Page 32 - All About History - Issue 54-17

A photograph of Kaiser
Wilhelm with his General
Staff, taken in c.1915

This 1898 propaganda Wilhelm rides through Berlin in
cartoon lampoons the kaiser’s August 1914 to say farewell to
imperialistic tendencies German expeditionary forces

ACCUSATION 1: naval theorist Alfred Thayer Mahan, who argued military might, Wilhelm dreamed of raising
HE GOADED BRITAIN a strong navy was instrumental to a strong state, Germany level with the global empires of Britain
and France to give the new nation its ‘place
Wilhelm got to work and Germany began building
under naval chief Alfred von Tirpitz. The First in the sun,’ as he put it. In response, Britain
Wilhelm II loathed and was obsessed with Britain Fleet Act of 1898 commissioned one flagship, 16 signed the Entente Cordiale with France in 1904,
in equal measure. As Queen Victoria’s eldest battleships, eight armoured costal ships, nine large strengthened in 1907 when Russia joined.
grandson, he was a frequent visitor to Osborne cruisers and 26 small cruisers by 1904. In 1900, Britain’s suspicions that Germany would begin
House on the Isle of Wight and enjoyed sailing at Tirpitz’s Second Fleet Act more than doubled the threatening its hegemony abroad were confirmed
Cowes as a young man. From there it was only a navy again, with a target date of 1917. Further first by their capture and then lease of Kiaochow
short trip to Portsmouth where the Royal Navy amendments came in 1906, 1908 and 1912. from the Chinese as a base from which to conduct
had its headquarters and the young kaiser would But Britain was nervous about the prospect commercial activity — a direct threat to Hong
become infatuated with British warships. When of Germany’s expansion, fearing not only that Kong, which Britain had also leased from the
he was made a British admiral in 1889, he said, Germany might attack but that they would also Chinese in a similar agreement. Germany also
“Fancy wearing the same uniform as St Vincent challenge their colonial dominance. Wilhelm discreetly supplied the South African Boers
and Nelson; it is enough to make one quite giddy.” dismissing his chancellor, Otto von Bismarck, who with weapons to fight Britain during the Second
Wilhelm took his duties as an admiral very had been in power since the 1860s and considered Boer War. Wilhelm himself sent a telegram
seriously but failed to win the acceptance of the foreign policy on a practical basis believing that in which he openly congratulated the Boer
British upper class. When he turned up in full a secure Europe was advantageous to Germany. President Stephanus Johannes Paulus Kruger on
uniform, goose-stepping, his sword fully drawn Instead Wilhelm advocated an aggressive form maintaining the independence of his kingdom.
as he inspected sailors for Queen Victoria, the of foreign policy know as ‘Weltpoltik’, or world When this was leaked, it caused outrage across
generals muttered that it was an “unseemly politics. Through either diplomatic means or Britain and stirred anti-German feeling.
comedy.” The kaiser, a reactionist whose fragile “HE WANTED TO BE ADMIRED AS A
pride had been wounded, abandoned fitting in
with Britain. Instead he vowed to build his own NORMAL ENGLISH GENTLEMAN AND
nation that, in his mind, would imitate and outdo
Britain in every capacity. ON THE OTHER HAND WANTED TO BE
The most obvious way in which he achieved
this was through the building of a navy that could FEARED AS A PRUSSIAN WARLORD”
outperform the British fleet. Influenced by the PRINCE FRIEDRICH WILHELM ON HIS GREAT-GRANDFATHER, WILHELM II
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