His office chair was a saddle. Astride it he would sit in full Prussian uniform, topped by spiked helmet, and arrange the affairs of Germany.
The image of Kaiser Wilhelm II at work is mirth-making; it is also symbolic. The Emperor was literally in the saddle of Germany, over which he ruled as monarch. He was head of the navy, and above all he was head of the mighty army.
“We belong to each other; I am the army. We were born for each other, and will cleave indissolubly to each other,” he declared grandiloquently. Like Hitler, the Kaiser was given to bombast. Like Hitler, he was more than half mad.
Where to begin with the madnesses of King William? A withered left arm, a congenital defect, caused his mother to cast him aside because he was imperfect; as a result, he felt unloved to a psychotic degree. He suffered another sort of pain, from a constantly discharging inner ear.
We belong to each other; I am the army
A textbook could be filled with Wilhelm’s personality disorders, though his physicians hardly helped. The prescribed treatment for his disfigured arm was to stick it inside a slain animal, enough to make anyone deranged.
The Kaiser’s notion of reality boggled other people’s minds; he once declared that the English and French were “Black races”. Probably the Kaiser was homosexual, which, by the mores of the day, was a no-no; repressing his sexuality merely served to put a lid on the mental turmoils. No wonder he raged (another similarity with Hitler, his spiritual twin).
The Kaiser’s definite attraction to handsome men had dire repercussions for German history; as Professor John Rohl, the Kaiser’s biographer, points out, the monarch often promoted men because of his admiration for their “good looks”. Some of the generals who led Germany into battle in 1914 were ornaments.
Life at court was, as you would imagine, hardly enjoyable. Since the Kaiser personally appointed all the great posts, (including the Reich Chancellor, the head of government) nobody dared to contradict him for fear of losing their position. Men sycophantically abased themselves for His Majesty’s amusement. The Chief of the Military Cabinet once danced in a tutu.
The court was vast, overblown, like something out of the era of the Borgias, although the real decisions were taken by Wilhelm and his military clique.
When, in 1912, Germany almost decided on war in Europe there were just five men in the room. The Kaiser’s mind wandered to dreams of German greatness. His courtiers egged him on. Only through war, the crazed Kaiser and his cabal believed, could Germany fulfil her spiritual destiny, her role as saviour of the West from Slavic barbarism and English liberalism.
From the court in Berlin, the bacilli of militarism spread to all parts of Germany, and to all of German life. The agency of contagion was the army, via mass peacetime conscription. Germany became rule-bound, a place of petty regulations, pettier officials, the latter usually got-up in brass-buttoned uniform.
As the Belgian ambassador of the day recalled, while one could lie in the Bois de Boulogne in Paris or sprawl in a park in London, the sign on the grass in Berlin’s Tiergarten ominously stated “Verboten”. Militarism ran amok.
By the army’s honour code, if an army officer was “slighted” he was obliged to take retribution. So, in 1896 when a drunk plumber accidentally brushed a Wilhelmine officer in Baden the young lieutenant legitimately sworded the plumber to death, and walked away.
There were other such cases. The Prussian officer class comprised little warrior sun-gods before whom mortals, the ordinary citizens of Germany, were expected to bow and scrape.
The truly terrible proof of Germany’s vassalage to militarism came in autumn 1913 when Lieutenant von Forstner, a young Prussian officer stationed in Alsace-Lorraine (the provinces seized from France in 1871) insulted the locals by calling them “Wackes” (good for nothings). They retaliated by jeering him. The response of the German army to the joshing? They fixed bayonets and occupied the town of Zabern.
To add injury to his insults, the Prussian prig von Forstner slashed open the head of a Zabern shoe-maker, Karl Blank. Zabern was under military rule. What became known as the “Zabern Affair” posed the crucial question: Who ruled Germany? The Kaiser and his military, or the people and their parliament?
Inside the Reichstag deputies from Alsace-Lorraine denounced “Militarism, military dictatorship, high treason!” Usually a timid dachshund, the Reichstag got up on its legs and snarled; the government was censured.
For one dizzy, incredible moment it appeared that the Reichstag would take the dramatic step of ousting Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg, the Chancellor. Under the reactionary constitution, only the Kaiser could hire and fire the chancellor but if the Reichstag held up the money for the Kaiser’s massive 1913 expansion of the army, he might be forced to sack Bethmann. De facto parliamentary democracy could come to Germany.
The Reichstag had used up its courage though. Having barked, it dared not bite. Tail back between its legs, the Reichstag licked the Kaiser’s hand and progressed the 1913 army budget.
As an exultant Bethmann explained, Germany was not England where, Heaven forfend, political parties constrained monarchs. If anyone failed to understand the significance of Zabern there came a smack-between-the-eyes finale.
Although Lieutenant von Forstner was found guilty of harming the shoemaker Karl Blank a military appeals court overturned Forstner’s conviction. Worse, the army officers charged with usurping civilian authority in Zabern were acquitted.
Berlin newspapers blared out the news in special editions. “MILITARY MEN OPENLY EXULT, LIBERALS DENOUNCE THE OVERTHROW OF CIVIL LAW” read one, admirably pithy headline. democracy in Germany were chimeras. The real power in Deutschland was the army and its master, and they could do what they wanted.
Germany was not a state with an army, it was an army with a state. saddle of his armed beast, destination Armageddon. When war came in August 1914, people across regime they saw as tyrannical, militaristic, a dictatorship in all but name. They were not wrong.