S04E14: Otto von Bismarck, the Iron Chancellor and the Second Reich

“The Great questions of the day will not be settled by means of speeches and majority decisions but by blood and iron.” A Prussian noble by birth, Otto von Bismarck used political cunning a brute force to shake 19th century Europe to its core. Wholly committed to diplomacy at the point of a gun, Bismarck unified the disjointed states of the former Holy Roman Empire into a unified state known as the Second Reich. While he remains the picture of conservatism in the 21st century and a hero of the German people, questions remain about Bismarck’s motives; his achievements however are without equal. On this episode we discuss Otto von Bismarck, “The Iron Chancellor."