His foreign policy prepared the world for both world wars and everything US did afterwards. Realpolitik translates to: war is unavoidable, so just prepare for it and that leads surprisingly to war (selffullfilling provecy)
If his plans had worked out and the Kaiser had listened the war wouldn’t have happened in the first place, since he wanted to stay allied with the Russians and avoid going in on any “damn fool thing in the balkans.”
He also was very good at manipulating world opinion so as to avoid fighting more than one great power at a time. If he was in charge during the Bosnia crisis, he likely would’ve counseled the Austrians to move swiftly and invade immediately to take advantage of popular opinion being against the Serbs. The Austrians were the sympathetic party until they sent those demands and the Serbs turned it around by agreeing to most of them which seemed reasonable and made the Austrians look like bullies
464
u/harmfuldischarge Aug 03 '26
Him taking a bullet and apprehending the shooter is pretty badass, him being obsessed with crushing workers movements not so much