In this well-researched follow-up to his 2001 A Duel of Giants: Bismarck, Napoleon III, and the Origins of the Franco-Prussian War, David Wetzel argues that men make history and that an emphasis on “those in positions of leadership . . . makes the telling of what happened [in the Franco-Prussian War] intelligible, understandable, and, above, all rewarding” (pp. xiii–xiv). The book's chief protagonist is Prince Otto von Bismarck. His opponents are virtually everyone else, from the indecisive King of Prussia, William I, and virulently anti-French Chief of the General Staff, Helmuth von Moltke, to most of Europe's diplomats, the French political and military leadership, and the republican left. All the great powers play a role in making Bismarck's life more difficult: Austria-Hungary; Russia; Great Britain; Italy; even tiny Denmark, whose Maria Aleksandrova, the Danish wife of czar Alexander II, ostensibly influenced her husband, brother (King Christian IX of Denmark), and niece, the future Queen of England, to take an unfavorable attitude toward Prussia. Wetzel nonetheless suggests that through his genius, will, and perspicacity, Bismarck was able to triumph over these internal and external challenges and push through his revolutionary diplomatic vision.

After introducing the main players in chapters one and two, chapter three follows the efforts of rival powers to form a “League of Neutrals,” which, as Prussian victories mounted, began to view German preeminence as potentially more dangerous than French hegemony on the continent. This revolutionary change in diplomatic attitudes put pressure on the Iron Chancellor to secure the war's military and diplomatic denouement before other powers could intervene. To be sure, as detailed in chapter four, Napoleon III's Second Empire was already in the midst of collapse by the end of August. But this merely raised the problem, examined in chapter five, of how to convince the new French republican government to take the blame for Napoleon III's poor decision making and accede to Bismarck's terms, which included millions in indemnities and the cession of Alsace-Lorraine. While Wetzel emphasizes “the amateurism, the ignorance, and the emotional erraticism of the figures agitating for peace on the French side” (p. 108), it is important to recognize the difficult state of affairs in which the republican government found itself, faced with heavy Prussian demands on the one hand and a French population that could not believe how quickly its empire had disintegrated on the other. Here Wetzel likely underestimates the degree to which Bismarck's insistence on annexing Alsace helped to turn the tide of European opinion against Prussia and made it virtually impossible, even for French moderates in favor of peace, to negotiate an armistice.

The Prussian victory at Metz, punctuated by the October 31 insurrection in Paris, cleared the way for a new set of negotiations. Faced with an indignant Parisian left and encouraged by the first major French victory of the war a week later, the French provisional government refused to yield to Bismarck's demands. Anxious at the slow pace of negotiations, Bismarck's long-simmering differences with Moltke over military strategy now came to a head. While Bismarck rejected Moltke's demand for suspending negotiations until Prussia had won a “total victory” in the field, the latter was frustrated by Bismarck's obsession with arcane diplomatic considerations and ostensibly inhumane and impractical military tactics, including the Iron Chancellor's advocacy of besieging the civilian population of Paris and countering partisans (franc-tireurs) by “shoot[ing] and stab[bing] the French down to little babies” (p. 150). The author's tendency to identify with Bismarck produces some confusion here, as Bismarck's support for brutal measures is justified as saving lives in the long run while Moltke and the General Staff are portrayed as having a profound “lack of understanding” of the military and diplomatic situation due to the “simpleminded notion that a war of destruction against France was inevitable (or, in their case, desirable)” (p. 158). These are strong words for the architect of Prussia's surprisingly rapid, relatively bloodless victory over the greatest military power in Europe. In any event, Bismarck got his way, the siege of Paris commenced at the end of December, and the French accepted Prussian terms four weeks later.

Wetzel concludes, with only some exaggeration, by quoting Disraeli, who stated that the Peace of Versailles was “a German revolution . . . greater . . . than the French Revolution of the last century . . . There is not a diplomatic tradition which has not been swept away” (p. 213). The author also notes, rightly, the revolutionary impact of Prussia incorporating dozens of independent German states, whose existence helped to preserve the balance of power in Europe and whose Catholic and minority populations now became a destabilizing factor within a unified Germany. Nevertheless, Wetzel sees little fault in Prussian, or more specifically Bismarck's, military or diplomatic strategy. Indeed, he agrees with Bismarck that “French bitterness [would] exist in the same degree even if they came out of the war with or without cession of territory” (p. 214) and cites continued Franco-German antagonism after the return of Alsace-Lorraine in 1918 as proof. Independent of the fact that it was Germany, not France, that harbored (legitimate) resentment at its territorial losses after 1918––a chief cause of the Second World War, even as French revanchisme contributed to the First––there is circularity in the argument that both the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine and French enmity were natural and inevitable. After all, Bismarck and the Prussian General Staff agreed not to impose territorial demands on a defeated Austria only three years earlier, precisely to avoid long-term diplomatic enmities. This tendency to accept Bismarck's position uncritically is counterpoised by a persistent bias against the French, especially the republican left (“The violent ideological preconceptions of the Commune's leaders, their hatred of the capitalist world; the churlish delight they took in taunting and insulting not only the government of France but the government of other powers,” etc., p. 225). In short, Wetzel's account evinces little patience for those who failed to share Bismarck's point of view, an approach that, despite its partisanship, is well worth reading.