The number one contributor to the establishment of the German Empire was Bismarck, the "Iron-Blooded Chancellor", and if Wilhelm II had followed the "Alliance of the Three Emperors", Germany might not have been defeated in World War I. The number one military hero is the old Moltke, known as the "Sword of Germany". Wenchen Bismarck looks tough, while the warrior old Moltke is thin and weak, but it is also a bit random!
The old Moltke's full name was Helmut Carl Bernhard von Moltke, which was different from the German marshal of the Later World War I and his nephew Moltke Jr., so he was called the old Moltke. The elder Moltke's father was a Prussian officer, his mother came from a merchant family, and due to the effects of the Napoleonic Wars, prussia lost more than half of its territory, and the old Moltke's family economy was also bankrupt. Moltke Sr.'s father moved to Holstein, a Danish subordinate at the time, and served in the Danish army.
The elder Moltke was sent to the Royal Military Academy in Copenhagen at the age of 10, and at the age of 17 he received the rank of second lieutenant, and his father's long-term stick education and economic poverty led to the taciturn and calm thinking habit of the young Moltke. After visiting Berlin, the then Prussian capital, the elder Moltke was shocked by the prosperity of Berlin, so he secretly decided to leave Denmark, and the next year he was admitted to the Prussian military academy, and a year later he was admitted to the Prussian Military Academy.
During his time at military school, the elder Moltke studied the History of War, Physics, and Geography, and gained an initial understanding of the formation of the school of military geography. After years of obscurity, the elder Moltke was promoted to captain, and at this time he was 34 years old, which means that the elder Moltke had been a company-level cadre for 17 years. But this is not important, the old Moltke published a military work "On the Outline of Military Surveying and Mapping" was valued by the Prussian military circles, breaking the old Moltke to the general staff.
After nearly 30 years in the General Staff, the Chief of Personnel of the General Staff proposed to the King of Prussia that the elder Moltke be appointed chief of the General Staff, at a time when the elder Moltke was 57 years old and a normal man had reached retirement age. This was a very important personnel appointment, the elder Moltke had previously worked as a civilian, only a few months as a company commander, whether he could be qualified was a big problem, at that time the Prussian chief of staff was equivalent to the later field marshal, commander, but the king still agreed.
The political ideas of the elder Moltke focused on the need for Prussia to unify Germany by force, and that Germany, if it wanted to become a European power, must be achieved by force, which was completely consistent with Bismarck's political ideas. After Moltke the Elder became Chief of the General Staff, Prussia caught up with the Second Industrial Revolution, and industry and commerce developed rapidly. The popularization of railways and telegraphs, as well as the improvement of the range and lethality of rifled firearms, and what role they would play in future wars were questions that The old Moltke pondered.
The elder Moltke decided to reorganize the Prussian army, relying on the railway network in Prussia to quickly assemble, direct command by telegraph, avoiding the military commanders from making temporary decisions on the front line, and turning the Prussian army into an efficient war machine, which was also the prototype of Germany's "blitzkrieg". When the Prussian War broke out in 1864, I studied military theory for a lifetime, and finally came to the time of the old Moltke battlefield practice.
In order to compete for the two principalities of Schleswig and Holstein, prussia and Austria's sixty thousand combined forces used the pre-planned pincer offensive to defeat forty thousand Danish troops and sign the Treaty of Vienna, Schleswig belonged to Prussia, and Holstein became an Austrian enclave, laying the groundwork for the Austro-Prussian War. There is no doubt that prussia was to be unified against Austria in the German Union.
Since Holstein was an Austrian enclave and territorially unconnected, Prussia offered to administer on behalf of the country, which was rejected by the Austrian-dominated Parliament of the German Union, and the Prussian army had marched into the Principality of Holstein, and the war between the two sides was immediately on the agenda. Most of the southern states in the Alliance supported Austria, while Prussia formed an ally with Italy, and Austria had to divide its forces south against Italy.
However, to the surprise of Bismarck and Moltke the Elder, the Italian army was actually vulnerable, and the plan of the Austrian army to fight on two fronts was frustrated just after the war began, which was clearly the norm in Italian military history. The elder Moltke had no choice but to organize the Prussian army to face the Austrian army alone, using the railway to quickly gather 250,000 troops to the Prussian border and use telegraphs to give unified command. Moltke the Elder used Prince Carl's army for a frontal charge, but let the Elbe Army and the Second Army attack the Austrian flank and rear, and the Austrian army was immediately thrown into chaos, capturing more than 45,000 people.
The Battle of Plesadoua ended with the complete victory of Prussia, Austria withdrew from the German Alliance, originally France was afraid that the Austrian army would threaten France's hegemony after the victory over Prussia, but it was not expected that prussia would soon unify Germany. At this time, the King of France was Napoleon III, the nephew of Napoleon I, and "it is my duty to restore Napoleon's glory."
In 1870, Napoleon III marched on a campaign and gathered about 400,000 soldiers to attack Prussia. Moltke the Elder estimated that France could only come up with 350,000 people, so he gathered 380,000 troops on the Franco-Prussian border, and when Napoleon III appeared on the battlefield with all the French troops, he found that the number of people on the other side was actually quite large. The elder Moltke used the tactics of coordination and division and encirclement, which led to the French army's repeated defeats on the battlefield.
However, in general, the French army's war losses were not large, but it brought bad political influence to Paris, and the Queen Regent was worried that the withdrawal of the army would trigger a revolution, so he repeatedly intervened in the French command system to prevent the French army from retreating to Paris, and Napoleon III actually supported his wife's decision. The elder Moltke learned that Napoleon III was supervising the battle with the army, and ordered the Third and Fourth Armies to pursue quickly, Napoleon III's Charons Army was besieged by the Prussian Third and Fourth Armies in Sedan, and after repeated failed breakthroughs, Napoleon III led more than 90,000 French troops to surrender to Prussia.
In January 1871, the Prussian army entered Paris, surrounded by Bismarck and the elder Moltke, in the Hall of Mirrors of Versailles in Paris, France, King William I of Prussia was crowned King of the German Empire, and the four southern German states that fought with Prussia also joined the German Empire, marking the emergence of a new hegemon in the presence of strong enemies on the European continent. William I's election to the throne in Paris, the capital of France, was not much of a injury, but it was extremely insulting.
France had to quickly sign the Treaty of Frankfurt, which was paid for the reparations, because of the revolution in France, France had to rely on the 100,000 French prisoners of war detained by Prussia to suppress the rebellion, and the Franco-Prussian War also laid the groundwork for the outbreak of World War I. Through three wars, Prussia finally completed the unification of Germany, and moltke's excellent coordination became the key, known as the "Sword of Germany" worthy of the name. The old Moltke did not have much experience in leading troops, but he was able to command thousands of troops and horses to victory, indicating that the war had changed a lot compared with before.
After the Franco-Prussian War, the elder Moltke said a profound word: What we have acquired with a sword in half a year must be defended with a sword for the next half century. In order to reward the old Moltke for his outstanding military exploits, the German Parliament rewarded the old Moltke with 500,000 tarrels, and the old Moltke bought back the Claysau estate in Silesia, which the old Moltke's father had squandered.
In his later years, the elder Moltke mainly studied the problem of German operations on the east and west fronts, and his hand-picked general Schlieffen was also a strategist who had never commanded an army in his life, but he solved the problem of Germany's east-west operations, that is, the "Schlieffen Plan". Germany must quickly send troops to solve france on the Western Front, and then free up its hands to attack Russia, which became the military strategy of Germany in the next two world wars! From the beginning of its establishment, Germany was not thinking about hegemony and striving to be strong, but was waging war against Britain, France, Russia and other great powers at the same time. Finally, ask for a follow-up!