Today I would like to share an excerpt from Jonathan Steinberg’s article in the 10th May issue of The London Review of Books, “Princely Pride” reviewing a book* on Crown Prince Frederick William of Germany, father of the notorious Kaiser William II.
“On the 31’s December 1870, when the war council determined to break the siege of Paris by bombarding the city, a move the Crown Prince [Frederick] strenuously resisted, he wrote in his war diary:
We are deemed capable of every wickedness and the distrust of us grows more and more pronounced. Nor is this the consequence of this War only – so far the theory, initiated by Bismarck and for years holding the stage, of “Blood and Iron” brought us! What good to us is all power, all martial glory and renown, if hatred and mistrust meet us at every turn, if every step we advance in our development is a subject for suspicion and grudging? Bismarck has made us great and powerful but he has robbed us of our friends, the sympathies of the world and – our conscience.”
Perhaps The Frau might benefit from reading this passage.
*Our Fritz: Emperor Frederick III and the Political Culture of Imperial Germany, by Frank Lorenz Muller.