H-NET BOOK REVIEW
Published by H-German@h-net.msu.edu  (September, 1998)

Lamar Cecil.  _Wilhelm II.  Volume 2: Emperor and Exile, 1900-
1941_. Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina
Press, 1996.  503 pp.  Illustrations and bibliographical
references.  $39.95 (cloth), ISBN 0-8078-2283-3.

Reviewed for H-German by David H. Olivier <olivier@DUKE.USASK.CA>,
Department of History, University of Saskatchewan.


Wilhelm II was certainly a man made for history.  He was
outspoken, opinionated, and bombastic.  He was also vacillatory,
egotistical, and self-confident to the point of arrogance.
These are excellent qualities for a fascinating personality, but
they were ill-suited for the man who was to be the last
Kaiser of Germany.  Wilhelm was so convinced of his innate
wisdom and genius that he repeatedly ignored the well-meant --
and frequently more reliable -- suggestions of his advisors,
tending instead to agree with the opinions of whoever he had last
heard.  He preferred the company of military men to politicians
despite the dual civil-military nature of his position as both
Kaiser and Supreme War Lord.  "These traits ensured that Wilhelm II
would be a disaster as a monarch, leading his hapless subjects to a
tragic end" (p. 1).

This is the unyielding judgement of Lamar Cecil, in the
concluding book to his two-volume biography of Wilhelm.  The
approach taken by Cecil in this second volume is a welcome one.
It is possible for someone unfamiliar with Wilhelm's life to read
this book and understand its subject without having to refer
back to the first volume.  Cecil chose to break his biography at
1900, a convenient point for two reasons.  First, it marked the
appointment of Bernhard von Buelow as Chancellor, certainly a
turning point in German diplomacy with the introduction of
_Weltpolitik_ and its consequently disastrous effects on Anglo-
German relations.  Second, 1900 was the halfway point in
Wilhelm's life; he turned forty-one that year and was destined
to live another forty-one years.

Consequently, Cecil's decision to use the first three chapters
as a chance to paint a portrait of Wilhelm at mid-life is a
useful exercise for those scholars interested only in post-1900
events.  In these chapters the author deals with Wilhelm's
personality, his relationships with those people to whom he was
closest, and his personal philosophies.  Once finished, any reader
emerges prepared to tackle the chronological narrative that
follows from the fourth chapter onward.  Yet scholars should not see
this work as a text of German history.  Cecil states as much in his
preface, where he notes he limits the scope of the book to the
interests of Wilhelm.  "This is the biography of a man whose vision
was woefully constricted and is not the history of the broadly
productive nation over which he so maladroitly ruled" (p. ix).

Although Cecil is generally critical of Wilhelm, he does make
one significant departure from that theme in his handling of the
_Daily Telegraph_ Affair.  Here, he defends the Kaiser,
portraying him as the victim of Buelow's negligence and
subsequent attempts at damage control.  "Buelow's failure lay
in the fact that he _had_ read the [interview text] and
recognized its potential for harming both relations with Britain
and the Kaiser's reputation but had then done nothing effective
to ensure that the unfortunate text was altered before being
sent forward for publication" (p. 136).

Cecil does not end his account of the last Kaiser's life with
the abdication in November 1918, but takes us through Wilhelm's
pathetic final years in exile at Doorn, "the kingdom of damp."
The Hohenzollern flirtation with Nazism is well-documented, but
Cecil makes it clear that, despite Wilhelm's rabid fulminations
against Jews, he had clearly broken with Hitler and the Nazis by
November 1932.  This break had little to do with disagreement
over Nazi policy, but was primarily because Wilhelm had
concluded that Hitler would never consent to the restoration of
the monarchy (pp. 339-40).

There are several minor errors in the text.  Cecil seems unclear
as to the intentions of the Schlieffen Plan, describing it as a
"pincers movement" designed to take Paris from both east and west
simultaneously (p. 213).  In fact, the original Schlieffen Plan
called for the German right flank to sweep round the north of the
capital and encircle it.  It was only during the execution of the
plan that First and Second Armies were forced to begin their southward
turns before passing north of Paris.  The southern armies in
Alsace-Lorraine were, again according to the original plan, to
remain on the defensive, in order to lure the French away from
the decisive theatre in the north.  The decision to pursue a
vigorous counter-offensive was one made in the heat of battle.
In addition, it does not seem correct to say that of the 1,198 victims
on HMS Lusitania in 1915, "many...[were] U.S. citizens," when only
128 were Americans (p. 222).  Finally, the Battle of Jutland is mis-
identified as the Battle of Dogger Bank not once, but three
times (p. 347).

In the final analysis, Cecil does not spare Wilhelm any guilt or
blame in the ruin that was his life.  Although Cecil believes
that the Kaiser could have been capable of so much, it was
because he could not take advice or criticism that Cecil brands
Wilhelm a failure "as a son, as a husband, as a father, as a
friend, as a commander, as a statesman, and as an emperor" (p.
356).  The evidence that Cecil has amassed from correspondence,
memoirs, and archival minutes supports the harsh conclusion
that Wilhelm, in the words of the Duke of Wellington speaking on
George IV, was a sovereign "who lived and died without having
been able to assert so much as a single claim on the gratitude
of posterity" (ibid.).

This book is certainly worthy of use by scholars of Imperial
Germany and of European diplomacy before and during the Great
War, and deserves to be looked at more closely by those
interested in the forces that opposed the Weimar Republic.
Cecil's biography will certainly be compared to John C.G.
Roehl's efforts when they become available, but for now this is
the best-available English treatment of the waning years of the
last Kaiser.

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