Episode Details

Otto von Bismarck fought twenty-five duels as a university student, drank prodigiously, and showed no signs of the political genius that would make him the most consequential European statesman of the nineteenth century. The reckless young Junker transformed himself into the Iron Chancellor who unified Germany, outwitted every rival, and built an alliance system so intricate that it took a world war to break it.

This episode traces Bismarck from his wild student years through the transformation into a diplomatic mastermind, the three wars of German unification, and the alliance architecture that kept the peace until his successors dismantled it.

• The wild university years — twenty-five duels, heavy drinking, and no political ambition
• The transformation from dissolute Junker into Prussia's most calculating diplomat
• The wars against Denmark, Austria, and France that forged the German Empire
• The alliance system, the dismissal by Kaiser Wilhelm II, and the catastrophe that followed