A trio of German men
Henning Schroeder at The Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Minnesota:
Before the trophy went to Adolf Hitler, German Emperor and King of Prussia Wilhelm II held the award for Most Hated Man on Earth. And while Hitler’s Third Reich has become the ultimate go-to place for much journalistic handwringing about the horrible times we are living in, in reality it feels like we are still stuck in Wilhelm’s Second Reich — it’s Kaiserzeit in America. Donald Trump and the last German Emperor have a lot in common, the vanity, insecurity, the penchant for bombast and persönliches Regiment (personal rule), to name just a few. In Wilhelm’s case the brakes on his impulsive and egotistical personality came off after he fired Bismarck, the experienced chancellor he inherited from his father, and surrounded himself with sycophantic generals and noble toadies who went along with his imperial fantasies and straight into World War I.
We had a little conversation about that exact parallel a couple of days ago at the Miscellany Room, via What a Maroon:
This popped up in my Facebook memories from two years ago. No one even tried to guess who it was referring to. Any guesses here?
“He believed in force, and the ‘survival of the fittest’ in domestic as well as foreign politics… [He] was not lacking in intelligence, but he did lack stability, disguising his deep insecurities by swagger and tough talk. He frequently fell into depressions and hysterics… [His] personal instability was reflected in vacillations of policy. His actions, at home as well as abroad, lacked guidance, and therefore often bewildered or infuriated public opinion. He was not so much concerned with gaining specific objectives…, as with asserting his will.”
It was that very Kaiser, child of Queen Victoria’s firstborn Vicky.
I am reminded of those spineless Wilhelmine characters every time I am watching a White House press briefing. It’s not so much the bumbling fool at the microphone who advertises Clorox for healing the nation. That’s to be expected from someone who has been in sales all his life. What’s truly troubling is the backdrop of supposedly educated advisors and cabinet members who gaze at the president nodding their heads like bobble toys every time he opens his mouth. Not much different from Wilhelm’s bootlicking court jesters.
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you.
The one difference that gives us some reason for hope is that there are clearly marked legal avenues for removing the BOM* from office. Though apparently Prince Jared has been making noises about possible postponing the election.
*Thanks for that. That may become my favorite nickname for the current occupier of the White House.
Technically, Trump does not have the power to postpone the election; that is a Congressional power. And even if the election is postponed, he is required to leave office at the expiration of his term if he has not been re-elected. I suppose that means we would move through succession.
The Supreme Court has rejected the idea that the president has a truly broad emergency power; of course, that was in the Truman years, so it wasn’t a court dominated by ideologues for the GOP that would vote how the party wants them to rather than how the constitution and the law require, so he might work up a legal argument that they would accept.
The problem with what Trump does and doesn’t have the right to do is that he doesn’t have the power to do a lot of things he’s done, but Congress has let him get away with it because of fear of his voters, or whatever other ridiculous reason they may have. And the presidents have been seizing more and more power ever since the time of Wilson, so a lot of people do now believe they have this almost imperial power, and that it is written in the constitution. He doesn’t, but if no one stops him, then he effectively does.
And if someone did try to stop him, they would still need to enforce it. He is Commander-in-Chief of the military, and they are unlikely to disobey and remove him. Even if they did, that leads to the possibility of a military takeover, and a military dictatorship rarely works out well for the people.
I think I’ve written here before about Wilhelm II too. He’s an interesting character and very like Trump. He was smarter for sure. His problem I think was the bubble he lived in from childhood. He grew up in an environment where every utterance was called genius, every endeavor praised as the best ever and no criticism being tolerated, even critiques from his teachers. Nothing was denied to him, he never experienced disappointment, rejection or restrictions.
He barely understood the concept that someone could have a different opinion on something and that what others thought or knew could be valid. Unlike Trump, he was quite sane, just horribly stunted cognitively and emotionally.
It is no surprise that he got rid of Bismarck very quickly. Whatever your opinion on Bismarck as a person, he was very clever and highly strategic. Not enough to avoid Wilhelm’s axe but he was highly respected even by his enemies and his ousting did not come without protest.
Without Bismarck, foreign policy began to crumble. Bismarck was determined to maintain peace in Europe and dealt with European nations in such a way as to balance power and reduce conflict. Wilhelm was more of a hawk although I suspect that was less about policy and more about his childish view of war as a great game.
He seemed to think that as the Kaiser, he was in some way also king of Europe. Thus he was flustered, enraged, and utterly baffled as to why other countries would not do what he commanded.
Late 19th/early 20th Century politics in Germany are fascinating. The Machiavellian plotting and scheming is as ludicrously complicated and bizarre as the time of Machiavelli himself. If it was a novel it would be lots of fun to read. In the context of history,it’s chilling because Wilhelm bears much of the blame for how things turned out.
I recall reading once that during WWI Wilhelm made a remark to someone to the effect of If Grandmama (Queen Victoria) were still alive she would never have allowed me to have my war. So, a definite childish streak, just like the Donald, although to his credit the Kaiser did at least acknowledge that there had been at least one person he was subordinate to.
And, like Hitler, our current dictator did not grow without deep roots in the political culture. For decades, revisionist historians struggled to erase German responsibility for the Great War. Some of the same guys turned up as the first Shoah deniers after the Second World War, e.g. Harry Elmer Barnes.