Customer Reviews

Bismarck

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Alan Palmer has written a very readable biography of Otto von Bismarck. He starts with Bismarck's family history and his parents. He covers Bismarck's early life, education, personal life and religious beliefs. Palmer also includes quotes from Bismarck and parts of his letters to show his thoughts. Palmers wrote this book to study how Bismarck's labyrinthine mind worked, and this book succeeds nicely and clearly.

This book works both on a scholarly level by describing and explaining Bismarck's politics and diplomacy, and on a layman's level by showing Bismarck's relations with his friends and family. Palmer alternates the high points and low points in Bismarck's political career, like the Schleswig Holstein crisis, the Luxemburg situation and the Drei Kaiser Bund with details of Bismarck's health. Palmer displays Bismarck's plans, both those that work and those that didn't in both politics and diplomacy.

Palmer concludes his book by shrewdly observing that Bismarck's " mastery of detail and skill at seizing and making opportunities enabled him, within nine years, to create a greater Prussia and call it Germany. Thereafter, his ability to maintain an intricate system of alliances and alignments imposed the balanced peace which the classical diplomats had sought in vain. Within Germany Bismarck failed in one important respect: he never attempted to build up a secure form of government in the Reich".

Palmer has included several maps, a collection of photographs, and an excellent

An excellent review of Bismarck's life. It does tend to glorify him though, for balance I suggest Crankshaw's Bismarck.