rise-and-fall-of-the-third-reich-william-shirer-pdf

86 THE RISE AND FALL OF THE THIRD REICHthat is, of the Junkers, the Army and the crown – and make Prussia, as againstAustria, the dominant power not only among the Germans but, if possible,in Europe as well. ”Germany looks not to Prussia’s liberalism,” he told thedeputies in the Prussian parliament, ”but to her force.”Bismarck first built up the Prussian Army and when the parliament refusedto vote the additional credits he merely raised them on his own and finallydissolved the chamber. With a strengthened Army he then struck in threesuccessive wars. The first, against Denmark in 1864, brought the duchies ofSchleswig and Holstein under German rule. The second, against Austria in1866, had far-reaching consequences. Austria, which for centuries had been firstamong the German states, was finally excluded from German affairs. It was notallowed to join the North German Confederation which Bismarck now proceededto establish.”In 1866,” the eminent German political scientist Wilhelm Roepke oncewrote, ”Germany ceased to exist.” Prussia annexed outright all the Germanstates north of the Main which had fought against her, except Saxony; these includedHanover, Hesse, Nassau, Frankfurt and the Elbe duchies. AH the otherstates north of the Main were forced into the North German Confederation.Prussia, which now stretched from the Rhine to Koenigsberg, completely dominatedit, and within five years, with the defeat of Napoleon III’s France, thesouthern German states, with the considerable kingdom of Bavaria in the lead,would be drawn into Prussian Germany. 121Bismarck’s crowning achievement, the creation of the Second Reich, cameon January 18, 1871, when King Wilhelm I of Prussia was proclaimed Emperorof Germany in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. Germany had been unified byPrussian armed force. It was now the greatest power on the Continent; its onlyrival in Europe was England.Yet there was a fatal flaw. The German Empire, as Treitschke said, was inreality but an extension of Prussia. ”Prussia,” he emphasized, ”is the dominantfactor . . . The will of the Empire can be nothing but the will of the Prussianstate.” This was true, and it was to have disastrous consequences for the Germansthemselves. From 1871 to 1933 and indeed to Hitler’s end in 1945, thecourse of German history as a consequence was to run, with the exception ofthe interim of the Weimar Republic, in a straight line and with utter logic.Despite the democratic facade put up by the establishment of the Reichstag,whose members were elected by universal manhood suffrage, the German Empirewas in reality a militarist autocracy ruled by the King of Prussia, who wasalso Emperor. The Reichstag possessed few powers; it was little more than adebating society where the representatives of the people let off steam or bargainedfor shoddy benefits for the classes they represented. The throne had thepower – by divine right. As late as 1910 Wilhelm II could proclaim that theroyal crown had been ”granted by God’s Grace alone and not by parliaments,popular assemblies and popular decision . . . Considering myself an instrumentof the Lord,” he added, ”I go my way.”He was not impeded by Parliament. The Chancellor he appointed was responsibleto him, not to the Reichstag. The assembly could not overthrow aChancellor nor keep him in office. That was the prerogative of the monarch.Thus, in contrast to the development in other countries in the West, the ideaof democracy, of the people sovereign, of the supremacy of parliament, nevergot a foothold in Germany, even after the twentieth century began. To be sure,