German Empire

The German Empire (Deutsches Reich) was the German nation-state proclaimed on 18 January 1871 at the Palace of Versailles, at the close of the Franco-Prussian War, when the North German Confederation's member states, joined by the south German states, conferred the title of German Emperor on King Wilhelm I of Prussia. The Empire was a federal constitutional monarchy of 26 constituent territories under Prussian leadership, engineered through Prussian Minister President and then Imperial Chancellor Otto von Bismarck's diplomacy and the wars of unification against Denmark, Austria, and France; Bismarck dominated imperial policy until Wilhelm II, who became Kaiser in 1888, dismissed him in 1890 and pursued a more assertive colonial and naval policy that contributed to the alliance tensions of the years before 1914. As the leading Central Power in the First World War, the Empire mobilized against Russia and France from 1 to 3 August 1914 and invaded Belgium on 4 August, bringing Britain into the war the same day; it fought on through the war's end, and Wilhelm II abdicated on 9 November 1918 amid the German Revolution, ending the Empire and opening the way to the Weimar Republic.