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The Franco-Prussian Conflict of 1870 and Bismarck's Concept of a “Provoked Defensive War”: A Response to David Wetzel

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 March 2008

Josef Becker
Josef Becker
Affiliation:
University of Augsburg
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Extract

In a recent issue of Central European History, David Wetzel published a wide-ranging review of the first two volumes of my documentary edition on the Hohenzollern candidacy for the Spanish throne, the immediate pre-history of the Franco-Prussian war of 1870/71. It goes without saying that I read this review by the author of A Duel of Giants: Bismarck, Napoleon III, and the Origins of the Franco-Prussian War (2001) with particular interest. My first—and lasting—impression is that here was the discussion of a specialist, one that—precisely because of Wetzel's roots in a different historiographical tradition—represents a model of scholarly fairness. In German historiography since the nineteenth century, and primarily for political reasons, comparably fair treatment of works that deal with a central historical figure such as Bismarck has not been the rule. I am no less grateful for the opportunity offered by his critical objections to make some more general and precise points.

Type
EXCHANGE: BISMARCK AND THE FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR
Information
Central European History , Volume 41 , Issue 1 , March 2008 , pp. 93 - 109
Copyright
Copyright © Conference Group for Central European History of the American Historical Association 2008

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References

1 Becker, Josef (with Michael Schmid), ed., Bismarcks spanische “Diversion” 1870 und der preußisch-deutsche Reichsgründungskrieg. Quellen zur Vor- und Nachgeschichte der Hohenzollern-Kandidatur für den Thron in Madrid 1866–1932, 2 vols. (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2003)Google Scholar, reviewed by Wetzel, David in Central European History (CEH) 37, no. 4 (2004): 606–612CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The third volume will appear shortly.

2 Private letter, Count Paul von Hatzfeldt (Berlin) to Prince Reuß, St. Petersburg, March 11, 1869, Reuß Archive, No. 268, Archiwum Panstwowe Jelenia Gora/Hirschberg.

3 Quoted in Gall, Lothar, Bismarck. Der weiße Revolutionär (Frankfurt am Main: Propyläen, 1980), 403Google Scholar. Cf. Sauer, Wolfgang: “It was by no means certain yet that the South German states would join this entity [the North German Confederation]. Failing a decision within a reasonable time—entirely possible if means were limited to negotiations—then quite unpredictable developments were possible,” “Das Problem des deutschen Nationalstaates,” in Probleme der Reichsgründungszeit 1848–1879, ed. Böhme, Helmut (Cologne and Berlin: Kiepenheuer und Witsch, 1968), 466Google Scholar.

4 Quoted in Pflanze, Otto, Bismarck and the Development of Germany, vol. I (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 305Google Scholar.

5 From the well-known account by Lothar Bucher, Bismarck's closest collaborator during the Hohenzollern candidacy and his loyal assistant even after the chancellor's dismissal. Badinguet was a pejorative nickname for Napoleon III, presumably after a worker in whose clothes Louis Napoleon fled from the citadel in Ham in 1846, after being convicted for his participation in the 1840 coup.

6 von Bismarck, Otto, Die gesammelten Werke, 15 vols., 2nd ed. (Berlin: O. Stolberg, 1931), vol. 6b, 1Google Scholar. The “se defendendo” in Werthern's letter is only one indication that “provoked defensive war” was a common prototype in diplomacy.

7 On the discussion in spring 1870, about whether a Prussian offensive in the German question would be “opportune,” see no. 450.

8 Bismarck, Die gesammelten Werke, vol. 6c, 63. Wetzel, book review, CEH, 610, compresses Bismarck's statement in such a way that the nuances are not preserved: “a monstrous intrusion into the affairs of providence [… which] made as much sense as committing suicide because one was afraid to die.”

9 Jeismann, Karl-Ernst, Das Problem des Präventivkrieges im europäischen Staatensystem mit besonderem Blick auf die Bismarckzeit (Freiburg and Munich: K. Alber, 1957), 184Google Scholar. Compare the concurring view of Hans-Ulrich Wehler in connection with the 1875 “war-in-sight crisis”: “Of course the chancellor's opposition [to the military's preventive war plans] in no way derived from … unshakable moral-ethical convictions requiring a principled rejection of the preemptive first strike. Rather, it proceeded, altogether free of Christian influences, from a cool weighing of interests, which, given the incalculability of the profound risks involved, held the disadvantages of such a war policy, at least since 1875, of being far too dangerous.” Wehler, , Deutsche Gesellschaftsgeschichte, vol. 3 (Munich: Beck, 1995), 879Google Scholar. Also compare Lothar Gall's interpretation of Bismarck's great Reichstag speech of January 11, 1887: “Germany … belonged [thus Bismarck] to the powers that had nothing to gain but everything to fear from a war, and that must therefore strive to prevent war. He called this … ‘our peace policy,’ of course in a … strictly interest-oriented sense. There was as yet nothing in him of that later line, simultaneously idealizing and obfuscating, that he cared about European peace as a value per se. Rather, the maintenance of peace was, not to put too fine a point on it, just as much an instrument for him as was, before 1871, war. Both were supposed to serve his own state's power, its preservation and possible augmentation.” Gall, Bismarck, 637. My emphasis in both quotes.

10 On this, see also Herbert von Bismarck's letter to Erich Marcks below and more generally the source-critical considerations in my essay “Zum Problem der Bismarckschen Politik in der spanischen Thronfrage 1870,” in Historische Zeitschrift 212 (1971): 571–579.

11 With respect to this “real political” interpretation of Bismarck's “policy of peace” after 1871, see the comprehensive analysis in Schmid, Michael, Der “Eiserne Kanzler” und die Generäle (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2003)Google Scholar.

12 Thus we can understand why, in spring 1870, Bismarck wrote “war” in the margins of several internal documents concerning French foreign policy.

13 von Radowitz, Joseph Maria, Aufzeichnungen und Erinnerungen aus dem Leben des Botschafters Joseph Maria v. Radowitz, ed. Holborn, Hajo (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1925), 229Google Scholar.

14 The report of the Russian ambassador in Berlin, already on February 24, 1869, quoted in Clark, Chester W., “Bismarck, Russia, and the Origins of the War of 1870,” Journal of Modern History 14 (1942): 198CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 Wetzel writes, “This was a document of advocacy written to appeal to the military caste of William's I mind”; Wetzel, book review, CEH, 610. The documentary record speaks against the diversionary dispatch's having been shown to the king.

16 Identical judgments: Prince Karl Anton (no. 896*) and the Spanish envoy to Berlin (no. 881). In my view, the judgment of Werthern and Rascón also refutes the interpretation of Paul W. Schroeder cited by Wetzel on p. 610 of his book review in CEH that Leopold's candidacy was intended to prevent the defection of Bavaria to Austria and France.

17 Röhl, John C. G., Zwei deutsche Fürsten zur Kriegsschuldfrage (Düsseldorf: Droste, 1971), 66ffGoogle Scholar.

18 Tsar Alexander II appended the indignant commentary “C'est trop fort” to the news from his Berlin envoy Paul Oubril that Gramont had demanded of Karl von Werther, the North German Confederation's ambassador in Paris, a letter of apology from the king (no. 862D*, according to a copy of the Chester W. Clark Nachlass in the University Archives of Augsburg). In a “Denkschrift” for King William written at the end of July 1870 about his behavior during the July crisis, Werther categorically rejected the chancellor's version regarding a letter of apology (no. 894*). The ambassador, who as a result of the publication of his July 12 report from Paris, leaked by Bismarck (a sort of second “Ems Dispatch”—no. 827*), had fallen into disfavor, was to be rehabilitated at the king's wish at the war's end in 1871 by being awarded Prussia's highest decoration. Bismarck blocked it. Rehabilitation came only some years later.

19 von Ranke, Leopold, Tagebücher, ed. Fuchs, Walther Peter (Munich and Vienna: Oldenbourg, 1964), 409Google Scholar. Ranke's informant was evidently the Prussian interior minister Eulenburg, who took part in the dinner at Bismarck's on July 12 (see nos. 834 and 852). Befitting the perception of actual power relations in Berlin, Ranke does not mention the constitutional side of this decision-making process.

20 Langer, W. L., “Bismarck as a Dramatist,” in Studies in Diplomatic History and Historiography in Honour of G. P. Gooch, C.H., ed. Sarkissian, A. O. (London and New York: Longmans, 1961)Google Scholar.

21 The original “dispatch from Ems” that Bismarck claimed to have recast, via his deletions, into the “Ems Dispatch” has so far never been found in Prussian archives. The director of the Political Archive of the Foreign Office alerted me to this fact at the beginning of the 1970s. Becker, “Zum Problem der Bismarckschen Politik,” 575.

22 According to a note of Sybel's that obviously stems from Georg von Werthern. As Prussian envoy in Munich, Werthern had introduced the Spanish emissary, Salazar, to the prince in Sigmaringen. In Heinrich von Sybel's Geschichte der Gründung des Deutschen Reiches durch König Wilhelm I, Werthern's communication appears only in a more anodyne form.

23 Quoted in Ward, A. W. and Gooch, G. P., eds., The Cambridge History of British Foreign Policy 1783–1919, vol. 3 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1923), 26Google Scholar.

24 Quoted in ibid., vol. 1, LXXIII.

25 According to Eberhard Naujoks in a letter to the author; this historian was the most knowledgeable student of Bismarckian press politics in the latter half of the twentieth century.

26 Through Bismarck's refusal to travel on to Ems from Berlin on July 13, justified by ostensible health concerns, and through the dispatch of Interior Minister Eulenburg to the king after the dinner on July 12 (nos. 834*, 835*, and 852*).

27 Radowitz, Aufzeichnungen und Erinnerungen, 228. A decade later, Karl Anton had reconciled himself to having contributed to what he now saw as “the greatest development in German history,” a German empire that was now the “referee of the world!!!” (no. 931*). “The Spanish candidacy … developed the greatest thing that German history had been able to produce, an imperial state under Prussian leadership, … whose gigantic growth in eleven years has elevated the German Empire to referee of the world!!!” (no. 931*). The remark of Crown Prince Frederick William of April 14, 1872, points in the same direction as Karl Anton's earlier one to Radowitz in 1871: “But of course my striving [for the founding of a German Empire] was directed toward a peaceful, bloodless achievement of this deed, and perhaps one could have attained the selfsame goal even without war.” Becker, Bismarcks spanische “Diversion” 1870, vol. III, appendix, “Chronik.”

28 Oncken, Hermann, “Zum Gedächtnis Bismarcks,” Historisch-politische Aufsätze und Reden, vol. II (Munich and Berlin: R. Oldenbourg, 1914), 120Google Scholar.

29 This would not have been possible without the exclusion of certain documents or their unacknowledged abridgment, which can hardly be explained as anything other than the Foreign Office's “political correctness.”

30 Kolb, Eberhard, Der Kriegsausbruch 1870 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1970), 136Google Scholar. In the current new edition of the “Friedrichsruhe Edition” published by the Otto-von-Bismarck-Stiftung, Kolb will have the opportunity, as one of the editors, to correct or affirm his support for Friedrich Thimme's apologetic version of 1931. Klaus Hildebrand, likewise a collaborator in the new edition, has aligned himself with Kolb's interpretation that France had “unleashed” the war. “Bismarcks Frieden,” in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, July 20, 1989.

31 Quoted in Jeismann, Das Problem des Präventivkrieges, 181.

32 Pflanze, Bismarck, vol. 1, 459.

33 Ibid., 462. Here, Pflanze is referring to the publications by O. Becker, E. Kolb, and J. Dittrich among others. Regarding my own studies, he writes, “they confirm what this author only surmised in the first edition of this work.”

34 Bismarck also made this remark to the crown prince in November 1870 in their Versailles headquarters, with the notable change of the date to 1862: 'Thus he had the firm intention, e.g., upon assuming office, of bringing Prussia to war with Austria, but took care not to talk about it then, or in any case too early, to His Majesty, until the time seemed to him appropriate.” Friedrich, Kaiser III, Das Kriegstagebuch von 1870/71, ed. Meisner, Heinrich Otto (Berlin and Leipzig: K. F. Köhler, 1926), 223ffGoogle Scholar.

35 See Wehler's assertion that “it would be an honorable but naive demand to insist on primary sources in which a master of political maneuver such as Bismarck would himself give credible, unambiguous, and candid information about the ticklish question of how he would make it almost unavoidable for his opponent to go to war and unleash the first strike.” Wehler, Gesellschaftsgeschichte, vol. 3, 321.