Who knows? But there was WAY much more to Wilhelm then just that . . .
One of the few things the Kaiser, who ruled
Germany from 1888 to 1918, had a talent for was causing outrage. A particular specialty was insulting other monarchs. He called the diminutive
King Victor Emmanuel III of
Italy “the dwarf” in front of the king’s own entourage. He called
Prince Ferdinand, of Bulgaria, “Fernando naso,” on account of his beaky nose, and spread rumors that he was a
hermaphrodite. Since Wilhelm was notably indiscreet, people always knew what he was saying behind their backs. Ferdinand had his revenge. After a visit to
Germany, in 1909, during which the Kaiser slapped him on the bottom in public and then refused to apologize, Ferdinand awarded a valuable arms contract that had been promised to the
Germans to a French company instead.
In March 1890, Wilhelm dismissed longtime Chancellor
Otto von Bismarck
and assumed direct control over his nation's policies, embarking on a
"New Course" to cement Germany's status as a leading world power. Over
the course of his reign, the
German colonial empire acquired new territories in
China and the
Pacific and became Europe's largest manufacturer. However, he often
undermined such progress by making tactless and threatening statements
towards other countries without first consulting his ministers.
Likewise, his regime did much to alienate itself from other great powers
by initiating a
massive naval build-up,
contesting French control of Morocco, and
building a railway through Baghdad that challenged Britain's dominion in the
Persian Gulf. By the second decade of the 20th century, Germany could rely only on significantly weaker nations such as
Austria-Hungary and the declining
Ottoman Empire as allies.
Despite strengthening Germany's position as a
great power by
building a powerful navy
as well as promoting scientific innovation within its borders, Kaiser
Wilhelm's public pronouncements and erratic foreign policy greatly
antagonized the international community and are considered by many to
have contributed to the
fall of the German Empire. In 1914, his diplomatic
brinksmanship culminated in Germany's guarantee of military support to
Austria-Hungary during the
July Crisis which plunged all of Europe into
World War I.
A lax wartime leader, Wilhelm left virtually all decision-making
regarding strategy and organization of the war effort to the German
Supreme Army Command. By August 1916, this broad delegation of power gave rise to a
de facto military dictatorship
that dominated the country's policies for the rest of the conflict.
Despite emerging victorious over
Russia and obtaining significant
territorial gains in Eastern Europe, Germany was forced to relinquish
all its conquests after a decisive defeat on the
Western Front in the autumn of 1918.
Wilhelm's birth seems to have been the source of his emotional development. Modern medical assessments have concluded his
hypoxic state at birth,
due to a breech delivery and the heavy dosage of
chloroform, left him
with minimal to mild brain damage, which manifested itself in his
subsequent hyperactive and erratic behavior, limited attention span and
impaired social abilities.
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, desiring to be
British and 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".
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".
British public opinion had been quite favorable towards Wilhelm 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 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
Nazi occupation authorities arranged for a
small military funeral, with a few hundred people present. However, Kaiser Wilhelm's insistence that the
swastika
and
Nazi Party regalia not be displayed at his funeral was ignored, as
is seen in the photographs of the funeral taken by a Dutch photographer.
