Titans of History

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.