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Blood and Iron: The Rise and Fall of the German Empire, 1871-1918
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52/99
Critics
70/99
Readers
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Scholars
38/99
Rating
66/99
Volume
68/99
Rating
72/99
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About This Book
In this vivid fifty-year history of Germany from 1871-1918—which inspired events that forever changed the European continent—here is the story of the Second Reich from its violent beginnings and rise to power to its calamitous defeat in the First World War.Before 1871, Germany was not yet nation but simply an idea. Its founder, Otto von Bismarck, had a formidable task at hand. How would he bring thirty-nine individual states under the yoke of a single Kaiser? How would he convince proud Prussians, Bavarians, and Rhinelanders to become Germans? Once united, could the young European nation wield enough power to rival the empires of Britain and France—all without destroying itself in the process? In this unique study of five decades that changed the course of modern history, Katja Hoyer tells the story of the German Empire from its violent beginnings to its calamitous defeat in the First World War. This often startling narrative is a dramatic tale of national self-discovery, social upheaval, and realpolitik that ended, as it started, in blood and iron.
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Reviews
"The author covers social, cultural, and religious developments under two Hohenzollern monarchs, especially Bismarck's path-breaking social legislation of the 1870s and '80s."
"Hoyer renders a vivid account of Wilhelm's overweening ineptitude ..."
"A strict word count is a cruel tyrant; difficult decisions about what goes in have to be made and creativity inevitably curtailed."
"a book that has the merit of treating imperial Germany as an era on its own terms rather than as an inevitable prelude to the horrors of 1933-1945."
"She makes excellent use of secondary sources, however, and lucidly explains how regional and political differences helped foster the 'internal strife, division and stagnation' that Wilhelm hoped to overcome by going to war."
"her thesis is bold and simple."
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