the title of one of Hillgruber's better-known books, Die gescheiterte Grossmacht (The Failed Great Power) (1980), in which he examined German power politics from 1871 to 1945. For Hillgruber, there were many elements of continuity in German foreign policy in the 1871–1945 period, especially with regard to Eastern Europe. Hans Mommsen wrote that the "ground-laying works of Andreas Hillgruber... suggested the view for the continuities of German policy from the late Wilhelminian period up to the capitulation". Hillgruber argued that in the 1870s, Germany had won a position of "semi-hegemony" in Europe, and that Otto von Bismarck had three options for preserving that "semi-hegemony": Follow the advice of Moltke the Elder and launch a "preventive war" to destroy France once and all. End Franco-German enmity by "compensating" France for the loss of Alsace-Lorraine by supporting the French annexation of Belgium. Maintain the status quo of "semi-hegemony". Hillgruber argued that the "war-in-sight crisis" of 1875 was Bismarck's way of probing the European reaction towards a German "preventive war" to destroy France, and finding that Russia was unsupportive and Britain inclined to intervene, chose the third option. Hillgruber argued that the article under the title "Is War in Sight?" published in a Berlin newspaper close to Bismarck, and which concluded that war was indeed "in sight" was a trial balloon by Bismarck to see what the international reaction would be to a German attack on France. In response to negative international reaction to the "war-in-sight crisis", Bismarck ultimately issued the Bad Kissingen decree of June 25, 1877 in which he called for a situation "in which all powers save France need us and in which they are prevented from forming coalitions against us through their ties to one another". Hillgruber argued that after the "War-in-Sight" crisis that Bismarck followed a conservative foreign policy aimed at upholding the international status quo which was so favourable to Germany. Hillgruber argued that the accession of Wilhelm II in 1888 marked a watershed in German diplomatic history as Wilhelm was not content with "semi-hegemony" in Europe, and instead sought a power of Weltpolitik intended to give Germany "world power status". To start with, the German decision not to renew the Reinsurance Treaty in 1890 marked the breakdown of the once warm relations between the Hohenzollerns and the Romanovs going back to the 18th century. Instead, Wilhelm preferred a policy of Anglo-German alliance, which he attempted to