#prussia #ww1 #wilhelm #fyp #edit The empire was founded on 18 January 1871, when the south German states, except for Austria, Switzerland and Liechtenstein, joined the North German Confederation. The new constitution came into force on 16 April, changing the name of the federal state to the German Empire and introducing the title of German Emperor for Wilhelm I, King of Prussia from the House of Hohenzollern.[26] Berlin remained its capital, and Otto von Bismarck, Minister President of Prussia, became chancellor, the head of government. During its 47 years of existence, the German Empire became an industrial, technological, and scientific power in Europe, and by 1913, Germany was the largest economy in continental Europe and the third largest in the world.[27] The success of the German Empire in the natural sciences was such that one-third of all Nobel Prizes went to German inventors and researchers. Germany also became a great power, building Europe's most extensive rail network, the world's strongest army,[28] and a fast-growing industrial base.[29] Starting very small in 1871, in a decade, the navy became second only to Britain's Royal Navy. Otto von Bismarck served as the first and longest-tenured chancellor of the German Empire from 1871 to 1890. His tenure began with relatively liberal measures and broad reforms but gradually shifted toward conservatism, marked by the Kulturkampf against the Catholic Church. In foreign affairs, Bismarck concluded the Dual Alliance with Austria-Hungary in 1879, expanded into the Triple Alliance with Italy in 1882, while also fostering close ties to the Ottoman Empire. Despite denouncing liberals and socialists as "enemies of the Reich", he introduced pioneering social programs that laid the foundation for the modern European welfare state. In the 1880s, Germany entered the colonial race despite Bismarck's earlier reluctance, acquiring territories in Africa, the Pacific, and China and building the world's third-largest colonial empire after the British and French.[30] Following his dismissal in 1890, Wilhelm II pursued Weltpolitik ("world politics"), a more aggressive and expansionist course that abandoned Bismarck's complex alliance system, leaving Germany increasingly isolated. When the July Crisis of 1914 escalated into the First World War, Italy distanced itself from the Triple Alliance while the Ottoman Empire aligned with Germany. The emperor's inconsistent and often unpredictable decisions contributed to the tensions that culminated in the outbreak of the war. In the First World War, German plans to capture Paris quickly failed, and the war on the Western Front became a stalemate. The Allied naval blockade caused severe shortages of food and supplements. However, Imperial Germany had success on the Eastern Front; it occupied a large amount of territory to its east following the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. The German declaration of unrestricted submarine warfare in early 1917 contributed to bringing the United States into the war. In October 1918, after the failed Spring Offensive, the German armies were in retreat, allies Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire had collapsed, and Bulgaria had surrendered. The empire collapsed in the November 1918 Revolution with the abdication of Wilhelm II, which left the postwar federal republic to govern a devastated populace. The Treaty of Versailles imposed postwar reparation costs of 132 billion gold marks (around US$269 billion or €240 billion in 2019, or roughly US$32 billion in 1921),[31] as well as limiting the army to 100,000 men and disallowing conscription, armored vehicles, submarines, aircraft, and more than six battleships.[32] The consequential economic devastation, later exacerbated by the Great Depression, as well as humiliation and outrage experienced by the German population are considered leading factors in the rise of Adolf Hitler and Nazism.[33] - @pl3sm41