’t know who his father was, Ramsay MacDonald.

In the 19th Century, we had a Jewish prime minister, Disraeli. We had opportunities. We had opportunities in Britain which the Germans didn’t have. It was a more rigid society than Britain. And that’s sort of an odd thing to say. Nevertheless, changes were taking place, and power was beginning to shift, if not in class terms, certainly in financial terms, away from the nobility and towards a rising entrepreneurial middle class. And Layton writes this, and I thought this was worth sharing. He writes in this way. “There is little doubt, therefore, "that the rapid pace of economic change in Imperial Germany "had an important effect upon the stability "of an already mixed society. "Whilst the traditional social ties and values "were still very strong,” as I just said, “Economic progress inevitably led "to rivalry, tensions, and disorder.” Now that is important and remains important right through to the Hitler years. “It was the problem of balancing the old with the new, "of accommodating the various groups in German society "which the political system somehow had to manage.” Because this change in 1871 was sudden, whereas in Britain, we had, in our typical way, muddled along and change came normally, gradually. But in Germany, there was a need to change because unification had changed everything. I would seldom describe myself as a Bristolian. If asked, I would reply probably not that I’m British. I might. But I might reply, “I’m English.” I have a choice. I can say, if I was meeting one of my American friends on Zoom and they said, “Well, what are you,” I’d never say, “I’m a Bristolian.” I would say either, “I’m English,” or, “I’m British.” Probably, I’d say I was English to an American.

British has connotations in America. In Germany, it’s different. You ask a German today and they will still say, “I’m a Wurttemberger,” or, “I’m a Hanoverian,” or, “I’m whatever.” Even down to the level of cities. “I come from Cologne,” they say. And that is because 1871 was such a cut down the thread of history, a sudden chop. Whereas here, we just grew, as it were, naturally, as indeed did those of you who are listening from Canada, America, or Australia grew slowly. But Germany’s story is a different one. Bismarck obviously was a representative of the old order, the Junker order of Prussia, the aristocracy, von Bismarck. But he was a politician. He was a very great politician. To use a German word, he is a realpolitik politician. I rather like realpolitik politicians and I’m rather agin politicians who’ve seen this future, seen the sign, had the vision. No, no, no. I want someone to deal with events as they happen. But you may take a different view. But Bismarck is a realpolitik politician. He dealt with what he had rather than what he wanted. He got what he wanted in 1871, German unification. But he knew he had to govern Germany after 1871 and he needed to deal with the parliamentary parties in the Reichstag. And the leading party were the National Liberals. Now, you would not expect Bismarck and liberals to be happy bedfellows, but Bismarck made it work. Why? Because he realised that if he didn’t make it work, the whole structure of German society could collapse, as, of course, it did in France in the Revolution. He doesn’t want a revolution.

He wants to manage change, manage change in order to control the change. And he actually did so. In the years of the 1870s, the Germans call it the liberal era. And that’s because Bismarck worked with, as chancellor, Germany worked with the Reichstag, and that meant with the National Liberals. Before the 1870s, he did not want to work with the National Liberals in a pre-unified Prussia. And of course he didn’t. He wasn’t a liberal, don’t get me wrong. He hasn’t had a conversion on the road to Damascus like St. Paul in Christian theology. He remains a conservative, but he’s a thinking conservative, a conservative that realises you have to give. Rather like the 19th Century Conservative Party in Britain, if we take somebody like Sir Robert Peel or Benjamin Disraeli who realised that in order to keep what they believed was the essential structure of the state holding together, you had to make concessions. If you made concessions, you could pull more people into them. And Peele did it by reforming the Corn Laws. Disraeli did it by extending the franchise. Those weren’t necessarily conservative things to do with a small c or even a big C. They were thought-through liberal policies that enabled conservatism, or the status quo, if you like, to continue pretty well unchallenged. That’s what Bismarck was about. It’s complex, if you like. Bismarck realised very clearly that unification wasn’t merely political unification, but it had other implications in what we can call the new Germany of unification. A common currency. Well, Bismarck was all into this with the Zollverein, the Prussian Zollverein, the Prussian Customs Union, which many people, as we saw, said kickstarted the movement towards unification, the final movement towards unification.

A common currency, common weights and measures. For goodness’ sake, we’d had a common currency in Britain since Saxon times! We had current weights and measures since the 13th Century. But not in Germany. And of course, they’re going to catch up with Britain if they’ve got a common currency, common weights and measures. Incidentally, Germany is a founder member of the Common Market, now the European Union. Do you see where those ideas in terms of German history filter in to the Germano-Franco Common Market? They each set up a national banking system. The Reichsbank was established by Bismarck. They set up an infrastructure, and we’ve talked about the railway infrastructure. And the railway infrastructure is so important, not just carrying goods from wherever, Hanover to Strasbourg. It was important for carrying people. You could work at a distance from where you were living. All of that is so important. Urbanisation, but imposed upon a country which only a few years ago had been rural-agricultural. But it meant you could go back to visit your parents. Your parents could travel to meet you. Urbanisation. The railways enabled all sorts of things to happen. P.S., railways also enabled in the First World War armies to be moved quickly. Another story for another day. Liberalism began to fade. Well, in truth, the liberals split. Political parties often do that. And in the 1880s, the political party in the Reichstag that Bismarck had to deal with were Social Democrats. Now, many of them did not believe in capitalism, but are moving towards a Socialism with a big S, if you like, Marxism. But he managed to work with them, too.

And that’s extraordinary. But before I leave liberalism, I read this in Katja Hoyer’s book, “Blood and Iron”, which was on my reading list. And Katja Hoyer writes this about the future of liberalism, and I found this a very interesting and exciting thought, even. She writes: German liberalism would not recover from this decline at the end of the 1870s for decades to come. And it was a melancholy context when Max Weber wrote his reflection in 1918 saying how sad he was that liberalism was dying, at which point, socialists, communists, and right-wing nationalists all made louder noises of opposition. The second German revolution of 1918 at the end of the First World War would not be dominated by liberalism. No, it wasn’t. It was dominated by the far right and by the far left. Now, is that a mistake? Is that a mistake made by Bismarck? Should he have kept in some way going forward with liberalism, rather than going forward with social democracy in the 1880s? Because the end result is that liberalism dies until the Weimar Republic, and we know how short-lived that was. It’s the extremes of German policy or political parties in the 1880s that many say bedevil the European Union Germany today. We cannot be, we cannot be, what is the right word to use? We cannot be complacent, perhaps, about German politics. It’s no good thinking of German politics in British terms, for example. Its far right and far left are far stronger than they’ve ever been in Britain.

And we shall talk about that in due course when we come to the end of the First World War and the horrors of the Civil War in Germany in 1918, 1919. What does all that I’ve said so far say about Bismarck himself? Now, this is me. This is not taken from reading. This is me thinking about it. And so, you may feel it’s not very good, but that’s fine. Think of your own answer to the question. What does this all tell us about Bismarck? I think it tells us three things. One, unification had been and always was his top goal. That’s what he wanted. He did not want Catholic Austria to dominate Germans. He wanted Prussia to dominate Germans. And he didn’t want Austrian Germans anywhere near the vision that he had of the Second Reich, point one. Point two, to perfect unification, he needed internally to compromise. He needed to compromise with the liberal/social views of the political parties representing the German people. He could not ride roughshod over their views, which is exactly what the Kaiser did after Bismarck’s dismissal in 1890. Thirdly, he wanted to compromise without, however, giving power, unfettered power to liberals and Social Democrats. He wanted the ancien regime to remain in place. For those of you who’ve read the novel by Benjamin Disraeli called “Sybil, or Two Nations”, Disraeli’s view is very much that of Bismarck. And it’s not surprising that when the two men met, they got on famously together, despite accusations of Bismarck’s antisemitism. There’s no trace of that in his dealings with Disraeli. They were after the same thing. But there were flaws in Bismarck’s position, and this is again me.

The flaw with Bismarck was there was no successor. He didn’t groom a successor. So, the question is, could Germany ever find a second Bismarck? If you were writing me an essay at a university, that’s your essay question for the week. “Did Germany ever find, between 1890 and 2023, "a second Bismarck? "Discuss.” I think the answer is largely no, it didn’t. But you may disagree. Secondly, even if they could find a second Bismarck, could that second Bismarck control the divisions in German society politically between those on the far right and those on the far left? Could they? Well, as late as 1945, we have a Marxist state in half of Germany, East Germany. Bismarck is almost, he’s a bright light that shines in the 1870s and 1880s. A man that Mrs. Thatcher might say, “You could do business with.” A Gorbachev, if you like, except better than Gorbachev, better than Gorbachev because he did manage change, whereas Gorbachev failed to manage change and is overthrown, wanted to manage change, but he’s overthrown. Bismarck to me is the greater man. Choice of essay, second essay topic. “Is Bismarck a greater man than Gorbachev? "Discuss.” Bismarck never had a replacement in mind. He never really had a structure in mind. And the problem was he never dealt with the position of the Kaiser, who is not, in truth, a constitutional monarch as Victoria and Edward VII were in Britain.

And that was a problem for him, the House of Hohenzollern. But he did do some extraordinary progressive things. Let me tell you some of the things he did. But first of all, this is Bismarck talking about pensions, which were introduced in Bismarckian Germany. Bismarck said: Whoever has pensions for his old age is far more easier to handle than one who has no such prospect. Look at the difference between a private servant in the chancellery or at court. The latter will put up with much more because he has a pension to look forward to. So, this is Marxist criticisms of capitalism, bread and circuses. “Give them a pension and they won’t cause trouble.” Well, that’s a, traditional European conservatives will see, conservative view of pensions. And they did indeed introduce pensions. Pensions came in in 1889 and it was for men only, aged over 70. Well, you might say, “Well, that’s not bad.” Well, not many people actually lived to 70. It was a fallback position. But it was in advance of what Britain and other European nations were doing. It was a very progressive legislation for its time. He introduced other forms of legislation. For example, he introduced health insurance in 1883. It established health insurance at a local level, paid partly by the employer and partly by the employee. The employers contributed 1/3, the workers, 2/3. But it was a huge step forward. In 1884, there’s an accident insurance bill, and this time, the federal government underwrote it.

And if, after 14 weeks of health insurance gave out after 14 weeks, you could get accident insurance. And it was a generous 2/3 of earned wages if the worker was fully disabled. And that plays out within Germany today and within the EU, far more generous than the British position, far more. Health insurance, accident insurance, old age, disability bill, education. Once Germany has unified, the Prussian education system, which was the foremost in Europe in the time in the 1870s, becomes, to all intents and purposes, the German system. What did it mean in practise? It meant better-qualified teachers, the setting up of teacher training colleges. But it also developed four types, four types of secondary school. The one that we all probably know of, the Gymnasium, Latin, Greek, or Hebrew, and one modern language. A Realgymnasium, Latin, modern languages, science and maths, science and maths? Horror in Britain, to something like that! Look at our public schools and grammar schools. We’re on an outdated curriculum as regards Germany then, let alone now. A Realschule without university entrance qualification, but with the option of becoming a trainee in a modern industrial office or technical job. In other words, a technical college, far in advance of anything we’ve got here. And finally, an Oberrealschule, modern languages, science, and maths so that you could get a job somewhere. It’s vocationally-directed, but it is also academically-directed. And we in Britain even today can’t get our heads around, well, our politicians can’t get their heads around it, and an advantage that Germany still has in terms of its technical education over Britain.

All these schools had equal rank and privilege. Not necessarily prestige, but not the sort of divisions that there were here in Britain. It is true that, at one time, this is what, well, in 1881, to be precise, Bismarck said to the Reichstag. In addressing them about his programme of social reform in 1881, Bismarck used the phrase, “Practical Christianity.” Now, that’s an odd phrase to us in the 21st Century. But for a moment, particularly those of you who are British and who went to public schools, this is no different than Dr. Arnold’s muscular Christianity at Rugby, which spread across the British public school and grammar school system. Muscular Christianity and practical Christianity, in the Christianity bit of the phrase, it meant moral duty. It had a morality concept in it, to do your bit for Britain, to do your bit for Germany. And the practical or muscular bit is get your hands dirty doing it. In a metaphorical sense, getting your hands dirty. So, very much of Bismarck’s thinking is in line with a lot of British thinking of the time. But what did not happen in Britain was a determined effort. Well, not at least until the beginning of the 20th Century with the Asquith Liberal government to introduce widespread reforms, which they did with the pensions and so-ons and national insurance and so on. But they didn’t in the 19th Century. And because Bismarck did it in the 19th Century, it gave Germany a lead.

And it’s given Germany a lead which it hasn’t given up since and is determined not to. And unlike Britain, Germany sees the Common Market, of the Germans, they would say, in control. It gives Germans within the Common Market a view that that helps Germany and helps Germans. Whereas we take a view the opposite of that, that being a member of the Common Market does not help us. Now, we won’t get into that argument, but there are differences in approach from the mid-19th Century through to the present day between how Britain and Germany look at things. But my argument is, if we can just concert on the 19th Century and forget the horrors of the two world wars, we were pro-German because we were very similar to Germany. And the Germany that Bismarck created was, in many respects, very similar to Britain, the difference being that the Kaiser was not a constitutional monarch in a British sense. And secondly, that in terms of Germany, there’s this far right and far left, which to all intents and purposes we did not have in Britain. Now, I know, oh, I’ve got to look at the time. I know Trudy is going to talk to you or has talked to you on lockdown about German Jewry during this period, but I really can’t not say something about German Jews. In 1871, at the time of unification, there were 512,000 Jews in Germany. But the question in Germany, as they began to ask themselves the question, “What is it to be German,” then the question is, “Can you be a German Jew?”

Well, you can obviously be a German Jew, but could you be a Jewish German? That’s a different question. You could be a German Catholic, but could you really be a Catholic German? This is a very Protestant-oriented society. And the argument is, with Jews, as I’m sure Trudy has or will say, is that distinction between, are you a Jew who lives in Germany or are you a German who happens to be Jewish? And it’s an important point. Now, we are talking about Germany, and anti-Semitism is there all the time through German history. And in the 1880s, there was a very distinct anti-Semitic movement called the Berlin movement because it started in Berlin. It wasn’t a political party. It was disparate groups and disparate individuals who took an anti-Semitic view on the basis that you couldn’t be a German, a full German citizen if you were Jewish. And that movement in the 1880s, the Berlin movement, is the first major anti-Semitic movement in modern German history. The Holocaust doesn’t come from out of nowhere. It has a long history. I’m teaching grandmothers to suck eggs. You all know that. But one factor in the anti-Semitism of the 1880s is interesting, interesting in 21st Century terms, because it’s about immigration. There was immigration into Germany by Russian Jews and Polish Jews, the Poland part of Russia.

There was an immigration of Russians and Poles, Jews, into Germany, as indeed there was into Britain and indeed there was into America, fleeing the pogroms of the 1880s in Russia. But these Jews were in German eyes, and in German Jewish eyes as well, uneducated, rural, backward. And you all know, well, every British Jew knows the story that the Jewish community in Britain, as these Jews from Russia and the East began to come in, was to try and stop them coming in because they thought it would upset the position that Jews had already reached in Britain. But that is the reason, or one of the reasons for the growth in antisemitism, specifically in the 1880s. But this question is so complex because all of Bismarck’s private financial affairs were dealt with by a Jew, Gerson Bleichroder. And he made a fortune. He, first of all was under the, he worked under the Rothschilds until he became an equal of the Rothschilds during the Franco-Prussian War when both his bank and the Rothschild bank lent 3 million thaler to Bismarck to fight the Franco-Prussian War. He is extremely unusual. He was the first German Jew who did not convert to Christianity. He was the first German Jew to be allowed to use the name von in front of his name, and that was something really important in Germany. And he genuinely believed he was pushing forward for Jews to be accepted as Germans who happened to be Jewish. Well, we know the outcome of all of that. Barry Strauss of Cornell University has written this: Bismarck had a complicated relationship with Jews and Judaism.

By today’s standards, he might be considered an anti-Semite. But by the mores of his era, he was enlightened. With his Jewish banker, Gerson Bleichroder, for example, Bismarck had not merely a close financial relationship, but even a friendship. Bismarck received him frequently at the Bismarck family manor in East Prussia. There’s always this danger with history to judge the past by the morals of today. You must judge whether Bismarck was deeply anti-Semitic or had the casual anti-Semitism of the era. That doesn’t excuse casual antisemitism. I’m not saying that. But I’m saying that Bismarck is no Adolf Hitler. But he was anti-Catholic, anti-Catholic because it was more personal to him. He is a devout Pietist Protestant, devout Protestant, and he disliked Catholicism, why? Because he thought the Catholic countries of Europe had tried to prevent German unification. France, Austria, even the papacy. He was adamantly against them. He described it as the coalition of Catholic revenge. Revenge for what? The Protestant Reformation. The Protestants, the Lutherans in Prussia saw Catholicism as a horrendous enemy of modernity, of truth, even, in a way they didn’t think of anti-Semitism in that way. They didn’t think of Judaism in that same way. But Catholicism was anathema to them. This was going to be a Protestant empire. Well, you might say, “Jews met antisemitism in Britain at this period.” Yes, they did. But on the other hand, many Jews were in positions of influence in Britain, particularly in the city of London, for example.

So, you’ve got to be careful when you look at this. It’s the anti-Catholic element. Now, interestingly, of course, in modern Germany, anti-Semitism is, well, a fringe activity on the far right and hopefully remains there, and occasionally sets awful things in motion. But anti-Catholicism is deep in the DNA. A friend of mine, a German friend of mine who was in charge of adult education in Baden-Wurttemberg, when there were cuts to adult education, I’ve told some of you this story before. When there were cuts to adult education in the 1990s, and she was Prussian, thrown out of East Germany, her family, and she was Prussian. And I said, “How are you dealing with the cuts?” Because they were all across Europe. “Oh,” she said, “I’ve got an easy job.” I said, “Well, how?” She said, “I just cut the provision for the Catholics.” Because Catholics and Protestants in Germany had separate sorts of provision in which they had to pay for adult education, a very complicated system in Germany. But she simply had said, “Oh, the Catholics aren’t going to have it. "They’ll only waste it,” is her actual words. So, anti-Catholicism was deep in German society. And I’m suggesting to you that anti-Semitism in this Berlin difficulties in the 1880s is the beginning of modern anti-Semitism, which leads to Hitler’s Germany. And the sad fact is, as I’m sure Trudy will have said, that many Jews in Germany, like Bismarck’s banker, thought they could be German and Jewish. And the truth was, in the end, the Nazis said, “No, you can’t. "You can’t be German and Jewish.”

You were Jewish, Germans would get rid of you. Bismarck was anti-Catholic for another political reason rather than personal religious reason, because he didn’t want church interference in the state in things like education. Remember that in Britain today, we still have schools funded by the government which are church schools. We have all sorts. But Germany did not because Bismarck would not have the church interfering. And he didn’t only mean the Catholic church, he meant the Protestant church. He believed state and religion were two separate things, quite separate, state, religion. And that’s a difference to us here because we’ve always compromised in Britain and we haven’t taken that strict rule. This whole episode against Catholics was given the title by the Germans of the time of Kulturkampf. And what they meant was it was an anti-Catholic, anti-clerical, really, thing. And what really got their goat was when the Pope declared his policy of infallibility. Now, that doesn’t go down well with any Protestant, but the Lutheran Protestants of Prussia were absolutely, absolutely against such a view. But what did the Catholics do? The Catholics in Germany thought, “We can’t fight this in any old-fashioned way. "We must fight it politically.” And so, Catholics become strongly represented in the centre of German politics. And that’s a theme that is going to come through again in the future. In 1890, at the age of 75, the young Kaiser Wilhelm II sacked Bismarck. He’d been on the throne two years and he couldn’t stand Bismarck. This is a young man in a hurry and Bismarck was an old man. Bismarck suffered, I think at this point, from hubris.

He believed he was too essential to Germany ever to be sacked. But Wilhelm wanted a aggressive foreign policy, which Bismarck did not want. Bismarck died eight years later, 1898, less than two decades before the outbreak of the First World War. Had there been a second Bismarck, would the war have come? Can’t answer that question. We’ll talk more next week about the war and the steps to war and the Kaiser and his rather strange personality. But I wanted to read you a piece from Simon Sebag Montefiore’s book, “The World”, really because I adore the way he writes so well. And he wrote this, now, just a couple of things taken out: Bismarck said of Wilhelm II, “That young man wants war with Russia "and would like to draw his sword straight away if he could. "I shall not be a party to it.” Montefiore says: Willy wanted to be, “My own Bismarck,” his phrase, making full use of the awesome powers of Kaiser. Abroad, his dream, he told Eulenburg, “Was German domination,” quote, “Assert a Napoleonic supremacy in the peaceful sense.” But he also embraced the racial ideologies of Teutons versus Slavs, Germans versus Russians. Willy embraced theories about the Aryan master race, which were becoming popular. Kaiser Wilhelm is a million miles away from the educated, careful, calculating politician that was Bismarck.

And Germany finds itself in the hands of this vain, silly, and ultimately dangerous man, Kaiser Wilhelm II. And we will certainly look at that next week. But I’m going to finish, okay, I’ve got half a minute. I’m going to finish with a quotation from a letter written by the eldest daughter of Queen Victoria, Princess Victoria, Vicky, who married into the German royal house and was the mother of Wilhelm II. And this is a letter that goes quite a way back in time. It goes right back to 1871 and German unification. And she writes a letter to her mother. “One thing I own torments me much. "It is the feeling of animosity between our two countries,” Germany and Britain. “It is so dangerous and productive of much harm. "Prussia has gained no popularity for itself since some time "on account of the king’s illiberal government, "but the feeling against us now in England is most unjust. "Now, dear Papa,” Prince Albert, “Is no longer here. "I live in continued dread that the bonds "which united our two countries for their mutual good "may in time be quite severed.” Vicky is her father’s daughter. She’s read the situation perfectly, 40-odd years before the outbreak of war between Germany and Britain. Thanks ever so much for listening. I guess there may be some questions, some comments, and some corrections, I guess. Let’s have a look.

Q&A and Comments:

Oh, that’s very nice, when people who put nice comments add.

Q: “What do I,” Susan, that’s a good question. “What do I think Bismarck would’ve thought of Hitler?”

A: The same as us, undoubtedly. He would not have tolerated that whatsoever. That’s not Bismarck’s vision at all. And he certainly didn’t want Germany to dominate militarily Europe.

Q: “Why didn’t Britain and Austria "form an alliance against Bismarck?”

A: There’s no need for us to form an alliance against Bismarck. He isn’t threatening us. The danger comes afterwards. Austria-Hungary is a broken reed, anyhow. But Britain doesn’t need to think about it until after Bismarck has gone. Then it does form alliances, but certainly not with Austria-Hungary, but with France and Russia. And that’s the alliance that takes us into the First World War.

Q: “Why was Bismarck sacked by Wilhelm?”

A: A clash of personalities is a basic answer. And secondly, because Bismarck would not go along with aggressive foreign policies. Yes, Angela, absolutely right.

“The army in Germany was also restricted "to the higher echelons of society far as officer status.” Absolutely correct. And Jonathan reminds us of the cartoon in the British comic magazine “Punch” by saying, “‘Punch’ got it right "in its famous ‘Dropping the Pilot’ cartoon "showing the serious mistake the Kaiser made "by sacking Bismarck.” It caused concern in the highest levels of British government where Prime Minister Lord Salisbury was fearful of what might follow Bismarck. Bismarck could be dealt with. He’s rational. He isn’t a threat. We may fear German industry. That’s another issue. We may fear the German military in the hands of the Kaiser, but that’s not Bismarck.

Q: “Did Bismarck cause a decline of the liberal party?”

A: Not really, they caused their own decline by internal dissension.

Q: “Would you consider Mrs. Merkel as a successor to Bismarck?”

A: I think you can’t answer that question because it’s too soon. And largely the answer has to be, I think, or the provisional answer at the moment has to be no. But we have to wait on that judgement .

Q: Herbert says, “Any brief comment about reunification, "Italy versus Germany at that same time "and the difference between Cavour and Bismarck?”

A: Oh, Herbert, that’s a huge question. Germany and Italy are so massively different. Italy only has one religion, for a start. Italy’s divisions were much more, economically, the division in Italy was much more pronounced between North and South.

Q: Cavour was also a able administrator, but I, was he in the same league as Bismarck?

A: It’s difficult to say. He died too young for us to say, or he died too soon for us to say. Italy still is suffering from unification. There are many breakaway groups, whereas in Germany is together. One of the problems were that the Italians who didn’t live in Germany, they didn’t live in Italy. The Italians in the Austria-Hungarian Empire, for example, when it was united. There’s all sorts of issues which are very different in Italy. I don’t think Cavour is in the same league as Bismarck, would be my basic answer. What is this?

Noah says, “We did not manage resolving "who is a Jew among ourselves.” Oh, Noah, no, that’s wonderful. I’ve learned that since I’ve worked so much with Jewish friends that, what do you say? “If there’s six Jews in a meeting, "there’ll be six different opinions?” No, that is also true, of course. It’s only looking here in Britain where that question, they are not denying anti-Semitism, even anti-Semitism today. It would be stupid to do so. But the Jewish communities see themselves as very British. It was a fantastic, when the King, Charles, came to visit JW3, the Jewish big community centre in North London, I was there and it was fantastic. And it was, if you saw that, you wouldn’t doubt that Jews are integrated in that way. I’m going to get myself in trouble if I say anymore. Who’s this?

Judith says, “I think that today you have done,” I think you mean a lecture, “A comparative history of UK versus Germany.” Yes, in part, I have.

“But I think at that time Germany was "and still is more European, "oriented to mainland Europe than looking to England, "more interest in Austria-Hungary and France than England.” No, I don’t think that was true. And certainly, you remember that Rhodes, for example, set up scholarships at Oxford for Germans, Americans, and British. Although we are not allowed to talk about Rhodes anymore, he set up scholarships in the hope that Germany, America, and Britain would elect leaders who had been educated at Oxford, and the three of them would bring eternal peace to the world. No, Germany was very connected to us. In my own college in Oxford, on the list of the dead of the First World War, German names appear absolutely integrated with English names and their German regiments given as English regiments given. In death, they were one as they were one when they were at the college. So, I’m not sure that I entirely accept that. Who is this?

Arlene, “It is so sad to me that anti-Semites "raise the question of Jewish loyalty "to the country in which they live. "I’ve never met a Jew who was not patriotic "to the country in which he or she lived.” Thank you for that.

Naomi, “Surely a part of hatred for Catholics "was because he felt somewhat threatened by them.” Yes, that’s true. And Naomi, you’re right. He would not have feared the Jews in that way. No, he didn’t. He would’ve more than likely have answered that he saw Jews as important in the economy of a united Germany. Yes, he did feel threatened by Catholics. Yeah, I accept that.

Q: Michael, “Can you say a little about the colonialism "that Bismarck opposed, but in the end, "came rather cruelly enacted?”

A: Yes, I will, and I was going to do it today, but to be all honest, I had too much to get through. So, I will do that because it is important in the lead-up to the war in 1914. Definitely do that, Michael, next time.

“My father thought that he could be German and Jewish.” Exactly.

Q: “Was Hitler coming from Austria Catholic? "I ask because of the arrangements "with the Pope during the war.”

A: Yes, he was brought up a Catholic. I don’t think he had any faith at all.

Q: “Isn’t Catholicism an anathema to the English as well?”

A: No is the short answer. Well, I’m not sure, David, that that’s a, “I remember meeting Catholic students "who definitely felt they were a minority in the 1960s.” I’m not sure they weren’t pulling your leg. There is some anti-Catholicism that lies deep. For example, the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, only converted to Catholicism when he came out of office rather than when he was in office ‘cause he thought that would be, I mean, we’ve had a Jewish prime minister, we’ve had Asian prime ministers, we’ve had women prime ministers, but we’ve never had a Catholic prime minister. We can, there’s no reason why we can’t. We have had some leading political parties, but they have never, they’ve never actually, Iain Duncan Smith, who led the Conservative Party a few decades ago, was Catholic. 1870s, Pope’s infallibility, 1870s.

Alison, “My father was arrested, "put in a concentration camp, but survived, "and managed to get out before the Second World War.” Thank you Susan.

Thanks, Alison. I’m glad people, remember always, I’m glad you enjoyed it, but you don’t have to agree. You can disagree profoundly. That’s what makes history so interesting. There isn’t a perfect answer. And if I was marking essays by you, some of you would write the opposite of somebody else and both could get an alpha. It just depends how you view it.

Ah, Nietzsche. Yeah, Yvonne, Nietzsche. I’m going to do, that’s another thing I had. In fact, I’ve written the notes for that bit for today, but I just had too much. I will refer to Nietzsche next time and the link onwards to Hitler and the link with Wilhelm. Yeah, I’ll do all of that, I promise you, next time. I better make a note, because otherwise I shall forget between now and next week what I promised to do. German colonies and Nietzsche, and I’ll put Nietzsche and Hitler, and that will give me the, will remind me of what I’ve got to do.

“With your final quote, "you are implying World War I was inevitable.” Once Wilhelm had got the bit between his teeth, yes, it was, I think, inevitable. And it was inevitable we had to fight. There are some modern historians, contemporary historians today who challenge that view and say Britain needn’t have got involved. Nonsense. We did need to get involved because we would have been taken once France had been taken. And remember, in World War I, France did not fall. Oh, Nanette, that’s nice of you! She said, “So much was left out "my secondary school in Switzerland.

"I wish you were here in the room "because we could ask you what you did "in your history lessons in Switzerland.” I have absolutely no idea what the Swiss teach in history.

Oh, that’s very nice of you, Cynthia, thank you. Oh, you’re not related, Cynthia, are you, to the firm that produces all the coin books, the great dictionaries of coins? If you are, drop me a line! I’m very interested. Who is this?

Jane, blah, blah, blah. “I vaguely remember learning about Bismarck "in my girls’ grammar school in the early ‘60s. "The subject seemed so dull to our class.” And thank you, you say, “You bring it alive and it’s relevant.” I think a lot of us suffered from, in Britain and I guess elsewhere, suffered from quite boring history. I was very lucky between the age of seven and 13 to have a brilliant teacher of history. I have to say, after 13, it rather dropped off and I was glad to give up history when I went to university. “Churchill said,” Churchill says some wonderful things. I like that quote. “Churchill said, 'The Germans are always either ”'at your throat or at your feet.’“ Well, that’s a nice thing to say.

"I thought that Blair was Catholic.” No, he was not Catholic. He only converted after he ceased to be prime minister. His wife was Catholic, he was not Catholic.

Q: “Would I have liked to have met Bismarck?”

A: Ooh, I don’t know. If I’m going to meet somebody like history, make it worth my while. I’d like to have met, I don’t know. Elizabeth, I, Catherine the Great? Oh, it has to be a woman. I don’t particularly want to meet Bismarck.

“No, not related.” Oh, what a shame. I was going to ask you to send me a complete set! No, I’m joking. Thank you, everyone. I think I’ve got through all the points that people have raised. I’m glad that a number of you enjoyed it. I enjoyed preparing it and delivering that. Next week, we’re moving from 1890 to 1918. I am not going to go through the First World War battle by battle. That is not what I’m going to do. I’m going to put it in the context of German and the context of European history and it’s the lead-up to it which is interesting, as we’ve said. And I will talk about Nietzsche and I will talk about German colonies.

So, thanks for listening.