Philip Bobbitt

The Shield of Achilles

One state more than any other in Europe had used the new developments in warfare to change itself. The Prussian solution to the danger of arming the public and the requirement of vast numbers of soldiers to exploit the opportunities of decisive battle was to militarize the entire society. After the 1873 depression, the German state nationalized the railroads, introduced compulsory social insurance, and increased its intervention in the economy—in order to maximize the welfare of the nation. Throughout the nineteenth century Britain refused to adopt a mass conscript army; it was Prussia that militarized as it industrialized. The railways, telegraph, and standardization of machined tools that industrialization made possible allowed for dizzying increases in the speed and mobility of military dispositions. The use of the telegraph, in concert with the railroad, allowed generals to mass widely dispersed forces quickly and to coordinate their operations over a vast theatre. During the Civil War, the Union Army shifted 25,000 troops, with artillery and baggage, over 1,100 miles of rail lines from Virginia to Chattanooga, Tennessee, in less than ten days. An entire society could be mobilized for war, replenishing the front when necessary as the conflict progressed. But this was only possible if that entire society could be made a party to the war. This was the contribution of the nation-state. Far from being the paradoxical fact it is sometimes presented as, Bismarck's championing of the first state welfare systems in modern Europe, including the first social security program, was crucial to the perception of the State as deliverer of the people's welfare. If the wars of the state-nations were wars of the State that were made into wars of the peoples, then the wars of the nation-states were national wars, championing causes that had deep popular support, and that were fought on behalf of popular ideals. The legitimation of the nation-state thus depends upon its success at maintaining modern life; a severe economic depression will undermine its legitimacy in a way that far more severe financial scarcely shook earlier regimes.

Bismarck essentially bargained with the peoples of the various states of the North German Confederation to deliver German nationalism by means of Prussian aggression. There was no a priori reason why Prussia, feared and in many German quarters hated, was the natural leader of German nationalism nor any reason why Austria could not have been Germany's champion. The difficulty for Austria lay in the fact that it was necessarily a state-nation: its empire was composed of so many nationalities that it could not, constitutionally, adapt. The difficulty for the liberal states of the Confederation was that they could not marshal the material resoources to exploit the military revolution wrought by industrialization. Only Prussia was without both these handicaps. Thus Prussia was the first European state to successfully unite the strategic and constitutional innovations of its time. Koniggratz, Gravelotte, and Sedan redeemed the Prussian pledge, and, in the doing, created a modern nation-state defined by the ethnicity of its people.

This new form of the state undertook to guide and manage the entire society, because without the total effort of all sectors of society, modern warfare could not be successfully waged. Not only the power of the State but its responsibility as well were extended into virtually all areas of civil life. All aspects of life were accordingly promised to improve. We hear its voice in Wilhelm II's famous assertion, 'Herrlichen Zeiten führe ich noch entgegen' ('they are marvelous times towards which I will yet lead you'), a public relations remark one can scarcely imagine in the mouth of his dignified and reticent grandfather.