Christopher Clark - Kaiser Wilhelm II

General Editor : Keith Robbins

CATHERINE DE MEDICI
R.J. Knecht

ELIZABETH I (2nd Edn)
Christopher Haigh

BURGHLEY
Michael A.R. Graves

JAMES I AND VI
Roger Lockyer

RICHELIEU
R.J. Knecht

GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS (2nd Edn)
Michael Roberts

OLIVER CROMWELL
Barry Coward

PETER THE GREAT (2nd Edn)
M.S. Anderson

THE ELDER PITT
Marie Peters

THE YOUNGER PITT
Michael Duffy

JOSEPH II
T.C.W. Blanning

ROBESPIERRE
John Hardman

NAPOLEON
Geoffrey Ellis

ALEXANDER I
Janet M. Hartley

DISRAELI
Ian Machin

JUREZ
Brian Hamnett

CAVOUR
Harry Hearder

NAPOLEON III
James McMillan

WILLIAM PENN
Mary K. Geiter

FRANCIS JOSEPH
Steven Beller

ATATRK
A.L. Macfie

LENIN
Beryl Williams

LLOYD GEORGE
Martin Pugh

PTAIN
Nicholas Atkin

HITLER
Ian Kershaw

CHURCHILL
Keith Robbins

NEHRU
Judith M. Brown

ATTLEE
Robert Pearce

NASSER
Peter Woodward

DE GAULLE
Andrew Shennan

FRANCO
Sheelagh Ellwood

MAO
S.G. Breslin

MACMILLAN
John Turner

KENNEDY
Hugh Brogan

CASTRO (2nd Edn)
Sebastian Balfour

GORBACHEV
Martin McCauley

KAISER WILHELM II
Christopher Clark

Christopher M Clark

To my father, Peter Dennis Clark

First published 2000

by Pearson Education Limited

Published 2013

by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Copyright 2000, Taylor & Francis.

The right of Christopher M. Clark to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

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ISBN 13: 978-0-582-24559-4 (pbk)

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book can be obtained from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Clark, Christopher M.
William II: the last Kaiser / Christopher M. Clark.
p. cm. --(Profiles in power)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-582-24559-1 (limp: alk. paper) -- ISBN 0-582-24560-5 (CSD: alk. paper)
1. William II, German Emperor, 1859-1941. 2. Germany--Politics and
government--1888-1918. 3. Germany--Kings and rulers--Biography. I. Title. II. Profiles
in power (London, England)
DD229.C53 2000
943.08'4'092--dc21
[B] 00030939

Typeset by 35 in 10/12 pt Janson Text

Wilhelm II is an ideal subject for Profiles in Power, because the extent of the power wielded by the last German Kaiser has long been the subject of animated historical debate. Was the later Wilhelmine empire governed through a system of personal rule ( persnliches Regiment ); was it a flesh and blood monarchy, in which the character and preferences of the sovereign played a crucial role in shaping political outcomes? Or was power vested in traditional oligarchies and anonymous forces that relegated an inconsequential shadow-Kaiser to the margins of the political process?

Much of the most interesting writing on these issues has focused on the question of whether the term personal rule can rightly be applied to all or part of Wilhelms reign. The debate over personal rule flared up in the early 1950s and has flourished intermittently ever since, fed by analogous disputes over the nature and distribution of power within the National Socialist regime. It has now generated its own sophisticated metaliterature, in which conflicting viewpoints on the power and political impact of Wilhelm II are classified, compared and assessed.

This book does not seek to reopen the debate on personal rule. Useful as the debate has been in connecting the scholarship on the reign with broader questions about the imperial polity, it has been dogged by an underlying uncertainty about definitions. Used as a catchphrase in Wilhelmine political polemic, personal rule meant different things to different people and has never acquired an agreed or stable meaning, a fact that has muddled the scholarly dispute over its applicability to the reign of Wilhelm II. A further problem has been that whereas most historians who use the term agree that the concept fits some parts of Wilhelms reign better than others, no consensus has been reached about when personal rule began and when it came to an end.

This book focuses instead as the guidelines of this series require on the character and extent of the Kaisers power, his political goals and his success in achieving them, and the mechanisms by which he projected authority and exercised influence. It aims to tease out the different kinds of power Wilhelm could exercise in different domains, and the various constraints that he encountered in doing so. It makes no pretence to biography, for which readers are referred to the highly readable studies by Balfour and Cecil, and the definitive multi-volume work now in progress by John Rhl, the worlds foremost expert on this Kaiser and his reign. Although it draws on some unpublished sources, it does not claim to have made crucial new discoveries. It aims at synthesis and interpretation. Above all it asks the question: how much difference did it make that it was Wilhelm II who sat on the German throne during the turbulent years between 1888 and 1918?