Otto von Bismarck and Camillo Cavour were the founders of the German and Italian nation states. Gian Enrico Rusconi shows how Bismarck promoted the creation of the nation state with the help of the Prussian army despite opposition from the Bundestag, and how Cavour used the support of the Piedmont parliament and French Emperor Napoleon III for the same ends. Contemporaries characterized both statesmen as “dictatorial” and “Caesaristic.”