Blood and Iron (speech) iron chancellor." Blood and Iron (speech) Blood and Iron (German: "Blut und Eisen") is the name given to a speech made by Otto von Bismarck given on 30 September 1862, at the time when he was Minister President of Prussia, about the unification of the German territories. It is also a transposed phrase that Bismarck uttered near the end of the speech that has become one of his most widely known quotations. In September 1862, when the Prussian House of Representatives was refusing to approve an increase in military spending desired by King Wilhelm I, the monarch appointed Bismarck Minister
Chancellor of Germany as in the Prussian tradition of, for instance, Hardenberg. In both of these aspects, the executive of the federation, and then empire, as it was formed in 1867 and 1871, was deliberately different from the Imperial Ministry of the revolutionary years 1848/49, which had been led by a prime minister elected by the National Assembly. In 1871, the concept of the federal chancellor was transferred to the executive of the newly formed German Empire, which now also contained the South German states. Here too, the terms of “chancellor” and “federal agency” (as opposed to “ministry” or “government”) suggested an (apparent)