Despite his gruff, militaristic image, Bismarck had no intention of leading his new empire into another war. Beginning in 1871, the aggressive statesman, who in eight years had overturned European politics, defeating two emperors and creating a third, turned his energy to preserving the status quo. War offered more risks than opportunities; what had been won so brilliantly and swiftly might be lost with equal suddenness. “We are satiated,”1 Bismarck said after the war with France. This opposition to war was not based on concern for human suffering. Rather, he considered war a clumsy way of settling international disputes. It took control away from him and placed it in the hands of the generals, whom he distrusted. “You know where a war begins2 but you never know where it ends,” he said. The subsequent restless, expansionist policies which dominated the German Empire under William II played no part in Bismarck’s design. Once he reached his goal of German unity, the maker of wars became a man of peace. And he succeeded: during Bismarck’s nineteen years as Imperial Chancellor, there were no wars among the Great Powers of Europe.
Bismarck’s tool was aggressive, ruthless diplomacy. He played a game of maneuver, constantly shifting tactics, smoothly alternating threats and blandishments, in pursuit of his twin goals of Continental peace and German hegemony. His technique of maintaining peace was not much different from the means he had employed in making wars: sowing suspicion and discord among other nations; provoking alarms, setting powers against one another as potential enemies, then offering one—or the other—or both—German support. His reputation made it easier: his achievement in creating the German Empire had been so extraordinary that other statesmen assumed that he possessed special powers, even special wisdom.
Bismarck had defeated each of his enemies—Denmark, Austria, and France—in isolation, but he realized that a powerful, united German Empire could not expect to fight another carefully insulated war. Between 1871 and 1890, there were five Great Powers in Europe—Germany, France, Austria, Russia, and Great Britainfn1—and the alignment of these five dictated the pattern of European diplomacy.
Great Britain, by choice, had isolated itself from peacetime Continental alliances; France, humiliated and embittered by defeat, also was isolated, although not by choice. That left three Great Powers: the empires of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Russia. It was the purpose of Bismarck’s diplomacy to influence and guide the policies of all three empires in the interest of Germany. “You forget the importance3 of being a party of three on the European chessboard,” the Chancellor told the Russian Ambassador. “That is the object of all governments and above all of mine. Nobody wishes to be in a minority. All politics reduce themselves to this formula: try to be à trois in a world governed by five powers.”
Germany had nothing to do with Britain’s absence from the European chessboard; it bore a heavy responsibility for rendering France implacably hostile. King William I had had a chance of making with defeated France the same generous peace he had made with Austria; this time he rejected Bismarck’s advice. The people of France had been accustomed to centuries of military glory. Tumbled from this summit, France could neither forget nor forgive. The choice of the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles as the site in which the new German Empire was proclaimed added a gratuitous insult. The heavy German war indemnity stimulated further resentment. In the years that followed, Bismarck and his successors periodically hoped that France might be reconciled to its losses and lured into the German diplomatic orbit. Always, the Germans were rebuffed. “We remember that they are waiting for us4 in Alsace-Lorraine,” said General Georges Boulanger, a French Minister of War and popular political figure in the 1880s.
The possibility of a France restored, powerful, and vengeful, in alliance with another power, haunted Bismarck. To keep France isolated, to seal her off from contact with other powers, to make her the pariah of Europe, became the cornerstone of the German Chancellor’s foreign policy. In 1873, while German occupation armies still camped on French soil, Bismarck created his first anti-French coalition, the League of Three Emperors (Dreikaiserbund). It was a grouping à trois of Europe’s three imperial dynasts, William I of Germany, Franz Josef of Austria-Hungary, and Alexander II of Russia. There was no formal alliance, merely an agreement to consult if circumstances warranted. The League was ideological rather than military, but in Bismarck’s mind it was a pledge of conservative, monarchical solidarity against the volatile ambitions of unstable, republican France.
Bismarck kept a close watch on France itself. When French policies, external or internal, displeased him, France was hectored and bullied. “Remember, I forbid you to take Tunis,”5 a German ambassador told a Foreign Minister of France. “Yes, I forbid you.” Nevertheless, France recovered rapidly from her defeat. When Bismarck had saddled the new republic with a war indemnity of 5 billion marks, he had expected this burden to keep France supine for many years. Instead, France had paid off the debt in two years and, by the end of 1873, in accordance with the terms of peace, the last soldier in the German occupation army had gone home. The French also had set about restoring the strength of their army.
The possibility of French attack on Germany was nonexistent, but signs of French vitality irritated Prince Bismarck. Moltke, in Berlin, talked incessantly of the dire consequences of French rearmament and the advantages of preventive war. To the British Ambassador, he explained his theory of responsibility for war: peace was not broken, he argued, by the nation that marched first; the state that provoked the necessity for the other to march was the guilty party. Bismarck’s policy trod a narrow line between peace and war. He never actually thought of unleashing Moltke, but he did attempt to intimidate France by showing that she was isolated and helpless in the face of German might.
In 1877, when Russia declared war on Turkey and marched on Constantinople, Austria and England combined to threaten Russia with war unless she drew back. When Count Julius Andrássy, the Austrian Foreign Minister, offered an international conference, Russia was wary. “If Vienna or London is chosen6 we shall not take part,” announced Prince Alexander Gorchakov, adding, however, that Russia “had no objection to Berlin.” Bismarck, eager to prevent a war between Austria and Russia which might entangle Germany, regarded the conference as a façade behind which the Russians could save face and offered his own services as an “Honest Broker.” Tsar Alexander II, relying on his warm personal ties with Kaiser William I, expressed complete confidence in Bismarck’s mediation. At the conclusion of the Congress of Berlin, when Russia was forced to give back many of the gains she had made at Turkey’s expense, the Tsar and the pan-Slavs in St. Petersburg were bitter. They had been betrayed, they felt, by Bismarck.
Russian bitterness and recrimination were much on Bismarck’s mind a year later when he arranged Imperial Germany’s first military alliance. His choice of Austria as a partner seemed at first unlikely. Bismarck had once fiercely opposed an alliance with Austria; in 1854 he had protested “tying our neat, sea-worthy Prussian frigate7 to Austria’s worm-eaten old galleon.” Again in 1876, when Austria confronted Russia in the Balkans, Bismarck had stated that Germany had no interest in the Eastern Question “that was worth the bones8 of a single Pomeranian grenadier.” His reason for change lay in the second axiom of the Chancellor’s imperial foreign policy. The first was to ensure the diplomatic isolation of France; the second was to preserve peace between the Reich’s two eastern neighbors, Austria and Russia. This had been the purpose of the League of Three Emperors, but in the crisis over the Russo-Turkish War, the League had disintegrated. As the Congress of Berlin concluded, Bismarck realized that antagonism between Austria and Russia in the Balkans was unlikely to disappear. His own effort to mediate had turned out badly; he had heard the grumbling and felt the growing estrangement from St. Petersburg. Better to begin with something solid: a defensive alliance with Austria. This could be used in two ways: it would ensure Germany’s southern flank in case of war with Russia, and it could also frighten the Russians into seeking a closer relationship with Germany.
The choice of Austria was made easier because the peace imposed on Austria after the 1866 war had been generous. There were no “lost provinces” like Alsace and Lorraine to keep Vienna embittered. Austria was suitable on ethnic grounds: the Austrian population of the Hapsburg empire was ethnically compatible with and spoke the same language as the Germans; if necessary, the alliance could be tuned to the theme of Teuton versus Slav. Bismarck’s larger purpose was to influence the relationship between Vienna and St. Petersburg as they moved towards a dangerous collision in the Balkans. To do this, he needed an ally he could dominate. Austria offered the better chance; Russia was too large, too remote, too far beyond his reach. “If I must choose,”9 he said, “I will choose Austria, a constitutionally governed, pacific state, which lies under Germany’s guns; whereas we cannot get at Russia.” Russia, nevertheless, remained a part of Bismarck’s equation. With Austria firmly in hand, he could reach out to Russia and offer her stability, managed and guaranteed by his iron hand in Berlin.
Bismarck’s principal opponent in making the Austro-German Treaty of 1879 was the Emperor William I. William saw no reason for making an alliance with Austria, his former enemy, against Russia, Prussia’s only permanent friend. Friendship between Hohenzollerns and Romanovs was a sacred bequest to William, handed down by his parents from the days of the Napoleonic wars. Tsar Alexander II was his uncle and his closest friend among European monarchs. Russia had stood by Prussia during Bismarck’s three wars of unification; from Versailles, the new Emperor William I had telegraphed Tsar Alexander II: “Never will Prussia forget10 that it is due to you that the war did not spread.” For Germany now to turn against Russia, the Kaiser said, would be a betrayal tantamount to treason. Bismarck, in order to influence William, said that Russian troops were moving towards the German frontier; he argued that a letter from the Tsar was offensively worded and portended an attack from the east. William, alarmed, hurried to meet Alexander at the frontier town of Alexandrovno. There, he assured the Tsar of his personal devotion and pledged German loyalty to a policy of friendship. Bismarck, meanwhile, proceeded to Vienna and, as if the Kaiser did not exist, drew up a treaty of alliance with Count Andrássy, the Austrian Foreign Minister.
When William returned to Berlin to find a telegram from Bismarck demanding his assent to a treaty with Austria, he was incredulous, then furious. “Prince Bismarck himself states11... that I shall find it difficult to ratify this treaty,” he said. “Not simply difficult but impossible: it would go against my conscience, my character, and my honor to conclude behind the back of my friend—my personal, my family, my political friend—a hostile alliance directed against him.” William fought stubbornly. He cited the historic friendship between Hohenzollern and Romanov, the services Alexander had rendered Prussia, the danger in isolating Russia of driving her into the arms of France. He said that he would rather abdicate than sign an alliance against Russia. Bismarck countered by threatening to resign unless the Kaiser agreed to sign. William gave way. His threat to abdicate was meaningless: if he stepped down, the Crown Prince, who favored the Austrian alliance, would become Kaiser and sign the treaty. “Bismarck is more necessary than I12 am,” said William, but added, “My whole moral strength is broken.” Signing the treaty, he wrote in the margin, “Those men who have compelled me13 to this step will be held responsible for it above.”
The treaty, essentially a German guarantee of Austria against Russian attack, became the cornerstone of the foreign policy of Imperial Germany. It remained in force continuously for thirty-five years, until the outbreak of war in 1914 and then through the war until both Powers collapsed in 1918. Germany, by the act of signing, acquired a vital interest in the survival of the Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy. To maintain her only Great Power ally, she would be forced more than once to go to the brink. As long as Bismarck was in Berlin, he could control the Austrians and overawe the Russians. When Bismarck was gone, new patterns would form, new games would be played.
Austria, in Bismarck’s mind, was a link, a secondary power, a useful supplement to German power. The keys to Bismarck’s diplomacy were France and Russia. The Chancellor knew where he stood with France and could plan accordingly. Russia was an enigma. Bismarck never wished to fight the Russians. Despite periodic urging by Moltke that the time was ripe for crushing Russia, Bismarck did not believe that such a victory was either possible or wise. What would be Germany’s objectives in such a war? he asked. Not territory; German expansion to the east could only be at the expense of Russian Poland, and Germany, he said, already had too many Poles. Besides, he told the German Ambassador to Vienna in 1888, one could not really defeat the Russians: “The most brilliant victories14 would not avail; the indestructible empire of the Russian nation, strong because of its climate, its desert, its frugality, strong also because of the advantage of having only one frontier to defend, would, after its defeat, remain our sworn enemy, desirous of revenge, just as today’s France is in the West.” Not wishing to fight the Russians alone, Bismarck assuredly did not wish to fight them if they were in alliance with the French. Nor did he wish the Austrians and the Russians to become embroiled so as to invoke the Austro-German Treaty. For all these reasons, once the Austrian treaty was signed, Bismarck moved quickly to bring the Russians into his European system. In mid-1881, he informed the Russian Foreign Office of the general nature of the Austro-German treaty, emphasizing that it was defensive. He invited the Russians to join in a broader defensive agreement; as a result the League of Three Emperors was resurrected. The three agreed that if one of them were attacked by a fourth power, the other two would preserve a benevolent neutrality. Thus, if Germany were attacked by France, Austria and Russia would remain neutral; similarly, if Russia were attacked by England, Germany and Austria would observe neutrality.
Bismarck still was not satisfied: the link with Russia was still too weak. Tension in the Balkans continued to mount, with Russia and Austria usually in opposition to each other. The League of Three Emperors, renewed in 1884, was allowed to expire in 1887. Bismarck then negotiated his final diplomatic masterpiece: a secret treaty with Russia against his ally Austria. Called the Reinsurance Treaty, it was defensive and promised only neutrality, not military assistance, if either party were attacked (German neutrality if Austria attacked Russia, Russian neutrality if France attacked Germany). Despite this limitation, it violated, as Bismarck well knew, the trust, if not the wording, of Germany’s treaty with Austria. Bismarck obviously insisted on secrecy. The new Tsar Alexander III was no less anxious to hide the existence of the Reinsurance Treaty. Himself a pan-Slav, he could predict the reaction of other pan-Slavs. Alexander signed the treaty only because it gave him a promise of German neutrality in case Austria provoked a war with Russia. Russia did not wish to fight Germany; certainly the Russian Army was not prepared to fight Germany and Austria together.
The Bismarckian system was now in place, a network of interlocking alliances, carefully balanced and kept in order by the master diplomat in Berlin. In Holstein’s metaphor, Bismarck was the ultimate railway yardmaster: “Our policy with its criss-cross of commitments15... resembles the tangle of tracks at a big railway station,” he wrote in 1887. “[Bismarck] thinks he can click everything into its proper place and hopes particularly that the greater the confusion, the more indispensable he is.”
Britain, the fifth of Europe’s Great Powers, stood outside Bismarck’s Continental system. This satisfied the Chancellor; he had no fear that England would engage itself in a Continental alliance which would upset his alignment of Germany à trois. Britain, he was convinced, never would enter into an alliance with Russia and the possibility of her siding with France seemed almost as unlikely. Nevertheless, before he signed the Austro-German Treaty of 1879, Bismarck considered offering England a German alliance. He proposed it to Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield and British Prime Minister, one evening after dinner during the Congress of Berlin. Disraeli, surprised, said that he was favorably disposed, but needed time to prepare Parliament and British public opinion. After returning to London, Disraeli discussed the matter with Count Münster, the German Ambassador, who wrote to Bismarck, “I am convinced that he is sincere.”
When, in March 1880, Disraeli’s Conservative government was replaced by a Liberal cabinet headed by W. E. Gladstone, talk of an alliance evaporated. Bismarck detested Gladstone. The Chancellor was always suspicious of the manner in which the English conducted diplomacy; its dependence on public opinion seemed to him absurd. When Disraeli and Salisbury were in power, this nervousness was soothed; they were practical, conservative men who would find a way for realism to triumph. But Gladstone, a hero to German liberals, was a moralist who preached that conscience had a role in domestic politics and international affairs. The Chancellor referred to the Prime Minister as “Professor Gladstone” and “that big Utopian Babbler.”16 Bismarck believed that Gladstonian morality, carried into diplomacy, led to murkiness, miscalculation, and bumbling, exemplified by England’s confusion during the Gladstone years as to whether her enemy in the east was Russia or Turkey. To defend Turkey, England had stood against Russia in 1877 and at the Congress of Berlin. But in the 1880 election campaign which led to victory, Gladstone had passionately denounced the Turks for their atrocities against the Bulgarian Christians. Turks, Gladstone had thundered, were “that inhuman exception17 to the human race.” Britain’s swing back and forth on issues like this made it harder for Bismarck to maintain his delicately balanced European system.
In addition, the Chancellor considered Gladstone’s government indecisive and ineffective in the overseas policy which most concerned Great Britain in the early 1880s: the occupation of Egypt. France, whose history in Egypt encompassed Napoleon’s disastrous campaign on the Nile and Ferdinand de Lesseps’ triumphant building of the Suez Canal, refused to give up its claims in Egypt despite the British occupation. The ensuing situation, in which England was embroiled in colonial conflict with France, was precisely the kind of confrontation on which Bismarck’s European system was based. England and France opposed each other; neither possessed an ally; one or both would turn to Germany for support.
In September 1882, Herbert Bismarck arrived in London to establish contact with prominent Liberal politicians and attempt to discover Britain’s ultimate purpose in Egypt. He was warmly received by British ministers and by London society; the Prince of Wales went out of his way to be cordial to the Chancellor’s son and proposed him for honorary membership in the Marlborough Club. Herbert was invited by Lord Granville, the Liberal Foreign Secretary, to Walmer Castle, Granville’s country seat, where the visitor spent several “very pleasant days18 discussing Egypt.” Although Herbert said that annexation by Britain “would be compatible19 with German interests,” Granville replied that England did not wish to possess Egypt and had not yet decided what to do. When the talk turned to alliances, Granville told Herbert: “England does not need an alliance20 with a European power and we do not pursue a policy of alliances. Even quite different circumstances than the present ones would never lead me to establish an alliance with a European Power.” Wherever he went, Herbert received thanks for German support in Britain’s Egyptian involvement. Sir William Harcourt, the Liberal Home Secretary, told Herbert, “We are uncommonly grateful21 to Prince Bismarck. Our being left a free hand in Egypt we owe... to Germany’s good will. We are all aware that at a particular moment Prince Bismarck could have upset the coach if he had chosen to.”
Encouraged by the talks with Herbert Bismarck, the Gladstone Cabinet was astonished by the next twist in Anglo-German relations. The German Empire in 1883 had no colonies. Most of the desirable regions of the globe had been seized before the Empire was founded. Now, only marginal territories were left, in the barren regions of South Africa and in the South Seas.
Believing that German security lay in a favorable balance of power in Europe, Bismarck had previously rejected all arguments in favor of colonies. Recognizing that a German drive for colonies could upset his carefully calibrated equilibrium, Bismarck had encouraged French colonialism to distract France’s attention from Alsace-Lorraine. If Germany were to compete with France for colonies, French hostility towards the Reich would be violently restimulated. Nor did Bismarck have any desire to compete with England in the colonial sphere. The British and German empires were fundamentally different political organisms. One was a cluster of states in Central Europe, welded into a powerful Continental empire. The other was a global scattering of people and territories, knit together by trade and sea power, with limited influence in peacetime on the continent of Europe, but unchallengeable on the seas. German trade flourished under the protection of the British Fleet; if colonial competition led to war with England, every German colony would be gobbled up in the first few weeks.
In the summer of 1884, to the bewilderment of British statesmen, Bismarck suddenly changed direction. For a short period, less than two years, colonies assumed importance and he wielded against England all the intimidating power of German diplomacy. Colonies were the usual symbol of international prestige; Britain, France, and Russia—all weaker in Europe than Germany—had colonial empires. To some Germans, colonies were more than a matter of pride. German merchants, bankers, and entrepreneurs sought markets for their capital and products outside Europe; shipowners and trading firms in Hamburg and Bremen argued that colonies would provide markets for goods and sources of raw material. Yet wherever they looked, they found a French or British flag. In 1882, the German Colonial League (Kolonialverein) was formed to lobby, through the press and public opinion, for acquisition of German colonies. Newspaper editors, professors, industrialists, and middle-class Germans in general enthusiastically supported the movement. The clamor for colonies rose in the Reichstag, and the Imperial Chancellor yielded, not because of a shift in his private belief, but because he saw an opportunity to quiet the pan-Germans and the Colonial League by taking advantage of Britain’s weakness in Egypt. And so, in the summer of 1884, the price was named: German support of Britain’s involvement in Egypt was to be paid for by British acquiescence in German colonial expansion.
In the spring of 1883, a Bremen tobacco merchant, F.A.E. Lüderitz, established a small factory and trading post at Angra Pequena, a coastal bay 150 miles north of the Orange River, which marked the northern boundary of Britain’s Cape Colony. Seeing no Europeans about, Lüderitz raised the German flag and, hoping for support, informed Berlin. The German government moved cautiously. In November, Count Münster, the German Ambassador in London, was instructed to ask whether Great Britain claimed to exercise sovereignty in that region. If the answer was yes, would Britain accept responsibility for protecting the lives and property of German subjects in the territory, thus exempting the Imperial Government from that obligation? The British government left the German inquiry unanswered for six months, first irritating, then infuriating Bismarck.
The cause of the delay in London lay in procedure and personalities. The German inquiry, an official communication from one European state to another, was properly addressed to the Foreign Office, where it came to the desk of the Foreign Secretary, Lord Granville. George Leveson-Gower, Second Earl Granville, was a gentleman who wished to give offense to no one. Although he was Leader of the Liberal Party in the House of Lords as well as Foreign Secretary, he was, in 1884, well past his prime. Nearly seventy, he suffered from severe gout, complained frequently that he had too much to do, and gave the impression to those around him that his memory was slipping. Granville, thus, was not a man to reach a quick decision. Furthermore, Granville and the British government had no idea that Bismarck was seriously interested in colonial expansion and considered the note merely a request to protect German settlers. The German Chancellor’s public pronouncements had opposed German colonies; he had communicated nothing in private to correct them. Once Granville focussed on the matter, he wished to accommodate Count Münster, but his path was obstructed by bureaucracy. Within the British Cabinet colonial matters were decided at the Colonial Office. Granville, therefore, had to consult Lord Derby, the Colonial Secretary. Derby was not at liberty to make a decision, for he in turn was required to consult the self-governing Cape Colony in South Africa. London might have no objection to a German foothold on the west coast of southern Africa, but Cape Town might have a different view. Indeed, a delegation of South Africans had already told Lord Salisbury, “My Lord, we are told22 that the Germans are good neighbors, but we prefer no neighbors at all.” Granville explained these intricacies to Münster, adding his “sincere regrets.” Bismarck impatiently sent Herbert to see the Foreign Secretary. Again, Granville turned up his palms, pleading goodwill and asking for time: “Neither my colleagues nor I23 have the slightest intention of obstructing German colonial aspirations and I beg you to say so plainly to Prince Bismarck.... If Germany pursues a colonial policy and opens barbarian lands to civilization and commerce we should rejoice at it.... The only representation which you can make against us is the slow progress of the negotiations; this happens owing to the independent position of our colonies which we cannot get over with the best will in the world.” Candidly, Granville grumbled to Herbert about the extra burden the matter had imposed on him. “It is very hard for me24 as I have so much to do that I cannot well enter into these colonial questions.” One solution, Granville suggested, would be for Herbert to discuss Angra Pequena “in my presence with Lord Derby25 since Derby is new at the Colonial Office. I will include his predecessor, Lord Kimberley.” Herbert, appalled at this confused, casual way of handling business, wrote to his father, “I replied to the noble Lord26 that I cannot attend a ministerial conference.”
Bismarck had already instructed Count Münster to demand of Lord Granville “why the right to colonize,27 which England uses to the fullest extent, should be denied us?” Now the excuses for delay seemed intolerable. London’s claim that the Cape Colony was an independent government was incomprehensible to a mind accustomed to orders flowing from the top. Colonies were colonies, not independent governments. “So long as they remain28 under the Queen’s sceptre and under the protection of the Mother Country... the game of hide and seek with the Colonial Office... is merely an evasion.” The Chancellor ordered Münster and Herbert not to speak to Derby at all on the subject, but to confine all their discussions to Granville. He began to think in terms of threats. “Our friendship can be of great help29 to British policy,” he reminded Münster, alluding to Egypt. “It is not a matter of indifference for England whether she has the good wishes and support of the German Empire or whether it stands coldly aloof.” He became more fierce: “If we fail to push our rights30 with energy,” he wrote to Münster, “we shall risk, by letting them sink into oblivion, falling into a position inferior to England’s and strengthening the unbounded arrogance shown by England and her colonies in opposition to us. We may be driven to contemplate a complete rupture.” Warned that he risked pushing Britain too far, he scoffed, “The English... have no reason at all31 for attacking us even if they are beginning to envy our industrial and commercial progress. The Englishman is like the dog in the fable who cannot bear that another dog should have a few bones, although the overfed brute is sitting before a bowl filled to the brim. An English attack would only be thinkable if we found ourselves at war with both Russia and France or did anything so utterly absurd as to fall upon Holland or Belgium or block the Baltic by closing the Sound.”
In March 1885, on his father’s instructions, Herbert pushed harder. The Liberal government was split and tottering, its prestige ruined by its failure to save Gordon at Khartoum. Accordingly, when Herbert went to see Granville, he felt empowered to be rude. It was his impression, he told Granville, that England deliberately stirred up trouble among her Continental neighbors and might even encourage war in order to “profit England32 by leaving her free to pursue her trading activities.” These words, Herbert gleefully reported to his father, “produced violent gesticulations33 and exclamations of annoyance from Lord Granville.” Herbert had gone too far. Sir Charles Dilke, a younger Liberal minister who was critical of Granville, was even more critical of the younger Bismarck: “Herbert Bismarck has come over again,”34 he wrote. “He wanted us to dismiss Lord Granville and Lord Derby... [a] gross and unwarranted interference in our home politics, thoroughly Bismarckian in character.”
Eventually, Britain acquiesced in Germany’s colonial acquisitions, not because of Herbert’s skill, but because Gladstone was determined not to quarrel. During a twenty-minute conversation with Herbert after dinner at Lord Rosebery’s mansion, Gladstone said that he was willing to go any lengths to meet Germany’s legitimate claims. He went further: “Even if you had no colonial aspirations,35 I should beseech you to go forward in this direction. I rejoice at your civilizing aspirations.” Such innocence and idealism were almost too much for Herbert; his report to his father was filled with contempt: “There is no point in discussing36 the foreign policy of a great country with Mr. Gladstone as he has no comprehension of it whatever.” Gladstone blandly assured the House of Commons that Britain welcomed with joy “the extension of Germany37 to these desert places.” Nevertheless, the heavy-handed behavior of the Bismarcks, father and son, made an unfavorable impression on Gladstone and his colleagues. When Gladstone returned a year later for a brief third term as Prime Minister, his Foreign Secretary, Lord Rosebery, warned the German Ambassador that “they must take care in Berlin38 of their style of communication which is apt to savor distinctly of menace.”
On June 8, 1885, the second Gladstone Cabinet resigned and Lord Salisbury formed a new Conservative government. Once more, British policy was in the hands of a man Bismarck trusted. The two statesmen quickly exchanged friendly messages. Salisbury wrote of his “lively... recollection of the kindness39 which your Highness showed me in Berlin in the years 1876 and 1878.” Bismarck replied, describing his pleasure in seeing “by your own words that our former personal intercourse,40 which I am glad to renew, has left with both of us the same sympathetic recollection.” Bismarck signalled his approval to everyone. “I value Lord Salisbury’s friendship41 more than twenty swamp colonies in Africa,” he said. The Chancellor’s new rejection of colonialism was as swift and absolute as his pounce on the issue had been a year before. “Here is Russia42 and here is France, with Germany in the middle,” he said to an African explorer. “This is my map of Africa.” In one of his final speeches to the Reichstag, he declared, “I am not a colonialist.”43
Behind Bismarck’s aberrant excursion into colonialism—along with the demands of German pride and desire for overseas markets—lay a domestic political motive: he wished to attack and neutralize the authority of the Crown Prince before Frederick became Emperor. The new reign could not be long postponed; in 1884, Emperor William I was eighty-six years old. Once on the throne, the liberal Fritz and his English wife were certain to choose their ministers from the liberal bloc in the Reichstag, giving Germany what the Chancellor contemptuously called “a German Gladstone ministry.”44 The colonial policy was a defensive stratagem. It stimulated patriotism and produced votes; it created an enemy whom Germans could blame for the shabbiness of their overseas possessions. Best of all, inflaming anti-British feeling in Germany weakened the liberals in the Reichstag and undermined the position of the Crown Prince. Frederick, as Emperor, would scarcely be able to follow a pro-British policy if, because of the colonial confrontation, most of his people hated England. Privately, Bismarck admitted his scheme. In the autumn of 1884, when the colonial dispute was at its height, Bismarck confided to Tsar Alexander III that “the sole object of German colonial policy45 was to drive a wedge between the Crown Prince and England.” And in 1890, after the Chancellor had fallen, Herbert Bismarck was asked how his father could have wandered so far from his anticolonialist views. Herbert replied, “When we entered upon our colonial policy46 we had to assume that the Crown Prince’s reign would be a long one with English influence predominant. To prevent this we had to embark on a colonial policy because it was popular and also conveniently adapted to be able to provoke conflict with England at any given moment.”
In sheer expanse of territory, Bismarck’s brief colonial adventure produced spectacular results: in scarcely more than a year, the Chancellor acquired new land surface five times the size of the Reich itself. South-West Africa (now Namibia), German East Africa (now Tanzania), Togo and the Cameroons in West Africa, a third of New Guinea, most of the Solomon Islands (renamed the Bismarck Archipelago), the Marshall and Caroline Islands in the central Pacific, and a share of the islands of Samoa came under the German flag. But by every measure other than size, the new German colonial empire was a disappointment. South-West Africa and German East Africa were mostly deserts and dry riverbeds, containing few raw materials to tempt even the hardiest explorers or entrepreneurs. In the end, they proved an embarrassment. By 1914, fewer than twenty-five thousand German citizens, including soldiers and naval detachments, were to be found in all the German colonies combined. The cost to the homeland was many times the profits. In 1889, Bismarck even tried to persuade the British government to assume sovereignty over South-West Africa because of the expense to Berlin. A large volume of German trade continued to flow overseas, but not to and from German colonies. In the twenty-five years before the Great War, millions of Germans emigrated, but they went not to the deserts of German Africa, but to Milwaukee, Minneapolis, and other cities and towns in the American Middle West.
In his last two years of power, Bismarck again suggested an Anglo-German alliance. In November 1887, soon after concluding the secret Reinsurance Treaty with Russia, the Chancellor wrote privately to Lord Salisbury. He described Britain, Germany, and Austria as satiated states; the danger to peace, he said, came from Russia and France. If Britain were to join Germany and Austria in a defensive alliance, peace would be permanently secured. Holstein was surprised and impressed by Bismarck’s move. “I know of no other case47 in which Bismarck addressed himself to a foreign premier in this direct form,” he said. “And that he should have taken this most unusual step when at the height of his power shows what crucial importance he attached to Lord Salisbury’s response.” Salisbury politely declined. Again, in January 1889, Bismarck sent Herbert to London to propose a formal defensive alliance among Germany, Austria, and England. Salisbury, understanding that the alliance was aimed primarily at France and that Britain would be required to prop up Austria in the event of war with Russia, again declined. Future Parliaments would not be bound by the acts of present Parliaments, he told Herbert, and therefore England did not enter into peacetime treaties of alliance. “Meanwhile,” he said politely of the offer, “we leave it on the table48 without saying yes or no. That is unfortunately all I can do at the present.”
Although stymied, Bismarck displayed rare good humor. “The preservation of Anglo-German goodwill is, after all, the most important thing,” he said on January 26, 1889. “I see in England49 an old and traditional ally. No differences exist between England and Germany. I am not using a diplomatic term if I speak of England as our ally. We have no alliance with England. However, I wish to remain in close contact with England.”
On February 6, 1888, the Chancellor introduced a new Army Bill into the Reichstag. By raising the age limit for reservists from thirty-two to thirty-nine, the Bill would add 750,000 men to the wartime strength of the German Army. Bismarck, standing before the hall packed with deputies, foreign ambassadors, and visitors, delivered an emotional, patriotic speech. Germany, despite her alliances, must ultimately rely on herself: “We no longer ask for love,50 either from France or Russia. We run after nobody. We Germans fear God and nothing else on earth!” The Reichstag erupted in cheering. Moltke burst into tears; Prince William of Hohenzollern, soon to be Kaiser, sitting in the gallery with his wife, applauded wildly. Four weeks later, on March 3, Bismarck appeared again at the Reichstag podium to announce the death of Kaiser William I. As he spoke of the sovereign whom he had made the most powerful monarch in Europe, the “Old Gentleman” whom he had served for twenty-five years, the Chancellor broke down. He attempted to continue, failed, and took his seat. To those watching, Bismarck’s breakdown was a more impressive tribute than anything he might have said.
Despite the tears shed at the old Kaiser’s death, Bismarck in 1888 was enjoying the rich fruits of a lifetime of achievement. His health was better than it had been for years. Herbert stood at his right hand, ably fulfilling a senior office. The Chancellor himself had finally managed to merge his own opposing desires: unchallenged power in the state and the life of a country gentleman. After Kaiser William II’s accession, Bismarck left Berlin in July, not to return until January. At Varzin, he slept late, rose and swallowed two raw eggs, and set out for a walk. Wearing a long black coat and black, broad-brimmed hat, he resembled a venerable clergyman. After dinner—if he felt inclined—he would look over state documents forwarded from Berlin. Everything must await the Chancellor’s approval—whenever he chose to give it. But why hurry? Everything—Germany, Europe, the young Emperor—all were fixed in a grand design, revolving with majestic precision in the balanced orbits he himself had long ago arranged. A lifetime of work and thought had gone into its creation. It should not be disturbed; certainly, not hurried.
Forty-four years’ difference in age separated the old Chancellor and the new Kaiser: William II was twenty-nine in 1888, Bismarck seventy-three. To Bismarck, accustomed to rule behind a screen of deferential references to a passive sovereign, the possibility of trouble with a man almost young enough to be his grandson never occurred. William II, like William I, would become an honored figurehead. Bismarck had known the young Kaiser all his life. He was aware of William’s impulsive self-confidence, his frenetic energy, his craving for flattery and applause. These could be managed. He also knew that William had an elevated view of his station in life and grandiose opinions as to his own qualities. These qualities in William, Bismarck had understood, could be not only tolerated but exploited. Through most of the reign of William I, the Chancellor had assumed that the threat to his power would come from Frederick. He had been prepared. A few years earlier, he had told the Crown Prince that he would remain in office under an Emperor Frederick on two conditions: the power of the Reichstag would remain limited and there would be no English influence on foreign policy. Frederick had agreed. To bolster his position, Bismarck had deliberately widened the breach between Prince William and his parents. William, born and bred in the authoritarian, militarist traditions of the Prussian Court, had been encouraged in his inclination towards autocracy. The Bismarcks, father and son, had drawn Prince William into their conservative fold, encouraged William’s rebelliousness, and attempted to sharpen, not soften, the antagonism between the restless, ambitious son and his liberal parents. When Frederick unexpectedly died, the Bismarcks had on their hands a personality for which they themselves were partially responsible.
During the first year of the new reign, the young Kaiser and the elderly Chancellor remained on good terms. William was delightedly preoccupied with the ceremonial pleasures of his new rank. Bismarck’s first complaints were minor and were not that his master was intruding on management of the state, but that, on the contrary, William was avoiding sustained and serious work. In February 1889, the Chancellor was heard to grumble that the Kaiser would rather attend a regimental dinner in Potsdam than a meeting with his ministers. General Count Alfred von Waldersee, Moltke’s successor as Chief of the Army General Staff, noted in his diary that when William was required to sit and listen to oral reports by his generals or ministers, the Kaiser could not hide his boredom and sometimes yawned openly. William immediately began to travel: to all parts of Germany, to St. Petersburg, to Vienna, London, Constantinople, and Athens. Bismarck resented these journeys and worried that the impetuous young ruler would disturb his carefully balanced diplomatic arrangements. “The Kaiser is like a balloon,”51 he said contemptuously. “If you don’t hold fast to the string, you never know where he’ll be off to.”fn2 William, for his part, let it be known that on these journeys he had listened to “too much talk of the Chancellor”52 and had heard the German Empire described as “the firm of Bismarck and Son.”
Gradually, the Chancellor realized that the new Emperor was no longer the fawning young Prince who had lit his pipe and complained about his parents. William was a versatile, ambitious, complicated man of considerable insecurity. This would require a relationship between Kaiser and Chancellor very different from that which had existed between William I and Bismarck. William II had grown up imbued with the lesson that Bismarck had taught: that although the German Empire was a constitutional state, he was also King of Prussia and had been granted this role—and that of German Emperor—by the Almighty. If God had put him in these places, no human, not even the founder of the Empire, should stand in his way. His education had stressed that ultimate political decisions—the decision for war or peace, the choosing of a Chancellor and Imperial and Prussian ministers—lay with the Emperor-King. William’s belief had been buttressed by a growing Hohenzollern mystique, taught in thousands of schools, preached from hundreds of university lecterns throughout the Empire. Bismarck, too, had encouraged William to believe in his own special genius and divine mission.
William was not a fool; he had understood that he was being used in the Chancellor’s game while his father was alive. He, in turn, had used Bismarck, extravagantly praising the Chancellor when he was at odds with his father and mother. But once he came to the throne, after his initial pleasure in dressing himself in glorious uniforms, hearing new forms of flattering address, inspecting troops, and riding in parades, he began to want more of the substance of power. He had no intention of playing only the passive role his grandfather had played. Soon enough, those opposed to the Chancellor found their way to the Emperor’s ear. Bismarck’s own subordinates, most prominently Holstein, leaked information in order to sabotage the Chancellor’s policies or his standing with the Kaiser. Years of resentment found distillation in poisonous remarks. William would never be a real emperor, he was told, so long as he was only a tool in the hands of the Imperial Chancellor. Count Waldersee, no friend to Bismarck, said pointedly that “if Frederick the Great had had such a Chancellor, he would not have been Frederick the Great.”
Sooner or later, a change was inevitable. Because Bismarck had no desire for change, it would be initiated by the Kaiser. The Prince would gladly have remained in office until his death; he loved power and genuinely believed that without him, Germany would be ruined. There was always Herbert, but Herbert still was young and unready. And Kaiser William, ten years younger than Herbert, had no experience at all. In fact, William felt his own inexperience and did not intend to dismiss Bismarck immediately. Rather, as the Chancellor aged, he meant gradually to take on more and more of Bismarck’s powers.
William’s relative lack of interest in politics during the first year of his reign lulled the Chancellor into underrating his former protégé. Instead of summoning his strength to solidify his control over the government and the Reichstag, Bismarck, sublimely overconfident, turned his back on Berlin, leaving Herbert to manage William. From Friedrichsruh or Varzin, the Chancellor conducted the government with little reference to the sovereign: if William asked a question or made a suggestion, Bismarck replied curtly, usually to observe how unwise or dangerous the Kaiser’s suggestions were.
William, although offended by the Chancellor’s prolonged absence and by his patronizing messages, did not challenge Bismarck on policy until May 1889. The first disagreement was over labor legislation. Bismarck, attempting to cope with the social repercussions of the rapid industrialization of Germany, already had given the German working class the most advanced social legislation in the world, including comprehensive social insurance and contributory old-age pensions. But he balked at restrictions on the age or sex of workers and on limiting the days and hours of work; forbidding a working man “to earn money on certain days54 and during certain hours” was “an encroachment upon personal freedom,” Bismarck said. William had personal reasons for opposing the Chancellor’s view. Although tutored in absolutism, the young Kaiser at the beginning of his reign craved the kind of popularity enjoyed by his father and grandfather. The means to achieve it, he decided, was to show that he was the Kaiser of all the German people. He would bind the workers to the crown with enlightened, cautiously liberal social and labor legislation; in this respect, laws protecting women and children from overwork and regulations on the hours and conditions of labor would be particularly popular and therefore useful.
The clash between these philosophies was precipitated by a strike of 170,000 Westphalian coal miners in May 1889. William, against the Chancellor’s advice, received a deputation of the striking miners and appeared unexpectedly at a Cabinet meeting to announce (in Bismarck’s words): “The employers and shareholders55 must give way; the workers were his subjects for whom it was his place to care; if the industrial millionaires would not do as he wished, he would withdraw his troops. If the villas of the wealthy mine owners and directors were then set on fire and their gardens trampled underfoot, they would soon sing small.” Bismarck argued that the mine owners were also subjects who had a right to their sovereign’s protection. The dispute festered and became a part of a larger crisis. In 1889, the seventy-four-year-old Chancellor was disinclined to make concessions to coal miners, factory workers, or Socialist deputies in the Reichstag. He believed that the time had come to deal forcefully with industrial turmoil and parliamentary upheaval. If the workers made trouble, the army would repress them; if the Reichstag misbehaved, he would simply dismiss it and turn the deputies into the street. To those who said that this coup d’état was unconstitutional, he would reply that he had created the constitution and could create another. Nor should anyone forget that he had begun his long service to the Prussian crown by ruling illegally for four years without the Prussian Landtag.
By January 1890, all parties in the Reichstag were in favor of legislation to restrict child labor, female labor, and work on Sundays. Bismarck refused to give way and William decided to act. On January 23, the Chancellor and all Prussian ministers were informed that the Kaiser had summoned a Crown Council (a session of the Prussian Ministry of State under the personal presidency of the King) for six P.M. on the following day. Herbert, charged by his father with learning the purpose of the Council, went to William and learned that the Kaiser intended to place his labor-reform plan before the ministers. Bismarck left Friedrichsruh, arrived in Berlin at two P.M., and summoned all Prussian ministers to meet in his office at three P.M. There, he told them what he knew of the Emperor’s intentions and asked them to neither accept nor reject the plan but to ask for time to think it over. Without exception, the ministers agreed.
At six P.M. the Crown Council assembled. William, unaware of the earlier meeting, explained his proposals. Instead of repressing socialists, he wanted to win them over. He had nothing extravagant in mind; simply limitations on hours, restriction of labor by women and children, inspection of factories to check on working conditions. He complained that German employers were squeezing their workers like lemons and letting old people rot on a dunghill. Unless something was done, he said, he would become the king of the beggars. William pointed out that the day of the meeting, January 24, was the birthday of Frederick the Great; three days later, January 27, his own birthday followed. If the ministers agreed quickly, the Kaiser could issue a dramatic birthday proclamation which would bring glory to the crown. Bismarck listened and later condemned “the practical aimlessness of the scheme56 and its pretentious and exalted tone.” In Council, he warned that “the increased expectations57 and the insatiable covetousness of the Socialist classes would destroy the kingdom.... His Majesty and the Reichstag were speaking of the protection of labor, but as a matter of fact it was a question of the compulsion of labor, the compulsion to work less.” The ministers spoke one by one. All, as they had promised the Chancellor they would do, said that the Kaiser’s proposals needed more time for consideration.
The Council turned to the repressive antisocialist bill before the Reichstag. William wished to moderate it by eliminating the state’s power to eject troublesome socialists from their homes. Bismarck opposed the Kaiser. He said that the sooner the government took a firm stand, the less bloodshed there would be, but that ultimately, these social questions would have to be decided by force. If the Reichstag rejected the antisocialist bill, he wished to go back to his beginnings and use force. He would tear up the constitution and abolish the Reichstag and universal suffrage. He talked confidently of industrial disturbances, strikes, and civil war. “The waves will mount higher,”58 he predicted; then “blood and iron” would rule again.
William pleaded that he did not wish to begin his reign by shooting his subjects. He appealed to the ministers, but they, not daring in Bismarck’s presence to challenge him, meekly supported the Chancellor. What the young Emperor might do if they failed to support him, they did not know. What Bismarck would do if they opposed him, they knew exactly: he would destroy them. There was little William could do, and he left the Council dismayed and angry. “They are not my ministers,”59 he said. “They are Bismarck’s.”
Bismarck had won a Pyrrhic victory. Between Kaiser and Chancellor, youth and age, the battle lines were drawn. The Kaiser had been humiliated; the old man had displayed his supremacy all too clearly. Bismarck sensed this; the following day a Chancellory official found him in tears lying on his office sofa. In the days that followed, he attempted to compromise. At the next meeting of the ministerial council, he agreed that the Kaiser should issue a proclamation declaring his interest in the welfare of the working class. William was also allowed to invite the European powers to an international conference in Berlin on labor and social problems.
William, only partially mollified, opened a campaign to win over the ministers one by one by receiving each individually every week to hear his report. This tactic alarmed Bismarck, who reacted by trying to control contacts between the Kaiser and the ministers more tightly than ever. He instructed Chancellory clerks to find an old decree, dating from 1852, which forbade Prussian ministers from speaking to the King except in the presence of the Minister-President. On February 18, 1890, Bismarck reissued this regulation. Prussian ministers were ordered to “cease all direct correspondence60 with His Majesty, with the Bundesrat and the Reichstag.... Draft proposals must be sent to me for approval. Similarly, oral declarations to the Bundesrat or Reichstag are not to be made without my express approval.” In his suspicion, the Chancellor was setting himself a Herculean task. At seventy-five, he would have to approve the Bundesrat agenda every day, chair all Bundesrat meetings, sign every order and bill in person, and approve every statement made by all government officials. Bismarck also refused to put his signature on the Kaiser’s labor-protection proclamation when it was issued. Secretly, the Chancellor attempted to damage William’s pet scheme, the international labor conference to be held in Berlin. He appeared uninvited at the French Embassy and proposed to the Ambassador that France should avoid the conference. “The Chancellor has unambiguously taken sides61 against his sovereign,” the Ambassador hurriedly reported to Paris.
On February 20, Bismarck’s coalition suffered heavy losses in elections for the Reichstag. Normally, Bismarck would have ignored this fact; as long as he possessed the confidence of the King-Emperor, he could continue to rule. Now, knowing that he was losing that confidence, Bismarck was in difficulty. He set about arranging new combinations in the Reichstag. At one point, he appeared before the Council and threatened to resign as Minister-President of Prussia and remain only as Imperial Chancellor. To his dismay, the ministers all agreed and one, Karl von Bötticher, the Interior Minister, made an eloquent farewell speech. Bismarck was enraged when, on March 9, the Kaiser summoned Bötticher and bestowed on him the Order of the Black Eagle, Prussia’s highest decoration, usually reserved for royal persons. William, in turn, was infuriated to learn that Bismarck had attempted to draw Ludwig Windthorst, leader of the Catholic Center Party, into a new Bismarckian coalition, without consulting or even informing the Kaiser. Windthorst was an old enemy of the Chancellor; the interview on March 12 was a measure of Bismarck’s desperation. Windthorst knew it; when he left the Chancellor’s office after a conversation of an hour and a half, he said, “I am just leaving the political deathbed62 of a great man.”
On March 14, William sent Bismarck a message that he proposed to call on him the following morning at the Foreign Minister’s (Herbert’s) residence. The Kaiser’s message failed to reach the Chancellor before he went to bed. On Saturday the fifteenth, Bismarck was awakened at nine o’clock with the news that the Kaiser was waiting for him at Herbert’s villa. Bismarck, accustomed to sleeping late, then having a cup of tea, a warm bath, and a massage in order to prepare himself for the day, hurriedly got out of bed, dressed, and walked in a cold rain through the garden of the Chancellor’s palace to Herbert’s villa. Both men were in a bad humor; William had waited twenty-five minutes for the Chancellor’s appearance; Bismarck complained that he had known nothing of the interview until twenty-five minutes before, when he had been awakened. “So?” said the Kaiser. “I gave the order yesterday63 afternoon.” The Chancellor told William what the Kaiser already knew: that Windthorst had called on him. “Well, of course you had him thrown out-of-doors,”64 William flared. How dare the Chancellor attempt to make secret arrangements with an opposition leader without the Emperor’s knowledge? Bismarck replied that, as Chancellor, he must be free to meet party leaders and said that he had received Windthorst as any gentleman had the right to receive friends in his home. “Not even when your sovereign commands it?”65 William demanded. “The power of my sovereign ends at the door to my wife’s drawing room,” Bismarck retorted so angrily that “it was all Bismarck could do to refrain from throwing an ink pot at my head,” William said later. William demanded that the reissued order of 1852 forbidding ministerial access to himself in the Chancellor’s absence be repealed. “How can I rule66 without discussing things with my ministers if you spend most of the year at Friedrichsruh?” he asked.
The conversation turned to Russia. William earlier had declared his intention of visiting Tsar Alexander III again soon; Bismarck now advised against it because, he said, he had received reports proving that the Tsar was unfriendly to the young Kaiser. Here, Bismarck played a trick. He picked up his dispatch case, fumbled with some papers, appeared to think better of it, and shoved them back into the case. William demanded to see the papers. Bismarck demurred, saying that it would be better if he did not. William insisted, reached out, and took the papers from the Chancellor’s case. He found himself reading a confidential dispatch from St. Petersburg which included a report that the Tsar had described the German Emperor as “un garçon mal élevé67 et de mauvais foi” (“a badly-brought-up young man of bad faith”). Bismarck watched implacably, as William, humiliated, returned the paper and stalked back to his carriage.
It was the end and both men knew it. Three times the Kaiser sent emissaries to Bismarck requesting either cancellation of the 1852 order or the Chancellor’s resignation. Bismarck refused and did not resign. On March 17, William sent a note, openly passed through departmental offices, complaining to Bismarck that he had not been informed of certain Russian troop movements: “I must greatly deplore68 the fact that I have received so few of the reports. You ought to have drawn my attention long ago to the terrible danger threatening.” Bismarck now had the excuse he sought: the Kaiser was interfering in foreign policy and talking of war with Russia. On March 18, he sent in his resignation. Two days later, the official gazette published the Kaiser’s letter of acceptance: “With deep emotion,69 I have perceived... that you are determined to retire from the offices which you have filled for many years with incomparable results. I had hoped that I should not be obliged to... part with you in our lifetime.... I confer upon you the dignity of Duke of Lauenburg. I will also have my life-size portrait sent to you.... I appoint you General Field Marshal [in the army].” Bismarck took these honors with cynical humor. The Kaiser had stated ill health to be a reason for the Chancellor’s resignation: “I am in better health70 than I have been in for years past.” William gave him a grant of money; Bismarck compared it to an envelope given to the postman at Christmas. As for the new dukedom: “I will use it71 when I am traveling incognito.” Foreign ambassadors were informed that the resignation was due to ill health.fn3 William telegraphed to Hinzpeter, “I am as miserable72 as if I had again lost my grandfather. But what God wills must be borne.... The position of officer of the watch on the ship of state has fallen to me. The course remains the same. Full steam ahead!”fn4
Bismarck left Berlin quickly. He filled three hundred packing cases with state papers and shipped thirteen thousand bottles of wine from the Chancellory cellar to Friedrichsruh. He paid a final call on his old enemy, the Empress Frederick. She asked whether there was anything she could do. “I ask only for sympathy,”74 he replied. On March 28, he visited the Royal Museum at Charlottenburg to lay roses on the grave of William I. “I have bid farewell75 to my old master,” he said. The roses were taken from the massive floral tributes which his own admirers had sent to him. On March 29, Bismarck departed the capital. Crowds lined the streets to the station; he was seen off by a guard of honor, Imperial and Prussian ministers, generals, and ambassadors. Only the Kaiser was missing. As his train rolled out of the station, Bismarck leaned back in his seat and said wryly, “A state funeral76 with full honors.”
Bismarck returned to Varzin, where he filled his diaries with the words “bored” and “tired.” Ahead, on the day of his resignation, stretched eight more years of life. After forty years in state service and twenty-eight years of supreme power, it was difficult for him to believe that this was the end. The German Empire was his handiwork; he had created it and administered it throughout its existence. It was inconceivable to him that it could function without him. For a long time, he dreamed of being recalled, of making a triumphal return. He talked of those whom he would dismiss when he was restored to power. His return would not result from any winning-over of public opinion, but because of an appeal from the Kaiser; this was the only path allowed by the constitution he had written. But the Kaiser had no such intention and remained aloof. In June 1892, Prince Hohenlohe, Governor General of Alsace-Lorraine, told the Kaiser that people feared that Bismarck would return. William laughed. “They can make their minds easy,”77 he said. “He will not return.”
Out of power, Bismarck remained a factor in German politics. He spoke freely about William II’s inexperience and volatility. For a while, Bismarck, on removing coins from his pocket, always turned the Kaiser’s likeness to the table—“so that I will not have to see78 that false face.” In 1891, he was elected by a Hanoverian constituency to the Reichstag. He never took his seat, explaining that he did not own a house in Berlin and was too old to live in a hotel. Eventually, he established an outlet for his views by contributing unsigned, but unmistakably authored, articles to Hamburg newspapers. These articles, widely read and often highly indiscreet, hammered at the foolishness of the Kaiser and the blunders of his successors. He worked spasmodically on his autobiography, spinning and respinning tales until his assistant, dutifully transcribing Bismarck’s words, had no idea where truth lay.
In May 1892, Herbert Bismarck became engaged to a Hungarian noblewoman, Countess Hoyos. Kaiser William telegraphed his congratulations and Bismarck decided to attend the wedding, which was to be held in Vienna. He requested an audience with Emperor Franz Josef. The new German Chancellor, however, worried about the possible ramifications of Bismarck’s appearance in Vienna and forbade the German Ambassador to attend the wedding. “We have not doubted79 for an instant that ovations will be prepared for the Prince in Vienna,” Caprivi wrote. “We cannot prevent that but we must avoid the participation of the German Embassy in festivities that will be accompanied by demonstrations where one cannot tell whether they are meant as more pro-Bismarck or contra-Kaiser William.” The Kaiser himself went further. In a private letter to Franz Josef he wrote: “He has planned an audience80 with you as the main event on his program. While most insolently ignoring my court and the Empress, he takes himself to Dresden and Vienna in order to parade himself there in the role of the grand old man. In the interest of myself and of my government, therefore, I should like to beg you as a true friend not to render the situation in the country more difficult for me by receiving this rebellious subject before he has approached me and said his Peccavi.” William’s letter made it impossible for Franz Josef to receive Bismarck and, during his stay in Vienna, the former Chancellor was ignored by Viennese society. No representatives of the Austrian court or the diplomatic corps attended Herbert’s wedding. Bismarck was enraged. On his return from Vienna, he was cheered by crowds along his route. In Kissingen and Jena, he made speeches, declaring that, in writing the Reich constitution, he had given too much power to the crown.
In 1893, Bismarck, then seventy-eight, fell seriously ill with influenza and shingles. The Kaiser telegraphed sympathetically and sent Count Kuno von Moltke of his staff to Varzin bearing a personal letter along with a bottle of the finest Rhenish wine from the Imperial cellars. While there, Moltke also invited Bismarck to visit Berlin to help celebrate the Kaiser’s birthday. News of Bismarck’s acceptance raised fears in many government ministries that the former Chancellor might be returning to power. At noon on January 22, 1894, the fallen Titan made his triumphal return to the capital. Prince Henry of Prussia met him at the station and embraced and kissed him. A squadron of Cuirassier Guards escorted him through streets lined with cheering crowds, under balconies crowded with nervous government officials. At the palace, he mounted the steps, leaning on Herbert’s arm. While the Kaiser received him, crowds outside repeatedly sang “Die Wacht am Rhein” and “Deutschland, Deutschland über Alles.”
Bismarck had come to Berlin hoping that this was the beginning of his return to power, or, at the least, expecting to be consulted about political affairs. Nothing of the sort occurred. Bismarck did not see Caprivi, the Chancellor; Marschall, the State Secretary for Foreign Affairs; or Holstein, the First Counselor of the Foreign Office. At the formal dinner that evening, Bismarck sat next to the Kaiser with Herbert and Bill nearby, but William kept the talk firmly on trivialities. Bismarck, it was said, was treated like visiting royalty, not as a source of political wisdom. On February 19, the Kaiser returned the visit by coming to Friedrichsruh. Again, there was no talk of politics.
Near the end of 1894, Johanna died quietly at Varzin. Bismarck left the estate and moved permanently to Friedrichsruh. The Kaiser arrived to celebrate his eightieth birthday in April 1895, a visit which produced a memorable photograph of Bismarck, standing awkwardly and leaning on his cane because of pain in his joints, still towering over the youthful Kaiser. On this birthday, Bismarck received many congratulations but the German Reichstag refused to participate. This surliness and ingratitude moved the French Ambassador—representing a nation which had little reason to honor Bismarck—to say, “Whatever the Germans may say or do,81 they will never be a great people.”
Bismarck’s move to Friedrichsruh marked a final separation from his Junker origins. He had long before risen above purely Prussian concerns for preserving caste privileges, agrarian interests, and the supremacy of the army. Now, close to the cosmopolitan prosperity of the great commercial port of Hamburg, he glimpsed the future of the Germany he had created. Bernhard von Bülow described how Bismarck at eighty was taken to see the port of Hamburg: “He stopped when he set foot82 on a giant steamboat, looked at the ship for a long time, at the many steamers lying in the vicinity, at the docks and huge cranes, at the mighty picture presented by the harbor, and said at last, ‘I am stirred and moved. Yes, this is a new age—a new world.’”
The quarrel between Bismarck and the Kaiser flared again in 1896 when the former Chancellor revealed in a Hamburg newspaper the previous existence of the secret Reinsurance Treaty with Russia and attacked William for refusing to renew it in 1890. William, infuriated, announced his intention to imprison Bismarck for treason in Berlin’s Spandau Prison. Prince von Hohenlohe, then Chancellor, talked the Kaiser out of it, pointing out that the minimum sentence for treason was two years’ hard labor, which would certainly kill the eighty-one-year-old Bismarck. Then would come the question of the funeral. The Kaiser certainly would wish to arrange and attend this event. “Would it be worthy83 of so great a monarch to have the funeral cortège of the first and most famous Imperial Chancellor proceed from a second-rate fortress such as Spandau?” William ended his threats.
In December 1897, the Kaiser came to Friedrichsruh for the last time “to see how long the old man will last.”84 William found his former Chancellor in a wheelchair. Bismarck, as host, tried repeatedly to begin a serious conversation. William evaded every political subject, listened absent-mindedly, replied with old barracks-room jokes from his regimental days in Potsdam. During the winter and spring of 1898, Bismarck declined rapidly, rarely left his wheelchair, and had difficulty breathing. He died on the night of July 30, 1898. William, cruising aboard the Hohenzollern on the North Sea, hurried back for the funeral. Bismarck had refused a state funeral in Berlin and was buried at Friedrichsruh. Herbert, who inherited the title of Prince on his father’s death, met the Kaiser at the station. They kissed on the cheek, but at the funeral William and his staff stood on one side of the grave, the family on the other. On June 16, 1901, a monument to Bismarck was to be unveiled in Berlin. Bülow, now Chancellor, gave the Kaiser the news. William said he would not come. When Bülow insisted that this insult was too great, William reluctantly consented. “Very well,85 if you insist, I shall come,” he said. “But only in a modest uniform.”
fn1 Italy was approaching, but never quite reached, full Great Power status.
fn2 Bismarck also correctly judged these early journeys as lacking in benefit to William II’s reputation. After the young Kaiser’s visit to St. Petersburg in the summer of 1888, Tsar Alexander III told an aide that his guest was “a rascally young fop53 who throws his weight around, thinks too much of himself, and fancies that others worship him.”
fn3 William telegraphed directly to his grandmother at Windsor Castle: “I deeply regret73 to inform you that Prince Bismarck has placed his resignation in my hands—his nerves and strength have given out.”
fn4 William’s nautical language, published on March 22, was probably the inspiration for one of the most famous political cartoons ever drawn. Appearing in Punch on March 29 and captioned “DROPPING THE PILOT,” it depicts Bismarck in mariner’s cap, jacket, and boots descending a ship’s ladder to a waiting rowboat while above on deck the Kaiser in crown and epaulettes leans languidly over the rail, watching.