Germany
Otto von Bismarck
1815–1898 Chancellor of Germany, 1871–1890
A Prussian landowner turned diplomat, Bismarck became minister-president of Prussia in 1862 and then won three wars to create the German Empire in 1871. As chancellor he declared Germany "satiated" and spent nearly twenty years building a web of alliances to isolate France and keep Russia, Austria-Hungary and Britain from combining against Germany. He was cold-eyed, devious, a master of improvisation and a bully to his own politicians. The Kaiser who dismissed him in 1890 did not understand the system he had built, and within four years it had broken. He died in 1898, sixteen years before the great European war he had spent his career trying to prevent.