A unified Germany was too powerful for any single other country on the continent to stand against (as France had once been), but that does not equal being near-unstoppable. In fact, that very imbalance of power, so seemingly in their favor, ultimately always worked against them by ensuring that broad alliances were always forming against them and leaving them encircled by foes. Britain, for instance, had for centuries made opposition (or oppositional balancing, at the very least) of the dominant Continental power the linchpin of its foreign policy.

Nazi Germany also seemed like such a juggernaut because its rise was against the backdrop of the collapse of empires abroad, and still-devastated economies, industries, and populations in Continental Europe. But many, Kissinger included, have argued that most of the work of rebuilding Germany into a world power was done long before the Nazis came to power (by Gustav Stresemann, among others), and that in realpolitik terms, Germany was stronger, even in defeat, than France was in victory.