Do you think that Bismarck is given too much credit for german unification?

Question

in 1860's?

Answer 1

Heck no. Without his demands and sheer force of will, I believe it would not have happened as quickly as it did

Answer 2

Yes - - - but it is more a matter of practical reality rather than any conspiracy to rob anyone of credit. The human brain can only cram so much info and so when students & contestents on Jeopardy need a quick an easy answer - - - 'Who Unfied Germany' - - - the brain spits out Bismark because hardly anyone is enough of a scholar to cite even five others involved in the process.....
Also in 'Democratic' America no one is about to credit Kaiser William / Wilhelm the First because he was 'a king or emperor or whatever,' and in American eyes Bismark was 'president or something.'
(for the record - - - Johann Gustav Droysen, and industrialist Krupp, Thysen, Siemens, ought to be given credit for their work toward unification)..

Bismark was brilliant and did a great job pulling together the elements for a successfull outcome (unless your were France or Austria or the rest of the planet, eventually).... But the drive toward a single Germany was there from the shrouded mists of Roman times when 'Germanic' Tribes threatened the Empire.

Despite his supposed reluctance to be an Emperor, Kaiser Wilhelm the First deserves much more credit than he is given and much like English Monarchs Wilhelm did see the need for a National Parliament, in other words he was not the stiff necked Prussian Autocrat of lore. COuld bore you will anedotes but I have blathered on enough. The bottom line is that people can only retain so much info just as Tutankhamen and Ramses are 'the Egyptian Pharohs,' just as Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, one or both Roosevelts and Reagan are 'the American Presidents,' so it falls to Bismark to be 'that German dude who united Germany.'

(Actually ironic as it may be the true unifier was Adolf Hitler who did away with century old covenents between the German States and made Germany one Nation under Adolf this besting Bismark who was not held in high regard by Der Fuhrer for a variety of arcane reasons)......

Peace..........................

Answer 3

Not at all. It was his political shrewdness, cunning if you like, and willpower that drove the whole German unification process.

Bismarck used a diplomatic dispute to provoke Austria to declare war on Prussia in 1866. Against expectations, Prussia quickly won the Seven Weeks' War (also known as the Austro-Prussian War) against Austria and its south German allies. Bismarck imposed a lenient peace on Austria because he recognized that Prussia might later need the Austrians as allies. But he dealt harshly with the other German states that had resisted Prussia and expanded Prussian territory by annexing Hanover, Schleswig-Holstein, some smaller states, and the city of Frankfurt. The German Confederation was replaced by the North German Confederation and was furnished with both a constitution and a parliament. Austria was excluded from Germany. South German states outside the confederation--Baden, Wuerttemberg, and Bavaria--were tied to Prussia by military alliances.

Bismarck's military and political successes were remarkable, but the first had been achieved at considerable risk, and the second were by no means complete. Luck had played a part in the decisive victory at the Battle of Koeniggraetz (Hradec Kralóve in the present-day Czech Republic); otherwise, the war might have lasted much longer than it did. None of the larger German states had supported either Prussia's war or the formation of the North German Confederation led by Prussia. The states that formed what is often called the Third Germany, that is, Germany exclusive of Austria and Prussia, did not desire to come under the control of either of those states. None of them wished to be pulled into a war that showed little likelihood of benefiting any of them. In the Seven Weeks' War, the support they gave Austria had been lukewarm.

In 1870 Bismarck engineered another war, this time against France. The conflict would become known to history as the Franco-Prussian War. Nationalistic fervor was ignited by the promised annexation of Lorraine and Alsace, which had belonged to the Holy Roman Empire and had been seized by France in the seventeenth century. With this goal in sight, the south German states eagerly joined in the war against the country that had come to be seen as Germany's traditional enemy. Bismarck's major war aim--the voluntary entry of the south German states into a constitutional German nation-state--occurred during the patriotic frenzy generated by stunning military victories against French forces in the fall of 1870. Months before a peace treaty was signed with France in May 1871, a united Germany was established as the German Empire, and the Prussian king, Wilhelm I, was crowned its emperor in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles.