What Happens When a Bad-Tempered, Distractible Doofus Runs an Empire?
by Miranda Carter, author of George, Nicholas and Wilhelm: Three Royal Cousins and the Road to World War I
Not that this deterred the Kaiser. One of the many things that Wilhelm was convinced he was brilliant at, despite all evidence to the contrary, was personal diplomacy, fixing foreign policy through one-on-one meetings with other European monarchs and statesmen. In fact, Wilhelm could do neither the personal nor the diplomacy, and these meetings rarely went well. The Kaiser viewed other people in instrumental terms, was a compulsive liar, and seemed to have a limited understanding of cause and effect.
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More sinisterly, Wilhelms patronage of the aggressive, nationalistic right left him surrounded by ministers who held a collective conviction that a European war was inevitable and even desirable. Alfred von Tirpitz, Germanys Naval chiefwho realized at his first meeting with the Kaiser that he did not live in the real worldconsciously exploited Wilhelms envy and rage in order to extract the astronomical sums required to build a German Navy to rival Britains, a project that created an arms race and became an intractable block to peace negotiations.
no shortage of famously shitty people to compare with Nutjob-In-Chief really.
Snackshack
(2,541 posts)There are many similarities in personality.
sprinkleeninow
(20,237 posts)empedocles
(15,751 posts)Harker
(14,012 posts)20th C. with whom some startling similarities may be found.
This is an exact match.
"The Kaiser couldnt lead three soldiers over a gutter. True.
Dump has the attention span of a gnat at best.
JHan
(10,173 posts)sheshe2
(83,746 posts)MFM008
(19,806 posts)His mother Vicky should have smothered him.
They also had a terrible relationship.
Perhaps he blamed her for his tweaky
little arm(congenital)deformity.
machoneman
(4,006 posts)trying to cover up (he-he!) his shortcomings?
world wide wally
(21,740 posts)elleng
(130,865 posts)Objection 14: 'The truth unquestionably is, that the only path to a subversion of the republican system of the Country is, by flattering the prejudices of the people, and exciting their jealousies and apprehensions, to throw affairs into confusion, and bring on civil commotion. Tired at length of anarchy, or want of government, they may take shelter in the arms of monarchy for repose and security.
Those then, who resist a confirmation of public order, are the true Artificers of monarchynot that this is the intention of the generality47 of them. Yet it would not be difficult to lay the finger upon some of their party who may justly be suspected. When a man unprincipled in private life desperate in his fortune, bold in his temper, possessed of considerable talents, having the advantage of military habitsdespotic in his ordinary demeanourknown to have scoffed in private at the principles of libertywhen such a man is seen to mount the hobby horse of popularityto join in the cry of danger to libertyto take every opportunity of embarrassing the General Government & bringing it under suspicionto flatter and fall in with all the non sense of the zealots of the dayIt may justly be suspected that his object is to throw things into confusion that he may ride the storm and direct the whirlwind.'
https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Hamilton/01-12-02-0184-0002