*wins the game of thrones

It's a terrible shame the careful balance he kept was ignored by the men who followed him.

Oh well, at least he finally created a unified German political block.

>he would have established a system that couldn't have been so easily ruined by stupid successors
His successors were Germans, he would have had to have been a god to devise a system of governance they could not wreck.

He didn't won game of thrones, he was promptly forced to leave by Wilhelm who undid all his gains, which subsequently resulted in Germany losing even more territory.

>opposed to the naval arms race
>a ship ends up named after him that is part of a new naval arms race
lel Germans.

>It's a terrible shame the careful balance he kept was ignored by the men who followed him.
He created a machine that only he can reliably operate so it's not at all surprising that it's fallen apart.

He was sacked because he opposed social reform.
There was no naval arms race for Germany in ww2.

Fuck off.

He gave too much power to the Emperor, that was his only mistake

>>a ship ends up named after him that is part of a new naval arms race

More than 40 years after he died you dumb fuck. Of course you would name a ship after a famous person in your country, why the fuck do you think the US has all of these aircraft carriers named after Presidents?

In foreign affairs maybe, but in german politics he sucked: his policy against the clergy (KulturKampf) ended up increasing catholic deputy numbers (zentrum), while his social security plans, whose objective was to pull the workers away from the socialist agenda, resulted in the surge of the socialist political Power.

>I DON'T WANT COLONIES
>*ends up with colonies anyway*

Only as a diplomat, and even there he wasn't perfect. Creating a tangle of commitments that only he was capable of managing was not conducive to long term German success. Plus he did ultimately make the decision to annex Alsace Lorraine, which was really quite irresponsible so far as peaceful relationships went.

And domestically he was awful, the Constitution he wrote was an absolute mess and gave far too much power to junkers, who by that point were absolutely irrelevant to German development and economic success

> I DON'T WANT AN UNIFIED GERMANY
> ends up with an unified Germany

>He was sacked because he opposed social reform.

YOUUUUUUREEE NOT ANNN EMMMPIIIIREE

>was he the greatest politician/leader ever

I think you meant she

Those Colonies were really useful for Lettow's glorious campaign and not much else.

>his policy against the clergy (KulturKampf) ended up increasing catholic deputy numbers (zentrum)
can you expand on that

he created social insurance

I NEED an East German girlfriend NOW

>Krieg-in-Sicht-Krise
He did make some retarded decisions

>only he can reliably operate

"just renew the alliance with russia"

What am I, some sort of political genius?

>dont need to expand
kek, except prussia and austria did just that. other states tried as well. I guess that goes to show though that expansionist states within the hre were the cancer that killed the empire

shes' actually a cute

I think he's trying to say that the Kulturkampf was a kind of "corporo-genesis", so to speak. Catholics had always had a feeling of being distinct from protestants up until that point within the empire, but it took Bismark and his autistic, and really just blatantly clumsy attempt to discriminate the catholics and force them out of political and cultural life that forged a new sense of catholic identity defined against the protestant ruling class identity. Bismark's persecution, in other words, CREATED not only a political constituency defined by its shared persecution, but created an entirely independent culture and society (which propped and complemented political power) that had no desire to integrate into the german "nation" without many reservations regarding the power of the state, spooks about total devotion to the state, military and fatherland and so on and so forth. This, of course, weakened by the 1920s and you have a lot of Catholic nazis (hitler, himmler, etc.) who were the minority of cultural catholics but ultimately the faction the triumphed and crushed the Catholics as a separate identity.

he must have been thrilling times for the people of those German kingdoms who had lived so long as irrelevant game pieces.

youtube.com/watch?v=3iaEUWHVI2Y

to add to this. the power of catholic identity was to create a what is called a "vertical" set of associations rather than horizontal ones. Whereas the social democratic parties, for example, were defined by working class solidarity across all sectors of society, the Catholic political parties incorporated people from all over the social spectrum because they more strongly identified with their share catholicism rather than share social or economic position. So at the same time you have Catholic middle class magazines, business associations and professional associations tailored to middle classes and businessmen, you also have catholic approved trade unions sanctioned by the clerical hierarchy, or sponsored by some more socially minded and maverick clergy with an ambiguous relation with the church but hesitantly approved by it so long as it stayed within the limits of legality.

also by corpor- i mean that it catholics became a political body. BTW, this process is known as "pillarization" in some quarters and is a process documented not only in late 19th century germany but in belgium and the netherlands in the 20th century. Basically, society becomes segregated into entirely distinct groups that might as well live in their own universes because the group identity itself provides the cultural, social, economic and political life within one lives one's life. A Social Democrat in these societies, for example, socialized with his own colleagues, belonged to SocDem soccer clubs, went to SocDem sponsored cultural venues, read SocDem media, attended SocDem political rallies, was part of SocDem sponsored insurance and other mutual aid schemes.

Mugambe of course, even Merket trying to imitate him.

>sides with Austria over Russia during the Berlin Congress
He's a complete mongoloid for that alone. Worst strategic decision of the century.