Meanwhile the Crown Prince had arrived and the deliberations were resumed. More army corps commanders had been asked if they could rely on their troops and the answer was no. But Count von der Schulenburg still retained hope and gave the Kaiser new courage; perhaps if His Majesty resigned as Emperor but remained King of Prussia his authority could be re-imposed; the Prussian troops undoubtedly would remain loyal and their example might turn the tide. At this moment Prince Max got through on the telephone and implored the Emperor to give his decision to abdicate; nothing else could save the monarchy and avert civil war. A huge strike had been proclaimed, thousands of workmen were gathering together, and tension was such that at any moment the mob might come flowing down the Wilhelmstrasse with machine guns. Schulenburg refused to be hurried, for the Kaiser had been won to his suggestions of “partial abdication.” A few minutes later the telephone rang again. “It is a question of minutes,” said Berlin.
This time Schulenburg replied: “His Majesty is resolved; he is at this moment formulating his resolve on paper; it will be in the hands of the Imperial Government in half an hour.”
Prince Max and his Cabinet could not wait. The vast throngs needed only a spark to set them off. In his memoirs the Prince declared that Schulenburg had neglected to mention William II’s fantastic intention to remain as King of Prussia; so that when he stepped on to the balcony of the Chancellery and announced, prematurely, the abdication of the Kaiser and the Crown Prince, he believed that he was only anticipating the resolve of his Emperor. The monarchy, Prince Max told the people, would remain, for the Social Democrat Deputy Herr Ebert had agreed to serve as Imperial Chancellor under a Regency which was now in the process of being set up.
It was not until Hindenburg and his generals had taken their leave of the Kaiser and returned to the Hotel Britannique, and until William II had led his dispirited entourage in to luncheon at the Chateau, that telegrams began to arrive informing them of the Chancellor’s action. “Treason!” cried the Kaiser. “Barefaced, outrageous treason!” He leapt up from the table and went into the hall, where he feverishly began filling in telegraph forms, insisting that he still remained King of Prussia. But even worse news was in store for him. Prince Max’s move had come too late to be effective. The Communists — or Spartacists as they were called — had seized the imperial palace, and proclaimed the Soviet Republic from its steps. This act had thrown Chancellor Ebert’s Social Democrat supporters into a panic, and he was unable to restrain the hysterical Scheidemann from proclaiming a Socialist Republic from the portico of the Reichstag. So now, not only was William II deposed, but the monarchy had collapsed.
The Kaiser fumed and stormed. He was so emotionally upset that it was impossible to talk to him calmly. Suddenly Hindenburg and Gröner were announced. “My God,” he cried, “are you back here again already?” Then he gave Gröner an annihilating look and said: “You no longer have a War Lord,” and refused to address him again. Hindenburg was now fully in control of himself. The problem no longer was a dynastic question — but a struggle between Bolshevism and Socialism. The only question that remained was what to do with William II. The roads to Berlin were blocked; The Kaiser so was the road to the front; and he could not guarantee the Emperor’s safety at Spa. “I cannot accept the responsibility,” he said, “of seeing the Emperor haled to Berlin by insurgent troops and delivered over as a prisoner to the revolutionary Government.
I must advise Your Majesty to abdicate and to proceed to Holland.”
“Do you think that I am afraid to remain with my troops?” William II flung back furiously. No one answered and he paced up and down the room in a frightening silence. Finally he signalled one of his entourage to make preparations for the journey. At this point Admiral von Scheer was announced. “Field Marshal,” said the Emperor, turning to von Hindenburg, “will you please repeat to Admiral Scheer what you have said to me.” Hindenburg repeated solemnly: “The army and the troops are no longer behind Your Majesty. There are no loyal troops left. Would to God, Your Majesty, that it were otherwise.” The Emperor then began to storm once again; he told Scheer that because of this state of affairs he had been forced to resign as Emperor; but his intention had been to remain as King of Prussia. “But that the gentlemen may learn how I am served by my Chancellor — Prince Max of Baden proclaimed my abdication both as Emperor and King this morning without my knowledge and without my authority. That is the way I am served by my last Chancellor!” Scheer groped for words and said rather lamely that it was no longer possible to rely on the navy. “I have no navy,” snapped the Emperor.[455]
The generals and the Admiral took their leave and for the next five hours the Kaiser struggled with himself for the right thing to do. He told the Crown Prince that he might not go to Holland at all; that whatever he did he would not make a decision until the following morning. Later in the afternoon he received a telephone call from Berlin telling him that the Empress was remaining quietly at the New Palace at Potsdam. This decided him to cancel his flight. “My wife is sticking it out — and they want to persuade me to go to Holland. I never will. It would be like a captain deserting the sinking ship.” Nevertheless he moved to the imperial train; and when Colonel Niemann arrived with his baggage at nine o’clock summoned by General Plessen “in case they left that evening,” the Kaiser’s mood had altered completely. “In the train I found the Emperor already at dinner with his suite. I had been afraid that the excitement of the previous hours had made him lethargic. But not at all. He looked at me with all his animation; his face calm and resolute… The Emperor had quite changed his mind about going to Holland. ‘Well if it must be so,’ he said, ‘…but not before tomorrow morning.’”[456]
Field Marshal von Hindenburg expected to take his leave of his sovereign at breakfast time. But at dawn, before anyone was up at Great Headquarters, the gold and white imperial train slid out of the station and gathered speed for the Dutch frontier. The Kaiser wrote no farewell message to his generals but before leaving scribbled a letter to the Crown Prince. “Dear Boy,” it began, “Since the Field Marshal can no longer guarantee my security here, and since he also will no longer take the responsibility for the loyalty of the troops, I have decided, after severe inward struggle, to leave the collapsed army. Berlin is totally lost in the hands of the Socialists, and two governments have already been formed there, one by Ebert as Reich’s Chancellor, and another at the same time by the Independents. I recommend that you remain at your post and hold the troops together until they start the march back home. As God wills auf Wiedersehen. General von Marschall will keep you informed. Your stricken father, William.”[457]
William II crossed the Belgian-Dutch frontier at Eysen. He gave up his sword to an astonished Dutch sentry, who thought for a moment he must be dreaming, and wondered wildly what he had better do. He telephoned The Hague. Queen Wilhelmina received the news in a business-like way and summoned her Cabinet. Meanwhile the Kaiser waited at the border. Six hours later he was told that he might enter Holland. A special train was on its way to the frontier to provide accommodation for His Majesty and his entourage until more definite arrangements could be made. The next day, November 11th, word arrived that Count Godard Bentinck, a Dutch-English Count of the Empire and a hereditary Knight of the Order of St. John, would put his house at Amerongen at the German monarch’s disposal. “Who is this Bentinck? I don’t think I know him,” said William II. They met for the first time at Maarn station the next afternoon. “Now,” said the Kaiser to his host, as they drove across the bridge leading to the Bentincks’ seventeenth-century, moated house, “for a cup of real good English tea!”
November 11th. On that same day, at five-twenty in the morning, the armistice was signed, bringing an end to the war in which ten million men had laid down their lives.
Chapter 18. Epilogue at Doom
“A friend came in to spend the evening with us yesterday, and had come straight from Amerongen, where he had spent two hours with the Emperor,” wrot
e Princess Blucher from Berlin, in February 1919, three months after William’s flight. “…He was taken down to the gallery in which the Emperor takes his exercise daily, and there he walked with him for two hours. He told us the first sight of him was a great shock. The Emperor has grown a long white beard; he brushes his now quite white hair straight back, and his complexion is sallow and unhealthy. But he bore himself with great dignity and spoke quickly and with reserve… He had tried from the moment he came to the throne to assert his own authority, but he was too young and perhaps too impulsive… He said that he had enough English blood in his veins to know that the only thing was to go in with England, but he was always talked over by his military authorities and diplomats… He complained most bitterly that he was deceived and lied to from the outset of his reign, and especially throughout the war. I did not give my opinion,” observed Princess Blucher, “but I cannot help thinking that if a man is an Emperor one of his chief aims should be to employ every person and every method by which he can arrive at the truth.”[458]
William II’s desire to excuse himself was heightened by the campaign which had sprung up in England to bring him to trial as a “war criminal.” The fact that millions of people in Britain, France, and America held him personally responsible for the war came as a genuine shock to him, for long ago he had convinced himself that the conflict had been thrust upon him by the Entente. He did not seem to realise that for four years Allied propaganda had laid atrocities of every kind at his door, and that cartoonists usually drew him as a butcher brandishing a huge knife with the blood running down his arms and dripping off his hands.
Indeed, the British public was enraged when it learned of his “escape” to Holland. On November 10th the English poet, Alfred Noyes, lashed out against Holland to a huge audience at Carnegie Hall in New York. “These people would permit the Emperor to retire to his yacht and his champagne dinners while 10 million men he has murdered lie rotting in the ground.” Two days later the London Times printed a letter from Arthur Conan Doyle urging that the neutrals should be warned “that we certainly shall not recognise any rights of asylum for those whom we regard as murderers.” And four days later, on November 16th, The Times published an article by Sir Valentine Chirol (who had been knighted for his services as a correspondent in Berlin) which purported to be a “character-sketch” of William II, but would have astonished the fallen monarch’s advisers. “Only a man,” wrote Chirol, “possessed of ruthless energy and untiring industry, who combined the most extraordinary versatility of methods with a fixity of purpose that amounted almost to an obsession, would have exploited as he did all the material and intellectual forces of a gifted… nation. He built up the fleet to destroy the British Empire. He lied and deceived. Then when trickery and deceit had done their work, the last word belonged to him who wielded the mightiest sword… and what sword could have seemed to him mightier in August 1914?”
The Kaiser found the anger of the British people incomprehensible. “Why do the English hate me so? Why do they hate me so?” he repeatedly asked his host as he paced up and down the Long Gallery of the Bentinck house. When the latter explained that they held him responsible for the death of women and children during the U-boat war he replied hotly that the British blockade had killed far more women and children than those who had died at sea. Furthermore, the British were still maintaining the blockade, despite the armistice, and thousands were dying in Germany at this very moment. He could not believe, he said, that this was the real reason for the campaign against him; it was too illogical, there must be a hidden motive.
If he was perplexed by the English attitude he was even more disturbed and wounded by the temper of his own people. Although he had left Germany because von Hindenburg had told him that it would be intolerable for the ex-Sovereign to fall into the hands of the Communists, he now was excoriated by all classes. He was astonished that von Hindenburg did not step forward and tell the German people that the Emperor had departed, much against his will, on the urgent advice of the High Command. Although William II had left after the Republic had been declared he had, inadvertently, spared the country a civil war; for it soon transpired that Prince Max of Baden bad handed over his powers to an unworkable coalition, or “directory” as it was called. It consisted of six Socialists, half of whom were inexorably opposed to the other half; three of them, including Chancellor Ebert, were Democrats with bourgeois affiliations, while the other three were “Independents” and Bolshevik sympathisers. On November 9th Communists were holding meetings all over Berlin trying to whip up the masses to fling out their masters and take control of offices and industries. Some of them had surged into the Kaiser’s Berlin palace and harangued the crowds from the balcony — the same balcony from which William II had addressed the people at the outbreak of war. The new Chancellor was beside himself, for with his Cabinet split in two he did not see what he could do to restore order. Late that night, while the Kaiser was preparing his dawn departure and von Hindenburg, who had taken over the supreme command from his sovereign, was sleeping from exhaustion, Ebert sat alone in the Chancellery wondering distractedly how he could prevent a total breakdown. Suddenly the telephone rang with a call from Spa. “Gröner speaking,” said a crisp military voice. The High Command, said the General, would help Ebert to restore and maintain order, so long as he would provision the army and promise to co-operate in the suppression of Bolshevism. With a sob of relief Ebert accepted the offer.
But if William II had remained in Germany this secret pact could not have taken place, for the Social Democrats had demanded the Emperor’s abdication and the army would have been caught between divided loyalties, unable to support a government opposed to its Supreme War Lord. As it was, the High Command raised a force of 400,000 reliable soldiers from the disintegrating mass of the Imperial Army, and during the next six months put down the Communists in two bloody encounters, in January and March. Between these clashes Germany held the first free election in her history. The result revealed that Communist agitation was out of all proportion to its actual strength, for the extreme left polled only 2,300,000 votes. The Social Democrats emerged as the strongest single party with 11,500,000 votes and 163 seats. But the ballot also showed that the majority of people in Germany had not swung left at all, for the parties of the right and centre, although divided among themselves, polled over 16,000,000 votes. Thus the Social Democrats were able to form a coalition with the Democrats and the Catholics, and Ebert became the first President of the Weimar Republic. It had been proved beyond dispute that the widespread desire for William II’s abdication had not sprung from disillusionment with the monarchical system, but from President Wilson’s warning that unless Germany rid herself of the rulers who had led her into the war she could expect no mercy.
And what could she expect now that the Kaiser had gone? The fallen monarch followed the events taking place in Paris with grim interest. The tiny village of Amerongen had become a scene of feverish activity, and remained so throughout 1919, for the British pledge to bring William to trial focused world attention upon him. The Emperor had arrived in Holland with a staff of servants, including chauffeur, valet, and cook, and a suite of thirty officers and aides. Count Bentinck put up some of them, while others found accommodation in the village inn or in neighbouring houses. Meanwhile dozens of journalists had arrived from all over the world, clamouring to get a glimpse of the famous refugee. Dutch troops, however, guarded all the points of entrance, and no one, not even members of the family, could gain admission to the grounds without presenting a white card signed by Count Bentinck; nor could they leave without surrendering a blue card. The house itself, surrounded by a wide moat with a drawbridge, was a perfect place for seclusion; but the fact that the journalists did not succeed in tracking down their prey immediately gave rise to a rumour that the Kaiser had gone mad, and that his bedroom had been transformed into a padded cell guarded night and day by male nurses!
The Kaiser had several official visitors, for
he had left Germany without making a formal abdication — or indeed any abdication at all — and the Berlin jurists argued that it was imperative to secure a signed document, otherwise it would be impossible for the German Government to make peace. The Kaiser acquiesced, and on November 28th renounced the throne, both as Emperor and King of Prussia. It was a very chilly abdication. It released the officials of the German Empire, all officers and non-commissioned men, from their oath of fealty to the Sovereign, and bade them “help those in possession of actual power in Germany to protect the German people against the threatening dangers of anarchy, famine, and foreign domination.” That was all. It contained no warm message to the German people, no praise for the valour of soldiers and civilians during the four years of war. The truth was that William II was still burning with indignation at the way his subjects had cast him aside in order to get an easy peace. He blamed Prince Max of Baden bitterly, and told Count Bentinck repeatedly that his cousin had “tricked him” behind his back.
On the same day that the Emperor signed his abdication the Empress arrived from Germany to join her husband. She had remained with her daughter, the Duchess of Brunswick, at the New Palace throughout the weeks of revolution. Although the guards had put red cockades on their uniforms, they had protected the royal ladies and prevented anyone from molesting them. The Empress was a broken woman. She still suffered from a bad heart, and now her anguish for Germany’s plight, and her fear for her husband’s safety, had reduced her strength still further. She believed that the forces of evil had triumphed and spent much of her time weeping lest the cruel English arrive to take away her Wilhelm.
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