Snake Featherston
Banned
Agreed here. Just observing on what might have made the Hohenzollern state so much weaker when the shit truly hit the fan.
Ironically the Hohenzollern *state* was actually quite solid in its own right. It had to be, to go from dirt-poor indefensible electorate to a rival to the Russian and Habsburg super-states. It didn't have a smooth rise by any means. The German Empire it created, however, was fatally and fundamentally flawed at multiple levels, which might well raise the question of how much Otto von Bismarck tends to be overrated by virtue of having taken the credit for Moltke the Elder's military victories....as well as reflecting on the difference between the singular Kingdom of Prussia and attempting to conglomerate a bunch of states with a prickly particularist tradition into a singular state, a process that was by no means simple (it certainly was never managed by the Habsburgs, Ottonians, or Hohenstaufens and that wasn't for lack of trying).