svon1 wrote:
but Bismarck totally not
he united german staates with military power
and beat down the social insurance of the people and replaced it
goverment insurance which is still today extremely unfair designed
He
did unite Germany more-or-less by military force (but note that out of the three wars that were fought, he started one, the second - Austria started the first, France the third). However, the effect of this was to stabilize the entire European diplomatic system, and after those three wars - which all took place in just 5 years of time - he used all his capabilities and power (which he only had
because he united Germany) to ensure peace in Europe. He managed to do that for all the 20 years he remained in office, even though there was a
huge number of conflicts between all the states, and even after he was gone, and Wilhelm II. started destroying everything he had build, his system proved so stable it
still took 25 years until World War I.
Basically, though three minor wars and an insane amount of diplomacy, Bismarck managed to delay World War I by 20-30 years, and had he stayed in office (and be able to choose a worthy successor), it'd likely have been 50 or more. In fact, even without that, there hasn't been a longer continuous peace between all major powers ever since (if we manage to reach 2035 without a war like that, we'll have caught up).
I also think it's funny how you pick up the one thing he got right in domestic politics to criticize him. As I already said, I don't think he should have meddled with domestic politics to begin with, but the insurance system is actually the exception here.
First, you're wrong about him replacing an insurance system. There wasn't any. And not only in Germany. I fact, the entire idea of insurances like we know them was invented by him. His motivation wasn't exactly praiseworthy (he wanted to attract supporters from the Social Democrats by relieving the working class of the problems that drew them to them - as I said, he shouldn't have gotten involved in domestics), but it was a revolutionary system, and is now the very base of all insurance system in the world, including, for example, the much-lauded Scandinavian ones. And no, it wasn't unfair - and still isn't today, if you wan an unfair system, take the American - as it distributed the load very clearly to whoever was responsible for it. Health costs were shared by employer and employee, while, for example, accident insurance (accidents at work, that is) needed to be paid by the employer alone (causing them to improve working place security). In fact, until World War I, Germany was leading worldwide in social insurances, and was generally considered to have the best, fairest and largest system of them all (the high debt and especially the reparations and the inflation they caused kinda killed the system).
So, he didn't replace an old, better system with a new one; he created the first system of that kind ever, which turned out to be the best one around for half a century, and is nowadays copied all over the world. As I said, the one thing he got right in domestics.
It is kinda embarrassing how episodic your history knowledge is.
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are attached, that paragraph may not be 100% serious. Seriously.
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