How the Research Is Empirically Examined 127
Bismarck and Hitler, two prominent German leaders, started their
international career as careful, successful warmongers. Bismarck’s three
wars—against Denmark, Austria, and France—were all carefully consid-
ered and a complete success. Hitler’s three early conquests—of Austria,
Czechoslovakia, and Poland—were very similar in terms of discretion and
success, but that is the only thing they had in common. In 1871, Bismarck
achieved his rational Clausewitzian goals of uniting the German popula-
tion and leading Germany to a period of prosperity. At the same time,
he became a peaceful leader. Hitler’s biography is the complete opposite.
Unlike Bismarck, Hitler did not stop his actions after achieving, more or
less, his rational Clausewitzian goals of forming hegemony in Central
Europe using sufficient power and growing, stable prosperity, and by con-
solidating his achievements. Instead of doing so, like Napoleon, he con-
tinued from one splendid victory to another. The most basic psychological
difference between the two leaders was that Bismarck had a sense of real-
istic limitation whereas Hitler did not.^145
The diminishment of Germany’s power, which manifested in the sys-
temic constraint of not winning a war but losing and contracting territo-
rially at its end, was accompanied by the American and Soviet military
presence in the heart of Europe, which removed the threat of German
aggression.^146
TERRITORIAL OUTCOMES IN BIPOLAR SYSTEMS
This part assesses whether the territorial outcomes of the wars fought
in the three bipolar systems, 1816–1848, 1871–1909, and 1946–1991, and
which included the polar powers that constituted each of these bipolar
systems, correspond with the international relations theory of war concerning
the degree of territorial expansion of superpowers in bipolar systems at
the end of the wars that they fought.
The subchapter attempts to prove that under bipolar systems, one prin-
ciple result for a territorial outcome of polar powers at the end of wars
that they have fought is possible: bipolar systems will dictate a territorial
status quo of the two superpowers.
Under bipolar systems, starting a central or major war will result in the
collapse of the system and the formation of another system in its place. In
the period assessed, 1816–2016, there were three bipolar systems, 1816–
1848, 1871–1909, and 1946–1991. During them, there was no central or
major war in which the superpowers constituting the system fought each
other; however, in bipolar systems minor wars may occur.
Bipolar systems will dictate a single territorial outcome of the two super-
powers constituting them (i.e., maintaining the territorial status quo that pre-
vailed before the outbreak of the war at the end of all minor wars in which
they are involved). Any other result would promote the expanding power