The Kaiser

by Virginia Cowles

  Bülow was a close friend of Holstein; and as Holstein’s quarrel with Eulenburg deepened over the latter’s refusal to help him “muzzle the Emperor,” it was only natural that Eulenburg should seek Bülow’s services as a go-between. “What Holstein overlooks,” Philip wrote, “is the obligation of friendship by which I am bound. I have always been a decent sort of person and… I very much doubt if I should be serving the Fatherland by leaving the Emperor stranded, or ‘driving him to the wall.’” He told Bülow about Holstein’s ‘cabal against H.M.’ and said he feared they would “stick at nothing.” Although Bülow took pains not to offend Holstein he replied to Eulenburg with gushing sentiment. “I can only say that when I look into such an abyss, I feel but the more completely on our dear sovereign’s side, and love him more fondly than ever.”

  Eulenburg over-estimated Bülow’s sincerity and was deeply grateful for his sympathy. It was understandable, therefore, in the spring of 1897 when the Kaiser confided that he intended to appoint a new Foreign Secretary in place of Baron Marschall, that Philip should suggest Bernard Bülow. The transfer took place in June so that Bülow could accompany the Emperor on the trip to Russia.

  William was enchanted by his new adviser. “Bernard has done clever work and I adore him,” he wrote to Eulenburg. “My God! What a pleasure to have someone who is devoted to you, body and soul, and can understand and wants to understand.” Bernard also wrote to Philip and managed to be even more rapturous than the Sovereign. “As a personality His Majesty is charming, touching, irresistible, adorable…” And in a letter a few months later: “I hang my heart more and more every day on the Emperor. He is so remarkable! Together with the great King and the great Elector he is far and away the most remarkable Hohenzollern that has ever existed. He combines in a manner that I have never before seen, the soundest and most original intelligence with the shrewdest good sense. He possesses imagination that can soar on eagle wings above all trivialities, and with it the soberest perception of what is possible and attainable; and — what energy into the bargain! What a memory! What swiftness and sureness of apprehension.”[160]

  Bülow showed his suppleness from the very first. He not only dazzled the Emperor, but managed to retain Holstein’s goodwill; and he not only retained Holstein, but managed to strengthen his intimacy with Eulenburg. Privately he sympathised with all of them in turn, and despite his “honeymoon” with the Kaiser took pains to see that Eulenburg was not neglected. “How constantly I am with you in thought!” he wrote in December 1897. “I say, write, and do nothing political without thinking of you. By your ideas, indeed, I measure everything that I do for the dear, dear Emperor, and he is always before me as the motive, the aim, the raison d'etre of everything.” Years later, when Bülow came to write his memoirs, he had expunged these emotions from his mind and so completely forgotten his gratitude to Eulenburg that he could only assert that Philip “valued having a personal friend as his chief.”

  Bülow took up his duties as Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs at a crucial moment in German history. He arrived on the scene to find that the Kaiser was obsessed by one over-riding desire: to build a great navy. This wish was not new; ever since Bismarck had departed he had pressed for naval expansion, and in 1894 — when he was making annual trips to Cowes to promote an alliance with Britain — he was talking in terms that agitated his mother. “William’s one idea is to have a Navy which will be larger and stronger than the British Navy,” she wrote to Queen Victoria, “but this is really pure madness and folly and he will see how impossible and needless it is. One large enough for German requirements and as good as possible of its kind is all that ought to be aimed at — with prudence and safety.”[161]

  William’s naval ambitions, however, were not based on practical needs. He was obsessed by the conviction that it was impossible to be a power of the first rank without a great navy. The truth was that he was dazzled by English grandeur, and no other yardstick would satisfy him. He remembered how thrilled he had been as a child when his grandmother had taken him to a Naval Review, and he had seen the majesty and might of the British Empire spread before him in an armada of ironclads that seemed to stretch as far as the eye could see. Now that he was Kaiser, ruling over a country bursting with energy, boasting a population of nearly sixty million and an industrial production that was beginning to outstrip Britain’s, he was convinced that it was his duty to raise Germany to a similar, if not greater, pre-eminence. One day England would wake up to find that the Fatherland possessed a fleet as awe-inspiring as her own, and what a day that would be for the House of Hohenzollern! “What William I had done for the army, he wished to do for the navy,” wrote Bülow. “If William I had been blessed with the unification of Germany, William II wanted to establish Germany at sea and so her position as a world power.”

  For a while the Empress’s fears were put at rest as William’s naval aspirations were blocked by the Reichstag. He could not build his fleet unless the lower chamber voted him the money. His Chancellors — first Caprivi and then Hohenlohe — told him that it was impossible to get the bill passed, for Germany was a land power, no one was sea-minded, and with the army being steadily enlarged, the deputies would refuse to sanction the expenditure. William did everything he could to educate his officials and make them understand that Germany could never attain true greatness without a navy. He knew Mahan’s Influence of Sea Power on History almost by heart and in January 1895 gave an illustrated talk to a group of public men at the New Palace; and the following month lectured the Military Society in Berlin on the relations between army and navy.

  William, however, made little headway with his ministers and deputies, and as the months passed became increasingly irritable. He began to blame every international happening, in which Germany did not get what she wanted, to a lack of sea-power. Sometimes he believed what he was saying, sometimes he merely exploited events to make his councillors “navy-minded.” Two months before the Jameson Raid, when it became apparent that trouble was brewing between the English settlers and the Boer Government, he wrote to Prince Hohenlohe: “We must make capital vigorously out of this affair for eventual naval increases to protect our growing trade.” And when, after the Kruger telegram, Britain sent a naval squadron into the Baltic to warn Germany to mind her own business, he talked loudly of the humiliation that the Fatherland had been forced to endure. The following year, in 1897, Britain refused to renew her old colonial agreements with Germany and asked for new ones to be drawn up; and this, too, was attributed to lack of sea-power. “The people will now perceive,” he wrote to Prince Hohenlohe in 1897, “how much valuable time in the last ten years has been wasted, in spite of my warnings. If all ship-building had not been violently opposed for years by the Socialist party and allowed to come to nothing we should not now be practically weaponless on the sea and utterly a prey to those who attack our trade. If we had a strong watchful fleet there would have been no denunciation; our answer must be a large and speedy increase of ships.”[162]

  Prince Hohenlohe, however, still insisted that a Navy Bill was impossible, and prophesied that the schemes the Kaiser was drawing up would be “stillborn.” This time William refused to listen. In the spring of 1897, shortly before Bülow made his appearance, the Kaiser appointed Admiral von Tirpitz as Secretary of State for the Navy. Tirpitz was a huge, black-bearded sailor, politically inexperienced and intellectually limited, but with a passion for a fleet equal to that of the Kaiser. He was a brilliant and unscrupulous organiser and rejected Prince Hohenlohe’s defeatism contemptuously. If the German public was not in favour of a fleet it must be re-educated. A Navy League must be established to pour out propaganda; the professors must be indoctrinated, the press regimented, the industrialists instructed, the Princes suborned; in short, the nation aroused.

  At this point Bernard von Bülow became Foreign Secretary. Before appointing him the Kaiser asked: “What about my ships?” and Bülow delighted his sovereign by telling him he thought a navy bi
ll could be got through the Reichstag. Of course, he added, it would be necessary “to beat the national drum.” “Agreed, agreed,” cried William delightedly; this was just what Tirpitz had said, what he himself believed. From then on the Kaiser conferred regularly with his two new advisers, referring ecstatically to Bülow as a “glorious fellow” and to Tirpitz as “the master.” They talked of nothing but the navy, planning their campaign, working out their tactics. They agreed with the Kaiser that it was impossible to be a great power without a great fleet, and that their main object was prestige. Tirpitz declared that a navy would demonstrate that Germany was as “well-born” as England; and Bülow later asserted in the Reichstag that the day was approaching when certain nations would no longer be able to “look down on Germany as a stuck-up aristocrat looks down on a modest tutor.” Repeatedly the parvenu note was struck.

  Yet the argument of prestige alone would not be sufficient to sway the Reichstag, and might lend itself to misinterpretation abroad. So the line agreed upon was “defence.” Germany was expanding rapidly both in population and industrial production; as she became an increasingly severe competitor she was bound to arouse English jealousy. “We must never fail to insist,” Bülow told the Kaiser, “that our naval construction has no offensive purpose behind it but is intended only to create a steady increase in the risk which any power threatening our peace must take to attack us.”[163]

  Thus the need for protection from British enmity became the key-note of Navy League propaganda. That it was never seriously believed was shown by the fact that few harbour fortresses or coastal defences were erected. Admiral Tirpitz talked about “the German people nearing the zenith of maturity” and Bülow coined the famous phrase about wanting “a place in the sun.” Although they both warned the Kaiser not to refer too often to naval plans, he could not contain his enthusiasm and repeatedly made speeches declaring: “We have bitter need of a powerful German fleet,” “Our future lies upon the water,” “We hold the trident in our hands.” On August 20,1897, he wrote to Philip Eulenburg ecstatically: “The naval or ‘Fleet Bill’ is practically ready, it has received my approval and in principle that of my Chancellor. It provides for the strength of the fleet to be attained by 1905… Tirpitz has just organised a huge office which, both directly and through intermediaries, will look after maritima in some 1,000 to 1,500 newspapers and magazines. In the great university towns all over the country the professor class has met us willingly and is going to co-operate by speaking, writing, and teaching Germany’s need to possess a strong fleet… What a noble harvest is beginning to grow and what a reward God is giving me for all the care and anxiety that I have experienced over this business!”[164] The Navy Bill, which agreed in principle to the construction of a German fleet, was passed by the Reichstag on March 28th, 1898, by 212 to 139 votes.

  The Empress Frederick seemed to be the only person capable of foreseeing the future. She did not regard the building of a German fleet as a natural development — as Bülow liked to put it — but as a complete departure from the policy that Germany had been pursuing for the past twenty-five years. Germany was a central power flanked on one side by a hostile France and on the other by an expansionist, shifty, aggressive Russia. Under Bismarck, Germany had prevented Russia from forming an alliance with France; and under William, Germany had managed to establish close relations with the Russian Czar which partly mitigated the effect of the Dual Alliance. But until now both Bismarck and William had accepted the necessity of drawing closer to Britain. One day Britain would abandon her policy of isolation, and when that day came she must be led into an alliance with Germany as the only logical and safe course for both nations. A rival fleet, however, was not the way to achieve this. Britain was bound to look upon it as an unfriendly provocation, for she had no army and regarded naval supremacy as a vital necessity for the safety of her island and her empire. Far from impressing her, Germany would only alienate her. If William was not careful he would find every nation in Europe lined up against him.

  It was impossible for the Empress to influence her son, but she felt so strongly about the Navy Bill, now in preparation, that she called on her friend, Maria von Bülow, wife of the new Foreign Secretary. She found Bülow himself at home and told him of the dangers she saw ahead. Bülow was not in a mood to listen. Even if he had agreed with the Empress, he never would have risked his future by trying to deter the Kaiser from a course so close to his heart. So he dismissed the Empress’s talk as English propaganda and wrote patronizingly in his memoirs: “She believed… the best Germany could do was to make herself useful to England and England’s high aims and at the same time ennoble herself by keeping in the course of English policy, like a tiny boat in the wake of a great frigate…”

  Helplessly the Empress watched the clouding scene. Although her relationship with William had improved, peace had only been restored by rigid restraint. The Empress never interfered or criticised or even proffered an opinion unless she was pressed to do so. This was exactly what William wanted, and at last he welcomed her with genuine affability. Her opinion of him, however, had not altered. She could never forgive his behaviour at the time of his father’s death, but the years had diluted the bitterness, and the maternal bond, so curiously unbreakable, now was fashioned almost wholly of pity. How naive and foolish and conceited he was! During the early nineties his brash, boastful utterances ringing with allusions to might and glory had made her writhe in anguish, and she found them almost unendurable. “If I had a shadow of influence I should implore William to make no speeches in public,” she wrote to her mother, “for they are too terrible…” Then again: “I wish I could put a padlock on his mouth for all the occasions where speeches are made in public. It is no use to say anything — the Bismarck education… has made him what he is.”[165]

  Gradually the Empress grew more resigned. Bismarck had ruined her son. She began to look upon him as a shell-shock case, a Bismarckian casualty, a victim for whom nothing could be done. He was thoroughly corrupted and Bismarck’s coup in alienating him from his parents had made the corruption irremediable. What a difference between William’s strident allusions to German might and her dead husband’s high-minded sentiments! She often read the message that Frederick had sent to the Iron Chancellor at the beginning of his ninety-nine-day reign. “Not caring for the splendours of great deeds, not striving for glory, I shall be satisfied if it one day be said of my rule that it was beneficial to my people, useful to my country and a blessing to the Empire.”

  Bismarck had corrupted her son, yet quite unwittingly he had been instrumental in restoring the modicum of harmony between them. As William grew to loathe the old man, who spent his forced retirement in writing anonymous newspaper attacks, he found his mother’s company more congenial. At least they shared a common detestation and although it sprang from different reasons the emotion drew them closer. William was enraged when Bismarck broke all rules in 1896, and revealed the details of the Reinsurance Treaty with Russia, which had been abandoned after his departure. But even from the grave the old man mocked them. A few months after his death, in July 1898, the first volume of his reminiscences was published and the Empress wrote William that she was disgusted by the tissue of lies. For once he replied warmly to his “most beloved mamathen” he poured out his heart, revealing a striking picture, not of Bismarck, but of himself. He stands before us gripped by romanticism and religious fervour, favoured by God to fulfil a special role; William II, not as the world saw him, but as he saw himself.

  The letter begins with a vehement denial that Bismarck ever succeeded in alienating him from his parents. “He never dared and I never should have allowed him to talk about you or dear Papa in my presence.” Then he continues: “I perfectly understood the terrible task which Heaven had shaped for me: the task of rescuing the Crown from the overwhelming shadow of its minister… When the strife waxed hot and Bismarck began his most daring tricks against me, not recoiling before even High Treason, I sent a message to h
im saying: it seemed to me as if he was riding into the lists against the House of Hohenzollern for his own family; if it were so I warned him, that this was useless as in that case he must be the loser. The reply was what I had expected, and I felled him, stretching him in the sand, for the sake of my Crown and our House… Where is he now? The storm has calmed, the standard waves high in the breeze, comforting every anxious look cast upwards; the Crown sends its rays ‘by the Grace of God ’ into Palace and hut, and — pardon me if I say so — Europe and world listen to hear ‘what does the German Emperor say or think’ and not what is the will of his Chancellor…”[166]

  William glowed with pleasure at the thought of his great navy; but he could not make up his mind what foreign policy to pursue. In 1898 he seemed to hold all the key cards and to be faced by an almost embarrassing array of choices. Even his diplomatic support for Russia against Japan was paying off well. Not only had he managed to acquire Kiao-chou as a naval base, but his action had brought Russia and Britain to the verge of hostility over the supine body of China. Russia had seized Port Arthur as soon as the Japanese evacuated it, and after negotiating with the Chinese announced that she had obtained a concession to build a railway linking the port with her own trans-Siberian system. Britain did not say much, but since she had the largest trading interests of any European nation in China, she countered by sending her Far Eastern Fleet to the Gulf of Pecheli and occupying Wei-hai-wei and Kowloon. She, too, managed to wring concessions from the Chinese Government which legalised her position; nevertheless she was anxious, for it was obvious that Russia had still larger designs on China. Indeed, the Russian Foreign Secretary, Count Witte, swept his hand across a map of China and told the British Ambassador that the Northern Provinces, including Manchuria, would inevitably be absorbed by the Czardom.