Wilhelm II a Nazi ??

[Mikael]

I have studied Wilhelm II a lot, and most of the Hohenzollern family. And i am used to have to defend them and Germany in discussions by facts. The anglo-saxon historic wwriting prevails, where Germany is the bad boy and they always fight for World Supreme Rule. Either way, usually i have facts that say "No it was not so". But in a recent discussion i got a bit in a situation where my opposer presents facts, no sources but still. That claims that Wilhelm II was a strong supporter of Nazism, and that the only reason he did not "Joint he party" was because they did not want him as Monarch.

The "Proof" he has is that Wilhelm II supposedly said once that the world would had been better if they had gassed a couple of jews.. And i personally find that a lot out of Wilhelm's character. Another "proof" presented is that many of the Hohenzollern join the SA and other institutions with his approval.

SO i wonder, is what my opposer says is true, was he a Nazi, or can you give me arguments that proves the opposite ?

[Alp Guard]

Intreresting question.

I went through several german sites on Wilhelm II and they denied aa friendship with the Nazis, although the "Kaiser" seemed to have some sympathies at the beginning. But he also saw the Nazis as a major hurdle for him, as he wanted to reinstall monarchy.

Have a look to this english site:

http://gsteinbe.intrasun.tcnj.edu/royal ... elmII.html

[walterkaschner]

Although Wilhelm II was a confirmed anti-Semite he was never a Nazi, and was shocked at the Nazi's brutality against the Jews on Kristallnacht, which he felt was an example of encouraging lower class rabble to destruction and disorder. He basically thought Hitler was an uncouth ruffian, particularly after the "Night of the Long Knives" in 1934, and as an Austrian plebian nobody totally unfit to rule Germany. However, in the early days of Hitler's chancellory Wilhelm still had hopes of being restored to the monarchy in a role similar to that of Victor Emanuel under Mussolini in Italy, and so was coy about publicizing his true opinions. He was also concerned about keeping the benefit of the revenues from his various properties in Germany and tried to be careful not to antagonize either the Weimar Republic or the Nazis after Hitler's take over of power. He initially permitted two of his sons - Auwi and Oskar - to join the Nazi party but toward the end of his days, although he welcomed the Austrian Anschluss, the incorporation of the Sudetenland and the war against Poland, he became increasingly embittered toward the Nazis and ordered that his remains be buried at Doorn rather than brought back to Germany. See Lamar Cecil, Wilhelm II: (vol.II) Emperor and Exile, 1900-1941 (University of North Carolina Press, 1996) at 330-353 passim.

[YM]

In January 1918 the Kaiser gave a speech in which he blamed the Jews
and Bolsheviks for Germans difficult situation. Now considering that
the German Jews were among the most loyal citizens of the country,
appreciating its relative tolerance for the Jews (at the time) compared
with the situation in Russia, Romania and other places in Eastern Europe,
and their loyal service in the Army, such a statement can only be
considered blatant anti-Semitism. Similarly, it is strange hypocrisy
to blame the Bolsheviks considering the role the Germans played
in sending Lenin back in order to force the Russians out of the war.
Here we see the rage and self-pity so many German ultra-nationalists
had and have in order to explain away their own flaws and mistakes.

[Mad Zeppelin]

In many respects, Wilhelm II was true politician - and thus should not be measured by his words but by his deeds. That, however, results to absolutely zero.
By his words he may be quoted to death by absolutely everybody for their own puposes. You can make him appear peaceloving/warmongering/brutal/caring/cranky/sound/etc. etc. - Judge him by his deeds - and he is nothing at all... - just a mirror image of the German nation...
Yes, by all his outings he may be regarded as anti-semitic, but - that was not the murderous anti-semitism of the Nazis, it was just the "normal" anti-semitism very widespread in Europe in these days. And Wilhelm II would have been one of the first to run away shreeking alout from those Nazi atrocities, had he ever known about them.

[Mikael]

I think you do a valid point there Mad Zeppelin, one must not mistake Anti-semitisism that he had, (and that was indeed widespread) with that of the Nazis, nor shall one put to much meaning into what was said.

But i think it is to go a bit far to say that "Judge him by his deeds, and he is nothing at all". For he did things that shows his character

But on the genre of anti-semitism, i would say that you can say that there he is nothing at all.

[YM]

Mad Zeppelin and Mikael, thank you for your responses. First, I think it is important
to realize that the "genocidal" anti-Semitism (Holocaust) of the Second World War
certainly stemmed from what you call "the normal anti-Semitism" of the earlier
period. When the supreme national leader (the Kaiser) makes blatantly false
statements blaming the Jews for Germany's problems, it makes an impression
on the population. It must be remembered that the chief of the German industial
program during World War I was a Jew, Walther Rathenau. Famous Nobel Prize
winning chemist Fritz Haber, also a Jew, ran important weapons development
programs and developed the process for extracting nitrogen from the air
providing nitrates for explosives which freed Germany from the need to import
nitrates from Chile (which led to the naval battles with Britain at Coronel
and the Falkland Islands). The "Kaiser Wilhelm Insititut" for physics (one of
the most important physics institutes in the world at the time and the place
where Einstein developed his "General Theory of Relativity" during the war) and named
for the Kaiser himself received something like 1/3 of all its funding from Jewish
donors, at a time when Jews were less that 1% of the population of Germany).
Jews served in the German armed forces honorably as was confirmed by no
less than Reichs President Paul von Hindenburg in 1932 at a time when the
Nazis were making the false charge that the Jews shirked duty during the war.
Thus, the Kaiser's accusation were blatantly false, and in my opinion can not
be justified in any way and leave a further stain on his already sulllied reputation.

[Mikael]

Politicians has always blamed groups when things go bad, during the entire cold war, if anything went wrong, it was Moscow, before that, earlier back in History, when anything went wrong, it was either the Jews or the Saracens whom where behind it, the Forces of Evil. Yet the societies then did not act against them, they did what was required to calm the people and hold the nation together. And what you say more or less prooves that he was not a Nazi as so many Jews where in high positions, and he did not turn anyone of them down because they where "Jewish".

[Mad Zeppelin]

YM, I agree completely that the "normal" anti-semitism provided the fertile soil for the holocaust-anti-semitism of the Nazis. Nevertheless, this is our - post-factum - knowledge. For the contemporaries, including Wilhelm II, this was not obvious. The German anti-semitism of that era was strictly non-violent (the violent ideas being evolved in Austria, I believe - although I've to admit no proper knowledge of Austrian affairs). As far as I can see, brilliant Walther Rathenau's greatest grudge with the Germans/Prussians at that time was that they had not allowed him to become "Leutnant der Reserve". There's no evidence that the German Jewish community in this era was concerned with fears about German anti-semitism. They were completely happy to know, that no violence would ever be allowed to happen against them in the German Empire. - This is the context in which you should put Wilhelm's words. The Mad Austrian and his "Endlösung" were still very, very far away from that world.

[Mikael]

When i was at the Jewishe Museum at Berlin this year took the tour, asked lots of questions and stuff. THe Historians there said that the German Jew had been so absorbed into the German community that a non-german jew coming there would had been terrified of how much they had been absorbed into Germany, they even had ceremony Jewish ones almost the same as the German ones, with church, music, everything, theyw here more "german then jewish", and they had been so more then in other european countries, this broad acceptance, resting on a legacy as far back as the Grosse Kurfurst whom allowed Huggenots and such settle. So the impression he gave was that Germany at that time was very very tollerant.

[Mad Zeppelin]

I've looked up what Wilhelm II said on 13th February, 1918 (not in January), and it was not a public speech but at a war council held at Bad Homburg. The subject was how to proceed in the east. And Wilhelm II said that it was neccessary to support the Germans in the Baltic States (who through the centuries had been very loyal subjects of the czars, supplying many generals and admirals for the Russian forces and quite a number of statesmen as well), and therafter it was neccessary to annihilate the Bolshevics because they wanted to import their revolution into Germany. This was important also for dynastic purposes. Wilson had proclaimed the abolition of the Hohenzollern as a war aim and was now supporting - together with the whole international Jewish community - the Bolshevics.
It was the first time that an antisemitic tone was mixed into Wilhelm's political reasoning, although he privately had outed himself as anti-semite (or at least as sympathizer of anti-semits) all through his life.

[YM]

MAD ZEPPELIN-
I would like to clarify or correct your quote that President Wilson "and the whole international Jewish community" supported the Bolsheviks. As a personal example, I, as a Jew, can tell you about my grandfather who immigrated
to the United States before World War I from the Austro-Hungarian Empire. When the war broke out, several of his
brothers were inducted into the Austrian Army. In the 1916 election in the US, when it was still neutral, my grandfather voted for President Wilson, because he promised to keep the US out of the war. My grandfather never forgave
Wilson for entering the war and never voted for his party (the Democrats) again in his life. Most American Jews supported Germany, at least some what, because Germany was more tolerant to the Jews than Britain and France's ally, Russia. Jew in Britain, for example, faced a dilemma because, as Jews, they felt the Germans were better than the Russian, but as Englishmen, they had to suppor their own country.
Now, regarding the situation in Russia, Jews around the world despised the Czarist regime because of its murderous
anti-Semitism (the "Black Hundreds", pogroms, etc). Thus all Jews were pleased when the Czar was overthrown, as were the vast majority of the Russian people. HOWEVER, the Bolsheviks were extremely hostile to Jewish political movements, in spite of the fact that there were prominent Jewish Bolsheviks. These Jews who supported the Bolsheviks would often persecute other Jews for insisting on remaining loyal to their religious beliefs, or Zionism. Thus, we can say that the Kerensky's regime was friendly to the Jews, but the Bolshevik regime was hostile. The large majority of Jews in Russia, Poland and other countries in Eastern Europe supported the traditional religious movement (Agudat Israel), the Zionists and the anti-Zionist, pro-Socialist Bund. The communists were supported by only a small minority of the Jewish population because the Bolsheviks (Communists) severly persecuted the other Jewish movements and ruthlessly suppressed Jewish religious practice. The Bund were especiallyl hated by the Bolsheviks because they were Socialists.
Thus, we can say that Bolshevism was despised by the large majority of Jews in spite of the fact that there were
prominent Jewish bolsheviks. (During the Russian Civil War, many Jews who were anti-Bolshevik ended up supporting the Red Army because many of the anti-Bolshevik "Whites" were virulently anti-Semitic and carried out massacres of the Jews, forcing Jews to side, at least for the moment, with the Reds)

[Mad Zeppelin]

YM, the quote is not my opinion, but Wilhelm II's (but perhaps my command of indirect speech in English is at fault).
In addition to what you state about the Jewish community, the Jews in the east generally welcommed the German forces as liberators. And - they were rather kindly treated by the Germans as well. Many of them worked for the Germans as they could make themselves easily understood - their Jiddish was a kind of ancient German mixed with Hebrew elements and some Slavic terms. And the German forces very often liked to trade with Jewish providers. I remember having read several regimental histories were it is stated that the "the Jew made good prices", especially one cavallry regiment which bought horse fodder from a Jewish merchant and found that he was so much cheaper compared to what they had to pay in Germany before the war.
If in 1912 someone had predicted that in one generation's time the Jews in Europe would be hunted down and killed amass, most people would have concluded the Russians were good for every atrocity. Some may even have proposed that the French could get mad enough to do such a thing. But nobody would have assumed that the Germans could be/would be the perpetrators.
And really, if I didn't know it really happened I - knowing only the story of the Jews and the German Empire pre 1918 - would surely think it's absolutely unbelievable, must be Allied/Bolshevic propaganda lies.

[bob lembke]

Guys;

Thanks, Mad Zeppelin, for looking up what/where Wilhelm II actually said; his having said that Bolsheviks/Jews were a threat in the context of Russia is very different than saying so in the context of Germany. Of course, I would like to read what he actually said, in the original. Equating Bolheviks and Jews is presently quite politically incorrect, but it is the fact that somewhere like half of the top and middle tiers of Bolshevik leaders were Jewish, most, no doubt, idealistically looking for a radical solution to the many evils of the Czarist system, which included violemt anti-Semitism.

Stalin, certainly no friend of the Jews, also found it useful to use many Jews for unpleasant tasks that then led to anti-Semitic attitudes and manifestations. For example, I read a book by an Isreali lawyer, who in the 1980's was in the Ukraine on business, at the KGB headquarters. He said that in the lobby there was a plaque honoring the 40 KGB men who died in the Ukraine in WW II. He said that all 40 had Jewish names, and he felt very ashamed. Of course Stalin then turned on the Jews also. He seemed to have done the same trick in Hungary; using Jews to oppress the local people, leading to anti-Jewish public opinion. I have detailed information on the Hungarian use of this tactic.

Wilhelm II had close Jewish friends; for example, Albert Ballin (spelling correct?), the shipping magnate. If you read the writings of almost any world leader of the period, you constantly find anti-Jewish, anti-black, anti-almost anything opinions casually uttered that would be considered astonishing at the present time. I consider Wilhelm's anti-Semitism the typical attitude of the period, superficial, mindlessness. MZ is correct that the murderous attitudes were a product of South (Catholic Austria and Germany), not north (Protestant) Germany. (Have I p----d anyone off? One can only hope...) Remember Hitler and his tirades about "Red Berlin".

There certainly was a greater dislike, by far, between Jewish Germans and Eastern Jews than between Jewish and non-Jewish Germans, to generalize.

My father's commander in the Freikorps was Major von Stephani, a Guards officer and the son of a Prussian general. In the early 1920's he, radically right-wing, was a plotter with Ludendorff and Col. Bauer in Hungary trying to cook up a radical right revolution, after the Kapp Putsch failed. Bauer had a personal assistant, one Lincoln Trebisch, a (former) Hungarian Orthodox Jew, who, I must say, was almost a characture of the anti-Semitic Jewish appearance found in Nazi propaganda later. Von Stephani was shocked that Col. Bauer had such a man as his aide, and got rid of him by giving Trebitsch an unsealed letter for Bauer (knowing that Trebitsch would read it), telling Bauer to have the disgusting guy killed, that in Hungary one can have a Jew killed in a minute. Trebitsch took off, unfortunately taking Bauer's files with him.

Von Stephani later was the top or almost top leader of the Stalhelm, which was far to the right of the Nazis. He then server in the Reichstag, far right, as an Ehre-Aryan. Why an "honorary Aryan"? Because he was Jewish. Speak of an assimilated Jew!!!

I can cite similar crazyness in my own family.

I am really happy that my interest in German history largely stops an 1926 or thereabouts.

Bob Lembke

[walterkaschner]

Bob Lemke wrote:

My father's commander in the Freikorps was Major von Stephani, a Guards officer and the son of a Prussian general. In the early 1920's he, radically right-wing, was a plotter with Ludendorff and Col. Bauer in Hungary trying to cook up a radical right revolution, after the Kapp Putsch failed. Bauer had a personal assistant, one Lincoln Trebisch, a (former) Hungarian Orthodox Jew, who, I must say, was almost a characture of the anti-Semitic Jewish appearance found in Nazi propaganda later. Von Stephani was shocked that Col. Bauer had such a man as his aide, and got rid of him by giving Trebitsch an unsealed letter for Bauer (knowing that Trebitsch would read it), telling Bauer to have the disgusting guy killed, that in Hungary one can have a Jew killed in a minute. Trebitsch took off, unfortunately taking Bauer's files with him.

I have just finished reading Bernard Wasserstein's The Secret Lives of Trebitsch Lincoln (Yale University Press, 1988), which deals with one of the most fascinating and colorful scoundrels that appeared as a bit player in the tumultuous events of the first half of the past century. He was born as Ignácz Trebitsch , one of 14 (or 16) children of an Orthodox Jewish family then living in a small town in Hungary. An incurable peripatetic, he moved to England, then back to Hungary, and in sequence to Germany (where he purported to convert to Christianity and was baptised as Ignatius Timotheus Trebitsch), Canada, the US, Canada again (where he was known as the Reverend J.T. Trebitsch), back to England where for a while he was curate in a small Anglican village church, which he gave up (assuming the name I.T.T. Lincoln) to become private secretary to a very wealthy and influential businessman active in the Liberal Party for whom he travelled extensively in Europe, and in 1910 was quite astonishingly elected (as I. T. Tribich Lincoln) to the British House of Commons as the Liberal MP for Darlington, by a majority of 29 votes over his Unionist opponent.

His tenure as an MP lasted less than a year, he ended up insolvent leaving his creditors with unpaid debts of many thousands of Pounds, and then embarked on a series of outrageous financial shenanigans involving investments in purported petroleum and related interests in Galicia and Rumania, thereby fleecing his investors of probably well over 100,000 Pounds. As a youth he had been sought by the police of Budapest and Trieste for petty thievery; he was convicted by a Rumanian Court of misappropriation of assets, and by 1914 he was sought by Scotland Yard for fraud and forgery. So at that point he decided to forgo (at least temporarily) his role as thief and con-man, and to embark on a new profession, whereby he proffered his services both to the British and to the Germans as a double (or perhaps triple) secret agent. Without either country taking the bait, and with the British police hard on his heels, Trebitsch Lincoln fled to the US. There he was arrested, jailed and ordered extradited back to England to stand trial. He escaped, was rearrested, shipped back to England, tried and sentenced to 3 years penal servitude.

At the end of Trebitsch Lincoln's jail term in 1919 he was released and deported to Germany, where his association with Oberst Max Bauer referred to by Bob Lembke in the above quote began. Primarily on the basis of articles which Trebitsch Lincoln was able to have published in the violently right-wing newspaper Deutsche Zeitung he was befriended by Bauer and ultimately became his press secretary and closest confidant - despite the fact that Bauer was a rabid anti-Semite and Trebitsch Lincoln made no secret of the fact that he was a Jew. Through his extremely close relationship with Bauer, Trebitsch Lincoln became an influential member of the "Nationale Vereinigung" which also included Ludendorff, General von Lüttwitz, Hauptmann Papst, Wolfgang Kapp, Hugo Stinness and other extreme right-wingers among its membership. As Bauer's assistant, he was among the inner circle of the instigators of the Kapp Putsch in March 1920 and was assigned (or assumed) the position of "Director of Foreign Press Affairs" and censor for the new "government" - which is an excellent example of the fatal naïveté and - yes - utter stupidity - of the plotters of that comic-opera fiasco.

After the collapse of the Kapp Putsch Bauer and Trebitsch Lincoln fled to Bavaria, where Bauer composed a pamphlet about the Putsch which Trebitsch Lincoln returned to Berlin to attempt to peddle to a publisher. There he was arrested, escaped, fled back to Bavaria and together with Bauer soon headed off to Hungary with the police at their heels. During this period and later Trebitsch Lincoln delighted in travelling under a host of assumed names: e.g. Wilhelm Ludwig, Heinrich Lamprecht, Vilmos Ludwig, Karl Lamprecht, Dr. Tibor Lahotzky, Theodor Lakatos, Dr. Johan Lange, Thomas Lorincz, Thomas Longford, H. Trautwein. In Budapest the two joined forces with a group of Hungarians to form the "White International" which was to be an alliance of German and Hungarian reactionaries, with the ultimate (hare-brained) design of renouncing the Versailles Treaty and Treaty of Trianon and, in union with White Russians, forming a Cenral European counterbalance to the British-French Entente and to the Communist International.

At this point Wasserstein's book departs somewhat from the description of events provided in Bob Lembke's above quotation. Based on the diary of Oberst Bauer's Secretary, Louise Engeler, it was a letter from Major von Stephani to Kapitän Hermann Ehrhardt (he of the famed -or infamous- Ehrhardt Freikorps), who was visiting in Budapest at the time, that recommended the assasination of Trebitsch Lincoln, not on the grounds that he was a Jew - although von Stephani opined that it should be easy to execute a Jew in Budapest at that time, when the White Terror post-Bela Kun's Jewish dominated régime had not yet abated - but rather that Trebitsch Lincoln was personally a scoundrel who, if not eliminated, could never be gotten rid of. Ehrhardt gave the letter unsealed to Trebitsch Lincoln for delivery to Bauer, which led to a furious confrontation between the two friends, in which Bauer assured Trebitsch Lincoln that he would never allow him to suffer such a fate. A few weeks later, however, Trebitsch L:incoln fled with a large suitcase full of secret White International documents, which, after trying to peddle them to the French and then the British without success, he managed to sell to the Czechs for a promised 500,000 crowns, of which the Czechs held back 300,000 crowns and ultimately refused to pay - leading to lawsuits and countersuits, the arrest of Trebitsch Lincoln in Vienna and his eventual deportation, his flight to the US without a valid visa, his arrest and subsequent deportation from the US from where he landed up in Japan and on to China in 1922.

In China he became close to several of the then reigning War Lords, embarked on financial escapades similar to those previously engaged in, and frittered to and fro between China and Europe on ventures and itineraries too complicated to describe here, but including a reconciliation with Oberst Bauer which led the latter in 1927 to become a military advisor to Chiang Kai-Chek. In 1931 Trebitsch Lincoln ended up ordained as a Buddist monk under the name Chao Kung, to which he added the title Abbot and attempted to recruit a religious following of his own. In the late 30s and early 40s he attempted through a local Gestapo agent in Shanghai to establish a relationships with Nazi Germany as an espionage agent, but the effort was rebuffed by Reinhart Heydrich, who chided his agent by the query "Don't you know he is a Jew?" Trebitsch Lincoln died in 1943 after an intestinal operation in Shanghai.

Wasserstein is (or was) Chairman of the History Department at Brandeis University. His book is well written, illustrated, researched, annotated and documented. I recommend it as a rousing good tale of a minor but extremely interesting rogue, the likes of whom can probably no longer be duplicated in the present age.

Regards, Kaschner