With Napoleon III nominally in command before Sedan, the French military was directionless. Had the French armies taken the offensive early, had they broken out of their fortresses, the Prussians might well have been stopped in their tracks, and the German empire, as we know it, would not have existed.
Without Bismarck's German empire, there would have been no Wilhelmine Germany, no pursuit of power for its own sake, no French revanchism over Alsace-Lorraine, and no First World War. Had there been no WWI, there would have been no Bolshevik revolution, no Soviet Union, and therefore no Cold War. The course of history for the last 150 years, the horrors of the century of total war, our century, would have been irrevocably changed. Instead, an inept, posturing nephew of the greatest military commander in modern times became the unwitting destroyer of the primacy of Europe.
Awesome
Wars have been started from less.
