Kaiser Wilhelm II - World War I - HISTORY.com Kaiser Wilhelm II A+E Networks Introduction Wilhelm II (1859-1941), the German kaiser (emperor) and king of Prussia from 1888 to 1918, was one of the most recognizable public figures of World War I (1914-18). He gained a reputation as a swaggering militarist through his speeches and ill-advised newspaper interviews. While Wilhelm did not actively seek war, and tried to hold back his generals from mobilizing the German army in the summer of 1914, his verbal outbursts and his open enjoyment of the title of Supreme War Lord helped bolster the case of those who blamed him for the conflict. His role in the conduct of the war as well as his responsibility for its outbreak is still controversial. Some historians maintain that Wilhelm was controlled by his generals, while others argue that he retained considerable political power. In late 1918, he was forced to abdicate. He spent the rest of his life in exile in the Netherlands, where he died at age 82.

Google Kaiser Wilhelm II’s Early Years Kaiser Wilhelm II was born in Potsdam, Germany, on January 27, 1859, the son of Prince Frederick Wilhelm of Prussia (1831-88) and Princess Victoria (1840-1901), the oldest daughter of Queen Victoria of England (1819-1901). The future monarch was the queen’s firstborn grandchild and was genuinely fond of her; in fact, he was holding her in his arms when she died. His ties to Britain through its royal family would play an important part in his later political maneuvering. Did You Know? Kaiser Wilhelm II was reportedly amused when he heard his cousin King George V (1865-1936) had changed the name of the British royal family from Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to Windsor in 1917 as a result of anti-German sentiment in Britain during World War I. Wilhelm’s childhood was shaped by two events, one medical and one political. His birth had been traumatic; in the course of a complicated delivery, the doctor permanently damaged Wilhelm’s left arm.

In addition to its smaller size, the arm was useless for such ordinary tasks as cutting certain foods with a knife at mealtime. The political event that shaped Wilhelm was the formation of the German Empire under the leadership of Prussia in 1871. Wilhelm was now second in line after his father to become an emperor as well as king of Prussia. Twelve years old at the time, Wilhelm was filled with nationalistic enthusiasm. His later determination to win a “place in the sun” for Germany had its roots in his childhood. An intelligent young man who possessed a lifelong interest in science and technology, Wilhelm was educated at the University of Bonn. His quick mind, however, was combined with an even quicker temper and an impulsive, high-strung personality. He had dysfunctional relationships with both parents, particularly his English mother. Historians still debate the effects of the kaiser’s complicated psychological makeup on his political decisions. In 1881, Wilhelm married Princess Augusta Victoria (1858-1921) of Schleswig-Holstein. The couple would go on to have seven children.

Emperor and King: 1888 Wilhelm’s father became Kaiser Frederick III of Germany in March 1888. Already ill with terminal throat cancer, he died after a reign of only several months. Wilhelm succeeded his father on June 15, 1888, at the age of 29. Within two years of his coronation, Wilhelm broke with Otto von Bismarck (1815-98), the “Iron Chancellor” who had dominated German politics since the 1860s. The kaiser embarked on his so-called New Course, a period of personal rule in which he appointed chancellors who were upper-level civil servants rather than statesmen. Bismarck bitterly predicted that Wilhelm would lead Germany to ruin. Wilhelm damaged his political position in a number of ways. He meddled in German foreign policy on the basis of his emotions, resulting in incoherence and inconsistency in German relations with other nations. He also made a number of public blunders, the worst of which was The Daily Telegraph affair of 1908.

Wilhelm gave an interview to the London-based newspaper in which he offended the British by saying such things as: “You English are mad, mad, mad as March hares.” The kaiser had already been hurt politically in 1907 by the Eulenburg-Harden affair, in which members of his circle of friends were accused of being homosexuals. Although there is no evidence that Wilhelm was gay–in addition to his seven children with his first wife, he was rumored to have several illegitimate offspring–the scandal was used by his political opponents to weaken his influence.Wilhelm’s most important contribution to Germany’s prewar military expansion was his commitment to creating a navy to rival Britain’s. His childhood visits to his British cousins had given him a love for the sea–sailing was one of his favorite recreations–and his envy of the power of the British navy convinced him that Germany must build a large fleet of its own in order to fulfill its destiny. The kaiser supported the plans of Alfred von Tirpitz (1849-1930), his chief admiral, who maintained that Germany could gain diplomatic power over Britain by stationing a fleet of warships in the North Sea.

By 1914, however, the naval buildup had caused severe financial problems for Wilhelm’s government. Kaiser Wilhelm II and World War I Wilhelm’s behavior during the crisis that led to war in August 1914 is still controversial. There is little doubt that he had been broken psychologically by the criticism that followed the Eulenburg-Harden and Daily Telegraph scandals; he suffered an episode of depression in 1908. In addition, the kaiser was out of touch with the realities of international politics in 1914; he thought that his blood relationships to other European monarchs were sufficient to manage the crisis that followed the June 1914 assassination of the Austrian archduke Franz Ferdinand (1863-1914) in Sarajevo, Bosnia. Although Wilhelm signed the order for German mobilization following pressure from his generals–Germany declared war against Russia and France during the first week of August 1914– he is reported to have said, “You will regret this, gentlemen.” With World War I under way, the kaiser, as commander in chief of the German armed forces, retained the power to make upper-level changes in military command.

Nonetheless, he was largely a shadow monarch during the war, useful to his generals as a public-relations figure who toured the front lines and handed out medals. After 1916, Germany was, in effect, a military dictatorship dominated by two generals, Paul von Hindenburg (1847-1934) and Erich Ludendorff (1865-1937). Kaiser Wilhelm II’s Years of Exile In late 1918, popular unrest in Germany (which had suffered greatly during the war) combined with a naval mutiny convinced civilian political leaders that the kaiser had to abdicate to preserve order. In fact, Wilhelm’s abdication was announced on November 9, 1918, before he had actually consented to it. He agreed to leave when the leaders of the army told him he had lost their support as well. On November 10, the former emperor took a train across the border into the Netherlands, which had remained neutral throughout the war. He eventually bought a manor house in the town of Doorn, and remained there for the remainder of his life.

Although the Allies wanted to punish Wilhelm as a war criminal, Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands (1880-1962) refused to extradite him. His last years were darkened by the death of his first wife and the suicide of his youngest son in 1920. He did, however, make a happy second marriage in 1922. His new wife, Hermine Reuss (1887-1947), actively petitioned German leader Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) in the early 1930s to restore the monarchy, but nothing ever came of her negotiations. Hitler despised the man he held responsible for Germany’s defeat in World War I, and Wilhelm was shocked by the Nazis’ thuggish tactics. In 1938, Wilhelm remarked that for the first time he was ashamed to be a German. After two decades in exile, he died in the Netherlands on June 4, 1941, at the age of 82.

Tags Kaiser Wilhelm's guide to ruining a country Lead book review Kaiser Wilhelm's guide to ruining a country A review of Wilhelm II: Into the Abyss of War and Exile, 1900-1941, by John C.G. Röhl, translated by Sheila de Bellaigue and Roy Bridge. The anachro­nistic, racist and militaristic German monarch hastened his country’s self-destruction Wilhelm II: Into the Abyss of War and Exile, 1900–1941 John C.G. Röhl, translated by Sheila de Bellaigue and Roy Bridge CUP, pp.1562, £45 The role of personality in politics is the theme of this awe-inspiring biography. This is the third volume, 1,562 pages long, of John Röhl’s life of the Kaiser. It has been brilliantly translated — the labyrinth of imperial Germany navigated by many headed subdivisions in each chapter — by Sheila de Bellaigue.

The fruit of what Röhl calls a ‘dark obsession’ with the Kaiser, it had its origin when, writing about Germany after the fall of Bismarck at the apogee of social and institutional history in the 1960s, he realised that he was analysing not a modern government but a court society. Personalities and dynasties were as important as classes and parties. One of the outstanding biographies of the past 20 years, based on research in almost as many archives as the Kaiser had palaces, it is also a guide to how to ruin a country. This volume deals with the years from 1900 to the Kaiser’s death in exile in the Netherlands in 1941. Behind Germany’s façade of parliamentary government, with the most advanced economy in Europe (by 1914 twice as many books were published in Germany as in France), considerable power remained with the Kaiser and his private military, naval and civil cabinets. He could appoint the Chancellor, ambassadors and generals.

As he wrote to his first cousin George V in 1912, ‘They have to obey and follow my will.’ Germany did not make ministers responsible to the legislature rather than the monarch until October 1918 — in a last-minute attempt to win better peace terms, rather than a sudden enthusiasm for constitutionalism. Journeys reveal power structure. The Chancellor travelled to remote royal hunting lodges — Rominten, Springe, Hubertusstock, even to the Kaiser’s villa in Corfu — in order to consult his master. One of the Kaiser’s closest friends, Prince Philipp zu Eulenburg, provoked public exposure as a homosexual by returning to Germany in January 1907 to be received into the Order of the Black Eagle in the Schlosss in Berlin. He risked everything to attend a court function. Admirers of Prince Charles’s speeches might reflect on the damage inflicted by the Kaiser’s indiscretions on his country, his monarchy and himself. From the start of his reign, he said ‘I’ instead of ‘my government’. After 1899 this forceful, volatile, controversy-courting ruler was openly attacked in a way other German monarchs were not.

Every imperial speech, August Bebel said, to gales of laughter in the Reichstag, won 100,000 votes for the socialists. Germany’s ruin was long foretold. General Count Waldersee wrote in 1900, ‘the Kaiser ruins everyone he deals with.’ Germany was heading for ‘a bad end’. In April 1904 Baroness von Spitzemberg wrote in her diary that the Kaiser was ‘leading glorious Germany into disaster, unless God helps us!’ After an especially indiscreet interview with the Kaiser, printed by the Daily Telegraph in 1908, which Röhl thinks was intended to lull England while Germany built up its navy, the Reichstag passed a unanimous vote of censure against his personal rule. A few weeks later, staying with Prince Furstenberg in Donaueschingen, the Kaiser and his household were entertained by General von Hülsen-Haeseler, head of his military cabinet, dancing in their hostess’s ball-gown, blowing kisses to the guests — until a heart attack left him dead at his master’s feet. The Kaiser’s subsequent nervous collapse lasted several weeks.

When he wanted he could be — wrote his cousin Queen Mary — ‘charming and agreeable’. Churchill admired his ‘easy grace’. In 1913 he boasted that his reign had seen 25 years of peace. Below the surface, however, Wilhelm II was anachronistic, racist and militaristic even by the standards of his day. He told troops going to China to ‘take no prisoners’. His belief that a ‘final struggle’ between Germans and ‘Slavdom’ was inevitable explains his blank cheque to Austria in 1914. After 1909, despite his friendships with ‘Kaiserjuden’ such as Albert Ballin, the Hamburg shipowner who named his liners Imperator or Vaterland, Wilhelm II’s youthful anti-Semitism revived. There were few Jewish officers in the Prussian army. The Kaiser’s militarism was not limited to words. Like the Schlieffen plan to invade France through neutral Belgium (thereby making Britain’s entry into the war inevitable), Germany’s battle fleet was a personal project. It too drove Britain to ally with France (the Royal Navy could better defend the North Sea if it left the Mediterranean to the French navy).

The Zabern incident on 28 October 1913 showed that age had not sobered the Kaiser. When German officers and soldiers insulted and arrested Alsatian civilians, Wilhelm II publicly commended their ‘energy’. The Chancellor proclaimed ‘the King’s uniform must be respected in all circumstances’. There were also schemes, detailed here, to attack New York, invade South America or dominate the Muslim world. Nevertheless the Kaiser could be manipulated by the men around him. As an old Prussian proverb went: und der konig absolut, wenn er unsern willen tut (‘let the King be absolute, as long as he does what we want’). Röhl shows that the Kaiser was not as war-hungry as his family and some of his countrymen. Some had called him, when he had preferred diplomatic solutions, ‘Guillaume le timide’, ‘the hope of France’. In the crucial days 28–30 July 1914, keen on war with France and Russia but alarmed that Britain would join them, the Kaiser hesitated.

Convinced that it was ‘militarily more favourable than it can ever be again for the foreseeable future’ — since Russia was growing stronger and Austria weaker — the Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg and the generals wanted war ‘the sooner the better’. They held back or distorted letters to and from the Kaiser in order to hasten war’s outbreak. By uniting Germany, and acquiring Alsace-Lorraine by force, Bismarck had fatally increased the power of the army — and ensured that France would plan revenge. Recent books by Christopher Clark and Sean McMeekin show that the French, Russian and Serbian governments were as belligerent as the German and Austrian. The Russian ambassador in Belgrade, Hartwig, like the Serbian prime minister Pasic, whom he met almost daily, knew of plans to kill Archduke Franz Ferdinand. President Poincaré, a man from Lorraine known to some as Poincaré-la-guerre, expressed relief when war broke out — soon after his return from a triumphant visit to Saint Petersburg. The leaders of 1914 were not ‘sleepwalkers’ but warmongers.

The Kaiser’s popularity reached its height when he proclaimed, from the balcony of the Berlin Schloss (now, incredibly, being rebuilt) mobilisation on 1 August 1914. Beaming faces everywhere in the war ministry; cheering crowds in the streets. Thereafter the Kaiser, although still a central factor, became hesitant and reactive. ‘The general staff tell me nothing,’ he complained. He was further incapacitated by a swollen scrotum. Unlike other monarchs, he rarely visited troops at the front. The head of his military cabinet wrote: ‘His own comfort and amusement always come first… one day we shall have to pay for all of this.’ That day came in November 1918. ‘Completely exhausted and battle-weary’, German troops were ‘quite indifferent’ to his fate. From military headquarters where he had retreated to avoid unrest in Berlin, on 9 November 1918 the Kaiser was led by his generals to exile in the neutral Netherlands, as one of them wrote, ‘just as if he was a little child’. In exile meetings between monarchists and Nazis — Goering twice went to see the Kaiser — were frequent.

The Kaiser advocated in private letters exterminating Jews and prayed for the destruction of ‘Juda England’, before his death in Doorn in 1941. It is impossible to disagree with Röhl’s conclusion that the Kaiser’s long and belligerent life personified ‘the numerous continuities between the Wilhelminian era and the Third Reich’. He hastened Germany’s self-destruction. This great biography shows how a dynamic modern country can be ruined by nationalism and militarisation. Phrases resembling the Kaiser’s ‘the sword is forced into our hands’, doctrines of ‘preemptive’ or ‘preventive’ war and the primacy of ‘security’ are used to justify wars in the 21st century just as they were in 1914. What Röhl calls ‘phobic hyper-nationalism’ is on the rise from Moscow to Glasgow. Militarism is as dangerous as terrorism. Available from the Spectator Bookshop , £42.50, Tel: 08430 600033. Kaiser Wilhelm II, a concise edition, will be published as a paperback original later this month (CUP, £16.99, pp.

240, ISBN 9781107420779). Philip Mansel’s books include Louis XVIII, Paris Between Empires, 1814–1852 and The Eagle in Splendour: Napoleon I and His Court. Subscribe to The Spectator today for a quality of argument not found in any other publication. Get more Spectator for less – just £12 for 12 issues . Kaiser Wilhelm II: from early years to exile - OpenLearn - Open University Kaiser Wilhelm II: from early years to exile History & The Arts Kaiser Wilhelm II: from early years to exile Updated Monday 16th December 2013 The last German Emperor and the last King of Prussia, Wilhelm II led German forces during the First World War. 550 700 Max Koner's painting of Kaiser Wilheml II. Select to enlarge. Wilhelm II was German Kaiser (Emperor), as well as Prussian King, from 1888 until his abdication in November 1918. It has been said that his erratic and at times bellicose foreign policy contributed to the outbreak of war in 1914.

While he may not personally have decided that Germany should go to war, he had put in place structures and fostered a culture of militarism which led to an aggressive foreign policy in his name. Wilhelm II was the first child of the Prussian Crown Prince Friedrich and his young wife, Princess Victoria, Queen Victoria’s first daughter. This made him the Queen’s grandson. Early life and health problems 600 700 Prince Wilhelm of Prussia, later Kaiser Wilhelm II, with his grandmother, Queen Victoria. Select to enlarge. He was born following a particularly difficult labour in which he nearly died. As a result of having been in breech position, he suffered an injury to his neck muscles which meant he could never use his left arm. A weak child who was often ill, he became a victim of the sometimes harsh practices of the time, in which his parents, teachers and doctors tried to cure him of his many ailments with cruel and often unnecessary procedures. Electroshocks failed to revive the ‘lifeless arm’, as did wrapping it in freshly killed hares and other such nightmarish treatments, for example. None of this ever cured the child, but doubtless contributed to emotional trauma.

Rejected as being ‘imperfect’ by his mother, his was a joyless childhood that turned the young Wilhelm against his mother and everything she stood for, including English liberal ideas. He developed a fateful love-hate relationship with Britain as a result of his strained relation with his mother and English relatives. His character was irascible and at times he appeared to contemporaries to be mad; certainly he was unpredictable and often cruel. 500 700 Italian poster from 1915 showing Wilhelm II biting into the world. The text reads "The glutton – too hard." Select to enlarge. Under his leadership, Germany was to claim its place in the sun. Germany had only become a unified country in 1871, too late for the imperial scrambles of the 19th century which helped expand other empires. Many Germans thought that the country’s size and economic power entitled it to a fair share of the bounty that the other great powers had enjoyed for some time. Under Wilhelm II Germany embarked on a large ship-building programme which created an Anglo-German naval rivalry. Some see in this animosity one of the causes of the First World War.

600 800 1909 cartoon in Puck shows nations engaged in naval race game. Select to enlarge. Certainly naval and military arms races escalated feelings of an impending war which would become increasingly difficult to win. Foreign policy Germany’s foreign policy echoed Wilhelm’s changeable and blustering character. After more than two decades of Wilhelmine rule, Germany found itself encircled by potentially hostile powers (Russia in the East, France and Britain in the West), and allied to Austria-Hungary and Italy. Where Chancellor Otto von Bismarck had previously created an alliance system whose purpose it was to avoid another continental war, Wilhelm II’s policy helped to create an alliance system which tied states in opposing ententes and alliances (see the diagram at the foot of thise page). Once war had broken out, Wilhelm II soon found himself marginalised by the military leaders who quickly took over decision-making. From 1914, he increasingly became a mere 'shadow' Kaiser.

When the war ended with Germany’s capitulation, the victors demanded the Kaiser’s abdication, and from within Germany, the new parliamentary government also wanted to end the Prussian monarchy.3 Abdication and flight 800 600 Kaiser Wilhelm II on 10 November 1918 at the Belgian-Dutch border, on his way to exile. Select to enlarge. Wilhelm II fled via Belgium to the Netherlands and thus narrowly escaped being tried as a war criminal by the victorious Allies. Famously, he crossed the border in a train which, in 7 carriages, contained many of his possessions. Another 63 carriages were sent to him the following year, and the new German Republic, which he so despised, made generous financial settlements. He was as bitter about his people whom he felt had betrayed him as they were about him. He had, so he claimed, been betrayed by a nation of pigs (‘Schweinebande’), by Jews and Socialists, and he longed to exact a terrible revenge on those who had forced him to abdicate.

He lived the rest of his life comfortably off, and tended to by some forty servants, in a country house in Doorn in Holland, and never returned to Germany. During the Second World War, when the German army was once again engaged in a bloody battle against its neighbours, he hoped that Adolf Hitler would finish the job that had been started in 1914. He did not live to see how the Second World War ended in even more destruction than the first. He died in June 1941, aged 82. Next: A diplomatic crisis among major European powers in 1914 led to the First World War. Find out what happened when with July Crisis: A chronology Kaiser Wilhelm II : Escape to The Netherlands (1918) - YouTube Kaiser Wilhelm II : Escape to The Netherlands (1918) Want to watch this again later? Sign in to add this video to a playlist. Need to report the video? Sign in to report inappropriate content. Rating is available when the video has been rented. This feature is not available right now. Please try again later.

Published on Feb 13, 2015 German Emperor Wilhelm II was at the Imperial Army headquarters in Spa, Belgium, when the uprisings in Berlin and other centres took him by surprise in late 1918. Mutiny among the ranks of his beloved Kaiserliche Marine, the imperial navy, profoundly shocked him. After the outbreak of the German Revolution, Wilhelm could not make up his mind whether or not to abdicate. Up to that point, he accepted that he would likely have to give up the imperial crown, but still hoped to retain the Prussian kingship. However, this was impossible under the imperial constitution. While Wilhelm thought he ruled as emperor in a personal union with Prussia, the constitution actually tied the imperial crown to the Prussian crown, meaning that Wilhelm could not renounce one crown without renouncing the other. Wilhelm's hopes of retaining at least one of his thrones was revealed as unrealistic when, in the hope of preserving the monarchy in the face of growing revolutionary unrest, Chancellor Prince Max of Baden announced Wilhelm's abdication of both titles on 9 November 1918.

Prince Max himself was forced to resign later the same day, when it became clear that only Friedrich Ebert, leader of the SPD, could effectively exert control. Later that day, one of Ebert's secretaries of state (ministers), Social Democrat Philipp Scheidemann, proclaimed Germany a republic. Wilhelm consented to the abdication only after Ludendorff's replacement, General Wilhelm Groener, had informed him that the officers and men of the army would march back in good order under Paul von Hindenburg's command, but would certainly not fight for Wilhelm's throne on the home front. The monarchy's last and strongest support had been broken, and finally even Hindenburg, himself a lifelong royalist, was obliged, with some embarrassment, to advise the Emperor to give up the crown.[55] A memorial to German soldiers killed in the First World War The fact that the High Command might one day abandon the Kaiser had been foreseen in December 1897, when Wilhelm had visited Otto von Bismarck for the last time. Bismarck had again warned the Kaiser about the increasing influence of militarists, especially of the admirals who were pushing for the construction of a battle fleet.

Bismarck's last warning had been: Your Majesty, so long as you have this present officer corps, you can do as you please. But when this is no longer the case, it will be very different for you. Subsequently, Bismarck had predicted accurately: "Jena came twenty years after the death of Frederick the Great; the crash will come twenty years after my departure if things go on like this" ― a prophecy fulfilled almost to the month. On 10 November, Wilhelm crossed the border by train and went into exile in the Netherlands, which had remained neutral throughout the war.[58] Upon the conclusion of the Treaty of Versailles in early 1919, Article 227 expressly provided for the prosecution of Wilhelm "for a supreme offence against international morality and the sanctity of treaties", but Queen Wilhelmina refused to extradite him, despite appeals from the Allies. King George V wrote that he looked on his cousin as "the greatest criminal in history", but opposed Prime Minister David Lloyd George's proposal to "hang the Kaiser". President Woodrow Wilson of the United States rejected extradition, arguing that punishing Wilhelm for waging war would destabilize international order and lose the peace.

Wilhelm travelled to the village of Maarn and first settled in Amerongen, where on 28 November he issued a belated statement of abdication from both the Prussian and imperial thrones, thus formally ending the Hohenzollerns' 400-year rule over Prussia. He also released his soldiers and officials from their oath of loyalty to him. He purchased a country house in the municipality of Doorn, known as Huis Doorn and moved in on 15 May 1920.[61] This was to be his home for the remainder of his life. The Weimar Republic allowed Wilhelm to remove twenty-three railway wagons of furniture, twenty-seven containing packages of all sorts, one bearing a car and another a boat, from the New Palace at Potsdam. Source: Wikipedia Kaiser Wilhelm II World Map / World War I / Kaiser Wilhelm II Kaiser Wilhelm II Kaiser Wilhelm II was the last emperor of Germany. Born in 1859 to Emperor Frederick Wilhelm of Prussia, Wilhelm was also the grandson of Queen Victoria. He was born in Berlin. Wilhelm was educated by private tutors in his early years but as he grew he received military at the Kassel Gymnasium.

His received his academic education at the University of Bonn. Emperor Wilhelm II’s Reign: With the death of Emperor Wilhelm I in 1888, Emperor Frederick Wilhelm ascended the throne but reigned for only a few months. On June 15 1888, Wilhelm II was crowned third Kaiser of Germany and ninth King of Prussia. Wilhelm was autocratic in his rule and did not approve of democracy. German Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck had pursued a policy of carefully measured colonization and cautious diplomacy. This led to a spat with the German Chancellor, and Emperor Wilhelm II dismissed the Bismarck. Emperor Wilhelm II pursued active imperialism and rapid expansion. Radically anti- British, he endorsed German militarism to establish naval supremacy. During the Boer War, Emperor Wilhelm’s support of South Africa in the Boer War, statements supporting Morocco against the French and interview with The Daily Telegraph did not make him popular with other European nations. Emperor Wilhelm II and World War I: Emperor Wilhelm II had assured Austria-Hungary of German military support and was keen on taking to task the Black Hand group responsible for the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.

Following the assassination, Austria-Hungary served Serbia a harsh ultimatum. Emperor Wilhelm II, though on his annual cruise at the time, hastened home to take control of the political developments. His assent of Serbia’s response, ignorant of Austria-Hungary’s decision to declare war was ineffectual as Russia had started to mobilize forces. “A brilliant solution—and in barely 48 hours!” - Emperor Wilhelm II Emperor Wilhelm II considered Russia’s refusal to demobilize as part of a conspiracy on the part of Britain, Russia, and France to annihilate Germany. With the outbreak of World War I, Wilhelm II was the commander in chief of the German armed forces. With the progress of war, the emperor’s authority diminished. Abdication and Exile: By 1916, Germany had become a dictatorship with Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff controlling all military and administrative authority. In 1917, they pitched for the dismissal of Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg. The Empire collapsed in October 1918, and the country's military and civilian populace no longer looked upon Emperor Wilhelm II as the leader of Germany.

In 1918, a number of uprisings in Berlin and a mutiny in the armed forces left the Kaiser morally crippled. On November 9, 1918, German Chancellor Prince Max announced the abdication of the emperor. Wilhelm then sought refuge in the Netherlands and Queen Wilhelmina did not succumb to the Allies’ appeal for his extradition. Wilhelm bought a castle in Doorn and lived there for the rest of his life. He wrote two autobiographical books, Memoirs 1878-1918 and My Early Life. Wilhelm II died in 1941 in Doorn. His last wishes of never returning to Germany were respected and he was buried in Doorn. Kaiser Wilhelm II Wilhelm II German Emperor and King of Prussia, 1888-1918 Friedrich Wilhelm Viktor Albrecht was born in Berlin on January 27, 1859, the son of Crown Prince Frederick William of Prussia and Victoria, Princess Royal of Great Britain. The grandson of Queen Victoria of Great Britain, he was, through her, related in some way to most of the royalty in Europe.

He was tutored by Georg Hinzpeter before attending the Friedrichsgymnasium at Kassel and then the University of Bonn. Kaiser Wilhelm II When Emperor Wilhelm I died on March 9, 1888, Friedrich's father inherited the throne, but he was already dying of throat cancer at the time and and died just 99 days later. Friedrich succeeded his father and was crowned Wilhem II, German Emperor and King of Prussia, on June 15, 1888. When Wilhelm ascended the throne, Germany's government was under the control of Chancellor, Prince Otto von Bismarck , who had exerted great influence over Emperor Wilhelm I and managed to gain almost complete authority over Germany. Wilhelm II frequently clashed with Bismarck over social issues, however, and he called for Bismarck's resignation in 1890. Rather than appoint a new chancellor, Wilhelm decided to rely on the advice of self-appointed ministers and run the government himself. Although he oversaw unprecedented growth in German industry and built up the army and navy until they were among the world's greatest, Wilhelm II proved inept in matters of foreign policy.

His reliance on bad advice from his advisors led Germany into conflict with Britain, France, and Russia, and, ultimately, into a losing alliance with Austria-Hungary during World War I . In 1890, Wilhelm broke a long-standing Prussian alliance with Russia, but then tried to renew that alliance during that country's war with Japan (1894) in hopes of gaining a port in either China or Japan in return. The renewal of alliances never materialized, however, and Germany failed to gain an Oriental port. In 1905, Wilhelm's advisers convinced him to publicly support nationalists in Morocco in their fight for independence from France believing that doing so would give Germany a say in the partitioning of Africa. Unfortunately, Germany only managed to anger the French; not only did she fail to gain new African colonies, the Moroccans never even acknowledged Germany's support for their cause. Then, in the autumn of 1907, a British newspaper published an "interview" with Wilhelm in which he seemed to express a desire to interfere with British internal affairs. Although Wilhelm had no such intentions, he had already distanced Germany from Britain and the article simply widened that distance.

On June 28, 1914, Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, a friend of Wilhelm's, was assassinated in Sarajevo, Serbia. Wilhelm immediately offered to support Austria-Hungary in any action it deemed necessary to avenge the assassination, but he never imagined that war would be the result. In fact, Wilhelm actively tried to convince Austria not to take up arms against Serbia, but was unsuccessful. Then, when Russia joined forces with Serbia against Austria-Hungary, Wilhelm was obligated to honor his promise to Austria; and, since Russia already had alliances with Britain and France, Germany and Austria-Hungary soon found themelves allied against every other military power in Europe. As he had done with government affairs, Wilhelm relied on a series of advisers to manage Germany's war effort. Unfortunately, his military advisers were even less effective than his foreign affairs advisers had been, and by 1918 Germany was on the verge of defeat. On November 9, 1918, with German citizens in revolt and the German Navy in mutiny, Emperor Wilhelm II quietly slipped out of the country and went into exile in the Netherlands, which had remained neutral throughout the war.

He spent the rest of his life as a country gentleman on an estate in Doorn, which he had purchased in 1919. He died there on June 3, 1941, and was interred in a mausoleum on the grounds. Marriages and Children Prince Friedrich Wilhelm married Princess Augusta Viktoria of Schleswig-Holstein on February 27, 1881. The couple had seven children: Crown Prince Wilhelm (18821951) married Duchess Cecilie of Mecklenburg-Schwerin in 1905. They had six children, the eldest of whom, Prince Wilhelm of Prussia (19061940), was killed in World War II . Prince Eitel Friedrich (18831942) married Duchess Sophia Charlotte of Oldenburg in 1906. They were divorced in 1926 and had no children. Prince Adalbert (18841948) married Princess Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen in 1914; they had three children.

Prince August Wilhelm (18871949) married Princess Alexandra Victoria of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glï¿½cksburg in 1908; they had one child. Prince Oskar (18881958) married Countess Ina Marie von Bassewitz in 1914. They had four children, the eldest of whom, Prince Oskar Wilhelm Karl Hans Kuno of Prussia, was killed in 1939 in World War II. Prince Joachim (18901920, by suicide) married Princess Marie-Auguste of Anhalt in 1916; they had one son. Princess Viktoria Luise (18921980) married Ernest Augustus, Duke of Brunswick in 1913; they had five children. Empress Viktoria died on April 11, 1921, barely a year after her and the Emperor's youngest son had committed suicide.

The following January, Wilhelm received a birthday greeting from a son of the late Prince Johann George Ludwig Ferdinand August Wilhelm of Schï¿½naich-Carolath. The 63-year-old Wilhelm invited the boy and his mother, Princess Hermine Reuss of Greiz, to Doorn. Wilhelm found Hermine very attractive and greatly enjoyed her company. The couple were wed on November 9, 1922, and she remained a constant companion to the aging Emperor until his death. The Last German Emperor, Living in Exile in The Netherlands 1918-1941 - YouTube The Last German Emperor, Living in Exile in The Netherlands 1918-1941 Want to watch this again later? Sign in to add this video to a playlist. Need to report the video? Sign in to report inappropriate content. Rating is available when the video has been rented. This feature is not available right now. Please try again later.

Published on Nov 24, 2012 The Last German Emperor, Living in Exile in The Netherlands 1918-1941 Wilhelm II or William II (German: Friedrich Wilhelm Viktor Albert; English: Frederick William Victor Albert) (27 January 1859 -- 4 June 1941) was the last German Emperor (Kaiser) and King of Prussia, ruling the German Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia from 15 June 1888 to 9 November 1918. He was a grandson of the British Queen Victoria and related to many monarchs and princes of Europe. Crowned in 1888, he dismissed the Chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, in 1890 and launched Germany on a bellicose "New Course" in foreign affairs that culminated in his support for Austria-Hungary in the crisis of July 1914 that led to World War I. Bombastic and impetuous, he sometimes made tactless pronouncements on sensitive topics without consulting his ministers, culminating in a disastrous Daily Telegraph interview that cost him most of his power in 1908.

His generals dictated policy during World War I with little regard for the civilian government. An ineffective war leader, he lost the support of the army, abdicated in November 1918, and fled to exile in the Netherlands.

Question: In 1918 Kaiser Wilhelm II was exiled to which country?
Answer: The Netherlands