What exactly happened to Germany after the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire?
The Holy Roman Empire was neither Holy nor Roman. It was a loose association of German cities, states, principalities, duchies and so forth. Napoleon smashed it into oblivion. The vacuum of power was filled by Prussia, which was the most powerful German kingdom since the 1700s. It was Prussia, along with Great Britain and Russia, which put down Napoleon in 1814 and again in 1815, after the dictator’s astounding return and 100 days in power. In the 1800s Prussia’s policy was to assert itself as the leader of the former states of the Holy Roman Empire. Wars against Denmark and Austria secured this status, but Germany did not really unite under the Prussian Crown until the defeat of France in the 1870 Franco-Prussian War. That conflict was climaxed by the proclamation at Versailles that Prussia’s Wilhelm I was the Emperor (“Kaiser” or “Caesar”) of Germany. By 1900, Wilhelm II was on the throne, determined to make Germany a major colonial and naval power. He was part of an arms race that c
