WI: Bismarck is never born?

What would the world look like, if Otto von Bismarck was never born?

The obvious result would be that the German states are never unified. But what sort of consequenses would this have on the rest of the world? Would there ever be a Great War?
 
Correct me if I am wrong.

But AFAIK the Ems Dispatch, written by Bismarck, was the primary reason for France declaring war on Prussia, and thereby getting the German states swooped up in a feeling of nationalism.

Had Bismarck not been around, the unification seems unlikely.
 

Rockingham

Banned
Correct me if I am wrong.

But AFAIK the Ems Dispatch, written by Bismarck, was the primary reason for France declaring war on Prussia, and thereby getting the German states swooped up in a feeling of nationalism.

Had Bismarck not been around, the unification seems unlikely.

The Ems dispatch was the equivalent of the assination of Franz Ferdinand, it was the excuse for something that had ben brewing for a long time.

Bismark wasn't so much a political genius as a man who was in the right position and place at the right time.
 
For one thing, Civilization would have to use Frederick the Great as the leader of the Prussians. :D

In this case, I don't think the theory of one indispensable man applies; rather, a secondary light (at least in OTL) would have stepped forward as the ostensible unifier of Germany (don't recall who, though). I also don't buy the argument of the vacuum caused by no Bismarck would permit Vienna to swallow the rest of the German-speaking jurisdictions; I can't see the Protestant Prussians, for example, sitting still for this.

But a non-Bismarckian unified Germany would probably have had something of a different, more liberal government, with less power vested in the chancellor and more in the Reichstag. In turn, that means that Wilhelm II's vagaries would have been more subject to review, comment--and perhaps veto.
 
The Ems dispatch was the equivalent of the assination of Franz Ferdinand, it was the excuse for something that had ben brewing for a long time.

Bismark wasn't so much a political genius as a man who was in the right position and place at the right time.

Agreed. The French basically went to war over perceived bad manners. If that's not a lame pretext, I'm not sure what is.
 
Correct me if I am wrong.

But AFAIK the Ems Dispatch, written by Bismarck, was the primary reason for France declaring war on Prussia, and thereby getting the German states swooped up in a feeling of nationalism.

Not quite. The problem had been solved, but the Kaiser described the actions of the French ambassador at ems to Bismark. Bismark took the telegraph and selectivly edited the telegraph to make it more aggressive, then released it. The French used it as an excuse for war.

Had Bismarck not been around, the unification seems unlikely.

Not quite. The germans were moving towards uniication. But the terms of that unification, such as whether there would be one or more states, who would dominate it, etc... would change. And it is possible that unification might never happen. For a few decades, at least.
 
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