Otto von Bismarck

Born at Schonhausen, a Junker estate west of Berlin. His father is a mediocre farmer from old Prussian stock. His mother is the well-educated daughter of a senior government official. He speaks English, French, Italian, Polish, and Russian. People see a backwoods aristocrat. He lets them.

Appointed Minister President of Prussia. Gives his "Blood and Iron" speech to the budget committee: "The great questions of the time will not be resolved by speeches and majority decisions but by iron and blood." The liberals despise him. The king keeps him.

Provokes war with Austria. Prussia wins in seven weeks. He dismantles the old German Confederation and builds the North German Confederation under Prussian control. Austria is out. He is 51 and has redrawn the map of Europe.

The German Empire is proclaimed at Versailles. In the Hall of Mirrors. While France burns from the siege of Paris outside. Bismarck has unified Germany through three wars in nine years. He becomes its first chancellor. They call him the Iron Chancellor.

Introduces the world's first national healthcare system. Then accident insurance, then old-age pensions. He's not doing it because he's kind. He's doing it to steal the socialists' platform. It works.

Kaiser Wilhelm II forces him to resign. Bismarck is 75. The young emperor wants to rule himself. Bismarck retires to write his memoirs and predict, accurately, that Wilhelm will lose everything he built.

Dies at Friedrichsruh at 83. His last recorded words: "I do not want a lying official epitaph. Write on my tomb that I was the faithful servant of my master, the first German Emperor, King Wilhelm I."