Blood and Iron

On January 18, 1871, the Second Reich was created. On this day, in the Palace of Versailles near Paris, Bismarck, in the presence of German princes, read out the text of the proclamation of the Prussian king as the German emperor. It was a triumph of the policy of unifying Germany with “iron and blood” of the great German statesman Bismarck. The German Empire politically united all states with the German population (25 states with 40 million Germans), with the exception of Austria, Luxembourg and Liechtenstein.