Philip Mansel

Kaiser Wilhelm’s guide to ruining a country

A review of Wilhelm II: Into the Abyss of War and Exile, 1900-1941, by John C.G. Röhl, translated by Sheila de Bellaigue and Roy Bridge. The anachro­nistic, racist and militaristic German monarch hastened his country’s self-destruction

He who must be obeyed: portrait of the Kaiser by Ferdinand Keller, 1893 [Getty Images]
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  • Wilhelm II: Into the Abyss of War and Exile, 1900–1941

    John C.G. Röhl, translated by Sheila de Bellaigue and Roy Bridge

    CUP

The role of personality in politics is the theme of this awe-inspiring biography. This is the third volume, 1,562 pages long, of John Röhl’s life of the Kaiser. It has been brilliantly translated — the labyrinth of imperial Germany navigated by many headed subdivisions in each chapter — by Sheila de Bellaigue.

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