Wilhelm II

Wilhelm II (Friedrich Wilhelm Viktor Albert; 27 January 1859 – 4 June 1941) was the last German Emperor from 1888 until his abdication in 1918. His fall from power marked the end of the German Empire as well as the Hohenzollern dynasty's 400-year rule over Prussia.

Born during the reign of his granduncle Frederick William IV of Prussia, Wilhelm was the son of Prince Frederick William and Victoria, Princess Royal. Through his mother, he was the eldest of the 42 grandchildren of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom. In March 1888, Wilhelm's father, Frederick William, ascended the German and Prussian thrones as Frederick III. Frederick died just 99 days later, and his son succeeded him as Kaiser Wilhelm II.

In March 1890, the young Kaiser dismissed longtime Chancellor Otto von Bismarck and assumed direct control over his nation's policies, embarking on a "New Course" to cement Germany's status as a leading world power. Over the course of his reign, Germany acquired new territories in China and the Pacific and became Europe's largest manufacturer. However, Wilhelm often undermined such progress by making tactless and threatening statements towards other countries without first consulting his ministers. Likewise, he and his government did much to alienate the German Empire from most of Europe by initiating a massive naval build-up, contesting French control of Morocco, backing Austria-Hungary's annexation of Bosnia and threatening Britain's access to the Persian Gulf by building a railway through Baghdad. By the second decade of the 20th century, Germany could rely only on significantly weaker nations such as Austria-Hungary and the declining Ottoman Empire as allies.

Despite strengthening Germany's position as a great power in the short term by building a powerful navy and promoting scientific innovation within its borders, Wilhelm II's erratic foreign policy greatly antagonized the international community and is considered by many to have led to the fall of the German Empire. In 1914, his diplomatic brinksmanship culminated in the guarantee of his country's military support to Austria-Hungary during the July Crisis which ultimately plunged all of Europe into World War I. A lax wartime leader, Wilhelm left virtually all decisions regarding strategy and organisation of the war effort to the German Supreme Army Command. By August 1916, his broad delegation of power gave rise to a de facto military dictatorship that dominated the country's policies in his place for the rest of the conflict. Despite emerging victorious over Russia and obtaining significant territorial gains in Eastern Europe, Germany relinquished all its conquests after its forces were decisively defeated on the Western Front in the autumn of 1918.

Losing the support of his country's military and many of his subjects, Wilhelm was forced to abdicate during the German Revolution of 1918–1919 which converted Germany into an unstable democratic state known as the Weimar Republic. The Treaty of Versailles stated he would face trial for the war. Wilhelm fled to exile in the Netherlands, where he remained during its occupation by Nazi Germany in 1940 before dying there in 1941.

Wilhelm was born in Berlin on 27 January 1859—at the Crown Prince's Palace—to Victoria, Princess Royal ("Vicky") and Prince Frederick William of Prussia ("Fritz", the future Frederick III). His mother, Vicky, was the eldest child of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom. At the time of Wilhelm's birth, his granduncle Frederick William IV was king of Prussia. Frederick William IV had been left permanently incapacitated by a series of strokes, and his younger brother Wilhelm, the young prince's grandfather, was acting as regent. Prince Wilhelm was the oldest of the 42 grandchildren of his maternal grandparents (Queen Victoria and Prince Albert). Upon the death of Frederick William IV in January 1861, Wilhelm's namesake grandfather became king, and the two-year-old Wilhelm became second in the line of succession to the Prussian throne. After 1871, Wilhelm also became second in the line to the newly created German Empire, which, according to the constitution of the German Empire, was ruled by the Prussian king. At the time of his birth, he was also sixth in the line of succession to the British throne, after his maternal uncles and his mother.

Shortly before midnight on 26 January 1859, Princess Vicky experienced labour pains, followed by her water breaking, after which August Wegner, the family's personal physician, was summoned. Upon examining Vicky, Wegner realised the infant was in the breech position; gynaecologist Eduard Arnold Martin was then sent for, arriving at the palace at 10 am on 27 January. After administering ipecac and prescribing a mild dose of chloroform, which was administered by Vicky's personal physician Sir James Clark, Martin advised Fritz the unborn child's life was endangered. As mild anaesthesia did not alleviate her extreme labour pains, resulting in her "horrible screams and wails", Clark finally administered full anaesthesia. Observing her contractions to be insufficiently strong, Martin administered a dose of ergot extract, and at 2:45 pm saw the infant's buttocks emerging from the birth canal but noticed the pulse in the umbilical cord was weak and intermittent. Despite this dangerous sign, Martin ordered a further heavy dose of chloroform, so he could better manipulate the infant. Observing the infant's legs to be raised upwards, and his left arm likewise raised upwards and behind his head, Martin "carefully eased out the Prince's legs". Due to the "narrowness of the birth canal", he then forcibly pulled the left arm downwards, tearing the brachial plexus, then continued to grasp the left arm to rotate the infant's trunk and free the right arm, likely exacerbating the injury. After completing the delivery, and despite realising the newborn prince was hypoxic, Martin turned his attention to the unconscious Vicky. Noticing after some minutes that the newborn remained silent, Martin and the midwife Fräulein Stahl worked frantically to revive the prince; finally, despite the disapproval of those present, Stahl spanked the newborn vigorously until "a weak cry escaped his pale lips".

Modern medical assessments have concluded Wilhelm's hypoxic state at birth, due to the breech delivery and the heavy dosage of chloroform, left him with minimal to mild brain damage, which manifested itself in his subsequent hyperactive and erratic behaviour, limited attention span and impaired social abilities. The brachial plexus injury resulted in Erb's palsy, which left Wilhelm with a withered left arm about six inches (15 centimetres) shorter than his right. He tried with some success to conceal this; many photographs show him holding a pair of white gloves in his left hand to make the arm seem longer. In others, he holds his left hand with his right, has his disabled arm on the hilt of a sword, or holds a cane to give the illusion of a useful limb posed at a dignified angle. Historians have suggested that this disability affected his emotional development.

In 1863, Wilhelm was taken to England to be present at the wedding of his uncle Bertie and Princess Alexandra of Denmark (later King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra). Wilhelm attended the ceremony in a Highland costume, complete with a small toy dirk. During the ceremony, the four-year-old became restless. His 18-year-old uncle Prince Alfred, charged with keeping an eye on him, told him to be quiet, but Wilhelm drew his dirk and threatened Alfred. When Alfred attempted to subdue him by force, Wilhelm bit him on the leg. His grandmother, Queen Victoria, missed seeing the fracas; to her Wilhelm remained "a clever, dear, good little child, the great favourite of my beloved Vicky".

Vicky was obsessed with her son's damaged arm, blaming herself for the child's handicap, and insisted that he become a good rider. The thought that Wilhelm, as heir to the throne, should not be able to ride was intolerable to her. Riding lessons began when Wilhelm was eight and were a matter of endurance for him. Over and over, the weeping prince was set on his horse and compelled to go through the paces. He fell off time after time but, despite his tears, was set on its back again. After weeks of this, he was finally able to maintain his balance.

Wilhelm, from six years of age, was tutored and heavily influenced by the 39-year-old teacher Georg Ernst Hinzpeter. "Hinzpeter", he later wrote, "was really a good fellow. Whether he was the right tutor for me, I dare not decide. The torments inflicted on me, in this pony riding, must be attributed to my mother."

As a teenager, Wilhelm was educated at Kassel at the Friedrichsgymnasium. In January 1877, Wilhelm finished high school and on his eighteenth birthday received as a present from his grandmother the Order of the Garter. After Kassel, he spent four terms at the University of Bonn, studying law and politics. He became a member of the exclusive Corps Borussia Bonn. Wilhelm possessed a quick intelligence, but this was often overshadowed by a cantankerous temper.

As a scion of the royal house of Hohenzollern, Wilhelm was exposed from an early age to the military society of the Prussian aristocracy. This had a major impact on him, and in maturity Wilhelm was seldom seen out of uniform. The hyper-masculine military culture of Prussia in this period did much to frame his political ideals and personal relationships.

Kaiser Wilhelm I died in Berlin on 9 March 1888, and Prince Wilhelm's father ascended the throne as Frederick III. He was already experiencing an incurable throat cancer and spent all 99 days of his reign fighting the disease before dying. On 15 June of that same year, his 29-year-old son succeeded him as German Emperor and King of Prussia.

Although in his youth he had been a great admirer of Otto von Bismarck, Wilhelm's characteristic impatience soon brought him into conflict with the "Iron Chancellor", the dominant figure in the foundation of his empire. The new Emperor opposed Bismarck's careful foreign policy, preferring vigorous and rapid expansion to protect Germany's "place in the sun". Furthermore, the young Emperor had come to the throne, unlike his grandfather, determined to rule as well as reign. While the imperial constitution vested executive power in the monarch, Wilhelm I had been content to leave day-to-day administration to Bismarck. Early conflicts between Wilhelm II and his chancellor soon poisoned the relationship between the two men. Bismarck had believed that Wilhelm was a lightweight who could be dominated, and he showed escalating disrespect for Wilhelm's favored policy objectives in the late 1880s. The final split between monarch and statesman occurred soon after an attempt by Bismarck to implement far-reaching anti-Socialist laws in early 1890.

According to adherents of the "Bismarck myth", the young Kaiser rejected the Iron Chancellor's allegedly "peaceful foreign policy" and instead plotted with senior generals to work "in favour of a war of aggression". Bismarck himself once complained to an aide, "That young man wants war with Russia, and would like to draw his sword straight away if he could. I shall not be a party to it."

But the origin of Bismarck's dismissal lay in home affairs. After gaining an absolute majority in the Reichstag he formed the Kartell, a coalition government of the German Conservative Party and the National Liberal Party. They favoured making the anti-Socialist laws permanent, with one exception: giving the German police the power, similarly to the Tsarist Okhrana, to expel alleged Socialist agitators from their homes by decree and into internal exile. Even Old Liberal statesman Eugen Richter, the author of the famous 1891 dystopian novel Pictures of the Socialistic Future, opposed banning the Social Democratic Party outright and said: "I fear Social Democracy more under this law than without it". The Kartell split over this issue and the law was not passed.

As the debate continued, Wilhelm became more and more interested in the social problems being exploited in the propaganda of the Socialists, especially the treatment of mine workers who went on strike in 1889. He routinely disagreed with Bismarck during Cabinet meetings. Bismarck, in turn, sharply disagreed with Wilhelm's pro-labor union policies and worked to circumvent them. Bismarck, feeling unappreciated by the young Emperor and by his ambitious advisors, once refused to co-sign a proclamation regarding the protection of industrial workers, as was required by the German Constitution, and prevented it from being made law. While Bismarck had previously sponsored landmark social security legislation, by 1889–90, he had become violently opposed to the rise of organized labor. In particular, he was opposed to wage increases, improving working conditions, and regulating labour relations.

The final break between the Iron Chancellor and the Kaiser came when Bismarck initiated discussions with the opposition to form a new parliamentary majority without consulting with Wilhelm first. The Kartell, the shifting coalition government that Bismarck had been able to maintain since 1867, had finally lost its majority of seats in the Reichstag due to the Anti-Socialist Laws fiasco. The remaining powers in the Reichstag were the Catholic Centre Party and the Conservative Party.

In most parliamentary systems, the head of government depends upon the confidence of the parliamentary majority and has the right to form coalitions to maintain a majority of supporters. In a constitutional monarchy, however, the Chancellor is required to meet regularly with the monarch to explain their policies and intentions within the Government. A Chancellor in a constitutional monarchy also cannot afford to make an enemy of the monarch, who represents the only real check and balance against a Chancellor's otherwise absolute power. This is because a constitutional monarch has plenty of means at their disposal of quietly blocking a Chancellor's policy objectives and is one of the only people who can forcibly remove an overly ambitious Chancellor from power. For these reasons, the last Kaiser believed that he had every right to be informed before Bismarck began coalition talks with the Opposition.

Bismarck was succeeded as Chancellor of Germany and Minister-President of Prussia by Leo von Caprivi. At the opening of the Reichstag on 6 May 1890, the Kaiser stated that the most pressing issue was the further enlargement of the bill concerning the protection of the labourer. In 1891, the Reichstag passed the Workers Protection Acts, which improved working conditions, protected women and children and regulated labour relations.

Caprivi in turn was replaced by Chlodwig von Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst in 1894. Following the dismissal of Hohenlohe in 1900, Wilhelm appointed the man whom he regarded as "his own Bismarck", Bernhard von Bülow.

In appointing Caprivi and then Hohenlohe, Wilhelm was embarking upon what is known to history as "the New Course", in which he hoped to exert decisive influence in the government of the empire. There is debate amongst historians as to the precise degree to which Wilhelm succeeded in implementing "personal rule" in this era, but what is clear is the very different dynamic which existed between the Crown and its chief political servant (the Chancellor) in the "Wilhelmine Era". These chancellors were senior civil servants and not seasoned politician-statesmen like Bismarck. Wilhelm wanted to preclude the emergence of another Iron Chancellor, whom he ultimately detested as being "a boorish old killjoy" who had not permitted any minister to see the Emperor except in his presence, keeping a stranglehold on effective political power. Upon his enforced retirement and until his dying day, Bismarck became a bitter critic of Wilhelm's policies, but without gaining the support of a majority within the Reichstag there was little chance of Bismarck exerting a decisive influence on policy.

In the early twentieth century, Wilhelm began to concentrate upon his real agenda: the creation of a German Navy that would rival that of Britain and enable Germany to declare itself a world power. The last Kaiser ordered the high command of the armed forces to read United States Navy Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan's book, The Influence of Sea Power upon History, and spent hours drawing sketches of the ships that he dreamed of having built. Bülow and Bethmann Hollweg, his loyal chancellors, looked after domestic affairs, while Wilhelm obliviously began to spread alarm in the chancelleries of Europe with his increasingly eccentric and ill-advised statements on foreign affairs.

Wilhelm enthusiastically promoted the arts and sciences, as well as public education and social welfare. He sponsored the Kaiser Wilhelm Society for the promotion of scientific research; it was funded by wealthy private donors and by the state and comprised a number of research institutes in both pure and applied sciences. The Prussian Academy of Sciences was unable to avoid the Kaiser's pressure and lost some of its autonomy when it was forced to incorporate new programs in engineering, and award new fellowships in engineering sciences as a result of a gift from the Kaiser in 1900.

Wilhelm supported the modernisers as they tried to reform the Prussian system of secondary education, which was rigidly traditional, elitist, politically authoritarian, and unchanged by the progress in the natural sciences. As hereditary Protector of the Order of Saint John, he offered encouragement to the Christian order's attempts to place German medicine at the forefront of modern medical practice through its system of hospitals, nursing sisterhood and nursing schools, and nursing homes throughout the German Empire. Wilhelm continued as Protector of the Order even after 1918, as the position was in essence attached to the head of the House of Hohenzollern.

Historians have frequently stressed the role of Wilhelm's personality in shaping his reign. Thus, Thomas Nipperdey concludes he was:

...gifted, with a quick understanding, sometimes brilliant, with a taste for the modern,—technology, industry, science—but at the same time superficial, hasty, restless, unable to relax, without any deeper level of seriousness, without any desire for hard work or drive to see things through to the end, without any sense of sobriety, for balance and boundaries, or even for reality and real problems, uncontrollable and scarcely capable of learning from experience, desperate for applause and success,—as Bismarck said early on in his life, he wanted every day to be his birthday—romantic, sentimental and theatrical, unsure and arrogant, with an immeasurably exaggerated self-confidence and desire to show off, a juvenile cadet, who never took the tone of the officers' mess out of his voice, and brashly wanted to play the part of the supreme warlord, full of panicky fear of a monotonous life without any diversions, and yet aimless, pathological in his hatred against his English mother.

As a grandchild of Queen Victoria, Wilhelm was a first cousin of King George V of the United Kingdom, as well as of queens Marie of Romania, Maud of Norway, Victoria Eugenie of Spain and Empress Alexandra of Russia. In 1889, Wilhelm's younger sister Sophia married Constantine, Crown Prince of Greece. Wilhelm was infuriated by his sister's conversion from Lutheranism to Greek Orthodoxy; upon her marriage, he attempted to ban her from entering Germany.

Wilhelm's most contentious relationships were with his British relations. He craved the acceptance of his grandmother, Queen Victoria, and of the rest of her family. Despite the fact that his grandmother treated him with courtesy and tact, his other relatives largely denied him acceptance. He had an especially bad relationship with his uncle Bertie (later Edward VII). Between 1888 and 1901, Wilhelm resented Bertie, who despite being the heir apparent to the British throne, treated Wilhelm not as a reigning monarch, but merely as another nephew. In turn, Wilhelm often snubbed his uncle, whom he referred to as "the old peacock" and lorded his position as emperor over him. Beginning in the 1890s, Wilhelm made visits to England for Cowes Week on the Isle of Wight and often competed against his uncle in the yacht races. Bertie's wife, Alexandra, also disliked Wilhelm. Even though Wilhelm had not been on the throne at the time, Alexandra felt anger over the Prussian seizure of Schleswig-Holstein from her native Denmark in the 1860s, and was also annoyed over Wilhelm's treatment of his mother. Despite his poor relations with his English relatives, when he received news that Queen Victoria was dying at Osborne House in January 1901, Wilhelm travelled to England and was at her bedside when she died, and he remained for the funeral. He also was present at the funeral of King Edward VII in 1910.

German foreign policy under Wilhelm II was faced with a number of significant problems. Perhaps the most apparent was that Wilhelm was an impatient man, subjective in his reactions and affected strongly by sentiment and impulse. He was personally ill-equipped to steer German foreign policy along a rational course. There were a number of examples, such as the Kruger telegram of 1896 in which Wilhelm congratulated President Paul Kruger for preventing the Transvaal Republic from being annexed by the British Empire during the Jameson Raid.

British public opinion had been quite favourable towards the Kaiser in his first twelve years on the throne, but it turned sour in the late 1890s. During the First World War, he became the central target of British anti-German propaganda and the personification of a hated enemy.

Wilhelm exploited fears of a yellow peril trying to interest other European rulers in the perils they faced by invading China; few other leaders paid attention. Wilhelm also used the Japanese victory in the Russo-Japanese War to try to incite fear in the west of the yellow peril that they faced by a resurgent Imperial Japan, which Wilhelm claimed would ally with China to overrun the conventional European Powers. Wilhelm also invested in strengthening the German colonial empire in Africa and the Pacific, but few became profitable and all were lost during the First World War. In South West Africa (now Namibia), a native revolt against German rule led to the Herero and Nama genocide, although Wilhelm eventually ordered it to be stopped and recalled its mastermind General Lothar von Trotha.

One of the few times when Wilhelm succeeded in personal diplomacy was when in 1900, he supported the morganatic marriage of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria to Countess Sophie Chotek, and helped negotiate an end to the opposition to the wedding by Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria.

A domestic triumph for Wilhelm was when his daughter Victoria Louise married the Duke of Brunswick in 1913; this helped heal the rift between the House of Hanover and the House of Hohenzollern that had followed Bismarck's invasion and annexation of the Kingdom of Hanover in 1866.

In his first visit to Constantinople in 1889, Wilhelm secured the sale of German-made rifles to the Ottoman Army. Later on, he had his second political visit to the Ottoman Empire as a guest of Sultan Abdul Hamid II. The Kaiser started his journey with a visit to Constantinople on 16 October 1898; then he went by yacht to Haifa on 25 October. After visiting Jerusalem and Bethlehem, the Kaiser went back to Jaffa to embark to Beirut, where he took the train passing Aley and Zahlé to reach Damascus on 7 November. While visiting the Mausoleum of Saladin the following day, the Kaiser made a speech:

In the face of all the courtesies extended to us here, I feel that I must thank you, in my name as well as that of the Empress, for them, for the hearty reception given us in all the towns and cities we have touched, and particularly for the splendid welcome extended to us by this city of Damascus. Deeply moved by this imposing spectacle, and likewise by the consciousness of standing on the spot where held sway one of the most chivalrous rulers of all times, the great Sultan Saladin, a knight sans peur et sans reproche, who often taught his adversaries the right conception of knighthood, I seize with joy the opportunity to render thanks, above all to the Sultan Abdul Hamid for his hospitality. May the Sultan rest assured, and also the three hundred million Mohammedans scattered over the globe and revering in him their caliph, that the German Emperor will be and remain at all times their friend.

On 10 November, Wilhelm went to visit Baalbek before heading to Beirut to board his ship back home on 12 November.

In his second visit, Wilhelm secured a promise for German companies to construct the Berlin–Baghdad railway, and had the German Fountain constructed in Constantinople to commemorate his journey.

His third visit was on 15–16 October 1917, as the guest of Sultan Mehmed V Reşâd and Enver Pasha.

The Boxer Rebellion, an anti-foreign uprising in China, was put down in 1900 by an international force known as the Eight-Nation Alliance. The Kaiser's farewell address to departing German soldiers commanded them, in the spirit of the Huns, to be merciless in battle. Wilhelm's fiery rhetoric clearly expressed his vision for Germany as one of the great powers. There were two versions of the speech. The German Foreign Office issued an edited version, making sure to omit one particularly incendiary paragraph that they regarded as diplomatically embarrassing. The edited version was this:

Great overseas tasks have fallen to the new German Empire, tasks far greater than many of my countrymen expected. The German Empire has, by its very character, the obligation to assist its citizens if they are being set upon in foreign lands. ... A great task awaits you [in China]: you are to revenge the grievous injustice that has been done. The Chinese have overturned the law of nations; they have mocked the sacredness of the envoy, the duties of hospitality in a way unheard of in world history. It is all the more outrageous that this crime has been committed by a nation that takes pride in its ancient culture. Show the old Prussian virtue. Present yourselves as Christians in the cheerful endurance of suffering. May honor and glory follow your banners and arms. Give the whole world an example of manliness and discipline.

You know full well that you are to fight against a cunning, brave, well-armed, and cruel enemy. When you encounter him, know this: no quarter will be given. Prisoners will not be taken. Exercise your arms such that for a thousand years no Chinese will dare to look cross-eyed at a German. Maintain discipline. May God's blessing be with you, the prayers of an entire nation and my good wishes go with you, each and every one. Open the way to civilization once and for all! Now you may depart! Farewell, comrades!

The official version omitted the following passage from which the speech derives its name:

Should you encounter the enemy, he will be defeated! No quarter will be given! Prisoners will not be taken! Whoever falls into your hands is forfeited. Just as a thousand years ago the Huns under their King Attila made a name for themselves, one that even today makes them seem mighty in history and legend, may the name German be affirmed by you in such a way in China that no Chinese will ever again dare to look cross-eyed at a German.

On 6 March 1901, during a visit to Bremen, in an apparent assassination attempt Wilhelm was struck in the face by a sharp iron object thrown at him. The assailant, identified as Johann-Dietrich Weiland, was adjudged to be insane. The Kaiser was riding in a coach to the railway station when the incident happened at 10:10 pm, and the object thrown "afterward proved to be a fishplate". The German Emperor was left with a deep wound, an inch and a half long, below his left eye; the Chief of the Naval Ministry would note later, "On the temple or in the eye the blow could have been devastating. The wonder of it is that our All-Gracious Lord felt neither the object flying at him nor, in the rain, the copiously flowing blood; it was those around him who drew his attention to it at first." Despite rumors in the press that the Kaiser had sunk into a depression, he would say in a speech at the end of the month, "nothing is more false than to pretend that my sanity has suffered in some way. I am exactly the same as I was; I have become neither elegiac nor melancholic... everything stays the same."

One of Wilhelm's diplomatic blunders sparked the Moroccan Crisis of 1905. He made a spectacular visit to Tangier, in Morocco on 31 March 1905. He conferred with representatives of Sultan Abdelaziz of Morocco. The Kaiser proceeded to tour the city on the back of a white horse. The Kaiser declared he had come to support the sovereignty of the Sultan—a statement which amounted to a provocative challenge to French influence in Morocco. The Sultan subsequently rejected a set of French-proposed governmental reforms and invited major world powers to a conference that advised him on necessary reforms.

The Kaiser's presence was seen as an assertion of German interests in Morocco, in opposition to those of France. In his speech, he even made remarks in favour of Moroccan independence, and this led to friction with France, which was expanding its colonial interests in Morocco, and to the Algeciras Conference, which served largely to further isolate Germany in Europe.

The Daily Telegraph Affair of 1908 involved the publication in Germany of an article from the British newspaper that included a series of wild statements and diplomatically damaging remarks. Wilhelm had viewed the article, which was based on discussions he had had with Colonel Edward Stuart-Wortley in 1907, as an opportunity to promote his views on Anglo-German friendship, but due to the content and emotional tone of many of his statements, he ended up further alienating not only the British but also the French, Russians and Japanese. He was quoted as saying that he was among the minority of Germans friendly to Britain; that during the Second Boer War, he had rebuffed the French and Russians when they asked Germany to help them "not only to save the Boer Republics, but also to humiliate England to the dust"; and that the German naval buildup was targeted against the Japanese, not Britain. One especially memorable quotation from the article was, "You English are mad, mad, mad as March hares". The effect in Germany was quite significant, with serious calls to modify the constitution to limit the emperor's powers. The Daily Telegraph crisis deeply wounded Wilhelm's previously unimpaired self-confidence, and he experienced a severe bout of depression. He kept a low profile for many months after the scandal broke, although in July 1909 he took the opportunity to force the resignation of the chancellor, Prince von Bülow, whose defence of him in the Reichstag had been aimed primarily at shifting blame from himself for not stopping the publication of the article. As a result of the scandal, Wilhelm had less influence in domestic and foreign policy for the remainder of his reign than he had previously exercised.

Nothing Wilhelm did in the international arena was of more influence than his decision to pursue a policy of massive naval construction. A powerful navy was Wilhelm's pet project. He had inherited from his mother a love of the British Royal Navy, which was at that time the world's largest. He once confided to his uncle, the Prince of Wales, that his dream was to have a "fleet of my own some day". Wilhelm's frustration over his fleet's poor showing at the Fleet Review at his grandmother's Diamond Jubilee celebrations, combined with his inability to exert German influence in South Africa following the dispatch of the Kruger telegram, led to Wilhelm taking definitive steps toward the construction of a fleet to rival that of his British cousins. Wilhelm called on the services of the dynamic naval officer Alfred von Tirpitz, whom he appointed to the head of the Imperial Naval Office in 1897.

The new admiral had conceived of what came to be known as the "Risk Theory" or the Tirpitz Plan, by which Germany could force Britain to accede to German demands in the international arena through the threat posed by a powerful battlefleet concentrated in the North Sea. Tirpitz enjoyed Wilhelm's full support in his advocacy of successive naval bills of 1897 and 1900, by which the German navy was built up to contend with that of the British Empire. Naval expansion under the Fleet Acts eventually led to severe financial strains in Germany by 1914, as by 1906 Wilhelm had committed his navy to construction of the much larger, more expensive dreadnought type of battleship. The British depended on naval superiority and its response was to make Germany its most feared enemy.

In addition to the expansion of the fleet, the Kiel Canal was opened in 1895, enabling faster movements between the North Sea and the Baltic Sea. In 1889 Wilhelm reorganised top-level control of the navy by creating a Naval Cabinet (Marine-Kabinett) equivalent to the German Imperial Military Cabinet which had previously functioned in the same capacity for both the army and navy. The Head of the Naval Cabinet was responsible for promotions, appointments, administration, and issuing orders to naval forces. Captain Gustav von Senden-Bibran was appointed as the first head and remained so until 1906. The existing Imperial admiralty was abolished, and its responsibilities divided between two organisations. A new position was created, equivalent to the supreme commander of the army: the Chief of the High Command of the Admiralty, or Oberkommando der Marine, was responsible for ship deployments, strategy and tactics. Vice-Admiral Max von der Goltz was appointed in 1889 and remained in post until 1895. Construction and maintenance of ships and obtaining supplies was the responsibility of the State Secretary of the Imperial Navy Office (Reichsmarineamt), responsible to the Imperial Chancellor and advising the Reichstag on naval matters. The first appointee was Rear Admiral Karl Eduard Heusner, followed shortly by Rear Admiral Friedrich von Hollmann from 1890 to 1897. Each of these three heads of department reported separately to Wilhelm.

Historians typically argue that Wilhelm was largely confined to ceremonial duties during the war—there were innumerable parades to review and honours to award. "The man who in peace had believed himself omnipotent became in war a 'shadow Kaiser', out of sight, neglected, and relegated to the sidelines."

Wilhelm was a friend of Franz Ferdinand, and he was deeply shocked by his assassination on 28 June 1914. Wilhelm offered to support Austria-Hungary in crushing the Black Hand, the secret organisation that had plotted the killing, and even sanctioned the use of force by Austria against the source of the movement—Serbia (this is often called "the blank cheque"). He wanted to remain in Berlin until the crisis was resolved, but his courtiers persuaded him instead to go on his annual cruise of the North Sea on 6 July 1914. Wilhelm made erratic attempts to stay on top of the crisis via telegram, and when the Austro-Hungarian ultimatum was delivered to Serbia, he hurried back to Berlin. He reached Berlin on 28 July, read a copy of the Serbian reply, and wrote on it:

A brilliant solution—and in barely 48 hours! This is more than could have been expected. A great moral victory for Vienna; but with it every pretext for war falls to the ground, and [the Ambassador] Giesl had better have stayed quietly at Belgrade. On this document, I should never have given orders for mobilisation.

Unknown to the Emperor, Austro-Hungarian ministers and generals had already convinced the 83-year-old Franz Joseph I to sign a declaration of war against Serbia. As a direct consequence, Russia began a general mobilisation to attack Austria in defence of Serbia.

On the night of 30 July 1914, when handed a document stating that Russia would not cancel its mobilisation, Wilhelm wrote a lengthy commentary containing these observations:For I no longer have any doubt that England, Russia and France have agreed among themselves—knowing that our treaty obligations compel us to support Austria—to use the Austro-Serb conflict as a pretext for waging a war of annihilation against us ... Our dilemma over keeping faith with the old and honourable Emperor has been exploited to create a situation which gives England the excuse she has been seeking to annihilate us with a spurious appearance of justice on the pretext that she is helping France and maintaining the well-known Balance of Power in Europe, i.e., playing off all European States for her own benefit against us.

More recent British authors state that Wilhelm II really declared, "Ruthlessness and weakness will start the most terrifying war of the world, whose purpose is to destroy Germany. Because there can no longer be any doubts, England, France and Russia have conspired themselves together to fight an annihilation war against us".

When it became clear that Germany would experience a war on two fronts and that Britain would enter the war if Germany attacked France through neutral Belgium, the panic-stricken Wilhelm attempted to redirect the main attack against Russia. When Helmuth von Moltke (the younger) (who had chosen the old plan from 1905, made by General von Schlieffen for the possibility of German war on two fronts) told him that this was impossible, Wilhelm said: "Your uncle would have given me a different answer!" Wilhelm is also reported to have said, "To think that George and Nicky should have played me false! If my grandmother had been alive, she would never have allowed it." In the original Schlieffen Plan, Germany would attack the (supposed) weaker enemy first, meaning France. The plan supposed that it would take a long time before Russia was ready for war. Defeating France had been easy for Prussia in the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. At the 1914 border between France and Germany, an attack at this more southern part of France could be stopped by the French fortress along the border. However, Wilhelm II stopped any invasion of the Netherlands.

On 1 August 1914 (Saturday), Wilhelm II made a war speech in front of a great crowd. On Monday, he motored back to Berlin from Potsdam and issued an imperial order to convene the Reichstag the next day.

On 19 August 1914, Wilhelm II predicted that Germany would win the war. He said, "I am firmly confident that, with the help of God, the bravery of the German Army and Navy and the unquenchable unanimity of the German people during those hours of danger, victory will crown our cause."

Wilhelm's role in wartime was one of ever-decreasing power as he increasingly handled awards ceremonies and honorific duties. The high command continued with its strategy even when it was clear that the Schlieffen plan had failed. By 1916, the Empire had effectively become a military dictatorship under the control of Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg and General Erich Ludendorff. Increasingly cut off from reality and the political decision-making process, Wilhelm vacillated between defeatism and dreams of victory, depending upon the fortunes of his armies. Nevertheless, Wilhelm still retained the ultimate authority in matters of political appointment, and it was only after his consent had been gained that major changes to the high command could be brought about. Wilhelm was in favour of the dismissal of Colonel General Helmuth von Moltke in September 1914 and his replacement by General Erich von Falkenhayn. In 1917, Hindenburg and Ludendorff decided that Bethman-Hollweg was no longer acceptable to them as Chancellor and called upon the Kaiser to appoint somebody else. When asked whom they would accept, Ludendorff recommended Georg Michaelis, a nonentity whom he barely knew. Despite this, the Kaiser accepted the suggestion. Upon hearing in July 1917 that his cousin George V had changed the name of the British royal house to Windsor, Wilhelm remarked that he planned to see Shakespeare's play "The Merry Wives of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha". The Kaiser's support base collapsed completely in October–November 1918 in the military, the civilian government, and in German public opinion, as President Woodrow Wilson made it very clear that the monarchy must be overthrown before an end of the war could take place. That year also saw Wilhelm sickened during the worldwide Spanish flu outbreak, though he survived.

Wilhelm was at the Imperial Army headquarters in Spa, Belgium, when the uprisings in Berlin and other centres took him by surprise in late 1918. Mutiny among the ranks of his beloved Kaiserliche Marine, the imperial navy, profoundly shocked him. After the outbreak of the German Revolution, Wilhelm could not make up his mind whether to abdicate. Up to that point, he accepted that he would likely have to give up the imperial crown, but still hoped to retain the Prussian kingship. He believed that as ruler of two-thirds of Germany, he would still be a key player in any new system. However, this was impossible under the imperial constitution. Wilhelm thought he ruled as emperor in a personal union with Prussia. In truth, the constitution defined the empire as a confederation of states under the permanent presidency of Prussia. The imperial crown was thus tied to the Prussian crown, meaning that Wilhelm could not renounce one crown without renouncing the other.

Wilhelm's hope of retaining at least one of his crowns was revealed as unrealistic when, in the hope of preserving the monarchy in the face of growing revolutionary unrest, Chancellor Prince Max of Baden announced Wilhelm's abdication of both titles on 9 November 1918. Prince Max himself was forced to resign later the same day, when it became clear that only Friedrich Ebert, leader of the SPD, could effectively exert control. Later that day, one of Ebert's secretaries of state (ministers), Social Democrat Philipp Scheidemann, proclaimed Germany a republic.

Wilhelm accepted this fait accompli only after Ludendorff's replacement, General Wilhelm Groener, had informed him that the officers and men of the army would march back in good order under Hindenburg's command, but would certainly not fight for Wilhelm's throne. The monarchy's last and strongest support had been broken, and finally even Hindenburg, himself a lifelong monarchist, was obliged, after polling his generals, to advise the Emperor to give up the crown. On 10 November, Wilhelm crossed the border by train and went into exile in the neutral Netherlands. Upon the conclusion of the Treaty of Versailles in early 1919, Article 227 expressly provided for the prosecution of Wilhelm "for a supreme offence against international morality and the sanctity of treaties", but the Dutch government refused to extradite him. King George V wrote that he looked on his cousin as "the greatest criminal in history" but opposed Prime Minister David Lloyd George's proposal to "hang the Kaiser". There was little zeal in Britain to prosecute. On 1 January 1920, it was stated in official circles in London that Great Britain would "welcome refusal by Holland to deliver the former kaiser for trial," and it was hinted that this had been conveyed to the Dutch government through diplomatic channels:

Punishment of the former kaiser and other German war criminals is worrying Great Britain little, it was said. As a matter of form, however, the British and French governments were expected to request Holland for the former kaiser's extradition. Holland, it was said, will refuse on the ground of constitutional provisions covering the case and then the matter will be dropped. The request for extradition will not be based on genuine desire on the part of British officials to bring the kaiser to trial, according to authoritative information, but is considered necessary formality to 'save the face' of politicians who promised to see that Wilhelm was punished for his crimes.

President Woodrow Wilson of the United States opposed extradition, arguing that prosecuting Wilhelm would destabilise international order and lose the peace.