Otto von Bismarck: A Life from Beginning to End

Otto von Bismarck was not the kind of man who waited for history to happen. He made it happen, and he didn't much care whose feelings got hurt along the way.

Bismarck was the pragmatic Prussian statesman who engineered Germany creation as a unified nation through Realpolitik—the unsentimental art of doing whatever it takes to get results. While other politicians speechified and moralized, Bismarck was already three moves ahead, turning all of Europe into his personal chessboard. He made allies, manipulated kings, and baited emperors just so he could maneuver them into position to wage war on them later. Where others saw diplomacy as a matter of trust and principle, Bismarck saw it as a tool to be picked up and discarded as the situation demanded.

It was his cynical disposition that allowed him to make and break alliances whenever politically suitable, and he played this game masterfully all the way to Germany's unification under his rule. Few could have threaded the political needle the way Otto von Bismarck—the Iron Chancellor—did. This book follows both his life and his unmatched political career.