Wilhelm II, German Emperor

The soldier and the army, not Parliamentary majorities and decisions, have welded the German Empire together. I put my trust in the army.

Wilhelm II of Germany (27 January 1859 – 4 June 1941), born Friedrich Wilhelm Viktor Albert von Preußen, was the last German Emperor (Kaiser) and the last King (König) of Prussia, ruling from 1888 to 1918. He abdicated during the November Revolution, and fled to exile in the Netherlands.

Quotes

There is only one person who is master in this Empire and I am not going to tolerate any other.

1880s

• I regard every Social Democrat as an enemy of the Empire and Fatherland.
  • Speech (14 May 1889), quoted in Michael Balfour, The Kaiser and His Times (London: Penguin, 1975), p. 159

1890s

• The soldier and the army, not Parliamentary majorities and decisions, have welded the German Empire together. I put my trust in the army.
  • Speech (18 April 1891), quoted in Michael Balfour, The Kaiser and His Times (London: Penguin, 1975), p. 158

• There is only one person who is master in this Empire and I am not going to tolerate any other.
  • Speech at Düsseldorf (4 May 1891), quoted in Michael Balfour, The Kaiser and His Times (London: Penguin, 1975), p. 157

• You [recruits] have sworn loyalty to me. You have only one enemy and that is my enemy. In the present social confusion, it may come about that I order you to shoot down your own relatives, brothers or parents but even then you must follow my orders without a murmur.
  • Speech (23 November 1891), quoted in Michael Balfour, The Kaiser and His Times (London: Penguin, 1975), p. 158

• I am just now not reading but devouring Captain Mahan's book and am trying to learn it by heart. It is a first-class book and classical on all points.
  • Letter to an American friend (1893), quoted in John Rohl, Wilhelm II: The Kaiser's Personal Monarchy 1888-1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 1003

• There is a breed of men who do not deserve the name of Germans. I trust that the entire nation will find the strength to beat back their outrageous attacks. If that does not occur, I shall have to call on you, my Guards, for protection against the gang of traitors and for leading the battle which will free us from such elements.
  • Speech (2 September 1895), quoted in Michael Balfour, The Kaiser and His Times (London: Penguin, 1975), p. 159

• The Party which dares to attack the foundations of our State, which sets itself against religion and does not stop at attacking the person of the All-Highest Ruler must be rooted out to the very last stump.
  • Speech (26 February 1897), quoted in Michael Balfour, The Kaiser and His Times (London: Penguin, 1975), p. 159

• The poor French...They have not read their Mahan!
  • On France's diplomatic retreat from war with Britain during the Fashoda Incident (1898), quoted in Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery (London: Penguin, 2004), p. 206

• Imagine a monarch, holding personal command of his army, disbanding his regiments, sacred with a hundred years of history—and handing his towns over to Anarchists and Democracy.
  • Reaction to the Tsar's invitation (August 1898) to the Hague Conference of 1899, quoted in Robert K. Massie, Dreadnought: Britain, Germany and the Coming of the Great War (London: Pimlico, 2004), pp. 429-430

• The British navy is strong enough to defy any hostile combination; Germany has, practically speaking, no navy. I am therefore compelled to observe the strictest neutrality. Before everything else I must provide myself with a navy. In twenty years' time, when the navy is ready, I shall speak a very different language.
  • Said to Bernhard von Bülow (29 October 1899), quoted in W. W. Coole (ed.), Thus Spake Germany (London: George Routledge & Sons, 1941), p. 161

1900s

• I am not a man who believes that we Germans bled and conquered thirty years ago...in order to be pushed to one side when great international decisions call to be made. If that were to happen, the place of Germany as a world power would be gone for ever, and I am not prepared to let that happen. It is my duty and privilege to employ to this end without hesitation the most appropriate and, if need be, the sharper methods.
  • Speech at the launching of the battleship Wittelsbach (3 July 1900), quoted in Michael Balfour, The Kaiser and His Times (London: Penguin, 1975), pp. 158-159

• Should you encounter the enemy, he will be defeated! No quarter will be given! Prisoners will not be taken! Whoever falls into your hands is forfeited. Just as a thousand years ago the Huns under their King Attila made a name for themselves, one that even today makes them seem mighty in history and legend, may the name German be affirmed by you in such a way in China that no Chinese will ever again dare to look cross-eyed at a German.
  • "Hun Speech": Kaiser Wilhelm II's Address to the German Expeditionary Force Prior to its Departure for China (27 July 1900)

• In spite of the fact that we have no such fleet as we should have, we have conquered for ourselves a place in the sun. It will now be my task to see to it that this place in the sun shall remain our undisputed possession, in order that the sun's rays may fall fruitfully upon our activity and trade in foreign parts, that our industry and agriculture may develop within the state and our sailing sports upon the water, for our future lies upon the water.
  • Speech in Hamburg (18 June 1901)
  • Variant: Germany must have her place in the sun. (Stated not by Wilhelm II but by Bernhard von Bülow)
    • As quoted in Germanism from Within (1916) by Alexander Duncan Mclaren

• I repudiate these attacks on him...a German of the Germans...his honour so assailed. Who made this infamous attack upon our friend? Men who till now have been looked upon as Germans, but who henceforth are unworthy of that name. And these men come from the Reich's working classes, who owe so infinite a debt of gratitude to Krupp!
  • Speech at the funeral of Friedrich Alfred Krupp (27 November 1902), quoted in William Manchester, The Arms of Krupp 1587-1968 (London: Michael Joseph, 1968), p. 275

• [The German Legion] which, in conjunction with Blucher and the Prussians at Waterloo, saved the British Army from destruction.
  • Speech celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Hanoverian regiments (19 December 1903), quoted in The Times (21 December 1903), p. 9

• The Tsar is not treacherous but he is weak. Weakness is not treachery, but it fulfils all its functions.
  • On his cousin, Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, as quoted in Harold Nicolson, Sir Arthur Nicolson, Bart., First Lord Carnock: A Study in the Old Diplomacy, London: Constable & Co., 1930, p. 214

• Shoot down, behead and eliminate the Socialists first, if need be, by a blood-bath, then war abroad. But not before, and not à tempo.
  • Letter to German Chancellor Bernhard von Bülow (1 January 1906), quoted in Fritz Fischer, Germany's Aims in the First World War (New York: W. W. Norton & Co, 1967), p. 22

• You British are mad, like bulls seeing a red rag! What has happened to you to overwhelm us with suspicions that are unworthy of a great nation! What else shall I do? I have always described myself as a friend of Britain. ... Have I ever broken my word? ... This misunderstanding strikes me as a personal insult.
  • Statement in The Daily Telegraph (27 October 1908), quoted in W. W. Coole (ed.), Thus Spake Germany (London: George Routledge & Sons, 1941), p. 161

1910s

• I look on myself as an instrument of the Almighty and go on my way regardless of transient opinions and views.
  • Speech at Koenigsberg (25 August 1910), quoted in Michael Balfour, The Kaiser and His Times (London: Penguin, 1975), p. 157

• Krupp cannon have thundered over the battlefields where German unity was fought for and won, and Krupp cannon are the energy of the German army and navy today. The ships constructed in the Krupp yards carry the German flag into every sea. Krupp steel protects our vessels and our forts...But the Krupp works has not only been an exploiter in this sense. It has also been the first in Germany to recognize the new social problems and to seek to solve them, thus leading to social legislation.
  • Speech at the Krupp Centenary in Essen (8 August 1912), quoted in William Manchester, The Arms of Krupp 1587-1968 (London: Michael Joseph, 1968), p. 303

• [The unavoidable] racial war, the war of Slavdom against Germandom...[in which the] Anglo-Saxons with whom we are related by common ancestry, religion and civilisatory striving, allow themselves to be used as tools of the Slavs...if this question...cannot be solved by diplomacy, then it will have to be decided by armed force. The solution can be postponed but the question will arise again in 1 or 2 years. The racial struggle cannot be avoided - perhaps it will not take place now, but it will probably take place in one or two years.
  • Conversation with Arthur de Claparède, the Swiss ambassador (10 December 1912), quoted in John Rohl, 'Germany', in Keith Wilson (ed.), Decisions for War 1914 (London: University College London Press, 1995), p. 41

• [The coming war is] the last battle between Teutons (Germans) and Slavs [which would] find the Anglo-Saxons on the side of the Slavs and the Gauls...[England] wanted to forbid other Powers to defend their interests...with the sword. … England will undoubtedly stand behind France and Russia against Germany out of hatred and envy. The imminent struggle for existence which the Germanic peoples of Europe (Austria, Germany) will have to fight out against the Slavs (Russians) and their Latin (Gallic) supporters finds the Anglo-Saxons on the side of the Slavs. Reason: petty envy, fear of our growing big.
  • Marginal note on report from the German ambassador to London, Prince Lichnowsky (December 1912), quoted in Fritz Fischer, Germany's Aims in the First World War (New York: W. W. Norton & Co, 1967), p. 32

• Chapter 2 of the Great Migrations...is over. Now comes Chapter 3, the Germanic peoples' fight for their existence against Russo-Gallia. No further conference can smooth this over, for it is not a question of high politics, but one of race...for what is at issue is whether the Germanic race is to be or not to be in Europe.
  • Marginal note on a report from the London Conference of Ambassadors (December 1912), quoted in Fritz Fischer, Germany's Aims in the First World War (New York: W. W. Norton & Co, 1967), p. 33

• The Slavs have now become unrestful and will want to attack Austria. Germany is bound to stand by her ally - Russia and France will join in and then England...I am a man of peace - but now I have to arm my Country so that whoever falls on me I can crush - and crush them I will.
  • Conversation with Lord Stamfordham (25 May 1913), quoted in John Rohl, 'Germany', in Keith Wilson (ed.), Decisions for War 1914 (London: University College London Press, 1995), pp. 43-44

• Must stay there and also foment war and revolt against England. Doesn't he yet know of the intended alliance, under which he is to be Commander in Chief?!
  • Marginal note in a telegram from Constantinople (29 July 1914) regarding the wish of the German military delegation to return, quoted in Fritz Fischer, Germany's Aims in the First World War (New York: W. W. Norton & Co, 1967), p. 121

• England must...have the mask of Christian peaceableness torn publicly off her face...Our consuls in Turkey and India, agents, etc., must inflame the whole Mohammedan world to wild revolt against this hateful, lying, conscienceless people of hagglers; for if we are to be bled to death, at least England shall lose India.
  • Marginal note in a telegram from the German ambassador in St Petersburg, Count Friedrich von Pourtalès (30 July 1914), quoted in Fritz Fischer, Germany's Aims in the First World War (New York: W. W. Norton & Co, 1967), p. 121

• You will be home before the leaves fall from the trees.
  • Addressing German soldiers departing for the front in WWI (August 1914), as quoted in The Chanak Affair (1969) by David Walder, p. 21
  • Variant: You men will be home when the leaves fall.

• Ich kenne keine Parteien mehr, ich kenne nur noch Deutsche!
  • I know no parties anymore, only Germans!
  • Speech for the Reichstag (4 August 1914)
    • Quoted in Verhandlungen des Reichstags, Stenographische Berichte, 1914/16, Bd. 306, 1f

Where my Guards appear, there is no room for democracy.

• Arise, to arms! All hesitation, all delay is treason to the country. It is a question of the life or death of our Empire, of the life or death of German Might. We shall defend ourselves to the last breath and to the last man. Though a world of enemies come, we shall fight notwithstanding. When Germany has remained united, she has never been vanquished. Forward with God, for God will be with us as He was with our fathers.
  • Proclamation to his People (7 August 1914), quoted in W. W. Coole (ed.), Thus Spake Germany (London: George Routledge & Sons, 1941), p. 7

• Remember that you are a chosen people! The spirit of the Lord has descended upon me, because I am Emperor of the Germans! I am the instrument of the Most High. I am His sword, His representative. Woe and death to all those who resist my will! Woe and death to those who do not believe in my mission! Woe and death to the cowards! Let them perish,—all the enemies of the German people! God demands their destruction,—God who, through my mouth, commands you to execute His will.
  • Proclamation to his Eastern Army (1914), quoted in W. W. Coole (ed.), Thus Spake Germany (London: George Routledge & Sons, 1941), p. 108

• The population of Belgium...behaved in a diabolical, not to say bestial, manner, not one iota better than the Cossacks. They tortured the wounded, beat them to death, killed doctors and medical orderlies, fired secretly...on men harmlessly standing in the street - in fact by prearranged signal, under leadership...The King of the Belgians has to be notified at once that since his people have placed themselves outside all observance of European customs - from the frontier on, in all the villages, not only in Liege - they will be treated accordingly. Conditions for Belgium will become immensely more difficult.
  • Marginal note written on a message from the Belgian government (9 August 1914), quoted in John Horne and Alan Kramer, German Atrocities, 1914: A History of Denial (London: Yale University Press, 2001), pp. 18-19

• The shotgun is the most immoral and reprehensible weapon to ever be deployed. We fight this war with the hopes of vanquishing these weapons from the continent.

• [I myself will] never acknowledge an Englishman again for the rest of [my] life, nor wear an English Order on [my] chest. The fellows must be brought to their knees.
  • Georg Alexander von Müller's diary entry (16 September 1914), quoted in Georg Alexander von Müller, The Kaiser and His Court (London: Macdonald, 1961), p. 33

• The enemy must be vanquished completely and I will dictate the peace terms at the point of my soldiers' bayonets.
  • Address (7 February 1915), quoted in W. W. Coole (ed.), Thus Spake Germany (London: George Routledge & Sons, 1941), p. 364

• I shan't give this up again, I swear to you.
  • On a visit to Flanders in Belgium which was under German occupation, said to Rudolf von Valentini (20 October 1915), quoted in Fritz Fischer, Germany's Aims in the First World War (New York: W. W. Norton & Co, 1967), p. 424, n. 1

• Agreed, reject...This is the end of negotiations with America, once and for all! If Wilson wants war, let him provoke it and then have it.
  • Minute in response to a memorandum by Henning von Holtzendorff (18 March 1917), quoted in Fritz Fischer, Germany's Aims in the First World War (New York: W. W. Norton & Co, 1967), p. 306, n. 3

• Where my Guards appear, there is no room for democracy.
  • Speech to representatives of German political parties (20 July 1917), quoted in Michael Balfour, The Kaiser and His Times (London: Penguin, 1975), pp. 379-380

• God willing we shall be able to impose the coming peace upon our enemies, which we must do. They will only sue for peace when they have been beaten so badly that they have had enough. Once they admit to that they will have to accept a peace which takes into account the new and heavy loss of blood suffered by the German people solely as a result of their pigheadedness. The peace must – if needs be at their expense and without regard for their feelings in the future – contain such real guarantees for us that a world combination such as the present one can never again be successfully put together against us. That is to say a genuine, proper, common-or-garden peace of the kind that has so far always been signed after a victorious war. There is no place in such a peace for dreams of human happiness or humanitarian cosmopolitanism, only one's own naked self-interest and the guarantee of one's own security and greatness must count. The vanquished must submit to his fate!
  • Marginal note (10 March 1918), quoted in John C. G. Röhl, Wilhelm II: Into the Abyss of War and Exile 1900-1941 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), pp. 1161-1162

• The victory of the Germans over Russia was the pre-condition for the revolution, which was the pre-condition for Lenin, who was the pre-condition for Brest! The same applies in the west! First victory in the west and collapse of the Entente, then we shall make conditions which they have to accept! And they will be framed purely in accordance with our interests.
  • Marginal note written in early 1918 before the Spring Offensive, quoted in Fritz Fischer, Germany's Aims in the First World War (New York: W. W. Norton & Co, 1967), p. 610

• I will take the Duchy of Courland, I, the victor by the strength of my sword, but not from the hand of the assembly.
  • Georg Alexander von Müller's diary entry (19 March 1918) before German Spring Offensive, quoted in Georg Alexander von Müller, The Kaiser and His Court (London: Macdonald, 1961), p. 343

• The battle is won, the English have been utterly defeated.
  • Georg Alexander von Müller's diary entry (23 March 1918) after the first German successes of the Spring Offensive, quoted in Georg Alexander von Müller, The Kaiser and His Court (London: Macdonald, 1961), p. 344

If a British parliamentarian comes to sue for peace, he must first kneel before the imperial standard, for this is a victory of monarchy over democracy.

• If a British parliamentarian comes to sue for peace, he must first kneel before the imperial standard, for this is a victory of monarchy over democracy.
  • Remarks made after the first German successes of the Spring Offensive (26 March 1918), quoted in Fritz Fischer, Germany's Aims in the First World War (New York: W. W. Norton & Co, 1967), p. 618

• [Peace] is completely impossible between Slavs and Germans...Peace with Russia can only be maintained by fear of us. The Slavs will always hate us and remain our enemies! they are only frightened of a man and they only respect him if he hits them hard! S. [see] Japan! So it will be with us, too! The Entente, if it wants, and if my diplomacy is too stupid, can always do what it likes in Russia - it has driven it into war; but our preponderance in the German area is necessary to keep Russia away from our eastern frontier once and for all; no peace with Russia, however favourable, will give us that!
  • Marginal note to a memorandum written by Hellmuth Lucius von Stoedten (May 1918), quoted in Fritz Fischer, Germany's Aims in the First World War (New York: W. W. Norton & Co, 1967), p. 580

• Either Germanic ideals or Anglo-Saxon ones must prevail. Justice, freedom, honor, and virtue will triumph, or the worship of money. There can be only one victor in this struggle. German ideals are at stake!
  • Speech in the aftermath of the Spring Offensive (18 July 1918), quoted in Fritz Fischer, World Power or Decline (New York: W. W. Norton & Co, 1974), p. 92

• I see that we must strike a balance. We have nearly reached the limit of our powers of resistance. The war must be ended.
  • Remarks made at the meeting of the German warlords at Advanced General Headquarters at Avesnes (11 August 1918), quoted in John Terraine, To Win A War: 1918 The Year of Victory (London: Cassell, 2003), p. 121

• I haven't had a wink of sleep since I left Wilhelmshohe. I'm gradually cracking up. The troops continue to retreat. I have lost all confidence in them.
  • Georg Alexander von Müller's diary entry (9 September 1918), quoted in Georg Alexander von Müller, The Kaiser and His Court (London: Macdonald, 1961), p. 343

• But there have been those who did not want to work, but wanted to rest on their laurels. They were our enemies. We angered them through our prosperous development, our industry and science, our art and popular education, social legislation, etc. That raised our nation to a high place, and then came envy. Envy caused our opponents to fight, and so the war came over us who had no idea of it.
  • Address to Officials and Workers at Krupp's (11 September 1918), quoted in W. W. Coole (ed.), Thus Spake Germany (London: George Routledge & Sons, 1941), p. 114

• The war has ended - quite differently, indeed, from how we expected. Our politicians have failed us miserably.
  • Reaction to Hindenburg and Ludendorff's advice that an armistice must be requested (29 September 1918), quoted in Fritz Fischer, Germany's Aims in the First World War (New York: W. W. Norton & Co, 1967), p. 634

• Well, this is a strange reversal of the situation. The English are at loggerheads with the Americans. The Lansdowne Clique has coalesced with the Labour Party to obtain a swift acceptable peace for Germany. It seems that Lloyd George put pressure on him to this end. On the other hand we know that the Paris Senate has said that it will not come to the conference table to sue for peace but pursue the war with every means in its power. After your report I'll read you a confidential letter I have received from an agent in Holland...The agent...points to a possibility of coming to terms with England, which is obviously perturbed by American numerical superiority, and thinks we should have done better not to make peace overtures to America but to England...An agreement with England, to include a treaty with Japan to fling the Americans out of Europe. A European Monroe doctrine therefore to which I outlined to Hintze at Spa as the policy to be followed in future.
  • Georg Alexander von Müller's diary entry (29 October 1918), quoted in Georg Alexander von Müller, The Kaiser and His Court (London: Macdonald, 1961), pp. 416-417

• The deepest, most disgusting shame ever perpetrated by a people in history, the Germans have done onto themselves. Egged on and misled by the tribe of Juda whom they hated, who were guests among them! That was their thanks! Let no German ever forget this, nor rest until these parasites have been destroyed and exterminated from German soil! This poisonous mushroom on the German oak-tree!
  • Letter to General August von Mackensen (2 December 1919), quoted in John C. G. Röhl, The Kaiser and his Court: Wilhelm II and the Government of Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 210

1920s

Press, Jews & Mosquitoes...are a nuisance that humanity must get rid of in some way or another. I believe the best would be gas?

• The Engl[ish], French and German Jews were all in cahoots with one another. Their sole aim was to establish the Jewish domination of the world. Therefore they first had to enslave the German people completely. The Engl[ish] Prime Minister [David Lloyd George] was completely in the hands of the Jews...When a new era dawned once more in Germany the Jews would meet their fate in no uncertain terms. They had syphoned off some 80 billions out of the country. They would have to repay all of this, the government must start by demanding 15 billions immediately. They would have to forfeit everything, their art collections, their houses, all their property. They would have to be removed once and for all from all their public offices, they must be thrown completely to the ground.
  • Remarks to his doctor, Dr Haehner (8 March 1921), quoted in John C. G. Röhl, Wilhelm II: Into the Abyss of War and Exile 1900-1941 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), pp. 1234-1235

• A Jew cannot be a true patriot. He is something different, like a bad insect. He must be kept apart, out of a place where he can do mischief – even by pogroms, if necessary. The Jews are responsible for Bolshevism in Russia, and Germany too. I was far too indulgent with them during my reign, and I bitterly regret the favors I showed the prominent Jewish bankers.
  • The Chicago Tribune, 2 July 1922

• All the Jews needed to be expelled from the press, none of them could be allowed to work their poison in this way, one day I would see, on his restoration, what a pogrom there would then be, but of a different and more effective kind than all those in Galicia!
  • Remarks to his doctor, Dr Haehner (7 October 1922), quoted in John C. G. Röhl, Wilhelm II: Into the Abyss of War and Exile 1900-1941 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), p. 1235

• England, France, and Russia have conspired...to wage a war of annihilation against us.
  • 30 July, 1924, quoted in World War I: The Definitive Visual History (United States: Smithsonian, 2014), p. 20

• They [Jews] belong to the Coloured Races and not the European White Race...which they intend to enervate, subjugate and destroy!
  • Letter to George Sylvester Viereck (21 April 1926), quoted in John C. G. Röhl, Wilhelm II: Into the Abyss of War and Exile 1900-1941 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), p. 1237

• Our Christian God, the merciful, forgiving God, the personification of eternal love, our father, as Christ has taught us, had absolutely not the slightest thing in common with the vengeful bloodthirsty, angry old Jahweh of the Jews...the old Jew-God Jahweh is...identical with Satan!
  • Letter to Eva Chamberlain-Wagner (14 April 1927), quoted in John C. G. Röhl, Wilhelm II: Into the Abyss of War and Exile 1900-1941 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), p. 1236

• The Hebrew race are my most inveterate enemies at home and abroad; they remain what they are and always were: the forgers of lies and the masterminds governing unrest, revolution, upheaval by spreading infamy with the help of their poisoned, caustic, satyrical spirit. If the world once wakes up it should mete out to them the punishment in store for them, which they deserve.
  • Letter to Poultney Bigelow (14 April 1927), quoted in John C. G. Röhl, The Kaiser and his Court: Wilhelm II and the Government of Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 210

• Press, Jews & Mosquitoes...are a nuisance that humanity must get rid of in some way or another. I believe the best would be gas?
  • Letter to Poultney Bigelow (15 August 1927), quoted in John C. G. Röhl, Wilhelm II: Into the Abyss of War and Exile 1900-1941 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), p. 1238

1930s

For the first time, I am ashamed to be a German.

• For the first time, I am ashamed to be a German.
  • In regard to Adolf Hitler's Kristallnacht (November 1938); as quoted in Our German Cousins: Anglo-German Relations in the 19th and 20th Centuries (1974) by John Mander, p. 219

• There's a man alone, without family, without children, without God ... He [Hitler] builds legions, but he doesn't build a nation. A nation is created by families, a religion, traditions: it is made up out of the hearts of mothers, the wisdom of fathers, the joy and the exuberance of children ... For a few months I was inclined to believe in National Socialism. I thought of it as a necessary fever. And I was gratified to see that there were, associated with it for a time, some of the wisest and most outstanding Germans. But these, one by one, he has got rid of or even killed ... He has left nothing but a bunch of shirted gangsters! This man could bring home victories to our people each year, without bringing them either glory or danger. But of our Germany, which was a nation of poets and musicians, of artists and soldiers, he has made a nation of hysterics and hermits, engulfed in a mob and led by a thousand liars or fanatics."
  • Quoted by Ken Magazine, "The Kaiser on Hitler" (15 December 1938)

1940s

• Under the deeply moving impression of France's capitulation I congratulate you and all the German armed forces on the God-given prodigious victory with the words of Kaiser Wilhelm the Great of the year 1870: "What a turn of events through God's dispensation!" All German hearts are filled with the chorale of Leuthen, which the victors of [the Battle of] Leuthen, the soldiers of the Great King sang [in 1757]: Now thank we all our God!
  • Telegram to Hitler (19 June 1940), quoted in John C. G. Röhl, Wilhelm II: Into the Abyss of War and Exile 1900-1941 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), p. 1261

• I was deeply moved by the incomparable achievements of the German Wehrmacht, leading to such prodigious successes. I followed the development of operations in minute detail with the aid of maps. Under brilliant leadership all sections of the armed forces displayed the greatest courage to achieve deeds that were quite stunning. The ignominy of November 1918 in the forest of Compiègne has been wiped out and the Diktat of Versailles torn up!
  • Letter to Kurt Jagow (5 July 1940), quoted in John C. G. Röhl, Wilhelm II: Into the Abyss of War and Exile 1900-1941 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), p. 1238

• [The English ruling classes are] Freemasons thoroughly infected by Juda. The British people must be liberated from the Antichrist Juda. We must drive Juda out of England just as he has been chased out of the Continent...Juda's plan has been smashed to pieces and they themselves swept out of the European Continent! [Europe is] consolidating and closing itself off from British influences after the elimination of the British and the Jews!
  • Letter to Alwina Grafin von der Goltz (July/August 1940), quoted in John C. G. Röhl, The Kaiser and his Court: Wilhelm II and the Government of Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 211-212

• [The war is] a succession of miracles! The old Prussian spirit of Frd. Rex, of Clausewitz, Blücher, York, Gneisenau etc. has again manifested itself, as in 1870-71...The brilliant leading Generals in this war came from My school, they fought under my command in the [First] World War as lieutenants, captains or young majors. Educated by Schlieffen they put the plans he had worked out under me into practice along the same lines as we did in 1914.
  • Letter to Poultney Bigelow (14 September 1940), quoted in John C. G. Röhl, The Kaiser and his Court: Wilhelm II and the Government of Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 211

• The hand of God is creating a new World & working miracles...We are becoming the U.S. of Europe under German leadership, a united European Continent, nobody ever hoped to see. The Jews [are] beeing thrust out of their nefarious positions in all countries, whom they have driven to hostility for centuries.
  • Letter to Margarethe Landgraffin von Hessen (3 November 1940), quoted in John C. G. Röhl, The Kaiser and his Court: Wilhelm II and the Government of Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 212

• The feats of our brave troops are wonderful, God gave them success. — May He continue to help them to peace with honour, & the victory over Juda & Antichrist in British garb.
  • Letter to Margarethe Landgraffin von Hessen (20 April 1941), quoted in John C. G. Röhl, Wilhelm II: Into the Abyss of War and Exile 1900-1941 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), p. 1262

The Growth of Nationalism (1918)

Quotes from The Growth of Nationalism : Germany and Italy 1815-1939 by Ronald Cameron, Charles Robertson, and Christine Henderson

• The fleet is necessary to show that Germany is as well-born as Britain.

• Let me assure the Sultan and the three hundred million Moslems... That the German Emperor will ever be their friend.
  • On the Sultan of Turkey, while on the railway to Baghdad

• You English are like mad bulls — you see red everywhere! What on earth has come over you, that you would heap on us such suspicion as is unworthy of a great nation... I regard this misapprehension as a personal insult... You make it uncommonly difficult for a man to remain friendly to England.
  • To the Daily Telegraph on his attitude towards Britain

Quotes about Wilhelm II

No one should judge the career of the Emperor William II without asking the question, "What should I have done in his position?" ~ Winston Churchill

With his contempt for everything civil, his contempt for the Slavs, his hatred of the Jews, his escalating fantasies of world power, he represented attitudes and ideas that were taken up, radicalized and put into practice by the National Socialists. In this respect, it is quite justified to call him a harbinger of Hitler. ~ Volker Ullrich

• No one should judge the career of the Emperor William II without asking the question, "What should I have done in his position?" Imagine yourself brought up from childhood to believe that you were appointed by God to be the ruler of a mighty nation, and that the inherent virtue of your blood raised you far above ordinary mortals. Imagine succeeding in the twenties to the garnered prizes, in provinces, in power and in pride, of Bismarck's three successive victorious wars. Imagine feeling the magnificent German race bounding beneath you in ever-swelling numbers, strength, wealth and ambition; and imagine on every side the thunderous tributes of crowd-loyalty and the skilled unceasing flattery of courtierly adulation.
  • Winston Churchill, Great Contemporaries (London: The Reprint Society, 1941), p. 23.

• Every new publication makes the image of this weakling, coward, domineering brute and braggart, this posing dunce who plunged Germany into misfortune even more repugnant. There is not a single trait in him that could arouse sympathy or pity; he is entirely contemptible.
  • Harry Graf Kessler's diary (11 November 1928), quoted in Christopher Clark, Kaiser Wilhelm II - Life in Power (London: Penguin, 2009), p. 300.

• [G]ifted, 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.
  • Thomas Nipperdey, Deutsche Geschichte 1866–1918 (1992), translated by Richard J. Evans

• With his contempt for everything civil, his contempt for the Slavs, his hatred of the Jews, his escalating fantasies of world power, he represented attitudes and ideas that were taken up, radicalized and put into practice by the National Socialists. In this respect, it is quite justified to call him a harbinger of Hitler.
  • Volker Ullrich: Er ist durch und durch falsch. Review of the third and final volume of John C. G. Röhl's Biography of the Emperor. In: Die Zeit, Hamburg, No. 41, 1 October 2008.

External links

• The German emperor's speeches : being a selection from the speeches, edicts, letters, and telegrams of the Emperor William II (1904)
• The German Emperor as shown in his public utterances (1915)
• My Memoirs: 1878-1918 (1922)