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.::In 1890 the young emperor William II dismissed Bismarck. His dismissal was as much a product of the chancellor’s age and inflexibility as of any specific political issues. Retiring to his estate, Bismarck lived the rest of his life at odds with the emperor and the government that had succeeded him. Bismarck, who had been made a prince at the end of the Franco-Prussian War, was made the Duke of Lauenburg after his retirement. He died on July 30, 1898.
The crucial question in evaluating Bismarck’s achievements centers around his contribution to Germany’s 20th-century behavior. Did the German catastrophe—two world wars and the National Socialist (Nazi) movement—have its roots in Bismarck’s 19th-century policies? The issue remains controversial. What is known is that, by the time of Bismarck’s resignation, Germany’s domestic politics were so deadlocked that Bismarck himself was considering either a coup d’etat or a return to the “crisis management” techniques of the 1860s. In foreign affairs Bismarck had created a web so complex that it frightened even his associates in the foreign office, who considered it a house of cards unsustainable in any serious crisis. Bismarck’s legacy, in short, was at best an extremely intricate system which depended on the abilities and personality of not merely one man, but one particular man whose talents proved impossible to replicate. In the absence of such talents, the elaborate structure Bismarck had created in both Germany and Europe quickly collapsed::.
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