Gordon A. Craig. From Bismarck to Adenauer: Aspects of German Statecraft. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1958. Chapter 1, pp. 3-28.
Historians have attributed the unification of Germany in 1871 along with the ensuing international balance of power that lasted until World War I to the foreign policy, or political strategy of Prussia's Minister President Otto von Bismarck. Noted historian Gordon A. Craig describes and analyzes Bismarck's diplomacy in a lecture delivered at The Johns Hopkins University in March 1958, which was published the same year along with four other lectures in the book From Bismarck to Adenauer. In the book's first chapter, "Bismarck: Diplomacy as a Vocation," Craig discusses the qualities that gave Bismarck the reputation of the model of diplomacy. His purpose is two-fold: to gain understanding of the reasons for Bismarck's successes in foreign policy, and for the failures of his successors. In so doing, Craig hopes that a greater understanding and "appreciation of the uses and the limitations of diplomacy itself" may be reached (p. 6). Craig is eminently qualified to analyze Bismarck's political theory. The J.E. Wallace Sterling Professor Emeritus of Humanities at Stanford University, he is a specialist of modern German history.
According to Craig, Bismarck's primary intention was to unify and modernize Germany, asserting its equality with other European nations. His underlying policy to achieve this was for the state to assume the leadership and supply the incentive leading to a system of quasi-statism. Its success in the Franco-Prussian War established the new nation of Germany as a central force in European affairs. Craig asserts that Bismarck "succeeded in transforming the chaos of 1862 into order and efficiencyà.and in bringing the diplomatic service to a level of technical excellence that was probably unsurpassed in Europe" (p. 5).
Bismarck set himself the task of learning statecraft, and ...