It is a bizarre state of affairs that one should write so much about German history and have so little to say about social and economic development. This is partly due to the axiomatic bias of this essay, which is weighted toward ideological matters. It is also no doubt the result of the plain fact that I am not equipped to write an economic history. Nonetheless, the matter cannot be got around so easily. Ideology and the struggle between the various notions of Germany on the one hand, and the changing empirical reality on the other, mean that the latter has to have its place if only because should it be, for whatever reasons, ignored, the former will not attain its true significance. Furthermore, there is a question here of fundamental importance. It was Bismarck, of course, who informed the Germans on coming to power on September 30, 1862 that it is “not by speeches and majority resolutions that the great questions of the time are decided.” And, we might add on his behalf: nor are they decided by poetry, philosophy, and, quite possibly, the books— no matter how popular—of historians. His subsequent triumph, accomplished in just under ten years, was nothing less than a confirmation of his own Weltanschauung. He was not to repeat—as he promised he would not—the mistakes of 1848 and 1849, when he saw the Prussian monarchy wobble and watched while the liberal Frankfurt Parliament spent its time pontificating. Above all, he saw how it had failed to grasp the brief historically opportune moment. Bismarck, from the opposite political camp, was always ready to grasp the moment opportunistically.

So if we are now confronted by Bismarckian “blood and iron,” the former quality has nothing to do with the romantic and racial notions of German blood and that allegedly high spiritual quality with which it has been associated hitherto. It has to do with that which is spilled on the battlefield and, quite possibly, in the foundry.