StormnStress

In this work the author presents an argument that the Empire of Germany, created by Count von Bismarck in 1871 subsequent to Prussia’s defeat of France, was presented in the year 1899 with an opportunity to supplant Great Britain as the world’s leading power.
The fact that Germany did not do so was down essentially to a quibble: whether it was important, or not, at the time, to ally your nation with a country whose leader espouses an unworldly doctrine: that the earth was not a sphere but flat according to President Kruger of Transvaal. When Wilhelm IInd, Emperor of Germany, saw the cartoon in a Cape Town newspaper he rued his decision to offer troops to aid the Boers against the British.
British troops were mauled badly by the Boers in the first Boer War. The Boers were armed with German-supplied Mauser rifles. Had the Kaiser supplied German troops to aid the Boers the outcome would almost certainly have been a British defeat. So, did the Kaiser miss an opportunity?
Count von Bismark’s schemes to unify the German disparate states into a single empire, has been described as machiavelian; another viewpoint might well be: downright dishonest. The reader can judge for himself on reading this work of creative fiction based upon data from official records.