These wars were a plan by Otto von Bismarck (The Chancellor of Prussia) who believed in unifying the German speaking people into one state. Which would later be known as the German Empire. He planed by doing it in a series of wars these were: The Second Schleswig War, The Austro-Prussian War and The Franco-Prussian War. The aim of all the wars was different. The Second Schleswig war was planned to establish dominance’s over German speaking territories. The Austro-Prussian war was to establish Prussia as the dominant German state not Austria. The Franco-Prussian was to unite all the final German states. (check out the blood and Iron speech if it helps you)
The first war was the Second Schleswig war was fought between Prussia and Austria vs Denmark it was a swift victory as the Prussians were armed with the Dreyse Needle Rifle which was the first bolt action and could fire 4 times faster than any other European rifle at the time you could also lie down and shoot instead of other European powers who used black powdered muskets. They also had sent observers to the American civil war and saw the use of effective trains on the battlefield. The Prussians used the excuse that they wanted to liberate what they called the occupied areas of Denmark or German speaking areas at least. At the end of the war Bismark purposely takes Schleswig while Austria take Holstein. He also creates the North German Confederation.
The Austro-Prussian war was the second of his wars and was between the North German Confederation vs Austria and its southern German allies. The North German Confederation also persuaded Italy to join in two so that the Austrians would have to split there army’s half of them fighting in the south against Italy the rest in the north fighting the North German powers. The war also only lasted 7 weeks which ended up being one of shortest wars in recent European history . When the war was over instead of annexing any land from Austria they annexed lands in the north who didn’t join the North German Confederation this was because they knew if they didn’t take any land from Austria it could end up being a stronger ally in the future which it was during ww1 they also didn’t take land from the Southern German states as he wanted to bring them in so they felt more like they wanted to become Germany.
The third and final war was the Franco-Prussian which he made it seem like France declared war on them instead of the other way round and also so it would make it seem like France was the aggressor instead of Germany this worked and when France declared war. They also felt like France was the right country because of earlier on in the century when Napoleon invaded Prussia so they wanted to get France’s back. After the war the north and south unified into the German Empire which also annexed Alsace Lorraine and France had to pay 5,000,000,000 Franks to Germany. The German Empire would officially collapse on November 9th 1918 just before the end of the First World War.
The World Wars 