Behind the Bastards - Part Two: Kaiser Wilhelm: The Saddest Warlord In History

Episode Date: November 21, 2019

In Part Two, Robert is joined again by Jamie Loftus to continue discussing Kaiser Wilhelm. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Alphabet Boys is a new podcast series that goes inside undercover investigations. In the first season, we're diving into an FBI investigation of the 2020 protests. It involves a cigar-smoking mystery man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse look like a lot of guns. But are federal agents catching bad guys or creating them? He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science?

And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price? Two death sentences in a life without parole. My youngest? I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Now, before we get into the episode, because I think it's important that you know about the bastardry being practiced by the host of the show, I need to tell everyone that Jamie Loftus is dipping popcorn into salad dressing like a goddamn monster. I got dragged the last time I was on this show because I mentioned that I dipped bagels in ketchup. I said that was fine. I'm okay with the popcorn dipping into dressing.

I am not okay with the popcorn dipping dressing. I fully support you because I know you have taste buds that need more. I have poor people taste buds. I hope very desperately, Jamie, that this makes you less judgmental of the Kaiser because I firmly believe that the millions he got killed in the trenches of Europe and you dipping your popcorn into salad dressing are equivalent crimes. Okay, sir. This is your battle of the psalm. This is not ideal. I would prefer to dip popcorn in soy sauce. There's no soy sauce here.

I go for salad dressing. Dipping popcorn in soy sauce is your verdun. Here's the thing. I like to make dry food wet. I can't explain why I'm sure there's a very fucked up motivation behind it, but when the food is dry, I'm like, let's moisten this up. Let's see what happens. Horrible. It's good.

Horrible. I've never been so proud to be your friend, Jamie. Thank you so much. I feel bad because I'm sure the salad dressing is stinky, but nevertheless, she persisted. There you go. Live your truth, baby. Does this make you uncomfortable? I was just going to say, speaking of living your truth, let's talk about what happens when a profoundly damaged young man becomes the king of Germany and then gets a chance to live his truth. I've got his birth chart up. Let's figure this out. Let's do it.

What does it say about people of his astrological sign leading the imperial German military? Well, here's the thing. I did his natal chart, but that's a little too complicated. What everyone needs to know is he's an Aquarius and Aquarian leaders. They're positive traits. They're open-minded. They're creative. He was an artist.

They're free-spirited. Negative traits, really bad stuff across the board for leaders, impulsive, unpredictable, inconsistent, extreme, and stubborn. It was foretold. I wouldn't call him open-minded in any way, but a lot of that tracks. I feel like I'll get dragged more for invoking astrology than I will for dipping popcorn and salad dressing. They're both horrible crimes against humanity. You know what? To each their own. I'm living a very vile life over here.

Now, the Reich that Kaiser Wilhelm inherited had been built and largely managed by Otto von Bismarck. And above all else, Bismarck wanted peace. The system of alliances he crafted for Germany were essentially, again, like I said, that era's version of mutually assured destruction. Starting a war with Germany would mean fighting with Russia too and Russia controlled a sixth of the planet's surface. This was a pretty good system while it lasted. Bismarck was a monster, but not a dumb man. Knew what he was doing. But Wilhelm came to power with distinct and probably agonizing memories of his father's martial prowess and military victories.

He had been insecure his entire life because of his arm and the complete lack of praise he received from Henspeter. Likewise, his wife and Bismarck had succeeded in inculcating a deep antipathy of his parents and of England in him. Kaiser Wilhelm II, a concise life, describes the mind-side that all of this resulted in once the young man came to power and was given the world's most powerful land army. Quote, Prince Wilhelm's mindset on the threshold of succeeding to the throne was characterized by bellicose ambition and contempt for parliaments and political parties, indeed for civilians in general. Britain must be destroyed, was his watchword, and he was already developing a passion for the idea of a strong German navy.

But Paris too had to be destroyed, he railed. Wilhelm was, naturally, very much in favor of war and hopes it will break out soon, General Waldersee noted with Glee on 25th January 1887. Under the latter's influence, the prince also advocated war with Russia. That young man once war with Russia and would like to draw his sword straight away if he could, Chancellor Bismarck recorded with dismay in 1888. So, and to be clear, he doesn't come to power until he is nearly 30 years old. Yeah. So, at this point, we're like, this is no longer a juvenile young boy who wants to have sex with his mother's hand. This is a grown-ass petty man who wants to have sex with his mother's hand.

Who wants to have sex with his mother's hand, of course. Now, Bismarck was also deeply concerned about the young emperor's almost violent hatred of Jewish people. This was the result of the influence of one Adolf von Stoker, the court chaplain. Now, Stoker was a member of the Christian socialist movement, an anti-Semitic far-right party that also hated Catholics. Wilhelm's parents and grandmother had all been disgusted by discrimination and had pushed to end it in their country. But Wilhelm wanted to blaze a new, much more racist path, and he was supported in this by the Prussian officer corps, who were also thoroughly bigoted. The Kaiser and his new allies wanted to keep the German race pure, stop Jewish immigration, and remove Jews from positions in schools and public office. Before his ascension, Bismarck had rebuked the prince for his support of anti-Semitism.

This sparked a passive-aggressive battle between the two men, from van der Kist's biography of Wilhelm. When Bismarck had articles published in the official press taking the religious conservatives to task for using Wilhelm, the latter wrote petulantly to Hinzpeter that he did not deserve such treatment, as for the chancellor's sake he had, for years, locked myself out of my parents' house. And about the same time, Wilhelm drafted a proclamation to the German princes, which was to be published in the event of his ascession. Bismarck told him to burn it. Soaking, Wilhelm replied that when he came to the throne, he would have all Jewish influence over the press stopped. Told that this would be a violation of the Constitution, Wilhelm said grandly that they would have to get rid of the Constitution as well. Sounds like someone we know. Yeah!

Yeah. If you look up Kaiser Wilhelm, Donald Trump, there's like a dozen different articles that different people have written about similarities between the two men. I think, for one thing, I think that's, I don't entirely agree with that for a number of reasons. One of them is that Wilhelm is an infinitely more sympathetic figure than Donald Trump. Right. But there are some similarities and that would definitely be one of them. Oh wow, there's a whole goddamn New Yorker article about that. Yeah, there's a ton of articles about the similarities between the two men. Well, I agree with this.

Yeah. Wilhelm was fond of making these sorts of grand threats and pronouncements like the one he made against Russia and England. Fortunately, they rarely resulted in anything. He was easy to talk down and he was liable to balk at the last minute from acting on any of his rhetoric. But the rhetoric itself had a damaging effect on international relations. Wilhelm deeply worried the rest of Europe when he made this pronouncement to the people of Germany after taking the crown. We were born to each other, I and the army. We were born for each other and will cleave indissolubly to each other, whether it be the will of God to send us to calm or storm.

You will soon swear fealty and submission to me and I promise ever to bear in mind from the world above the eyes of my forefathers look down on me. And that I shall one day have to stand accountable for them for the glory and honor of the army. Also, why can't you have sex with your mother's hand? That should be legal. TTYL Wilhelm. Now, the Kaiser had no real military experience and no aptitude whatsoever for warfare. But he felt that he had to portray himself as a mighty warlord in part because his father and grandfather had been mighty warlords. That was kind of Prussia's whole deal.

So to compensate for being just a dude with a bad arm, Wilhelm collected an absurd amount of military uniforms. His cousin, the Queen of Romania, wrote that he changed his uniform several times a day as a smart woman changes her gown. So embarrassing. I know. It's about to get embarrassing her because Vanderkis book goes into detail about just how extensive Wilhelm's wardrobe really was. In addition to his much cherished foreign uniforms, he had a full one for every Prussian regiment over 300 alone to say nothing of those of Bavaria, Saxony and Wurttemberg as well as naval and marine uniforms. All had their own individual badges, sashes, caps, helmets, epilepsy, shoulder points, belts, swords, lances and firearms. The resulting wardrobe and armory had to be housed in a hall containing huge wardrobes.

With a Camardina on duty from morning to night to select the shortest possible notice any outfit he might require. According to Anne Topham, his daughter's governess, he cut a fine figure in military dress, but in civilian clothes the effect was completely lacking. Many German gentlemen lost much appearance when out of uniform, but none to the extent that their emperor did. He no longer had any shred of dignity and curiously enough that Charm of Manor was also bereft of its influence and merged into what was an offensive, weary-some buffoonery. He was wise, she added, not to appear before his subjects except in uniform. Oh God, I like how he's just like, how could I possibly not be a war hero? Look at all my shirts! Yeah.

That's not how that works. Pause, pizza's here. During the summer of 2020, some Americans suspected that the FBI had secretly infiltrated the racial justice demonstrations. And you know what? They were right. I'm Trevor Aronson, and I'm hosting a new podcast series, Alphabet Boys. As the FBI sometimes, you gotta grab the little guy to go after the big guy. Each season will take you inside an undercover investigation. In the first season of Alphabet Boys, we're revealing how the FBI spied on protesters in Denver.

At the center of this story is a raspy-voiced, cigar-smoking man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse was like a lot of guns. He's a shark. And on the gun badass way. He's a nasty shark. He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Lance Bass, and you may know me from a little band called NSYNC.

What you may not know is that when I was 23, I traveled to Moscow to train to become the youngest person to go to space. And when I was there, as you can imagine, I heard some pretty wild stories. But there was this one that really stuck with me about a Soviet astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. It's 1991, and that man, Sergei Krekalev, is floating in orbit when he gets a message that down on Earth, his beloved country, the Soviet Union, is falling apart. And now he's left defending the Union's last outpost. This is the crazy story of the 313 days he spent in space, 313 days that changed the world. Listen to The Last Soviet on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science?

The problem with forensic science in the criminal legal system today is that it's an awful lot of forensic and not an awful lot of science. And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price. Two death sentences and a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. I'm Molly Herman. Join me as we put forensic science on trial to discover what happens when a match isn't a match. And when there's no science in CSI. How many people have to be wrongly convicted before they realize that this stuff's all bogus? It's all made up. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

So we're back. They received pizza in the room and Jamie and I are talking about all the articles comparing Kaiser Wilhelm to Trump. And one of the things I noted is that like nobody ever really defends Kaiser Wilhelm. One of my weird hobbies is I like to go on YouTube and I like to find collections of Imperial Prussian and Imperial British and Imperial Russian like court music, like military marches and stuff like that. I say this with love. That's very weird. Yeah. I like to read the comments because the comments are filled with monarchists, with people who like desperately want to return to monarchy in Europe, and they're all the saddest, dumbest people in the entire world. And it's, I like to read their arguments between each other, but nobody ever defends the Kaiser. I mean, commenters will defend almost anything. I like to go to the YouTube so it's like, okay, what am I saying? You're looking for a specific song and so you search it on YouTube and then you accidentally scroll down to the comments and it's like something that's very depressing out of nowhere. I forget what song I was looking up recently, but the top comment was like, my husband died to this song and it's nice that it's on YouTube.com and it was like a dance song. But anyways, I love commenters.

There's a story there. Where's the Wilhelm hive? Where's the Wilhive? Yeah, they are not buzzing because he was really bad at his job. And even the dumbest people in the world, monarchists, can recognize that. Now, as his reign began, the Kaiser fell under the influence of a number of bad apples. There was the anti-Semite Stoker who we already talked about. There was also Count Alfred von Waldersee, the deputy chief of the German general staff. Now, he was a rabidly pro-war nut fuck who supported an immediate attack against both France and Russia. Like this was his advice. We just invade them both simultaneously right now. Now, when Bismarck heard about the growing friendship between the Kaiser and Waldersee, he is said to have cried, Alas, my poor grandchildren. So Bismarck, being a smart guy, pretty instantly realized I was like, oh shit, this dude is going to plunge the whole continent into a stupid, stupid war.

And boy, was he right. He was not wrong. Like he said, Bismarck is a visionary. He's a bad man, but he's a visionary and he clearly saw what was going to happen. I hate when the bad people are smart as well. And they're more effectively bad. Yeah. I mean, in Bismarck's defense, he was just kind of a sociopath, but his goals weren't dominate Europe and put all the Jews in camp. His goals were ensure Germany a place of prominence among nations and stop a massive European war. And he did gross and manipulative things to ensure that, but he wasn't trying to make the world worse. He wasn't doing chaos for chaos as sick. Yeah. Yeah. He wasn't like a, yeah. Yeah. His goals were like, he just wants things to not break into a war.

And he wants Germany to be popular. Okay. Well, he failed. Yeah. He definitely didn't succeed in the long run. Now, Count Julenberg, the Kaiser's best friend and probable crush also led to the Kaiser's break with Bismarck. The Kaiser demanded that a Bismarck promote the count to the position of Prussian envoy in Munich, which was a very important job. Now, Bismarck balked at giving this job to an inexperienced friend of the Kings. The conflict between the two men very much embodied a greater conflict within German governance. A large chunk of the country, including Bismarck, wanted Germany to be a proper nation state with rules and laws and checks and balances.

They weren't Democrats. And I don't mean that in like the American political sense. I mean, like pro-democracy sense. At least not all of them, but they didn't want an absolute monarchy where the Kaiser's will determined everything. The Kaiser, on the other hand, didn't really see why other people should have a say in how he ran Germany. Now, Bismarck warned the Kaiser that filling government posts with his buddies would lead to a situation wherein he couldn't actually trust any of his ministers to give him good information. Because they'd all be toadies at worst or his friends at best. And in any case, they wouldn't be trustworthy to actually speak the truth to him when the truth needed speaking. The Kaiser ignored Bismarck. And over the next few years, the positions of the ministers and the Reich Chancellor, Bismarck's job, were demoted to what Roel calls royal lackeys. Oh boy, yeah.

Yeah, yeah. Throughout 1888 and 1889, Wilhelm and Bismarck's relationship degraded. Things came to a head in 1889 when a bunch of miners in the Ruhr district went on strike for better working conditions. Now, here, Hinspeter had what you would actually say is a positive influence. As odd as it sounds, Kaiser Wilhelm instantly sided with the striking workers against their employers. This caused another rift between him and Bismarck because Bismarck's, again, a piece of shit. It's a rare good move. Yeah, the Chancellor didn't give a fuck about the workers and obviously cared mostly about steel production and his friends who ran the companies. But, you know, the Kaiser stood for the working people. And on May 12th, he charged into a meeting of the Prussian Ministry of State and declared that Bismarck was wrong for not acceding to their demands. He declared the workers were his subjects whom he had to look after.

All right, go on. Yeah, this is good. Now, Wilhelm got his way on the Ruhr strike, further frustrating the Reich Chancellor. In the summer of 1889, he took his yacht out for his first cruise across Scandinavian waters. This became a yearly tradition, one he kept up for decades. On his first outing, he brought Valdersee and Julenberg with him. The latter was, at least, a sane person who didn't support wars of aggression with the rest of the world. But Valdersee was a racist nut fuck.

And during their vacation, he convinced the Kaiser that Bismarck was Jew-ridden and had been conned into giving control of the Reich's monetary policy to a bunch of Jews. Wait, and this is his crush? No, no, no. His crush is a pretty reasonable guy. This is that racist general who wants him to invade the entire world. God, the names are so confusing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, sorry, there's a lot. Valdersee is the racist general. Julenberg is his crush. Now, so Valdersee convinces the Kaiser that Bismarck had been conned into giving control of the Reich's monetary policy to a bunch of Jews. This was a lie, but reality had very little influence on the Kaiser.

Now, this month-long annual cruise around the coast of Norway became one of the Kaiser's favorite things. And I have to read you, Vanderkis' description of it, because it sounds like the worst time you can have on a boat. The annual cruise, or Nordlinrice, with its exclusively male company, allowed him, the Kaiser, to indulge in practical jokes and boyish tomfoolery, like applying a foot to the backside of elderly aides-de-camp engaged in physical exercises. Its purpose was originally to give him a month-long break from court life, but in due course his doctor decided it was counterproductive as he was physically and mentally upset by the long voyage. Diet and exhaustion of various kinds, and it did him more harm than good. His entourage soon tired of these cruises, bored if not repelled by the juvenile atmosphere and behavior of the Kaiser and some of his officers,

who loathe every childish prank and moment themselves, but were too sycophantic to say so. God, it sounds like... It reminds me of that documentary where Jim Carrey goes method, where you're like, oh, he's just a tyrant. He's been waiting his whole life to get people trapped in this enclosed setting to be horrible. Cool. Well, I'm glad they did pranks on the set of his yacht. You want to go on a month-long prank cruise with the king boy? Yeah, with the king boy who has...

Oh, God. Imagine just having people on a cruise with him and all of his demons. That's wild. They're into you, he never didn't have an erection, and he never knew what it was for. That means he's just walking around with a full erection all the time, like, do you guys know what this is? Just kicking people in the butt. I think he's just... Hard as a rock, kicking old people around.

Okay, well, he's officially... Well, I mean, he's just a bad man. He's a creatively bad man in this case. Really punishing everyone around him in very specific ways. Yeah. Now, in January of 1890, Wilhelm told his crown council that he would celebrate his 31st birthday with two new proclamations, one to protect working people and limit their labor hours, and another to call an international summit in Berlin to improve labor conditions across the continent.

So that's pretty cool, right? Yeah. All right. Labor crusader. I'm very surprised that he was, like, gunning for labor like this. Well, you know, one of the good things about Hince Peter is he had taken him around to all these factories and mines and stuff when he was a kid. So the Kaiser had seen, like, how tough life was for working people, and he wasn't... He's not like a sociopath or anything.

He had empathy for these people. So he did care about people, like, he's not a monster. Okay. He does monstrous things, but he's not a monster. Now, Bismarck thought that the Kaiser's love of the working people was super dumb. The two fought over this, and another fight broke out in March of 1890 when Bismarck entered into negotiations with the leader of the center party. He's like, Doc, why do you care about the pores? That's such a bad fucking look.

They're the pores, man. Come on. The pores. What the fuck? Where are you going to get out of that? So Bismarck enters into negotiations with the leader of the center party, a guy named Windhorst, and their goal is to get rid of bigoted anti-Catholic legislation in Germany. So again, Bismarck is trying to fight against discrimination here.

So none of these sides are simple here. Bismarck hates working people, but also hates discrimination. The Kaiser fights for the working man, but gets furious about removing this anti-Catholic legislation because he's a bigot. So they're just like a stalemate. Yeah. Yeah. Now, he's particularly pissed that this meeting between Bismarck and the leader of the center party had been organized by Bismarck's banker, who was a Jewish man.

Now, to the Kaiser, this was confirmation that the Jews were secretly running his empire via Bismarck. God damn it. Okay. Next, according to Kaiser Wilhelm II, a concise life, early in the morning of 15 March 1890, there took place one of the most highly charged scenes ever played out in Berlin's center of government, the Wilhelmstrasse. Kaiser Wilhelm II summoned the 75-year-old Reich chancellor from his bed and upgraded him for receiving Windhorst. He went on to complain that Bismarck had dug out a dusty old cabinet order of 1852 that prevented the monarch from receiving ministers

except in the presence of the minister president. He preemptorily demanded that the order be rescinded, which Bismarck refused to do. Wilhelm later recounted that Bismarck had become so violent towards him that he was afraid the chancellor would throw the ink stand at my head. After this dramatic quarrel, Waldersee urged the Kaiser, in the presence of the chief of the military cabinet, to sack Bismarck forthwith. The present state of affairs was quite untenable, he argued. And moreover, the chancellor was too closely allied with the Jews. Bismarck first sent Hunk, his like military leader, and then the chief of the civil cabinet, Hermann von Lucanus, to the chancellor, ordering him to hand in his resignation, which Bismarck finally did on 18 March 1890.

If Waldersee is one can safely assume, expected to take Bismarck's place, he was in for a bitter disappointment. That same evening, Wilhelm II announced to the commanding generals as symboled in the Berlinish loss that, in order to remain master of the situation, he had to issue an order to the chancellor, insisting that he submit. So the Kaiser accepted Bismarck's letter of his retirement and made a guy named Caprivi, who was a licks beetle, the new chancellor. So he forces out the guy who, like the political cartoons in Europe at this time, are like show the Kaiser on a boat kicking Bismarck the pilot of the boat off of the ship. And that's generally how this is seen. Germany has like jettisoned its pilot in favor of the dumbest monarch in Europe. Man, what a choice. What a choice.

It's not great. It's not great. I mean, there's no winning scenario, but they did seem to choose the losing of the two. They definitely chose the losing scenario. But you know what's not the losing scenario, Jamie? Tell me. The products and services that support this show. Oh, it's true. I love each and every one, even especially the dick pills. The dick pills, especially. And you know, one of the behind the bastards guarantees is that no more than 7% of our sponsors contributed to the outbreak of hostilities in World War One.

Wow. Okay. So that's a guarantee. No other podcast will give you. That's a little wiggle room. That's nice. That's nice. Up to 7%. Okay. I'll crunch those numbers and then cancel you later. All right. Here's some ads. Prydokes.

During the summer of 2020, some Americans suspected that the FBI had secretly infiltrated the racial justice demonstrations. And you know what? They were right. I'm Trevor Aronson, and I'm hosting a new podcast series, Alphabet Boys. Because the FBI sometimes, you got to grab the little guy to go after the big guy. Each season will take you inside an undercover investigation. In the first season of Alphabet Boys, we're revealing how the FBI spied on protesters in Denver. At the center of this story is a raspy-voiced, cigar-smoking man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse were like a lot of guns.

He's a shark, and not in the good and bad ass way. He's a nasty shark. He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Lance Bass, and you may know me from a little band called NSYNC. What you may not know is that when I was 23, I traveled to Moscow to train to become the youngest person to go to space. And when I was there, as you can imagine, I heard some pretty wild stories. But there was this one that really stuck with me about a Soviet astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. It's 1991, and that man, Sergei Krekalev, is floating in orbit when he gets a message that down on Earth, his beloved country, the Soviet Union, is falling apart.

And now he's left defending the Union's last outpost. This is the crazy story of the 313 days he spent in space, 313 days that changed the world. Listen to The Last Soviet on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science? The problem with forensic science in the criminal legal system today is that it's an awful lot of forensic and not an awful lot of science. And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price. Two death sentences and a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday.

I'm Molly Herman. Join me as we put forensic science on trial to discover what happens when a match isn't a match and when there's no science in CSI. How many people have to be wrongly convicted before they realize that this stuff's all bogus? It's all made up. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Now, with Bismarck out of Kaiser Wilhelm was the unquestioned chief power in Germany. And this was not a good thing. Wilhelm was bad at every aspect of the job, particularly diplomacy. And he had been for years is the most frustrating. And he had been for years.

This was not a shock to anyone. Yeah, now he was convinced that his relation to the other crown heads of Europe and his personal charisma would allow him to negotiate well with other nations. The New Yorker summarizes his talent for this part of the job, thusly. Quote, he called the diminutive King Victor Emanuel III of Italy the dwarf in front of the King's own entourage. He called Prince later Tsar Ferdinand of Bulgaria Ferdinando Nassau on account of his beaky nose and spread rumors that he was a hermaphrodite. Since Wilhelm was notably indiscreet, people always, yeah, since Wilhelm was notably indiscreet, people always knew what he was saying behind their backs. Ferdinand had his revenge. After a visit to Germany in 1909, during which the Kaiser slapped him on the bottom in public and then refused to apologize,

Ferdinand awarded a valuable arms contract that had been promised to the Germans to a French company instead. One of the many things that Wilhelm was convinced he was brilliant at, despite all evidence to the contrary, was personal diplomacy. Fixing foreign policy through one-on-one meetings with other European monarchs and statesmen. This is one of the reasons people compare him to Trump a lot. In 1890, he let lapse a long-standing defensive agreement with Russia, the German Empire's vast and sometimes threatening eastern neighbor. He judged wrongly that Russia was so desperate for German goodwill that he could keep it dangling. Instead, Russia immediately made an alliance with Germany's western neighbor and enemy, France. I don't like a dingle negotiation. That's nasty.

It's bad. Wipe it. Wilhelm decided he would charm and manipulate Tsar Nicholas II, a ninny and a whimperer, according to Wilhelm, fit only to grow turnips into abandoning the alliance. In 1897, Nicholas told Wilhelm to get lost. The German-Russian alliance withered. So he comes to power and within a couple of years, scraps the alliance with Russia and Russia immediately allies with France, which means that Germany is now surrounded on both sides by enemies. So he went from Germany's entire flank to the east being totally protected by a military ally to the nation being surrounded.

He's so bad at this. It's crazy how I did the speed at which he's bad at it, too. It's not even a slow burn. I do something shitty everywhere. He's just expeditiously ruining everything. No, he is a more stupid, faster guy. Very much so. The worst kind of person.

Okay. Now, one good thing you can say for the Kaiser is that he was better than most modern governance at promoting gay people to positions of high authority. The downside of this is that these guys were all his friends and sycophants, and he almost certainly had no idea they were gay. His best friend Julenberg, of course, occupied high positions in the Reich, but there were too many rumors about him for him to be made chancellor. There were a number of trials and news stories that would come out. So the Kaiser promoted a dude named Bülow for the job. A letter Bülow wrote in July 1896 shows that things within the German government had degraded exactly the way Bismarck predicted they would. Quote, I would be a different kind of chancellor for my predecessors. Bismarck was a power in his own right, a Pippin, a Richelieu, Kaprivi and Hohenloh regarded or regard themselves as the representatives of the government and to a certain extent of the parliament in relation to his majesty.

I'm picturing this as like an Instagram caption. Yeah. Bülow would have been tweeting sycophantically about his boss in this modern era, but he's like he comes to power and immediately promises I'm going to do everything the Kaiser says and not represent the rest of the government in any way. Like that's his promise. Wow. And he thinks that's a good thing. Now, in an 1898 letter to his mother, Kaiser Wilhelm exalted in his ability to gradually wear down the government of Germany into acting as just an extension of his ego. Forever and ever, he exalted in the letter to his mother in 1898.

No. There is only one real emperor in the world, and that is the German, regardless of his person and qualities, but by right of a thousand years tradition and his chancellor has to obey. Oh, God, leave your, if nothing else, leave your poor mother alone. Now, Eulenberg, who'd put Bülow up for the job because Eulenberg, there were too many rumors about him being gay, wrote the new chancellor this advice for working under Kaiser Wilhelm. And again, I have to remind you, this man loves Wilhelm. Right. Well, I mean, yeah. Wilhelm II takes everything personally. Only personal arguments make any impression on him. He likes to give advice to others, but is unwilling to take it himself. He cannot stand boredom, ponderous, stiff, excessively thorough people get on his nerves and cannot get anywhere with him. Wilhelm II wants to shine and decide everything himself. What he wants to do himself, unfortunately, often goes wrong. He loves glory. He is ambitious and jealous. To get him to accept an idea, one has to pretend that the idea came from him. Never forget that his majesty needs praise from time to time.

He is the sort of person who becomes sullen unless he is given recognition from time to time by someone of importance. You will always accomplish whatever you wish, so long as you do not admit to express your appreciation when his majesty deserves it. He is grateful for it like a good, clever child. If one remains silent when he deserves recognition, he eventually seems malevolent in it. We too will always carefully observe the boundaries of flattery. I mean, who among us has not worked for someone exactly like this? Absolutely, yeah. I was working for someone like this two weeks ago. Yeah, Hollywood is 30% people like this. 30% Wilhelm, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Oh, God, I mean, but the fact that that's like one of his closest friends, he's like, yeah, he's an absolute nightmare. He's the worst person I know, but also he's my closest friend. And I love him, yeah. And the health insurance is great, so put up with it. Now, Wilhelm had a bad reputation for basically siding with whatever the last person he talked to had said. Since a number of his generals were warmongering racists, this was problematic. In 1896, the Kaiser impulsively sent a congratulatory telegram to Paul Kruger of the Transvaal Republic, South Africa, for his victory over a British raiding party. This is like in the Boer War period. Now, the Boers are a Germanic people and there was great sympathy for them within the Reich, but England was the world's preeminent naval power. And by sending this message, the Kaiser provoked rage from a country he really needed to keep on his side since he'd already alienated Russia.

So that's not a great move, like reaching out to the enemy of the greatest naval power in the world and being like, good job killing some of their guys. Like, it doesn't play well in England. Again, petty, petty, dumb, petty, dumb. Now, there were numerous other insults and slides like that. Kaiser for like 26 years before the war, and this shit happened constantly. I'm just gonna, you know, I'm giving you a couple of examples so you know the sorts of shit he was up to. Bit by bit, Wilhelm alienated basically all of Germany's allies. His advisors and ministers, men like Bülow and Eulenberg, proved unable to do anything but praise the Kaiser and hope to calm him down and reduce his impulsive swings.

They were often unsuccessful. In 1900, the Boxer Rebellion in China led to the capture of a number of Europeans, including Germans in the city of Peking. Most of Europe's great powers dispatched soldiers to deal with the situation. The Kaiser was late in doing so, and his men arrived too late to participate in the fight. But before they left, the Kaiser insisted on addressing them personally with a speech that made him the laughing stock of Europe. It ended like this. 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. Now, you've heard of like how the Huns, like Germany was referred to as the Huns in like World War One propaganda by the British and the Americans and stuff. This speech is why, the Huns speech is what people call it. So they were just getting, they were just like roasting Wilhelm indirectly. Exactly.

They're pretty directly actually. Yeah, I guess that's not even a sub tweet. Because like this is seen as really silly. For one thing, like beating China in this period was not something to brag about. Like the European powers had machine guns and like modern battleships and military tactics and the Chinese military just did not. And so it wasn't really a fight. Also the Germans arrived too late to participate in the fight. So this was both seen as like a man child pretending to be a warrior, but it was also seen as deeply worrying by the crown heads of Europe, the other leaders of the European powers, because the Kaiser had Europe's most powerful army.

And it's not comforting to hear him say this. It's like somebody with a huge gun collection talking about how he could carry out a school shooting if he wanted to. Oh, that's always very comforting. Oh, fuck. Yeah, this might, this is a problem. Maybe I should call the police. But of course there's no police to call on the Kaiser. No, don't you love when someone's above the law and therefore thousands of people have to die?

Millions, but yeah. Oh, I'm so sorry. Millions, nations worth. Now, speaking of the army, they were the only ones who really gained in power during Wilhelm's reign. He had a habit of promoting generals to ministerial positions. He liked being surrounded and consulted by them. His appointees included General Alfred von Schlieffen, a military tactician who developed an elaborate plan for how Germany could beat both Russia and France in a European war. Wasn't it like a five year plan?

It was, or what was the duration of the war? No, it was very quick. It was very, it was supposed to happen in a matter of months. So basically the idea was that you've got, you're surrounded now because Wilhelm fucked up and made Russia an enemy. So Germany has to fight both Russia and France at the same time. So Schlieffen's idea was that the vast majority of the Germans army, like two or three million men, would invade and conquer Paris very quickly. And then, you know, a small chunk of the German army would hold off the Russian army in the east until the rest of the army could be freed up and sent by rail to go fight the Russians. The only way for them to beat France quickly was to bypass France's fortresses and like, like defensive line on the German French border and invade through Belgium.

Now this would necessitate Germany break like basically Belgium's a neutral power. So this would like necessitate Germany launch a war of aggression against a neutral power and Britain had an agreement with Belgium that they would defend them from this sort of thing. And basically the nature of the Schlieffen plan essentially guaranteed that Britain would get involved in a war between France and Germany. So it's not a great plan. It's a very detailed and elaborate plan, but it's not a good idea. And it's only necessary. He just wrote a medium.com article. He's like, all right, here's what I want to do. And everyone's like, well, at least he came up with a plan. I mean, you could argue that it was the best possible plan in the impossible situation.

No, no, no. But like, if you like, if you have to try to beat Russia, a sixth of the world and French, the second largest military power in Europe simultaneously, there's really no good way to do that. And in Schlieffen's defense, this actually came very close to working like Germany almost won World War One very early on. They didn't in everything else that happened. Brave of you to come to Schlieffen's defense in this way. It's more just pointing out, like, I think it's important to note how powerful the German army was. The German army essentially on its own because Austria-Hungary was useless and their allies, the Italians, turned their backs on them almost immediately. So Germany, on their own, conquered a huge chunk of France, beat Russia, beat Romania, and conquered the majority, like, almost won a war against the entire world. And that's the force that this guy inherits, this like young man with anger problems.

Yeah. So it's less like a guy with a gun collection and a guy with a nuke collection. Like, that's the power of the army that he gets as birthright. Right. Which maybe means you shouldn't get armies by birthright. Now there's something to think about. Hold on a second. Yeah, yeah.

So it's a bad idea. So basically the Schlieffen plan means that by necessity, there would be no defensive wars for Germany under the Kaiser. So another general close to the Kaiser was Helmut von Moltka. Von Moltka was one of the relatively few people who was brave enough to criticize Kaiser Wilhelm to his face. The cause of his ire in the first case was the annual German war games, particularly the fact that every year they were arranged so that the Kaiser would win no matter what he did. Von Moltka was convinced that the next European war would be an enormous bloody affair, consisting of millions of men and entire nations at arms. He did not think set-piece war games like Germany practiced were adequately preparing her for this sort of conflict. Fair.

This is the passage now from von Moltka's memoirs. And this is him talking to the Kaiser. And when I now look at the strategic war game plans which are put before your majesty year after year, regularly ending with the taking prisoner of enemy armies consisting of five or six hundred thousand men, and that too after only a few days of operations, I cannot avoid the feeling that this in no way meets the conditions of war. I cannot engage in such war games. Your majesty knows yourself that the armies led by you regularly encircle the enemy and in this way allegedly end the war with one blow. In my opinion, these results can only be brought about by forcefully distorting circumstances in such a way that the basic principle that the war games should be a study for real war and should take into account all the friction and obstacles that arise in war is not met. This kind of war game in which, to a certain extent, your majesty's enemy is at your mercy, with his hands tied from the outset, must give rise to false ideas which can only be pernicious when war comes.

But in my view, this is not the worst part of it. I hold it to be even more disturbing that the distorted war games have the effect of destroying their interest for the wide circle of officers involved. Everybody has the feeling that it doesn't matter what you do, a higher destiny controls the business and brings it one way or another to the desired conclusion. Your majesty will have noticed that it becomes increasingly difficult to find officers who want to exercise command against you. This is because, everyone says, I'll only be wiped off the map. However, what I complain about most and what I must say to your majesty is that because of all this, the officer's confidence in their supreme commander is severely shaken. The officers say that the Kaiser is much too clever not to notice how everything has arranged and that he shall turn out to win, so that must be the way he wants it. Now, the Kaiser expressed shock to Moltke that things had been arranged this way and claimed to have no idea that the war games he took part in every year were rigged.

I honestly believe that. Yeah, I think he's just deluded. Yeah, I think that he, I mean, it's like, given his upbringing and the fact that just no one has ever pointed anything out to him in his entire life, it tracks that he's like, wait a second, I'm not fucking the coolest person that's ever... I'm not the best military leader in history! Especially at this point where he's been in charge for so long too, like no one has negged him in decades. Yeah, not since Hinspeter. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, not a great thing. No. From an early age, Wilhelm II had been obsessed with warships, like most boys. But unlike most boys, he came up to own a nation and he was able to indulge in his obsession with naval boats. This quickly became a problem. See, England's thing was being the best at having a navy. Since they were a tiny country with a very tiny army, the Royal Navy was really the only thing that ensured Great Britain's safety. Germany was the unquestioned military master of Europe and the only reason that Britain didn't worry more was that they had naval supremacy.

But in 1897, Wilhelm made an admiral named Alfred von Terpitz, the secretary of the navy. Now, his reasons for this were simple. Terpitz was good at praising the Kaiser and making him feel included in naval decisions. Terpitz had realized on their first meeting that the Kaiser, quote, did not live in the real world and had discovered that he could very easily manipulate the emperor by painting a lurid picture of a gallant and unstoppable high seas fleet. In 1897, the year after the Kaiser's disastrous Kruger Telegram, where he praised people for killing British soldiers, Germany passed its first naval bill, announcing a massive expansion of the fleet. Coming a year after the Kaiser praised one of Britain's enemies for defeating her soldiers, this was not seen as a friendly move.

No way. According to John... All right. According to John Satir, a professor at the University of Virginia, quote, the Kaiser often indignantly denied that Germany was challenging Britain's domination of the seas, but there is clear evidence that this was in fact the aim of Admiral Alfred von Terpitz, whom he had made secretary of the navy in 1897. When in 1904, Britain settled its outstanding disputes with France, the Kaiser, at Bielow's suggestion, went to Tangier the following year to challenge France's position in Morocco by announcing German support for Moroccan independence.

His hopes of thereby showing that Britain was of no value as an ally to France were disappointed at the 1906 Algiers Conference, in which the Germans were forced to accept French predominance over Morocco. In 1908, William caused great excitement in Germany by giving, after a visit to England, a tactless interview to the Daily Telegraph, telling his interviewer that large sections of the German people were anti-English. He had sent the text beforehand to Bielow, who had probably neglected to read it, and who defended his master very lamely in the Reichstag. This led Wilhelm to play a less prominent role in public affairs, and feeling that he had been betrayed by Bielow, he replaced him with the evolved von Bethmann Holwig. Bethmann's attempts to reach an agreement with Britain failed, because Britain would not promise neutrality in a war between Germany and France,

unless Germany would limit its fleet. This the Kaiser interprets refused to do. So there's a chance to stop Britain from coming in against Germany in World War One, but he has to not build a shitload of boats, and the Kaiser really wants a shitload of toy boats. I mean, and he's one, and again, you can track that way the fuck back. This man loves his boats. He loves his fucking boats. Jesus. Now, that Moroccan crisis that was talked about in the quote above very nearly resulted in World War One breaking out in 1906.

And in that case, the Kaiser and everyone were lucky that cooler heads were able to pull Europe's fat out of the fire. But the fact that things had gotten that close was evidence that the Kaiser's utter lack of competent ministers and gut-focused foreign policy was basically the world's deadliest game of dice. The series of bad decisions that would lead the world into blood-soaked calamity started in 1909, when Austria-Hungary announced the formal annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. These provinces had been administered by Vienna since 1878, but they were formally part of the Ottoman Empire. When the young Turk rebellion swept the Ottoman Empire and imposed a constitution on the Sultan, Austria-Hungary saw it as a chance to right what they saw as a historical wrong.

Now, the Ottoman Empire was allied with Germany, and that alliance was one of Wilhelm's very few successes. But the Kaiser was unhappy with the Young Turk Revolution because the constitution they forced on the Sultan was made an imitation of Great Britain, and Wilhelm took offense to this. Backing Austria-Hungary in this was an odd decision, especially given the fact that one of Wilhelm's later schemes was to try and win the Muslim world over to his banner. And we're going to talk about that. But before we talk about how Kaiser Wilhelm tried to win over the Muslims, let's talk about how these products and services are going to try to win over your dollars.

Ayo, smooth transition as usual, Robert. Maybe my best, yeah. Products! During the summer of 2020, some Americans suspected that the FBI had secretly infiltrated the racial justice demonstrations. And you know what? They were right. I'm Trevor Aronson, and I'm hosting a new podcast series, Alphabet Boys. As the FBI sometimes, you gotta grab the little guy to go after the big guy. Each season will take you inside an undercover investigation.

In the first season of Alphabet Boys, we're revealing how the FBI spied on protesters in Denver. At the center of this story is a raspy-voiced, cigar-smoking man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse was like a lot of guns. He's a shark, and on the gun badass way. He's a nasty shark. He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to heaven. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Lance Bass, and you may know me from a little band called NSYNC.

What you may not know is that when I was 23, I traveled to Moscow to train to become the youngest person to go to space. And when I was there, as you can imagine, I heard some pretty wild stories. But there was this one that really stuck with me. About a Soviet astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. It's 1991, and that man, Sergei Krekalev, is floating in orbit when he gets a message that down on Earth, his beloved country, the Soviet Union, is falling apart. And now he's left defending the Union's last outpost. This is the crazy story of the 313 days he spent in space, 313 days that changed the world.

Listen to The Last Soviet on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science? The problem with forensic science in the criminal legal system today is that it's an awful lot of forensic and not an awful lot of science. And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price. Two death sentences and a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. I'm Molly Herman. Join me as we put forensic science on trial to discover what happens when a match isn't a match and when there's no science in CSI. How many people have to be wrongly convicted before they realize that this stuff's all bogus? It's all made up.

Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. We're back. Now, we're talking about Kaiser Wilhelm's attempt to make all the Muslims love him. That may seem weird, but there's logic behind it. See, the British Empire ruled a huge chunk of the Muslim world and the French Empire did as well. And most of those Muslims were unhappy with this fact. If Wilhelm could earn their loyalty, he thought, it would provide him with another weapon to use against England. Friendship with the Ottomans also helped counter Germany's isolation, which was only a thing because Wilhelm sucked at diplomacy.

In 1905, he said this, In the present very tense circumstances, when we stand almost alone in the face of great coalitions which are being formed against us, our last trump card is Islam in the Mohammedan world. So Wilhelm saw the young Turks and their Anglo-friendliness as an attack on his hard-won courtship of their empire. So he threw them under the bus to support Austria-Hungary's ambitions. This trend of supporting Austria-Hungary, regardless of what it did, would prove to be all of Europe's undoing, as Rolls-Biography notes. From then onwards, Kaiser Wilhelm ardently supported his allies' initiative and, as usual, overshot the mark in his martial enthusiasm. In the possibility of war between Austria-Hungary and Serbia loomed, he exclaimed,

If only it would start! He was fully aware of the danger that Germany could be drawn into a war against France and Russia by a Balkan conflict. 13 years earlier, on November 1895, Wilhelm II had assured the Austro-Hungarian ambassador, the Austro-Hungarian ambassador, quite plainly that he would stand at Austria-Hungary's side with all the forces at my disposal, without any further inquiry as to whether there's any cause for war that exists in our accordance with our Treaty of Alliance. Your all-highest sovereign, Franz-Joseph, may be quite sure that if at any moment the position of Austro-Hungarian monarchy is at issue, my entire fighting forces will be immediately and unconditionally at his disposal. So the Kaiser gives Austria-Hungary a blank check to do whatever they want,

and this would wind up probably being the key mistake most responsible for plunging Europe into the First World War. Yeah. Seems to be the popular opinion. Yeah, yeah. When Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated by a Serbian partisan in the summer of 1914, it made Austria's war against Serbia inevitable. Russia was bound to come to Serbia's defense, and the Kaiser had repeatedly promised, loudly and publicly, to back Austria-Hungary in any such war. Now, there'd been another Balkan crisis in 1912 and 13 that had almost led Europe off a cliff into war, but again, cooler heads had talked things down. This time, however, in 1914, there were fewer cooler heads available.

For one thing, the Kaiser's best friend, Julenberg, was no longer in the picture. A complex blackmail plot, orchestrated in part by pro-war elements in the German government, had been executed against Julenberg. The chief cause for this was Julenberg's pacifism. Once he was out of the picture, the Kaiser had no friends close to him who actually cared about him as a human being. Julenberg was a licksbiddle, but he was a licksbiddle who legitimately had Wilhelm's best interests at heart and didn't want a war. Sorry, can you unpack the term licksbiddle? Yeah, he's a sycophant. He's somebody who just is gonna praise the leader and not gonna question them too much. Is that your word or is that someone else's word?

No, no, no, no. That's a common word. Says you. I learned it from the Simpsons. Says, oh, okay. Well, fine. Now, with Julenberg gone, the Kaiser's next best friend was Prince Max Egon of Baden, who was closely related to the emperor of Austria, Hungary, which of course had drawn the Kaiser close to the Austrian royal family, which made him make more and more dumb promises. I'm simplifying things here by quite a lot because we only have so much time,

but I think this paints the essential picture of what went on to bring Wilhelm to a point where he was willing to make these bad, bad, bad calls. I mean, it is kind of remarkable, just hearing it all out in order, like, how long a massive conflict was avoided. Like, there's so many close scrapes before something actually starts. Yep, yep, yep. And yeah, there were a lot of other things going on. One of them was cold, ugly math. The German general staff had this fabulous plan cooked up by Schlieffen to win a two-front war in Europe, and they'd kept careful tabs on both the Russian and French armies, and they'd calculated that 1914 was basically the best year possible for them to have a war like this if it was inevitable, which they thought it was, because both nations had started revamping their field armies.

So this exact sequence of events that led to the outbreak of hostilities in World War I is too long a story to fit in at the end of an episode, and Kaiser Wilhelm's exact level of blame is heavily debated to this day. Rolf's book paints him as an eager belligerent, wringing his hands in anticipation. He was not excited for war precisely, but he was excited for a major diplomatic victory that would humble Russia and Britain without a shot being fired, but he understood that fighting might result, and he was willing to take that risk, but he didn't want it to come to that. He attempted to mediate between Austria and Serbia, and was briefly optimistic of peace once the Serbians yielded to most of Austria's demands, but then his ally decided to go to war anyway, and the Kaiser backed him still. Now, van der Kist's biography paints a more reticent picture of Wilhelm.

His belligerent words and threats of violence were the same sort of impulsive passing fancies that had steered him his entire life. He was a rich kid with poor impulse control, but he ultimately didn't want war, and when it came, he was horribly anxious over the whole affair. Writing years later, Bülow recalled, No German and above all, no English pacifist was filled with a profounder or more honest love of peace than was Wilhelm II. It was his own and our misfortune that his words and his gestures never coincided with his real attitude in the manner. When he boasted or even threatened people in words, it was often because he wanted to allay his own timidity. I think that's right. He's an awkward, sad, insecure kid who winds up boasting and threatening because he's fundamentally insecure and because he's a crowned head of a nation, it helps lead to war.

I feel like that does seem like kind of the story of World War I in a lot of ways where the social conflicts are generally directing stuff, but then the fucked up inbred leaders are able to be manipulated accordingly. There was a big debate and it still continues as to who was responsible for World War I. The nation of Germany was forced to take responsibility in the Treaty of Versailles, which was not fair. Germany and the Kaiser are not mostly responsible for World War I because there's so much blame to be shared by different nations. But you could make a strong case that the single individual with the largest share of the blame is Kaiser Wilhelm II. You could make that case. Yeah. It feels like his whole life is setting him up to do this level of fuck up too.

Yeah, exactly. You can see it coming from so far away. It's infuriating. Yeah. Now, once war was joined, the Kaiser was hopeful that it would be a short, relatively bloodless affair and would leave the overall map of Europe relatively unchanged. He's not a Hitler type guy. He doesn't want to conquer France and he doesn't want to own and hold Belgium forever. He wants to move through Belgium and then eventually leave. He wants to beat France in a war and then sign a treaty with them, take a little bit more of their land maybe, but he wants France to still exist. He doesn't really want to destroy England as a nation. He doesn't want to conquer the entire world. No, he just wants to fuck his mom.

He wants to fuck his mom and he wants to be seen as a military hero. I mean, don't we all in a way? Yeah. We all in a way do. Yeah. Now, Wilhelm believed he'd be able to arrange peace when it was necessary at basically any point by just working things out one-on-one with his royal cousins. That mere democracies could never make a peace conference work because war was a royal sport to be indulged in by hereditary monarchs and concluded at their will. This was part of the idea about war at the time, which was that war between kings never is that bad because kings are all friends at the end. Our soldiers will kill each other for a while, but I don't want you to lose your crown.

I don't want things to be that bad for you. We're just having a spat and once this is concluded satisfactorily, we can go back to being friends. Right. This is Wilhelm's idea at the start of this, yeah. Well, because he's, yeah, because he's like talking with his cousins. Yeah, exactly. It's like being, yeah, with just no awareness for the fact that there is a rest of the world that this affects. Yeah. And this is not how things worked out.

No. And World War I was instant. No, no. No? Like a quarter of a million Germans die in the first week of fighting. Oh, shit. Like it's, it's like hundreds of thousands of people are dead as soon as the fighting starts. Yeah.

And the Kaiser, you know, as the situation grows more serious, the Kaiser is very quickly sidelined by his generals. He actually had almost no role in the conduct of the war throughout the vast majority of it. Right. It was basically ceremonial, you know, he'd address factory workers and soldiers and he spent a lot of his time on vacations at his farm. Germany increasingly became a military dictatorship and by the end of it, the Kaiser was as much of a figurehead as the King of England. And of course, when the war ended in, yeah, when the war ended in German defeat and 17 million deaths, Wilhelm II was forced to abdicate and flee the country. He spent the rest of his life in Dorne in the Netherlands,

living the quiet life of a country gentleman and a global pariah until his death in 1941 from being old as shit. In the end, I think the best epitaph for this man was written by journalist Charles Lowe, a foreign correspondent for The Times. He called Wilhelm, quote, the chief creator of the war spirit, which he found it impossible to exercise or resist and was thus, so to say, devoured by his own offspring for at the last moment when shrinking from the results of his own creative handiwork, he allowed the sword in his own phrase to be thrust into his hand, which was just as much as if he had drawn it of his own accord, thus proving himself to be a weak-willed and criminal ruler, the most nefarious of his kind, whoever sat upon a throne. There it is, that hand comparison again. Sorry, you hate to see it, you hate to see it, the hand is back. It all comes back to the fucking hands. Oh, always back to hands with this guy. Well, yeah, you know, what a coward that was set up to be a fucking loser that would cost millions of people their lives.

Yep, yep, yep. And that's why monarchists are the dumbest people in the world. Yeah, they're horrible in there, and I hate that there's usually an in to feel kind of bad for them, because you're like, oh, well, why would you not be horrible? Why would you be good? Monarchs themselves, like, absolutely, you have to have sympathy for a guy like Phil Helm, because like, fuck man, there was no good ending to this story. But like, the people who want to go back to having a monarchy, I baffles me. I can't figure out, I'm like, do you just like tabloids? You like fancy costumes.

That's what this shit's about. I mean, you can still have that. There's a lot of people that'll wear a lot of fancy. You should just start watching Drag Race. If you're a monarchist, just start watching Drag Race, you'll get what you want. So are you, yeah, sorry. No, no, that's the end of my call to action for the monarchists. Has your level of sympathy or feeling about Kaiserville Helm changed at all over the course of these episodes?

I honestly, my sympathy for him went up. Like, I knew that everyone, you know, all the monarchy that were involved in the beginning of World War One were dumb as rocks, you know. Yeah, dumb as a bag of dead horses. But the specificity of how they even got that far is, oh, it just sucks. He just wanted his mom to be in love with him. He just wanted to fuck his mom's hand and get a medal. I feel for her and I feel for Germany. But yeah, God, I'm not feeling as like indignant and angry as I usually am at the end of this.

I'm just feeling empty. I feel like a husk, Robert, for an absolute husk right now. I watched an interesting movie on Netflix last night called The Exception, which is based on a book called The Kaiser's Last Kiss. And it's a fictional story about a German SS officer who is the head of Wilhelm's bodyguard when Germany conquers the country where he's staying at the start of the Second World War. And it's also about this, like, British spy. And the movie is more sympathetic towards Wilhelm than I think the book is. The guy who wrote the book has a very deep knowledge of the man. It's a fun, it's an interesting book that I think gives a good, a very fair, like, accounting of the man's personality and doesn't make him into a demon or a good guy.

One of the phrases that it says about him is that he was half genius and half child. Do we feel he was a genius in any way? Do we give him that? I didn't see it. There were some parts, like, his understanding of labor rights and, like, that sort of thing. Like, he was really good about certain things throughout his reign, but he was on the whole not a good leader. But he was, like, the point this guy's making is that the things about him that he wasn't smart about led him to make a lot of his worst decisions. Like that mustache. Like that mustache. Yeah, when you're full of yes men, you know, when you're surrounded by yes men who won't tell you you're dumb as shit, you end up with that mustache and that life.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's a lot of good quotes in that book. I'm reading the book right now and it's fun. So maybe check that out if you want more Kaiserville helm in your life. But yeah, man. That's a hard, if you'll pardon the phrase, he drew a rough hand in life. Oh, don't mention hands in front of him. He loses it. And then he played that hand for shit. Oh, God. And then he's just, like, shaking his operational fist at the sky.

You hate to see it. He might be the worst at a job that anyone's ever been. Yeah, yeah. Like really, really bad at being the Kaiser. Why you shouldn't just be given the most consequential jobs. Not a job that should have existed. Nope, certainly not. And you get the feeling if he'd been a ceremonial monarch like the King of England is today, he'd have been great at it.

He loved marching around and wearing uniforms. He loved outfits. He's an Instagram monarch. Yeah, he would have been very happy if he'd never had to make a real decision. If he was just posting fit checks every day, like he would be happy as a little clam. Thirst posting about the Russian army, fine. Thirst posting about his mom. Yeah, another pick of me and mama.

Mama. Yeah, no, what a, you know, you know, monarchists, you're idiots, you're dumb. You're on notice. You're dumb. See you in the comment section. Yeah, we're going to really bring the monarchist listeners behind the bastard. Hit the reddit board, folks. Debate me.

Yeah, it's one of those things. I had this opinion before I started doing this research that kings were basically the same as dictators. And I don't feel that way anymore in part because of all this reading about how hopelessly everyone watched this guy slouch towards being in power and couldn't stop it. Which like a dictator seizes power generally. And like, there's not really a question about it. Like they take the power and even if everyone, like all other people know they're bad at it, like they take it. Whereas with this, everyone's like, yeah, this guy's going to be a disaster too bad. There's nothing to do about it.

Right. Like it seems like if he had had been, if he had been given a way out where that wouldn't have resulted in eternal shame upon him and his family, he absolutely would have taken it. If he could still have been the Kaiser but not have had to make maybe, I don't know. Maybe he was also really arrogant. He could have been the fashion prince. He just wanted to be a fashion king. Yeah, I do think he wanted, he wanted to be a military power too though. And like, I don't think he wanted to in that.

I don't think he was inherently a military kind of guy. But because his whole family had raised him to believe that it's shameful to be a Prussian and not be a great warrior. Yeah. Like, yeah, it's fucked, man. It's a bummer of a story. It's definitely fucked. I hate that I feel for him, but I do. You kind of can't, it doesn't mean he didn't get millions of people killed and isn't a piece of shit.

But like, it also means that like, well, fuck, you plug anybody into that job with that kind of upbringing. How does it end well? How does it pass? Yeah, it's a, it's a, I blame society, Robert. I blame very specific assholes, not society in general. I blame a bunch of shitty people, including Queen Victoria. I bravely blame, we live in a society. That's my whole point.

I blame George Hiddins Peter, Queen Victoria, the Empress Augusta, and a couple of other terrible assholes. And some bad, bad doctors. I blame the doctors. I blame the arm stretcher. Whoever made the arm stretcher. Yeah, that didn't help. That didn't help. They really have a lot to answer for.

All right. Because it didn't work, first of all. And second of all, it was deeply humiliating and you can sort of trace the death of many people to the humiliation from the arm stretcher. So, by an arm stretcher, by the way, this podcast is supported by arm stretchers. What if there's an ad came on for an arm stretcher right now? Oh boy. Is your child the Prince of Prussia? Is his arm gimp?

Stretch it out. Stretch it out, of course. Good lord. Oh boy. Yeah, he is. You do have to, you can't really understand him unless you understand that he was also a disabled man who was abused by a bigoted medical establishment. Right. And there was like no option or ability for him to be accepted as he was.

Yeah. It sucks. It fucking sucks. You know what doesn't suck, Jamie? What? Your pluggables. That's well, wait and see. No kidding.

They're great. You can follow me on Twitter at Jamie Loftus Help. You can listen to, I'm releasing a short form podcast called My Year in Mensa that's about my horrible year in the Mensa organization. So excited. I'm very, Robert, your voice is in it. Thank you. I was editing it in just yesterday. It comes out on Thanksgiving.

It's a full blown nightmare. I hope people listen to it. And yeah, then you can listen to the Bechtelcast every Thursday and that's, and those are my pluggies. Listen to the Bechtelcast, listen to My Year in Mensa, which is Jamie's year in Mensa, not My Year in Mensa. It's not your year, but you know, you could if you wanted to, but you know. Yeah. I know. No, I could not.

Find us on the internet at BehindTheBastards.com or we'll have all the sources for this. Find us on Twitter and Instagram at at BastardsPod. And find some room in your heart to buy a neck stretching machine for the young infant child in your life today and ensure they grow up just like the Kaiser. I gotta go get a stretch in right now. Right after I write my mom the scariest letter I've ever written in my life. Oh yeah. Everybody write your moms about their sexy, sexy hands. Everyone writing about their mom's sexy hands.

No shame. Just don't hit send. It's that simple. Some shame. It's that Robert is just pro-shaming people horny for their mom's hands. I'm a little more open-minded. That's the fucking episode. Bye.

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And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price? Two death sentences in a life without parole. My youngest? I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.