This is a revisionist work based on published primary sources and the pertinent secondary literature that straddles the border of popular and scholarly writing. Christoph Jahr's front matter offers no explanation of where his work fits in the historiography of either the Wars of German Unification or the Sonderweg, yielding the latter to “Golo Mann's judgment that the founding of the empire was a peculiar process in which ‘nothing can be clearly identified’” (295). Be that as it may, Jahr acknowledges that any discussion of German unification must recognize the roles played by monarchs and their soldiers. However, he brings into focus Anton von Werner's masterpiece of Prusso-German military art, Die Kaiserproklamation, noting: “reproduced hundreds of times in school books, it is the icon of the establishment of an empire. According to this painting, bearded, uniformed men brought about what generations before had failed to do” (7). He informs us that something is missing from the scene captured in Werner's painting and, in general, from the mainstream narrative of the Wars of Unification. “But it was not only a handful of aristocratic men in uniform who accomplished the founding of the empire,” continues Jahr. “Those who are missing in Werner's picture, the women, the civilians, the politicians, the poets, the peacemakers, the powerless, and the poor: they were not missing from the history itself. This book makes their voices heard” (7). For that reason, the roles of Bismarck and other Prussian decisionmakers are recognized but sidelined in Jahr's account.
Moreover, Jahr maintains that the unification of Germany did not occur in a vacuum. The Thirty Years’ War, the eighteenth-century Austro-Prussia rivalry, the French Revolution and Napoleon, the revolutions of 1848, the Crimean War, and the unification of Italy all contributed to the German achievement of unity in 1871. Jahr reminds the reader that the fierce Austro-Prussian rivalry gradually unfolded in a way that made national unification a concrete possibility. The fact that a “cabinet war between Austria and Prussia against Denmark” (39) arose in 1864 is due to a “disastrous combination of nationalistic zeal, cynical power politics, and a distorted perception of the balance of power” (75). The Austro-Prussian War likewise was fought as a cabinet war, in which Prussia's military success hung “by a thread” (119). “With the Prussians, it seemed to contemporaries that the new era arrived—whether one welcomed, demonized, or acknowledged it—with a shrug” (139).
The work then narrows its focus to the period from 1863–1864 to 1871. Jahr does not intend to answer “old questions, but to bring this distant time closer to us” so that we can learn from what it is saying to us (303). He notes that the war with Denmark over Schleswig and Holstein “was more than just a prelude to 1866 and 1870/71,” and that “1864 revealed everything that would shape the coming years—politically, socially, diplomatically, and militarily” (11). Yet, he again cautions the reader that “those who start in 1863/64 run the risk of continuing the Prussian-focused historiography and stylizing the three military trials of power with Denmark, Austria, and France into deliberately waged ‘wars of unification.’ But this is a fallacy, because nothing divided the Germans more than the wars of 1864 and even more so 1866, especially since both destroyed the existing German state. In the spring of 1870, ‘Germany’ was in some respects more torn than in the previous decades” (11). The author maintains that the events of 1863–1871 were not predetermined and could have unfolded along alternative story lines. Nationalist historians who celebrated Prussia's mission as the inevitable fulfillment of German history got it wrong.
Jahr argues that while a narrative of 1863–1871 should conclude with the establishment of peace between the new Germany and France, a survey of the legacy of this period should not be omitted. Founded in 1871, the German nation-state was seventy-four years old in 1945; like “the rest of Europe and much of the world, it was in ruins, physically, but, much worse, ethically, morally, and politically” (12). The author makes the case that because 1914, 1918, 1933, 1939, 1945, 1949, and 1989 followed 1864, 1866, and 1870–1871, the unification period needs to be examined with a much wider lens than that portrayed by Werner's painting. For Jahr, the origins of the empire contained the seeds of the catastrophes of the twentieth century. Moreover, Prussia sowed the seeds of destruction, as Jahr's subtitle indicates: Wie Preussen Deutschland Erzwang. The unintended “consequences of Bismarck's policy” include the “orgy of destruction during the World Wars” (74) and also the genocide of the Jews of Europe, all of which found their roots in the German empire.
“My view of the nation-state and especially of nationalism is critical,” admits Jahr. “The history of the founding of the German nation-state presented here is therefore not the story, but a story. Other perspectives are possible, even necessary. Looking back cannot provide answers to today's questions. But it helps us better understand these questions” (12). Although Jahr finds little in common between twenty-first-century Germany and the Germany of 1871, he maintains that there is a “general unsettling parallelism between the ‘unification processes’ of 1870/71 and 1989/90.” Both occurred as a result of a “technocratic act of accession” (299). To Jahr, the “malaise” left behind by the founding of the Kaiserreich (295) remains responsible for the “pains of unification” of 1989–1990 (300).
As historiography has moved from the hagiography of great men to postmodernism, so too has the portrayal of decisionmakers changed from leaders who achieved their goals through hard work, planning, and dynamism, to emasculated conjurers who constantly “developed and discarded ideas, forged and broke alliances, violated guarantees, [and] quickly discarded cleverly crafted plans. Chance often played a role, luck and bad luck” (11). Thus, for Jahr, these men must be stripped of their greatness and ridiculed in public education, to undermine any respect for them that still remains. Bismarck is introduced as having a “wooden voice” (7) and speaking “words of thunder” (8). Although Jahr recognizes Bismarck's central role in ending Austro-Prussian dualism in 1866 and achieving German unification in 1870–1871, he emphasizes that the Iron Chancellor viewed the idea of the nation as “nothing more than an instrument in his tool case with which he would restructure the European order” (178). That this rebuilding was successful was “not least” due to an “excess” of the fortunes of war (216).
In the end, Jahr wants us to understand that more reasons led to the founding of the Kaiserreich than just nationalism and the will of Bismarck. He seeks to address the modern and general antipathy for the founding of the German nation-state 150 years ago. His goal is to bring the complex series of events that led to the emergence of the empire closer to an audience that knows little about these events because “the memory of them has long been overlaid by the subsequent world wars and rests deeply sedimented at the bottom of the collective memory” (291). However, as is often the case when chronicling diplomacy and war, Jahr's presentation follows the military events of 1864, 1866, and 1870 that made possible the imperial proclamation in 1871. Although Jahr shifts the focus of his narrative away from Bismarck, Moltke, and Roon, he sometimes gets bogged down in the details of the Wars of Unification without providing proper context, which raises the question of why he decided to include such details. Jahr discloses the wars’ causes, the diplomatic environment, the strategies and operations, and the experiences of both the military and civilian population. As much as possible, he allows the contemporaries to speak by utilizing a variety of published sources, in particular letters, diaries, and journals.
As for original contributions, the book's final chapter examines the contrary images of the history of the Kaiserreich created both contemporaneously and subsequently. Its title, “The Spirit of Violence” summarizes the book's main argument: that the creation of the empire established violence as a norm in German history that prevailed until 1945. In addition, Jahr examines the event of the founding of the empire over the longer term by looking at the very different cultures of commemoration and remembrance in the states involved in the Wars of Unification. Lastly, Jahr's emphasis on Bismarck's economic policy, the success of the Prussians in developing their economy faster than their rivals, and the views of the economy by Marx and Engels are presented in the short but important chapter “Armaments and Politics.” Jahr quotes Rudolf Löwenstein, who had prophesied in 1862 that German unity would be established “not through ‘iron and blood,’ but rather through iron and coal” (94).
Blut und Eisen is a multifaceted, thought-provoking book. Jahr connects the dramatic events of the 1860s with the great trends of the time and the perspective from above with experiences from below. The description of the military events remains tight and clear. Jahr covers much ground in a well-written, handsome book.
