Sarah Paine

And it was a big empire where you have pieces, you own pieces, you lose pieces, you lose pieces, you own pieces.

So for the Austrians, the value of the object, again, is much lower.

Given how they were slammed in the war, it seems to be a generous piece.

And then when he gets into the Franco-Prussian War, all these little Germanic states are joining with Prussia, and that's going to create unified Germany.

And then he takes a bite too far when he takes Alsace-Lorraine, which the French are totally upset about and they never give up on that one.

But all of these objectives are limited objectives.

He's not overthrowing the Danish government, the Austrian government, or the French government.

And the value for Prussians of unifying the Germanic states is far greater than the places that are losing these itty-bitty places.

Also, they don't get the big picture.

They don't see it till it's done that, whoops.

By doing all of this, Prussia has transformed itself from the weakest of the five great powers of Europe to second only to Britain.

And that's ex post facto.

And it's a real reason why you don't want royalty running stuff.

You want people who get their jobs based on merit rather than who their dad was.

Because it's in the world of Bismarck's dealing with is kings who are just clueless what they're up to.

Yes, yeah, he needed it because he had this big petroleum deficit zone.

And so when you say stupid to invade Russia, probably it's once you've done this number, you have to go into Russia because you've got to take those oil fields back.

Then you can go, buddy, don't go for Moscow.

Forget those people.

Just go straight for the oil fields.