Blood and Iron: The Rise and Fall of the German Empire; 1871-1918

This vivid fifty-year history of Germany from 1871-1918-which inspired events that forever changed the European continent-is the story of the Second Reich from its violent beginnings and rise to power to its calamitous defeat in the First World War.

Before 1871, Germany was not yet a nation but simply an idea.

Its founder, Otto von Bismarck, had a formidable task at hand. How would he bring thirty-nine individual states under the yoke of a single Kaiser? How would he convince proud Prussians,...