War & Peace Quote by Gustav Stresemann

A “sometimes hard battle” is Stresemann’s tidy euphemism for governing inside a nation that had effectively snapped in two: a defeated Germany with a humiliated diplomacy, a wrecked currency, and a political system being stabbed from both flanks. The line’s power is in its restraint. He doesn’t romanticize the fight or name enemies; he frames foreign policy as a continuous campaign, suggesting stamina and discipline rather than grandstanding. That’s not modesty so much as a strategy: in Weimar Germany, foreign policy wasn’t a technocratic portfolio. It was a domestic minefield where every negotiation with France or Britain could be painted as betrayal, every concession as capitulation.

Context does the heavy lifting. Stresemann was the architect of a pragmatic recalibration after World War I: ending passive resistance in the Ruhr, stabilizing the economy, and pursuing “fulfillment” of Versailles obligations as a route to revision, not surrender. Locarno, League of Nations entry, the Dawes Plan: these were diplomatic wins, but each required him to sell compromise to a public primed for revanchism and to elites who preferred either defiance or a return to authoritarian certainty.

The subtext is self-justification with a warning label. He positions himself as a combatant for “German foreign policy,” not for a party, hinting at statesmanship above faction while quietly insisting that his unpopular deals were patriotic necessities. It’s a line built to outlast the news cycle: a record for history, and a plea for continuity in a democracy that struggled to sustain it.