The single most important driving force towards a unified Germany was a common German people and culture across the many German states. Throughout the Middle Ages and right up to the early nineteenth century, Germany comprised of hundreds of independent states, ranging from tiny city states to large and powerful kingdoms such as Prussia and Austria. Although under Napoleon the number of states was significantly reduced from over 390 to 39, most German people still felt it illogical and impractical to have a common people scattered and restricted in so many states. They longed for a

Austria remained the main and most powerful threat to Prussia. Bismarck, determined to stay on friendly terms with Austria, proposed a joint military campaign against Denmark to recover the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein. Austria was persuaded, and in 1864 the Prussians and Austrians attacked and defeated Denmark. Following the war, Prussia and Austria disagreed on the future of the acquired duchies and this disagreement came to conflict, the Austro-Prussian War.

No man was more influential during the later stages of the unification of Germany than Otto von Bismarck. A man of Prussian Junker background, Bismarck already had substantial political experience when King William I appointed him as Minister President of Prussia in 1862. Immediately, Bismarck made it clear that he believed that Germany could not be unified through the previously attempted diplomacy, but only though war with its enemies. This point he made known in his famous ‘blood and iron’ speech.

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