The Saber and Scroll Journal Volume 7, Issue 1, Winter 2018 | Page 34

destination of his to which he had frequently traveled for his entire adult life—a
period of nearly sixty years:
I have nothing but admiration for the high qualities of the German
intellect and character. . . . I have good German friends; and two of
my sons in their professional careers have been trained in Germany
and have made Germany their home. I have known Berlin 50 years
ago in its early provincial state, as well as recently in its triumphal
state; and I do honour to the grand patriotism and the administrative
genius which have given the empire its proud position in the
world. 16
However, in his lifetime, the Positivist had also witnessed Germany
transform from a confederacy to an
empire at the conclusion of an
aggressive
military
campaign
masterminded
by
Otto
von
Bismarck—“The aspirations of the
German people . . . , given the general
situation and the history of the new
German Empire . . . is an obvious
result of the European situation and of
the history of Germany since the rise
of Bismarck in 1864.” 17 This
precipitous emergence of a civilization
in European international relations
signified to Harrison that German
ambition would function as an
antecedent variable of future European
warfare—“There is no doubt about the
domineering ambition of German
diplomacy, for this is the key that Figure 2. Otto von Bismarck, ca. 1870s
-80s.
explains the course of history in
Europe for the last twenty years.” 18
Many historians classify this period as the Second Reich—the time from
Bismarck’s declaration of his king, Wilhelm I, as emperor of a new German
Empire to the government’s collapse at the end of WWI forty-seven years later. 19
The First Reich was the Holy Roman Empire, a multi-ethnic, central-European
political system that lasted for several centuries. 20 The Nazis intended for their
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