ABSTRACT
Bismarck had by no means given up the strategic concept that he had advocated before coming to power and had tried to put into operation since. He still wanted to solve the problem of ensuring Prussia’s survival as a great
power by enlisting the dynamic of German nationalism and to do so by concentrating on the goals that were common to the German national movement and to Prussian great-power ambitions. But for him it was the German national movement that was to be instrumentalized not the Prussian state. Strengthened by its success in the Danish war, the Bismarck government was prepared to make some conciliatory gestures and even in the bitter debate that had produced the challenge to Virchow the prime minister had said: ‘If we could explain to you the likely course of our policy in the duchies with the same clarity as I can to HM the King, then, I believe, the vehemence of your opposition to what we are doing would be considerably reduced.’ At the beginning of the session the interior minister Eulenburg, trying to be conciliatory, had urged the chamber to assert its budgetary rights in an area other than the military, for in anything touching his power of command the king remained adamant.
