ABSTRACT
As long as William I lived, German foreign policy was conducted by Bismarck alone. Although the quality of German diplomats was of the highest calibre, Bismarck's autocratic temperament in the long run served only to destroy their initiative and consequently his diplomatic system remained, as one of his biographers remarked, ‘a one-man band’ (Palmer, 1976: 219). Occasionally his views were challenged but invariably he overcame any opposition and his diplomats had little option but to ‘fall into rank like soldiers’ (Lerman, 2004: 205).
