(This collection of literature attempts to compile many of...)
This collection of literature attempts to compile many of the classic works that have stood the test of time and offer them at a reduced, affordable price, in an attractive volume so that everyone can enjoy them.
Wilhelm II was the last German Emperor (Kaiser) noted for his frequently militaristic manner as well as for his vacillating policies. Born in royalty but he is badly known as the cause of German defeat in World War I. He was the King of Prussia during the period from 1888 to 1918 when he was forced to be removed from the throne due to his reputation and his role in the wars.
Background
Wilhelm was born on 27 January 1859 at the Crown Prince's Palace, Berlin to Prince Frederick William of Prussia (the future Frederick III) and his wife, Victoria, Princess Royal, the eldest daughter of Britain's Queen Victoria. At the time of his birth, his great-uncle Frederick William IV was king of Prussia, and his grandfather and namesake Wilhelm was acting as Regent. He was the first grandchild of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, but more importantly, as the first son of the Crown Prince of Prussia, Wilhelm was from 1861 second in the line of succession to Prussia, and also, after 1871, to the newly created German Empire, which, according to the constitution of the German Empire, was ruled by the Prussian King. It is stated that Wilhelm II had stressed relationship with both of his parents, especially his mother.
Education
From the start, the lad was weighed down by physical and psychological handicaps: a withered left arm, incurred during birth, caused him discomfort later in life; and the conflict between his grandfather's Prussian conservatism and his parents' English liberalism tugged at his conscience. His mother remained cold and imperious, despising all she saw in a foreign land; her bitter feud with Otto von Bismarck placed the future ruler in an unenviable position between parent and chancellor.
Victoria sent her son to high school at Kassel, where he was educated by the Calvinist Georg Hinzpeter. Wilhelm graduated in 1877 and after a brief stint in the guards, which in accordance with Hohenzollern tradition he had entered at age ten, he attended Bonn University, joining the Borussen Corps. Two years later Wilhelm returned to Potsdam and to primarily a military life.
Career
Wilhelm II was second to the throne after his father to become the King of Prussia and an Emperor. It was very much influenced by the creation of German Empire led by Prussia in the year of 1871.
On March 17, 1890, Wilhelm asked for and the next day received Bismarck's resignation, thus "dropping the pilot," as Punch put it.
In the month of March 1888, Wilhelm II’s father went on to become Kaiser Frederick III of Germany. Already suffering from throat cancer, he died after few months of becoming the emperor. Following his death, Wilhelm II was declared the King of Prussia and the Emperor at the age of twenty-nine on 15th of June, 1888. During the time, Otto von Bismarck subjugated the German politics. Wilhelm II broke up with him to rule the state personally. He did appoint several chancellors as high-level civil servants but not as statesmen. When this happened, Otto von Bismarck’s sour incident with Wilhelm II led him to mention that the action taken up by the king would lead the state to wreck.
Wilhelm II contributed to Germany by creating an army that could match the British. Having been through several see-sailing experiences, Wilhelm II was determined to have a large fleet for Germany. With the support from Alfred von Tirpitz who was the chief admiral then, they decided to place large warships along the Northern Sea to expand Germany’s political power over British. By the year 1914, the plan to create the navy force against British had created several financial issues for Germany.
The assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand at Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, shocked Wilhelm deeply, and on July 2 he declared, "The Serbs must be disposed of, and very soon." It was a question of "now or never." To Krupp, Wilhelm confided that this time he "would not cave in," and on July 6 he issued the famous blank check to Austria-Hungary, assuring it of Germany's support in any action taken against Serbia. But when he received a copy of Belgrade's conciliatory reply to a Viennese ultimatum on July 28, the kaiser was delighted, saying, "A great moral victory for Vienna, and with it every reason for war disappears.” But it was not to be. Wilhelm drifted for the next week as mobilization orders and cancellations, partly or wholly, were heaped one atop the other; in the end, he continued to hope that the British would stay out of the fray, but by July 30 he realized that this "mean crew of shopkeepers" would stand by its ties to France and Russia. Not even a frantic burst of telegrams to the tsar, his Cousin Nicky, in Russia could avert the calamity upon which Europe was resolved to embark.
The German failure at the Marne in September 1914 prompted Wilhelm to appoint the Prussian war minister, Erich von Falkenhayn, as Moltke's successor. Perhaps the kaiser's being "terrified at the thought of a long war" prompted him to permit Falkenhayn to attempt to "bleed the French forces white" before Verdun on February 21, 1916. For thirty-five days the German Fifth Army lost men at the rate of one every forty-five seconds. On the other hand, the kaiser worked hard to prevent an all-out naval battle in the North Sea, rightly fearing that this would result in the end of the High Sea Fleet. And while he favored a separate peace with Russia, he could not bring himself to initiate talks with Nicholas II that might have led to this.
By July 1916, Falkenhayn's offensive before Verdun had spent itself, General Aleksei Brusilov attacked in full force in Galicia, and Rumania entered the war against Germany. As a result, Falkenhayn was dismissed in August 1916, in favor of the victors of Tannenberg, Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg and General Erich Ludendorff. The new duumvirate at once stabilized the western front through a strategic withdrawal and attempted to bolster their land forces with Polish volunteers by agreeing in November to create an independent Polish nation after the war.
And whereas in March 1915 Wilhelm had accepted Tirpitz's resignation rather than permit unrestricted submarine warfare against neutral passenger liners, on January 9, 1917, at Pless he concurred with Admiral Henning von Holtzendorff and other naval leaders that Germany needed to play its last "trump" against Britain. The kaiser "fully expected America's entry into the war" as a result of this decision, but he assured his entourage that such a turn of events was "irrelevant" to the outcome of the war.
At home, 1917 proved to be a critical year. Bethmann Hollweg on April 8, Easter Day, wrung from Wilhelm a proclamation stating that after the war there would be franchise reform in Prussia and an overhaul of the Bismarckian constitutional system. While the Easter message delighted many liberals, it solidified the military and its right-wing civilian backers in the belief that the chancellor was an obstacle to a victorious German peace, which alone could uphold the conservative social order of the Reich. On July 13 Wilhelm yielded in the face of threats of resignation from Hindenburg and Ludendorff and dismissed Bethmann Hollweg; Crown Prince Wilhelm, Colonel Max Bauer, and the political leaders Matthias Erzberger, Gustav Stresemann, and Kuno von Westarp had been eager to assist the military in its political intrigue. The kaiser showed little interest in the next chancellors, Georg Michaelis and Georg von Hertling, and instead occupied his time with schemes to place either his sons or other German princes on the thrones of German-controlled Belgium, Courland, Finland, Poland, and Rumania.
By the end of the year 1918, the condition of Germany had worsened with the war and the financial conditions. Wilhelm II was requested to have himself removed from the throne to bring back order in the state. Wilhelm II had also lost support from his followers. His resignation from the throne was declared on 9th of November, 1918 and the next day, he boarded the train to Netherland borders to remain disinterested for the entire war. Wilhelm II spent rest of his life in a large country house that he purchased in Doorn.
Wilhelm II is also mentioned to be a cause of the World War for which many nations wanted to punish him. But the then Queen of Netherlands Wilhelmina rejected to hand him over to the foreign nations.
Wilhelm II married Hermine Reuss in the year 1922. She tried to bring back control through the German leader Adolf Hitler but it did not work out. Hitler did not want to support the person who was the cause of the defeat in World War I for Germany. It was in the year 1938 when Wilhelm II mentioned that he was embarrassed to be a German.
After spending around twenty years away from the royalty and the throne, Wilhelm II succumbed to death at the age of 82 on 4th of June 1941 in Netherlands.
His major contributions to Germany include having a large fleet created for Germany and place it in the Northern Sea to gain political affluence against British. Though this was performed with good intentions, Germany had to go through great financial stress over this. Wilhelm II role in the initiation of World War I is highly controversial. Though it is believed that he triggered the war, he hardly participated in the battles as a military leader and with his meager role, he was removed from the throne in the year 1918.
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Religion
Wilhelm II was Lutheranian which falls under Evangelical State Church of Prussia's older Provinces.
Views
By the time Wilhelm II was twelve, he had the national patriotism to become a great leader. He was ill prepared for the task: his closest associations had been with aristocratic officers in the guards and he had never developed a penchant for sustained work. This notwithstanding, the new ruler desired to be his "own Bismarck." Moreover, for the next two years he wished to appear socially progressive, determined not to renew Bismarck's anti-Socialist laws and also to disavow the secret tie established with Russia in 1887. His role in the initiation of World War I is highly controversial. Though it is believed that he triggered the war, he hardly participated in the battles as a military leader and with his meager role, he was removed from the throne in the year 1918 after which he received no support from Germany. During the late years of his life, living in exile, he has stated that he is ashamed to be a German.
Wilhelm II remained defamed among the public due to several mistakes he made during his reign. He intervened with the foreign policies and strained his relationship with other nations. Some of his friends and supporters were found to be homosexuals who was less prevalent and accepted during the time in the year 1907. Though there is no evidence of Wilhelm II being homosexual, he was defamed by the people for having numerous affairs out of his marriage and having many illicit off-springs. This was used by his rivals to abate Wilhelm II’s power.
Wilhelm II also made a mistake when during one of his interview with the Daily Telegraph in the year 1908; he called the British mad publically. His statement was “You English are mad, mad, mad as March hares.”
As supreme war lord in the Great War, Wilhelm proved to be a dismal failure. Devoid of deeper strategic insight and unable to lead the nation in time of emergency, he staggered from one crisis to the next until in the end his powers were usurped by two generals. Deep down, the monarch could never sustain a consistent policy, either in peace or in war. As one biographer (Balfour) has noted, Wilhelm's "alternation between dark, suspicious moments of frustration and confident assertions of imminent triumph remained the most marked characteristic" of his personality throughout the war. According to Prussian tradition, the kaiser was to be with his troops during the war, and hence he spent much of the period 1914-1918 at army headquarters: first at Koblenz and Luxembourg, then at Charleville, Spa, and Pless. By and large he remained a spectator; personnel decisions alone remained his prerogative.
Quotations:
“I look upon the People and the Nation as handed on to me as a responsibility conferred upon me by God, and I believe, as it is written in the Bible, that it is my duty to increase this heritage for which one day I shall be called upon to give an account. Whoever tries to interfere with my task I shall crush.”
“I regard every Social Democrat as an enemy of the Empire and Fatherland.”
“There is only one person who is a master in this Empire and I am not going to tolerate any other.”
“(Germany) has the strongest army in the world and the Germans don't like being laughed at and are looking for somebody on whom to vent their temper and use their strength...Now it is 38 years since Germany had her last war, and she is very strong and very restless, like a person whose boots are too small for him. I don't think there will be the war at present, but it will be difficult to keep the peace of Europe for another five years. “
Wilhelm despised President Woodrow Wilson, and steadfastly refused the American leader's mediation offers, stating "I and my cousins George and Nicholas will make peace when the proper time has come."
Personality
He was a quick learner but also possessed short temper. He could easily get very nervous and reacted vaguely in important circumstances.
Wilhelm II had to go through several traumatized experience during the last years of his life. The death of his wife and the suicide of his youngest son which happened in the year 1920 were the cause of it.
Physical Characteristics:
A traumatic breech birth left him with a withered left arm due to Erb's palsy, which he tried with some success to conceal. In many photos he carries a pair of white gloves in his left hand to make the arm seem longer, holds his left hand with his right, or has his crippled arm on the hilt of a sword or holding a cane to give the effect of a useful limb posed at a dignified angle. His left arm was about 6 inches (15 centimetres) shorter than his right arm. Historians have suggested that this disability affected his emotional development.
Quotes from others about the person
Historians have frequently stressed the role of Wilhelm's personality in shaping his reign. Thus, Thomas Nipperdey concludes he was:
"...gifted, with a quick understanding, sometimes brilliant, with a taste for the modern,—technology, industry, science—but at the same time superficial, hasty, restless, unable to relax, without any deeper level of seriousness, without any desire for hard work or drive to see things through to the end, without any sense of sobriety, for balance and boundaries, or even for reality and real problems, uncontrollable and scarcely capable of learning from experience, desperate for applause and success,—as Bismarck said early on in his life, he wanted every day to be his birthday—romantic, sentimental and theatrical, unsure and arrogant, with an immeasurably exaggerated self-confidence and desire to show off, a juvenile cadet, who never took the tone of the officers' mess out of his voice, and brashly wanted to play the part of the supreme warlord, full of panicky fear of a monotonous life without any diversions, and yet aimless, pathological in his hatred against his English mother."
Historian David Fromkin states that Wilhelm had a love-hate relationship with Britain. According to Fromkin:
From the outset, the half-German side of him was at war with the half-English side. He was wildly jealous of the British, wanting to be British, wanting to be better at being British than the British were, while at the same time hating them and resenting them because he never could be fully accepted by them.
Langer et al. (1968) emphasize the negative international consequences of Wilhelm's erratic personality:
"He believed in force, and the 'survival of the fittest' in domestic as well as foreign politics... William was not lacking in intelligence, but he did lack stability, disguising his deep insecurities by swagger and tough talk. He frequently fell into depressions and hysterics... William's personal instability was reflected in vacillations of policy. His actions, at home as well as abroad, lacked guidance, and therefore often bewildered or infuriated public opinion. He was not so much concerned with gaining specific objectives, as had been the case with Bismarck, as with asserting his will. This trait in the ruler of the leading Continental power was one of the main causes of the uneasiness prevailing in Europe at the turn-of-the-century."
Wilhelm's biographer Lamar Cecil identified Wilhelm's "curious but well-developed anti-Semitism", noting that in 1888 a friend of Wilhelm "declared that the young Kaiser's dislike of his Hebrew subjects, one rooted in a perception that they possessed an overweening influence in Germany, was so strong that it could not be overcome." Cecil concludes:
"Wilhelm never changed, and throughout his life he believed that Jews were perversely responsible, largely through their prominence in the Berlin press and in leftist political movements, for encouraging opposition to his rule. For individual Jews, ranging from rich businessmen and major art collectors to purveyors of elegant goods in Berlin stores, he had considerable esteem, but he prevented Jewish citizens from having careers in the army and the diplomatic corps and frequently used abusive language against them."
Interests
Wilhelm II was on friendly terms with the Muslim world. He described himself as a "friend" to "300 million Mohammedans". Following his trip to Constantinople (which he visited three times — an unbeaten record for any European monarch) in 1898, Wilhelm II wrote to Tsar Nicholas II that, “If I had come there without any religion at all, I certainly would have turned Mahommetan!”
Connections
Wilhelm and his first wife, Princess Augusta Victoria of Schleswig-Holstein, were married on 27 February 1881. They had seven children.
Empress Augusta, known affectionately as "Dona", was a constant companion to Wilhelm, and her death on 11 April 1921 was a devastating blow. It also came less than a year after their son Joachim committed suicide.
The following January, Wilhelm received a birthday greeting from a son of the late Prince Johann George Ludwig Ferdinand August Wilhelm of Schönaich-Carolath. The 63-year-old Wilhelm invited the boy and his mother, Princess Hermine Reuss of Greiz, to Doorn. Wilhelm found Hermine very attractive, and greatly enjoyed her company. The couple were wed on 9 November 1922, despite the objections of Wilhelm's monarchist supporters and his children. Hermine's daughter, Princess Henriette, married the late Prince Joachim's son, Karl Franz Josef, in 1940, but divorced in 1946. Hermine remained a constant companion to the aging Emperor until his death.
Although the couple had no children, Hermine's youngest daughter married Wilhelm's grandson in 1940 and had issue.
Hermine returned to Germany in widowhood, and was held under house arrest after the second World War. She died at the Paulinenhof Internment Camp near Brandenburg.
Father:
Friedrich, III
Prussian Monarch. Prussian King and German Emperor. He married Victoria of England, daughter of Queen Victoria, on June 1, 1858. The marriage was happy and the couple had 8 children. Two of them, Waldemar and Sigismund, did not survive their childhood. He commanded the Prussian army in the wars of 1866 and 1870/71. He was diagnosed with cancer of the larynx in May 1887.
Kaiser Wilhelm II: The Life and Legacy of Germany’s Emperor during World War I by Charles River Editors
Kaiser Wilhelm II: The Life and Legacy of Germany’s Emperor during World War I examines the life of one of the 20th century’s most important rulers, and the debates over his legacy. Along with pictures of important people, places, and events, you will learn about Germany’s most famous Kaiser like you never have before.
