Five Brothers and a War

History—1800 to 1900 AD

Irrespective of politics, the effect of having a common enemy on popularity is undeniable. Notice what happened to U.S. President George W. Bush’s approval rating up to, and then after, the terrorist attacks in the United States on September 11, 2001. He was hovering in the 50-60% range up to the attacks, but after 9/11, it peaked at an unheard of 92%. The blue line represents approval, the red disapproval, and the green represented people who just didn’t know.

Knowing the effect of having a common enemy, both Bismarck and Hitler manufactured common enemies in order to gain the political advantage they needed to gain power. Bismarck officially unified Germany by declaring the Second Reich and crowning Wilhelm as Kaiser (literally Caesar or emperor). Not only that, he did this at Versailles, for 200 years the symbol of French power and now the symbol of its humiliation. This newly unified Germany would become an economic superpower by rapidly industrializing. For example, German steel production doubled every decade between 1870 and 1910, even passing British steel production after 1900. Both Prussia's treatment of France and its unification and industrialization of Germany would upset the balance of power and trigger a system of interlocking alliances that kept Europe on a knife-edge of readiness for a war that nearly everyone expected to break out. That war, World War I, would be the beginning of the end of European supremacy. The Treaty of Versailles, ending World War I, was fully intended to rub Germany’s nose in their defeat, precisely as Germany had done to France, also in Versailles. Making the political situation in Europe a powder keg was the extreme inter-relationships between nations, which often occurred through the royal families extant at the time. It was important that royalty only marry royalty to preserve the supposedly superior royal blood lines. Often first cousins married each other to accomplish this. And more often than not, marriages were arranged in order to effect political ends.

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Five Brothers and a War

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