It took a different Emperor, and chancellor and different treaties dor the Bismarck system to fail. And decades. For the time, it worked fine. The Bismarck had no sqy in adapting it, and there is no way to tell if would have been able to do so if he were allowed, can hardly be blamed on Bismarck.

But I agree, Europe most likely was bound to blow up anyway. Bismarck at least tried to prevent that. Sure, most likely until he thought Prussia could win, but try, and succeed, he did. As much as he was a non-democrat, people got the Nobel Peace Price for less.

I honestly have no idea why people paint Napoleon as a proto-Hitler (mostly Brits, which is strange since Britain defeated him) and Bismarck as some kind of either incompetent idiot or yet another stepping stone that got to WW2. I don't know, maybe those people mix up Bismarck and Hindenburg in their imagination, because the actually did put Hitler and the Nazis in power.