Flawed character of ‘Kaiser Bill'

Press, 21 April 1979, Page 17

Flawed character of ‘Kaiser Bill'

The Kaiser. By Alan Palmer. Weidenfeld and Nicolson. 276 pp. $18.95. (Reviewed by David Gunby) Born in Berlin in January, 1859, the eldest son of the Crown Prince of Prussia, Frederick William, and his wife Victoria, eldest daughter of Queen- Victoria, Prince Frederick William Albert Victor was, for much of his life, as welll-known and as popular in Britain as he was in Germany. Favourite grandson of Queen Victoria (though not liked by his uncle Edward VII), he was (periodically) an avowed and flamboyant anglophile, and as late as 1911, when AngloGerman rivalry was growing in intensity, he could be cheered by a London crowd. August, 1914, changed all that, of course, and by early 1915 the war had become known as “the Kaiser’s War.” One of the questions Alan Palmer has to consider in this well-written and well-considered biography of Wilhelm II is how justified this attribution was. His answer has to take account not only uf the subtle and complicated shifts of i>ower between Kaiser, Chancellor and Reichstag, but also of the unstable and anpredictable nature of the Kaiser. This last is, indeed, the central feature of Mr Palmer’s book. In the first chapter we learn of the difficulties of the future Kaiser’s birth, of the deformity which ensued, and of the psychological troubles which resulted from an upbringing designed

to overcome or at least hide the weakness of the left arm, the partial deafness and the impaired balance which were legacies of the birth. In this respect the account of the riding lessons (p. 12) is particularly revealing. As the author remarks “the cost in physical agony and nervous repression was enough to sear a boy’s character.” Seared Willy’s personality indeed was. Throughout his life he strove, generally with success, to present to the public an image of martial dignity and strength. Inwardly, as Mr Palmer makes abundantly clear, the man was very different: insecure, mercurial, highly sensitive and emotional. Intellectually a dilettante, the Kaiser liked to think of himself as an expert on everything from industry to art and music, and was unfortunate enough to be able, by virtue of his rank, to make his often absurd pronouncements without contradiction. He was also able to indulge his taste for fantasy and to get away with rather more lies and half-truths than his loyal subjects. All these traits constituted considerable weakn.sses. Coming together in a man who excercised a measure of real rather than merely constitutional authority within his kingdom, they were dangerous, and contributed materially to the downfall of the ruler and of the realm. It always helps, in a biography, if the subject is one to whom the reader can respond warmly. Kaiser Bill one

can readily sympathise with, but not not warm to. Reading Mr Palmer’s highly professional account of the “Warlord of the Second Reich,” as the sub-title puts it, we become, in the end, irritated by the man’s behaviour even as we understand the reasons for it. “Ach, the fool,” was Queen Alexandra’s verdict. Her husband, Edward VII, expressed his feelings when he remarked, after a Kaiserly visit to Sandringham, “Thank heaven he’s gone.” If Wilhelm had not, in his exile" in the Netherlands, been an irrelevancy for more than 20 years, there would have been many who would have said the same at the Kaiser’s death in 1941. As it was, Wilhelm II had amply fulfilled the fears his father had expressed to Bismarck in 1886, when the Chancellor had suggested that the young Prince be attached to the Foreign Ministry for a time to gain experience in diplomacy. “In view of the unripeness and inexperience of my eldest son,” the then Crown Prince Frederick wrote, “together with his tendency to brag and his overweening conceit, I consider it a positive danger for him to be allowed to come into contact with foreign affairs.” What a pity it was that one Kaiser of such sound judgments ruled so briefly and died comparatively young, while another, incapable of this kind of insight and objectivity, lived (and ruled) so long.