Yet Wilhelm knew nothing of statecraft. A gambler and an opportunist, he lacked prudence. ‘He knew how to make the gestures, to utter the word, to strike the attitudes in the imperial style,’ Churchill wrote in profiling the Kaiser. ‘He could stamp and snort’ but he possessed neither character nor consistency nor foresight. His modus operandi was to raise a ruckus and to see what might happen. Impulse took precedence over calculation. In the long run-up to the war of 1914-1918, the Kaiser’s penchant for recklessness was on full display. On multiple occasions, he instigated crises that brought Europe to the brink of war over issues that no European leader viewed worth fighting for. Take the Agadir Crisis of 1911. Annoyed that France was asserting primary influence in Morocco without properly accounting for German interests there, the Kaiser opted for a show of force. Dispatching the gunboat Panther seemed to suggest Germany was looking for a fight. Thus did Wilhelm come within an eyelash of dragging all of Europe into a conflagration over an issue of trifling importance.
‘It seems probable,’ wrote Churchill, ‘that the Germans did not mean war on this occasion. But they meant to test the ground; and in so doing they were prepared to go to the very edge of the precipice. It’s so easy to lose one’s balance there: a touch, a gust of wind, a momentary dizziness, and all is precipitated into the abyss.’
Just three years later, in no small measure due to the Kaiser’s own miscalculations, Europe plunged headlong into that abyss. The ensuing cataclysm cost Wilhelm his throne, his empire, and much else. No participant emerged with less than grievous wounds. In Donald Trump we may have another Wilhelm II on our hands — someone who poses a danger, not because he is intent on evil, but because he is erratic, unpredictable, and totally oblivious to how others may interpret his words and deeds.
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