Dreadnought

by Robert K. Massie

Bülow ignored the Kaiser: “Without the slightest suspicion25 in my mind of the ominous contents of the manuscript, which I could not find the time to read, I sent it off to the Wilhelmstrasse with a note: ‘Please read the enclosed article carefully, transcribe it in clear, official script... duplicate it, and enter in the margin such corrections, additions or deletions as may seem suitable.’”

  State Secretary Schoen was absent from No. 76 Wilhelmstrasse when the manuscript arrived; accordingly, it went to Under State Secretary Stemrich, who read the draft and forwarded it untouched to Reinhold Klehmet, for the previous twelve years a Counselor in the Political Division. Klehmet interpreted Bülow’s instructions literally: he was to correct any errors of fact and not to express an opinion as to the advisability of publication. He made two minor corrections and returned the manuscript—now written neatly on good paper—to the Chancellor. Bülow stated he again did not read the interview. He sent it back to the Kaiser, saying that he saw no reason not to publish. William sent it to Stuart-Wortley, who gave it to the Daily Telegraph26.

  On the morning of October 29, Bülow found on his desk a long message from the Wolf Telegraph Agency office in London, summarizing an interview with the German Emperor published the previous day in the Daily Telegraph. In the interview, given to an anonymous person “of unimpeachable authority,” the Kaiser protested that he had always been a friend of England but that his friendship was unappreciated. “You English are mad, mad as March hares,” he said. “What on earth has come over you that you should harbor such suspicions against us, suspicions so unworthy of a great nation.” He took “as a personal insult,” William continued, the “distortions and misinterpretations” of the British press in describing his “repeated offers of friendship” with England. This hostility made his own effort to promote friendship all the more difficult as the majority of Germans disliked the English. Then came what Bülow, in his Memoirs, was to call “the three enormities”: when the Boer War was at its height, Russia and France had urged him to save the Boer republics by joining a Continental coalition which would “humiliate England to the dust.” He had refused, the Kaiser declared, and had informed the Russians and the French that “Germany would use her armed might to prevent such concerted action.” He had sent this letter to his grandmother, Queen Victoria, and it had been placed “in the archives of Windsor Castle.”

  “Nor was that all,” the Kaiser continued. “Just at the time of your Black Week [early in the Boer War], when disasters followed one another in rapid succession... I worked out what I considered to be the best plan of campaign... submitted it to my General Staff... then... despatched it to England. That paper is likewise among the State Papers at Windsor Castle awaiting the severely impartial verdict of history. And as a matter of curious coincidence, let me add that the plan which I formulated ran very much on the same lines as that which was actually adopted by Lord Roberts....

  “But, you will say, what of the German Navy?... Against whom but England is it being steadily built up?” Its purpose, William explained, was to protect Germany’s growing worldwide trade. “Germany looks ahead. Her horizons stretch far away. She must be prepared for any eventualities in the Far East.... Look at the accomplished rise of Japan.... It may even be that England herself will be glad that Germany has a fleet....”

  Bülow’s reaction was utter dismay. The interview revealed, “more than any previous manifestation27 of the kind, the Emperor’s intellectual extravagance, his incoherent regard of facts, his complete lack of political moderation and balance, combined with an excessive urge towards... display.” “As I read these sad effusions, which could scarcely have been surpassed in tactless stupidity, I sent for Klehmet and asked him how he could ever have let pass such incredible expressions of opinion. He replied that he had received the definite impression that His Majesty personally was very anxious to have the whole article published.” Bülow exploded: “And haven’t you learned28 yet that His Majesty’s personal wishes are often sheer nonsense?”

  Bülow had chosen his own defense: busy with a crisis, the Chancellor had trusted the Foreign Office; the Foreign Office—which, Bülow knew, the Kaiser intensely disliked—had betrayed the trust and, therefore, the Kaiser and himself. The Foreign Office, then in the hands of the weak Baron von Schoen, was ill equipped to refute this charge. It had obeyed specific orders to make “such corrections, additions or deletions as may seem suitable.” Beyond this, it had in the Bismarckian tradition left the ultimate decision as to the advisability of publication up to the Chancellor.

  The vital point, on which no one except Bülow could supply the truth, was whether Bülow had actually read the interview before approving publication. He claimed that he had not; he clung to this through the parliamentary storm that followed and maintained it even in his Memoirs. Yet no one had greater experience with the Kaiser’s inflammatory exaggerations and rhetorical bluster than Bülow. As Chancellor, he lived in constant apprehension of William’s indiscretions; he was constantly editing, suppressing, rewriting the Kaiser’s speeches. Further, a German Emperor did not publish a lengthy interview in an English newspaper every day. If not as a duty, then out of sheer curiosity, would not the Chancellor have wished to know what William was saying? Schoen, Stemrich, and others at the Wilhelmstrasse were convinced that Bülow was lying. Some have suggested that he read the interview, anticipated the result, and permitted publication in the hope of using the subsequent constitutional crisis as a means of improving his own position in relation to the Crown.

  The interview startled the world. Japan wondered what “eventualities” might involve the German Fleet with its own navy. France and Russia denied that they had proposed a coalition against England during the Boer War; indeed, Tsar Nicholas II told Sir Arthur Nicolson, it was the Kaiser who had suggested Continental intervention. The English reaction ranged from amusement to contempt. Lord Roberts threatened to return his Order of the Black Eagle. The Times observed that if Germany were planning a naval war in the Pacific, the accumulation of a powerful, short-range battle fleet in the North Sea seemed odd. Grey wrote to a friend: “The German Emperor is aging me; he is like a battleship with steam up and screws going, but with no rudder, and he will run into something some day and cause a catastrophe.” In the House of Commons, Haldane was asked whether the plan of campaign which had won the Boer War could be made public. The War Minister replied that the War Office had been unable to locate the document in its archives. Consequently, he said, “I am not in a position29 to fulfill the wish of those who want the document published.”

  In a Germany just emerging from the first Eulenburg trial, the interview ignited a new firestorm of shock, embarrassment, and indignation. The ruler who seemed to have chosen his friends so indiscreetly had now proclaimed to Germany and Europe that the Empire was ruled by a man who was constitutionally irresponsible and possibly mentally unbalanced. Sir Edward Goschen, the new British Ambassador, was amazed. “To a newcomer like myself,30 imbued with the idea that His Majesty was more or less outside public criticism, this onslaught upon him comes as a most striking surprise,” he reported to Sir Edward Grey. The Austrian ambassador sent a similar report to Vienna: “Never before in Prussian history31 have all circles been captured by such deep resentment against their sovereign.” Germans, most of whom had passionately supported the Boers, were furious that the Kaiser claimed to have drawn up the plan of campaign by which the British had conquered the South African republics. Why alienate the Japanese? Why antagonize the French and Russians? Why provoke the British by saying that most Germans hated them?

  Underlying specific criticism of the Kaiser’s unguarded remarks was the general complaint that William was attempting again to exercise personal rule—a right he had not been granted by the Imperial constitution. The left reacted by demanding greater limits on the monarchy and tighter restriction of the Emperor’s right to interfere in domestic and foreign policy. The Conservatives wanted the monarchy left unfettered, but desired restraint
s placed on the eccentric, damaging behavior of this monarch. When a majority in the Reichstag, including many Conservatives, demanded a censure debate, Bülow sent Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg, the Imperial Secretary of the Interior, to assess the mood of the assembly. Bethmann-Hollweg reported to the Chancellor that “it will be impossible32 to limit the present uproar to the Daily Telegraph or to formal mistakes committed in the treatment of the document” by the Foreign Office. “What is erupting now with primeval force is resentment against the personal regime, dissatisfaction over the Emperor’s attitude of the last twenty years, of which the conversations in the Daily Telegraph are only one among many symptoms.”

  Before he could deal with the Reichstag, Bülow had to make sure of the Kaiser. Under the German constitution, the Chancellor was chosen by the Emperor and could remain in office as long as the Emperor wished, no matter what the views of the members of the Reichstag. William II, who had agreed to publication of the interview to contribute, he thought, to friendly relations with England, was stunned by the personal criticism directed at him from all sides. He had behaved in strict accordance with the constitution by forwarding a draft of the interview to the Imperial Chancellor for approval. The Chancellor had approved, the interview had been published—and now he, the German Emperor, was everywhere regarded as a menace or a fool.

  Bülow’s most effective weapon had always been the threat of resignation; he used it now. He wrote to the Kaiser, who was still at Romintern, declaring that though he had not read the interview, he had submitted it to the Foreign Office. “If Your Majesty is displeased33 with my having failed under pressure of business to go through the English manuscript in person, and blames me for the carelessness shown by the Foreign Office, I humbly beg to be relieved of my Chancellorship. If, however, I have not lost Your Majesty’s confidence, I feel I cannot remain at my post unless I am given the freest scope to defend Your Majesty openly and vigorously, against the unjust attacks on my Imperial Master.” As soon as Bülow saw the Kaiser, on William’s return from Romintern, the Chancellor realized that he had no need to worry. “He was,” said Bülow, “as he always was34 at moments of crisis, very pale, very pitiable.” William did not reproach the Chancellor; this time Bülow did not even need to blame the Foreign Office. He informed the Kaiser that the Reichstag debate would begin on November 10. “Go ahead,”35 said William. “Say what you like. But, however you do it, bring us through.” “His trustful, childlike attitude36 touched me more than I can say,” Bülow observed.

  With the Kaiser submissive, Bülow had no difficulty getting permission to publish a statement in the official government gazette, the Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung. The statement ignored the content of the interview and dealt solely with responsibility for publication. The guilty party was the Foreign Office; the Chancellor had taken the blame; the Emperor had refused the Chancellor’s resignation.

  In the Reichstag, which debated both the content of the interview and the responsibility for publishing it, the targets of attack were the Foreign Office and the Kaiser. Speakers on all sides condemned the carelessness and incompetence of the Foreign Office; members on the left demanded constitutional changes which would restrict the authority of the Emperor; Conservatives expressed “the wish that in future37 the Emperor will maintain greater reserve in his conversation.” Bülow successfully avoided the storm, managing to incriminate the Kaiser, exonerate himself, and present the image of a brave and chivalrous Chancellor, willing to absorb all blows, just and unjust, and persevere for the sake of Crown and nation. The interview, he said when he rose to speak, contained incorrect facts: No plan of campaign had been worked out or sent to Windsor, rather the Boers had been warned that they would have to fight alone; there had never been a proposal of a Continental alliance against England; the majority of Germans were not hostile to England; Germany had no ambition to threaten Japan in the Far East. “For the mistake38 which was made in dealing with the manuscript, I take the entire responsibility,” Bülow continued. “It is repugnant to my personal feelings to brand as scapegoats officials who have done a life-long duty.”fn2 Bülow characterized the Kaiser as a willful, clumsy child, anxious to be useful and important, who stumbled badly when left untutored. “Gentlemen, the knowledge39 that the publication of his conversations had not produced the effect which the Emperor intended in England, and has aroused deep excitement and painful regret in our country will—and this is the firm conviction which I have gained during these days of stress—will induce His Majesty in future to observe that reserve which is as essential in the interests of a coherent policy as in those of the authority of the Crown. If this were not so, neither I nor my successors could accept the responsibility.”

  Bülow emerged triumphant. “When, amid a roar of cheering,40 I sat down, I felt that the battle had been won,” he said. Holstein, watching from retirement, supported the Chancellor’s tactics: “In view of the Kaiser’s indiscretions,41 no defense was possible,” he wrote in his journal. The Berliner Tageblatt openly attacked Kaiser William: “We have a population42 of more than sixty million, a highly intelligent nation, and yet the fate of the Chancellor as well as the choice of his successor rests with one man! Such a situation is intolerable to a self-respecting nation. The events of the last few days have made it clear that the German people will not continue to allow their vital interests to depend on the mood of a single individual whose impulsiveness they have once again had the opportunity of witnessing.”

  The Kaiser was not in Berlin during the Reichstag debate. His schedule, established well in advance, had called for a visit to the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the Austrian Heir, and then attendance at a hunting party at Donaueschingen, the Black Forest estate of his friend, the multimillionaire German-Austrian Prince Max von Fürstenberg. William’s decision to go ahead with his journey at a time when the nation was convulsed by talk of the monarch’s indiscretion had drawn bitter comment in the Reichstag. In fact, before his departure, the Kaiser had asked Bülow whether he ought to remain in Berlin during the debate. Bülow had told him to go: “He was longing43 for Donaueschingen where fox-hunting, cabaret entertainments and every kind of amusement were in prospect,” the Chancellor explained. “I yielded to his wish.” Once the Kaiser had gone—and despite the fact that William was being roundly condemned in the Reichstag for his absence—Bülow did nothing to bring him back. When Holstein questioned Bülow, “Did you, as people are saying,44 dissuade the Kaiser from returning to Berlin?” Bülow replied, “No, I said nothing either way.” In fact, during William’s stay at Donaueschingen, he received a lengthy, coded telegram from the Chancellor, stating that it was unnecessary for him to return to Berlin during the debate.

  When the Kaiser arrived at Donaueschingen, his host was struck by William’s look. “If you met Kaiser William,45 you would not know him,” Prince Max said. At first, the visit distracted the Kaiser. “The two days here46 have gone off very harmoniously and gaily,” he wrote to Bülow. “The shoot went splendidly. I brought down sixty-five stags. I remember you in all my prayers, morning and evening.... There is a silver lining in every cloud. God be with you! Your old friend, William I.R.” Then, one evening after dinner, William suffered a personal blow. The ladies “in full evening dress47 with all their jewels, the gentlemen in green or black swallowtails... were assembled in the Great Hall of the Castle, with a band playing on the staircase. Suddenly, Count Hülsen-Haeseler appeared in pink ballet skirts with a rose wreath and began to dance to the music.” General Count Hülsen-Haeseler, a friend of the Kaiser’s since boyhood, and Chief of the Military Cabinet, had performed in this manner before. “It is an unusual experience48 to see a Chief of the Military Cabinet capering about in the costume of a lady of the ballet,” said a new member of the Kaiser’s suite. Exhausted by his pirouettes, the Count stopped, bowed—and then sagged to the floor. The Castle was in pandemonium: a doctor worked over the stricken dancer; Princess von Fürstenberg sat in a chair and wept; the Kaiser paced frantically up
and down. After an hour and a half, the Count was pronounced dead of heart failure. Rigor mortis had set in and only with great difficulty was the General’s body stripped of its tutu and dressed in proper military uniform.

  William, already agitated by the Daily Telegraph affair, was further unnerved. Meanwhile, Bülow’s success before the Reichstag was evaporating. To secure his position as Chancellor, he needed a public endorsement by William of the stand he had taken in the debate. On November 17, Bülow went to see the Kaiser, who had returned to Potsdam. William and Augusta awaited him on the terrace in front of the New Palace. As he approached, the Empress hurried forward and whispered in his ear, “Be really kind and gentle49 with the Emperor. He is quite broken up.” William led Bülow into his study. The Kaiser, pale and dejected, was “in such a depressed and pessimistic mood50 that I had to comfort him more than criticize his past conduct,” said Bülow. With the monarch deep in melancholy, the Chancellor had no difficulty. He drew from his pocket a prepared statement:

  “Uninfluenced by the exaggerations51 of public criticism, which seem to him unjustified, His Majesty the Emperor regards it as his chief Imperial task to assure the continuity of Imperial policy, while, at the same time, maintaining his constitutional responsibilities. His Royal and Imperial Majesty has accordingly approved all declarations by the Imperial Chancellor in the Reichstag, at the same time assuring Prince von Bülow of the continuation of his confidence.”

  William eagerly endorsed the document and, said Bülow, “grasped my hand52 convulsively. ‘Help me! Save me!’ He embraced me and gave me a hearty kiss on both cheeks.” As Bülow bowed and was leaving, the Kaiser said again, “Thank you! Thank you with all my heart!” Returning home, Bülow told his wife, “I’ve managed,53 once more, to get the Crown and the Emperor out of a scrape.”

  When Bülow left, William began to weep and went to bed. The following day, Bülow was informed by telephone that the Kaiser intended to abdicate. The Chancellor hurried back to Potsdam. The Empress, her eyes red with tears, received him on the ground floor. “Must the Emperor abdicate?”54 she asked. “Do you wish him to abdicate?” Bülow attempted to calm her, assuring her that, thanks to his speech in the Reichstag, “the storm had begun to abate.”