Prussia was an unlikely candidate to become a great power. Yet from the economically unpromising Brandenberg region, Prussia eventually established itself as a European power, ultimately coalescing the various states of Germany into a single, powerful nation. The question of how this took place is at the heart of Christopher Clark's book, a valuable survey of the three centuries of Prussia's rise, dominance, and eventual dissolution after World War II. It is a very Carlylean tale in his telling, giving much of the credit for the success Prussia enjoyed to its leadership, particularly the remarkably capable series of rulers in the 17th and 18th centuries. Together they used a combination of careful alliances, agreements, and marriages to expand their holdings, to the point where they dominated northern Germany by the early 19th century. The country which subsequently emerged was in many respects "Prussia plus," with Prussian institutions doubling in some instances as the main organ of government for all of Germany. Though this changed after World War I, the loss of the kaiser -- the dominant figure in the Prussian constitution -- left a hole that was largely unfilled until Adolf Hitler's rise to power during the Great Depression.

Clark's book describes all of this in an assured and well-sourced narrative that surveys the broader social and cultural context for Prussia's emergence. It is by far the best account of Prussia's modern history, one that is unlikely to be bettered for the foreseeable future. For anyone seeking a useful overview for anyone interested in learning about the emergence and collapse of this vanished kingdom and European power, this is the book to read.

The Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Fall of Prussia by Christopher Clark is something of a ponderable tome. I picked up the book from Audible back in February, and I have been listening to it off and on for some time. It was only in mid April that I could safely say I finished it. Even though I did not read it continuously, a powerful influence behind my delay in finishing it is the book’s immense length: 800 pages, which when read by Shaun Grindell came to about 28 1/2 hours.

Even with its rather extensive length, the work produced by Mr. Clark comes across as at times uncomfortably between a survey of Prussian History and a more in-depth work. For areas where a student may have studied Prussian History, a number of individuals will feel like some of the most important parts were left out. This started becoming apparent at around the time of Frederick the Great, but became notably egregious from Bismark and Kaiser Wilhelm. For those amateur historians, this book will come off as mildly frustrating at times.

And for those who know little about Prussia, this book can be quite overwhelming. The book has both thematic discussions and historical chronology, but the names that fill the pages of this book can come across as a “who’s who” of Prussian history without much introduction to them. The underlying assumption that you know about the subjects in question often comes off as a tad too academic for the casual reader. This suggests that this book is not meant for strangers to Prussia, but rather for those individuals who know enough to have been misled by the errors of popular history.

Clark devotes much of his time to myth-busting, and it is in this respect that the Iron Kingdom grasped the better part of my attention. However, if that was the only goal of this book, something fraction of its size would have been more than capable of doing so.

Instead this book is something of a reference text that seeks to completely re-imagine what it is that Prussia actually was now that it is wholly erased from the maps of Europe. Christopher Clark opens and closes with the seeming extinction of the Prussian nation. While other countries and kingdoms may have vanished, they still exist as cultural, political, or geographical units of some fashion. Prussia, however, was eradicated.

Clark does well to vindicate Prussia of most of its historical baggage in the process of this re-invented history. Clark, in a very real way, seeks to take the history of Prussia outside of the political discourse of German politics and public perception that birthed a zeitgeist opposed to the very identity of Prussia. In a way, this is something he is uniquely qualified to do as an outsider to the discourse, coming across not as a partisan, but as a historian.

With respect to a review of this books contents, I am inclined to cede almost entirely the initiative to William Anthony Hay’s review of the book in the National Interest called “Remember Prussia?”. Another recommended review to understand more about what I mean by re-inventing history, Robert Billinger has a much shorter review in the journal for the text in the German Studies Review.

For those fearing paywalls and academic subscriptions, Patrick Wright’s review on the Guardian called a A Fistful of Fredericks and Peter Preston’s From Prussia with love do an admirable job taking a look at the book. Daniel Johnson’s “Prussia: Wiped from the World” is okay as well.

However, I do wish to lay a rather heavy criticism at the feet of this work: It is incomplete. I do not mean this literally, as the book does follow the chronology from start to finish quite well. Nor do I mean this in the sense of no one’s study of a subject can ever truly be complete. No, I mean this in the sense that this book alone will not tell you the whole story of Prussia’s history.

Much of history is determined by the context of surrounding events, and in the beginning Christopher Clark devotes much of his time to detailing events in Poland, Sweden, and Austria to highlight just how vulnerable Prussia’s starting position truly was. However, this context-driven historical-political narrative becomes increasingly narrow as time goes on.

The book becomes less about the wars and major events occurring in Europe, and eventually drops this vein entirely by the first world war. The progressively focused historical narrative leaves gaps and holes that can leave many readers left wondering what, exactly, is going on. While an overt focus on the Prussian state and people is important, one should never lose sight of the emerging and changing positioning of Prussia within the European system of states. When wars that populate entire libraries of divergent opinion get little more than a brief mention, the result can be jarring upon reflection.

This is especially egregious given that Christopher Clark wrote a book of nearly the same length about just the start of the first world war. While those details can be overlooked in other works, with such an extensive re-imagining of Prussia history, it is not hard to see that something is lost by the seeming willingness to abandon broader understanding to the very series of books and forms of historiography that this text was designed to smash.

The problem can best be exemplified in the final part of the book, when there is a discussion on World War I, the Inter-War Years, and World War II. World War I creates a different impression of Germany and Prussia, completely upending how others tend to look at it as a unitary actor with a cohesive vision, as well as providing a different perspective of Kaiser Wilhelm II. Yet, of the broader Europe, there is nothing – and the war is described rather loosely at best even though it is ultimately what tore down the monarchy. The Inter-War section was perhaps one of the greatest achievements within the text for what it does to tell the story of the rise of Hitler’s regime, but the lack of a detailed broader picture even inside of Germany beyond Prussia’s borders makes the analysis feel partial. This is made even more apparent in World War II where the discourse of the book shifts towards how Prussia as a concept is near dying, as it becomes a political tool from which people derive whatever they want at the cost of any sense of authenticity among both the Nazis and the Prussian landholders themselves. A rather cogent point made almost entirely separate from the war itself.

The reason why is the attempt to divorce Prussia from the German Empire, the Wiemar Republic, and Nazi Germany. These are separate polities to Mr. Clark, and thus anything extensive written about them seems to be beyond the scope of the book that he wrote. Which, in the end, is something I cannot help but feel left something crucial out of this book.

It seems odd, but I feel like this book was almost too short. I would rather have had 1500 pages that told the whole story, than the 800 that seemed to drop discussion of almost everything else towards the end.

Score: B+ (88)

The history of Prussia is a complex,but a rich one, standing as one of the most illustrative kingdom, people and culture in the world. My interest in the Prussian history is an intuitive one, drawn by two strikingly vivid image, of the piked Prussian helmet and its resemblance to the Japanese, which I was interested first.

The Japanese and the Prussians shared a lot in terms of their fates in geography, history and cultures. Despite the Japanese occupies a contiguous mass of lands and surrounded by islands that shared the same affinity with the parent island, the islands are unfortunately dearth of natural resources. The nation was mountainous, stark from good arable lands and surrounded by sea. Prussia shared Japanese fate of isolation and starkness in terms of its core provinces of Brandenburg-Berlin is also an island, completely devoid of any natural barriers that can act as buffers and occupied smack in the central of Europe. The Japanese, in its early days of poverty are much more backward than the neighbouring kingdom of Corea, and perpetually shadowed by the Heavenly Kingdom of China. Brandenburg-Berlin has no natural ports, surrounded by multiple Germanic sovereign entities of all types, endangered physically by the Poles in the East, the warmongering Sweden in the North and threatened politically by the fickle policies of the Austrian Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire.

The Japanese and the Prussian starkness and meagreness in natural advantages stood too close with a string of societies that Toynbee called as “stunted societies”. Perhaps conscious of their innate disadvantages, these stunted societies more often than not have to recourse to extreme modes of action to accelerate their standing, increase their chance of continuity but also, more often than not, backfires and extinguished their ephemeral flame of existence. This happened to the nation-state of Sparta, who completely dearth of natural resources, completely relied on their queer militaristic society to enslave the helots just to secure their basic need for food and other basic sources of survival. They eventually overextended themselves in a scheme of hegemonist policies and collapsed under their fragile unnatural societal rules and the helots rebellion. The same happened to the great but transient society of the Aztecs, the Sumerians and other nameless great societies in the Mesoamerica.

But some of these helpless societies eventually found a way to survival and then to greatness. Babylonians, for an instance, managed to prolonged for a while their militaristic kingdom by adopting a strong rule of law via the Hammurabi Codex (the same goes for Ashoka of the Gupta Kingdom), the Romans started with enslaving surrounding Latin kingdoms (to a point abducting neighbouring kingdoms’ women just to procreate) but managed to transit successfully into a republic first by mastering the Grecian arts, and later to an empire by trial and error from their interactiona with the eastern kingdoms and empires such as the Parthian and later the Persians. These successfully morphed societies started initially with extreme disadvantages or with queer initial cultural marks by their ability to adapt according to their rapid expansion. And this is exactly what the Japanese and the Prussian incorporated into the very fibre of their societies.

The House of Hohenzollern, the ruling dynasty of Prussia, emerged in Late Medieval Age as the rulers of the province of Nuremberg in Southern Germany. Their house was one of the many political entities existing in the Holy Roman Empire. By an almost serendipitous act, Frederick I of Hohenzollern purchased the territory of Brandenburg from the Holy Roman Empire. The Hohenzollern then migrated north, becoming the ruler of a province so bleak and stark. European history, however, were marked with political marriages that we can appreciate in modern series such as the Game of Thrones.

By a fortuitous familial relations and marriages, the House acquired the province of Ducal Prussia, a territory lies in the lands of the previous Teutonic Knights overseeing the Baltic Sea, completely separated from the core provinces. Another familial relations secured the Hohenzollern with the firsts of their Western provinces; the provinces of Julich, Berg and Minden. The establishment of the Western provinces provides an important precedent in Prussian history, as we shall see below. The prestige of the Elector of House Hohenzollern of Brandenburg-Berlin was enough for him to be delegated to a royal monarch with the acquisition of Ducal Prussia, thus was promoted to Kings “in” Prussia, but not “of” Prussia, because the other lands of Prussia was still under Polish rule. And this was not the problem for Frederick the Great, the greatest of all Prussian monarch, to make into use of the instability of Poland, to divide her territory between Prussia, Russia and Austria. With this, the Hohenzollern acquired the remaining province of Royal Prussia, and then they can be rightfully called as the Kings of Prussia.

Up till then, the land was divided into dynastic allegiances. The French people were yet to cognize for a “French” identity, they are only to be known to be the people that is under the rule of the Bourbons. Such was the people of the Palatinate known themselves to be the Palatinates, the Saxony Saxons, the Prussia Prussians et cetera. But all this immediately changed with the emergence of the French Revolution. The people of Bourbon dynasty, overthrew their Bourbon kings, and found themselves to belong to the same identity, but no more of Bourbon, but of France. They started to cognize themselves more as a people, and defining themselves according to an early form of nationalism, that of a people that are bound together by a similar historical experiences, that of the French Revolution. But the Revolution immediately lapsed into a brutal anarchy, which was vanquished by Napoleon.

The Napoleonic corps eventually spilled over Europe, to Russia in the East and to the Iberian peninsular in the South. The Hohenzollern was immediately defeated, but later re-emerged by defeating the French, but not just by a professional standing army, but by also a volunteer army formed all over the German states. For the first time, the “German” people bind themselves together to kick the invaders out from “German” lands. The volunteers of Prussia found themselves not only fighting in Prussia lands, but also of other “German” lands, side by side with another “German” volunteer, to drive their common enemy out from their “German” lands. Indeed, Napoleon set the precedent of a German identity. To weaken Prussian hold, he reduced the Prussia Kingdom to its mere eastern non-“German” provinces, and established the Confederation of Rhine.

The Germans finally found themselves bind together under a historical experience, that of the War for Liberation against Napoleon. The Prussian monarch also dedicated himself into the most active role of reforms, further smoothing his bureaucracy. He also, post-Napoleonic Wars, acquired the larger provinces of Westphalia and Rhineland where his formerly western provinces lies. The problem is that the people of Rhineland shared the liberal affinity with the French, bend more towards the rule codes of the French rather than to the autocratic Prussia General Code of Laws. The people of the Rhineland would be Prussia undermining factors again and again for their persistence and insistence of more freedom and radical reforms.

A series of events (and wars) occurs successively that eventually elevated Prussia as the German power that unites Germany as one, and not Austria. First, would be the elevation of Otto von Bismarck as minister-president of Prussia. He was a soul that is free from liberal-conservative dualism, who is more pragmatic than dogmatic, allowing him the flexibility and the speed in making decision; his actions are guided by his objective rather than his private preferences. The setting stage would be the Schelwsig-Holstein crisis. The pair of duchies are located at the foot of Jutland, the peninsular in North Europe, formally were under Danish influence of control. But the demise of the Danish monarch without a male issue left an awkward question lingering, as the Salic Law inherited by the duchies does not acknowledge the female succession. The decision of the Danish to persist in including these duchies into their realm incited an-all Germanic protest because first, it ignores the Salic Law as the quintessence Germanic rule of law, secondly, the duchies have considerable number of populations who were Germans and thirdly, it would extend the Danish influence southwards formally at the gates of German, and thus Europe.

The Germans responded by declaring war; the Austrians, the Prussians and the German Confederates (which constitutes the whole of the Germanic realm plus Austria, but basically occupied by non-Prussian Germanic states who is pro-Austria) joined together and won the war. The Austrians performed admirable, while the Prussians stumbled at all steps, from manoeuvring mistakes, outdated military technology down to incompetent military officers. When the Germans won the war, the Austrians and the Confederates denied Prussians’ suggestion for them to annex the two duchies; the Austrians and the Prussians settled with the governance of one duchies each of them.

But, of course this is not enough for Prussia, and for Bismarck. The calls for a Germanic union with Prussia at its helm was very enthusiastic, and there is no better time than the year 1866. Prussia’s foreign policy in post-Napeolonic era was basically a mere extension of Russia. The monster of an empire lurked in Prussia’s every step, and there is no states at all between them to act as buffers. Worst, Russia entered into an alliance with Austria, thus limiting the options for Prussia. But when Russia embarked into the disastrous Crimean War, Austria decided to enter coalition against Russia, their relationship immediately turned cold. The Italian Kingdom of Piedmont saw this opening, declaring immediate war against Austria. Their brief war won them much of the lands in Northern Italy and in the lands deep in Campagna. Bismarck is about to do the same stunt.

He secured a secret treaty with Russia, that Prussia would support them against the damning treaties Russia have incurred post-Crimea for Russia silence. He dangled Luxembourg and Belgium to Napoleon III of France, who also agreed to close his eyes (for he never believed Prussia would win anyway, and he can take the two territories from Prussia anytime soon). And the fatuous decision by Bismarck would be to secure an alliance with Italy. Wars declared, the Prussians entered Schlesweig-Holstein easily, and the Austrians and the Confederation mobilized against Prussia.

Apart from the diplomatic factors Bismarck managed to secure, Prussia has made tremendous reform in their military post German-Danish. They adopted the needle-gun technology and enforce discipline among their infantryman, while Austrians still relies on the “shock tactics” of their artillery. Prussia immediately put into use their railway system to mobilize their forces with speed and effectiveness that counter Austrians advantages. Prussia immediately defeated Hannover, and the southern states of the Confederates decided to not join with the Austrians and to stick to their own territory. The Italians also mobilized against Austria, splitting Austrians forces into two. The Prussians advanced, defeating the Austrians at every battle before Austrians capitulated mere 7 weeks into the war. The German Confederation was disbanded, Prussia acquired huge swaths of land: the entirety of Schlesweig-Holstein, Hannover, Hesse-Kassel, Hesse-Darmstadt and the city of Frankfurt, the capital of German Confederation. The remaining southern Germany states were still free, but now freed from Austrian control, ripe for the taking.

Another fortuitous episode happens when Queen Isabella of Spain was deposed, and Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern, a relative of the dynasty ruling Prussia was suggested to ascend the throne of Spain. For France, this was completely unacceptable as Prussia would effectively encircled France. It only took a meeting between the desperate French ambassador with the King of Prussia, and an edited telegraph that incite the wroth of the German people for Bismarck to declare war against France. Within 7 weeks, Paris capitulated and the German people, now utterly convinced of Prussian might and interest in the fates of the whole German people, instead of their private dynastic interest, agreed for a union. Once a King “in” Prussia, then “of” Prussia, and now William I ascended the throne as the German Emperor. Austria, still fatigued by its previous war with Prussia, bend its knees and agreed to be the junior partner in an alliance with Germany. The rest would be history.

I consider myself as a particularist. For me, the axiom “there is only culture” stands as the truth. Culture is the great differentiating factor between people; races, language, nations, empires are secondary bracketing of it. Culture is the differentiating factor because it acts as an intensifier that is transmissible both vertically and horizontally. What starts as a medieval melodrama between dynastic marriages, eventually emerge as a story of a great nation, that is Germany with Prussians virtues and history at its core. And it is a damn good story.

De los mejores ensayos históricos que he leído nunca. Exige al lector conocimientos previos sobre el periodo temporal que cubre, así que no diría que es para gente que no tenga mucha idea sobre la Europa moderna y contemporánea. Clark demuestra que es posible combinar la exactitud con la narrativa y ha hecho que las 800 y pico páginas en inglés no se me hicieran pesadas en ningún momento. Además, se atreve a desmontar mitos tan extendidos como el de la militarización absoluta de la sociedad prusiana del siglo XVIII en adelante, el centralismo, la eficiente burocracia o el hecho de que el prusianismo inspirara realmente a los ideólogos nazis. Un 10 de 10.

A very enjoyable and comprehensive history of the rise of Prussia and the Hohenzollern dynasty. A strong point is the final chapters on the afterlife of Prussia and its image in Weimar Germany and post-WWII politics of the major powers.

There is not a lot of coverage of WWI, which is fine with me as during the centenary I’ve read some elsewhere (although I may have missed some if my phone Overdrive player turned back on after I dropped it in my purse; it’s a very long book and you might not notice you’d dropped half a file). But there is thorough coverage of the earlier years (from 1600, roughly) and the accomplishments of Frederick the Great. Also clear descriptions, although the detail can sometimes be tough to absorb when you’re listening, of the Prussian strategy during the Napoleonic era and the politics of German unification.

This rating reflects my personal enjoyment and takeaways from listening to this one, not the quality of the work. Listening is probably not the best way to consume this book. It is detailed and somewhat dense. It was hard to keep people identified, especially since names like Frederick are very common. There were sections that I found quite good, and this is certainly a good book if you want a deep dive into Prussia. I learned a decent bit, but it will ultimately be forgettable for me.

"The hesitation and wavering of these years had less to do with the personal characteristics of the ruler [George William] than with the intrinsic difficulty of the choices that confronted him. There was something irreducible, something structural in his predicament. This is worth emphasizing, because it draws our attention to one of the continuities of Brandenburg (later Prussian) history. Again and again, the decision-makers in Berlin would find themselves stranded between the fronts, forced to oscillate between options. And on each of these occasions the monarch would be vulnerable to the charge that he had hesitated, prevaricated, failed to decide. This was not a consequence of 'geography' in any simplistic sense, but rather of Brandenburg's place on the mental map of European power politics. If we visualize the main lines of conflict between the continental power blocs of the early seventeenth century -- Sweden-Denmark, Poland-Lithuania, Austria-Spain and France -- then it is clear that Brandenburg, with its virtually undefended appanages to the west and the east, was in the zone where these lines intersected. Sweden's power would later decline, followed by that of Poland, but the rise of Russia to great-power status would pose the same problem anew, and successive governments in Berlin would have to choose between alliance, armed neutrality, and independent action." (26-7)

"In some places the shock was sufficient to sever the thread of collective memory. It has been observed of Germany as a whole that the 'great war' of 1618-48 obliterated the folk memory of earlier conflicts, so that medieval, ancient or prehistoric walls and earthworks lost their earlier names and came to be known as 'Swedish ramparts.' In some areas, it seems that the war broke the chain of personal recollection that was essential to the authority and continuity of village-based customary law -- no one was left of an age to remember how things were 'before the Swedes came.' Perhaps this is one of the reasons for the paucity of folk traditions in the Mark Brandenburg. In the 1840s, when the craze for collecting and publishing myths and other folklore was at its height, enthusiasts inspired by the brothers Grimm found lean pickings in the Mark." (36)

"The acquisition of a chunk of Poland was one of Frederick's long-cherished dreams -- where e famously described Poland as an 'artichoke, ready to be consumed leaf by leaf.'" (231)

William I "prefer[red] to bathe once a week in a watertight leather bag slung from a frame that had to be carted over from a nearby hotel." (on William's "thrifty habits", 588)

"But conservatives did not monopolize allegiance to Prussia, though they might sometimes have felt that they did. There had always been an alternative tradition -- not particularist but universalist in temperament -- attached not to the unique personality of a specific historically 'grown' community, but to the state as an impersonal, trans-historical instrument of change. ... The influence of this exalted conception of the state was felt so widely that it bestowed a distinctive flavor on Prussian political and social thought." (615-6)

"Only in Mark Brandenburg (and to a lesser extent in Pomerania) did a regionalist identity evolve that fed directly into an allegiance to Prussia and its German mission (though not necessarily to Berlin, which some saw as an alien urban growth on the agrarian landscape of the Mark). [Theodor] Fontaine was among those who argued -- not only in 1848 but also after the foundation of the Second Empire in 1871 -- that the unification of Germany must necessarily bring about the demise of Prussia." (685)

The most complete book I've read about it, no doubts.

War ein Brummer. Clark schreibt sehr detailliert, nimmt verschiedene Sichtweisen ein und erzählt eine spannende Geschichte über Preußen. Wo es herkommt, wie es war und vor allem auch welchen Einfluss es auf das 20. Jahrhundert hatte. Sehr umfangreich, sehr detailliert und man muss es wahrscheinlich 20 mal lesen/hören, bis man nichts mehr mitnimmt. Wenn jemand Geschichts-interessiert bzgl dieses Themas ist, kann ich es sehr empfehlen.

Insuperable historia del Reino de Prusia. Desde sus comienzos como un ambiciosos electorado imperial hasta su desaparición tras llegar a su cúspide, o quizás su ocaso, al crear el Reich alemán.

Aunque no es un libro para personas que no conozcan algo la historia alemana, si que el autor tiene una notable habilidad para contar los principales hechos que jalonan su historia y a la vez enseñarnos como evolucionó el estado prusiano, sus instituciones y sus gentes.

Puede que a algunos les rompa algunos anclados esquemas sobre este pequeño, y luego, gran reino pero es lo que pasa con la historia que nunca es como nos la enseñaron en el colegio... o tal vez si. Lo mejor de la historia es el viaje que luego nos damos por nuestra cabecita.

When an author attempts to cover so much in so little (!) space, it is too easy to nitpick. So easy, actually, that I stopped writing them down halfway through the book. Yes, I would love if he had concentrated more on warfare. Yes, I would rather have him gradually expand the scope of his work into whole Germany as Hohenzollerns ate up the country bit by bit, etc. etc. But the point stands, nevertheless, that this book is an absolute success. Mindbogglingly so, considering the discrepancy between its intended purpose and apparent audience.

In the history of nations, one may be hard pressed to find one that was both as fragile and as long-lasting as Prussia. This book catalogs first and foremost the factors that pushed and pulled the Prussian state over its 400 year existence. Geographically situated between many great powers of Europe, clever alliances and acquisitions helped form it into a powerful kingdom while at other times armies stampeded through its lands and humbled its people. With many different religions and cultures under the state, Prussia is constantly in an effort to balance the needs of its peasants, nobility, non-Protestants, provincials, and military. Economically very agrarian at first, again we see the push and shove of government policies and workers and customs as the nation moves into the modern era. We're presented with a state where the outcome of any war feels uncertain and defeat may mean the division of the empire, and despite its militaristic reputation achieved most of its victories diplomatically. In a final ironic twist, Prussia subsumes control of Germany, which in turn eventually dissolves the state and ends the monarchy that drove Prussian history for the bulk of its history.

If you enjoy well-researched history over a long time span with interesting anecdotes here and there, this is certainly a wonderful book. My main gripe as someone who isn't a history major would be the verbose and complex sentences when describing political philosophy. For example (p. 615):

Whereas historical narration in Victorian Britain carried the imprint of the Whig teleology, according to vis-à-vis the monarchical state, in Prussia the polarities of the argument were reversed. Here it was the state that rose, gradually unfolding its rational order in place of the arbitrary personalized regimes of the old grandees.

There's a few too many assumptions here about history I definitely don't know about. You might have to do some research for some of the chapters (this happened as well when references were made to the German revolution of 1918-1919, which I hadn't heard about before).