Not in YBQ or OED.
Historians use the phrase "the iron dice (of war)," apparently in large part because Bismarck once spoke of rolling them (in German, of course).
However, the phrase seems to have been coined by Schiller, in "Die Schlachte" (1782):
"Durch die grüne Ebne schwankt der Marsch.
Zum wilden eisernen Würfelspiel
Streckt sich unabsehlich das Gefilde."And later:
"Eisern im wolkigten Pulverdampf,
Eisern fallen die Würfel."Credit goes to Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton for the English translation:
1852 Bulwer Lytton, trans. Poems and Ballads of Schiller (ed. 2) (Edinburgh: Blackwood) 354:
“More fast through the vapour, that hangs like a pall,
Do the iron dice fall.”In the first ed. (Leipzig: Tauchnitz, 1844), p. 265, Lytton had instead
"The iron Death-dice fall!"
It’s certainly understandable that many millions of Americans have focused on Springfield, Ohio, after the debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. When Trump repeated the ridiculous rumor that Haitian immigrants in Springfield were killing and eating household pets, he not only highlighted once again his own vulnerability to conspiracy theories, it put the immigrant community in Springfield in serious danger. Bomb threats have forced two consecutive days of school closings and some Haitian immigrants are now “scared for their lives.”
That’s dreadful. It’s inexcusable. But it’s not Trump’s only terrible moment in the debate. Most notably, he refused to say — in the face of repeated questions — that he wanted Ukraine to win its war with Russia. Trump emphasized ending the war over winning the war, a position that can seem reasonable, right until you realize that attempting to force peace at this stage of the conflict would almost certainly cement a Russian triumph. Russia would hold an immense amount of Ukrainian territory and Putin would rightly believe he bested both Ukraine and the United States. He would have rolled the “iron dice” of war and he would have won.
There is no scenario in which a Russian triumph is in America’s best interest. A Russian victory would not only expand Russia’s sphere of influence, it would represent a human rights catastrophe (Russia has engaged in war crimes against Ukraine’s civilian population since the beginning of the war) and threaten the extinction of Ukrainian national identity. It would reset the global balance of power.
| David French, Trump Dislikes Ukraine for the Most MAGA of Reasons
Note that French refers to a quote attributing ‘the iron dice of war’ to German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg in 1914, who likely read Schiller. Lighter shares a general misconception that Bismarck used the phrase, but apparently that’s not the case.