The policy of Bismarck was first of all to cripple the rival claimant for the hegemony of Central Europe, Austria.

Her complete subjugation being unfeasible, she had to be shut up rigorously to her immediate dominions on the eastern side of Central Europe, in order to leave the path clear for Bismarck, by war or subterfuge, to absorb, under a system of nominally vassal States, the whole of the rest of Germany into the system of the Prussian monarchy.
Now, as we know, from its very foundation the Hohenzollern-Prussian monarchy has always been a more or less veiled despotism, based on working through a military and bureaucratic oligarchy.

The army has been the dominant factor of the Prussian State from the beginning of the eighteenth century onwards.

Prussia has been from the beginning of its monarchy the land of the drill-sergeant and the barracks.

It is this system which the Junker Bismarck has riveted on the whole German people, with what results we now see.