A lesson from 19th Century Prussia?

At the end of the Second Franco-Prussian war, Germany (at that time, the North German Confederation, led by Prussia) was in a strong position. Awash with looted French gold and a proven military power, the Confederation morphed into a full Empire, and with some justification. Yet, the path it took next demonstrate parallels with the course of the UK now.

The introduction to this moment comes with Bismarck, the Iron Chancellor, leading a cultural revolution to seal his accomplishment. He radicalised Protestant Germans with a strongly anti-Catholic narrative, to weaken the position of the Catholic Church in society and replace it solely with the Prussian state. There was also a great economic crash as the French loot finally and inevitably ran out.

The first great error was alienating international allies in order to boost domestic popularity. Bismarck was starting to face difficulties at home and hoped that prompting talk of war would encourage people to rally around his leadership. To this end, in 1875 he used the press to suggest that war with France may be on the horizon. This backfired completely as it prompted France, Britain and Russia to come together in opposition to Germany.

The next mistake was to let a desire for Prussian dominance in Germany drive decision-making. Pan-slavic nationalism was threatening to unmake the Austro-Hungarian Empire. This would likely have led to an influx of German Catholics and the arrival of a German monarchy. Bismark was scared that Prussia would lose its position of privilege. To stop this he formed the Dual Alliance, helping keep Austro-Hungary afloat. This Dual Alliance had the dangerous consequence of further tying together Russia and France against Germany, for France wanted to retake Alsace-Lorraine from Germany, while Russia wanted territory in the Balkans from Austria. 

The other, domestic effect, was that Bismarck had effectively completely dropped the cultural revolution and left German Protestants in the lurch in order to create this alliance with Catholic Austria. While anti-Catholicism was natural to these people, it was anti-Semitism that was to be forged into a full ideology. A dual narrative was constructed, that (English/American) Jews were in positions of power, controlling the banks and the press, while (Polish) Jews were breeding in large numbers, flooding Germany with beggars and criminals. Some candidates ran on this anti-Semitic platform in elections to the Reichstag, winning 16 seats. These 16 alone could achieve little, but the much bigger Conservative Party was worried its power based was being eroded and so responded by adopting anti-Semitism into its official policies. 

Later, to try to reverse his fortunes, Bismarck tried to convince Russia and France to turn on Imperial Britain instead. Yet the wave of domestic anglophobia that he encouraged did not have the desired effect and succeeded only in alienating Britain further, a country that was seen to be a natural ally only a few years earlier, and encouraging a stronger alliance between the US and Britain against German colonial ambitions.

With this tangled web now in place, Bismarck was possibly the only person who maybe could have rescued Germany out of, what may now seem to us, the inevitable road to WW1. For Bismark was one of the few in power now who realised that German military power was not invincible and that the previous successes had taken his diplomacy as much as knowledge in battle. Unfortunately, when Willhelm II took power, he wished to rule as a true monarch and dismissed Bismark from his post. 

Germany was left riven by xenophobia and anti-Semitism, it was economically weakened, surrounded by hostile countries on all sides, and many of its leaders were convinced it was invincible and that its military strength could see through any challenge.

So to resume:

1. A country, strong domestically and respected internationally.
2. A radicalised population and an economic crash.
3. Political leaders alienating allies in order to try and secure domestic popularity.
4. The need for one region to dominate the state leading to poor decision-making at home and abroad.
5. Pandering rather than confronting extremists, based on fear of losing any power (who had been born of previous radicalisation).
6. Further isolation after failed attempt to divide and rule and possibly radicalising domestic population further.
7. The country, convinced of its own invincibility and natural place in the world, willingly goes down the path to disaster and ruin.

No one is seriously saying that the UK is heading towards WW3. For one, the specific delusions of 19th Century Prussia and 21st Century UK are not the same and so would not lead to the same mistakes. But such delusions will lead to serious mistakes and perhaps history could be showing us an example to learn from, rather than follow.

Amendment: In discussing this, Alexander Clarkson, a lecturer at King's College London, made the good point that where Prussia here was a rising power going global, the UK is a former world power that has largely been declining in individual power. He explained that this would have an important impact on the power dynamics. I agree and suggest it would, therefore, be wrong to try to use this comparison to predict the outcome of the UK's current trajectory other than in the most general ways (e.g. more aggressive on the international stage). The purpose of this article then is not to try and use comparative history as a means of prediction, but to highlight how easily we can repeat mistakes in history and how often these patterns recur.