The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Review
Blood, iron and one wise French child
Both politicians and hoi polloi star in a smart study of Bismarck’s role in the Franco-Prussian War
BISMARCK’S WAR:
THE FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR AND THE MAKING OF MODERN EUROPE by Rachel Chrastil
512pp, Penguin, T £30 (0844 871 1514), RRP£30, ebook £12.99 “Picture to yourself,” a battlefield observer wrote in August 1870, “a continuous wall of smoke... a column of dust which darkened the sun.” The Franco-Prussian War had begun in July, and the “eerie sound” of machine-gun fire was heard in a European war for the first time. Troops travelled by train; news reports were telegrammed around the globe. The Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 was remarkably modern, and instrumental in creating Europe as we know it today, shifting balances of power, ushering in the Third Republic in France, and creating a unified Germany.
This conflict was arguably orchestrated, and certainly exploited, by Otto von Bismarck, ministerpresident of Prussia, with more or less that latter intention – to shift the balance of power and create a German nation-state. According to his speech of September 30 1862, the questions of the day wouldn’t be solved by talking, but “by blood and iron”. He believed that unity would come by forging new bonds through the shared struggle of a common war. Sure enough, when the smoke settled, Germany was unified and in possession of AlsaceLorraine – and the map of Europe had been redrawn. Bismarck’s War by Rachel Chrastil, professor of European history at Cincinnati’s Xavier University, tells a vivid and informative story of these events and their consequences.
Historians have frequently argued about the role of the FrancoPrussian War in paving the way for the rise of Hitler and the Third Reich; Chrastil makes a subtler and more compelling argument, that the conflict was a “bridge” between the Napoleonic Wars and the First World War. Contemporary observers, as she relays, made similar observations. The French newspaper Le Constitutionnel reported jubilation in the streets of Paris when war was declared in July 1870, with people crying “vive la guerre”, but a child (supposedly) replying: “If guerre means killing, and vive means living, how can you say ‘live Death’?” The correspondent mused: “Is it out of the mouth of this ‘babe and suckling’ that the philosophy of the 20th century is foreshadowed?”
Such “foreshadowing” can be seen throughout Bismarck’s War. There are hints of trench warfare on the horizon, when we hear that the usual defences against enemy fire aren’t enough – “not in 1870”. Chrastil notes an anticipation of “shell-shock”, too, in the contemporary recognition that this war had caused significant and widespread psychological trauma in soldiers and civilians alike.
Chrastil illuminatingly describes the Franco-Prussian War as “a war of emotions”. And it makes sense that a conflict intended to create a sense of national unity would arouse strong feeling. Crown prince Friedrich Wilhelm (the future Friedrich III), on taking leave of his family to go to the front, writes about “sharing the same pang of parting with all [his] married fellow-countrymen”. Feeling, and feeling in common, was part of the point of a war in which new identities, allegiances and enmities were being formed.
Bismarck’s War calls on many witnesses to tell this story, from famous names to ordinary civilians and soldiers; it quotes extensively from correspondence and diaries. Dietrich von Lassberg, a soldier from Bavaria and diligent journal-keeper, is turned to throughout. Such frequent glimpses of his life – he says goodbye to his family, his boots rub, he wonders what the French think of his presence beside a statue of Joan of Arc – make it easy to be invested in his story. His first entry is excited: “War! War with France!” Later, upon receiving his first letters from home after his brother’s death, he records only “___________”. The idea that some things are unspeakable or unrelatable comes through repeatedly. “I have neither the power nor heart to describe what we saw there,” a British observer reported. “You must see it yourselves to realise it in all its horrid truth.”
Bismarck himself, however, often feels curiously vague. His role is shown to be pivotal, but he still doesn’t seem a main character. Perhaps this is partly because he often seems to pull strings behind the scenes. His role in the “Ems Telegram”, which provoked France into declaring war, or in the “Kaiser Letter”, in which Wilhelm, king of Prussia, was asked to become German emperor, both see him subtly shaping events from the shadows. When Napoleon III surrenders, Wilhelm consults with Bismarck, Moltke and Friedrich Wilhelm – but “Bismarck dictates the reply”.
This handling also brings to mind the recent controversy around the restoration of Bismarck’s imposing monument in Hamburg. In 2021, protests erupted against memorialising a figure linked to nationalism and colonialism; the Hamburg ministry of culture and media held a series of public seminars in response, posing the question: “Bismarck. Bismarck? Wer wird hier eigentlich geehrt?” (“Bismarck. Bismarck? Who is actually being honoured here?”) The Bismarck who brought Germany together, or the Bismarck who waged wars and expanded an empire? Chrastil’s compassionate and thought-provoking history does justice to both sides of this legacy, the great statesman’s achievements tempered with their human cost.