Kaiser Wilhelm II

Kaiser William II was born on January 27, 1859 to a Prince and Princess of Prussia. His mother was the daughter of Queen Victoria. He grew up like any Prussian Prince, except for an arm that was deformed from birth. He admired his grandparents who became Kaiser and Empress when he was small. He also admired his English Grandmother Queen Victoria as well as Otto von Bismarck. During his formative years he had to deal with having brothers and sisters. His brother Henry even got married to their cousin Irene (their Aunt Alice's daughter). Because of the attention his parents gave to his arm he grew to detest them. When William was in his late teens he fell in love with his cousin (the daughter of his Aunt Alice) but she did not love him and got married to Grand Duke Serge of Russia. A few years later he got married to a granddaughter of his grandmother's half-sister. They had several children.

Children: Crown Prince Hohenzollern, Prince Eitel Friedrich (1883-1942), Prince Adalbert (1884-1948), Prince August Wilhelm (1887-1949), Prince Oskar (1888-1958), Prince Joachim (1890-1920), and Viktoria Luise von Preußen.

In 1888 when his father died he raided his desk to find anything that may have incriminated his father in something, but all that was found was papers about how bad he had been in his life.

Publicly sided with the Boers after the Jameson Raid in 1896, and during the Second Boer War (1899-1902).

He was with his grandmother Queen Victoria when she died in 1901. Later that year he lost his mother as well. He did the same thing to his mother that he did with his father with the same results. Vickie had given all her papers to the British ambassador to Berlin a few days before she died. After his mother died he continued to rule Germany in a back handed manner, and did not like the fact that his Uncle Edward was more powerful than he was. He did not like the fact that he was part of starting World War One because it pitted him against cousins, aunts, and uncles all over Europe and the Americas. His response to his cousin changing their last name to Windsor was that he would like to see the Merry Wives of Saxe-Coburg & Gotha. After the war he had to give up his throne and he went to the Netherlands, where after the death of his first wife he married a second.

Encouraged Russia to go to war with Japan in 1904, and supplied the Imperial Russian Navy with fuel as it sailed around Africa.

The impact of Wilhelm's abdication sent youngest son, Prince Joachim, into a deep depression. Unable to accept his new status as a commoner, he shot himself on July 18, 1920.

Initally supported Adolf Hitler, hoping Hitler would restore the monarchy with his eldest grandson as the fourth Kaiser. After "The Night of the Broken Glass" in November 1938, Wilhelm was quoted as saying that for the first time in his life, he felt ashamed to be German. However he wrote anti-Semitic remarks in letters, and sent telegrams congratulating Hitler on the Dutch surrender in May 1940 and the Fall of France in June 1940. Hitler ignored his request that there be no Nazi regalia at his funeral.

Wilhelm's grandson, Karl Franz Josef, married Hermine's daughter, Henriette, in 1940. They divorced in 1946.