Wilhelm II,
Kaiser of Germany
-part 2-
Kaiser Wilhelm II's children:
Prince Eithel Friedrich
Prince Adalbert
Crown Prince Wilhelm   
Prince Oskar
Prince August Wilhelm
     On June 6, when Crown Prince Wilhelm was marrying to Grand Duchess Cecilie of Mecklenburg Strelitz, Wilhelm knew of Delcasse's fall and gave his Chancellor the rank of Prince.  But Bulow and Holstein were not yet satisfied with Delcasse` resignation. They wanted the Anglo-French Entente to be destroyed and Morocco to be internationalized.
   Meanwhile, Wilhelm, aboard the Hohenzollern, met Tsar Nicholas II, who was aboard the Polar Star, at the Finish fjord of Bjôrko. Wilhelm visited NIchoals aboard the Polar Star and convinced him to sign a treaty of alliance between Germany and Russai, which had been previously prepared by the Kaiser. The treraty established that France would be iveited later to join it and would counteract the British power by destroying the Anglo-French Entente. Altough Nicholas had just been pushed by Wilhelm to a disastrous war with Japan, he again was convinced by the Kiaser and signed the treaty. Bulow's reaction towards the treaty was not what Wilhelm expected. He said the treaty was of no use for Germany and he threatened to resign. Wilhelm wrote his minister a letter begging him to stay in the Chancellory. The Tsar's ministers also rejected the treaty and NIcholas wrote a retractation letter to Wilhelm. To Wilhelm and Bulow's discouragement, the German policy they had followed had strenghtened instead of weakened the Anglo-French Entente. When the Liberal Party won the elections in England, Lord Edward Grey, the new Foreign Minister, reassured the British support to France.
   An international conference was arranged in the Spanish town of Algeciras, accross the bay form Gibraltar, in order to solve the Morocco crisis. The Algeciras Conference formally opened on January 16, 1906. The German delegates were Herr von Radowitz, German Ambassador in Madrid, and Count von Tattenbach, former Minister to Morocco. The Spanish delegarte, the Duke of Almodovar, was elected preside the conference. The French delegate was M. Revoli and the Brtish was Sir Arthur Nicolson, former Minister to Moroccco, who was now British Ambassador to Spain. Nicolson said that Engalnd would support France as established in the Article IX of the Anglo-French treaty. Tattenbach, at teh offensive, declared that France 's wish to had the comission of establishing order through Morocco, was inadmisible. According to him, the German policy was an attempt to "secure full guarantees for the open door in Morocco". He invited Nicolson to support him, but the British diplomat answered that his country had obligations with France. The German diplomats did poorly at Algerias. Holstein was furious and wanted to go into war with France but Bulow stopped him. He only wanted the conference to end. The conference resolution was that Frnace would have the comisiion of perserving order along the Moroccan-Algerian frontier and would share with Spain he supercision of the police with a Swiss inspector as general in command..The document was sign on April 17 and the Conference ended. The American president, Theodore Roosevelt, considered the Conference as a Gemran victory and even sent Wilhelm a congratulations message. But the other nations considered that France had defeat Germany althogh she had not had a complete victory.
    For many years Wilhelm was considered guilty of the Morocco crisis because of his behaviour at tangiers. Only many years later the true came to light. During his exile in Holland he worte after reading the biography of Sir Arthur Nicolson, wrote by his son Harold: "Algeciras was the result of a totally worng policy of Hosltein and Bulow, who forced me to go to Tangiers. The damned constitution! If I had not been a constitutional monarch tied to my ministers by a constitution, but a mocarch free to geovern as Friedrich the Great had been, the visit ti Tangiers had not have taken lace and neither had the Algeciras Conference".
  

   The Kaiser's best and intimous friend Philip von Eulenberg had a great influence in Wilhelm's government. Eulenberg was once accused to be homosexual, accusation that involved Wilhelm too because of his intimate relation with him. The matter came from a journalist named Maximilian Harden, of jew origin, whose justification for attacking Eulenberg was his antisemitism. Wilhelm and Eulenberg always denied the accusation and after the sad affair was over, they never saw each other again.

  . On May 24, 1913, Wilhelm's daughter, Viktoria Louise, was married to Prince Ernest August of Hanover, and the Kaiser invited his cousins, King George V of England and Tsar Nicholas II; this would be the last time the Royal cousins saw each other.
   On the morning of June 28, 1914, the heir of Austria-Hungary, Archduke Franz Ferdinand was visiting Sarajevo, capital of Serbia, when a young Servian named Gavrilo Princip fired a pistol over the Archduke, who died almost inmediately. The Austrian Government reacted violently towards the assesination, sending Serbia an ultimatum. Russia, Serbia's protector, mobilized his army against Austria. Germany, Austria's allied, declared war to Russia; First World War had begun.
Germany was sorrounded by the war in two fronts; in the East by Russia and in the West by France and Belgium. Kaiser Wilhelm and his Chief of General Staff, Helmuth von Moltke, decided to adopt the Schlieffen plan as offensive strategy. It consisted in the sacrifice of East Prussia by constituing a strong offensive in the French border destinated to destroy the French army. Once schieved this offensive, it would be time to end with Russia wich was slowlier in its militar movilization.
   The news from the Esatern front, which was under General Prittwitz's command, were alarming; the Russian numeric superiority was forcing the German army to retreat to low Vistula. Wilhelm was worried but unable to take a decition. Moltke decided to modify the Sclieffen plan and reinforced the Esatern front, by sending from troops from the West. Generals Erich von Ludendorf and Paul von Hindenburg wer assigned to replace Prittwitz. This change weakened the Western front. The result was a Russian defeat by Hindenburg's army at Tannenberg on the last days of Augusts. But tyhe Germans were to as lucky at the Western front. In September the French troops of General Joffre stopped the German advance over Paris at the Marne; in October the Belgians stopped them at Yser and the British did the same at Ypres in November. Moltke's prestige was damage and was replace by General Erich von Falkenhayn as Chief of General Staff. 
The Kaiser used to visit his troops in the front but the most of times his speeches used to result inconvenient because his idea of war was incongruent with the experience of is soldiers. All of his sons were fighting in the front: Crown Prince Wilhelm was commander of the 5th Army and had a great victory at Longwy; Eitel Friedrich was at the head of the First Regiment of Infantry; Adalbert was an naval officer on board of the dreadnought Luitpold; August Wilhelm was an officer of the General Staff in the front; Oscar commanmded the Kaiser's granadiers at Liegnitz; the younger son, Joachim, was a cavalry officer and he was wounded during the battle of the Masurian Lakes.
   The new Chief of the General Staff, Erich von Falkenhayn, beleived that Russia had been already exterminated on the Eastern front and that Germany most concentrate its troops on the Western front against France and England, in order to win the war. On February 21 1916, he began an offensive at Verdun, against the French Army, in which Crown Prince Wilhelm took part. Altough the French looses were higher (440,000 between woundeds and deaths) that the Germans (280,000), and the German troops had gained some territory, the French manteined the front line and they retained Verdun. By June the Germans were exhasuted and the French had recovered some lost territory. Crown Prince Wilhelm tried to convinced the General Staff to stop that useless and bloody offensive but Falkenhayn was decided to go on with his plan till the end. By August the impossibility to go on in Verdun became obviuos and Falkenhayn was dismissed. Hindemburg replaced him and on September 2 the offensive against verdun stopped.
   Germany was biseiged by British troops and hunger was devasting the poplation. The demands on an unrestricted submarine war increased in order to destroyed the ships that supplied food to Englamnd and put the island at the mercy of Germany. Falkenhayun had supported the idea but Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg  was against it, as well as Kaiser Wilhelm. They both feared that an unrestricted submarine war would push the United States to the war in the Allied side and Germany would be lost. Wilhelm was convinced that a rupture with North American should be avoided. The United States had already been annoyed towards germany when in 1915 a German submarine had sunk the British transatlantic Lusitania where 124 Americans were on board. The only incursion the Germans had made in the war at sea was the Battle of Jutland in May 1916, when the Brotish Navy was severely damage. Nevertheless it was not a total victory for Germany. 
   The German Almiral and creator of the German navy, Alfred von Tirpitz had longed for a mre intensive offensive at sea so he also supported the submarine war. He even asked for the resignation of Bethman Hoolweg but, as Von Tirpitz was the Chancellor's subordinated, it was the Almiral who was dismissed. Wilhelm was deeply resented at Tirpitz's dismissal. Hindemburg and Ludendorf supported the submarine war too and on Jnaury 9, 1917 they presented Wilhelm an ultimatum declaring that they would not keepon assuming any military responsability if the unrestricted submarine war had not begun for February 1st. Finally Wilhelm had to agree and on January 31, the unrestricted submarine war was declared. Germany sank about five thousand tons of mercantile British ships just in February, leaving England at the edge of disaster. On April 2, the United States declared war to Germany and by the summer about a million and seven hundred American soldiers were fighting in the Western front against Germany. Bethmann Hollweg was accused by Hindemburg and Ludendorff of sympathizing with the defeatist peace resolution promoted by the leader of the Rman Catholic Central Party, Mathias Erzeberger, while the true was that the chnacellor didn't agree with such resolution On June 26, the Chancellor recieved the Papal nuncio, Eugenio Pacelli (future Pope Pius XII), who was trying to negotiate peace between the warring nations. Wilhelm recieved Pacelli three days later. The unfortunate true was that Bethmann Hollweg was not popular and Hindemburg and Ludendorff  demanded Wilhelm for his resignation, threatening to resign themselves if the Kaiser refuses. The Chancellor resigned himself, telling the Kaiser that the population would lost his faith in the Army without those two generals. Pacelli, as well as the American embassador in Berlin agreed that without Bethmann Hollweg the peace would be more difficult.
Kaiser Wilhelm II's children:
Princess Viktoria Lousie
Prince Joaquim
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