Titans of History

WILHELM II

1859–1941

Ruthlessness and weakness will start the most terrifying war of the world, whose purpose is to destroy Germany. Because there can no longer be any doubts, England, France and Russia have conspired them selves together to fight an annihilation war against us.

The last emperor of Germany—known to the British simply as the Kaiser—was an inconsistent, bombastic, tactless, preposterous, perhaps even mentally deranged, absolutist monarch who managed to use the empire’s constitution to gain control of German military and foreign policy yet who ultimately proved unable to govern or sustain his own power. However, for twenty years, Wilhelm II was the vociferous and dynamic ruler of the most modern and powerful country in Europe and his personality dominated international affairs. He came to symbolize the brutal militaristic expansionism of the rising new German empire but his unbalanced personality represented its dangerous insecurity, its inferiority complex and political flaws. He certainly contributed to the growing instability of Europe and the acceleration of the arms race with Britain. He must take much blame, along with the German military-bureaucratic elite, for the humanitarian catastrophe of the First World War—though it is simplistic to place the entire weight of guilt on his shoulders.

Son of the liberal Crown Prince Frederick of Prussia and his wife the English princess Vicky, daughter of Queen Victoria, Wilhelm’s left arm was damaged at birth and remained shorter than the other throughout his life, often causing him embarrassment and discomfort. As he grew up, he worshipped the swagger, machismo and discipline of the Prussian military caste, becoming a self-conscious parody of the Prussian officer with his waxed mustache, shining boots, batons, ever more flamboyant aquiline helmets and self-designed dandyish uniforms. Despite, or perhaps because of his damaged arm, his frail figure and health, his white feminine skin and camp taste for uniforms, his embrace of Prussian militarism was obsessional.

At first he worshipped the magnificent Machiavellian power of the Iron Chancellor Bismarck, but his real hero was his grandfather Wilhelm I the first kaiser—or emperor—of the new German empire, who personified the austere, unflashy, patriotic service of the perfect Junker officer. Simultaneously he came to despise the Anglophile liberalism of his own father and mother. He combined the old and the new in his personality for he was convinced that he would be a German absolutist monarch backed by divine right, yet he was also a keen proponent of the new technologies—somehow managing to see himself as both medieval knight and modern technocrat. His opinions were, from the very beginning whimsical, for he combined rabid anti-Semitism with support for the new business class, obsessional militarism with a liking for architecture and art, and absolutist authoritarianism with pretensions to supporting the working class and liberalizing labor laws.

In 1888, Wilhelm’s grandfather died and his father became emperor, but tragically the new kaiser was already dying of throat cancer and Bismarck remained in total control. On his father’s death a few months into his reign, Wilhelm succeeded to the throne. Bismarck had already had to spend time paying off Wilhelm’s mistresses and buying back the young emperor’s love letters after his sexually perverse early adventures. Worse, from now on, Bismarck had to hide and suppress Wilhelm’s often insane and tactless comments on official documents, but soon the emperor’s speeches—which varied from boasting how German troops would massacre Chinese with the brutality of the Huns to proposing the shooting of German strikers by troops—were embarrassing the German elite.

By 1890, Wilhelm was determined to rid himself of the ancient Bismarck using his own pro-labor policies to procure his resignation. He replaced him first with a worthy officer, General von Caprivi, and then with the antique Prince von Hohenlohe, but it was clear that Wilhelm was set on ruling himself. Bismarck had created the hybrid constitution of the German empire with all the trappings of democracy, but beneath them the royal Prussian prerogative was intact and absolute: this had suited Bismarck because his chancellorship depended on the favor of the kaiser. But now Bismarck was gone, the kaiser was determined to seize it himself, and over the next few years, Wilhelm, displaying some political skill, took control of German policy, particularly basing his power on his right to run the military through his personal military cabinets and to appoint the chancellor and ministers.

The kaiser was advised during this successful new course of German politics by his unlikely best friend Prince Philip von Eulenberg, who was his ambassador to Vienna, an aesthete, musician, writer and believer in divine right, the power of the kaiser, social conservatism, German imperialism and psychic séances. Thanks to Eulenberg’s intrigues and plans, the kaiser managed to find and promote a candidate for chancellor, Bernard von Bulow, who saw himself as an imperial courtier instead of independent statesman. In 1900, Wilhelm appointed Bulow to the post, henceforth dominating policy. At the same time, the kaiser promoted the creation of the German Imperial Navy, launching an arms race with the British. His outbursts—his support for the Boers against the British, his disastrous visit to Morocco which outraged France, then his notorious Daily Telegraph interview in which he offended all the powers of Europe, particularly the British—exposed his emotional immaturity and mental instability yet also destabilized European politics.

Although he now found himself dominant as home, he was undermined by a series of embarrassing political scandals that again revealed his own personal flaws: it emerged that he was surrounded by a secret homosexual clique and that his best friend Eulenberg led a homosexual double life. At one point, an old general, the chief of his military cabinet, died of a heart attack while dancing for the kaiser dressed in a ballet tutu. The kaiser never spoke to Eulenberg again—but the rising scandals in his court circle, homosexual and heterosexual alike—bewildered him and undermined his prestige. His interventions in German policy were often ill conceived and inconsistent but his foreign policies only contributed to a worsening international tension.

In 1914, faced with the assassination of the Austrian grand duke Franz Ferdinand by Serbian terrorists, Wilhelm’s overexcited maneuverings helped guide Germany to the policy of encouraging and indeed guaranteeing the Austrian right to attack Serbia. Despite his personal pleas to Tsar Nicholas II for peace, he backed the plans to attack France through the Low Countries and was eager for war against Russia, even though all this implied a war on two fronts.

Once war had started, Wilhelm again pushed for the alliance with the Ottomans, and backed submarine warfare (which ultimately pulled America into the war) as well as the brutal colonization of Russia. For Allied troops, the kaiser, nicknamed Kaiser Bill, was the ultimate enemy. His entire life had been a preparation for his role as Germanic warlord but when the war came, he was listless and depressive, overexcited and irrational in equal parts, proving totally incapable of political, military or strategic planning, let alone administration. His ministers and generals regarded him with contempt and he was intimidated by the real rulers of Germany from 1916, Field Marshal von Hindenburg and General Ludendorff. When defeat came in 1918, Wilhelm was hopelessly associated with the catastrophic militarism and imperial corruption that had brought Germany to defeat. He abdicated and went into Dutch exile where he fulminated against Jews and liberals, dying in 1941.