Part One: Kaiser Wilhelm: The Saddest Warlord In History

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
What's doing an episode my the podcast that I do.
I'm Robert Evans very badly introducing another podcast of Behind
the Bastards, the show where we talk about the worst
people in all of history, and here to help me
today is one of the best people in all of history.
Jamie Lofta. How you doing, Jamie. I'm good. I'm I'm

(00:26):
I'm having a lovely day. I'm too cold, bruise deep. Oh,
too cold, bruise deep. Are you feeling optimistic and and
and positive about the world. I'm feeling like who we
talk about today is going to might end up actually
being a pretty good guy. That's a good guy. That's
how I go into every Bastard's episode. Now, I'm just like,

(00:47):
you know what, this guy's gonna end up being pretty nice.
I think I might change my opinion on this fellow.
I think that I'm going to really have some arguments
in his name. You you might have a couple because
the guy we're talking about today is Kaiser motherfucking wilhelm Um. Yeah. Yeah,

(01:08):
your reaction was pretty intense when I told you that
right before the episode. I was, well, I'm never allowed
to know in advance, and then I just and then
I sit down and it's what fresh hell in terms
of in terms of person, in terms of facial hair
and turns just in every this is a brutal one
for me, strictly on a facial hair level. You're not

(01:30):
a fan of his walrist mustache. Listen. I respect someone
who makes a choice. Right, he made a choice. You
had to give him that. I will hand it to him.
Much like Robert Pattinson in the Lighthouse, he is making
a choice. Choices don't always work out. Uh, this is
actually I think this is one of the first subjects

(01:50):
that I actually like. No affair amount about I took a.
I took A in high school for some reason. My
last two years of high school I only learned about
World War One. That's great. It was love World War One.
I mean, I'm as I stand and we stand, we
have no Oh the psalm so good. The trench. I

(02:12):
love that we acted out the assassination of Archduke friends Ferdinand.
It was a black one of my favorite assassinations. Of
the assassinations. The fashion, the fashion, the fashion, the trench
helmets that didn't stop bullets off. You know what, you
love it. It's also good and underrated World War I

(02:34):
am oh, yeah, yeah, no, way better than the sequel.
In my opinion, I totally agree sequel is overhyped. We
get it, you know. I mean, I'll pick Terminator two
of a Terminator one. I'll pick Aliens over alien but
I'm gonna pick World War one over World War two
every day of the We're gonna pick the Cheetah Girls
two over Cheetah Girls one. And that's a controversial opinion

(02:55):
for those I know you don't Rob, I'm still I
had to tell you who Ariana Grande was last year,
which is something that I just I still it still
shakes me to my marrow that that happened. Well, girls
are wait, no, we can't swark with the show until
you know who the Cheat Girls are. Who you don't

(03:15):
know who the cheet Girls are? Of course I don't
I know, but I'm just always waiting for girls. They
wish they do, wish they were like the Spice Girls.
But they're a band that was started by well some
great uh novellas for young girls. But it's it's like
Raven Simone. Two of the girls, right, she's the alpha,

(03:38):
and then two girls from three l W which you
also don't know what that is. And then a fourth
girl who has dropped off the face of the planet.
We don't know what happened to her. The point is
it was good. The singles were fine, and they wore
track suits. Oh, I do love track suits. I am
a big track suit fan. I love people in matching
track suits. Was they wore like complimentary past ll track

(04:01):
seas and then the second one they go to Barcelona. Yeah.
I think when uh, when it comes to like you're
talking about the fashion in World War One and how
how good it was. I hope when we have our
next World War that it's basically the same as World
War One, but we're all wearing track suits like that.
That is my dream. Imagine the World War three will

(04:23):
be waged in juicy guture head to to like form
fitting track suits, comfortable waste bands. By god. Yeah, I
don't want those royal ten in bombs tracks. I want
I want like goddamn Belton like the yeah, the ones
that have like rhinestones on them, and I'll tell you'll

(04:44):
know who's on what side. Yeah, yeah, but the color
of the rhinestones. Yeah, it will be a great war. Yeah.
I think that this is actually going to be the
best World war yet. I feel like we have a
real chance to make it so. But before we start,
before we start another world war, we should learn about
one of the guys who was most behind the First
World War. Uh Now. One I think it's interesting about

(05:07):
the Kaiser is that, like most of the people we
talked about on the show make a decision at a
certain point to be shitty people who do like horrible, exploitative,
violent things to other people. Um like, they make a
choice to be bastards at some point. But there's also
another less common category of bastards who are just sort
of born into it. They have bastardy, you know, thrust
upon them by the circumstances of their family and the

(05:29):
time they live in, which doesn't like make them mitigate
the evils they perpetrated or remove their agency entirely, but
I think it makes them more sympathetic figures than guys
like Hitler or Saddam who kind of like dove head
first into that. And Kaiser Wilhelm is like, once you
understand his whole backstory, you're kind of like, yeah, you
were a piece of ship, but like, how could this
story have ended? Well, how could you. Yeah, how could

(05:52):
you have learned? Who would you have learned how to
be a good person from? Exactly? Like? How was this
not gonna suck? Um? And that's the story of Eiser Wilhelm.
That's a good that will be the name of the biopic. Yeah,
how could this have not sucked? Yeah? Okay, cool? Yeah.
Kaiser Wilhelm was born of the Hahensallern dynasty, a family

(06:14):
of German nobles whose history stretches back nearly a thousand years.
To understand where he comes from, we have to start
this episode but talking about his father's birth on October
thirty one. Now this is long before Germany was a thing.
Prince Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia was born in Potsdamp. His
father was also named Wilhelm. All of the men in
this story are named fucking Friedrich Wilhelm. Um. And I

(06:36):
don't understand why the numbering works the way it does.
I don't understand any of this. But they're all named
Friedrich Wilhelm. Is the numbering out of order? It's it's weird.
I think it's because of like their middle names and
ship because they have a bunch of names other than
Friedrich Wilhelm. But they're they're all known as Friedrich Wilhelm. Yeah,
it's it's it's very dumb. I don't like when rich

(06:58):
people try to bamboozle me. Yeah, they have to have
the same name. God damn it. Yeah, I would love
it if the reasoning for that was just that the
common people like couldn't be trusted to learn a new
king's name. But I know it's something dumber and more
arrogant than that. It's still it's still like I don't know, like,
why are there five hundred Hollywood agents named Scott and

(07:21):
that are all the same man? You know, it's that's
that's nominative determinism. That's because if you're born Scott, you
get fast tracked into c A A. You got it.
There's a lot of you know, the Scots and the Mics,
and you know, we love them, but do we can
we tell them apart? No? Now, uh so Prince Friedrich Wilhelm,

(07:42):
who is the dad of the Prince Friedrich Wilhelm, will
be talking about this episode. Uh entered the world second
in line to the throne of Prussia after his brother,
the Crown Prince, who was also named Friedrich Wilhelm. Um
His parents had a typically loveless royal marriage. His father
was in love with Princess Elise reads a Will of Poland,
but she wasn't noble enough for a hohens All earned

(08:03):
to marry, so he had to marry one of his relatives, Augusta,
while vowing that he would never give his heart to her.
So this is how the relationship that leads to Kaiser
Wilhelm starts. Now, as you might expect, familial compromises like
this did not make for the happiest of home lives. Uh.
In June forty King Friedrich Wilhelm the third died after

(08:23):
forty three years of ruling Prussia. His oldest son succeeded him,
and Wilhelm became the Prince of Prussia. So Kaiser Wilhelm's
dad is now the crown Prince of Prussia. Okay, so
will the previous Wilhelm? He does? Dad diesel right, Yeah,
he sure does. He sure does. His dad dies and

(08:44):
his brother who was the same name as him, and
his dad becomes the king and he is now the
crown Prince. How does that work? When his dinner time?
You just shall one. I don't know, I don't know
how they told each other a part it's it's it
sucks so much like writing this part sucks because it's
just incredibly confusing, Like reading about royal I don't understand
people who like royal families because it makes me just

(09:06):
want to start punching and never stopped. Yeah. I hope
that there were some really disturbing nicknames in the mix.
It seems like the only way that this would work. Yeah,
I I don't know. Um. So, when he was eighteen
of a very right wing general named Leopold von Gerlach
told Kaiser Wilhelm's dad that he envied the prince's youth

(09:26):
for he would no doubt survive the end of this
absurd constitutionalism. Um. Because there were a lot of democratic
movements going through the German states at this point, um,
including Prussia, which is when night they established the Reichstag
and stuff like that. So, like people are starting to
get a voice in this period. Monarchs, you know, when
we talk about the Kaisers, we're not talking about absolute monarchs.
They have more power than obviously the British royal family,

(09:49):
but they're not like the czar, like they don't need
to just make yah. Yeah. Yeah, So Prince Friedrich. The
Kaiser's dad, was actually a fan of the growing democratic
movements in Germany. He was a live broll. He was
a very progressive guy. He believed that the people deserved
a constitution that would guarantee their rights and protect them
from like nobles just wanting to do whatever. Yeah, the

(10:11):
Kaiser's dad's actually a pretty chill dude. He's not like
the Kaisers or the Prince's prince. He's yeah, he's the
crown Prince at this point, which is like the next
in line for the throne. There's a funkload of princes.
The crown Prince is the one who's going to be
the king next. Yeah. That's the way it works all
over in all the different royal families. Right. So the

(10:32):
Kaiser's dad again, who's also Prince Wilhelm, spent a shipload
of his youth in England due to a friendship with
the British royal family that was orchestrated in part by
our old pal, King Leopold of Belgium. This is actually
one of the nice things Leopold did because the goal
of it was basically, I have all these if these
royal families start fucking and and marrying a bunch, then

(10:53):
they clearly will never fight in a war. Um yeah,
what a problem solving. They're like, well, what if this
whole family fucked each other? That would really solve politics.
And he was ready for a while there, for a
while there, for a while there, if he if he'd
been to the American South, he would have known that
having a family that fox each other does not stop

(11:16):
them from shooting at each other. But alas I mean,
the American South once again coming out on top their
way ahead of their time in terms of fucking and
also killing their family. Yeah. Yeah. Now, in eighteen fifty five,
Prince Wilhelm was invited to Britain without his parents to
stay with Queen Victoria and her family and proposed to

(11:36):
the Princess, who was also named Victoria because the British
royal families justice insufferable with the German um yeah. Now.
Happily enough, it turns out that the Kaiser's dad and
his mom, Princess Victoria, were actually a very rare love match, um,
which doesn't happen often in royal marriages. Um. And they
weren't closely related, which is also great. So by the

(11:57):
summer of eighteen fifty eight Princess Victoria, it was pregnant
and expecting. This was not treated with joy by Queen Victoria.
She considered this horrid news which would all end in
nothing because the princess got sick almost immediately and stayed
ill throughout much of the pregnancy. Queen Victoria was not
an optimist. Yeah. Um, the royal doctors assured everyone that

(12:18):
things would be fine, but the princess is midwife, Miss
Innocent knew what a single look that the pregnancy would
not end well. Miss Innocent, Yeah, named after Pope Innocent.
I think, oh, that's what I feel like. I had
a shirt this so that in junior high. Different meaning
I had Miss Innocent, Miss Independent after the Kelly Clarkson.

(12:40):
That was that's another pope. Yeah, Angel, that yet another pope.
A lot of popes that you had shared space. He
was the He was of the popes, one of the top,
I mean, pretty close to being a complete angel. Yeah.
Now we don't know precisely what went wrong with Kaiser

(13:02):
Wilhelm's birth, but it is certain that the doctors who
managed the birth fucked up in some way. Um. Some
of this is due to the fact that the infant
Kaiser was a breach birth. At that time in Central Europe,
about nine percent of babies born in breach were stillborn,
so almost all of the babies born this way died.
But obviously the Kaiser had the very best doctors. I mean,

(13:22):
you might argue that his doctors did a great job
of bringing him through alive, but known at the time
said so. The princess would later write of the bungling
way she was treated, And it seems like what happened
is while they were pulling him out of the birth canal,
they basically ripped his left arm off of his body
and fucked it like like they didn't separate, but like
ripped the muscles and ship. So he has his arm

(13:44):
is fucked up from the jump. Um. Now, the princess
was confined to bed rest after the birth for a month,
but both she and the child survived, albeit not without
permanent damage. When the birth was announced to the people
of Prussia by a field marshal, the baby prince was
described as as sturdy, a little recruit as a heart
could wish to see, But the obstetrician told a different story.

(14:06):
The infant was seemingly dead to a high degree. Yeah,
that's that's described. It is absolutely savage take on that infant.
Yeah yeah, really roasting the baby Kaiser. His survival was
considered close to miraculous. And I'm gonna quote next from
the book kaiser Villehelm, the Second Germany's Last Emperor by

(14:28):
John Vanderkist. Three or four days after the birth, Miss
Innocent drew Dr Martin's attention to the baby's left arm
hanging lifelessly from the shoulder socket. The father was told
at once. When he asked the German doctors, they reassured
him that the damage was only temporary paralysis, which would
improve with a little gentle massage at first, followed by
exercises at a later stage. This would prove to be
optimistic and untrue. Even as an adult, William's left arm

(14:51):
was six inches shorter than the right. He reminds me
of Nemo, who Robert from Find the Neim the one
that gets found. Oh yeah, he is, he is, And
like Nemo, he grows up to spark a war that
kills seventeen million people. That is what Anaxar hasn't gotten
to that that movie yet, But that's how the story goes. Well,

(15:13):
they're all about revisionist history over there. It's a disaster. Yeah. Yeah,
Nemo did become yeah, like a brutal general. He's he's
actually people blame global warming for the whole like coral
Reef dying off, but that's simply not the case. Yeah,
it's and also like the Kaiser super anti Semitic didn't

(15:34):
come up in the movie, but really really really far
off horrible if you get the feeling that they're just
cutting away just before something terrible happens. In every scene
in that movie, he has a copy of the Protocols
of the Elders of Zion tucked beneath his good finn.
Oh my god, you know again. I love fun fat,
I love movie trivia. Uh so. Um, the young Keyser's

(16:01):
hand looked normal when he grew up, but his the
actual arm in hand itself, were too weak to hold
anything much heavier than a piece of paper. Um. He
spent his life hiding it out. Yeah, it's that's fucking hard. Um. Yeah,
if you look at pictures of him, he's always hiding
his left arm out of sight in a coat pocket
or like like kind of up to his side with

(16:21):
like a glove on. And he had gloves that would help,
like extend the length of his hand a little bit
to make it look more normal. I've decided to forgive him.
Now we're cool. You're you're going to wind up feeling
very sympathetic throughout a significant chunk of this until we
get to the parts of it where he's a giant
piece of shit. Um. Yeah, now. As vander kiss book notes,

(16:45):
hiding this deformed arm became a guiding motivation for the
young prince throughout his life. Few photographs showed his left
arm clearly, let alone the hand. From an early age,
the art of concealing it from the camera lens became
second nature to him. It meals he could not manage
an ordinary knife and fork, but his body guard always
carried a special combined one while the person sitting next
to him discreetly cut up his food as if to compensate.

(17:06):
His right hand had an iron grip, something he would
often exploit as an adult one, greeting people for the
first time with a vice like handshake, sadistically turning the
rings on his fingers inward first, so as to add
to the other person's discomfort. If these men or women
were English, he laughed heartily at their winces as he
made jibes about the mailed fist. Okay, okay, he grows
up with a bit of a thing he's getting. I mean,

(17:28):
I guess you have to. It begs the question like,
if I had power influence as a twelve year old
with a back brace, would I have oppressed other people?
I don't know. Yes, I feel like you probably any
any furious twelve year old that feels out of place
if they had the It just no twelve year old
have the ability to He's the rare one. Yeah. If

(17:50):
I had absolute power at the age of twelve, when
I was like, uh, like an insecure, fat kid who
didn't know how to be social, I would have killed millions, millions?
What what wouldn't I? I know, like I was a
gigantic walking rectangle for most of my formative years. What
if I what if someone could have suffered for that? Yeah? Exactly?

(18:13):
Yea now, um. The Kaiser's hand was not the only
part of him injured by the circumstances of his birth.
His neck was also damaged and his head tilted to
the left his entire life. His left ear was likewise unformed,
and he was partly deaf and had problems with balance.
As a result of this, his entire life, he suffered
from constant ear infections and required a series of surgeries

(18:35):
which left him eventually completely deaf in his left ear
and frequently subjected him to intense pain that probably contributed
to his infamous temper tantrums. There's also a chance that
he was born profoundly mentally ill, with a specific kind
of mental illness that is common among royal families as
a result of in Brady. There's no proof of this,
um and I kind of think that the other stuff

(18:57):
explains his temper tantrums and ship more than than porphyria.
I think it was the name of the illness, but
it's possibly he had like a brain thing going on too,
got it now? In short, the Prince who would one
day become the Kaiser came into this world with very
serious difficulties to overcome, even for a child born as
wealthy as a child could possibly be born. His father,

(19:19):
Prince Friedrich Wilhelm, was a decent guy and handled this
with love and support, but his grandfather, who was the Kaiser,
was said to have noted that he wasn't sure if
he should even congratulate his son on the birth of
a defective prince. Uh and like one of the German
generals who's around when the Kaiser is like a little
kid is like no one with a fucked up arm
should ever become the Kaiser, Like you shouldn't even be alive.

(19:41):
So like this is not his parents are really good
and really loving, but like he also grows up in
this very unforgiving culture that cannot tolerate physical imperfection, right,
I mean and and being I feel like especially for
like young god, just an emasculated twelve year old. Is
there anything with more more potential for danger? Yeah? No

(20:05):
not not really no. So the princess was a devoted
and loving mother. In a letter to his grandmother, Queen Victoria,
the kid who would become Kaiservillehelm was Queen Victoria's first grandchild,
um So. In a letter to his grandmother, his mother wrote,
your grandson is exceedingly lively, and when awake, will not
be satisfied unless kept dancing about continually. He scratches his

(20:26):
face and tears his caps and makes every sort of
extraordinary little noise. I am so thankful, so happy. He
is a boy I longed for one more than I
can describe. My whole heart was set up on a boy,
and therefore I did not expect one. So kid is
very deeply loved and and has you know, kind of
your best case scenario for parents in this period of time.
Sure he was a preached birth, but at least he

(20:47):
wasn't a girl child. We would have hated that. Well,
you know, I think, um, I don't get that feeling
from her. I get the feeling more that she just,
like number one, like one of your jobs as a
princess in this period is to like give birth to
an air like they had daughters, and she treated the
daughter as well like they like they weren't like didn't
hate their daughters. Yeah. Well, there's there's just a lot

(21:08):
of ship built up around having a son to continue
the line, and the fact that her first child was
a son like that takes a lot of the pressure.
That's good for her because then people stop giving her
ship exactly. I think that's a big part of why
she feels that way. It's also you know, like even today,
like my friends who get married have expressed preferences like, oh,

(21:29):
I hope it's a boy, I hope it's a girl.
For whatever whateverything they want to do with the kid. Um, Like,
I don't get the feeling that like she was being
shitty by saying that what you do when you hear
about these are well, no, yeah, it's weird like these are.
Their first kid was a girl, and like his bizarre
like his His wife wrote to him that like, um,

(21:50):
I'm so sorry basically that I wasn't able to provide
a son, and he was like, no, no, it's fine.
We have a son. The son belongs to Russia. This daughter,
you know, is ours, So we get to really just
like oil her and enjoy having a child and we'll
we'll have the sun later. So I don't you get
a mix of reactions from the royal fairs as far
as yeahs, as far as that situation goes, I guess
that's one of the better ways it could shake. All right.

(22:13):
So we know a lot about the life in particularly
the childhood of the Kaiser, more than we know about
the life and childhood of literally anyone else I've ever
talked about on this show. Um, because he was born
to be king. So every scrap of correspondence from his
parents and his teachers and his relatives about him and
from himself has been saved and is in archives. Um.

(22:34):
So it's fair to say there's more detail on the
early life of this guy than any other person I've
covered on the show. Um, which is probably why I'm
more sympathetic about this guy, because when you have that
much detail to draw on, like, it's hard not to
feel some sympathy for Again, when you know that much
about kids, miserable childhood one way, that's tough. Yeah, that's

(22:55):
why they made finding names with a monster. They're like, well,
he lost his mother young, he got he got kidnapped
by the ocean, and he had a he had a
difficult fin so we should forgive him for his sins. Yeah,
for his rabid anti Semitism. I mean, I can't say
it enough. It's really impossible to override the six So

(23:20):
Prince Wilhelm was baptized on March five, eighteen fifty nine.
Queen Victoria was unable to attend and was represented by
Lord Ragland, the British commander during the Crimean War and
one of the guys in charge of the Light Brigade.
He's that dude, So that's who like represents his grandmama
at the at the at the baptism. Well that's nice. Yeah.

(23:40):
In general, the future Kaiser had a very British upbringing.
His nurse Mrs Hobbs was English. His chief doctor, Sir
Benjamin Brody, was also British. The most British has names
I've ever heard. Very Yeah, this kid is half British.
You have to remember that because like his mom is
an English princess, his grandmother is the fucking literal Queen Victoria,

(24:03):
and he has he's raised but like he grew up without.
He spoke English perfectly with almost no accent um. Like,
you can listen to his speeches by this guy in
English and it you can barely notice the accent. So
that's yeah. It's impossible to overstate how intermarried and intermingled.
The royal families that helped launch World War One were

(24:24):
Prince Wilhelm, the guy who became the Kaiser, was also
the Prince of Orange and in line for the throne
of England. His current like great grandson, who's alive today,
is a hundred and seventieth in line for the British throne.
Um Over in Russia, the czar's wife was a German
princess and the Czar and the Kaiser were cousins. All
of the monarchs in charge of the primary belligerence in

(24:45):
World War One shared grandparents and aunts and where cousins
and had grown up together. Those are my favorite letters
I wish I haven't, like it's been like almost ten
years now, but like the reading through the letters between
cousins where they're like, are we going to start a war?
Like are we gonna? Are we going to get all
these people killed? It's so funny. It's so bizarre, being

(25:05):
like what if I could just write my cousin Tammy
and be like, so, like how attached are we to people?
What do we like four to six million of our
young men? Like can we just do you feel able
to just it's so bizarre knowing that their cousins that like,
for the most part, know each other, Like it's just
very weird. Yeah, and and love each other. Yeah, yeah,

(25:29):
We're like there's those like the letters between Wilhelm and
this the bizarre. They're so bizarre. It's just yeah, yeah,
you know what's not bizarre, Jamie? What Robert? The products
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(27:00):
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Now let's get back to talking about Prince Wilhelm's miss
shapen arm. Um a little fin it won't him? Right? Yeah?
His damaged arm was a matter of serious concern for
the German royal family or Prussian at this point royal family.
His nurse rubbed massage oil on it daily to try

(27:22):
and stimulate growth. Wilhelm's doctors ordered that his arm be
tied to the side of his leg for an hour
a day in order to try to force it to
grow normally. Oh my god, he is a back brace
for his arm. Oh, we were getting to the back brace. Yeah. Now,
the infant prince had almost no feeling in the limb
and barely noticed most of this. Uh. While most of

(27:43):
his treatments were ineffective but benign, some were really brutal.
And I'm gonna quote now from the book kaiserville Helm
the Second, A concise life by John Roll. When the
infant was six months old, Professor Bernhard von Langenbeck of
the Charite hospital in Berlin prescribed animal baths twice a
week will help. His left arm was inserted into the
body of a freshly slaughtered hair for half an hour

(28:04):
and the hope that the wild animals warmth and vigor
would be transferred to the arm. No, this stuck him
arm deep in a dead animal. No, you're just like
he's how is how would this grow up to be
a good person? This is like biblical curses. They're flusting
upon a baby. Shove a fresh bloody corpse on the

(28:26):
literal infant child's arm for an hour. How does that?
There's someone in the room like, we've got to make
sure that this is remembered, because what if it works
ever sence and it's never gone wrong? Amazing God, that's

(28:48):
again brutal. He's the Prince of Prussia, so this is
like the best doctor you can get at the time
in the country. Germany at this point is renowned as
having some of the best doctors on the world. That's
really like the height of medical science. What has happened
that everyone else? I honestly, I would rather die at
four than have that be my medical regimen. I would

(29:10):
brother have died years ago. It's terrible. Now, perhaps the
most damaging treatment came at the direct orders of Queen Victoria.
And I'm gonna quote now from John Vanderkist's biography, Queen
Victoria's a piece of ship, by the way, just as
it heads up. I did the I went to I
went to England over the summer brag and we did

(29:32):
the Buckingham Palace tour um because I just didn't I
just wanted to see what it was like. And the oh,
the revisionism on like there's there's no mention of Wilhelm,
there's no mention of you know, it's just too messy.
They're like, she was really nice. She hated when her
husband died. Thanks for the forty dollars. Well, here's a

(29:54):
little bit more about Queen Victoria. Hit it the princess.
We're talking about kaiservillehelms mom it on babies, and within
a few days of his birth she had started breastfeeding him,
to the revulsion of her mother in law. Knowing Queen
Victoria's views on the subject were one with hers, she
the mother in law, wrote to the Queen asking for
her approval in putting it into this odious habit, much

(30:14):
to the young mother's disappointment, her baby was promptly handed
over to a wet nurse whose milk irritated his bowels
and caused regular stomach upsets. So the Queen of Prussia
and Queen Victoria both hate breastfeeding because they think it's
a gross, commoner thing to do, and so they make
somebody whose milk makes Kaiser Wilhelm sick breastfeed the baby.
You know what, my mom did the same thing, except

(30:34):
with formula. So you know, my mom was just like, um,
you stay away from me. Here's some mestly, here's some
nestly chemicals. Good luck with your life now. Years later,
his grandmother, the Empress Augusta, his other grandmother, would la
too Kaiser Wilhelm and tell him that his mother had
refused to breastfeed him because she found his arm disgusting.

(30:55):
Oh but Helm was nice, that mom was She's just
a bitch who hates his mom. And it's like he like,
I said, how does this kid not grow up fucked up?
Like like I don't like women on. I don't like
woman on woman conflict. It's not fair. We don't need it.
It makes me upset. Although my grandma did that though

(31:17):
to my mom. Yeah, it's it's less damaging when the
babies that are getting like manipulated by the funked up
people aren't growing up to be the emperors of Germany. Yeah,
it's it's not. I mean just regular people are the best.
Yea damage as it is. Yeah, don't give anyone any power.

(31:39):
Nobody turns out great. No, everyone's a disaster. Like every
now and then. Every now and then you get a
Danny DeVito, but most of us don't turn out obsessed
with Danny DeVito. I love Danny. What about Billy Zane.
I don't know anything about Billy Zane. Is he nice?
He's nice? Good? Good for Billy Zane. Everyone. Let's replace

(32:00):
Congress with Danny de Vito and Bill you know what,
the only two white men we can support at this point. Now.
In eighteen sixty, when the Prince was one year old,
his doctors began giving him daily electro magnetic therapy, applying
constant galvanic current to his neck for hours every day
to attempt to stimulate blood flow in his arm. Electrocuting

(32:21):
the infant kaiser for hours a day did not work either.
No kidding, God, it's just like your child has a disability.
We're four pages in and we haven't stopped talking about
the funked up ways they damaged This kid trying to
heal his arm feels so I I God, it is
hard not to feel for you, Like, that's a lot

(32:44):
to deal with. Your family's electrocuting you because they find
you to be gross. That's yea a nightmare. That's a
cross to bear that it certainly is. On January second,
eighteen sixty one, King Friedrich Wilhelm the fourth died and
Prince Wilhelm's grandfather became Kaiserville Heelm the First. Uh. He

(33:06):
was sixty three at the time. Two years later, in
eighteen sixty three, when the Prince who would become the
Kaiser that we're talking about, I know this is confusing. UM,
I'm gonna call, like when I say King Friedrich Wilhelm
the Fourth, he's also a Kaiser Wilhelm. I'm only going
to call the kaiserville Helm from World War One that
we're talking about this episode the Kaiser for the sake

(33:26):
of like making this makes sense. Um. So when the
future Kaiser was four, his doctors presented him with a
terrifying and barbaric machine designed to help him treat another
one of his ailments um see. Four years after birth,
Wilhelm had developed torture callis caused by the healthy muscles
on the right side of his neck pulling his head
downwards in that direction. Now, this would obviously be way

(33:49):
too visible an ailment to possibly let the King of
Prussia have the future King of Prussia have. So to
treat this, his doctor's prescribed him what his mother called
a head stretching machine that sounds safe an hour a
day every day, and in a letter to Queen Victoria,

(34:09):
the prince's mother described it thus lee a belt around
his waist to the back of which an iron bar
is affixed. The bar leads up the back of to
something which looks exactly like a horse's bridle. The head
is then fixed in this and positioned is desired by
means of a screw, which is just the iron bar.
Why this is oh, I feel I'm sad, Robert, this

(34:34):
sucks now. The young prince eventually went through facial surgery
to correct this, which alleviated the problem at the cost
of some permanent disfigurement. Uh. He was also subject to
an arm stretching machine, which was used on him for
years and was similar to the next stretching machine are
medieval torture devices. This is not helpful. Yeah. The thing

(34:55):
that actually did help his arm to grow somewhat was
a course of regular jim nat sticks um, which figure
like like just actual exercise. Yes, that one didn't seem
to help there. It's so I'm like, I mean, these
these these doctors have to have at least the foresight
to give the arms stretching machine a confusing name so

(35:16):
you don't notice it's an arms stretching machine. Yeah, I mean,
I'm only referred to as the arms stretching machine, but
it probably had a fun German nickname, a doctor sue
sounding thing. Yeah. Now, in spite of all this horror,
Wilhelm's early childhood was considered He remembered it at least
as fairly pleasant. His mother and father were both doating parents,

(35:37):
which was unusual Imprussian families of that era. He was
the baby of the global royal family and for a
time Queen Victoria's favorite grandchild. Starting in eighteen sixty three,
he began to regularly visit his aunts and uncles and
cousins in Great Britain. John Vanderkiss describes him as a
spirited child. Quote. On his way to Saint George's Chapel Windsor,

(35:58):
he threw his aunt Beatrice's muff out the carriage window.
Beatrice was only five years old at the time and
in no position to exercise any authority over him. Queen
Victoria's youngest child, she wasn't always remained her mother's baby,
a name her nephew soon picked up. When she told
him petulantly that he must address her as an aunt.
He snapped back aunt baby, then board. During the long
marriage service, while most of his relations were shedding emotional tears,

(36:21):
he pulled his dirk, which is a knife, from his
stocking and threw it noisily across the chapel floor. When
his young uncle's Arthur and Leopold remonstrated with him, he
bit them in the legs. What a sweet kid, I mean,
I gotta love that he he bites King Leopold of Belgium,
the slaughterer of the Congo, in the leg for yelling
at him for throwing a knife during a wedding, which

(36:42):
is awesome. That actually does sound like what you would
have done. Yes, little little knife thrower might have bonded
over knife throwing. I love throwing knives when if I
anytime I get really drunk, I'm gonna throw knives. I
you know, I I know that to be true. Yeah,

(37:03):
it's great. I think I also had a shirt that
said aunt baby in middle school. There's a lot of
these phrases are bringing or bringing back some some memories.
Aunt baby, that's actually a sick burn for that is
a sick birdie he was. He was not not witless
heads quick. Yeah, that's quick for like a four year

(37:25):
old too not bad to be baby, I can't. I
have no punch ups. That's great. Hell yeah kid now.
In eighteen sixty four, the prince's father, who was the
Crown Prince, fought in the Prussio Danish War and returned
home a war hero. Um The future Kaiser's father would

(37:45):
again win laurels in the Franco Prussian War of eighteen
seventy one, which is what led to the establishment of
the German Empire. Some of the Prince's earliest strong memories
the future Kaiser's strong Memories, where his father is sending
back captured battle flags and glorious reports of conquests from
the front lines so he grows up like with some
of his earliest memories being his dad being a legitimate
war hero. Um like, he was really close to the front.

(38:07):
Obviously not in as much danger as an infantrymen, but
he was like participating in battles and leading troops in
combat and stuff. So as he grew into an adolescent,
the young Prince gradually overcame many of his physical limitations.
He learned how to swim and row, and was quite
good at it. His grandmother, Queen Victoria, was ever on
the watch for signs of pride from her first grandchild.

(38:28):
She told the Crown Princess to bring him up simply, plainly,
and not with that terrible Prussian pride and ambition which
grieved dear Papa so much, and which he always said
would stand in the way of Prussia taking that lead
in Germany, which he ever wished her to do. If
only the Germans were more British, if only the Germans
were more were more humble like us. All we did
was conquer a quarter of the world's land surface, unlike

(38:52):
these arrogant Germans, notoriously chill and tolerant British. Yes, yeah, now,
the Prince's parents seemed to have listened to this advice.
Starting in mid eighteen sixty six, when the future Kaiser
was seven and starting school, George hins Peter was chosen
to be his tutor. Now hints Peter was a Calvinist,

(39:12):
which means he believed that only a predetermined elect few
ever got into heaven, and the vast majority of humanity
was destined for hell no matter what they did. As
you might expect, he was a gigantic dick. He also
looked exactly like the dude who played Taiwan Lanister on
Game of Thrones. Sophie looks up his picture, like exactly
like him. It's really weird, now, hints Peter's educational program

(39:34):
involved twelve hour days of mixed study and exercise. It was,
in his words, based exclusively on a stern sense of
duty and the idea of service. The character was to
be fortified by perpetual renunciation, the life of the prince
to be molded on the lines of old Prussian simplicity,
its ideal being the harsh discipline of the Spartans. Now
it's here I should say a few words about Prussia.

(39:57):
Prussia no longer exists as a state or as political
entity in any way. Prussia's disillusion was one of the
British requirements for the end of World War Two. Prior
to that, Prussia was the most powerful German state and
the source for all of our modern stereotypes of Germany
and Germans as disciplined, sterned, humorless and militaristic. The Prussian
military was one of the chief military forces in Europe

(40:20):
for centuries and became world famous for their discipline and skill.
During the U s Revolutionary War, a Prussian nobleman, Baron
von Steuben, built the entire American military from scratch. The
core of our military's organization to this day is still
based along Prussian lines, So it makes sense that the
young prince would be raised in a strict, militaristic, spartan way. Um.

(40:44):
But while Prussian discipline made for an effective military, it
also made for profoundly damaged young men, which is why
we got yeah hints. Peter declared that the growing Wilhelm
could never ever receive any kind of praise, approval, or
encouragement for any reason. He was ordered to eat dry
bread for breakfast. When he and his siblings hosted their cousins.

(41:06):
They were required to give them cakes and cookies without
eating any sweets for themselves, no matter how well yeah
this guy, this is so fucked up. This is like
calculated ship. Yeah yeah yeah. No matter how well Prince
Philhelm performed, George hints Peter never gave him so much
as a kind word. The impossible was expected of the

(41:27):
pupil in order to force him to meet the nearest
degree of perfection. Naturally, the impossible goal could never be
achieved Logically, Therefore, the praise which registers approval was also excluded. God,
yeah it does with a whole love from your child.
And see what that's such a god? Why did I
feel like sometimes parents? I mean again, if this is

(41:48):
just like every bad parenting technique turned up to an
eleven for amazing how many different bad types of parenting
he receives from really everyone but his parents, but his
so many sets of stops. Yeah, god, that's so brutal. Yeah,
they're like, oh, watch your cousin eat a piece of that.
I feel like that happens to kids sometimes as as punishment,

(42:11):
you know, like oh, look everyone's gonna get birthday cake,
but you whatever, you ship on the floor, so you
gotta eat a cracker. I'm not. Some of those people
there grow up to be shitty managers at a sonic.
But since they don't have Germany, they don't inherit the
German military, so it's not a huge problem. There's a
version of Wilhelm had he been from you know, like

(42:31):
from a normal class of person, where he would have
just been a perfectly happy manager of the lids that
didn't talk to his family that much. No, no, and
he would have denied his employees lunch breaks for shitty
reasons just because he's got some hurt in his heart. Yeah,
the damage would have been contained, right, right. Not that

(42:52):
we condone this behavior from lids managers, we don't, but
but I prefer people like Wilhelm become lids manage jeers,
the Imperial German army managers. Okay, okay, I'm listening. Yeah now,
Every Wednesday and Saturday, Hints Peter and Wilhelm would visit
museums and art galleries. They would also visit factories, foundries, workshops,

(43:13):
farms and the like. The goal was to show the
would be kaiser what life was like from the manual
laborers who actually built his country. To Hints, Peter's credit.
He also wanted the royal family to gain an understanding
of social inequality and the suffering of workers. Wilhelm was
required to remove his hat and deliver a thankful speech
at every place of business they visited after their tour.

(43:34):
So Hints Peter did a lot of the job of
raising Billhelm, and that had positive and negative echoes. As
we'll see, one of his big demands was that the
prince developed and express an opinion of every single person
he met. This was part of Hints Peter's plan to
get the young man to express his views at all
times so that he would not be dominated by his
advisers in the future. This one would wind up backfiring

(43:54):
on the entire planet now as he grew into a
young boy queen Victorian to some unpleasant changes taking over
her darling grandson. He is inclined to be selfish, domineering
and proud, but I must say they are not his
own faults, as they have been hitherto more encouraged than checked.
Hints Peter todt Wilhelm to ride a horse by letting
him fall off of it repeatedly, ignoring the Prince's tears

(44:15):
and forcing him back on the horse for weeks until
he got good at riding one hand, and he was
said to be an excellent horseman. So he learns how
to one hand and ride a horse. It's almost like
they should have just let him learn how to do
things with one hand the entire time, rather than the
torture machines, rather than the evil torture machines. Jamie, you're
anti torturing babies. Agenda has been clear for quite some time,

(44:37):
and I think you might be biased on this, thank
you know what, It's true, And people have been calling
me out a lot. They're like, no, but what if
we did torture the babies. How will you know until
you've tried it? How will you know until you've tried it? Right?
And that's fair. I haven't tried it yet. Yeah, well,
uh sure of course, yeah yeah, Well who are they

(44:58):
gonna tell exactly what are they going to do? Not
because they can't speak English. I'm about to get a kitten,
so um, you know, um, it's gonna be there. There
is a specific type of torture that you have to
do to young kittens if you want them to be affectionate,
which is that from a very young age. Do you
know what the cat gun is? The cat gun? It's

(45:19):
when you hold your cat like a gun, with its
back legs as the handle and its front legs like
a four grip, and you pretend it's a little machine gun.
If you do that from the time that they're what
if you do that when they're a kitten, then they
grow up just knowing that people are going to pick
them up and funk with them, and they're fine with it.
You know, you hold it with anything that you hold
with two hands, You're like, you know, like a machine gun.

(45:42):
There there, you pretend it's yeah, it just feels natural
and right, I'm bringing you to the hospital. It's it's
it's how you raise a baby kitten. And then they
grow up being very affectionate because they just know that
people pick them up and do weird things to them,
and it's fine, that's nice. I almost dressed my dog
up like a gun for Halloween, but I didn't want

(46:03):
it to be interpreted as political, so I changed it
to a knife. You radical pro knife agenda has also
been clear for some time. I have been in favor
of knives. Look someone in the eye, just I just
want eye contact now. When Wilhelm was ten in eighteen
sixty nine, he was awarded the Order of the Black
Eagle oppression chivalric award that was supposed to be very

(46:25):
prestigious but kind of loses its luster to me when
awarded to children. He received fucking a hundreds of awards
and orders and knighthoods and dukedoms over the course of
his life. We're going to ignore basically all of them,
although his biography is always note whenever he was given
a new one. He was also inducted into the first
Infantry Regiment of the Guards and made a German officer

(46:45):
when he was ten years old. Um so, yeah, he's
he's in the military from a very young age. Um
and he's he's continually gifted more military units and made
honorary member and commander of different military regiments in the
Prussian Army over the course of his childhood. This is
like like getting micro machines was for me, right right,

(47:09):
Like they become that they're nice to have, but eventually
they become meaningless. Yeah, he loves he loves these. Yeah,
he loves his military universe made up of real men.
In eighteen seventy, France and Prussia went to war Prussia one,

(47:29):
and Germany was born. From here on out. The Kaisers,
the Kings of Prussia, where kings of the entire German Empire.
Now they were like twenty two other kings in Germany,
but the Kaisers were like the chief kings of all
of them. So, uh, that's the story. As we go
in to our second ad break, Uh, still life, we're
all kind of on the future Kaiser side at this point.

(47:50):
I like. I like that, Robert, you choose moments to
go to ad breaks where I feel I'm at the
peak of I'm on the edge of my seat and
my hand is on my wallet as well. Yeah, that
could have gone another way, but it went wallet. You know,
you have a weird habit with that wallet of of
holding it out before ad breaks. Yeah, my hands trembling.

(48:12):
I'm helpless in the face of capitalism. I need the products,
I need the services. Pull out your credit cards, everybody,
ignore what the actual products are and just immediately buy
them without a thought. Don't even put in the discount, cut,
don't even put in the discount. Well, no do because
then we get then it helps us. Sorry, it's good
for the show. Here they go. We're back after Franco

(48:47):
Prussian War happens, and the prince's mother, the Crown Princess,
who was you know, British and not Prussian, was very
concerned about all of the war focus in her son's childhood. Um. Again,
she wanted relations between Britain in Prussia to be good,
and she knew there was always a chance that there
would be war between them. So she was very concerned,
like everyone in Europe about prussia militarism, and she didn't

(49:08):
want her son to say, grow into a man whose
ambition helped Europe plunge into a war that killed seventeen
million people. She didn't want that to happen, I guess
for effort, at least, it occurred to her that it
might happen. This could be a problem. Um So she
sent the future Kaiser off to Germany in January of
eighteen seventy one to remove him from Prussia in these

(49:30):
negative military influences for a while. Now. That month, she
wrote to Queen Victoria about her son's pleasant, amiable ways.
She admitted that he was not possessed of brilliant qualities,
nor any strength of character or talents, but he is
a dear boy and I hope and trust he will
grow up into a good and useful man. I've described
a lot of my boyfriends that way. I think I'm

(49:52):
just like, he looks like ship. He like can't seem
to stay clean for some reason. You know, he's nice.
I don't know, one day grow up. I'm trying to
raise him as best I can. Of course. Yeah, so

(50:14):
you know I get it. I get it. Yeah, yeah,
And you know, at some point, you know, the Kaiser
read these letters his mom wrote about him to his grandma.
Has to have done some damage. That sucks. If you like,
that's like going into your mom's text and finding out
how disappointed she actually is. You're like, oh, yikes, Okay. Now,

(50:37):
the Prince loved his time in England. He spent a
lot of it making butter and cheese at the Royal
Dairy and looking over Britain's incredible collection of old wooden ships.
He really, he really liked England. He was set for
most of his life. He said that he would be
happier as an English country gentleman than as the King
of Prussia. It was probably true. I was like that
tracks yeah, yeah, we all wish that had been the case. Well,

(51:00):
honey baby. In eighteen seventy four, fifteen year old Prince
Wilhelm started classes at Castle Polytechnic, a public school. Now
this was hugely controversial amongst and by public school, I
mean and like the sense of only rich, non noble
kids got to go there, not in the sense of
everybody from all walks of life went there. But they

(51:21):
weren't royals, they weren't like aristocrats. It wasn't like exclusy enough. Yeah, yeah,
And this was very controversial among his family, many of
whom were horrified of the idea of a noble child
competing against commoners for grades. But Hince Peter thought it
would be good for the prince, he knew was not
all of that bright to be humiliated by getting bested

(51:42):
by his social inferiors. For some reason I do not grasp,
he thought that this would push the prince to develop
a sense of superiority over common people. Like it's one
of those things where at the start where it's like, oh,
you want him to realize that, like he's not the
smartest person them. Okay, this could actually be really heavily.
Oh no, you want him to get a sense of
superiority of people over learning that they're better at school
than him. How did this track to you, Peter, I

(52:04):
get it. It tracks to me because it's just I
feel like that's like a way for Wilhelm to realize
exactly how powerful he is. He's like, Oh, I'm dumb
as rock and it doesn't fucking matter. I'm still If
I don't like how much smarter someone is than me,
I'll just have him killed. Yeah. Maybe, yeah, that may
that may have been kind of the reasoning there. I

(52:25):
don't like that, I get it, but I think I
get Yeah. Now, at school, Wilhelm started his days at
five am and didn't end them until nine pm. So
this is this is a brutal school schedule. He was
a decent student, He got okay grades, but he was
not exceptional. His best friend at Castle with Siegfried's summer
a jew on top of the class. Now this is
noteworthy that because, as we'll cover, the Prince grew into

(52:46):
probably Germany's second most anti Semitic leader of all time.
Oh wait, who's number one? I'm kidding, Okay, Now he's
not wanted anything. He's number two. And I will say
this in fairness to the Kaiser. There is a big

(53:07):
gap between two and one. In most anti Semitic German
leader the contest, there's a sizeable gap between the two.
Where is Jojo Rabbit? Yeah, I can't wait to see that. Yeah,
I saw it the other day. I liked it. It
looks good. I just haven't had a chance to get
down to the theater. M fun it's it's a romp.

(53:29):
And Jamie says it's a romp. Check it out people
with TD plays Hitler. I'm so, I'm so easily bothered
by like child actors. And they got a good one. No,
I hate most children. Um, they're okay, Well, let's take
us to the next level. It's good. It's good though.
I liked it. Yeah, now is probably the right time

(53:49):
to talk about the prince's bizarre feelings towards his mother. Now,
Freud would tell us that it's not unusual for young
boys to have a childish sort of infatuation with their mother. Um,
but even by Freudian standards, Wilhelm was fucking odd. And
I mean, it's not that she is the only person
that was nice to him. Yeah, I'm still gonna say

(54:11):
this is I'm just gonna read this quote from the biography,
Kaiser Vilhelm A concise life, and you can tell me
what you can help. Ana. This is a long one, Jamie,
and there's a lot to unpack here. Horny. I let
me just read the quote and we discuss it. Quote.
In the winter of eighteen seventy seventy five, Wilhelm began

(54:32):
a series of letters to his mother in English, naturally
recounting a recurring dream. He was having letters that are
remarkable not only for their evidently incestuous character, but also
for their fetishistic emphasis on her gloved left hand. A
poignant cry for unconditional acceptance and love, if ever there
was one, I have got the little secret, which is
for you alone. Visit a peculiar dream, he wrote to Vicky,

(54:52):
his mom, on March eighteen seventy five, shortly after her
visit to Castle for his sixteenth birthday. I dreamt last
night that I was walking with you in another lady
and walking you were discussing who had the finest hands,
whereupon the lady produced a most ungrateful hand, declaring that
it was the prettiest, and turned us her back. I,
in my rage, broke her parasol. But you put your

(55:12):
dear arm around my waist, led me aside, pulled your
gloved hand off your dear left hand, which I so
often kissed at castle, and showed me your dear beautiful hand,
which I instantly covered with kisses. Wilhelm hoped that his
dream would become reality. I wish that you would do
the same when I am at Berlin alone with you
in the evening, and he continued craving reassurance. Pray, write

(55:33):
to me what you think about this dream. It is
quite true as I have written it, you say, I
always think of you, my dear mamma. I sometimes dream
of you. I am so glad that soon we will
sit together in your dear library and sit together. But
this dream is alone for you to know, he insisted.
Several days later, the dream recurred. I am very glad
that you liked my little secret about your dear hands.

(55:54):
Since then I have again dreamt about you. This time
I was alone with you in your library when you
stretched forth your arms and pulled me down to your
chair so that my head rested on your left arm.
Then you took off your gloves and laid your hands
gently on my lips for me to kiss it, asking
me at the same time. If I remember dreaming about you,
I instantly seized your hand and kissed. Then you gave
me a warm embrace, putting your right arm around my
shoulder and neck, and got up and walked around the

(56:16):
rooms with me. No, no, no, that's odd, that's that's peculiar.
He's just like writing his mom being like, I want
to fuck you? Is that I want to fuck your hand?
Well that's well, I think, well that's like very telling,
right that he's like fixated on hands and arms. That

(56:37):
makes sense because of his life is obsessed about so
of course that the man becomes this like erotic fixation
left a left hand fetish if you will, Oh, that's
just like baby boy, put it in your journal and
then light it on fire. Do not send it by

(56:58):
send them to mama. Ah and wait, so we so
we there was Ah. He sent a letter and then
presumably got a reply that was like, oh, yeah, tell
me more. Yeah, we're going to get into that a
little bit. Now. I've read a few biographies of Wilhelm,
and most of them mentioned this weird fixation, but they
kind of breeze past it, um like they'll note it

(57:20):
was weird, but they don't go into that much detail.
Ralph's book is the one I found that really does
the best job of highlighting how fucking peculiar this all was.
And I'm going to continue quoting. Yeah, I mean the
hand fixation is very telling. Yeah, he could hardly wait
for his dream to be fulfilled. In eight days, he wrote,
we will go to Berlin and then what I dream
about we will do in reality when we are alone

(57:42):
in your rooms without any witnesses. This is the second secret.
And he's like fourteen or fifteen, he's yeah, he's he's
like a little horny teenage for mama. Okay, okay, sorry,
keep going. This is the second secret. For you. Pray,
write to me what you think about it, and promised
to do so really as you did in my dream

(58:03):
to me, for I do so love you. The correspondence
continued in this vein for several months. In May eight
seventy five, he urged his mother again to keep your
promise you gave me at Berlin. Always give me Alane
the soft inside of your hand to kiss. But of
course you keep this as a secret for yourself. Yeah,
that's definitely, He's like, your left hand is a pussy

(58:26):
like that's his energy. Okay, so keep going. With less
than four weeks to go before the holidays, he wrote,
thanking her for her most recent letter. How glad I
was to see the promise written down that I could
kiss your hands as much as I liked. Be sure
of it, I shall do it shortly before they reunion.
Wilhelm could hardly contain his excitement, calculating that it was
now only days or eighty four hours, or in five

(58:48):
thousand forty minutes or in three two four hundred seconds
before he would be able to embrace his mother again
in pot Stem and kiss her sweet beautiful hands. Yeah hands, Robert, Yeah,
the man loves his mom wants to touch mommy's hand.
I well, here's my question, what is she replying to this?

(59:10):
Because it doesn't sound like she's saying, please stop talking
about sucking my hands. I think we can forgive the
Crown Princess for not knowing how to respond to her
teenage son's sexual obsession with her hands. I'm just trying
to get a feel for like, is she weirded out
by it but doesn't know how to handle the situation,
or is she like this is cool, She's weirded out.

(59:32):
You know. At first she's like, okay, yeah, you can
kiss my hands, and she tries to move the letters
along to something more normal, and then she tried politely
ignoring it. She would return his letters to him with
like the spelling corrected and stuff, correcting his grammar and stuff.
Not really, but how he wants to her, like, if
you're gonna suck my hands, say say it right, Yeah,

(59:55):
we can safely say. She felt very strange about it,
and eventually she did what she thought was the responsible
thing and pushed her son away just a little bit
to try and like get some distance boundaries. Yeah that
He found this deeply painful. Um. This led to a
start of a split between mother and son, which many,

(01:00:15):
like people who like write about the Kaiser, have seen
as the seeds of the split between Germany and Britain.
As the future Kaiser began to push back against the
British site of his ancestry since his mother was British.
So well, it's all significant repercussions. I mean, you can't
blame her, she said, like, what do you do? What

(01:00:35):
do you do you do? Someone shut up about wanting
to kiss your hand like that. Yeah, it's predicament. That's
what a predicament. And then you think back of like, well,
maybe if everyone wasn't complaining about this kid's hands his
whole life, he wouldn't have this weird horny hand thing.
And again, this is why you shouldn't have kings or

(01:00:58):
leaders with any kind of significant amount of power like this,
because like they grow up with something like this weird
hand thing is something that like, you know, Wilhelm couldn't
help that he felt that way. It was where like
he was like this was going to happen. His mom
kind of drawing away from him wasn't unreasonable. Him having
really complicated feelings about England as a result of this

(01:01:19):
wasn't unreasonable. But he with the German Army as his inheritance,
so it became an issue. He doesn't have too much
to lash out with you just like take your mom's car, Like, yeah, God,
I think that so far, the villain of this story
is power. I know it'll be exactly but at all

(01:01:39):
it's still mostly power. Even though like there are points
at which he does make choices that make him into
a villain. The primary villain is still power. If he
had just been a normal dude, and like, gotten some
fucking therapy. I get the feeling just knowing kind of
everything about his life. I get the feeling with a
competent therapist. He could have been a decent man who

(01:02:02):
would have raised a relatively healthy family and not damaged school.
He would have been a perfectly like, you know, in
in offensive, like whatever guy. He just would have been
a guy. I don't think he was inherently moved to
commit acts of horrible evil, but he did. And yet Yeah,

(01:02:23):
Now Wilhelm reached adulthood and did the normal things that
Prussian kids did. At that point. He joined the military,
He went to military school, he got command of his
first military units. Now he was noted by everyone is
having no real ability to focus on the finer points
of strategy and tactics, but having a deep and abiding
love of making men march around in fancy uniforms. It
became instantly apparent that the prince would not be the

(01:02:44):
great warlord that his father was. Now, on the twenty
seven March eighteen seventy nine, Wilhelm's eleven year old younger brother, Waldemar,
died from diphtheria, along with one of his aunts, Wilhelm
had been jealous of the little boy, who was widely
seen as his parents favorite, but he was a dutiful
mourner for his brother and held an all night vigil
at the coffin. He described the family pain as deep

(01:03:05):
and cruel beyond words, which is a reasonable way to
react to the death of an eleven year old um.
But a few months later Wilhelm was back to acting
like a dick to his mom. His little brother had
owned a cat, which his mom had adopted once he died,
and she loved the animal and it clearly gave her
some comfort in the absence of her beloved boy. While
they were out vacationing, the housekeeper of one of their

(01:03:26):
vacation homes shot the cat, cut off his nose, and
hung it up against a tree. This because it was
his job to ensure the pheasant population of the property
stayed healthy so the nobles could hunt. Wilhelm's mother and
sisters were horrified, but the prince defended the keeper, saying
the cat murder had been laudable zeal in the pursuance
of his duty. So we're seeing as he grows into

(01:03:47):
a young man, this guy has some emotional depth issues,
some difficulty understanding why certain certain things are horrifying to
other people. Um, poor, I just like feeling for his mom,
just like his moms with me, And he won't stop
mutilating animals. What Yeah, what do I do know? Her

(01:04:08):
son didn't do it? That the guy who killed the
cat mutilated it to scare off other cats. Oh okay,
that's still not okay, But okay, it's not okay. Um,
it is pretty normal. Like you know, I have I
have friends and family with farms, and like, if you
kill a coyote on your farm and you have livestock,
it's not abnormal to like hang the corpse of the
coyote up to scare off other coyotes to protect your
cows and ship. Like, it's something that people do when

(01:04:30):
they're trying to maintain a population of prey animals. A
very Game of Thrones. Yeah, it's fucked up, but it's
like it's also like life in the rural world. Although
killing somebody's pet cat to protect a pheasant population, I
would argue is not the healthy way to deal with that.
Maybe keep the cat indoors. Yeah, Like, there there was
a clear solution to that, and it was a pack

(01:04:54):
of Yeah, it's not like a pack of wild wolves. Like,
there are other ways that this could have been handled.
The worst case scenario is that there were a couple
more cats around. Yeah. Boy. Now, as a young adult,
Wilhelm fell madly in love with his cousin Ella, but
Otto von Bismarck was not a fan of the pairing. Now,

(01:05:14):
Bismarck is a guy will probably do an episode on
at some point. He's one of the most important people
who's ever lived. He was the actual mind behind the
formation of the German Empire. He engineered the Franco Prussian War,
and is again probably the single man most responsible for
making Germany a thing unit on that motherfucker. Yeah, he's
a very important, influential guy. Yeah, as he's a dick,

(01:05:39):
but he's also he's also very smart and very capable. Um, Like,
he's not one of these powerful people who's also an idiot.
He knows what the funk he's doing. Now, the Kaiser Prince,
Wilhelm's grandfather was the monarch of Germany. But Bismarck made
a lot of the critical decisions. Um, he was kind
of them. He was kind of the it's not fair
to compare Prince Wilhelm's grandfather or father to George W. Bush.

(01:06:03):
But Bismarck is kind of like a Dick Cheney type,
you know, the power behind the throne um and Otto
von Bismarck was worried that Ella was too closely related
to Kaiser Wilhelm, so he didn't, you know, let that
relationship uh come to pass. So Kaiser saw this as
Ella rejecting him, and he wrote to Hints Peter that

(01:06:23):
he thought his fucked up arm had made him unlovable,
which was a normal thing for him to feel, considering
that his grandmother had told him that his fund up
arm made him unlovable. Now, thankfully there was another princess
waiting in the wings, Donna Augustineberg. She was a low
rent princess, basically the Safeway Select equivalent of a hollands
All learn Um, the family of the Kaiser's Bismark. She

(01:06:46):
was not yeah, yeah, she's not like a high level princess.
But Bismarck liked that she was not closely related to Wilhelm.
He called her a Holstein cow and thought that she
would inject fresh blood into the hawns All learn line,
which was plagued by an illness. Yeah that's not that description,
but not super into that, okay, but good to know. Yeah,

(01:07:10):
when the marriage was announced, hints Peter was a static
that his dearly beloved problem child was going to marry
someone who understands him and sympathizes with him in his weaknesses.
Hints Peter was on record as saying that Wilhelm needed
people around him who gave him unconditional love and admiration
because he just couldn't exist without it. Um. And one

(01:07:32):
of the weird notes is that, like, I think we
can all look at how hints Peter had him raised
as like profoundly abusive. Um. But Kaiser Wilhelm loved hints
Peter till the day he died, and wrote him letters
up until the older man's death, like almost on a
daily basis, he would write like desperately seemed to crave
this man's affection and approval. Um, it's devastating. Yeah, yeah,

(01:07:56):
it's fucked up man, this kid, Like how does that?
There's no way this guy ends up healthy, you know.
And again it's like if you're just in a regular
person with daddy issues, you're just one of the many
bunch of daddy issues with power, who people are gonna die?
Real problem. Now, this gets it. One of the things
I think is wildest about the very idea of a

(01:08:16):
monarchy when you really look into the letters everyone around
the future Kaiser was writing, as both Rolf and Vanderkiss,
the main biographers who were sources for this episode, did.
It's obvious that one of the people who knew Wilhelm
when he was young knew ahead of time that he
was going to be a terrible Kaiser. The best anyone
would say about him was that he could be sweet

(01:08:36):
and charming, but nobody thought he was gifted in any
intellectual capacity. Um As he grew older, his family wrote
increasingly about his startling arrogance, his inability to take advice
or criticism, and his frequent tendency to snap into blind rages.
So everyone's like, oh, this guy shouldn't be king, but
he's gonna. Boy, that'll suck when that inevitably happens. That's

(01:09:00):
a shame. There's no other possible thing we can have
than than a monarchy. Too bad, Jesus Christ. Okay, all right,
yeah that is I mean, that doesn't make me slight.
I mean, obviously we're in a terrible version of democracy.
But like, at least there's some things aren't inevitable from

(01:09:21):
that far away. No, it's an iterative sort of thing. Yeah. Now,
the prince's parents hoped that the marriage would have a
soothing effect on his worst characteristics, but unfortunately, his wife,
Donna was one biographer describes as a reactionary bigot whose
small minded views only reinforced his own yeah to make

(01:09:41):
matters where she despised the British, which helped push Prince
Wilhelm further away from his mother. She was against liberal
politics and the growing mood towards democratization in Europe. She
treated the Crown Prince and Princess Wilhelm's parents coldly and
further pushed them away from him. Wilhelms started referring to
his family as the English colony and complained that his

(01:10:01):
father treated him as if he were a dumb child.
Now Otto von Bismarck also took advantage of the growing
rift between Wilhelm and his parents. Well. The Crown Prince
wanted Germany to draw closer to England. Bismarck was deeply
suspicious of the British. He'd spent his entire life, building
an intricate series of alliances that he believed would render
Germany essentially impossible to invade. Under Bismarck's guidance, the German

(01:10:22):
Empire had forged a strong defensive pact with Russia and
Austria Hungary. This meant that roughly eighty percent of Europe
would be on one side, Germany side if a war
broke out, which would essentially make it impossible to have
nobody's going to go to war with like, Like, the
Russian Empire at this point is one sixth of the
world's land mass, so like in Germany has by all

(01:10:43):
accounts the best army in Europe. So nobody is going
to war against that, Like, it's just impossible. Nobody would
make a decision that's stupid and they're all cuzos um.
But Bismarck doesn't have much faith in royal diplomacy, which
would prove to be wise. He had faith in if
we have essentially this is the nuclear arms race of

(01:11:03):
its day, is having an alliance that that no one
could dare to fight. And so that was bismarck strategy, Like, well,
as long as we're in good with Russia, nobody will
funk with us, and that ensures peace in Europe. And
he's right. As long as Russia's allied with Germany, there
are no wars between European states and like a mass scale. Um. Now,
there are some very persistent rumors that Wilhelm was homosexual. Um,

(01:11:27):
it seems more accurate to say that he might have
been bisexual. Um. He fell in love with a guy
named Yuhlenberg, another noble, who Wilhelm described as my bosom friend,
the only one I have. Now it's very unlikely either
boy ever consummated their attraction, but for years they were inseparable.
In his biography of Wilhelm, Emil Ludwig wrote that Uhlenberg

(01:11:48):
was the first to open the gates of the garden
of romance to the young man who had been forced
into the part of hard bitten Prussian prince and was
now taking leave of an adolescents poor alike and love
and the dreams of youth. God, so it's really hard
not to feel for this guy, like he's it's rough man. Yeah,
he's got he's got a lot of forces working against him.

(01:12:09):
It's oh, it's not all Yeah, he's disabled. Bi sexual
abuse victim. Um, they just yeah that he and his
boyfriend should just move away. Oh yeah, funnily they'd gotten
a house in Paris or something together, so nice that
painted pictures, yeah, yeah, and he was Wilhelm had like

(01:12:30):
some aptitude for art. He was described by someone as
a gifted artist who never found his art, so like,
he was good at a bunch of different things, but
he never really well, no, because Hitler was shitty at it,
like Wilhelm. You get the feeling if he'd like gotten
some actual if it had been made, um a real like,
if people had made a point of really giving him

(01:12:52):
some serious art training, he would have figured out what
he was into. It could have been really talented. What
if this was the point where you found out that
I actually thought Hitler's aret was really good man, that
he was like, oh yeah, like yeah, no, Hailer was
a Terrowartis we agree on that Jamie Loftis has a Hitler.
I mean, I'm not gonna lie, I would actually love
to have an original Hitler for they're talking about it. Yeah,

(01:13:14):
but I love haunted things. You do love haunting things.
That's very absolutely oh my god. So so he would
but he was like he was a better artist, you know,
I just he seems to have been good. He just
never quite like found something that he was really into,
throwing his whole interest behind. And obviously he had to
be the Kaiser. So there was a lot of other
ship on his time for painting when you're the kind,

(01:13:35):
time for painting when you're the cut some time for painting,
but not enough. Now Bismarck saw Wilhelm as a pliant,
multiple dummy he could direct in whichever direction he chose.
The key for Bismarck was to deepen the rift between
the prince and his father in the mid eighteen eighties,
who went behind the crown Prince's back and made the
future Kaiser the chief envoy of the German Empire. Now

(01:13:56):
this by all right should have been his father's job,
but Bismarck worried the crown princes English sympathies would look
bad to the Russians, since Russia and England had just
fought a war over the Crimea, so he pushed Wilhelm
into the role. Wilhelm's father complained that this was a
terrible idea in view of the immaturity as well as
the inexperience of my eldest son, together with his tendency
towards overbearing this and self conceit, I cannot but frankly

(01:14:18):
regarded as dangerous to allow him at present to take
part in any foreign affairs. Yeah, Principal was a terrible diplomat.
His arrogance came off badly, and he had a nasty
habit of insulting the world leaders he talked to. He
botched his first meeting with the Russian Czar by basically
giving him approval to conquer Constantinople, something the Zar didn't

(01:14:40):
think he needed to prove he didn't need to get
from an upstart boy who wasn't even kaiser yet. Yeah. God,
what a du fist. Yeah. So the Prince's career did
not start with great promise, but at least he was
everyone everyone knew was happening, um, I will say, though
he enjoyed some fringe benefits of the gig is envoid

(01:15:02):
of Russia. According to vander Kiss book quote, he relished
the attention paid to him his chief envoy of the
German Empire, and he was deeply impressed with the bearing
of the young infantry recruits on parade at the winter palace. Nevertheless,
he betrayed rather more than he intended when he wrote
in a tale about the physical appearance of the soldiers,
a very nice looking lot, but the fact that hardly
any of them had any hips made their white capes

(01:15:24):
look as though they had been poured into their slim bodies.
He doesn't understand when to like, not be horny over ship.
You're oversharing many on main all the time. Be yeah,
He's like, yeah, at least make a like a fake account,
don't you. Paul amid Romney write these under another name.
He is being horny on the main it's so such

(01:15:46):
a bad look. Like I'm fine with it, Like no judgment, bro,
but like, don't judge it. Don't be horny on the main. Yeah,
you are being a horny in your official job as
international diplomat, which is probably inappropriate that the line. That's
the line Bill Holm now VILLELM also had mistresses, but

(01:16:08):
he was no better at managing them than he wasn't
managing international diplomacy. In eighteen eighties six, he arranged to
have two of his mistresses follow his train out of
Berlin and made him in a small village in Austria.
The women did so, but when they arrived, he refused
to reimburse them for their travel costs. And I should
know now that he was the wealthiest man in Germany. Yeah,

(01:16:30):
I mean, I fail. Well, that's just dating a rich guy,
is Yeah, like the women going to be great and
then and then it turns out that they're they're fucking mean.
Miser's left. Yeah. Yeah. The women left in a rage,
and one of them stole one of the Prince's monogrammed
cuff links, so she displayed around town to prove that
she's had liaison with the prince. When the Kaiser realized this, yea,

(01:16:55):
I flew southwest for this ship and runs us today. Now.
When the Kaiser realized this, he begged them to come back,
and he offered to pay for their travel costs. They returned,
and finally yea, and the ensuing threesome was so loud

(01:17:16):
that it woke up other guests in the hotel. People
could actually hear them talking post coitus. A number of
random Austrians heard the future Kaiser complaining to prostitutes about
his parents. He called his dad a conceited popularity seeker
under Jewish influence. He also loudly insulted Austria, his nation's
closest ally, as rotten, close to dissolution all the Austrian

(01:17:39):
He called the Austrian people useless pansies and Gorman's no
longer fit for life. I hope those I hope that
the sex workers got like an emotional support bonus. You know,
it's like, that's not what you huh. Well, he made
one of them pregnant and she blackmailed him, and she
get a shipload of money out of it. Was like,

(01:18:00):
this guy's a loser, Stop there, man. Word of all
this got back to the Austrian Crown Prince, which sparked
another international incident. This all voted particularly ill for the future.
In the space of a year, the young prince had
insulted both of his nation's chief military out the Emperor,

(01:18:20):
his grandfather was ill and near death, and right as
his grandfather starts dying, his father also gets sick, which
would prove to be throat cancer. So none of this
bodes well for the future piece of Europe. Right, They're like,
oh no, then is the only one who will live? Okay.
In eighty eight, the Emperor died and the Crown Prince

(01:18:41):
became Kaiser, the Crown Prince, you know, the Kaiser's the
future Kaiser's dad. He would only rule for ninety nine days,
and he was very ill for all of them. By
the time he died on June fifteenth, eight Now, Crown
Prince Wilhelm had already been taking on and botching many
of his dad's duties. That same day, Kaiser Wilhelm ascended
to the throne of the German Empire. So in part two,

(01:19:03):
we're going to talk about what happened once he was
in charge. All right over, Jamie, you got some plug
doubles to plug? I got some plug ease. I'm releasing
a podcast on Thanksgiving called My Year and Mensa is
about what the title is about. It's about My Year
and Mensa, how I got in and how I almost
got bullied out. Uh. And then you can listen to

(01:19:25):
the beg Del Cast every week. Uh. You can follow
me on Twitter at Jamie Loft to help, and that's
what you can do. That's what you're able to do
at this time now. Um, you can find me on
Twitter and Instagram and at Bastard's Pod. You can find
me personally on Twitter at I right, okay, where I
am not horny on maine. Um, that's inappropriate, especially with

(01:19:50):
all of the diplomacy I have to do with the
Russian army, right, yeah, I mean would make you a
terrible kaiser. It would make me a terrible kaiser. And
my whole job is to become a very good Kay. Yeah,
your fence to as horny as hell? Yes? Oh my god,
it is nothing but thirst postings, sameless can it's I

(01:20:12):
muted it now, Jamie. What is a fence to what
I'm gonna jump off the balcony? I cannot possibly excite
to you. What a fence? It's a fake Instagram. That's
where you it's where you do your horn I don't
actually have one, which is what everyone who has one sets,
but um, but it's like where you post, you know,

(01:20:32):
you post, you know, the illusion on the main right,
you're like, I'm so happy, everything's great, and then you
post depression memes and thirst posts on the fence to
that's where you're like you're you're, you're, you know, two extremes. See.
I write my thirst posts on a sheet of paper

(01:20:53):
and then I cut my finger and block them out
with blood, and then I burned them in a bonfire
at night in order to wipe my shame in front
of God in the heavens. I know, but unfortunately that
is a spell. That means it's in a book somewhere
far away. So your thirst posts are uh, they're they're
documented somewhere. You shouldn't drop blood on it. That that's

(01:21:13):
that activates the curse. Damn it. I'll send you some.
If you want to activate a curse, buy some T
shirts from t public dot com. All of our shirts
come cursed. Um, so that's good. Um, the episode is over, okay,

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Part One: Kaiser Wilhelm: The Saddest Warlord In History