Wilhelm II

(1859 - 1941)

Wilhelm II became kaiser of Germany and king of Prussia at the age of twenty-nine. His mother, the oldest daughter of Queen Victoria, tried to instill in him the outlook of a nineteenth-century member of the British Liberal Party, and historians debate how much his relationship with his mother had an effect on his complicated psychology and emotional decision-making. Wilhelm was held responsible for Germany’s defeat in World War I, thanks to his attempts to save Austria-Hungary from collapse fomenting the war, and had to seek asylum in the Netherlands. He lived out the rest of his life quietly in the countryside, remarking in 1938, three years before his death, that the tactics of the Nazis had made him ashamed to be a German.