Word: bismarckers
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Determined to go into December's election as "the unification Chancellor," Kohl has been summoning up on the hustings the name of Otto von Bismarck, who first achieved a united Germany in 1871, and closing with the call, "God bless our German fatherland." But it has also dawned on him that his politically motivated equivocation over Poland's borders -- a play to German right-wing sentiment -- has been damaging. Kohl last week emphasized that a unified Germany would have "good relations with all countries in East and West, and I name Poland in first place." No one need fear...
...protector of all Christians. The British and French joined in resisting that demand in the bloody stalemate of the Crimean War (1853-56). Resisted in the West, the succeeding Czar Alexander II looked east. He was repeatedly urged in this direction by Prussia's Chancellor Otto von Bismarck. "Russia has nothing to do in the West," Bismarck once declared. "There she can only catch nihilism and other diseases. Her mission is in Asia. There she represents civilization...
...borders, which now include parts of Poland. Kohl reassured Germans across much of the political spectrum as well as Germany watchers around the world by emphasizing the term confederation. With its explicit echoes of the Zollverein, the customs union of German states that existed during the 19th century before Bismarck's unification of the nation, the word summoned an image of a large but unthreatening German entity...
KOHL is no Bismarck, and his movement will never gather the same force or militancy as that of his 19th century counterpart. Keep a close eye on central Europe, though, and you're bound to see continued politicking and constituency-building towards one Germany. If it comes, the 20th-century reunification will be built not with blood and iron, but with consensus and politics...
...unified Germany has been the single most destructive power in the world during the last century. The last time Germany unified, after the 1870 Franco-Prussian War, surging nationalism under Otto von Bismarck caused changes in the balance of power that eventually led to World War I. And we all know of the horrible forces German nationalism produced...