ABSTRACT
The German Reich came into being when the southern states joined the North German Bund. Bismarck was quick to negotiate with the South during the war of 1870–1871, in order, as he said, to prevent an evaporation of national enthusiasm before the Anschluss took place. Bismarck even managed to get Ludwig of Bavaria to sign a letter inviting William of Prussia to become the German Emperor. Bismarck’s some successful wars had aroused fears in Europe that Prussia-Germany would follow a similar policy of expansion throughout the continent. Bismarck considered a French republic to offer greater prospects of peace than a monarchy. In 1875 a European crisis blew up because the German General Staff wanted to counter France’s unusually massive rearmament by a preventive war. The treaties with the South German states were approved by the latter’s Landtage and the North German Reichstag, though the two-thirds majority required by Bavarian law was only just obtained.
