More curious was the absence of Leopold II, the man on whose behalf the conference had been organized. He thought it best to stay away and let the German hosts handle his interests in Berlin. Bleichröder did so by entertaining the delegates with elaborate dinner parties at his mansion. But of course it was Bismarck, once again, who was the crucial figure here, and it was through the diplomatic skill of the German chancellor that Leopold gained what he most dearly wanted: the blessing of the Great Powers for his grand “humanitarian” project in the Congo. Bismarck won Britain’s acceptance by promising to support London’s interests in Niger against France. He negotiated a complex deal with France and Portugal, whereby those powers were pacified, at least partly, with properties north of the Congo River. The territory that ended up under Leopold’s control was not quite as large as he had originally envisaged, but at over a million square miles it was the largest private domain in the history of imperialism.
At the end of the conference, Bismarck delivered a pretty speech in which he spoke of the meeting’s glorious successes—freedom of trade in the whole Congo Basin and “careful solicitude” for the moral and physical welfare of the native races. This last claim, of course, was a black farce. By turning the Congo over to Leopold, Bismarck and his colleagues facilitated the creation of a brutal, genocidal regime— the horrific realm evoked in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.
Important as Bismarck’s role in this tragic development was, however, it should not be overstated. Because of the West Africa Conference, the myth evolved that the Scramble for Africa was precipitated in Berlin—that “Berlin carved up Africa.” In reality, Bismarck only helped to direct and refine the carving, which had begun well before the conference in Berlin. Moreover, while Germany certainly got what it wanted from the meeting, the Reich came across here more as an arbitrator than as a self-aggrandizer.
Indeed, in the African conference, as in the Congress of Berlin, Bismarck showed that the new Germany, far from being a threat to the European and world order, could be a force for peace and stability. He proved that the word “Wilhelmstrasse” could stand for adroit diplomacy rather than rampant militarism. Alas, much like the diplomatic settlement engineered at the Congress of Berlin, this image would turn out to be very short-lived. Already by the turn of the century, mention of Berlin’s main governmental street conjured up visions of a rapacious foreign policy acting as a fig leaf for aggression.
Metropolis of Opposition
On May 11, 1878, about a month before the opening of the Congress of Berlin, an imbecilic tinsmith named Max Hodel took three potshots with a pistol at Kaiser Wilhelm I as he was riding down Unter den Linden in an open carriage. None of the shots hit Wilhelm, and Hodel was immediately arrested trying to flee the scene. Two weeks later, again on Unter den Linden, a failed academic with a doctorate in philosophy fired two shotgun blasts at Wilhelm, then turned the gun on himself. (“So much for philosophy,” said Queen Victoria, when she heard of the shooting.) Although this time the Kaiser was hit, his injuries were not life-threatening, and he was able to complain as he was rushed to the hospitaclass="underline" “I don’t understand why I am always being shot at.”
If the Kaiser was puzzled by these cowardly attempts on his life, Bismarck was appalled. For him the assassination attempts were a symbol of the disorder and disrespect for authority that made Berlin such a dangerous place from which to govern. “Here is an old man—one of the kindest old gentlemen in the world—and yet they must try and shoot him!” he exclaimed to former president Ulysses S. Grant, who happened to be visiting Berlin at the time. When Grant proposed that the only thing one could do with such enemies of decency was “to kill them,” Bismarck replied: “Precisely so.” At the same time, however, the chancellor saw that the attacks on the kaiser could be turned to his advantage. They were, he believed, just the ammunition he needed to launch a campaign against the German Social Democratic Party (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, SPD), which had been rapidly gaining followers across the Reich, particularly in Berlin. Although a police investigation revealed that neither of the would-be assassins was directly connected to the SPD, Bismarck suppressed this information and spread the word that both men were part of a Red conspiracy to bring down the monarchy.
Bismarck’s campaign against the Social Democrats was focused on Berlin, for the capital had emerged as a hotbed of Marxist activity, due largely to large-scale industrialization. The SPD was headquartered in the Spree metropolis, and twenty-one of Germany’s fifty-six Social Democratic periodicals were published there. Berlin even had a Union of Female Socialists, which among other quixotic causes called for the replacement of Christian teaching in the schools with socialist doctrine. Despite constant harassment from the authorities, the Social Democratic movement made steady gains at the polls, winning ever higher percentages of the Berlin vote in national elections. In 1878 August Bebel, one of the party leaders, could declare, “Berlin gehort uns! (Berlin belongs to us!).” And he added: “If Berlin is ours, we can say that Germany also belongs to us; for at Berlin is our great enemy, and there the blow must be struck.”
The “great enemy,” of course, was Bismarck, but it was he who managed to strike first. In May 1878, following the Hodel attack on Wilhelm, Bismarck brought a bill before the Reichstag to suppress “publications and organizations that pursue the aims of Social Democracy.” The bill failed to pass because the National Liberals objected that it was too dictatorial and would only generate sympathy for its targets. Bismarck decided to try again to cripple the Socialists in the wake of the second assassination attempt, which had inspired great indignation across the Reich, including Berlin. Now the chancellor prepared a more sweeping anti-Socialist bill, which he coupled with an order to dissolve the Reichstag and hold new elections. Because he regarded Berlin as the center of the Red danger, he demanded that martial law be imposed on the city and that military regiments patrol the streets “to impress the mob.” He also called for measures to inhibit immigration into the capital. His cabinet, however, refused to go along with these last proposals, prompting him to exclaim: “Unless I stage a coup, I can’t get anything done.”
In the electoral campaign following the Reichstag dissolution, Bismarck attacked not just the Social Democrats, but also the National Liberals and Progressives, whom he accused of coddling the Socialists. The chancellor asked the voters to decide between supporting him, the unifier of the nation and master of European diplomacy, and the various “conspirators” who wished to destroy his work. He was backed by the Conservative Party and its press, which, in the interest of corralling the Socialists, were prepared to forgive Bismarck for his earlier Judenpolitik. The Kreuzzeitung howled: “Socialism is . . . the worst of the many horrors spawned by liberalism.”
The campaign of defamation bore fruit against the liberals, but it did little direct damage to the Socialists. In the Reichstag elections of July 30, 1878, the National Liberals and Progressives both lost significantly, while the SPD declined only slightly nationwide and actually gained in Berlin, climbing from 31,522 to 56,147 votes in the city. This result so shocked the National Liberals that they signaled their readiness to follow the chancellor in his anti-Socialist crusade. The Progressives remained committed to their oppositionist stance, but were too weakened by their electoral defeat to carry much clout in the parliament, which was now dominated by the pro-Bismarckian forces.