CZM Rewind: Part Two: Kaiser Wilhelm: The Saddest Warlord In History

In Part Two, Robert is joined again by Jamie Loftus to continue discussing Kaiser Wilhelm.

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
A media. Hey, motherfucky's and motherfuck ats. Wow, that's not
how I should introduce this anyway. Hello everybody, Robert here,
and this is our last week of what you might
call him rerun episodes. We are still on vacation here
at Cool Zone, having a great time. Actually not on vacation.

(00:24):
We were on vacation, but this is the week where
I have to write so that we can catch up
and have episodes for you all in the new year.
But you know, because I have one more week of
blessed relative freedom, here's another fucking rerun. Enjoy it. I
love you. Welcome back to Behind the Bastards. I'm Robert

(00:47):
Evans and this is part two of our episode on
Kaiservillehelm the second. 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 this show, I
need to tell everyone that Jamie Loftus is dipping popcorn
into salad dressing. Okay, goddamn monster, I.

Speaker 2 (01:07):
Got fucking Okay. First of all, yes, that is what
I'm doing.

Speaker 3 (01:12):
Well, I got dragged the last time I was on
this show because I mentioned that I dipped bagels in
ketchup and there was a lot.

Speaker 1 (01:20):
I said that was fine.

Speaker 2 (01:22):
I'm okay with the popcorn dipping into dressing.

Speaker 3 (01:24):
I am not okay with support you because I know
you have like taste buds that.

Speaker 2 (01:29):
Need more I need I need. Yeah, oh right, yeah
I have not. I have poor people taste buds.

Speaker 1 (01:36):
I hope, 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.

Speaker 3 (01:49):
They're okay, sir, I it's this.

Speaker 1 (01:53):
Is your battle of the somme.

Speaker 3 (01:55):
This is not ideal. I would prefer to dip popcorn
in soy sauce.

Speaker 2 (02:00):
There's no soy sauce here. I go for salad dressing.

Speaker 1 (02:02):
Dipping popcorn and soy sauce is your verdune.

Speaker 2 (02:05):
Here's the thing.

Speaker 3 (02:06):
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 a food is dry, I'm like, let's moisten
this up. Let's see what.

Speaker 1 (02:15):
Horrible good, horrible it's good, horrible.

Speaker 2 (02:18):
I've never been so proud to be your friend, Jamie.
Thank you so much.

Speaker 3 (02:22):
It actually I feel bad because I'm sure the solad
dressing is stinky.

Speaker 2 (02:25):
But no. But nevertheless, I'm ah, there you go, live
your truth? Baby? Does this make you uncomfortable?

Speaker 1 (02:35):
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.

Speaker 2 (02:46):
I've got his birth chart up. Well, let's figure this out.
Let's do it.

Speaker 1 (02:50):
What does it say about people of his astrological sign well,
beaving the Imperial German military.

Speaker 3 (02:57):
Well, here's the thing. I did his name chart, but
that's a little too complicated. What everyone needs to know
is he's an Aquarius and aquarian leaders you know, they're
positive traits. They're open minded, right, they're creative. He was
an artist, right, they're free spirited. Negative traits really bad
stuff across the board of fur leaders, impulsive, unpredictable, inconsistent, extreme,

(03:22):
and stubborn.

Speaker 2 (03:23):
So you know it was Foetold.

Speaker 1 (03:25):
I wouldn't call him open minded in any way, but
a lot of that tracks that's crazy.

Speaker 3 (03:31):
I feel like I'll get dragged more for invoking astrology
than i will for dipping popcorn and salad dressing.

Speaker 1 (03:36):
I know they're both horrible crimes against humanity, you.

Speaker 2 (03:39):
Know what, to each their own. I'm living a very
vile life over here now.

Speaker 1 (03:46):
The Reich that kaiserville Heilm inherited had been built and
largely managed by Auto 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 distry production. 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

(04:07):
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 marshal 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

(04:27):
wife and Bismarck had succeeded in inculcating a deep antipathy
of his parents and of England in him. Kaiser Wilhelm
the second, A concise life, describes the mind sight 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

(04:50):
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 Harris too had to be destroyed, he railed. Wilhelm
was naturally very much in favor of war and hopes
it will break out soon. General walderc noted with Lee
on twenty fifth January eighteen eighty seven, under the latter's influence,

(05:12):
the Prince also advocated war with Russia. That young man
wants war with Russia and would like to draw his
swords straight away if he could. Chancellor Bismarck recorded with
Dismay in eighteen eighty eight, so.

Speaker 3 (05:22):
And to be clear, he doesn't come to power until
he is nearly thirty years old.

Speaker 1 (05:28):
Yeah, is that right?

Speaker 2 (05:29):
So at this point where like this is no long term.

Speaker 1 (05:31):
Tartenty nine, Yeah, yeah, he's not a lot anymore.

Speaker 3 (05:34):
A juvenile young boy who wants to have sex with
his mother's hand. This is a grown ass, petty man.

Speaker 1 (05:42):
Who wants to have sex with his who wants.

Speaker 2 (05:44):
To have sex with his mother's hand, of course.

Speaker 1 (05:46):
Yeah, yeah. 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 Adolph von Stoker,
the court chaplain. Now. Stoker was a member of the
Christian Jinn's Socialist movement, an anti Semitic far right party
that also hated Catholics. Wilhelm's parents and grandmother had all

(06:06):
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 in public office. Before his ascension, Bismarck

(06:28):
had rebuked the Prince for his support of anti Semitism.
This sparked a passive aggressive battle between the two men.
From vander Kiss's biography of Wilhelm, when Bismarck had articles
published in the official press taking the religious conservatives to
task for using Vilhelm, 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

(06:49):
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 accession. Bismarck told him to
burn it. Sulking, 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.

Speaker 2 (07:09):
Sounds like someone we know, Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (07:13):
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,

(07:33):
But there are some similarities, and that that would definitely
be one of them.

Speaker 3 (07:38):
Oh wow, there's a whole there's a whole goddamn New
Yorker article.

Speaker 1 (07:42):
Yeah, there's a ton of articles about the similarities between
the two men. Well, I'm again. Yeah. Vilhelm 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

(08:06):
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

(08:27):
my forefathers looked down on me, and that I shall
one day have to stand accountable for them for the
glory and honor of the army.

Speaker 2 (08:34):
Also, why can't you have sex with your mother's hand?
That should be legal? TTYL.

Speaker 1 (08:39):
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

(09:00):
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. Now, Vanderkisser,
I know it's about to get embarrassing her, because Vanderkiss's
book goes into detail about just how extensive Wilhelm's wardrobe
really was. In addition to his much cherished foreign uniforms.

(09:23):
He had a full one for every Prussian regiment over
three hundred alone, to say nothing of those of Bavaria, Saxony,
and Wurtemberg, as well as naval and marine uniforms all
had their own individual badges, sashes, caps, helmets, epaulets, shoulder points, belts, swords, lences,
and firearms. The resulting wardrobe and armory had to be
housed in a hall containing huge wardrobes, with a cammerdiner

(09:44):
on duty from morning to night to select the shortest
possible notice any out that 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,

(10:04):
that charm of manner was also bereft of its influence
and merged into what was an offensive wearisome buffoonery. He
was wise, she added, not to appear before his subjects
except in uniform.

Speaker 3 (10:15):
Oh God, I like, he's just like, how could I
possibly not be a War Hero look at all my
shirts like you're like, yeah, that's not how that works.

Speaker 1 (10:25):
Pause, Pizza's here, so we're back. They received pizza in
the room and Jamie and I are talking about all
the articles comparing Kaiservillehelm to Trump, and one of the
things I noted is that like, nobody ever really defends

(10:46):
kaiserville Helm. One of my 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, and I like to relive comments.

Speaker 2 (11:03):
Very weird.

Speaker 1 (11:04):
Yeah, well, 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
it's I like to read their arguments between each other.
But nobody ever defends the Kaiser.

Speaker 2 (11:23):
No, that's good, that's tical.

Speaker 3 (11:25):
I mean, commenters will defend almost anything that's immat Yeah.

Speaker 2 (11:29):
I like to go to the youtubes. It's like, oh
not the Okay, what am I saying?

Speaker 3 (11:32):
Okay, where you're like 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.

Speaker 2 (11:42):
I forget what song I was looking at recently.

Speaker 3 (11:44):
But the top comment was like, my husband died to
this song and it's nice that it's on YouTube dot
com and it was like a dance song.

Speaker 2 (11:53):
But anyways, I love comments.

Speaker 1 (11:55):
There's a story there.

Speaker 2 (11:57):
Where's the Wilhelm Hive, where's the will Hive?

Speaker 1 (12:00):
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's the anti Semite Stoker, who we already
talked about. There was also Count Alfred Voan Waldersey, the

(12:22):
deputy chief of the German General Staff. Now, he was
a rabidly pro war nutfuck who supported an immediate attack
against both France and Russia. Like this was his advice,
we just invade them both simultaneously, right now.

Speaker 3 (12:36):
Now.

Speaker 1 (12:36):
When Bismarck heard about the growing friendship between the Kaiser
and Valderc. He is said to have cried, alas my
poor grandchildren. So Bismarck, being a smart guy, pretty instantly
realizes like, oh shit, this dude is going to plunge
the whole continent into a stupid, stupid war.

Speaker 2 (12:54):
Boy, was he right?

Speaker 1 (12:56):
He was not wrong. Like I said, Bismarck is a
very is a visionary. He's a man, but he's a
visionary and he clearly saw what was going to happen.

Speaker 2 (13:04):
I hate when the bad people are smart as well.

Speaker 1 (13:06):
Yeah, and they're more effectively bad.

Speaker 2 (13:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (13:10):
I mean in Bismarck's defense, like he was just kind
of kind of associopath, but he wasn't bad. And like,
his goals weren't dominate Europe and put all the Jews
in camp. His goals were insured 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 like make the world worse.

Speaker 2 (13:31):
He wasn't doing chaos for chaos's sake.

Speaker 1 (13:33):
Yeah, yeah, he wasn't like a yeah yeah, his goal
in the like he just wants things to not break
into a war and he wants Germany to be popular. Okay,
well he felt yeah, he definitely did, didn't succeed in
the long run. Now, Count Eulenberg, the Kaiser's best friend
and probable crush, also led to the Kaiser's break with Bismarck.

(13:54):
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

(14:15):
and laws and checks and balances. They weren't democrats, and
I don't mean that like the American political since, I
mean like pro democracy, since at least not all of them.
But they didn't want an absolute monarchy where the Kaisers
will determined everything. The Kaiser, on the other hand, didn't
really see why other people should have a say and
how he ran Germany. Now, Bismarck warned the Kaiser that

(14:35):
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

(14:58):
what role calls royal lab Oh so yeah, yeah yeah.
Throughout eighteen eighty eight and eighteen eighty nine, Wilhelm and
Bismarck's relationship degraded. Things came to a head in eighteen
eighty nine when a bunch of miners in the Ruher
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

(15:20):
the striking workers against their employers. This caused another rift
between him and Bismarck, because Bismarck's again a piece of
shit and a chance they didn't but 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,

(15:41):
and on May twelfth he charged into a meeting of
the Prussian Ministry of State and declared that Bismarck was
wrong for not acceding to their demands, and declared the
workers were his subjects whom he had to look after.
All right, yeah, this is like, yeah, this is good. Now.
Wilhelm got his way on the Ruher strike for their
frustrating the Reich Chancellor. In the summer of eighteen eighty nine,

(16:02):
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 walder
C and Ulenberg with him. The latter was at least
a sane person who didn't support wars of aggression with
the rest of the world, but valder C was a
racist nutfuck, and during their vacation he convinced the Kaiser
that Bismarck was jew ridden and had been conned into

(16:25):
giving control of the Reich's monetary policy to a bunch
of Jews.

Speaker 2 (16:29):
Is his crush.

Speaker 1 (16:31):
No, no, no, his crush is a pretty reasonable guy. This
is that racist general who wants him to invade the
entire world.

Speaker 2 (16:37):
The names are so confusing, Okay, yeah.

Speaker 1 (16:39):
Yeah, yeah, sorry, there's a lot. Walder C is the
racist general. Yulenberg is his crush. Now, so Valderc 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 kaisers favorite things.

(17:00):
And I have to read you Vanderkiss's description of it
because it sounds like the worst time you could have
on a boat. The annual Cruise, or nord lynd Rice,
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 aids. De camp engaged
in physical exercises. Its purpose was originally to give him

(17:21):
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 loathed every
childish prank and moment themselves, but were too sickophantic to

(17:42):
say so.

Speaker 2 (17:44):
God, it sounds you're going.

Speaker 3 (17:45):
It reminds me of like 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, in this enclosed setting to be horrible cool.

Speaker 2 (18:01):
Well, I'm glad you did pranks on the set of his.

Speaker 1 (18:05):
You want to? You want to? You want to go
on a month long prink cruise with the King Boy.

Speaker 3 (18:09):
With the Yeah, with the King Boy who like has
a God, imagine just having a cruise with him and
all of his demons.

Speaker 2 (18:17):
That's wild.

Speaker 1 (18:19):
Oh guarantee you. He never didn't have an erection and
he never knew what it was for.

Speaker 3 (18:25):
Well, he's just walking around with a full erection all
the time, Like.

Speaker 2 (18:28):
Do you guys know what this is?

Speaker 3 (18:30):
Like?

Speaker 1 (18:30):
Just kicking people in the butt. I think I was laughing.

Speaker 2 (18:34):
Hard as a wrong kicking old people around what.

Speaker 3 (18:38):
Okay, Well he is officially you know, well, I mean
he's just a bad he's a badman.

Speaker 2 (18:45):
He's a creatively bad man in this case.

Speaker 3 (18:47):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, really really punishing everyone around him in
very specific ways.

Speaker 1 (18:52):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (18:53):
Now.

Speaker 1 (18:53):
In January of eighteen ninety, Wilhelm told his Crown Council
that he would celebrate his thirty first 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, is labor crusader.

Speaker 2 (19:14):
I'm very surprised that he is like gunning for labor
like this.

Speaker 1 (19:18):
He well, you know, one of the good things about
Heinz Peters, 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.
He does monstrous things, but he's not a monster. Now,

(19:41):
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 eighteen ninety when Bismarck
entered into negotiations with the leader of the Center Party.
He's like, Dinad, why do you care about the poors?
It's such a bad fuck there. Look they're the poors man.

Speaker 2 (19:57):
Come on, of course, what the foot? What are you
going to get on it?

Speaker 1 (20:01):
So Bismarck enters into negotiations with the leader of the
Center Party, a guy named Winthorst, 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, right, Bismarck
hates working people but also hates discrimination. The Kaiser fights
for the working man, but gets furious about removing this

(20:23):
anti Catholic legislation because he's a bigot.

Speaker 2 (20:27):
So they're just like a stalemate.

Speaker 1 (20:29):
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.

Speaker 2 (20:46):
God damn it okay.

Speaker 1 (20:47):
Next, according to Kaiser Vilhelm the Second, a concise life,
early in the morning of fifteen March eighteen ninety, there
took place one of the most highly charged scenes ever
played out in Berlin's center of government. The Wilhelmstrasa Kaiser
Wilhelm the Second some of the seventy five year old
reich Chancellor from his bed and upbraided him for receiving Winthorst.
He went on to complain that Bismarck had dug out
a dusty old cabinet order of eighteen fifty two that

(21:08):
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 inkstan at my head.
After this dramatic quarrel, walderse urged the Kaiser in the
presence of the chief of the military Cabinet, to sack

(21:29):
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 honk Is like military leader,
and then the chief of the civil Cabinet, Hermann von Luchannis,
to the Chancellor, ordering him to hand in his resignation,
which Bismarck finally did on eighteenth March eighteen ninety. If walderse,

(21:50):
as one can safely assume, expected to take Bismarck's place,
he was in for a bitter disappointment. That same evening,
Wilhelm the Second announced to the commanding generals assembled in
the berlinsh Lass that in order to remit and master
of the situation, he had to issue in order to
the Chancellor, insisting that he submit. So, the Kaiser accepted
Bismarck's letter of you know, he's retired his retirement and

(22:12):
made a guy named Kaprivy, who was a Lickspittle, you know,
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 jettison to

(22:32):
its pilot in favor of the dumbest monarch in Europe.

Speaker 2 (22:36):
The man. What a choice?

Speaker 1 (22:39):
What a choice? All right, it's not great, it's not great.

Speaker 3 (22:42):
I mean, there's no winning scenario, but they did seem
to choose the losing er of the team.

Speaker 1 (22:47):
They definitely chose the losingest scenario. Yeah, but you know
what's not the losing scenario, Jamie, tell me the products
and services that support this show.

Speaker 2 (22:58):
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Speaker 1 (23:03):
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Speaker 2 (23:13):
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Speaker 1 (23:14):
Okay, so that's a guarantee no other podcast will give you.

Speaker 3 (23:17):
That's a little wiggle room. That's nice, that's nice.

Speaker 1 (23:20):
Up to seven percent.

Speaker 2 (23:22):
Okay, I'll crunch those numbers and then cancel you later.

Speaker 1 (23:27):
All right, here's some ANTSCS Now with Bismarck out Kaiser
Wilhelm was the unquestioned chief power in Germany, and this
was not a good thing. Phil Helm was bad at
every aspect of the job, particularly diplomacy, and he haven't
been for years.

Speaker 2 (23:47):
It had been for years. It was not a shock
to anyone.

Speaker 1 (23:50):
Oh okay, yeah, Now, he was convinced that his relation
to the other crowned heads of Europe and his personal
charisma would allow him to negotiate well with other nations.
The orchard summarizes his talent for this part of the
job thusly quote. He called the diminutive King Victor Emmanuel
the third of Italy the dwarf. In front of the
king's own entourage, he called Prince later Czar Ferdinand of

(24:12):
Bulgaria Ferdinando Nasso on account of his beaky nose and
spread rumors that he was a hermaphrodite. Since Philhelm 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
nineteen oh nine, during which the Kaiser slapped him on

(24:32):
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

(24:53):
compare him to Trump a lot. In eighteen ninety he
let lapse a long standing defensive agreement with Russia, the
German empires vast and some I'm 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.

Speaker 2 (25:10):
I don't like him single negotiation.

Speaker 1 (25:12):
That's nasty, it's bad.

Speaker 2 (25:15):
Wipe it.

Speaker 1 (25:16):
Wilhelm decided he would charm and manipulate Zar Nicholas the Second,
a ninny and a whimperer, according to Wilhelm, fit only
to grow turnips into abandoning the alliance. In eighteen ninety seven,
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

(25:37):
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.

Speaker 2 (25:51):
Jesus, he's so benefit.

Speaker 3 (25:54):
Yeah, it's crazy how I did like the speed at
which he's bad at it too, Like he's not even
a slow burn, Like, ah, I do something shitty everyone
Like he's just like expeditiously ruining everything.

Speaker 1 (26:06):
No, he is a more stupid, faster guy, very much.

Speaker 2 (26:10):
So, the worst kind of person.

Speaker 1 (26:12):
Okay, Now, one good thing you can say for the
Kaiser is that he was better than most modern governance
that 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 Yulenberg of course occupied
high positions in the Reich, but there were too many
rumors about him for him to be made chancellor. There

(26:33):
were a number of like they were like trials and
like news stories that would come out. So the Kaiser
promoted a dude named Bulah for the job. A letter
Bulou wrote in July eighteen ninety six 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 pepin a Richelieu, Caprivi and Hohenlow

(26:56):
regarded or regard themselves as the representatives of the government
into a certain extent of the parliament in relation to
his majesty. I would regard myself as the executive tool
of his majesty, so to speak, his political chief of
staff with me. Personal rule in the good sense would
really begin.

Speaker 2 (27:11):
I'm picturing this as like an Instagram caption.

Speaker 1 (27:14):
Yeah, yeah, Buloh 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 s In an
eighteen ninety eight letter to his mother, Kaiser Wilhelm exalted

(27:35):
in his ability to gradually wear down the government of
Germany into acting as just an extension of his ego
forever and ever. He exulted in a letter to his
mother in eighteen ninety eight, there is only one real
emperor in the world, and that is the German, regardless
of his person in qualities, but by right of a
thousand years tradition, and his chancellor has to obey.

Speaker 3 (27:55):
Oh God, leave your if nothing else, lee of your
poor mother alone.

Speaker 1 (28:02):
Now Eulenberg, who'd put Bulo up for the job because
Ulenberg 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.

Speaker 2 (28:16):
Right well, I mean you.

Speaker 1 (28:17):
Wilhelm the second 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 the second wants to shine and
decide everything himself. What he wants to do himself, unfortunately,

(28:38):
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 has
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

(28:59):
majesty deserves it, he's grateful for it, like a good
clever child. If one remains silent when he deserves recognition,
he eventually seens malevolence in it. We too, will always
carefully observe the boundaries of flattery.

Speaker 2 (29:11):
I mean, who among us has not worked for someone
exactly like this?

Speaker 1 (29:15):
Absolutely?

Speaker 2 (29:16):
Yeah, I was working for someone like this two weeks ago.

Speaker 1 (29:20):
Yeah, Hollywood is thirty percent people like this.

Speaker 2 (29:23):
Thirty percent Wilhelm.

Speaker 3 (29:24):
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 night. Mary's the worst person I know.
But also he's my closest friend, so.

Speaker 1 (29:35):
You know, I love him.

Speaker 2 (29:36):
Yeah, and the health insurance is great, so put up. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (29:40):
Now, wil Helm had a bad reputation for basically sighting
with whatever the last person he talked to had said.
Since a number of his generals were warmongering racists, this
was problematic. In eighteen ninety six, the Kaiser impulsively sent
a congratulatory telegram to Paul Krueger of the Transvaal Republic
South Africa for his victory over a British raiding party.

(30:01):
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
pre eminent 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

(30:22):
enemy of the greatest naval power. In the world being like,
good job killing some of their guys, Like it doesn't
play well in England.

Speaker 2 (30:29):
Again, petty petty dumb, petty dumb.

Speaker 1 (30:33):
Now, there were numerous other insults and slights like that.
He was the Kaiser for like twenty six 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 Bulou and Ulenberg, proved
unable to do anything but praise the Kaiser and hoped

(30:56):
to calm him down and reduce his impulsive swings. They
were often unsuccessful. In nineteen hundred, 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,

(31:16):
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 has forfeited, just as a
thousand years ago the Huns under their king Atilla made
a name for themselves, one that even today makes them
seem mighty in history and legend. May the name German

(31:38):
be affirmed by you win 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 were referred to as the Huns
in like World War I propaganda by the British and
the Americans and stuff.

Speaker 2 (31:53):
Mm hmm.

Speaker 1 (31:54):
This speech is why the Hun speech is what people
call it.

Speaker 3 (31:57):
So they were just getting They were just like roasted
filim indirectly.

Speaker 1 (32:02):
Exactly, but pretty directly.

Speaker 3 (32:04):
Actually, yeah, I guess that's not even a subtweeen, because
like this is seen as really silly.

Speaker 1 (32:08):
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

(32:30):
like a manchild pretending to be a warrior, but it
was also seen as deeply worrying by the crownheads 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.

Speaker 3 (32:41):
Shit.

Speaker 1 (32:42):
It's like somebody with a huge gun collection talking about
how he could carry out a school shooting if he
wanted to. Oh, he'd be like, 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.

Speaker 3 (32:56):
No, don't you love when someone's above the law, And therefore,
yeahs of people have to die, millions, but yeah, I'm sorry, yeah, millions.

Speaker 1 (33:07):
The nation's worth okay. 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.

Speaker 2 (33:28):
Wasn't it like a five year plan? It was? Or
what was the duration?

Speaker 1 (33:32):
It was very quick. Happened 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 Schleifen'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,

(33:55):
a small chunk of the German army would hold off
the Russian army in the east until the rest of
the army could be read 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

(34:18):
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. So basically the
nature of the Schliefen Plan essentially guaranteed that Britain would
get involved in a war between France and Germany. Okay,

(34:38):
so it's not a great plan. It's a very detailed
and elaborate plan, but it's not a good idea, and.

Speaker 2 (34:44):
It's just like article.

Speaker 3 (34:46):
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.

Speaker 1 (34:53):
I mean, you could argue that it was the best
possible plan in the impossible situation that the Kaiser could
get German. No, no, no, But like, like, if you
have to try to beat Russia a sixth of the world,
and France, the second largest military power in Europe, simultaneously,
there's really no good way to do that. And in

(35:15):
Schliffen'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.

Speaker 2 (35:25):
Have you had a cumber Schleifen's defense.

Speaker 1 (35:27):
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

(35:49):
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
it's less like a guy with a gun collection and
a guy with a new collection, like he's he that's
the power of the army that he gets as birthright right,

(36:09):
which maybe means you shouldn't get armies by birthright.

Speaker 2 (36:13):
Now there's something to think about. Yeah, hold on a second.

Speaker 1 (36:19):
Yeah, yeah, So it's a bad it's a bad idea.
So basically, this Schleefen plan means that by the necessity,
there would be no defensive wars for Germany under the Kaiser.
So another general close to the Kaiser was helm With
von Moltke. Moltke was one of the relatively few people
who was brave enough to criticize Kaiservillehelm to his face.

(36:39):
The cause of his ire in the first caise 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 Moltke was convinced that
the next European war would be an enormous, bloody affair
consisting of millions of men in entire nations at arms.
He did not think set piece war games like Germany,

(37:00):
we're adequately preparing her for this sort of conflict. And
I'm going to quote a passage now from von Moltke's memoires,
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

(37:22):
that this in no way meets the conditions of war.
I cannot engage in such wargames. Your Majesty knows yourself
that the army is led by you regularly encircle the enemy,
and in this way allegedly in 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 wargames should be a study for
real war and should take into account all the friction

(37:44):
and obstacles that arise in war is not met. This
kind of wargame, 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
wargames have the effect of destroying their interest. For the

(38:04):
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,

(38:25):
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 is arranged,
and that he shall turn out to win, so that
must be the way he wants it. Now. The Kaiser
expressed shocked to Moltka that things had been arranged this way,
and claimed to have no idea that the wargames he

(38:47):
took part in every year were rigged.

Speaker 2 (38:49):
I honestly believe that.

Speaker 1 (38:50):
Yeah, I think he's just diluted.

Speaker 2 (38:52):
Yeah, I think that he.

Speaker 3 (38:53):
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.

Speaker 1 (39:07):
I'm not the best military leader in.

Speaker 3 (39:08):
History, especially at this point where he's been in charge
for so long too, like known as negdam in decades.

Speaker 1 (39:15):
Yeah, not since Henspeter.

Speaker 2 (39:16):
Yeah exactly.

Speaker 1 (39:18):
Uh yeah, that a great thing.

Speaker 2 (39:22):
Now.

Speaker 1 (39:22):
From an early age, Wilhelm the Second 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

(39:43):
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 eighteen ninety seven, Wilhelm made an admiral named
Alfred von Turpetz the Secretary of the Navy. Now, his
reasons for this were simple. Turpets was good at praising
the Kaiser and making him feel included in naval decisions.

(40:05):
Turpets 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 eighteen ninety seven, the year after the
Kaiser's disastrous Krueger Telegram, where he praised people for killing
British soldiers. Germany passed its first naval bill, announcing a

(40:28):
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.

Speaker 2 (40:38):
All right.

Speaker 1 (40:39):
According to John Setier, 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 Turpetz, who he had made Secretary of the Navy
in eighteen ninety seven. When in nineteen oh four Britain
settled its outstanding disputes with France, the Kaiser, at Beulou's suggestion,
went to Tangier the following year to challenge France's position

(41:01):
in Morocco by announcing German support from Iroccan independence. His
hopes of thereby showing that Britain was of no value
as an ally to France were disappointed at the nineteen
oh six Algiers conference, in which the Germans were forced
to accept French predominance over Morocco. In nineteen oh eight,
William caused great excitement in Germany by giving, after a
visit to England, a tactless interview to the Daily Telegraph,

(41:22):
telling his interviewer that large sections of the German people
were anti English. He had sent the text beforehand to Bulah,
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 Buloh, he replaced
him with theovald On Bethman. Holwig Bethmann's attempts to reach
agreement with Britain failed because Britain would not promise neutrality

(41:44):
in a war between Germany and France unless Germany would
limit its fleet. This, the Kaiser, interprets, refused to do.

Speaker 3 (41:51):
So.

Speaker 1 (41:51):
There's a chance to stop Britain from coming in against
Germany and World War One, but he has to not
build a shitload of boats. And the Kaiser really wants
a sh shitload of toy boats.

Speaker 2 (42:02):
I mean, and he's one and again you can track
that way. The fuck bag. Yes, man loves his boats.

Speaker 1 (42:09):
He loves his fucking boats.

Speaker 2 (42:10):
Jesus.

Speaker 1 (42:12):
Now, that Moroccan crisis that was talked about in the
quote above very nearly resulted in World War One breaking
out in nineteen oh six, 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.

(42:35):
The series of bad decisions that would lead the world
into blood soaked calamity started in nineteen oh nine, when
Austria Hungary announced the formal annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
These provinces had been administered by Vienna since eighteen seventy eight,
but they were formerly part of the Ottoman Empire. When
the Young terp Rebellion swept the Ottoman Empire and imposed
a constitution on the Sultan, Austria Hungary saw it as

(42:58):
a chance to write 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

(43:19):
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.

Speaker 2 (43:34):
A smooth transitions usual, Robert.

Speaker 1 (43:38):
Maybe maybe my best. Yeah, products, we're back.

Speaker 2 (43:49):
Huh.

Speaker 1 (43:49):
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. 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

(44:11):
with the Ottomans also helped counter Germany's isolation, which was
only a thing because Wilhelm sucked at diplomacy. In nineteen
oh five, he said, this and 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 and the Mohammadan world. So Wilhelm saw
the young Turks and their Anglo friendliness as an attack

(44:32):
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, and the possibility of war between Austria Hungary

(44:55):
and Serbia loomed, he exclaimed, if only it would start.
He was fully aware of the danger that your he
could be drawn into a war against France and Russia.
By a Bulkan conflict. Thirteen years earlier, on November eighteen
ninety five, Philhelm the Second had assured the Austro Hungarian ambassador,
Count Ledislaw Vaughan. I'm not going to try to pronounce
this fucker's name. The Austria Hungarian ambassador quite plainly that

(45:15):
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

(45:39):
check to do whatever they want, and it's this would
wind up probably being the key mistake most responsible for
plunging Europe into the First World War.

Speaker 2 (45:47):
Yeah yeah, seems to be the popular opinion.

Speaker 1 (45:51):
Yeah yeah. When Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated by a
Serbian partisan in the summer of nineteen fourteen, 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 nineteen twelve and thirteen

(46:11):
that had almost led Europe off a cliff into war,
but again cooler heads had talked things down this time. However,
in nineteen fourteen, 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 Ulenberg. The chief cause for this was Ulenberg's pacifism.

(46:35):
Once he was out of the picture, the Kaiser had
no friends close to him who actually cared about him
as a human being. Ulenberg was a lickpittle, but he
was a lixpittle who legitimately had Whilhelm's best interests at
heart and didn't want a war.

Speaker 2 (46:46):
Sorry, can you unpack the term lickspittle?

Speaker 1 (46:49):
Yeah, he's a sickophant. He's somebody who just is going
to praise the leader and not going to question them
too much.

Speaker 2 (46:54):
Is that your word or is that someone else?

Speaker 1 (46:56):
No? No, no, no, no, no, that's a common word.

Speaker 2 (46:59):
Yeah, I learned.

Speaker 1 (47:00):
It from the I learned it from the Simpsons.

Speaker 2 (47:02):
Says oh, okay, well fine.

Speaker 1 (47:05):
Now with Yulenberg 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

(47:25):
of what went on to bring Veilhelm to a point
where he was willing to make these bad, bad, bad calls.

Speaker 3 (47:30):
I mean, it is kind of remarkable just hearing it
all out in order, Like how long a massive conflict
was avoided? Like that's yeah, there's been there's so many
close scrapes before something actually starts.

Speaker 1 (47:42):
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 Schleief and to win a two front war in Europe,
and they'd kept careful tabs on both the Russian and
French armies, and they had calculated that nineteen fourteen was
basically the best year possible for them to have a
war like this if it was inevitable, which they thought

(48:03):
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 One is too long
a story to fit in at the end of an episode,
and Heiser Wilhelm's exact level of blame is heavily debated
to this day. Rolfe's book paints him as an eager
belligerent wringing his hands in anticipation. He was not excited

(48:24):
for war precisely, but he was excited for a major
diplomatic victory that would humble Russia and Britain without a
shot being fired fighting. Yeah, exactly. He understood flightding 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,

(48:46):
but then his ally decided to go to war anyway,
and the Kaiser backed him. Still now, Vanderkiss'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, Beulah recalled

(49:09):
no German and above all, no English pacifist was filled
with a profounder or more honest love of peace than
was William the Second. 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. Yeah,
Like he's an awkward, sad, insecure kid who winds up

(49:33):
boasting and threatening because he doesn't he's fundamentally insecure, and
because he's a crowned head of a nation it helps
lead to war.

Speaker 3 (49:42):
I feel like, Yeah, that does seem like kind of
the story of World War One in a lot of ways,
where it's like the you know, the social conflicts are
generally directing stuff, but then the fucked up inbred leaders.

Speaker 2 (49:55):
Are you able to be manipulated accordingly?

Speaker 3 (49:59):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (50:00):
You know. There was a big debate and has been
for it still continues as to who is responsible for
World War One. 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 One 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

(50:22):
blame is Kaiservillehelm the second you can make that case.

Speaker 3 (50:26):
Yeah, I mean, and it was like he was It
feels like his whole life is setting him up to
do this level to fuck up.

Speaker 1 (50:33):
Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 2 (50:34):
You can see it coming from so far away. It's infuriating.

Speaker 1 (50:38):
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

(50:59):
of their life and 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. He doesn't want
to conquer the entire world, you know.

Speaker 2 (51:09):
No, he just wants to suck his mom.

Speaker 1 (51:11):
He wants to fuck his mom, and he wants to
be seen as a military hero.

Speaker 2 (51:15):
I mean, don't we all in a way?

Speaker 1 (51:18):
Yeah now? 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. He noted
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

(51:42):
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, and you know,
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 you know, once this is concluded satisfactorily,
we can go back to being friends. This is Bill
Help's idea at the start of this.

Speaker 3 (52:03):
Yeah, well because he's yeah, because he's like talking with
his cousins, like exactly, it's like being yeah, with just
no awareness for the fact that there is a rest
of the world.

Speaker 2 (52:14):
Of this effects.

Speaker 1 (52:15):
Yeah, and this is not how things worked out. And
World War One was instant no, no, no, like a
quarter of a million Germans die in the first week
of fighting, Like 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

(52:38):
actually had almost no role in the conduct of the
war throughout the vast majority of it. 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

(53:00):
defeat in seventeen million deaths, Wilhelm the Second was forced
to abdicate and flee the country. He spent the rest
of his life in Dorn in the Netherlands, living the
quiet life of a country gentleman in a global pariah,
until his death in nineteen forty one from being old
as shit in the end, I think the best epitaph
for this man was written by journalist Charles Lowe, a

(53:21):
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

(53:42):
proving himself to be a weak willed and criminal ruler,
the most nefarious of his kind whoever sat upon a throne.

Speaker 3 (53:49):
There it is that hand comparison again. I'm sorry, you
hate to see it.

Speaker 2 (53:53):
You hate to see it.

Speaker 1 (53:54):
The hand is all comes back to the fucking hands.

Speaker 2 (53:57):
Oh, always back to hands with this guy.

Speaker 3 (53:59):
Well, yeah, what what a coward that was set up
to be of a fucking loser that would cost millions
of people their lives.

Speaker 1 (54:07):
Yep, yep, yep. And that's why monarchists are the dumbest
people in the world.

Speaker 3 (54:14):
Yeah, they're horrible in there, and I and I hate that.
There's usually an end to feel kind of bad for them,
because you're like, oh, you're well, why would you not
be horrible?

Speaker 2 (54:24):
Why? Oh would be good?

Speaker 1 (54:25):
Monarchs like monarchs themselves? Like I absolutely you have to
have sympathy for a guy like phil Helm because like,
fuck man, there's no good ending to this story, right,
But like the people who want to go back to
having a monarchy, I baffles me.

Speaker 2 (54:40):
I can't figure out. I'm like, do you just like tabloids, like.

Speaker 1 (54:43):
Where you like fancy costumes? That's what this shit's about
I mean, like.

Speaker 3 (54:48):
You can still have that. There's a lot of people
that will wear a lot of fancy. You should just
start watching drag Race. If you're a marcust just start
watching drag Race.

Speaker 2 (54:56):
You'll get You'll get what you want. And so are you.

Speaker 1 (55:01):
I got sorry?

Speaker 3 (55:02):
No, no, I guess that's the end of my call
to action for the monarchists.

Speaker 1 (55:07):
Has your level of sympathy or feeling about Kaiservillehelm changed
it all over the course of these episodes.

Speaker 3 (55:14):
I honestly my sympathy for him went up, Like I knew,
I knew, I knew that everyone, you know, all all
the monarchy like that were involved in the beginning of
World War One were dumb as rocks.

Speaker 1 (55:30):
You know, but dumb as a bag of dead horses.

Speaker 3 (55:33):
But the but the specificity of yeah, like how how
that how they even got that far?

Speaker 2 (55:40):
Is Oh, it just sucks. It sucks.

Speaker 3 (55:44):
I you know, he just wanted to his mom to
be in love with him.

Speaker 1 (55:49):
He just wanted to fuck his mom's hand and get
a medal.

Speaker 3 (55:53):
I feel for her, and I feel for Germany and that, yeah,
God that I'm feeling. I'm not feeling as like indignant
and angry as I usually am at the end of this.

Speaker 2 (56:06):
I'm just feeling empty.

Speaker 3 (56:07):
I feel like a husk, Robert, Yeah, absolute husk right now.

Speaker 1 (56:12):
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 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

(56:32):
about this like British spy and it's the The movie
is more sympathetic towards Wilhelm than I think the book is.
The I wrote the book like it has a very
deep knowledge of the man. So really 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

(56:54):
doesn't make him into a demon or a good guy. Okay,
he's just like. One of the phrases that it says
about him is that he was half genius and half child. Yeah,
and says he's there's another.

Speaker 2 (57:09):
Do we feel he was a genius in any way?

Speaker 3 (57:11):
Is that?

Speaker 2 (57:11):
Is that? Do we give him that?

Speaker 1 (57:13):
I don't.

Speaker 2 (57:13):
I didn't see that. I didn't see it. Yeah, I
didn't see it.

Speaker 1 (57:18):
There were some parts like his his understanding of labor
rights and like the 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 he was in 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.

Speaker 2 (57:38):
Like that mustache, Like I mean mustache.

Speaker 3 (57:41):
Yeah, when you're full of yes men, you know, when
you're surrounded by yes men who won't tell you you're dumbest shit,
you end up with that mustache and that life.

Speaker 1 (57:50):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, there's there's there's a lot of good
quotes in that book. I I'm reading the book right
now and it's fun. So maybe check that out if
you want more Kaiser Vilhelm in your life. That's a
hard he if you'll pardon the phrase, he drew a

(58:11):
rough hand in life.

Speaker 2 (58:13):
Oh don't say, don't mention hands in front of him.

Speaker 1 (58:16):
He loses it and then he played that hand for shit.

Speaker 3 (58:20):
O god, and then he's just like shaking his operational
fist at the sky.

Speaker 2 (58:26):
You hate to see it.

Speaker 1 (58:28):
He might be the worst at a job that anyone's
ever been. Yeah, like really really bad.

Speaker 2 (58:35):
Why you shouldn't just be given the most consequential.

Speaker 1 (58:38):
Jobs, not a job that should have existed.

Speaker 2 (58:41):
Nope, certainly not.

Speaker 1 (58:44):
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.

Speaker 3 (58:52):
Outfits an Instagram monarch.

Speaker 1 (58:57):
Yeah, he would have been very happy if he'd never
had to make a real decision.

Speaker 3 (59:01):
He if he was just posting fit checks every day,
like he would be happy as a little clam.

Speaker 1 (59:06):
First posting about the Russian Army.

Speaker 3 (59:08):
Fine about his mom, Yeah, just another pick of me
and mamah. Yeah no, but uh, you know, you know, monarchists,
you're idiots, You're dumb, You're unnoticed, dumb.

Speaker 2 (59:24):
See you in the comments section.

Speaker 1 (59:27):
Yeah, we're gonna really bring the monarchist listeners to behind
the bastards out of the.

Speaker 2 (59:31):
Words for folks.

Speaker 3 (59:34):
Me.

Speaker 1 (59:35):
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 sees his power
generally and like there's not really a question about it,

(59:59):
like they take the pow and even if everyone, like
a lot of 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.

Speaker 3 (01:00:09):
That's the thing is it seems like if he had
had been if he had been given a way out
or that wouldn't have resulted in eternal shame upon him
and his family, he absolutely would have taken it.

Speaker 1 (01:00:20):
If he could still have been the Kaiser, but not
have had to make maybe I don't know, maybe a prince.

Speaker 2 (01:00:25):
He just wanted to be a fashion king.

Speaker 1 (01:00:28):
Yeah, I do think he want He wanted to be
a military power too though, and like I don't think
he wanted to in that. I don't think it 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.

Speaker 3 (01:00:48):
It's it's definitely fucked. I hate that. I feel for him,
but I.

Speaker 1 (01:00:53):
Don't it 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.
You plug anybody into that job with that kind of upbringing,
how how does it end? Well?

Speaker 2 (01:01:08):
How does it appear?

Speaker 3 (01:01:09):
Yeah, it's as I blame society, Robert, I.

Speaker 1 (01:01:14):
Blame very specific assholes, not society in general. I blame.

Speaker 2 (01:01:20):
We live in a society. That's my whole point.

Speaker 1 (01:01:25):
I blame George Hinspeter, Queen Victoria, uhh, the Empress Augusta,
and a couple of other terrible assholes, and some bad,
bad doctors.

Speaker 3 (01:01:37):
I blame the doctor's own. I blame the arm stretcher.
Whoever made that that. They really have a lot to
answer for, all right, And it didn't work, first of all,
and second of all, it was deeply humiliating, and and
and you can sort of trace the death of many
people to the humiliation from the arms stretcher.

Speaker 1 (01:01:58):
So by an arm stretcher. By the way, this podcast
is supported by an arm stretcher.

Speaker 2 (01:02:04):
I came on for an arm stretcher right now.

Speaker 1 (01:02:07):
Oh, your child, the Prince of Prussia is his arm
gimp stretched out of course? Good lord, oh boy, yeah
he is. You do have to you can't really understand him,
nless you understand that he was also a disabled man
who was abused by a bigoted medical establishment.

Speaker 2 (01:02:27):
Right bye bye.

Speaker 3 (01:02:28):
Yeah, and and there was like no option or ability
for him to be accepted as he was.

Speaker 2 (01:02:34):
It's yeah, it sucks. It fucking sucks.

Speaker 1 (01:02:38):
You know what doesn't suck? Jamie what your pluggables?

Speaker 2 (01:02:41):
That's well wait and see, no kidding, they're great.

Speaker 3 (01:02:46):
You can follow me on Twitter at Jamie christ or
no at Jamie Loftus help.

Speaker 1 (01:02:52):
Uh.

Speaker 3 (01:02:52):
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.

Speaker 1 (01:03:01):
So excited.

Speaker 2 (01:03:02):
I'm very Robert your voice is in it.

Speaker 1 (01:03:05):
Thank you.

Speaker 3 (01:03:05):
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 Bechdel Cast every Thursday, and that's and those are
my plugies.

Speaker 1 (01:03:19):
Listen to the Bechdel Cast, Listen to My Year in Mensa,
which is Jamie's year in Mensa, not my year.

Speaker 2 (01:03:25):
Not your year. But you know you could if you
wanted to, But yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:03:30):
I know.

Speaker 3 (01:03:30):
No.

Speaker 1 (01:03:31):
I could not find us on the internet at behind
the Bastards dot com or we'll level the sources for this.
Find us on Twitter and Instagram at bastards pod and
find some room in your heart to buy a next
stretching machine for the young infant child in your life
today and be sure they grow up just like the Kaiser.

Speaker 3 (01:03:48):
I gotta go get a stretch in right now, right
after I write my mom the scariest letter I've ever.

Speaker 1 (01:03:53):
Wrote in my life. Everybody write your mom's about their sexy,
sexy hands.

Speaker 3 (01:03:58):
Everyone writing about their mom's hands. No shame, Just don't
hit send. It's so shameful.

Speaker 1 (01:04:04):
It's that shame.

Speaker 3 (01:04:05):
Robert is pro shaming people horny for their mom's hands.

Speaker 2 (01:04:08):
I'm a little more open minded.

Speaker 1 (01:04:12):
That's the fucking episode.

Speaker 2 (01:04:14):
Bye. Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website coolzonemedia
dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
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