Bismarck: Foreign Policy

Historiography
1. Until quite recently, historians were wedded the primacy of the foreign policy. They ignored or greatly neglected the importance of domestic policy.
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Bleichroder
1. From 1859 to Bleichroder's death the two men conferred and collaborated regularly, each deriving profit from the other's help.
2. He belonged to what must be called the 'Rothschild intelligence network', and in time he managed to surpass it by adding his own strategically placed informants. His correspondents included some of the leading diplomats and business men of Europe; they knew that Bleichroder had easy access to Bismarck, and men like to share confidences with friends who are close to power.
3. Bleichroder may have supplied Bismarck with more information than he needed; in turn the Chancellor use Bleochroder to convey thought and inclinations to foreign leaders without having to rely on more official and possibly less discreet efforts of his ambassadors.
4. By the 1860's the Berlin banker considered himself an auxiliary of the foreign office.
5. In Bismarck's hardest days as Chancellor, Bleichroder proved his loyalty.
  1. Dazzles by Bismarck's resourceful dimplomacy, historians have lost sight of the fact that the wars of 1864 and 1866 posed major fiscal problems for a government that, because of a recalitrant Diet could not raise extra loans or new taxes.
    1. In that crisis Bleichroder pointed the way to an intricate and probably unconstitutional solution. He advocated the conversion ofthe government's rights to shares of the Colgne-Minden railway, with which Bleichroder happened to have had long connections. The mobilisation of that additional capital gave Prussia the necessary fiscal backbone for waging war major war.
6. After 1971 he continued to play a semi-covert role in foreign policy. For xample he was involved in Bismarck's first imperial venture in Samoa. As a freind of Leopold II, Bleichroder was well versed in African politics.
7. Assessment: Perhaps one can finally measure his importance by the amount of abuse Bismarck was willing to take to suffer on account of their relationship.Privately in the 1860s and publicly in the next two decades, Bismarck was maligned for giving a Jew so much power, protection and influence.
  1. The anti-semitic agitators, Franz Perrot and Adolf Stocker, carried the campaign to the masses, depicted Bleichroder as an evil genius of Bismarck foreign and economic policy.
Undemocratic
1. Bismarck not a fan of democracy - took his own route to foreign policy.
2. From his assocation with Bleichroder, his policies, his pocket, and perhaps even his psyche profited.
No European statesmen has since dominated his (sic) country for as long and as completely as did Bismarck. The powers of the state became specialised and buraucratic, and the land of the informal, intimate relationship that existed between Bismarck and Bleichroder became less feasible in the new, so-called mass age.

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Bismarck: Foreign Policy

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