5/19/2023 0 Comments Prussia iron kingdom![]() ![]() None of this was preordained, but contingent on the ebb and flow of the European state system and the skill of Prussian leaders. For his Prussia is "self-made": through will-power, hard work and ingenuity, monarchy and administration fashioned out of the unproductive "sandbox" of Brandenburg and assorted territories a state able to sustain an army very much larger than its wealth or population warranted. He provides a sophisticated yet accessible account of how a middling German dynasty manoeuvred its way into the European pentarchy of powers. It is a tribute to the enduring power of the "Prussian myth" that the victors felt the need to exhume the corpse, ram a final stake through its heart and bury it for good.Ĭhristopher Clark begins Iron Kingdom, his history of "the rise and downfall of Prussia", with this famous decree, but his remarkable book is not another exorcism, nor an uncritical celebration. By then the heartlands of Silesia, Pomerania and East Prussia had been annexed by Poland and the Soviet Union, and ethnically cleansed of their German population, and the notorious "Junker" noble class systematically uprooted. Prussia is unique in that it was formally abolished by decree of the British, American, French and Soviet victors in February 1947, after it ceased to exist in any meaningful sense. Many states have been conquered, partitioned, occupied, "ended" and even destroyed. ![]()
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