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Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600-1947

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Rich in detail, Christopher Clark's new book Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia 1600-1947, is a welcome addition to the multitude of histories covering central Europe. Clark brings to life an era of Prussian history that is little known aside from the 19th and 20th century Kaisers and this expansive history is a fine piece of research.

Clark analyzes the transformation of the Prussian empire from its small Brandenburg origins to the dominant European power it became. The book covers all the major rulers from the Great Elector to Frederick the Great to Kaiser "Willy", and examines in detail the social, political, economic and military issues that played such a part in the development of Prussia. Where Clark especially shines is the detail of the empire's early years with the Great Elector and his two successors. In this era Prussia gained extensive swaths of territory through alliances and marriages, even as it went through internal and religious strife at home. Clark has clearly done his homework, scouring through dusty archives and examining in multiple languages the papers of the empire, most notably the Political Testaments (a letter of sorts to the next King) of the early Kings. Clark examines the successes of the Prussian military machine, with its strength of the canton regimental system, and the growth of the civil service and judiciary. The political maneuverings between Prussia, France, England, Russia, and Austria make for fascinating reading, with Prussia somehow managing to come out ahead more often than not (conversely, Austria managed to always find a way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory).

This is a large book, and takes a while to get through. Clark's writing style is fairly fluid, rich with detail, but the structure of the book is more thematic as opposed to linear, at least in the early chapters. For example, the clash of Lutheranism and Calvinism in the early empire spanned many decades and three different rulers, with the text jumping back and forth between the years. After a few chapters, it's hard to keep focus on who is ruling and what territory is gained, but it does get better as you get deeper into the book. This however, is a minor fault and may be more based on my writing preferences rather than any fault of the author's. Overall a very solid book and a nice addition to your history shelf. Recommended.

A.G. Corwin
St.Louis, MO

Christopher Clark begins his survey of Prussian history with the death of his protagonist - the State of Prussia - at the hands of the Allied powers after WW II. He then proceeds to develop the reasons for that destruction. In doing so, he follows Prussia's growth from its swampy Brandenburg heartland to a continental power and threat to world peace. The story of this rise and fall has value for students of strategy and national security, as well as armchair historians interested in modern Europe.

Strategists will recognize many facets of their discipline throughout this well-documented book. The Hohenzollerns, Nuremberg burgraves, purchased Brandenburg in 1417 for prestige. Burgrave Frederick paid a king's ransom in gold to become one of seven electors of the Holy Roman Emperor. As electors, the Hohenzollern were influential among the 300-odd sovereigns owing fealty - if not always paying loyalty - to the Habsburg emperor in Vienna. The position - and Hohenzollern ambition - eventually led Prussia to contend with Vienna for leadership of the German nation. Success came in 1871 - and meant the elimination of Prussia as an independent state. Along the way, Prussian rulers developed the tools of state necessary to match their ambition. The Great Elector played the game of diplomacy well, protecting his non-contiguous realm from encroachment by the great powers while strengthening it economically with Protestant immigrants. Frederick William II, the Soldier King, built a formidable army and a bureaucratic and economic structure to support it. His son, Frederick the Great, used that army to boost Prussia into the ranks of great powers.

The student of national security will learn how Frederick's successors squandered his gains. They allowed the army and its supporting structures to ossify. Poor diplomacy and failure to ally with Austria and Russian against Napoleon led to defeat and occupation. Timid King Fredrick William III recognized that he could retake his kingdom only after massive reforms. Fortunately, he was blessed with a remarkable generation of administrative and military reformers. Professor Clark recounts the struggles of Hardenberg, Stein, Gneisenau and others in rebuilding the Prussian state. Their reforms ranged from education to agriculture to the bureaucracy, economics and citizenship. These efforts yielded a reconstituted Prussian army of citizen-soldiers - and an allied victory at Waterloo.

The armchair historian will find more than the machinations of kings and generals in their quest for power. Clark sets each epoch into cultural context. The Prussian subject is here - the French Huguenot, the east Elbian peasant and independent-thinking Rhinelander. Great movers and shakers are here as well. In addition to the Napoleonic-era reformers are the Bismarcks, Hegels and Fontanes. Above all, Clark gives us the land and its people - the true underpinning of an agrarian society developing into a modern industrial power.

Clark's final chapters chronicle the cooption of the Prussian identity - already subsumed by the German Reich in 1871 - into a backdrop for Nazi propaganda. The end result is a Prussia, stripped of its identity, destroyed by war and occupied by the unsympathetic Allies. It ceased to exist as a political entity by Allied decree in 1947. All that remained were gutted buildings, buried monuments and Brandenburg - soon to be a province in the Soviet Union's East German satellite.

Clark has wriiten an interesting book about the history of Prussia in which he argues that Prussia has been misunderstood as a reactionary militaristic state when in reality it was the most progressive of the German states. Throughout the eighteenth century the Prussian government would protect small farmers from abusive aristocratic landowners and also educate the Prussian peasantry. This legacy of reforms would continue throughout the nineteenth century with a nationalized health insurance program and a state pension system. Moreover the Prussian state was tolerant to various ethnic groups such as Poles and Jews since there was no such thing as Prussian identity because Prussia included Catholics from the Rhineland and Protestant Poles in East Prussia. Clark contends that the Prussian idea of an enlightened cosomopolitan Prussian state dissapated after the German wars of Unification and the nationalist idea that stressed a racial notion of the nation took over. In the closing chapters of the book Clark seems to blame Nazism on the southern Germans and the Austrians since they formed most of the Nazi leadership and the fact that Prussia was the last German state to keep a democratic majority of mainly the SPD until the collaspse of the Weimer Republic. The only weakness of Clark's book is that he seems to ignore the fact that the origins of German nationalism originated in the writings of Herder and Hamman, who were both Prussians,despised the enlightenment and wanted a nation based on exclusively linguistic ties and not a cosmopolitan Prussian state. Nevertheless this book gives an interesting and new view of German history.

I read a lot of history books, but I don't review very many. In fact, I think this is only my second review of a history text. I think it's because I don't want to come across looking like an idiot since I'm only an amateur historian. :D

However, Iron Kingdom was so good that it inspired me to write something here. I bought this book purely for research purposes, but once I started reading, I devoured not only the chapters relevant to the time period I was researching, but the entire book. Clark has an engaging way of writing that kept me up late several nights, thinking, 'Okay, just a couple more pages, then I'll go to sleep'. Maybe I'm just odd, but I got as much enjoyment and suspense out of reading this as I do from works of fiction.

The only real gripe I have is that Clark tended to gloss over large chunks of time and events. I realize this is going to happen in a work of this magnitude; if he'd gone into minute detail on every bit of the three and a half centuries the book covers, we would've had a 1500 hundred page book instead of the already hefty 680 pages (not including notes and bibliography). And maybe that's actually a good thing; by keeping the narrative flowing, my interest was more than engaged from beginning to end. But still, I wanted a little more in certain parts...

Overall, from my layman's perspective, Iron Kingdom was a very worthwhile read, and I'll definitely be referring to it and re-reading it time and again.

From its emergence as a major military power in the mid-eigteenth century to its dissolution at the hands of the Allies, shortly after World War II, Prussia played a critical, at times fateful, role in the shaping of European politics and culture. Christopher Clark, a history professor at Cambridge University, tells the epic story of Prussia's rise and fall with verve, wit and an erudition that is all the more impressive because he wears it so lightly. _Iron Kingdom_ is a bravura performance in every respect. The writing is fresh, elegant and thoroughly absorbing; Clark's vivid and almost conversational style leads the reader comfortably through more than three centuries of history, in which the map of Central Europe was constantly re-drawn as the result of bloody wars and bold diplomacy. The narrative is packed with nuggets of fact and anecdotes, culled from an astounding variety of sources, which bring to life and throw a fascinating new light on a host of complex characters, including Frederick the Great, Bismarck, William II ('the Kaiser') and Hindenburg. As vast as the scale of the undertaking is, the book is never heavy-going: it is carried, throughout, by an almost literary imagination, a profound (if not uncritical) sympathy for the subject and, most importantly, a novel as well as (in my eyes) utterly convincing argument that explodes many of the myths about Prussian and indeed German history. These myths, woven around images of spiked helmets and polished boots, are still with us. If you want to go beyond them, you should read _Iron Kingdom_. It is, quite simply, the best book on the subject and a must for anyone interested in how Germany came to be what it is today.

Christopher Clarke's new history of Prussia is a triumph of scholarship. `Iron Kingdom' charts the evolution of Prussia from its humble beginnings in the early 17th century, to its growth into a military and political powerhouse, its role in the unification of Germany, and its final, fateful, engagement with National Socialism. Clark manages this long and complex history with supreme confidence. His analysis is lucid and detailed -- evincing the idiosyncrasies of Prussia history without losing sight of the broader, European context. The result is a novel and compelling book, which challenges the accepted stereotype of Prussia as an overbearing military and political monolith. The usual suspects -- Friedrich the Great, Bismarck, Kaiser Wilhelm II -- are attended to with due diligence, of course. But behind the clichés of `blood and iron', Clark discovers strong traditions of humanism, enlightenment, religious toleration and administrative equity at the centre of Prussia's history. Artists, theologians, architects, philosophers, and composers emerge alongside generals and statesmen as the bearers and shapers of Prussian identity. Clark's nuanced re-interpretation of Prussia provides an invaluable insight into the past on which the German present rests. Those who wish to understand the triumphs and tragedies of modern German history will find few better starting points than the `Iron Kingdom'.

I will say it again this book was outstanding. This is one of the best historical works I have ever read. Clark is an eminent scholar and an excellent writer as well. This book offers the reader a wealth of knowledge and information in a style that is both eloquent and entertaining.

One of the things that most struck me about this book was the level of intimacy with which the author writes about the different figures and times. The author's level of erudition is such that the reader feels as though they are reading a contemporary account of events rather than a work written 300 years after the fact. The author's knowledge and scholarly dedication allows the author to write with an authority that comes through very clearly, and it is this authority that gives this work so much power.

The author's style made this, rather large, work an easy and enjoyable read. The pages simply turn themselves. Not only does the author have a very readable style, but his prose and ability to turn phrases would rival any literary work. As someone who has read a few history books, quite a few of which were rather dry, it is rare to find an author who knows his subject this thoroughly and is also a talented writer as well.

What I really like about these types of histories (when they are done well that is) is that they give the reader a broader perspective. Instead of taking a particular figure or moment in history and studying it in isolation, detached from earlier influential events, the reader gets to see history as a continuous, free flowing force that affects individuals and whole nations alike. If you want to understand German history or Prussian history this book is a must because the author not only hits major historical events but speaks on the philosophical undercurrents that drove those events. Mr. Clark writes in great detail about how events such as the enlightenment influenced Prussian leaders and the state.

This is an amazing work that should be on anyone's reading list who is interested in Prussian or European history. It is indispensable.

Very well written, Clark keeps the pace going while touching on the many issues involved with the history of Prussia. I bought this book because I found that I had learned very little about Prussia or Germany for that matter in the course of my high school and college education. It seems there is a distaste for the subject that is left over from the association of Nazi fascism and militarism with Prussia. Clark sets out to show that this is an incorrect association and does so convincingly. Full of helpful illustrations, photos, and maps, Iron Kingdom comprehensively covers the political, economic, and social history of Prussia, focusing on the key institutions, people, and moments that influenced its success and then its fall.

This is the most indepth and thorough book on Prussia. Everything from wars to religion to the nobility to the common people. I read this book hoping to change my view of Prussia. I admitt I'm among those who have a negative view of Prussia and hoped this book would help me to understand Prussia more. It certainly did. I found the wars of religion very interesting and how Prussia was attempting to keep its balance itself between the powers while it was in the Holy Roman Empire. I liked reading about the common people. Its really an excellent book with only two problems one is how the author kept going back and forth. It would be on 1700s and then jump back to the 1600s or on Frderick the Great and it would jump back to another elector. It was a little annoying. It would have been easier if the author did everything on one subject and then moved on to the next. Or one elector to the next. Secondly the author takes such pains not to blame anything on anyone like if Prussia was in war with France or Austria the author spent so much of the time on why the war wasn't Prussia's fault or France's or Austria's instead of explaining how things started in the war and the reasons for Prussia being in the war (which was what I was hoping learn) that it was hard to understand exactly what the author was trying to say or even what the author's own thoughts were.

This is a distinguished piece of work, a history of Prussia over 350 years. Its detail and complexity may be necessary and unavoidable but the result is that the book is very hard going indeed. It will be immensely useful more as a reference work than as a narrative of people and events.

The notion that Prussia had good points and is not solely at the foundation of the "German malaise" is not a new one at all. Many historians of various persuasions have written favorably of Prussia in the period before German Kaiser William II, with heroes like the Great Elector and Frederick the Great given their due. But it is useful to have this viewpoint presented again. Americans and many other non-Germans seem to prefer the bonhomie of the Barvarians and Austrians without understanding that in a pinch the uprightness of the Prussians might be preferable. Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels, Heydrich and Eichmann were not Prussians but Austrians, Bavarians, Rhinelanders, and southerners. While Rhinelanders and German Catholics generally worried about showing they were good German nationalists and patriots Prussians did not worry about being German at all. They were content with being subjects of the Hohenzollern ruler, good Prussians.