Kaiser Wilhelm II

by Christopher Clark

  Within a year, however, developments in the Far East underscored the opportunities that came with a credible naval presence. Following the murder of two German Catholic priests near the Chinese port of Kiaochow, Wilhelm resolved to use the incident as a pretext for occupation and seizure of the port and ordered a German squadron to move in on 14 November 1897. The occupation was eventually formalized under a ninety-nine-year lease of the kind recently secured by the British in Hong Kong. The Kiaochow initiative had been proposed by a squadron commander serving in the China Sea and was launched without any consultation of the German chancellor and foreign minister – although Wilhelm had taken the precaution of sounding out his cousin Nicholas II to ensure that the Russians would not object. The incident strengthened Wilhelm’s resolve to secure for Germany the services of a strong fleet.40

  Wilhelm’s deepening preoccupation with naval expansion coincided with the emergence of an increasingly bitter factional division within the uppermost ranks of the naval administration. On the one hand, Wilhelm’s naval cabinet chief, Admiral Baron Gustav von Senden Bibran, and his ambitious protégé Alfred von Tirpitz pressed for the construction on a grand scale of large battleships along the lines foreseen by the navalist historian Mahan. On the other side was the cautious Admiral Friedrich Hollmann, secretary of state for the navy and the man with responsibility for drafting naval bills for the Reichstag, who remained committed to the construction of a cruiser force. Whereas Senden and Tirpitz saw German naval strategy in terms of a future struggle for parity with Great Britain in waters close to home, Hollmann envisaged a more flexible weapon that would be used to press German claims and protect German interests on the periphery. While Tirpitz called for a propaganda campaign to mobilize public support for increased naval expenditure, Hollmann remained convinced that the Reichstag would never commit itself to grandiose, long-term building plans and insisted that naval expansion must advance by small stages. Between 1893 and 1896 Hollmann’s rivals waged a guerrilla campaign against the naval secretary, openly questioning his competence and bombarding Wilhelm with memoranda outlining their own strategy proposals. Wilhelm was excited by the breathtaking scale of the dissenters’ proposals, but was unwilling to relinquish Hollmann, in part because he remained attached to the cruiser concept favoured by the then-fashionable French jeune école, and in part because Hollmann still enjoyed the support of the camarilla around Philipp Eulenburg. Instead, he oscillated in characteristic fashion between the two fronts, countering the arguments of each party with the objections of the other. At the same time, he tacitly recognized Tirpitz as Hollmann’s eventual successor.41 Hollmann’s position finally became untenable in March 1897, when his naval estimates were mauled by the Reichstag budget committee. Hollmann was granted ‘leave’, and Admiral Tirpitz was appointed to replace him.

  The consequence was a victory for the battleship-based, anti-British fleet strategy that Senden, Tirpitz and their allies had been calling for since the early 1890s. On 26 March 1898, following a naval propaganda campaign of unprecedented scale and intensity, the Reichstag passed a new Navy Bill. In place of the eclectic and unfocused proposals of the early and mid-1890s, Tirpitz’s Imperial Naval Office now installed a long-term construction plan. Its ultimate objective was to enable Germany to confront the British navy on equal terms; the aptly named ‘Tirpitz plan’ aimed, as Jonathan Steinberg has put it, to ‘wrest from Great Britain her exclusive hegemony over the world’s oceans’.42

  Did the appointment of Tirpitz and the era of unilateral naval rearmament that followed with the navy laws of 1898, 1900, 1906, 1908 and 1912 represent an unalloyed victory for Wilhelm and for the principle of personal rule? In one sense, there would seem to be no doubt that it did. It was Wilhelm, after all, who installed the man who built the ships, promoting him over the heads of thirteen more senior officers. Wilhelm continued to support the admiral (soon promoted to grand admiral) against a growing chorus of criticism, insisting that government ministers work together with Tirpitz in support of new naval legislation. ‘Your Excellency is aware,’ Wilhelm informed Chancellor Hohenlohe in November 1899, ‘[…] that I am firmly determined to dissolve the Reichstag in the event that it should reject the reinforcement of our naval armaments which is so absolutely vital for our security and future. All other concerns and considerations must be subordinated to this question, which is a matter of existential importance for the Reich.’43

  Some qualifications are in order nonetheless. It is striking that Wilhelm could only bring about this momentous transition in defence policy by arbitrating, as it were, in a struggle within the naval administration between Hollmann of the Imperial Naval Office and his adversaries in the Naval Cabinet and Naval Command. Here, as in many of the other political conflicts in which he had taken part, his role was reactive rather than creative. Nor did the Tirpitz plan correspond with Wilhelm’s own long-standing ideas about the kind of fleet Germany needed. Wilhelm had wanted fast modern cruisers; Tirpitz wanted heavy battleships with maximum firepower. In this sense, the switch to big ships involved a departure for the Kaiser. Not the least of Tirpitz’s achievements was his success in warding off Wilhelm’s later attempts to modify the construction programme Tirpitz had put in place. As Volker Berghahn has observed, the new naval policy had to be protected, not only against the threat of parliamentary intervention, but also against interventions from above.44

  Wilhelm was aware from the outset of the anti-English thrust of the new plan. He can hardly have failed to note the Anglophobe animus of the admiral’s policy documents: the memorandum setting out the reform proposals to the Kaiser in June 1897, for example, began with the lapidary observation that ‘For Germany, the most dangerous naval enemy at the present time is England,’ and the same assertion cropped up in various forms throughout the draft proposals and memoranda of later years.45 In the short term, such bullish talk doubtless spoke to Wilhelm’s sense of grievance over the events of the mid-1890s. But a distinction must be made between Wilhelm’s mercurial and ambivalent attitude to the country of his British relatives and the unbending hostility of Tirpitz, which as Peter Winzen has shown, was linked with the admiral’s Social Darwinist conviction that German demographic and economic expansion would inevitably lead to conflict with the world’s foremost imperial power.46 Even within the senior ranks of the German navy, this consistency and narrowness of focus made Tirpitz an unusual figure. He was a determinist of the most pessimistic and dogmatic stripe: the question for him was not whether, but when, the confrontation would come and how swiftly the German navy could be prepared for it.

  By contrast, Wilhelm retained, as ever, a sense of the open-endedness of contemporary developments. He believed and hoped that England, in respectful acknowledgement of Germany’s growing naval might, would eventually decide to attach herself to the Triple Alliance. ‘I do know for a fact,’ his mother wrote to Queen Victoria in the summer of 1898, ‘that Wilhelm is most anxious for a rapprochement with England, and hopes with all his heart that England will come forward in some sort of way and meet him half-way.’47 In a much reported speech of February 1901, given in Marlborough House on the occasion of his departure from England after the burial of Queen Victoria, Wilhelm declared outright that Britain and Germany ought to form an alliance: ‘with such an alliance not a mouse could stir in Europe without our permission’.48 One could argue, of course, that such statements amounted to little more than effusions generated by the excitement of the moment, but this view is belied by Wilhelm’s consistency in returning to the theme throughout the pre-war era. Alternatively, one might argue that public expressions of interest in an alliance were merely cynical attempts to provide cover for Germany during the construction of the fleet by hoodwinking the British public about his country’s intentions. But this would hardly explain his frequent similar remarks in contexts where there could be no question of misleading the public – in his marginalia to diplomatic correspondence, for example, or his private conversations. ‘An enemy of Engl
and I shall never be,’ he told Ambassador Szögyényi in January 1902, ‘despite the many annoyances I have experienced from their side.’49 As late as March 1913, he expressed to the Württemberg envoy in Berlin his confidence that British apprehensions over German sea power would soon give way to a peaceful relationship founded on mutual respect.50

  The momentous reshuffle of 1897 appears, in other words, to have inaugurated an ominous divergence between the ever hazy and unresolved policy of the monarch, and the all-too-focused programme of his powerful servant. As Volker Berghahn has pointed out, Wilhelm was not ‘a man of clear concepts, who did the hard work of thinking and preparation and then goaded others to carry out the plans he himself had developed’.51 Small wonder that he became increasingly aware of the limits of his control over the naval policy he himself had launched. ‘[His Majesty] is upset by the fact that he is not yet doing the thing on his own and doesn’t appear – especially in the eyes of the better informed naval circles – to be the one in control.’ Tirpitz, who wrote these words in 1903, saw Wilhelm’s discomfiture as further evidence of the monarch’s superficiality: ‘That is the sad and depressing thing about this talented monarch: that he esteems the appearance above the essence.’52 But the truth of the matter was surely that it was Tirpitz himself who had seized control over the essentials of the naval programme, leaving Wilhelm with the mere appearance of control.

  Escape routes (1904–6)

  By the summer of 1904, Germany’s diplomatic position was substantially worse than it had been when Bismarck left office. The alliance concluded between Russia and France ten years before had inaugurated an era of close military and financial–industrial cooperation between Germany’s neighbours of east and west and now appeared to be a permanent feature of the European scene. The threat posed by this arrangement to the security of the Reich was heightened in 1899, when changes were made to the wording of the treaty that sharpened its anti-German focus. As relations with England cooled, Germany became increasingly dependent on the support provided by the Triple Alliance with Austria–Hungary and Italy. But here too, there were grounds for concern: it had always been difficult to reconcile Italian and Austrian interests within the joint security arrangements of the Triple Alliance, and the Italo-French agreement of 1902 over Tripoli and Morocco raised serious doubts as to the solidity of the Italian commitment.

  The German political leadership observed these ominous developments with an insouciance that seems astonishing in retrospect. Bülow had never felt that the Russian–French alliance called for a compensatory move in the direction of Great Britain, since he assumed that tensions between Britain and the two continental powers would provide Germany with room for manoeuvre and keep the door to a German– British rapprochement – should this become necessary – permanently open. He responded to the Italo-French accord over northern Africa with similar sang-froid: ‘in a happy marriage,’ he told the Reichstag on 8 January 1902, ‘there is no need for the husband to go red in the face when his wife dances an extra turn with someone else’.53 Bülow thus lost no time in turning down an alliance offer from the Russian foreign minister, Count Lambsdorff, in 1902 – a move he was later to regret. But the Anglo-French Entente of 1904 was a more serious blow. In a letter to Bülow of April 1904, Wilhelm confided that the Entente gave him ‘much food for thought’, because the fact that England and France no longer needed to fear anything from each other meant that ‘the need to take account of our position becomes ever less pressing’.54

  How could Germany extricate itself from this unhappy state of affairs? Two options presented themselves. The first was to commit the Reich to an alliance with Russia and thereby weaken or neutralize the Franco-Russian alliance. The second was to find some means of weakening the new Entente between Britain and France. Opportunities to test both options arose during 1904–5, thanks to an international crisis that placed the European alliance system under severe strain.

  In February 1904 war broke out between Russia and Japan over control of Manchuria. Wilhelm had been calling for some time – without success – for a diplomatic approach to the Russians and he quickly saw the advantages to be reaped from Russia’s predicament. In a letter of February 1904 to the tsar, Wilhelm pointed out that the French were supplying the Japanese with raw materials and thus hardly comporting themselves as reliable allies.55 In June he informed Nicholas that he believed the Anglo-French Entente served the purpose of ‘preventing the French from coming to your aid!’; other letters made commiserating noises about the ill-fortune of the Russian army and expressed confidence in future successes.56 Wilhelm also approved more practical measures, such as the coaling of Russian battleships from German stations en route to the East. Finally, on 30 October, he presented the tsar with a draft alliance provided by Bülow. The substance of the text was an undertaking that each power would come to the other’s aid in the event of either’s being attacked in Europe or elsewhere in the world. Nicholas gave the matter serious consideration, but was unwilling to enter into a formal agreement before consulting his French ally. Since it was inconceivable that the French would agree, this was tantamount to rejecting the proposal.

  By the summer of 1905, however, Russia’s position had worsened drastically: Port Arthur had fallen in January, the Russian Manchurian army had been defeated by Japanese forces at Mukden in March, and the Baltic fleet was destroyed in the Sea of Japan in May. In the political and economic upheaval that resulted, a revolution broke out in January and raged on intermittently throughout the year. Wilhelm renewed his approaches to Nicholas, who was now disposed, in his desperation, to take more serious note of his cousin’s proposals. In the summer of 1905 the royal yacht Hohenzollern made its way towards the small fishing village of Björkö in the Gulf of Finland for a rendezvous with the tsar’s Polar Star. As Roderick McLean has shown, the purpose of this journey was kept secret, even from the entourage, although one of the Kaiser’s companions later recalled that Wilhelm had spoken incessantly of ‘alliances and political combinations’, and specifically of a ‘coalition between Germany, France and Russia’.57 The two boats moored alongside each other on 23 July and the tsar came aboard for dinner. Confidential discussions followed, during which Wilhelm played – with considerable success – on the tsar’s anxieties about British designs against Russia and the unreliability of the French, who had now thrown in their lot with Britain. On the following morning a treaty was signed by the two monarchs. It stipulated that ‘in the event that one of the two empires were attacked by a European power, its ally would aid it in Europe by land and sea with all of its forces’. A closing clause laid down that the Russians were to seek the participation of France as a co-signatory.58 The tsar appears to have been in an unstable emotional state throughout the proceedings; Wilhelm recalled to Eulenburg that after signing he ‘fell into my arms and wept, so that the tears came pouring down, [saying:] “You are my only loyal friend.” ’59

  Wilhelm was delighted with the new agreement and ecstatic at the role he himself had played in orchestrating it. He saw it as a triumph for dynastic diplomacy and a new ‘cornerstone’ in European politics that would turn over ‘a new leaf in the history of the world’. In this he was to be disappointed. Oddly enough, given his strong support for the earlier draft treaty of 1904, Bülow now refused to accept and co-sign the commitment Wilhelm had pledged at Björkö. The chancellor objected to an amendment Wilhelm had made to the draft text – against the advice of the Foreign Office60 – that limited the area of operations covered by the treaty to Europe (the original text had stated that an attack in Europe or elsewhere in the world would activate the alliance) and decided, after some days’ reflection, to tender his resignation. By limiting the treaty to Europe, Bülow argued in his letter of resignation, Wilhelm had rendered it useless, since Germany was in a far better position to aid Russia on the continent than Russia would be to aid Germany. Whether Bülow’s protest really holds water has been disputed among historians. Lamar Cecil is inclined to take a
t face value the arguments offered in the chancellor’s letter of resignation and to accept his negative judgement of Wilhelm’s diplomacy. Katherine Lerman, by contrast, has argued that there was sound reasoning behind Wilhelm’s amendment (namely the desire to avoid entangling Germany in an imperialist conflict between Russia and Great Britain) and that the treaty, had it been ratified, might well have served a valuable purpose. Both agree, however, that Bülow’s protest and resignation were motivated in large part by the desire to strengthen his position and assert his independence from the emperor.61

  5. Wilhelm II aspired to play a role in shaping the foreign policy of the German empire. His most dramatic intervention in this sphere occurred in the summer of 1905 when he met with Tsar Nicholas II at sea off Björkö on the coast of Finland to agree the text of a draft treaty. The meeting went well (the two emperors are seen here chatting on board one of the German vessels), but like so many of Wilhelm’s other diplomatic initiatives, this one came to nothing.

  The impact of the showdown between emperor and chancellor over Björkö on relations between the two men has been discussed (see chapter 4 above). As for the question of the amended treaty’s value to German diplomacy, this swiftly became irrelevant, as it emerged that the French would never co-sign such an agreement.62 In a memorandum to the tsar, the Russian foreign minister, Count Lambsdorff, pointed out that ‘it was inadmissible to promise at the same time the same thing to two governments whose interests were mutually antagonistic’. Nicholas’s contrite reply revealed how fragile were the foundations upon which the agreement had been based: ‘I didn’t understand the Treaty of Björkö as you do,’ he told Lambsdorff. ‘When I signed it, I didn’t for a moment think that my agreement with Emperor Wilhelm could be directed against France; quite the contrary; I had always intended that France should be associated with it.’63 Nicholas remained favourably disposed to an agreement of some kind with Germany – a revised version of Björkö, perhaps, that had been vetted by the French? – but under pressure from his political and economic advisers he gradually dropped the idea.64 The ‘eastern road’ out of isolation was thus closed off, at least for the foreseeable future.