Replace

More like the ones that lose world wars and the ones that didn't

Perhaps the uberStensch [see what I did there?] were better of as small states and cities fueding with each other over who knows what.

No, they weren't! Machievelli is one of the most misunderstood writers of his time and a lot of what he wrote was to demonstrate that economic and military practices of the time WEREN'T working.

Most military campaigns back then were run on private contracts to, basically, mercenaries. Nobody thought anything of it. Invisible hand of the market, the person who manages the money best wins, right? And they couldn't figure out why mercenaries kept switching sides, sometimes mid-battle, because ultimately France had more money than any of those city states had on their own and France had an eye to conquering all of them some day.

When Machievelli was put in charge of the defence of Florence, he put the entire mercenary system in the garbage and enlisted the citizens to serve. Basically, you guys live here, you're not going to switch sides, now pick up a sword and fight. And that was so successful that they ended up capturing Parma, a different city entirely.

Nowadays, they'd call him a leftist for that.

You really believe it was better that Germany attack the world barely 4 decades after unification and again two decades after that rather than little skirmishes between the likes of Mecklenburg-Schwerin and Anhalt-Dessau over whose wurst was, well, [wait for it] worse?

Gosh, you would have hated what I would have done if I was at the helm back then, and that is, respect them and follow through with what they wanted, namely, extirpate the damn bastards and redistribute Deutschland to their victims, with Neu Judea and Romalandia getting the best chunks and the rest to Poland and so forth. Except Russia, for obvious reasons. What can I say, too much Trek Prime Directive for me.

Pro-Nazi . . . a bad look, and definitely not a civilization for the ages.