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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