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The Franco-Prussian War
Of all the events that could be called instrumental in the start of the Great War, the Franco-Prussian war was one of the main causal factors that made at least a limited conflict between Germany and France a possibility.
In 1870 the second French Empire of Napoleon III was the strongest military power in Europe. Her strength came from a strong economy and a well educated population. At the same time Prussia, the most powerful German state, was itself a growing influence on the continent that had recently defeated Austria and was moving to unify the northern and southern German states into a single political body under the influence of the master statesman Otto von Bismarck.
The French power, although unquestioned, was actually at its weakest point in the past 100 years. Long considered the masters of warfare and heirs to Napoleon, her military technology and skills in planning and organization were no longer the best in Europe, although many factors conspired to hide this. In particular, the French military had failed to note the lessons of the American Civil War, which had ended just five years earlier, and a massive armament program, although resulting in some innovative weapons such as the Mitrailleuse and the Chassepot rifle, had failed to keep up with innovations in steel artillery and military rail logistics. In addition, the French army was still lead directly rather than through a professional staff, an innovation that was seen in the Civil War but was normalized and brought to a high level of efficiency by Germany in the form of the General Staff.
Finally, France had a largely professional army which was only beginning to work on a functional conscription system, while German was able to call effectively on a levee en masse of nearly 1 million soldiers. Napoleon the III was aware of the numerical disadvantage he faced, but the French army command structure assured him repeatedly they were ready to face any enemy on the continent. Despite this Napoleon III was hesitant to engage in a war with any enemy.
Understanding this, and knowing that the only way Prussia would prevail in unifying Germany and defeating France was if French power was limited by diplomatic isolation, Bismarck went to work after defeating Austria creating conditions that would assure a victory. His own writings reveal that war was France was his goal, but he wanted to have that war occur only when there was an advantage for Germany. He did this by engineering a diplomatic crisis over Spanish succession, then manipulating French news media to create a sense of outrage among the French public against Prussia. The result was massive French support for war with Prussia, and a declaration of war against Prussia by the French.
The war was intense but short. The French army was unable to efficiently mobilize, lacked logistics and trained manpower for prolonged resistance, and was generally poorly lead by its general officer corps. The Germans, in contrast, were equipped with modern Krupp artillery which devastated the French forces it encountered, had modern training in use trains and industrial quality logistics, and was lead competently. In the end Prussia set up a situation where its primary objective, the unification of the German peoples of Europe (save those of Austria) could be carried out almost as an afterthought.
Had Germany stopped there, the history of the world might have been far different. Instead, and to some extent possibly against Bismarck's wishes, Germany demanded a huge repatriation payment from France and transferred two key French speaking regions, Alsace and Lorraine, from the French Empire to the German Empire. These two moves set up French and Germany for a collision - it assured that France could not ever have truly peaceful relations with Germany, and in turn caused a great deal of worry among other European powers helping to isolate Germany in the future.
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