When the Reich was established in 1871 it seemed superfluous to pursue the question of whether the German nation-state would then have to be established and if so, whether under this form. Bismarck's state appeared to contemporaries and to two subsequent generations as an inevitable historical necessity, with people generally inclining towards Hegel's dictum about the Rationality of the Real, of things as they are and, moreover, towards the tendency since 1871 (mocked by Jacob Burckhardt as the ‘Victorious German gloss on history’) to consider the nineteenth century as a providential oneway road from the old Reich to the Second Reich. Was there not a lot to be said for this view? Were the Germans not simply catching up with what most European nations had long ago put behind them – a ‘delayed nation’? Did not the power of growing national awareness as the decisive mass ideology speak out as much for Bismarck's solution to the German question as did the process of economic modernisation, and the development of economic structures? Should the question of historical alternatives be posed at all?

Yes, it must be posed, since it is only by reconstructing past possibilities and opportunities that teleological and fatalistic historical clutter can be dispensed with and a proper assessment of actual historical developments be made. Seen from the perspective of a political observer prior to the unification of the Reich, what actually happened was only one of many possible series of events and maybe not even a very likely one.