Blood and Iron: The Rise and Fall of the German EmpireIn this vivid fifty year history of Germany from 1871 1918 which inspired events that forever changed the European continent here is the story of the Second Reich from its violent beginnings and rise to power to its calamitous defeat in the First World War. Before 1871, Germany was not yet nation but simply an idea. Its founder, Otto von Bismarck, had a formidable task at hand. How would he bring thirty nine individual states under the yoke of a