The small, sandy north-German kingdom that, through relentless discipline, an outsized army, and a famously efficient bureaucracy, punched far above its weight, forged modern Germany under its rule, and gave the world both the model of the capable state and the word "Prussian" as a byword for militarism.
It was once said that Prussia was not a country with an army, but an army with a country. The remark stuck because it was close to true. This was a poor, scattered kingdom on the sandy plains of northeastern Germany, with no rich soil and no natural borders, and yet for two centuries it outfought and out-administered states many times its size. The cost was a society organized around drill, duty, and obedience. The Allies who won the Second World War thought that lesson so dangerous that in 1947 they did something almost never done to a defeated land: they did not just shrink it or occupy it. They abolished Prussia outright, by decree, declaring it the bearer of German militarism and wiping its name from the map.