How powerful was the Kaiser?

If you can find it, the BBC's Fall of Eagles[1] documentary series is one of the best I've seen on depicting the Kaiser and the other 19th Century Monarchs of Central Europe and their downfall. It also has a very young Patrick Steward portraying Vladimir Lenin and his rise to power.

Fall of Eagles depicts the Kaiser as being rather childish, whimsical and always having something to prove. The later being at least partially attributed his self-conscienceness about one of his arms being noticeable shorter than the other (birth defect) as well as envy of British Naval/Colonial power (his mother was also one of Queen Victoria's Children). However, that's pretty much how the actual Kaiser Wilhelm II was during much of his reign. He had his positives though, instilled in him from his English Mother and progressive father, such as supporting worker's rights and funding for science and the arts. However, WWI pretty much overshadows anything else from his legacy.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall_of_Eagles

One occasionally hears that hereditary monarchy is superior to democracy because the monarchs must consider the effects of their decisions on their descendents.

Anyone interested in this, please read "The Sleepwalkers" by Christopher Clark. Its an in depth documentation of all the factors leading up to the war. Its absolutely enthralling, I can't put it down.

I don't know how a person can write about the Kaiser and not even mention once Edwards the 7th. He was the Kaiser's uncle and one of the most manipulative forces upon him. I would say the Kaiser was one of those people who didn't have the chops to function properly in his position, and wasn't very powerful at all in the leadership sense of the word. What really gets me is that this is the backdrop for the entire mess we have found ourselves in since the beginning of the 20th century. Take note of such connections in the following text from Webster Tarpley's "King Edward VII of Great Britain: Evil Demiurge of the Triple Entente and World War 1"

"Edward’s mastery of psychological and ideological manipulation is most evident in his relation with his pathetic and unstable nephew, Kaiser Wilhelm. Edward made a detailed study of Willy’s psychological profile, which he knew to be pervaded by feelings of inferiority and incurable anglophilia. As Flourens noted: “Edward VII made an in-depth study of the defects of Wilhelm II. He counted them as his most precious allies.” (Flourens, p. 58)

The British and Entente demonization of Wilhelm as the world’s chief warmonger was always absurd. Wilhelm felt inferior to British royalty. Wilhelm’s greatest secret desire was for acceptance by the British royals. Edward could modulate his own behavior to get the desired result from the Kaiser. If he wanted a public tantrum, he could get that. One British writer, Legge, reports that Edward punched the Kaiser and knocked him down in a meeting.

But if Edward needed to be friendly, he could do that too. During the Boer War, in November 1899, when Britain’s diplomatic isolation was at its height, Edward was able to con the Kaiser into making a state visit to Britain. The Boxer Rebellion in China, with its overtone of white racial solidarity against the “yellow peril,” was also made to order for duping the Kaiser. In Wilhelm’s dockside harangue to the German contingent setting out for Peking, he urged his soldiers on to cruelty against the Chinese:

“Give no quarter! Take no prisoners! Kill him when he falls into your hands! Even as, a thousand years ago, the Huns under their King Attila made such a name for themselves as still resounds in terror through legend and fable, so may the name of Germans resound through Chinese history a thousand years from now.” (Cowles, p. 177) This “Huns” speech has provided grist for the London propaganda mill for almost a century, from World War I to the Margaret Thatcher- Nicholas Ridley “Fourth Reich” hysteria of 1989. Not just once, but again and again, the Kaiser muffed opportunities to checkmate Edward’s plans.

Edward also played on the Kaiser to sabotage the Berlin to Baghdad railway. At Windsor Castle in 1907, Edward demanded that the British keep control of a section of the railway between Baghdad and the Persian Gulf as a “gate,” supposedly to block German troops going to India. The Kaiser was ready to grant such a gate. Otherwise, Edward demanded that all talks about the Baghdad railway should be four-way, with France, Russia, Britain, and Germany involved, so that German proposals would always be voted down 3 to 1.

When the war was finally over, and the Kaiser had lost his throne, the first thing he wanted in exile from the Dutch host was a cup of real English tea.

Edward joked with his French friends that while many prayed to an eternal father, he alone seemed to have an eternal mother. Queen Victoria finally died in 1901, and Edward began his drive to world war."

Fascinating question. In my opinion, it is because the Kaiser was so inconsistent that such a drama could unfold - his never ending blathering facilitated the rise of hawkish people in his entourage (and the german empire at the time was full of those), in turn increasing the risk of a full scale conflict which eventually broke out in the summer of 1914. It is only insofar that Germany can be deemed as "more" responsible for the outbreak of the first world war. Anyways, the absence of proper check and balances apart from the Kaiser made the downfall of the regime inevitable on the long run.

According to Gordon Craig's history of Germany 1866-1945, Wilhelm II complained during the war that none of the generals would tell him anything, except for the one in charge of railways, to whom he was very grateful for the favor. The recent history The Sleepwalkers depicts him as a bit panicked by the approach of the war.

The article seems to guffaw a bit about the Kaiser's concerns over the French invading through Belgium. They absolutely were planning to do that! And much of the French leadership was still thirsting for vengeance over 1870. If the Belgian king found a discussion about the subject shocking then he was an idiot.

I think a better question is, how come everybody wanna keep it like the kaiser?