Wars of German Unification (Blood and Iron) / Deutsche Einigungskriege (Blut und Eisen) 

Sophie Niegsch This is actually a very good point. Thanks!

GLAD I CAN HELP!!! :D

Thank you very much for the kind words! I might have just found my new director of marketing!

That is a very high compliment! Thank you! :D

Same here!

And thank you for watching and making such a kind comment! It's people like you who keep me going. :D

I'll see what I can do for the rightful Lord of the Seven Kingdoms! I teach Modern European History and make several video lectures for that course each year.

Please do a video on the history of the seven kingdoms!! Just kidding, I'm french and I just finished College but I wish I could go back and attend your lessons in class, I bet they're awsome :)

Thank you for the kind words! I'm very glad I'm able to help you. Best of luck to you on your exam!

+Tom Richey thank you sir..:)

hey! Did you clear the UPSC exam now? Hope it went well:)

Glad to hear it! Good luck on your exam!

But that's not, what Bismarck meant.

Most Historicans say it other.

Civis Hamburgum it implies economic power but the goal is military power

I spell schleswig Slezz-wig

Well, every language, without exception, mutilates phonetics of some foreign language names. But it's amusing to know that people are capable of drawing fun even out of such simple stuff... Pardon my illiteracy (if any), by the way, my native language isn't English.

@@tivorum there weren't any errors in your comment. I too get some amusement from hearing foreigners butchering the hell out of my language

I have succeeded in spot-the-Hetalian once more!

they are*

Victor Conway haha

So glad I could help you! This is why I do what I do.

Anna Stroinski Thank you for watching! Imperialism is on my list, but my slides for that topic need work pretty bad, so we'll see if it happens before the exam.

I posted it the night before the exam. I hope you found it helpful!

By the way, if you need any help with pronunciation of French and German words, it's easier than you think! You write the words in Google Translate and you can press the "sound button" to hear how they are pronounced. Except for this small point, your lectures are great!!! They've come all the way to Greece.. :D and they help me so much!!

Glad I could help make sense of this important topic for you!

Glad I could deliver once again! :D

And there never were actual Imperial German Crown Jewels. So no fancy gold crown was ever seen on a Kaiser's head yet I'm pretty sure Wilhelm II. would have loved to have one being as overexaggeraterd and overcompensating for his crippled arm as his head could possibly carry.

+Wolfgulfur im guessing that's long live prussia? You know that funnily enough it were the nazis who ended prussia.

This may be the first time anyone has complimented my German! Danke!

I asked a German speaker to say it both ways for me and concluded that "blut and eisen" also sounds better in German.

Haha Good to know!

+Liz O if Bismarck have kept Germany out of Africa knowing now if they know then racism in Germany weren't be that bad as it is right now

It's possible!

Thanks so much !!!!

Tom Richey I would love a video on Italian unification!

I've got a Causes of WWI video lecture up now - will follow up with more WWI stuff soon.

Indeed, Bismarck put it that way, but it has nonetheless been known in history as his "Blood and Iron" speech. Sometimes, you just have to go with what sounds better!

+manu de backer Actually it does. When the queen of Spain was overthrown one of the next in line was a relative of William 1st. Yet, France did not want more german influence at its doors, especially after they lost a lot of their political and military power with the wars in Italy and the Congress of London. So Napoleon III met with William 1st who basically told him his relative won't become king of Spain and that he considered the subject to be closed on his part. Napoleon III wanted more guarantees. He sent some of his demands by telegram and Bismarck used it to ridicoule him. Consequently, France basically had to declare war to save its honor. Even more so since a bunch of french liberals were starting to stand up against the regime. The french knew the couldn't take Prussia. The army showed its limits in Italy in the 60's

Napoleon I defeated Prussia in 1806, forced it to be his ally and later support him with troops, when he invaded Russia. So he didn't "fail" to "take Prussia". However, as a consequence of Napoleons defeat in Russia, Prussia turned against Napoleon and joined the anti-napoleonic alliance in 1813. There can be no doubt, that Bismarck personally (not the Prussian king, by the way) triggered the Franco-Prussian war.

"Consequently, France basically had to declare war to save its honor." Well, if you like to put it that way. Napoleon III had not been very successful in foreign affairs in the recent years and the opposition against him increased. So he tried to achieve an easy diplomatic victory, by urging the Prussian king to use his influence to prevent that a - quite remote and actually rather pro-French - relative of his (and, by the way, also a remote relative of Joséphine de Beauharnais), Leopold von Hohenzollern, would become king of Spain. As Wilhem I did so and Leopold resigned, the whole issue could have been settled. But Napoleon, not content with this small success, further demanded from the Prusssia to agree that no member of the Hohernzollern familiy ever would apply for the Spanish throne again, even threatening with war. His goverment issued this public declaration: « La France ne tolérerait pas l’établissement du prince de Hohenzollern ni d’aucun prince prussien sur le trône espagnol. Pour empêcher cette éventualité, il [the French government] comptait à la fois sur la sagesse du peuple allemand et sur l’amitié du peuple espagnol. S’il en était autrement, fort de votre appui et de celui de la Nation, nous saurions remplir notre devoir sans hésitation et sans faiblesse.» Wilhelm I stayed in in Bad Ems, then a fashionable a spa near Koblenz, at the time and the French ambassador came to see him, addressed him in the street and asked him to agree to the French demand. The king denied this, rather annoyed by the ambassador's behaviour, and sent a message about the incident to Bismarck. Bismarck took the chance to change this message (the "Emser Depesche" or telegram of Ems) that the kings denial appeared like an insult and made it publish in this form. Now, Napoleon, not a very clever man, as it seems, had no other option than to declare war, unless he would have lost all political support in his country. This was exactly, what Bismarck had tried to achieve, knowing that the German unification emplied a victorious war against France, which he was confident to win.

+SiggiNebel Really? If you say to your wife, that her sister made you to put your ... into her ... , the normal reaction will be a kick in your ...But in this case everyone seems to accept, that it is the fault of the sister. The fact is, that Bismarck didn't stood behind Napoleon III and pointing a gun to his head to force him declaring war on Prussia. The fact is, Prussia accepted the demands of France, and STILL France declared war on them. Oh, they were not polite enough giving in this demands, so they had no choice but going to war... It would be nice to get rid of this myth, that poor France, beeing a world super power, somehow was bullied by Prussia, witch was at best a major european power.

Jupp James Did you understand at all, what I tried to explain before? And do you really mean to say that Bismarck didn't intend France to declare war?

To the best of my understanding, I wouldn't use the term "annex," since even at the time of the Franco-Prussian War, the entity was still known as the North German Confederation, but yes, the North German Confederation would have existed before the Austro-Prussian War.

Tom Richey Very nice and informative video, but I believe that Viktor Salmi is correct, as much as I hate using Wikipedia as a source, according to the link here (and my personal understanding and schooling of the topic): en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_German_Confederation you can see that the North German Confederation (Norddeutscher Bund) was formed after Prussia had won the 7 weeks war over Austria in 1866. In this area of the website Wikipedia references Görtemaker's work, who is a highly respected historian here in Germany and I happened to have his book here. I reread that and saw that he also claims the existence of the Norddeutscher Bund to be after the 7 weeks war.

NJSM1995 has a nice shape i guess

Because people are rather clueless and immature.