All wars seem, in some sense, to be continuations of a preceding war. WWI is no exception and the parent war of that conflict is certainly the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71. The war was ended, for all intents and purposes by the Battle of Sedan, which was a stunning victory of the German army over the French. That war, among other things, established a new German dominance over European affairs. It also solidified German unification (largely under Prussian leadership) and gave them control over the European territory know as Alsace-Lorraine. This territory is west of the Rhine river and hence constituted an "expansion" of Germany beyond its natural border provided by that river. The emotional conflict that results in the French mind played a large part in the outbreak of the next war. For their part, the Germans ruled Alsace-Lorraine, with a large French population, as if it were a colony, handing down edicts to be ignored by the populace at their peril.
Otto Von Bismark, the German Chancellor, who was a key figure in the creation of the modern German state, opposed the annexation, arguing correctly that it would only engender lasting enmity on the part of the French toward Germany. Von Bismark can be seen as a "Germany First" man, a careful diplomat, more concerned about holding on to the gains made in unification and less in meddling in external affairs. He sees with almost uncanny vision the future of Europe.
"Jena came twenty years after the death of Frederick the Great; the crash will come twenty years after my departure if things go on like this" ― a prophecy fulfilled a little late when, twenty four years after his resignation as Chancellor, World War I began in August 1914.[68]He is asked to resign by Kaiser Wilhelm II, a man who imagines himself Germany's ultimate war lord, in 1890.
In 1894 a scandal erupted in France, the Drefus Affair, that resulted from accusation that a French army officer had communicated military secrets to the German government. The baseless conviction of Dreyfus only succeeded in bitterly dividing French political thought. Both anti-German thought and antisemitism (Drefus was Alsatian and a Jew) contributed to the conflict. In 1906, finally Drefus was exonerated, but the recriminations remain to influence French political thought.
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