When Diplomacy Fails Podcast
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Age of Bismarck #15: The Giant Cannot Sleep
🕑 Added 2025-04-17 05:30:03 +0000 UTC[PATRONS]
What was it about Bismarck that made him take even the slightest amount of opposition so personally? When his appointments were blocked; when Reichstag stalwarts like Ludwig Windhorst challenged him; when he couldn't get one of his many nemeses demoted, the Iron Chancellor's solution was to go nuclear, and threaten to resign. Not even his King was immune from the threat that someday, he might be true to his word. As Bismarck knew full well, the threat worked so well because there was nobody that could replace him. Rather than seek this replacement, Bismarck's contemporaries simply put up with his reign of terror for as long as they could, until the giant was finally put out to pasture.
