From The Shortest History of Germany (James Hawes, 2018) p124
But the Prussian General Staff had come to believe its own propaganda. Wars, they thought, were won through sheer Prussian military genius and willpower. Most younger Prussian diplomats bought into the myth and were all for a showdown with Russia. The passage below isn’t some impotent crackpot sounding off, but the future Imperial Chancellor, writing from the embassy in St Petersburg to the No. 2 at the Berlin Foreign Office at a time when war seemed on the cards:
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Prussian Leaders Re-plan Eastern Europe, December 1887
We would have to bleed the Russians to such an extent that they will be incapable of standing on their legs for twenty-five years. We must stop up Russia’s resources for years to come by devastating her black-earth provinces, bombarding her coastal towns, destroying her industry and commerce to the greatest possible extent. Finally, we must drive Russia back from the two seas — the Black Sea and the Baltic — which are the foundations of her great position in the world. I can only picture to myself a Russia truly and permanently weakened if it cedes those territories which lie to the west of line from Onega Bay through the Valdai Hills to the Dnieper. Such a peace — unless there were a complete internal breakdown in Russia in the event of war, which is hard to foresee to that extent — would only be enforceable if we stood on the banks of the Volga… we should seize the opportunity afforded us by war to drive the Poles en masse from our Polish provinces… [He goes on to describe a new, more eastern buffer-state of Poland/Ukraine, deliberately constructed for Germany to divide and rule by balancing Catholic and Orthodox inhabitants. ]
Bernhard von Bulow to Friedrich von Holstein, 10 December 1887
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