Portrait of Otto von Bismarck wearing a traditional pickelhelm helmet, 1874
In German school textbooks, this person's grade has changed at least six times. There is more literature about him than about all five monarchs under whom he lived and worked combined.
Raging Junker
While still a student in 1834, the Prussian landowner (junker) Bismarck wrote in a letter to a friend: "I will become either the greatest reformer of Prussia, or the greatest scoundrel." “Beware of this man, he says what he thinks,” future British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli warned a quarter of a century later. * * Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881) - English statesman, representative of the Conservative Party of Great Britain, Prime Minister of Great Britain in 1868 and from 1874 to 1880, member of the House of Lords from 1876..
Bismarck himself never concealed his views: "Politics is the art of adapting to circumstances and benefiting from everything, even from what is disgusting." On the coat of arms of one of the officers, he once read the motto: "Never repent, never forgive!" - and immediately admitted that he had been applying this principle in life for a long time.
Bismarck's biographer Emil Ludwig believed that Bismarck “always loved power more than freedom; and in this, too, he was a German.” More precisely, he became a German, overcoming Prussian limitations and creating a single German nation by the end of his life. He created it, steadily putting into practice his own directive, expressed impromptu on September 30, 1862 in the budget committee of the Prussian parliament and almost costing him his career: “... The most pressing issue of the day will not be resolved by speeches and not by a majority of votes<…>but iron and blood.
What were iron and blood to him? First of all, based on a strong army, the Reich, and only then its population. National unity from above through total submission. The solution of the "German question" by force. The search for "profitable" conflicts for the sake of the same goal. Such an alignment could not please the then liberals, who had a two-thirds majority in the Landtag. But Bismarck almost always defended an unpopular point of view!
During his life he fought duels 27 times. He used to drink all night long. He took part in the royal fun - bear hunting. He fell off the rocks in Sweden. Escaped from government service for three months, caring for a beautiful English woman whom he wanted to marry. Reveled, having spent in Wiesbaden alone on moonlit evenings with champagne a huge amount of 1,700 thalers (200 then pounds). He played roulette, made huge debts, wanted to shoot himself. Returning to his estates, he suddenly became a zealous owner, but still did not miss a single pretty peasant woman. Being an envoy to France, at the age of 47 he started a “resort romance” in Biarritz with the 22-year-old wife of the Russian envoy in Belgium, Ekaterina Orlova-Trubetskoy, and this novel, according to historians, was not at all platonic. He enjoyed life and power, which for him were inseparable. 
Reactionary
His finest hour was the revolution of 1848-1849. With one pistol and four rounds of ammunition in his pocket, he left his estate for Potsdam and Berlin with the intention of persuading the king to give the army a free hand. Strange, but in Prussia at that time there was a very effective feedback in power, and a simple junker could easily obtain an audience with the monarch.
One of the main components of Bismarck's political outlook was the complete denial of the violent change of power from below, that is, the revolution. When the Prussian king Friedrich Wilhelm IV bared his head in March 1848 in memory of the Berliners who died at the barricades, and then took part in the people's procession, the "mad Junker", outraged by the weakness of the king, even conceived something like a palace coup and discussed the possibility of regency with the princess Augusta, wife of Crown Prince Wilhelm. But he didn't succeed.
When calm was bloodlessly restored in the capital on November 9, the question of rewarding Bismarck with a ministerial post began to be considered in court circles. But the king writes in the margin: "Inveterate reactionary, he smells of blood, use later." In his memoirs, Bismarck quotes another phrase: "It can only be used with the unlimited domination of the bayonet."
A year later, Bismarck will declare in the Landtag that he is very glad that "Prussia has dissociated itself from any shameful connection with democracy." 
Bismarck (right) and Wilhelm I, Kaiser of the German Empire and King of Prussia, in a watercolor by Konrad Siemenroth, 1887
Refrigerator on the Neva
Reserve lieutenant Bismarck, at the age of 35, had already determined for himself exactly why it was necessary to fight. At the heart of his actions is state egoism. Goals and motives are determined in advance and thoughtfully. "Woe to any statesman who at such a time cannot find a reason for the war, such that it will stand scrutiny after the fighting is over."
In the ability to look for explanations and reasons, he, no doubt, was helped by diplomatic training. A mission to the Frankfurt Diet, a consultative body of the German-speaking states, introduced him to the highest diplomatic circle in Europe. Queen Victoria, who was visiting Europe with her husband, is talking to him. The only person she mentioned in her diary after a lavish ball in Paris was Bismarck, whom she called "very Russian."
How an Englishwoman looked into the water. Bismarck is assigned to Petersburg. Clear increase. But it looks like a link to him. “They put me in storage in a refrigerator on the Neva.” It is interesting that Bismarck was forced to appear at military parades in the uniform of a Lieutenant of the Landwehr. I learned Russian in just 4 months.
During these years, he identifies the closest enemy: Austria. It was her hegemony in the German-speaking territories and the tendency of the small German states to unconditionally support Vienna that prevented the creation of a single national space led by beloved Prussia. But even before his trip to St. Petersburg, Bismarck, in a conversation with the national liberal Victor von Urnu, also identified his main ally - the German people. So instead of "Prussian virtues" the concept of "nation" was included in Bismarck's political lexicon. In order for the nation to exist, power was needed.
The accession to the throne in 1861 of Wilhelm I gave Bismarck hope for a return to real conservatism. And a year later, the king's conflict with parliament over military appropriations, military service, as well as the real threat of the monarch's abdication opened the highest corridors of power for the ambitious reactionary. He becomes the minister-president, at the same time heading the Foreign Ministry. Russia is delighted, France is bewildered, England is angry.
dominance of the bayonet
Disraeli once asked Bismarck at the beginning of his career what he would do when he came to power. Bismarck replied: "My first task will be to renew the army."
Having received power, he begins to spend money on the army without the consent of the Landtag, bypassing the constitution, ignoring the protests. He dissolves and reconvenes Parliament. It gives the right not to report to the ministers before the deputies. The result is three wars in eight years.
Bismarck knew what he was fighting for - for the German world. At first it was a German-speaking minority in Denmark - in the duchies of Schleswig, Holstein and Lauenburg, which belonged to Denmark. He created a system of alliances and coalitions, the main task of which was to prevent anti-Prussian and then anti-German alliances in Europe, threatening war on two fronts. That is why in 1864 Bismarck even goes for an alliance with Austria.
He was not embarrassed that the Danish authorities guaranteed broad autonomy to the duchies, including language. Denmark retreated, the territory was divided.
But the contradictions became even greater, and two years later it was the turn of Austria itself. At the Battle of Sadov * * The Battle of Sadov (Sadovaya) took place on July 3, 1866 and was the largest battle of the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, which radically influenced the course of the war. General Helmuth von Moltke utterly defeated the Austrians. As a result, the northern duchies "freely reunited" with Prussia, causing a surge of popular enthusiasm. However, the king used the word "annexation", which was not considered abusive then.
And finally, France. Victory at the Sedan. Capture of Napoleon III. Proclamation on January 18, 1871 in the Mirror Gallery of the Palace of Versailles of the Second Reich, which joyfully included the South German states. Germany is finally united. Bismarck is an imperial chancellor, prince and one of the richest landowners in the country.
There is, however, one very important detail: Bismarck never fought simply for the sake of war. Defeated for him is a potential partner. So, in 1866, he convinced the king not to triumphantly enter Vienna, sparing the pride of Franz Joseph, and in 1870 not to occupy Paris, releasing Napoleon III. In the first case, he forever tied decrepit Austria to Germany, and in the second, he postponed the war in the west for 44 years.
Kaiser Wilhelm I will soon say: "It is not easy to be Kaiser under Bismarck." However, with all the greatness of the victories of the "iron chancellor" of his contemporaries, his unscrupulousness, promiscuity in means and duplicity were depressing. He provoked the French into war without even informing the king. He brought Austria into the war. He shamelessly deceived his allies, sometimes setting them against each other. He forged dispatches. He corrupted the German press with secret funds. He threatened to shoot the hostages. He forced a city that had never fought to pay indemnity. He applied repressions in Poland, which were not inferior in cruelty to the royal ones. He manipulated voters and suffrage. Bismarck himself, however, was not too weary of all this. "Whoever calls me an unscrupulous politician, let him first test his own conscience on this springboard." 
What did he leave
A flourishing economy. Bismarck introduced favorable internal tariffs and skillfully regulated taxes. German engineers became the best in Europe, German education became the standard, German masters worked all over the world. Bismarck sought and found foreign markets. The French grumbled that Bismarck wanted to make a "solid gesheft" out of Europe.
social stability. As early as in 1970s, a system of workers' insurance against sickness and accidents was introduced. Suitable jobs have been opened for the unemployed. Bismarck supported aid and self-help funds, craft banks, and especially industrial associations. The maximum duration of the working day, the minimum level of wages have been established. Bismarck made no secret of his goal: to isolate the workers from the opposition and convince them of the reliability of state support.
vertical of power. The pyramid "Kaiser - Chancellor - Ministers - Officials" seemed to him ideal for the state structure of Germany. The Reichstag became, in fact, a decorative organ. Any opposition was crushed. “Freedom is a luxury that not everyone can afford,” he said. In 1878, Bismarck introduced an "exceptional" legal act against the socialists, putting the adherents of F. Lassalle (whom he personally respected very much), A. Bebel and K. Marx, in fact, outside the law. The Bavarian separatists were defeated. With the Catholic Church, Bismarck waged a merciless "cultural struggle", the Jesuits were expelled from the country.
“Only secular power can exist in Germany. Any rise of one of the confessions threatens with a national split,” he believed. He felt a pathological dislike for both religious and nationalist fanaticism.
“Since the state machine cannot stand,” he once said, “legal conflicts easily turn into questions of power: whoever has power in his hands acts according to his own understanding.” The liberals immediately accused the chancellor of pursuing a policy under the slogan "Power over law." “I did not proclaim this slogan,” Bismarck quipped. “I was just stating a fact.”
Photo: Sammlung Rauch/Interfoto, heritage-history.com