Word: wilhelm
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...Warlords and Statesmen. The tide of Teutonic conquest had flowed and ebbed for 2,000 years before it caught up with Wilhelm Hohenzollern and left him stranded when it briefly receded. The Warlord of Potsdam, as he talked of history's cry for leaders, must have thought of other German warlords who had ridden the tide of conquest when it flowed. He must have thought, as Adolf Hitler so often thinks, of the fear which has caused other peoples to fight against the tide for 2,000 years of history...
...must have thought of the Knights of the Sword and the Teutonic Knights, who Germanized the shores of the Baltic, where the Hohenzollerns were to found their Kingdom, and of Friedrich Wilhelm, the Elector of Brandenburg, who helped bring about the Treaty of Westphalia after the Thirty Years' War that reduced Germany to ruin. It was Friedrich Wilhelm who started the Hohenzollerns on the road to the leadership of Germany, and his son, Friedrich I, who persuaded the Holy Roman Emperor to style him King in Prussia. Of Friedrich's grandson, Frederick the Great, the Kaiser must have...
...Power and Glory. Friedrich Wilhelm Viktor Albert, son of Crown Prince Friedrich Wilhelm of Germany, was born in 1859, three and one-half years before Bismarck became Chancellor. Bismarck soon weaned him away from his none-too-doting parents, persuaded his Emperor-Grandfather to make him a Lieutenant of Infantry at the age of ten. Bismarck had him riding a horse at twelve in the victory parade when Wilhelm I celebrated the conquest of France...
...Young Wilhelm had two infirmities that profoundly affected his life: a withered left arm, injured by forceps at his birth, for which he compensated by showing great physical daring; and otorrhea, an ear infection, which made him irritable and increased a natural tendency to avoid mental exertion. Throughout his life he loved pomp and the physical trappings of power. Throughout his life his brilliance was marred by mental shallowness and arrogance...
...became Kaiser at 29, after his ailing father had ruled for 99 days. Determined to rule in his own right, he dismissed Bismarck two years later, in 1890. Historians blame his dropping of the canny old Chancellor for the fate that ultimately humbled Germany, and certainly Wilhelm's arrogance and indiscretion made him many enemies. He got huffy with his Uncle Bertie (Edward VII of Great Britain) after his father's funeral, and in 1896 enraged all Britain by sending a telegram of sympathy to the Boer leader, Oom Paul Kruger. He refused to renew the Reinsurance Treaty...