The German Genius

relished more than any other. It was an era symbolized by Bismarck’s observation in 1862, that “The solution of the great problems of these days is not to be found in speeches and revolutions—but in blood and iron.” 8
    Otto von Bismarck, Prussia’s prime minister from 1862 on and Germany’s chancellor until 1890, was three years younger than Krupp and in many ways the “Iron Chancellor” and the “Cannon King” were very similar. Both were tyrannical, misanthropic, and incapable of intimacy, and both sought refuge in things—Bismarck in dogs and trees, Alfred in horses and guns. It was once said of Bismarck: “I have never known a man who experienced so little joy,” and it could equally have been said of Alfred. “No two Prussians have been so responsible for the image, in the Anglo-Saxon mind at least, of the Prussian as someone aggressive, belligerent and destructive.” 9
    Bismarck, we should never forget, was a Junker—that class of “militaristic, predatory land-owners” who had won their great estates in the east by force and who, therefore, believed in force. To preserve this class, which was the chancellor’s lasting aim, he had to preserve Prussia, and that meant diminishing both Austria and France, destroying German liberalism, and replacing a primarily cultural German nationalism with a Prussian political nationalism. In doing these things, he came to be the “best hated man in Europe,” with Krupp a close second. 10
    Bismarck first visited Essen in October 1864, en route from Paris to Berlin. Discovering that he and Krupp shared a passion for horses and big trees, he took Krupp into his confidence and during their rambles apparently disclosed some of his plans for Prussia. Bismarck well understood how Krupp’s guns could play a part in these plans and Krupp sensed big profits, not least from the chancellor’s intention to expand the navy.
    The first major battle in which Krupp guns took part (on both sides, it should be said), was at Königgrätz on July 3, 1866, between Prussia and Austria. Though less than perfect, another 700 Krupp guns were ordered inside four months. And though this Austro-Prussian war of 1866 was one of the shortest of wars, it had far-reaching consequences in that, as a result, Prussia grabbed the Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein and annexed the states that had not sided with her before Königgrätz—Hanover, Hesse, Nassau, and Frankfurt. With Austria soundly defeated, Bismarck’s strategy to make Prussia a world power was set in motion. 11
    Two years later Prussia announced it was intending to start a navy. At first the admirals intended to buy British guns, but Krupp, backed up by the king, prevailed in his argument that German guns should be used, and in September 1868 the new navy ordered forty-one heavy guns for their three new ironclads—from Krupp. This in itself shaped German naval policy for decades. 12
    In 1870, as cleverly as he had baited Austria four years earlier, Bismarck followed the same maneuver with France, luring Napoleon III to declare war on Prussia to restore to France those parts of the country that Napoleon I had lost. On the day Prussia mobilized, Krupp offered a consignment of guns to the armed forces as his contribution to the war. The gift was declined, but the army increased its orders for Krupp armaments to the point where Prussia for the first time was buying more guns from Krupp than from anyone else. 13
    Equipped with old-fashioned bronze muzzle-loaders, Napoleon III ’s troops were nowhere near equal to the Prussians. “The new Krupp steel breech-loaders and the new Krupp steel heavy mortars pulverised the forts of Metz and Sedan in no time at all and blasted a hole through the outskirts of Paris itself.” This encounter was revealing about both Krupp and Bismarck. Most Prussian generals were opposed to the shelling of Paris, which had just been rebuilt by Georges-Eugène Haussmann. (The beautiful city that we know as Paris was brand new then.) However, both Krupp and Bismarck were very much in favor of attacking the capital, Krupp so much that he offered the army his 2,000-pounder. He also began to devise a giant siege gun capable of bombarding 1,000-pound shells from great distances right into the heart of Paris. They could not be built in time, but eventually they became the World War I weapons that “horrified the world.” As a result, Krupp joined Bismarck and the Kaiser in the trinity of the most hated men