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Authors: Diana Preston
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that if it was strategically a matter of life or death for Germany to advance through Belgium, it was equally a matter of life or death for Britain to keep its solemn compact.
Some hours before midnight and the expiry of the ultimatum, according to a British diplomat within, a mob “of quite well-dressed individuals, including a number of women,” stoned the British embassy, smashing many windows. The crowd “seemed mad with rage . . . howling ‘Death to the English pedlar nation!’ ” “that was guilty of Rassen-verrat!”—“race treason.”
Von Bethmann Hollweg later complained: “My blood boiled at his [Goschen’s] hypocritical harping on Belgian neutrality, which was not the thing that had driven England into the war.” British hypocrisy would soon become a familiar German charge. The kaiser too was nonplussed at Britain’s decision. His relationship with Great Britain had always been one of his most complex, emotional, and ambiguous. Her first grandchild, he adored his grandmother Queen Victoria and is said to have held her in his arms as she died in 1901. He had cordially loathed her successor, his uncle Edward VII. After one of Edward’s royal visits to France to cement the Anglo-French entente, the kaiser told three hundred guests at a Berlin dinner “He is Satan. You can hardly believe what a Satan he is.” When Edward died in 1910, the kaiser advised Theodore Roosevelt that the forty-five-year-old George V was “a very nice boy . . . He is a thorough Englishman and hates all foreigners but I do not mind that as long as he does not hate Germans more than other foreigners.”
As an autocrat the kaiser overestimated the power of the monarchy in the British democracy. In late July 1914, on the eve of war, he placed great credence in an account from his brother Henry, then yachting in England, of a conversation with George V in which the latter said that Britain would remain neutral. He told a skeptical von Tirpitz that “I have the word of a King and that is sufficient for me.” When Britain declared war he complained, “to think that Nicholas [the czar of Russia] and Georgie should have played me false! If my grandmother had been alive she would never have allowed it . . . Only among the ruins of London will I forgive Georgie.”
The ambiguity of the kaiser’s feelings toward Britain extended far beyond its royal family. He admired much about the country and its culture, including its capital’s fine architecture. His enthusiasm for battleships and Atlantic liners had been roused in British ports. He was proud not only of being a Knight of the Garter but also an honorary British Admiral of the Fleet and Field Marshal. Initially he had wanted an alliance between what he thought of as “the two Teutonic nations,” commenting in 1901 that “with such an alliance not a mouse could stir in Europe without our permission and the nations would in time come to see the necessity of reducing their armaments.” Such an alliance would be a defense against the encirclement of Germany, which he feared.
Subsequently, he had simply wanted Britain to stand aside and allow Germany a free hand in Europe and in so doing recognize in political terms its real and rising economic strength. Germany had become the dominant force in European steel and chemical production as well as coal mining. In 1870 Britain had 32 percent of the world’s manufacturing capacity, but by 1910 its share had fallen to less than 15 percent, while Germany’s had risen to 16 percent. (The United States by then had 35 percent.) * Thereafter the kaiser had come to believe that Britain still treated Germany too lightly, undervaluing both him and his nation, and to share his mentor Bismarck’s view of the British: “I have had all through my life sympathy for England and its inhabitants but these people do not want to let themselves be liked by us.”
It is easy to portray the kaiser—sensitive about his withered arm, early
Some hours before midnight and the expiry of the ultimatum, according to a British diplomat within, a mob “of quite well-dressed individuals, including a number of women,” stoned the British embassy, smashing many windows. The crowd “seemed mad with rage . . . howling ‘Death to the English pedlar nation!’ ” “that was guilty of Rassen-verrat!”—“race treason.”
Von Bethmann Hollweg later complained: “My blood boiled at his [Goschen’s] hypocritical harping on Belgian neutrality, which was not the thing that had driven England into the war.” British hypocrisy would soon become a familiar German charge. The kaiser too was nonplussed at Britain’s decision. His relationship with Great Britain had always been one of his most complex, emotional, and ambiguous. Her first grandchild, he adored his grandmother Queen Victoria and is said to have held her in his arms as she died in 1901. He had cordially loathed her successor, his uncle Edward VII. After one of Edward’s royal visits to France to cement the Anglo-French entente, the kaiser told three hundred guests at a Berlin dinner “He is Satan. You can hardly believe what a Satan he is.” When Edward died in 1910, the kaiser advised Theodore Roosevelt that the forty-five-year-old George V was “a very nice boy . . . He is a thorough Englishman and hates all foreigners but I do not mind that as long as he does not hate Germans more than other foreigners.”
As an autocrat the kaiser overestimated the power of the monarchy in the British democracy. In late July 1914, on the eve of war, he placed great credence in an account from his brother Henry, then yachting in England, of a conversation with George V in which the latter said that Britain would remain neutral. He told a skeptical von Tirpitz that “I have the word of a King and that is sufficient for me.” When Britain declared war he complained, “to think that Nicholas [the czar of Russia] and Georgie should have played me false! If my grandmother had been alive she would never have allowed it . . . Only among the ruins of London will I forgive Georgie.”
The ambiguity of the kaiser’s feelings toward Britain extended far beyond its royal family. He admired much about the country and its culture, including its capital’s fine architecture. His enthusiasm for battleships and Atlantic liners had been roused in British ports. He was proud not only of being a Knight of the Garter but also an honorary British Admiral of the Fleet and Field Marshal. Initially he had wanted an alliance between what he thought of as “the two Teutonic nations,” commenting in 1901 that “with such an alliance not a mouse could stir in Europe without our permission and the nations would in time come to see the necessity of reducing their armaments.” Such an alliance would be a defense against the encirclement of Germany, which he feared.
Subsequently, he had simply wanted Britain to stand aside and allow Germany a free hand in Europe and in so doing recognize in political terms its real and rising economic strength. Germany had become the dominant force in European steel and chemical production as well as coal mining. In 1870 Britain had 32 percent of the world’s manufacturing capacity, but by 1910 its share had fallen to less than 15 percent, while Germany’s had risen to 16 percent. (The United States by then had 35 percent.) * Thereafter the kaiser had come to believe that Britain still treated Germany too lightly, undervaluing both him and his nation, and to share his mentor Bismarck’s view of the British: “I have had all through my life sympathy for England and its inhabitants but these people do not want to let themselves be liked by us.”
It is easy to portray the kaiser—sensitive about his withered arm, early
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