Top Highlights

• The overwhelming flaw in the constitution of the German Empire was that it was designed too closely to meet the needs and accommodate the talents of specific personalities. Fitted smoothly to the qualities of Bismarck and William I, it made the Chancellor the most powerful man in the empire. But, constitutionally, the Chancellor required the absolu...
• Bismarck never exchanged ideas; he gave orders.
• At their first meeting, the Chancellor said roughly, “I don’t like questions.” “Then get a veterinarian,” Schweninger replied. “He doesn’t question his patients.”
• he considered war a clumsy way of settling international disputes. It took control away from him and placed it in the hands of the generals, whom he distrusted. “You know where a war begins but you never know where it ends,” he said. The subsequent restless, expansionist policies which dominated the German Empire under William II played no part in ...
• On this birthday, Bismarck received many congratulations but the German Reichstag refused to participate. This surliness and ingratitude moved the French Ambassador—representing a nation which had little reason to honor Bismarck—to say, “Whatever the Germans may say or do, they will never be a great people.”