Kaiser Wilhelm II
Wilhelm II ruled Germany for thirty years and lost an empire that his grandfather's chancellor had built. Born in 1859, the son of the Prussian crown prince and of Queen Victoria's eldest daughter, he suffered a traumatic breech birth that left his left arm withered and possibly caused brain injury. His mother's attempts to correct the arm and his own compensating obsession with martial display are the standard psychological reading of him. He came to the throne in 1888, the year of three emperors, at twenty-nine, and dismissed Bismarck within two years. The dismissal is the hinge. Bismarck's system had rested on keeping France isolated and on the Reinsurance Treaty with Russia; Wilhelm let the treaty lapse in 1890, and Russia and France concluded an alliance within four years. His Weltpolitik then made things worse. Tirpitz's battle fleet, built explicitly to challenge Britain, drove London into ententes with France in 1904 and Russia in 1907, and Germany found itself encircled — a condition it had produced and then treated as a grievance. He was personally erratic, gave interviews that had to be disavowed, and provoked two crises over Morocco to no purpose. In July 1914 he issued the blank cheque to Austria-Hungary and then went on his annual cruise. His authority evaporated during the war, and by 1916 Hindenburg and Ludendorff governed. He abdicated on 9 November 1918 and fled to the Netherlands, which refused to extradite him. He died there in 1941. He lived long enough to congratulate Hitler on the fall of Paris.
- Lived: 1859 CE – 1941 CE
- Nationality: German
- Roles: head_of_state, commander_in_chief
