Kaiser Wilhelm II: German Emperor and King of Prussia (1888-1918)

(27 January 1859 – 4 June 1941)

• SPEECHES OF KAISER WILHELM II
• TELEGRAMS & LETTERS OF KAISER WILHELM II

Early life

Wilhelm was born in Berlin on 27 January 1859—at the Crown Prince's Palace—to Victoria, Princess Royal ("Vicky") and Prince Frederick William of Prussia ("Fritz", the future Frederick III). His mother, Vicky, was the eldest child of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom. At the time of Wilhelm's birth, his granduncle Frederick William IV was king of Prussia. Frederick William IV had been left permanently incapacitated by a series of strokes, and his younger brother Wilhelm, the young prince's grandfather, was acting as regent. Prince Wilhelm was the oldest of the 42 grandchildren of his maternal grandparents (Queen Victoria and Prince Albert). Upon the death of Frederick William IV in January 1861, Wilhelm's namesake grandfather became king, and the two-year-old Wilhelm became second in the line of succession to the Prussian throne. After 1871, Wilhelm also became second in the line to the newly created German Empire, which, according to the constitution of the German Empire, was ruled by the Prussian king. At the time of his birth, he was also sixth in the line of succession to the British throne, after his maternal uncles and his mother.

Early years

In 1863, Wilhelm was taken to England to be present at the wedding of his uncle Bertie and Princess Alexandra of Denmark (later King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra). Wilhelm attended the ceremony in a Highland costume, complete with a small toy dirk. During the ceremony, the four-year-old became restless. His 18-year-old uncle Prince Alfred, charged with keeping an eye on him, told him to be quiet, but Wilhelm drew his dirk and threatened Alfred. When Alfred attempted to subdue him by force, Wilhelm bit him on the leg. His grandmother, Queen Victoria, missed seeing the fracas; to her Wilhelm remained "a clever, dear, good little child, the great favourite of my beloved Vicky".

Vicky was obsessed with her son's damaged arm, blaming herself for the child's handicap, and insisted that he become a good rider. The thought that Wilhelm, as heir to the throne, should not be able to ride was intolerable to her. Riding lessons began when Wilhelm was eight and were a matter of endurance for him. Over and over, the weeping prince was set on his horse and compelled to go through the paces. He fell off time after time but, despite his tears, was set on its back again. After weeks of this, he was finally able to maintain his balance.

Wilhelm, from six years of age, was tutored and heavily influenced by the 39-year-old teacher Georg Ernst Hinzpeter. "Hinzpeter", he later wrote, "was really a good fellow. Whether he was the right tutor for me, I dare not decide. The torments inflicted on me, in this pony riding, must be attributed to my mother."

As a teenager, Wilhelm was educated at Kassel at the Friedrichsgymnasium. In January 1877, Wilhelm finished high school and on his eighteenth birthday received as a present from his grandmother the Order of the Garter. After Kassel, he spent four terms at the University of Bonn, studying law and politics. He became a member of the exclusive Corps Borussia Bonn. Wilhelm possessed a quick intelligence, but this was often overshadowed by a cantankerous temper.

As a scion of the royal house of Hohenzollern, Wilhelm was exposed from an early age to the military society of the Prussian aristocracy. This had a major impact on him, and in maturity Wilhelm was seldom seen out of uniform. The hyper-masculine military culture of Prussia in this period did much to frame his political ideals and personal relationships.

Wilhelm was in awe of his father, whose status as a hero of the wars of unification was largely responsible for the young Wilhelm's attitude, as were the circumstances in which he was raised; close emotional contact between father and son was not encouraged. Later, as he came into contact with the Crown Prince's political opponents, Wilhelm came to adopt more ambivalent feelings toward his father, perceiving the influence of Wilhelm's mother over a figure who should have been possessed of masculine independence and strength. Wilhelm also idolised his grandfather, Wilhelm I, and he was instrumental in later attempts to foster a cult of the first German Emperor as "Wilhelm the Great". However, he had a distant relationship with his mother.

Wilhelm resisted attempts by his parents, especially his mother, to educate him in a spirit of British liberalism. Instead, he agreed with his tutors' support of autocratic rule, and gradually became thoroughly 'Prussianized' under their influence. He thus became alienated from his parents, suspecting them of putting Britain's interests first. The German Emperor, Wilhelm I, watched as his grandson, guided principally by the Crown Princess Victoria, grew to manhood. When Wilhelm was nearing 21, the Emperor decided it was time his grandson should begin the military phase of his preparation for the throne. He was assigned as a lieutenant to the First Regiment of Foot Guards, stationed at Potsdam. "In the Guards," Wilhelm said, "I really found my family, my friends, my interests—everything of which I had up to that time had to do without." As a boy and a student, his manner had been polite and agreeable; as an officer, he began to strut and speak brusquely in the tone he deemed appropriate for a Prussian officer.

When Wilhelm was in his early twenties, Chancellor Otto von Bismarck tried to separate him from his parents, who opposed Bismarck and his policies, with some success. Bismarck planned to use the young prince as a weapon against his parents in order to retain his own political dominance. Wilhelm thus developed a dysfunctional relationship with his parents, but especially with his English mother. In an outburst in April 1889, Wilhelm angrily implied that "an English doctor killed my father, and an English doctor crippled my arm—which is the fault of my mother", who allowed no German physicians to attend to herself or her immediate family.

As a young man, Wilhelm fell in love with one of his maternal first cousins, Princess Elisabeth of Hesse-Darmstadt. She turned him down, and in time, married into the Russian imperial family. In 1880 Wilhelm became engaged to Princess Augusta Victoria of Schleswig-Holstein, known as "Dona". The couple married on 27 February 1881, and their marriage lasted 40 years until her death in 1921. Between 1882 and 1892, Augusta bore Wilhelm seven children, six sons and a daughter.

Beginning in 1884, Bismarck began advocating that Kaiser Wilhelm send his grandson on diplomatic missions, a privilege denied to the Crown Prince. That year, Prince Wilhelm was sent to the court of Tsar Alexander III of Russia in St. Petersburg to attend the coming-of-age ceremony of the 16-year-old Tsarevich Nicholas. Wilhelm's behaviour did little to ingratiate himself to the tsar. Two years later, Kaiser Wilhelm I took Prince Wilhelm on a trip to meet with Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria-Hungary. In 1886, also, thanks to Herbert von Bismarck, the son of the Chancellor, Prince Wilhelm began to be trained twice a week at the Foreign Ministry.

Accession

Kaiser Wilhelm I died in Berlin on 9 March 1888, and Prince Wilhelm's father ascended the throne as Frederick III. He was already experiencing an incurable throat cancer and spent all 99 days of his reign fighting the disease before dying. On 15 June of that same year, his 29-year-old son succeeded him as German Emperor and King of Prussia.

Although in his youth he had been a great admirer of Otto von Bismarck, Wilhelm's characteristic impatience soon brought him into conflict with the "Iron Chancellor", the dominant figure in the foundation of his empire. The new Emperor opposed Bismarck's careful foreign policy, preferring vigorous and rapid expansion to protect Germany's "place in the sun". Furthermore, the young Emperor had come to the throne, unlike his grandfather, determined to rule as well as reign. While the imperial constitution vested executive power in the monarch, Wilhelm I had been content to leave day-to-day administration to Bismarck. Early conflicts between Wilhelm II and his chancellor soon poisoned the relationship between the two men. Bismarck had believed that Wilhelm was a lightweight who could be dominated, and he showed escalating disrespect for Wilhelm's favored policy objectives in the late 1880s. The final split between monarch and statesman occurred soon after an attempt by Bismarck to implement a far-reaching anti-Socialist laws in early 1890.

The New Course

Bismarck was succeeded as Chancellor of Germany and Minister-President of Prussia by Leo von Caprivi. At the opening of the Reichstag on 6 May 1890, the Kaiser stated that the most pressing issue was the further enlargement of the bill concerning the protection of the labourer. In 1891, the Reichstag passed the Workers Protection Acts, which improved working conditions, protected women and children and regulated labour relations.

Caprivi in turn was replaced by Chlodwig von Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst in 1894. Following the dismissal of Hohenlohe in 1900, Wilhelm appointed the man whom he regarded as "his own Bismarck", Bernhard von Bülow.

In appointing Caprivi and then Hohenlohe, Wilhelm was embarking upon what is known to history as "the New Course", in which he hoped to exert decisive influence in the government of the empire. There is debate amongst historians as to the precise degree to which Wilhelm succeeded in implementing "personal rule" in this era, but what is clear is the very different dynamic which existed between the Crown and its chief political servant (the Chancellor) in the "Wilhelmine Era". These chancellors were senior civil servants and not seasoned politician-statesmen like Bismarck.[neutrality is disputed] Wilhelm wanted to preclude the emergence of another Iron Chancellor, whom he ultimately detested as being "a boorish old killjoy" who had not permitted any minister to see the Emperor except in his presence, keeping a stranglehold on effective political power. Upon his enforced retirement and until his dying day, Bismarck became a bitter critic of Wilhelm's policies, but without gaining the support of a majority within the Reichstag there was little chance of Bismarck exerting a decisive influence on policy.

In the early twentieth century, Wilhelm began to concentrate upon his real agenda: the creation of a German Navy that would rival that of Britain and enable Germany to declare itself a world power. The last Kaiser ordered the high command of the armed forces to read United States Navy Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan's book, The Influence of Sea Power upon History, and spent hours drawing sketches of the ships that he dreamed of having built. Bülow and Bethmann Hollweg, his loyal chancellors, looked after domestic affairs, while Wilhelm obliviously began to spread alarm in the chancelleries of Europe with his increasingly eccentric and ill-advised statements on foreign affairs.

Promoter of arts and sciences

Wilhelm enthusiastically promoted the arts and sciences, as well as public education and social welfare. He sponsored the Kaiser Wilhelm Society for the promotion of scientific research; it was funded by wealthy private donors and by the state and comprised a number of research institutes in both pure and applied sciences. The Prussian Academy of Sciences was unable to avoid the Kaiser's pressure and lost some of its autonomy when it was forced to incorporate new programs in engineering, and award new fellowships in engineering sciences as a result of a gift from the Kaiser in 1900.

Wilhelm supported the modernisers as they tried to reform the Prussian system of secondary education, which was rigidly traditional, elitist, politically authoritarian, and unchanged by the progress in the natural sciences. As hereditary Protector of the Order of Saint John, he offered encouragement to the Christian order's attempts to place German medicine at the forefront of modern medical practice through its system of hospitals, nursing sisterhood and nursing schools, and nursing homes throughout the German Empire. Wilhelm continued as Protector of the Order even after 1918, as the position was in essence attached to the head of the House of Hohenzollern.

Foreign affairs

German foreign policy under Wilhelm II was faced with a number of significant problems. Perhaps the most apparent was that Wilhelm was an impatient man, subjective in his reactions and affected strongly by sentiment and impulse. He was personally ill-equipped to steer German foreign policy along a rational course. There were a number of examples, such as the Kruger telegram of 1896 in which Wilhelm congratulated President Paul Kruger for preventing the Transvaal Republic from being annexed by the British Empire during the Jameson Raid.

British public opinion had been quite favourable towards the Kaiser in his first twelve years on the throne, but it turned sour in the late 1890s. During the First World War, he became the central target of British anti-German propaganda and the personification of a hated enemy.

Wilhelm exploited fears of a yellow peril trying to interest other European rulers in the perils they faced by invading China; few other leaders paid attention. Wilhelm also used the Japanese victory in the Russo-Japanese War to try to incite fear in the west of the yellow peril that they faced by a resurgent Imperial Japan, which Wilhelm claimed would ally with China to overrun the conventional European Powers. Wilhelm also invested in strengthening the German colonial empire in Africa and the Pacific, but few became profitable and all were lost during the First World War. In South West Africa (now Namibia), a native revolt against German rule led to the Herero and Namaqua genocide, although Wilhelm eventually ordered it to be stopped and recalled its mastermind General Lothar von Trotha.

One of the few times when Wilhelm succeeded in personal diplomacy was when in 1900, he supported the morganatic marriage of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria to Countess Sophie Chotek, and helped negotiate an end to the opposition to the wedding by Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria.

A domestic triumph for Wilhelm was when his daughter Victoria Louise married the Duke of Brunswick in 1913; this helped heal the rift between the House of Hanover and the House of Hohenzollern that had followed Bismarck's invasion and annexation of the Kingdom of Hanover in 1866.

Political visits to the Ottoman Empire

In his first visit to Istanbul in 1889, Wilhelm secured the sale of German-made rifles to the Ottoman Army. Later on, he had his second political visit to the Ottoman Empire as a guest of Sultan Abdulhamid II. The Kaiser started his journey to the Ottoman Eyalets with Istanbul on 16 October 1898; then he went by yacht to Haifa on 25 October. After visiting Jerusalem and Bethlehem, the Kaiser went back to Jaffa to embark to Beirut, where he took the train passing Aley and Zahlé to reach Damascus on 7 November.

On 10 November, Wilhelm went to visit Baalbek before heading to Beirut to board his ship back home on 12 November. In his second visit, Wilhelm secured a promise for German companies to construct the Berlin–Baghdad railway, and had the German Fountain constructed in Istanbul to commemorate his journey.

His third visit was on 15 October 1917, as the guest of Sultan Mehmed V.

Assassination attempt

On 6 March 1901, during a visit to Bremen, in an apparent assassination attempt Wilhelm was struck in the face by a sharp iron object thrown at him. The assailant, identified as Johann-Dietrich Weiland, was adjudged to be insane. The Kaiser was riding in a coach to the railway station when the incident happened at 10:10 pm, and the object thrown "afterward proved to be a fishplate". The German Emperor was left with a deep wound, an inch and a half long, below his left eye; the Chief of the Naval Ministry would note later, "On the temple or in the eye the blow could have been devastating. The wonder of it is that our All-Gracious Lord felt neither the object flying at him nor, in the rain, the copiously flowing blood; it was those around him who drew his attention to it at first." Despite rumors in the press that the Kaiser had sunk into a depression, he would say in a speech at the end of the month, "nothing is more false than to pretend that my sanity has suffered in some way. I am exactly the same as I was; I have become neither elegiac nor melancholic... everything stays the same."

World War I

Further information: German entry into World War I

Historians typically argue that Wilhelm was largely confined to ceremonial duties during the war—there were innumerable parades to review and honours to award. "The man who in peace had believed himself omnipotent became in war a 'shadow Kaiser', out of sight, neglected, and relegated to the sidelines."

Shadow-Kaiser

Wilhelm's role in wartime was one of ever-decreasing power as he increasingly handled awards ceremonies and honorific duties. The high command continued with its strategy even when it was clear that the Schlieffen plan had failed. By 1916 the Empire had effectively become a military dictatorship under the control of Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg and General Erich Ludendorff. Increasingly cut off from reality and the political decision-making process, Wilhelm vacillated between defeatism and dreams of victory, depending upon the fortunes of his armies. Nevertheless, Wilhelm still retained the ultimate authority in matters of political appointment, and it was only after his consent had been gained that major changes to the high command could be brought about. Wilhelm was in favour of the dismissal of Colonel General Helmuth von Moltke in September 1914 and his replacement by General Erich von Falkenhayn. In 1917, Hindenburg and Ludendorff decided that Bethman-Hollweg was no longer acceptable to them as Chancellor and called upon the Kaiser to appoint somebody else. When asked whom they would accept, Ludendorff recommended Georg Michaelis, a nonentity whom he barely knew. Despite this, the Kaiser accepted the suggestion. Upon hearing in July 1917 that his cousin George V had changed the name of the British royal house to Windsor, Wilhelm remarked that he planned to see Shakespeare's play “The Merry Wives of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha”. The Kaiser's support base collapsed completely in October–November 1918 in the military, the civilian government, and in German public opinion, as President Woodrow Wilson made it very clear that the monarchy must be overthrown before an end of the war could take place. That year also saw Wilhelm sickened during the worldwide Spanish flu outbreak, though he survived.

Life in exile

In 1922, Wilhelm published the first volume of his memoirs—a very slim volume that insisted he was not guilty of initiating the Great War, and defended his conduct throughout his reign, especially in matters of foreign policy. For the remaining twenty years of his life, he entertained guests (often of some standing) and kept himself updated on events in Europe. He grew a beard and allowed his famous moustache to droop, adopting a style very similar to that of his cousins King George V and Tsar Nicholas II. He also learned the Dutch language. Wilhelm developed a penchant for archaeology while residing at the Corfu Achilleion, excavating at the site of the Temple of Artemis in Corfu, a passion he retained in his exile. He had bought the former Greek residence of Empress Elisabeth after her murder in 1898. He also sketched plans for grand buildings and battleships when he was bored. In exile, one of Wilhelm's greatest passions was hunting, and he killed thousands of animals, both beast and bird. Much of his time was spent chopping wood and thousands of trees were chopped down during his stay at Doorn.

Wealth

Wilhelm II was seen as the richest man in Germany before 1914. After his abdication he retained substantial wealth. It was reported that at least 60 railway wagons were needed to carry his furniture, art, porcelain and silver from Germany to the Netherlands. The Kaiser retained substantial cash reserves as well as several palaces. After 1945, the Hohenzollerns' forests, farms, factories and palaces in what became East Germany were expropriated and thousands of artworks were subsumed into state-owned museums.

Views on National Socialism

In the early 1930s, Wilhelm apparently hoped that the successes of the NSDAP would stimulate interest in a restoration of the House of Hohenzollern, with his eldest grandson as the new Kaiser. His second wife, Hermine, actively petitioned the National Socialist government on her husband's behalf. However, Adolf Hitler, despite being a veteran of the Imperial German Army during the First World War, felt nothing but contempt for the man he blamed for Germany's greatest defeat, and the petitions were ignored. Though he played host to Hermann Göring at Doorn on at least one occasion, Wilhelm learned to distrust Hitler. Hearing of the murder of the wife of former Chancellor Kurt von Schleicher during the Night of the Long Knives, Wilhelm said, "We have ceased to live under the rule of law and everyone must be prepared for the possibility that the National Socialists will push their way in and put them up against the wall!"

Wilhelm was also appalled at the Kristallnacht of 9–10 November 1938, saying "I have just made my views clear to Auwi [August Wilhelm, Wilhelm's fourth son] in the presence of his brothers. He had the nerve to say that he agreed with the Jewish pogroms and understood why they had come about. When I told him that any decent man would describe these actions as gangsterisms, he appeared totally indifferent. He is completely lost to our family". Wilhelm also stated, "For the first time, I am ashamed to be a German":

There's a man alone, without family, without children, without God [...] He builds legions, but he doesn't build a nation. A nation is created by families, a religion, traditions: it is made up out of the hearts of mothers, the wisdom of fathers, the joy and the exuberance of children [...] For a few months I was inclined to believe in National Socialism. I thought of it as a necessary fever. And I was gratified to see that there were, associated with it for a time, some of the wisest and most outstanding Germans. But these, one by one, he has got rid of, or even killed ... Papen, Schleicher, Neurath - and even Blomberg. He has left nothing but a bunch of shirted gangsters! [...] This man could bring home victories to our people each year, without bringing them either glory or (danger). But of our Germany, which was a nation of poets and musicians, of artists and soldiers, he has made a nation of hysterics and hermits, engulfed in a mob and led by a thousand liars or fanatics.

— Wilhelm on Hitler, December 1938

In the wake of the German victory over Poland in September 1939, Wilhelm's adjutant, Wilhelm von Dommes, wrote on his behalf to Hitler, stating that the House of Hohenzollern "remained loyal" and noted that nine Prussian Princes (one son and eight grandchildren) were stationed at the front, concluding "because of the special circumstances that require residence in a neutral foreign country, His Majesty must personally decline to make the aforementioned comment. The Emperor has therefore charged me with making a communication." Wilhelm greatly admired the success which the Wehrmacht was able to achieve in the opening months of the Second World War, and personally sent Hitler a congratulatory telegram when the Netherlands surrendered in May 1940: "My Führer, I congratulate you and hope that under your marvellous leadership the German monarchy will be restored completely." Unimpressed, Hitler commented to Heinz Linge, his valet, "What an idiot!"

Upon the fall of Paris a month later, Wilhelm sent another telegram: "Under the deeply moving impression of France's capitulation I congratulate you and all the German armed forces on the God-given prodigious victory with the words of Kaiser Wilhelm the Great of the year 1870: 'What a turn of events through God's dispensation!' All German hearts are filled with the chorale of Leuthen, which the victors of Leuthen, the soldiers of the Great King sang: Now thank we all our God!" In a letter to his daughter Victoria Louise, Duchess of Brunswick, he wrote triumphantly, "Thus is the pernicious Entente Cordiale of Uncle Edward VII brought to nought." In a September 1940 letter to an American journalist, Wilhelm praised Germany's rapid early conquests as "a succession of miracles", but remarked also that "the brilliant leading Generals in this war came from My school, they fought under my command in the World War as lieutenants, captains and young majors. Educated by Schlieffen they put the plans he had worked out under me into practice along the same lines as we did in 1914."

Anti-England, antisemitic, and anti-Freemason views

During his last year at Doorn, Wilhelm believed that Germany was still the land of monarchy and Christianity, while England was the land of classical liberalism and therefore of Satan and the Antichrist. He argued that the English nobility were "Freemasons thoroughly infected by Juda". Wilhelm asserted that the "British people must be liberated from Antichrist Juda. We must drive Juda out of England just as he has been chased out of the Continent."

He also believed that the Freemasons and the Jews had caused both world wars, and were aiming for a world empire financed by British and American gold, but that "Juda's plan has been smashed to pieces and they themselves swept out of the European Continent!" Continental Europe was now, Wilhelm wrote, "consolidating and closing itself off from British influences after the elimination of the British and the Jews!" The result would be a "U.S. of Europe!" In a 1940 letter to his sister Princess Margaret, Wilhelm wrote: "The hand of God is creating a new world & working  ... We are becoming the U.S. of Europe under German leadership, a united European Continent." He added: "The Jews [are] being thrust out of their nefarious positions in all countries, whom they have driven to hostility for centuries."

Also, in 1940 came what would have been his mother's 100th birthday. Despite their very troubled relationship, Wilhelm wrote to a friend, "Today the 100th birthday of my mother! No notice is taken of it at home! No 'Memorial Service' or ... committee to remember her marvellous work for the ... welfare of our German people ... Nobody of the new generation knows anything about her."

Death

Wilhelm died of a pulmonary embolism in Doorn, Netherlands, on 4 June 1941, at the age of 82, just weeks before the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union. Despite his personal resentment and animosity toward the monarchy, Hitler wanted to bring the Kaiser's body back to Berlin for a state funeral, as Hitler felt that such a funeral, with himself acting in the role of heir apparent to the throne, would be useful to exploit for propaganda.However, Wilhelm's orders that his body was not to return to Germany unless the monarchy was first restored were then revealed and were grudgingly respected. The National Socialist occupation authorities arranged for a small military funeral, with a few hundred people present. The mourners included Field Marshal August von Mackensen, fully dressed in his old Imperial Hussars uniform, former World War I Office of Naval Intelligence field agent Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, Colonel General Curt Haase, World War I flying ace turned Wehrmachtbefehlshaber for the Netherlands General Friedrich Christiansen, and Reichskommissar for the Netherlands Arthur Seyss-Inquart, along with a few other military advisers. However, Kaiser Wilhelm's insistence that the swastika and NSDAP regalia not be displayed at his funeral was ignored, as is seen in the photographs of the funeral taken by a Dutch photographer.

Wilhelm was buried in a mausoleum upon the grounds of Huis Doorn, which has since become a place of pilgrimage for German monarchists, who gather there every year on the anniversary of his death to pay their homage to the last German Emperor.

Religion

Own views

In accordance with his role as the King of Prussia, Emperor Wilhelm II was a Lutheran member of the Evangelical State Church of Prussia's older Provinces. It was a United Protestant denomination, bringing together Reformed and Lutheran believers.

Attitude towards Islam

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 Nicholas II that:

If I had come there without any religion at all, I certainly would have turned Mohammedan!

In response to the political competition between the Christian sects to build bigger and grander churches and monuments which made the sects appear idolatrous and turned Muslims away from the Christian message.

Antisemitism

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.

At the height of German military intervention against the Red Army during the Russian Civil War in 1918, Kaiser Wilhelm also suggested a similar campaign against the "Jew-Bolsheviks" who were slaughtering the Baltic German nobility in the Baltic states, citing the example of what Turks had done to the Ottoman Armenians just a few years earlier.

On 2 December 1919, Wilhelm wrote to Mackensen, denouncing the November Revolution of 1918 and his own forced abdication as the "deepest, most disgusting shame ever perpetrated by a person in history, the Germans have done to themselves ... egged on and misled by the tribe of Judah ... Let no German ever forget this, nor rest until these parasites have been destroyed and exterminated from German soil!" Wilhelm advocated a "regular international all-worlds pogrom à la Russe" as "the best cure" and further believed that Jews were a "nuisance that humanity must get rid of some way or other. I believe the best thing would be gas!"