The Berlin Wall Read Online Free PDF

German professor, who had gone mad; and Palmerston himself, who had forgotten.
    In 1864 Prussia, acting for all the German states, occupied the two provinces in concert with Austria. The arrangement lasted for a year or so, until they disagreed over the province’s ultimate fate. The result, in 1866, was a war in which most of the other German states supported Austria. The Prussian armies won easily, crushing the Austrians and their allies in seven weeks.
    Immediately after this victory, Bismarck called elections. He rode a wave of patriotic enthusiasm. The Progressives were soundly beaten. A conservative prime minister now had a conservative parliament at his disposal.
    The formal unification of Germany came in 1870, after the last of Bismarck’s victorious wars, in this case against France. William I of Prussia became Emperor William I of Germany—and Bismarck his Reich Chancellor.
    In 1862, Bismarck had grimly told the Berlin parliament: ‘The great questions of the day will not be decided by speeches and the resolutions of majorities…but by iron and blood.’ Tragically, he was all too right. Not just for the nineteenth but for the twentieth century too.
    The stage was set for what some would call a ‘revolution from above’. Bismarck would be the architect of this fascinating, ominous new development. In the course of the country’s transformation, Berlin would spread out across what had seemed all those centuries ago to be such inhospitable and unpromising sands and lakes. It would become a great, darkly glittering world city.

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    REDS
    ON THE EVE OF the first great war of the twentieth century, Berlin was the second-largest city in Europe. Since unification, massive industrial growth, a breakneck expansion in construction, and a huge increase in wealth, especially for the middle and upper classes, had transformed the German capital into a boom town comparable with San Francisco or Chicago.
    Great tenement blocks, often built in gloomy grey stone, spread out from the heart of the city, especially in the east. Consisting of concentric courtyards like Chinese boxes, getting cheaper as the inner courtyards became darker and more airless and the apartments smaller, such blocks were known in Berlin as Mietskasernen (rental barracks). In the west, away from the historic centre, well-to-do suburbs ate into the agricultural land and swallowed up the lake landscape that surrounded the city. The newly rich middle and professional classes wanted space and greenery. Districts such as Grunewald, Wilmersdorf, and Zehlendorf rapidly filled with desirable residences in a variety of inauthentic but grandiose styles, be they colonnaded classical villas or turreted, mock-medieval fortresses.
    Bismarck’s long dominance as first chancellor of the German Empire (1871-90) saw the liberal flame that burned so brightly in the middle of the century all but die. Many liberals joined Bismarck’s reactionary project, calling themselves ‘National Liberals’ to make their allegiance clear. Middle-class Germans were content to exchange truly representative government for the wealth, power and prestige that rapidly ensued.
    After unification, a national parliament or Reichstag was established. Bismarck’s trick was to make this body electable on the basis of universal male suffrage, thus superficially democratic. However, he gave its members no say over the formation of the Reich government, whichremained wholly the Emperor’s prerogative. Who won how many seats was therefore only marginally important. This hybrid form of authoritarian government was Bismarck’s most problematical legacy.
    The ‘Prussianisation’ of Germany continued apace. A large national army on the Prussian model, based on conscription, meant that all German males were influenced by military values. The new regime slyly transformed the liberal idea of the ‘Home Guard’ into a reinforcing element for the authoritarian status quo.
    The officer in uniform became