Bismarck’s War

Author Rachel Chrastil
Narrator Sarah Borges
Publisher Penguin Books Ltd
Publish Date 1 June 2023
Run Time 17 hours and 37 minutes
Format Audio
Genre European history, History, Military history, Social and cultural history.

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What to expect

Brought to you by Penguin.

Less than a month after it marched into France in summer 1870, the Prussian army had devastated its opponents, captured Napoleon III and wrecked all assumptions about Europe's pecking order. Other countries looked on in helpless amazement. Pushing aside further French resistance, a new German Empire was proclaimed (as a deliberate humiliation) in the Palace of Versailles, leaving the French to face civil war in Paris, reparations and the loss of Alsace and Lorraine.

Bismarck's War tells the story of one of the most shocking reversals of fortune in modern European history. The culmination of a globally violent decade, the Franco-Prussian War was deliberately engineered by Bismarck, both to destroy French power and to unite Germany. It could not have worked better, but it also had lurking inside it the poisonous seeds of all the disasters that would ravage the twentieth century.

Drawing on a remarkable variety of sources, Chrastil's book explores the military, technological, political and social events of the war, its human cost and the way that the sheer ferocity of war, however successful, has profound consequences for both victors and victims.

©2023 Rachel Chrastil (P)2023 Penguin Audio

Critics Review

Compelling, illuminating … Chrastil’s compassionate and thought-provoking history does justice to both sides of this legacy, the great statesman’s achievements tempered with their human cost.

Daily Telegraph

Superb on the human consequences of war. It is ravishing in its evocations of wartime life … [the] prose is crystal clear.

The Times

An extraordinary story too little known in Britain … Chrastil addresses the story with a modern eye, especially for issues of gender and civilian victimhood. She displays considerable knowledge… The book [offers] fascinating details about the conflict.

Sunday Times

Vivid, commendable … Chrastil excels in providing vivid descriptions of military operations and their impact on ordinary soldiers and civilians … brings these events to light in a vivid way. Her book is likely to become the standard account of the war in English.

Literary Review

A most engaging book, distinguished by sharp insight, powerful characterization and a strong narrative flow. It is the best modern account of the war and deserve to stand with Sir Michael Howard’s classic study of 1961.

Wall Street Journal

Elegantly written, marvellously readable … Bismarck’s War is very much worth reading as a lively and effective account of a largely forgotten past conflict.

Times Literary Supplement

Engrossing narrative history … The mosaic of glimpses into the human hopes and tragedies of the Franco-Prussian War leaves one thinking long after the last page.

Engelsberg Ideas

This is an impressive work, fluent, wide-ranging, vivid in its use of sources, and central to an understanding of Europe’s subsequent history.

The Spectator

A fresh and compelling history of the most important European war between Waterloo and World War I. In rich and engaging detail, she shows how it laid much of the foundation for the wars of the twentieth century, even as it was seen at the time, and subsequently remembered, as a relatively conventional conflict. A tour-de-force.

David A. Bell, Princeton University

Bismarck’s War brings the Franco-Prussian War to life through the words and deeds of participants both on and off the battlefield. Rachel Chrastil’s fascinating examination of the conflict compellingly narrates its military and political dimensions, and it puts the war in a global context, emphasizing its human cost and the international response to the humanitarian crisis it created. An engrossing, compassionate, and critical interrogation of a decisive historical event.

Carolyn J. Eichner, author of The Paris Commune

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