3 C. Bismarck — rise and fall

Rise: the Prussian Junker — ambassador, then Minister-President (1862), announcing that the great questions of the day would be decided "by blood and iron" the constitutional crisis ridden out (taxing and governing without the budget — the Lückentheorie's power-play); then the three wars (above) and two decades as the Empire's first Chancellor (1871–90). The Chancellor'ssystem (the statesmanship, 1871–90):1. Kulturkampf — the quarrel with the Catholic Church (the Jesuits expelled, civil marriage) — then the tactical retreat (the enemy swapped);2. The social-insurance laws (1883–89 — sickness, accident, old-age): the world's firstwelfare state — socialism fought by stealing its program (POTH Unit 5's social-democracy's grandfather; ECO-II's public finance's ancestor);3. The alliance system — isolating France: the Dual/Triple Alliances, the Reinsurance Treaty with Russia — the diplomatic machine holding the peace of a Europe he redesigned;4. The colonial scramble joined late (Africa and the Pacific — the "map of Africa" conference's Berlin, 1884–85). Fall (1890): the young Kaiser Wilhelm II — impulsive, navalist, world- political — dismissing the pilot ("dropping the pilot" — Punch's famous cartoon); Bismarck, the man who made an empire, dying a grumbling squire (1898), his system dismantled: the Reinsurance Treaty dropped (Russia to France — the encirclement), the naval race with Britain, Weltpoltik's swagger → the July 1914 crisis → the Great War → the Empire's fall (1918's abdication…