Kaiser Wilhelm Deserved Much Worse Than He Got



Kaiser Wilhelm II was the last Emperor of Germany. His delicate ego, intense jealousies, and unpredictable temper led straight to the calamitous events of WWI and the fall of the House of Hohenzollern.

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39 thoughts on “Kaiser Wilhelm Deserved Much Worse Than He Got”

  1. I haven't even bothered to watch the whole movie since in the first few lines of narration it shows a lack of research. The kaiser literally begged the tsar not to attach the Austro Hungarian empire. It is fairly obvious that the actions of Franz Ferdinand, going back in an open topped car, antagonizing the locals, to the scene where there was another assasination attempt on his life HOURS BEFORE, have much more to do with the start of WWI. Same as the purposely unacceptable demands made of the Serbs on the back of that assasination by the Austro Hungarians. And the web of treaties that tied various countries into HAVING to defend other countries in case of war. And, essentially, all the countries actively seeking war, to show the supremacy of their own military. I don't doubt the kaiser did dirty deeds, but if you can't at least get basic facts right, why would I believe any other stuff you're saying?

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  2. Wilhelm deserved more than he got, because of the fact his.left arm was badly. damaged . His childhood was absolutely shellfish, because His family treated him terribly. Relationships were strained between him and his parents .After he forced Bismarck to resign, things got worse and Germany.got embroiled in World War 1.

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  3. It's amazing how so FEW people know anything at all about royalty, be it British, German or Russian. Do you think royalty would really leave much of their private life for us to indulge ? This is mostly from the pre internet era. And forgery in those days was at an all time high. How the heck can you expect anything else ? In other words, letters, diaries, etc could have been forged and likely MANY were in fact forged for obvious reasons: marriage, loans, financial transfers, etc. Follow the money and you find the answers. Follow God and your soul gets cleansed. Follow both you get satisfaction.

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  4. Your analysis on Kaiser Wilhelm II in WWII is false, above all, because you failed to discuss his famous reaction to learning of the Holocaust: to paraphrase "for the first time in my life, I am ashamed to be a German." It has been written that the Kaiser was mixed in that he sometimes had anti-Semitic views (common for the time), but also maintained friendships with known Jews. However, he was disgusted when he learnt of the Holocaust plans and when one of his sons joined the Nazis. He congratulated Hitler's victories, but 1. only to win favour for restoring the monarchy in Germany, which Hitler and his mostly working-class originated National-Socialists (Hitler himself was once a socialist) were firmly against, and 2. to stubbornly emphasise the fact (even as a deposed Kaiser no longer reigning) it was HIS army that was winning to thumb his nose at Hitler and (try to) claim the glory for himself. To paraphrase one letter I know of regarding France: "congratulations on taking Paris… with my army". Regarding the Kaiser's funeral, although the Nazis did grant one of his wishes (to be buried outside of Germany until a Hohenzollern restoration, and which was probably granted more to keep it as far from Berlin as possible to avoid making him a national hero than out of any respect), they did not grant his second- that he wanted NO Nazi insignia or iconography at his funeral. Hitler, obviously, saw no reason to respect this out of his ego and spite, and great big Swastika banners were stuck up (of course) to make the Kaiser's funeral just another Nazi state event and relegate the Kaiser to existing in the Fuhrer's shadow.

    To sum up, although it could be said that the Kaiser exhibited arrogance and a sense of ego in his actions and behaviours (due at least in part to his withered arm and quite probably mental health issues that went undiagnosed considering the times), he was not a bad person. He just had some bad character traits, which, honestly we are all guilty of. He tried his best to keep Austria and Russia from igniting the First World War, then got relegated away from any meaningful leadership in that conflict as Hindenburg, Ludendorff and the General Staff gradually took control to turn Germany into a military dictatorship, before they forced to abdicate and give up his throne (including the throne of Prussia, which the Kaiser was hoping to keep given his family had it for around 400 years). Then, like much of the German conservatives, he opposed Hitler and the Nazis. You can't tell me he deserved worse when he never even started the war.

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  5. Historians will look at the events leading up to a crisis with objectivity. An excellent historian is Margaret MacMillan. History and its events are a complex interplay. Thank you for sharing this information.

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  6. 8:17: This political cartoon is kinda humorous; he's deciding what uniform to wear next; Diplomat, General, Foreign Minister, University chancellor, even as a hunter. but my German really isn't good; what do "Diechhauptmann", "Zollparlament's Versitzend" and "Gesandter" mean?

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  7. I'm not saying this man was right in all his actions (far from it) but seriously, if you had a lifetime of physical pain and emotional abuse like he had, could you honestly guarantee you'd be a saint? We take so much for granted today.

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  8. It's very interesting the story with his sister and her engagement with the future king Constantine. In fact, Venizelists would use the fact that he was married with Kaiser's sister very heavily as a propaganda tool for convincing people that King Constantine wanted to enter the war with the Central Powers and tried to hide that he was estranged with Wilhelm.

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  9. "The oaf should have done this to us too, especially to his mother."
    Anger is a very human reaction to that situation. Human reactions to tragic events aren't always nice or logical, like the narrator seems to think they should be.

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  10. Oh come off it!!! I remember my grandfather & his generation saying that Willi saved Germany by renouncing his crown. "We want our Kaiser Wilhelm back" they would say. Yours is an ethnocentric sham!

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  11. that belgium exploiter of afrika's family is still ruling
    the kaiser didnt start the war
    england and russia did
    or maybe a serb pawn
    you need to step back and realize
    who was exploited and who did the exploiting
    american arms on a british passsanger ship
    leaked to the german navy
    we and the brits are real good govt

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  12. It's been speculated that during his difficult birth, oxygen may have stopped going to the brain for a short time, which could have resulted in minor brain damage. If true, this would help explain his truly bizarre personality and megalomania.

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  13. Isn't it usually the case of one man's ego leading to the deaths of millions? History is replete with the lists of Kings, Emperors, Religious Leaders and Politicians whom have sent millions to die for their vanity and it's still happening.

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  14. he destroyed germany. his fixation with building a naval challenge to britain aimed a dagger at the heart of the british empire. if he hadn;t built anything more than a small fleet to supply the over seas empire then he was britains fo=irts choise as an ally. then if he limited his immediate amnitions in europe he slowly exceeds britain and the world industrially and dominates a cponservative germany and uses his poerful isition to stop the riussian revolution amd mediate the rise of the break up f austria and bring peace in the balkans. gemany would still doinate europe, but he had to have his useess navy

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  15. I must say, I can't place much confidence in a video on German history that doesn't even bother to learn how to pronounce German names properly. German W is pronounced as V, so the name should be said "Vilhelm," not "Wilhelm"; "eu" is pronounced "OY" so Prince Eulenberg should be called "Oylenbairg", not "Youlenburg". Hermine Reuß = "Hair-MEE-neh Royss" @6:04 That's Hindenburg, not Bismarck. @9:15 It's perhaps worth noting that Victoria herself didn't care much for Bertie, whom she blamed all his life for his father Albert's death. Edward, for his part, resented his mother for keeping him so long from the throne; he once said, “I don't mind praying to the Eternal Father, but I must be the only man in the country afflicted with an Eternal Mother.” (To be fair, it was part of the upper-class Victorian mindset that a woman's duty was much more towards her husband than towards her children, who were more likely to be raised by nursemaids, governesses, and tutors than by their parents. Princess Frederick Victoria probably inherited this mindset from her mother, as well as the conviction that England was the best country in the world, which contributed to the alienation felt by her son.) A further source of irritation between the two was Edward's Gallophilia, which led him to support French revanchism, and the resentment of Edward's wife Alexandra towards the German Empire's annexation of Schleswig-Holstein from her native Denmark. @9:45 Perhaps I shouldn't complain unduly about the pronunciation of German words when equal violence is being done to English ones. LUTHeranism is pronounced with the accent on the first syllable; I've never heard of anyone referring to Dr. MarTIN LuTHER. @11:45 Harden (real name, Felix Ernst Witkowski) was a wart and a worm, a hanger-on of Bismarck who despised Wilhelm for his liberalism (!) and who urged the Germans to adopt the most brutal methods in WWI ("Does the oak-tree apologize for uprooting the underbrush?"), though he, of course, turned pacifist after Germany started to lose the war, and abandoned the country immediately thereafter. @13:05 What made Wilhelm call the English "mad as March hares" was that they insisted on claiming that they were in danger from German ambition, when they themselves were far more imperialistic than his government; his antagonism was aimed rather eastward at Russia than westward at England. It was exactly his conciliatory tone toward the English that made Wilhelm exceedingly unpopular in Germany at this time (along with his flirtation with socialism, which irritated the National Liberals, the Catholic Center, and the old Prussian Conservative parties). @14:43 Wilhelm didn't exactly "retreat"; he was shouldered aside by the General Staff, who more or less assumed control of the running of the war and the country.

    I find it odd to be defending Wilhelm II von Hohenzollern, who was certainly a boor, a narcissist, and a fool. What he was not, however, was responsible for the war. Prussia-Germany more or less stupidly stumbled into that; the path to war was blazed by the conflict between the Austrian and Russian empires both trying to expand their power-base in the Balkans, where the Balkan Wars, sparked by nationalism coupled with pan-Slavism, had already broken out twice in the two years before WWI. Austria-Hungary's ham-fisted diplomatic maneuvering and the Russian generals' desire for a decisive war in the region (with a chance of permanently driving the Austrians out of the Balkans and Poland) provided the impetus towards the war; if Wilhelm is to blame for anything, it was his reckless insistence on supporting Austria even to the point of war with Russia, which gave the French and (to Wilhelm's thick-headed surprise) the British the pretext they desired to trim back Prussia-Germany's empire. But though Wilhelm was rather a swine, he comes nowhere near the swinishness of scum like Clemenceau, Lloyd George, and Wilson.

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  16. It's frustrating that you would take the time to put this video together but didn't bother to learn to pronounce the name Wilhelm correctly. It's not that difficult. W in German is pronounced like V in English.

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  17. It was a fashion to "adore" beauties in the Victorian period, hence Wilhelm's "adoration" of Ella, just as Oscar Wilde had publicly swooned over Lily Langtry. Wilhelm was essentially a homosexual. The Prince Ulenberg homosexual scandal threatened to topple Wilhelm.

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