... Italy and Germany by uniting their small states to make one, Italy in 1861 and Germany in 1871. Once the countries were formed, Germany immediately started to form alliances. Bismarck, the leader of political Germany, was in charge of these alliances. After the Franco-Prussian war Germany feared the French's hunger for revenge, especially after the treaty of Frankfurt which gave Prussia the provinces Alsace & Lorraine. The German alliances were strictly defensive but there was no way that the French would know this. Bismarck brought about this first alliance. It brought Austria-hungry and Germany into an alliance with Russia 1873, known as the Three Emperors League. This alliance meant that each country would stay neutral if any of them went to war with another country. The idea of this alliance was to isolate France. The second alliance signed, was the one between Germany and Austria-hungry, 1879. This brought the two countries ...

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