Customer Reviews

The Last Kaiser: The Life of Wilhelm II

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2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Not only should a great biography of an important world leader be well researched and historically accurate, but in order to have any appeal beyond scholastic circles it should also be entertaining and bring the subject to life. In order to achieve this delicate balance, an author must carefully review the voluminous historical record and cull the mundane and marginally relevant details from those that provide real interest and insight. I can't speak authoritatively on the subject, but it is clear that Giles MacDonogh has exhaustively studied the life of Kaiser Wilhelm II. Both original sources in the form of personal letters and first hand accounts and later critical examinations of Wilhelm are well represented. Unfortunately, while this book may be a scholarly success, it is not a particularly good read. The subject is compelling, but MacDonogh's pedantic rendition never fully engages the lay reader. Wilhelm is one of the most contradictory and controversial leaders of the 2th century, but this book never really gives you a sense of his personality or his relationships with others. Instead of really delving into the heart and soul of his subject, MacDonogh produces a dry litany of historical facts. The only personal aspect of the kaiser that MacDonogh tries to address in any depth is his anti-semitism, but even here he is not completely successful.

Gile MacDonogh has produced an interesting new look at Kaiser Wilhelm II. The writing is not scintillating, and there are some ridiculous errors (The Tsar-Liberator was Alexander II, not Nicholas II). The editing leaves a lot to be desired, too, as there are some sentences which don't make sense unless you figure out that there are some words missing here and there.
Be that as it may, the book is nevertheless well worth your time. MacDonogh takes a different attitude than most about the Kaiser's damaged arm, pointing out that he was able to cope successfully with the handicap throughout a long life and that it was not necessarily psychologically damaging. MacDonogh also takes another view of Wilhelm's parents, Kaiser Frederick III and Victoria, Princess Royal of Britain. Most of their previous biographers have made "Fritz" and "Vicky" out as heroes determined to make Germany a liberal, democratic nation. MacDonogh underscores Fritz's weaknesses and penchant for pomp and Vicky's cold and demanding nature.
MacDonogh also illuminates Wilhelm's role as a surprisingly progressive ruler. The Kaiser was one of the first to speak of a United States of Europe and the need to let down customs barriers, eighty years before such ideas became fashionable. At the same time Wilhelm was advocating these reforms, unfortunately, he was also pushing Germany's imperialistic and militaristic policies until they became an open challenge to Great Britain and led to World War I.
One of the most interesting parts of the book is the section dealing with Wilhelm's exile in Doorn, Holland. It seems the ex-Kaiser may have grown up a little once he was out of the spotlight, refusing to deal with the Nazis, for example, and reducing some of his braggadocio.
So, despite the shortcomings of the writing and editorial processes, this is a worthwhile addition to your library.

I actually feel a little bit guilty giving this book only 3 stars! It is clear from the endnotes that Mr. MacDonogh did a prodigious amount of research, almost all of it in the primary German sources. There are many amusing and interesting bits and pieces.....little details concerning the way William dressed and ate; many clever and sarcastic comments about their contemporaraies made by William and Bismarck; a description of how William passed the time of day after he was forced to abdicate (he loved to chop wood, and at his first "home" in exile, Amerongen, he managed to chop up some 14,000 trees- giving away most of the wood to the poor). And even though it is interesting to read about many of these things, the end result is oddly unsatisfying. It is almost as though the author found lots of fascinating material, knew he had to include it, but couldn't turn everything into a coherent whole. Mr. MacDonogh quotes so many contrasting opinions that we are left with all of the following: William was an anti-Semite; William was not an anti-Semite; William was brilliant and could have been another Frederick The Great; William was lazy; William had boundless energy and was always traveling and making speeches; William was mentally unbalanced; William could have done more to prevent the slide into WWI; William's hands were tied by the military and by right-wing members of the government; William wanted an alliance with the British; no he didn't; William wanted an alliance with the Russians; no he didn't.....I think you get the idea! In the end, we are left with no clear picture of William as a person or as a ruler, nor are we left with a clear picture of what was going on in Germany in the crucial years leading up to 1914. Imagine that Georges Seurat started to paint a portrait of someone, but by the time the picture was finished it had mutated into a Jackson Pollock! That's probably the best description I could give you of how I felt by the end of this book...

Giles MacDonogh gives a fine, often thoughtful, account of the life of the last German emperor, Kaiser Wilhelm II, whom the author refers repeatedly as William. MacDonogh offers a vivid, complex portrait of Wilhelm II, which clearly illustrates the contradictory aspects of the Kaiser's personality. Much to my surprise, MacDonogh amply demonstrates how progressive the Kaiser was with regards to labor relations and economics, having the vision of creating a "United States of Europe" nearly a century before its inception as the European Union. And he shows how determined Wilhelm was in maintaining peaceful relations between the German Empire and its neighbors. Indeed, Kaiser Wilhelm II comes across as the most level-headed person in his regime at the outbreak of World War II; yet he was paradoxically also the most naive, hoping that his family ties to the ruling houses of Great Britain and Russia would ensure peace. MacDonogh also notes Wilhelm's complex, often contradictory, atttitudes towards England (The British Empire), often cast as family quarrels between himself and his British Coburg cousins; for example seeking an alliance with Great Britain while simultaneously building a German navy which threatened British interests. Perhaps the most fascinating part of the book covers Wilhelm's years in exile at Doorn, The Netherlands, where the former Kaiser indulged in his lifelong passion for archaeology.

Good biography about man who treated his parents Fritz and Vicky very poorly but was with his grandmother Queen Victoria when she died.His belligerent and bellicose nature did nothing to quell emotions and tempers in the period prior to the outbreak of World War I.His physical deformities really messed him up as a child from which he never recovered and which plagued him with self doubt and anger. The book was very balanced in its treatment of him and attempts to remove the generally accepted position that he was largely responsible for the First World War.

I enjoyed reading this book. There were a few times I lost track of who was who doing what to what and when and where, but for the most part I felt I understand better the role and personality of a complex and contradictory charactor in history.

In regard to the Kaiser, the quote by Daisy Pless in this book may say it best. "Poor man, he means so awfully well, and everything he does is intended for the best, and still he is completly destitute of tact that everything turns out exactly opposite to what he intends."

Still,little comfort to the millions who died in the "War to End All Wars."

The most recent English language biographical study of Wilhelm is The Last Kaiser: The Life of Wilhelm II by Giles MacDonogh (2001). MacDonogh seems to have set out deterministically to write something other than an "indictment" of Wilhelm. He asserts that historians have been unduly critical against the emperor for eighty years, which has prompted him to examine Wilhelm "in a light which, if not ridiculously positive, [is] at least a little more indulgent than that which as coloured attitudes in the past." (viii) While MacDonogh's study is not "ridiculously positive," it does tend to minimize Wilhelm's culpability for the various blunders historians commonly associate with his reign. While he concurs with other scholars of Wilhelmine Germany that the emperor was "a mass of contradictions," (1) MacDonogh also minimizes the Kaiser's documented anti-Semitism, and strongly implies that the "cases brought up against the emperor" such as the Kruger telegram (1896), the "Hun Speech" of 1900, and the Daily Telegraph Affair (1908), were handled "reasonable, and in some cases well" by the Kaiser. (7) This attempt to show that Wilhelm did not act maliciously, criminally or incompetently is what differentiates The Last Kaiser from its predecessors.
In MacDonogh's account of Wilhelm's wartime role, he reaches a familiar conclusion: "it would be impossible to make out that he played the role of `Supreme Warlord' between 1914 and 1918." (3) He shows that Wilhelm "wavered over the preventive strike" long advocated by the General Staff, and "each time he looked in to the abyss he drew back in horror and countermanded" his generals' orders for such an attack. (9) This gives the kaiser too much of a benevolent, conscientious role for the time. MacDonogh portrays a Kaiser swept up with the emotions and events of August 1914, a leader who allowed himself to be carried into the war. By the first weeks of the conflict, "he had become increasingly peripheral." (367) This declension culminated in January 1917 with Bethmann Hollweg's removal at the insistence of Hindenburg and Ludendorff, at which point Wilhelm "was no more than a shadow emperor. No one listened to him." (391) Probably true.....
Despite showing far more sympathy toward his subject than other biographers of Wilhelm II have done, MacDonogh echoes many of their conclusions. "It is perhaps right that we condemn William," he suggests, "for if the First World War was not his undertaking, the finger of blames points over and over again to the failure of German diplomacy in which he tried so hard to play a positive role." (460) MacDonogh seems reluctant to assign Wilhelm much direct blame for the origins of the Great War or how it was conducted. On the contrary, most students of the last Hohenzollern ruler of Germany concur with the concise biographical entry in The Oxford Companion to Military History (2001): Kaiser Wilhelm II was "seduced by...nationalism and militarism," and came to discover that "leading a cavalry charge on maneuvers...is not the same thing as presiding over a beleaguered state engaged in total war." The last German Kaiser "lacked the strength of character and consistency of purpose which his role demanded, and if he cannot be blamed for leading Germany into war, he may be more justly censured for what one historian has called `a childlike flight from reality' in the crisis of 1914."

For obvious reasons there have been pretty much no books on Kaiser Wilhelm II that portray him in other than an unambiguously negative light published since 1918, and fewer still not published in German before then. Giles MacDonogh's biography is not exactly positive in outlook, but certainly he aims to be dispassionate and objective, sticking to facts and omitting a lot of the heavy breathing ordinarily associated with biographies of his subject. Unfortunately, if there is a flaw to this long and exhaustive book, it stems from that very thing.

MacDonogh does an excellent job on the historical/family/dynastic background of the future Kaiser, making more or less clear to us the dynamics of the royal houses and their interactions of the pre-war era. The family tree given is also of great use. Young William's studies under a severe Calvinist tutor, his relations with his soft father and cold mother, and in particular the peripatetic life he led before coming to the throne are all well-covered, and one gets a good idea of the various inputs, for good or ill, that went into the bombastic, intelligent, ill-disciplined, sensitive, self-indulgent and inconsistent personality of the Kaiser. His father's brief reign, cut short by throat cancer controversially mistreated in the course of a family political/medical tug-of-war, and the pressures this put on all around Wilhelm, is also discussed in detail.

Once Wilhelm ascends to the throne, his reign is broken down in chapters focusing on his key ministers, and the focus changes somewhat. For this reader, the book lost something, as it became something more like an extended itinerary, a travelogue, as the author follows the royal party on its travels around Europe, its cruises to the north, and the constant move from palace to palace. Changes in the composition of the royal court are noted, important personalities discussed (except, it seems, Wilhelm's much of the time), but we get little but the occasional reactionary outburst regarding the political issues of the time, no real analysis of statecraft as Wilhelm attempted to exercise it. Or perhaps, that's all it was? His motives pre-war are treated more or less sympathetically; it is clear Wilhelm spent his entire life wanting to form an alliance with Britain, for example, and never understood the British objections to the growing German fleet; nonetheless, the lack of an alliance must be laid largely at Britain's door. Here Wilhelm's bark was far worse than his bite.

There was a good deal of inconsistency to Wilhelm's attitudes at times. There are well-known instances of strongly anti-Semitic attitudes taken; then, there are close friendships with a number of his Jewish connections and business pals, and his rejection of the Nazis and those in his entourage after the war who would embrace them. His saber-rattling was it is now clear intended largely for effect; in war, he was lost. His deeply conservative outlook brooked no serious risk - until the final one confirmed his worst nightmares.

Ironically, one idea of Kaiser Wilhelm II has come true - he had pushed almost from the start for a confederated type of united states of Europe, formed to benefit all by keeping the peace and stabilizing the world. Put forward again and again in one way or another, it was rebuffed again and again by implacable enemies like France, or those concerned about the rapid economic ascendency of Germany under such a stable system, like England.

Once the war does come, Wilhelm is essentially an irrelevancy, pushed aside by the army for the duration; his major decision after 1914 was whether or not to abdicate in the final days. His time in Holland, and advances towards him by various Nazis including Goering, show Wilhelm to have, finally and in comfortable exile, come to terms with himself, his aptitudes and interests, and to have become more than a cartoon.

This reader enjoyed the book, but felt if it had a flaw it was the coverage of Wilhelm's reign on a daily basis - where here it is seemingly reduced to a list of stops and starts, which becomes quite repetitive.

I have long been interested in German history and this book is an excellent biography of the last German emperor and his reign. I highly recommend to those who have an interest in the Germany monarchy.

Clearly Giles MacDonagh did a great deal of research for this book. It shows on every page. Unfortunately, what we get is more a straightforward, day-by-day description of Wilhelm II's life than a real biography. Very little background information or interpretation makes it onto the page. As the bones for a first-rate biography, it seems to be excellent. But I was left with no real understanding of the Kaiser or his critically important times. Perhaps someday Mr. MacDonagh will revisit the text and flesh it out into a real biography, rather than a "facts on file" type of timeline. Clearly he is complete in his research (after a while, I began to think that he could probably tell us what the Kaiser had for breakfast on October 13, 1911) but the book lacks real style and needs a good editor.