This admirably concise book gives due weight to the whole of the period from 1871 to 1918 rather than glossing over the years between the Bismarck Chancellorship and the events immediately preceding the First World War. It is that intervening period which is particularly well described and assessed.
By 1890 the age difference of 43 years between Bismarck and the new Kaiser and the friction created by their different temperaments became too much for the headstrong Wilhelm II to bear. That there was no obvious successor suited Wilhelm who saw himself as “a neo-absolutist Kaiser of all Germans. In his vision of himself as a reincarnation of the mythical Frederick Barbarossa… there was no room for chancellors, ministers and political realities”.
