Speaker 1: All media.
Speaker 2: Hey, motherfucky's and motherfuck ats. Wow, that's not how I
Speaker 2: should introduce this anyway. Hello everybody, Robert here, and this
Speaker 2: is our last week of what you might call him
Speaker 2: rerun episodes. We are still on vacation here at cool Zone,
Speaker 2: having a great time. Actually not on vacation. We were
Speaker 2: on vacation, but this is the week where I have
Speaker 2: to write so that we can catch up and have
Speaker 2: episodes for you all in the new year. But you know,
Speaker 2: because I have one more week of blessed relative freedom,
Speaker 2: here's another fucking rerun. Enjoy it. I love you what
Speaker 2: doing an episode the podcast that I do. I'm Robert
Speaker 2: Evans very badly introducing another podcast of Behind the Bastards,
Speaker 2: the show where we talk about the worst people in
Speaker 2: all of history, and here to help help me today
Speaker 2: is one of the best people in all of history.
Speaker 2: Jamie Lot. How you doing, Jamie.
Speaker 1: I'm good. I'm having a lovely day. I'm too cold.
Speaker 2: Bruce Deep ooh too, Cole, Bruce Deep. Are you feeling
Speaker 2: optimistic and and and positive about the world.
Speaker 1: I'm feeling like who we talk about today is gonna
Speaker 1: might end up actually being a pretty good guy.
Speaker 2: That's a good guy.
Speaker 1: That's how I go into every Bastards episode. Now, I'm
Speaker 1: just like, you know what, this guy's gonna end up
Speaker 1: being pretty nice.
Speaker 2: I think I might change my opinion on this fella.
Speaker 1: I think that I'm going to really have some arguments
Speaker 1: in his name.
Speaker 2: You you might have a couple because the guy we're
Speaker 2: talking about today is Kaiser motherfucking Wilhelm. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: your reaction was pretty intense when I told you that
Speaker 2: right before the episode.
Speaker 1: I was, well, I'm never allowed to know in advance.
Speaker 1: And then I just and then I sit down, and
Speaker 1: it's what fresh hell in terms of in terms of person,
Speaker 1: in terms of facial hair, in terms just in every
Speaker 1: this is a brutal one for me, strictly on a
Speaker 1: facial hair level.
Speaker 2: You're not a fan of his Walris mustache, Listen.
Speaker 1: I respect someone who makes a choice.
Speaker 2: Right, he made a choice. You have to give him that.
Speaker 1: I will hand it to him. Much like Robert Pattinson
Speaker 1: in the Lighthouse, he is making a choice. Choices don't
Speaker 1: always work out. This is actually I think this is
Speaker 1: one of the first subjects that I actually like. No
Speaker 1: affair amount about I took a I took a in
Speaker 1: high school. For some reason. My last two years of
Speaker 1: high school I only learned about World War One.
Speaker 2: That's great, it was. I love World War One.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm I stand and we stand.
Speaker 2: You have no choice to stand. Oh the so good.
Speaker 1: The trench I love there. We like acted out the
Speaker 1: assassination and of Archduke friends Ferdinand.
Speaker 2: It was a black one of my favorite assassinations. Of
Speaker 2: the assassinations.
Speaker 1: The fashion, the fashion, the fashion, the trench helmets that
Speaker 1: didn't stop bullets.
Speaker 2: I love them, you know what, you love it. It's
Speaker 2: also good.
Speaker 1: An underrated World War I amo, oh yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, way better than the sequel.
Speaker 1: In my opinion, I totally agree sequel is over hyped.
Speaker 1: We get it, you know.
Speaker 2: I mean, I'll pick Terminator two over Terminator one. I'll
Speaker 2: pick Aliens over alien But I'm going to pick World
Speaker 2: War One over World War Two every day of the.
Speaker 1: We're going to pick the Cheeta Girls two over Cheatah
Speaker 1: Girls one. And that's a controversial opinion.
Speaker 2: For those cheating girls.
Speaker 1: I know you don't wrong. I'm still I had to
Speaker 1: tell you who Ariana Grande was last year, which is
Speaker 1: something that it just I still it still shakes me
Speaker 1: to my marrow that that happened. Wells are wait, no,
Speaker 1: we can't stark the show until you know who the
Speaker 1: cheat girls are. You don't know who the Cheata girls.
Speaker 2: Are, but of course I don't.
Speaker 1: I know, But I'm just always waiting for girls. They
Speaker 1: wish they do, wish they were like the Spice Girls,
Speaker 1: but they're a band that was started by well some
Speaker 1: great novellas for young girls. But it's it's like Raven Simone.
Speaker 1: Two of the girls, shit, yeah right, she's the alpha,
Speaker 1: and then two girls from three l W which you
Speaker 1: also don't know what that is, and then a fourth
Speaker 1: girl who has dropped off the face of the planet.
Speaker 1: We don't know what happened to her. The point is
Speaker 1: it was good. The singles were fine, and they wore
Speaker 1: track suits.
Speaker 2: Oh I do love tracksuits. I am a big tracksuit fan.
Speaker 1: I love people in matching track suits. They wore like
Speaker 1: complimentary pastel track suits. And then the second one they
Speaker 1: go to Barcelona.
Speaker 2: I think when it comes to like you're talking about
Speaker 2: the fashion in World War One and how good it was,
Speaker 2: I hope when we have our next World War that
Speaker 2: it's basically the same as World War one, but we're
Speaker 2: all wearing tracksuits, like that's that is my dream.
Speaker 1: Imagine the Yeah, World War three will be waged in
Speaker 1: juicy couture head to toe like form fitting track suits.
Speaker 2: Yes, comfortable waistbands by god.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I don't want those royal ten in bombs track
Speaker 1: suits missing.
Speaker 2: I want like all those goddamn belts and.
Speaker 1: Like the yeah, the ones that have like rhinestones on
Speaker 1: them and that till you don't know who's on what side.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, but the color of the rhinestones. Yeah, it'll
Speaker 2: be a great war.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think that this is actually going to be
Speaker 1: the best World war yet.
Speaker 2: I feel like we have a real chance to make
Speaker 2: it so. But before we start, before we start another
Speaker 2: world war, we should learn about one of the guys
Speaker 2: who is most behind the First World War. Yes, Now,
Speaker 2: one I think it's interesting about the Kaiser is that,
Speaker 2: like most of the people we talk about on the
Speaker 2: show make a decision at a certain point to be
Speaker 2: shitty people who do like horrible, exploitative, violent things to
Speaker 2: other people, like they make a choice to be bastards
Speaker 2: at some point. But there's also another less common category
Speaker 2: of bastards who are just sort of born into it.
Speaker 2: They have bastardy, you know, thrust upon them by the
Speaker 2: circumstances of their family and the time they live in Sure,
Speaker 2: which doesn't like make them mitigate the evils they perpetrated
Speaker 2: or remove their agency entirely, but I think it makes
Speaker 2: them more sympathetic figures than guys like Hitler or Saddam
Speaker 2: who kind of like dove headfirst into that, right. And
Speaker 2: Kaiser Wilhelm is like, once you understand his whole backstory,
Speaker 2: you're kind of like, yeah, you were a piece of shit,
Speaker 2: but like, how could this story have ended? Well?
Speaker 1: How could you? Yeah? How could you have learned? Who
Speaker 1: would you have learned how to be a good person from?
Speaker 2: Exactly? Like how was this not gonna suck? And that's
Speaker 2: the story of Kaiser Wilhelm.
Speaker 1: Oh that's a good that'll be the name of the biopic.
Speaker 2: Yeah, how could this have not sucked? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Okay, cool? Yeah.
Speaker 2: Kaiser Wilhelm was born of the hollenz All Learned dynasty,
Speaker 2: a family of German nobles whose history stretches back nearly
Speaker 2: a thousand years. To understand where he comes from, we
Speaker 2: have to start this episode but talking about his father's
Speaker 2: birth on October eighteenth eighteen thirty one. Now this is
Speaker 2: long before Germany was a thing. Prince Friedrich Wilhelm of
Speaker 2: Prussia was born in Potsdam. His father was also named Wilhelm.
Speaker 2: All of the men in this story are named fucking
Speaker 2: Friedrich Wilhelm. And I don't understand why the numbering works
Speaker 2: the way it does. I don't understand any of this.
Speaker 2: But they're all named Friedrich Wilhelm.
Speaker 1: Wait is the numbering out of order?
Speaker 2: It's weird. I think it's because of like their middle
Speaker 2: names and shit, because they have a bunch of names
Speaker 2: other than Friedrich Wilhelm, but they're all known as Friedrich Wilhelm. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's very dumb.
Speaker 1: The god I don't like when rich people try to
Speaker 1: bamboozle me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they don't have to have the same name, God
Speaker 2: damn it. Yeah, I would love it if the reasoning
Speaker 2: for that was just that the common people like couldn't
Speaker 2: be trusted to learn a new king's name. But I
Speaker 2: know it's something dumber and more arrogant than that.
Speaker 1: It's still it's still like I don't know, like, why
Speaker 1: are there five hundred Hollywood agents named Scott and that
Speaker 1: are all the same man?
Speaker 2: You know, it's Oh, that's that's nominative determinism. That's because
Speaker 2: if you're born Scott, you get fast tracked into Cia.
Speaker 1: You got it. There's a lot of you know, the
Speaker 1: Scotts and the Mics, and you know we love them,
Speaker 1: but do we can we tell them apart?
Speaker 2: No, now, So Prince Friedrich Wilhelm, who is the dad
Speaker 2: of the Prince Friedrich Wilhelm will be talking about this episode,
Speaker 2: entered the world second in line to the throne of
Speaker 2: Prussia after his brother, the Crown Prince, who was also
Speaker 2: named Friedrich Wilhelm. His parents had a typically loveless royal marriage.
Speaker 2: His father was in love with Princess Elise Radziwill of Poland,
Speaker 2: but she wasn't noble enough for a hohenz Allern to marry,
Speaker 2: so he had to marry one of his relatives, Augusta,
Speaker 2: while vowing that he would never give his heart to her.
Speaker 2: So this is how the relationship that leads to Kaiser
Speaker 2: Wilhelm starts. Now, as you might expect, familial compromises like
Speaker 2: did not make for the happiest of home lives. In
Speaker 2: June eighteen forty, King Friedrich Wilhelm the Third died after
Speaker 2: forty three years of ruling Prussia, his oldest son succeeded him,
Speaker 2: and Wilhelm became the Prince of Prussia. So Kaiser Wilhelm's
Speaker 2: dad is now the Crown Prince of Prussia.
Speaker 1: Okay, so Wilhelm, the previous Wilhelm.
Speaker 2: His brother, Yeah the he his dad does his name Wilhelm, right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: he sure does. He sure does. His dad dies and
Speaker 2: his brother who is the same name as him, and
Speaker 2: his dad becomes the king and he is now the
Speaker 2: crown Prince.
Speaker 1: How does that work when it's dinner time? You just
Speaker 1: shall want I don't know. I don't know how they
Speaker 1: told each other apart. It sucks so much getting it, Like.
Speaker 2: Writing this part sucks because it's just incredibly confusing, Like
Speaker 2: reading about royal I don't understand people who like royal
Speaker 2: families because it makes me just want to start punching
Speaker 2: and never stop.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I hope that there were some really disturbing nicknames
Speaker 1: in the mix. It seems like the only way that
Speaker 1: this would work.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know. So when he was eighteen, a
Speaker 2: very right wing general named Leopold von Gerloch told Kaiser
Speaker 2: Wilhelm's dad that he envied the Prince's youth, for he
Speaker 2: would no doubt survive the end of this absurd constitutionalism
Speaker 2: because there were a lot of democratic movements going through
Speaker 2: the German states at this point, including Prussia, which is
Speaker 2: when they established the Reichstag and stuff like that, So
Speaker 2: people are starting to get a voice in this period. Monarchs,
Speaker 2: you know, when we talk about the Kaisers, we're not
Speaker 2: talking about absolute monarchs. They have more power than obviously
Speaker 2: the British royal family, but they're not like the czar,
Speaker 2: like they don't need to just make yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: So Prince Friedrich, the Kaiser's dad, was actually a fan
Speaker 2: of the growing democratic movements in Germany. He was a liberal.
Speaker 2: He was a very progressive guy. He believed that the
Speaker 2: people deserved a constitution that would guarantee their rights and
Speaker 2: protect them from like nobles just wanting to do whatever. Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 2: the Kaiser's dad's actually a pretty chill dude.
Speaker 1: He's not like the other Kaiser's or prince.
Speaker 2: He's he's a prince. He's yeah, he's the crown prince
Speaker 2: at this point, the prince, which is like the next
Speaker 2: in line for the throne. There's a fuckload of princes,
Speaker 2: the crown Prince is the one who's going to be
Speaker 2: the king next. Okay, yeah, that's the way it works
Speaker 2: all over in all the different royal families, right right,
Speaker 2: So the Kaiser's dad again, who's also Prince, Wilhelm, spent
Speaker 2: a shipload of his youth in England due to a
Speaker 2: friendship with the British royal family that was orchestrated in
Speaker 2: part by our old pal, King Leopold of Belgium. Oh,
Speaker 2: this is actually one of the nice things Leopold did,
Speaker 2: because the goal of it was basically, I have all
Speaker 2: these If these royal families start fucking and marrying a bunch,
Speaker 2: then they clearly will never fight in a war.
Speaker 1: Wow, Leopold, what a problem solving. They're like, well, what
Speaker 1: if this whole family fucked each other? That would really
Speaker 1: solve politics? And he was right for a while there,
Speaker 1: for a.
Speaker 2: While there, for a while there. If he if he'd
Speaker 2: been to the American South, he would have known that
Speaker 2: having a family that fucks each other does not stop
Speaker 2: them from shooting at each other.
Speaker 1: But alas I mean, the American South once again coming
Speaker 1: out on top. They're way ahead of their time in
Speaker 1: terms of fucking and also killing their family.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. Now, in eighteen fifty five, Prince Wilhelm was
Speaker 2: invited to Britain without his parents to stay with Queen
Speaker 2: Victoria and her family and proposed to the Princess, who
Speaker 2: was also named Victoria, because the British royal family is
Speaker 2: just as insufferable as the German Yeah. Now. Happily enough,
Speaker 2: it turns out that the Kaiser's dad and his mom,
Speaker 2: Princess Victoria, were actually a very rare love match, which
Speaker 2: doesn't happen often in royal marriages. Yeah, and they weren't
Speaker 2: closely related, which is also great.
Speaker 1: So.
Speaker 2: By the summer of eighteen fifty eight, Princess Victoria was
Speaker 2: pregnant and expecting. This was not treated with joy by
Speaker 2: Queen Victoria. She considered this horrid news which would all
Speaker 2: end in nothing. Because the Princess got sick almost immediately
Speaker 2: and stayed ill throughout much of the pregnancy. Queen Victoria
Speaker 2: was not an optimist. Yeah. The royal doctors assured everyone
Speaker 2: that things would be fine, but the Princess's midwife, Miss Innocent,
Speaker 2: knew it a single look that the pregnancy would not
Speaker 2: end well.
Speaker 1: Miss Innocent yeah, named.
Speaker 2: After Pope Innocent.
Speaker 1: I think, oh, that's what I feel like. I had
Speaker 1: a shirt this so that in junior high different meaning
Speaker 1: I had miss Innocent, miss independent after the Kelly Clarkson song. Yeah,
Speaker 1: miss that was.
Speaker 2: That's another pope.
Speaker 1: Yeah angel one percent devil.
Speaker 2: That yet another pope. A lot of popes that you
Speaker 2: had shareds based off. He was the He was of
Speaker 2: the popes, one of the top, I mean.
Speaker 1: Pretty close to being a complete angel.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Now we don't know precisely what went wrong with
Speaker 2: Kaiser Wilhelm's birth, but it is certain that the doctors
Speaker 2: who managed the birth fucked up in some way. Some
Speaker 2: of this is due to the fact that the infant
Speaker 2: Kaiser was a breech berth. At that time, in Central Europe,
Speaker 2: about ninety eight percent of babies born in breach were stillborn,
Speaker 2: so almost all of the babies born this way died.
Speaker 2: But obviously the Kaiser had the very best doctors. I mean,
Speaker 2: you might argue that his doctors did a great job
Speaker 2: of bringing him through a live but no one at
Speaker 2: the time said so. The princess would later write of
Speaker 2: the bungling way she was treated, and it seems like
Speaker 2: what happened is while they were pulling him out of
Speaker 2: the birth canal, they basically ripped his left arm off
Speaker 2: of his body and fucked it like like did They
Speaker 2: didn't sever it, but like ripped the muscles and shit. Ugh,
Speaker 2: So he has his arm as fucked up from the
Speaker 2: jump now. The princess was confined to bed rests after
Speaker 2: the birth for a month, but both she and the
Speaker 2: child survived, albeit not without permanent damage. When the birth
Speaker 2: was announced to the people of Prussia by a field marshal,
Speaker 2: the baby prince was described as as sturdy, a little
Speaker 2: recruit as a heart could wish to see. But the
Speaker 2: obstetrician told a different story. The infant was seemingly dead
Speaker 2: to a high degree. No show. Yeah, that's never described it.
Speaker 1: That is absolutely savage take on that infant.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, really roasting the baby Kaiser.
Speaker 1: Jeez.
Speaker 2: His survival was considered close to miraculous. And I'm going
Speaker 2: to quote next from the book Kaiser Wilhelm, the Second
Speaker 2: Germany's Last Emperor by John vanderkist Okay. Three or four
Speaker 2: days after the birth, Miss Innocent drew doctor Martin's attention
Speaker 2: to the baby's left arm hanging lifelessly from the shoulder
Speaker 2: socket the father was told at once. When he asked
Speaker 2: the German doctors, they reassured him that the damage was
Speaker 2: only temporary paralysis, which would improve with a little gentle
Speaker 2: massage at first, followed by exercises at a later stage.
Speaker 2: This would prove to be optimistic and untrue. Even as
Speaker 2: an adult, William's left arm was six inches shorter than
Speaker 2: the right.
Speaker 1: He reminds me of Nemo, who Robert from finding Nemo
Speaker 1: the one that gets found.
Speaker 2: Oh oh yeah, yeah, yeah he is. He is, And
Speaker 2: like Nemo, he grows up to spark a war that
Speaker 2: kills seventeen million people. That is Whatsar hasn't gotten to
Speaker 2: that movie yet, but that's how the story goes.
Speaker 1: Well, they're all about revisionist history over there. It's a disaster.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Nemo did become yeah, like a brutal general. He's he's
Speaker 1: actually people blame global warming for the whole like coral
Speaker 1: reef dying off, but that's simply yeah.
Speaker 2: It's And also like the Kaiser, super anti Semitic didn't
Speaker 2: come up in the movie Lunch, but really really really
Speaker 2: far off.
Speaker 1: If you get the feeling that they're just cutting away
Speaker 1: just before something terrible happens.
Speaker 2: Yeah, in every scene in that movie, he has a
Speaker 2: copy of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion tucked
Speaker 2: beneath his good fin.
Speaker 1: Oh my god.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know again.
Speaker 1: I love fun fat, I love movie trivia.
Speaker 2: Uh So, the young Kaiser's hand looked normal when he
Speaker 2: grew up, but it is the actual arm in hand
Speaker 2: itself were too weak to hold anything much heavier than
Speaker 2: a piece of paper. He spent his life hiding it out. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's that's fucking hard. Yeah. Yeah. If you look at
Speaker 2: pictures of him, he's always hiding his left arm out
Speaker 2: of sight in a coat pocket or like like kind
Speaker 2: of up to his side with like a glove on.
Speaker 2: And he had gloves that would help like extend the
Speaker 2: length of his hand a little bit to make it
Speaker 2: look more normal.
Speaker 1: I've decided I forgive him.
Speaker 2: Now we're cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're going to wind up feeling very sympathetic throughout
Speaker 2: a significant chunk of this until we get to the
Speaker 2: parts of it where he's a giant piece of shit.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Now, as Vanderkiss's book notes, hiding this deformed arm
Speaker 2: became a guiding motivation for the young prince. Throughout his life,
Speaker 2: few photographs showed his left arm clearly, let alone the hand.
Speaker 2: From an early age, the art of concealing it from
Speaker 2: the camer lens became second nature to him. At meals,
Speaker 2: he could not manage an ordinary knife and fork, but
Speaker 2: his bodyguard always carried a special combined one, while the
Speaker 2: person sitting next to him discreetly cut up his food
Speaker 2: as if to compensate. His right hand had an iron grip,
Speaker 2: something he would often exploit as an adult one, greeting
Speaker 2: people for the first time with a vice like handshake,
Speaker 2: sadistically turning the rings on his fingers inward first, so
Speaker 2: as to add to the other person's discomfort. If these
Speaker 2: men or women were English, he laughed heartily at their
Speaker 2: winses as he made jibes about the male fist. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 2: he can getting a bit of a thing.
Speaker 1: He's getting a bit. Yeah, I mean, I guess you
Speaker 1: have to. It begs the question like, if I had
Speaker 1: power influence as a twelve year old with a backbras,
Speaker 1: would I have oppressed other people? I don't know, yes,
Speaker 1: I feel.
Speaker 2: Like probably alteah.
Speaker 1: Any any furious twelve year old that feels out of
Speaker 1: place if they had the it just no twelve year
Speaker 1: old to have the ability to He's the rare one.
Speaker 2: Yeah. If I had absolute power at the age of twelve,
Speaker 2: when I was like like an insecure, fat kid who
Speaker 2: didn't know how to be social, I would have killed millions, millions.
Speaker 1: What wouldn't I? I know, like I was a gigantic
Speaker 1: walking rectangle for most of my formative years. What if?
Speaker 1: What if someone could have suffered for that?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Exactly? Yeah, Okay. Now, the Kaiser's hand was not
Speaker 2: the only part of him injured by the circumstances of
Speaker 2: his birth. His neck was also damaged and his head
Speaker 2: tilted to the left his entire life. His left ear
Speaker 2: was likewise unformed, and he was partly deaf and had
Speaker 2: problems with balance as a result of this. His entire life,
Speaker 2: he suffered from constant ear infections and required a series
Speaker 2: of surgeries, which left him eventually completely deaf in his
Speaker 2: left ear and frequently subjected him to intense pain that
Speaker 2: probably contributed to his infamous temper tantrums. There's also a
Speaker 2: chance that he was born profoundly mentally ill, with a
Speaker 2: specific kind of mental illness that is common among royal
Speaker 2: families as a result of inbrading. There's no proof of this,
Speaker 2: and I kind of think that the other stuff explains
Speaker 2: his temper, tantrums and shit more than porphyria. I think
Speaker 2: it was the name of the illness, but it's possible
Speaker 2: he had like a brain thing going on to got
Speaker 2: it now. In short, the prince who would one day
Speaker 2: become the Kaiser came into this world with very serious
Speaker 2: difficulties to overcome, even for a child born as wealthy
Speaker 2: as a child could possibly be born. Right, His father,
Speaker 2: Prince Friedrich Wilhelm, was a decent guy and handled this
Speaker 2: with love and support, but his grandfather, who was the Kaiser,
Speaker 2: was said to have noted that he wasn't sure if
Speaker 2: he should even congratulate his son on the birth of
Speaker 2: a defective prince. Oh, and like one of the German
Speaker 2: generals who's around when the Kaiser's like a little kid,
Speaker 2: is like no one with a fucked up arm should
Speaker 2: ever become the Kaiser, Like you shouldn't even be alive.
Speaker 2: So like this is not his parents are really good
Speaker 2: and really loving, but like he also grows up in
Speaker 2: this very unforgiving culture that cannot tolerate physical imperfection, right.
Speaker 1: I mean, and being I feel like especially for like
Speaker 1: young Oh god, just an emasculated twelve year old. Is
Speaker 1: there anything with more more potential for danger?
Speaker 2: Yeah? No, not really no. So the princess was a
Speaker 2: devoted and loving mother. In a letter to his grandmother,
Speaker 2: Queen Victoria, the kid who would become Kaiser Wilhelm was
Speaker 2: Queen Victoria's first grandchild, right so. In a letter to
Speaker 2: his grandmother, his mother wrote, your grandson is exceedingly lively,
Speaker 2: and when awake, will not be satisfied unless kept dancing
Speaker 2: about continually. He scratches his face and tears his caps
Speaker 2: and makes every sort of extraordinary little noise. I am
Speaker 2: so thankful, so happy. He is a boy. I longed
Speaker 2: for one more than I can describe. My whole heart
Speaker 2: was set upon a boy, and therefore I did not
Speaker 2: expect one. So could is very deeply loved and has
Speaker 2: you know kind of your best case scenario for parents
Speaker 2: in this period of time?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, like, sure he was a preached birth, but
Speaker 1: at least he wasn't a girl child. We would have
Speaker 1: hated that.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, I think I don't get that feeling
Speaker 2: from her. I get the feeling more that she just
Speaker 2: like number one, like one of your jobs as a
Speaker 2: princess in this period is to like give birth to
Speaker 2: an air Like they had daughters, and she treated the
Speaker 2: daughters well like they like they weren't like, didn't hate
Speaker 2: their daughters.
Speaker 1: That's it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, there's just a lot of shit built up
Speaker 2: around having a son to continue the line, and the
Speaker 2: fact that her first child was a son like that
Speaker 2: takes a lot of the pressure.
Speaker 1: Well that's good for her her because then people stop giving.
Speaker 2: Her shit exactly. I think that's a big part of
Speaker 2: why she feels that way. It's also you know, like
Speaker 2: even today, like my friends who get married have expressed
Speaker 2: preferences like, oh, I hope it's a boy. I hope
Speaker 2: it's a girl for whatever whatever thing they want to
Speaker 2: do with the kid. Like I don't get the feeling
Speaker 2: that like she was being shitty by saying that, which
Speaker 2: you do when you hear about the czar. Well, no, yeah,
Speaker 2: there it's weird, Like the czar their first kid was
Speaker 2: a girl, and like his bizar, like his his wife
Speaker 2: wrote to him that like, oh, I'm so sorry basically
Speaker 2: that I wasn't able to provide a son. And he
Speaker 2: was like, no, no, it's fine. We have a son.
Speaker 2: The son belongs to Russia. This daughter, you know, is ours,
Speaker 2: so we get to really just like spoil her and
Speaker 2: enjoy having a child, and we'll we'll have the son later.
Speaker 2: So I don't know, you get a mix of reactions
Speaker 2: from the royal fans far.
Speaker 1: As Yeah, as far as that situation goes, I guess
Speaker 1: that's one of the better ways it could shake.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, yeah, cool. So we know a lot
Speaker 2: about the life and particularly the childhood of the Kaiser,
Speaker 2: more than we know about the life and childhood of
Speaker 2: literally anyone else I've ever talked about on the show,
Speaker 2: because he was born to be king, so every scrap
Speaker 2: of correspondence from his parents and his teachers and his
Speaker 2: relatives about him and from himself has been saved and
Speaker 2: is in archives. So it's fair to say there's more
Speaker 2: detail on the early life of this guy than any
Speaker 2: other person I've covered on the show, which is probably
Speaker 2: why I'm more sympathetic about this guy, because when you
Speaker 2: have that much detail to draw on, like, it's hard
Speaker 2: not to feel some sympathy for.
Speaker 1: Care when you know that much about a kid's miserable
Speaker 1: childhood one way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, that's tough.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Nemo, that's why they made finding meme.
Speaker 2: That's why they made finding names.
Speaker 1: With a monster there. He lost his mother young, he
Speaker 1: got he got kidnapped by the ocean, and he had
Speaker 1: a he had a difficult fin. So we should forgive
Speaker 1: him for his sins.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for his rabbit anti Semitism.
Speaker 1: I mean, I can't say it enough.
Speaker 2: It's really impossible to owe emphasize. So Prince Wilhelm was
Speaker 2: baptized on March fifth, eighteen fifty nine. Queen Victoria was
Speaker 2: unable to attend and was represented by Lord Ragland, the
Speaker 2: British commander during the Crimean War and one of the
Speaker 2: guys in charge of the Light Brigade. He's that dude.
Speaker 2: So that's who like represents his grandmamma at the at
Speaker 2: the at the baptism.
Speaker 1: Well that's nice.
Speaker 2: Yeah. In general, the future Kaiser had a very British upbringing.
Speaker 2: His nurse, Missus Hobbs, was English. His chief doctor, Sir
Speaker 2: Benjamin Brodie, was also British.
Speaker 1: The most British as names I've ever heard.
Speaker 2: Yeah, very Yeah, this kid is half British. You have
Speaker 2: to remember that because like his mom is an English princess.
Speaker 2: His grandmother is the fucking literal Queen Victoria, and he
Speaker 2: has he's raised by like he grew up without it.
Speaker 2: He spoke English perfectly with almost no accent. You can
Speaker 2: listen to speeches by this guy in English and yeah,
Speaker 2: you can barely notice the accent. So posh. Yeah, it's
Speaker 2: impossible to overstate how intermarried and intermingled. The royal families
Speaker 2: that helped launch World War One were Prince Wilhelm, the
Speaker 2: guy who became the Kaiser, was also the Prince of
Speaker 2: Orange and in line for the throne of England. His
Speaker 2: current like great grandson who's alive today, is one hundred
Speaker 2: and seventieth in line for the British throne. Over in Russia,
Speaker 2: the tsar's wife was a German princess, and the Czar
Speaker 2: and the Kaiser were cousins. All of the monarchs in
Speaker 2: charge of the primary belligerence in World War One shared
Speaker 2: grandparents and aunts and were cousins and had grown up together.
Speaker 1: Those are my favorite letters I wish I haven't like
Speaker 1: it's been like almost ten years now, but like the
Speaker 1: reading through the letters between cousins where they're like, are
Speaker 1: we gonna start a war, like.
Speaker 2: Are we gonna are we going to get all these
Speaker 2: people killed? Yeah?
Speaker 1: So fuck, it's so bizarre being like what if I
Speaker 1: could just write my cousin Tammy and be like, so,
Speaker 1: like how attached are we to people?
Speaker 2: How much do we like four to six million of
Speaker 2: our young men, Like.
Speaker 1: Just do you feel able to just it's so bizarre
Speaker 1: knowing that their cousins that like, for the most part,
Speaker 1: know each other, like, it's just very weird.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and love each other.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, we'd where like there's those like the letters
Speaker 1: between Wilhelm and this and the are they're so bizarre.
Speaker 2: It's just yeah, yeah, you know what's not bizarre, Jamie,
Speaker 2: what Robert the products and services that support this podcast
Speaker 2: with their advertising.
Speaker 1: Patron I love a product and I love a service.
Speaker 2: Well here's both.
Speaker 1: Okay, we're back. Oh what a nice product or service? Though?
Speaker 1: Is just described?
Speaker 2: It was nice. Now let's get back to talking about
Speaker 2: Prince Wilhelm's misshapen arm.
Speaker 1: But his plot Finn won't swim right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, his damaged arm was a matter of serious concern
Speaker 2: for the Royal family or Prussian at this point, royal family.
Speaker 2: His nurse rubbed massage oil on it daily to try
Speaker 2: and stimulate growth. Wilhelm's doctors ordered that his arm be
Speaker 2: tied to the side of his leg for an hour
Speaker 2: a day in order to try to force it to
Speaker 2: grow normally.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, he is a back brace for his arm.
Speaker 2: Oh we were getting to the back brace. Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: Now the infant prints had almost no feeling in the
Speaker 2: limb and barely noticed most of this. While most of
Speaker 2: his treatments were ineffective but benign, some were really brutal.
Speaker 2: And I'm going to quote now from the book Kaiservillhelm
Speaker 2: the Second A Concise Life by John Roll. Okay, When
Speaker 2: the infant was six months old, Professor Bernhard von Langenbeck
Speaker 2: of the Charite Hospital in Berlin prescribed animal baths twice
Speaker 2: a week. Wilhelm's left arm was inserted into the body
Speaker 2: of a freshly slaughtered hair for half an hour and
Speaker 2: the hope that the wild animal's warmth and vigor would
Speaker 2: be transferred to the arm. No, this stuck him arm
Speaker 2: deep in a dead animal. No, why it was a baby.
Speaker 1: You're just like, how is how would this grow up
Speaker 1: to be a good person? This is like biblical curses.
Speaker 1: They're fosting upon a.
Speaker 2: Baby, shove a fresh bloody corpse on the literal infant
Speaker 2: child's arm for an hour. How does that not talk
Speaker 2: about it?
Speaker 1: I hate there's someone in the room like, We've got
Speaker 1: to make sure that this is remembered, because what if
Speaker 1: it works?
Speaker 2: What if it works? If he's the best king ever?
Speaker 1: I mean science, We're going to do about science and
Speaker 1: the utal and does it's never gone wrong?
Speaker 2: Amazing?
Speaker 1: Oh god, that's again brutal.
Speaker 2: He's the Prince of Pruscius. So this is like the
Speaker 2: best doctor you can get at the time. And the
Speaker 2: country Germany at this point is renowned as having some
Speaker 2: of the best doctors on the world. That's really like
Speaker 2: the height of medical science.
Speaker 1: What is it? Does everyone else? You know? Honestly, I
Speaker 1: would rather die at twenty four than have that be
Speaker 1: my medical regimen. I would rather have died years ago.
Speaker 2: It's terrible. Now. Perhaps the most damaging treatment came at
Speaker 2: the direct orders of Queen Victoria. And I'm gonna quote
Speaker 2: now from John Vanderkist's biography, Queen Victoria's a piece of shit,
Speaker 2: by the way, Just as it heads up.
Speaker 1: I did the I went to England over the summer
Speaker 1: brag and we did the Buckingham Palace tour because I
Speaker 1: just didn't. I just wanted to see what it was like.
Speaker 1: And the oh, the revisionism aunt like, there's no mention
Speaker 1: of Wilhelm. There's no mention of you know, it's just
Speaker 1: too messy. They're like, she was really nice, she hated
Speaker 1: when her husband died. Thanks for the forty dollars.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Well here's a little bit more about Queen Victoria.
Speaker 1: Hit it.
Speaker 2: The princess we're talking about Kaiservillhelm's mom doated on babies,
Speaker 2: and within a few days of his birth, she had
Speaker 2: started breastfeeding him, to the revulsion of her mother in law.
Speaker 2: Knowing Queen Victoria's views on the subject were it won
Speaker 2: with hers, she the mother in law wrote to the
Speaker 2: Queen asking for her approval and putting it into this
Speaker 2: odious habit. Much to the young mother's disappointment, her baby
Speaker 2: was comply handed over to a wet nurse whose milk
Speaker 2: irritated his bowels and caused regular stomach upsets. So the
Speaker 2: Queen of Prussia and Queen Victoria both hate breastfeeding because
Speaker 2: they think it's a gross commoner thing to do, and
Speaker 2: so they make somebody whose milk makes Kaiser Wilhelm sick
Speaker 2: breastfeed the baby.
Speaker 1: You know what, My mom did the same thing, except
Speaker 1: with formula. So you know, my mom was just like,
Speaker 1: I'm you stay away from me. Here's some NESI, here's
Speaker 1: some nessli chemicals. Good luck with your life now.
Speaker 2: Years later, his grandmother, the Empress Augusta, his other grandmother,
Speaker 2: would lie to Kaiser Wilhelm and tell him that his
Speaker 2: mother had refused to breastfeed him because she found his
Speaker 2: arm disgusting.
Speaker 1: Oh, but his mom was nice.
Speaker 2: Oh that's his mom was nice. She's just a bitch
Speaker 2: who hates his mom and is like he's like I said,
Speaker 2: how does this kid not grow up fucked up?
Speaker 1: Like I don't like I don't like women on I
Speaker 1: don't like women on woman conflict. It's not fair. We
Speaker 1: don't need it. It makes me upset, although it might
Speaker 1: did that though to my mama.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's it's less damaging when the babies that
Speaker 2: are getting like manipulated by the fucked up people aren't
Speaker 2: growing up to be the emperors of Germany.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh it's it's not. I mean, just regular fucked
Speaker 1: up people are the best.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we do enough damage as it is. Yeah, don't
Speaker 2: give anyone any power. Nobody turns out great. No, everyone's
Speaker 2: a disaster. Like every now and then, every now and
Speaker 2: then you get a Danny DeVito, but most of us
Speaker 2: don't turn out.
Speaker 1: We're obsessed with Danny DeVito.
Speaker 2: I love Danny.
Speaker 1: What about Billy Zayin.
Speaker 2: I don't know anything about Billy z an Is he nice?
Speaker 1: He's nice?
Speaker 2: Good? Good for Billy's aye?
Speaker 1: Everyone.
Speaker 2: Let's replace Congress with Danny DeVito and Billy You.
Speaker 1: Know what, the only two white men we can support
Speaker 1: at this point.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Now. In eighteen sixty, when the Prince was one
Speaker 2: year old, his doctors began giving him daily electromagnetic therapy,
Speaker 2: applying constant galvanic current to his net for hours every
Speaker 2: day to attempt to stimulate blood flow in his arm.
Speaker 2: Electrocuting the infant Kaiser for hours a day did not
Speaker 2: work either.
Speaker 1: No kidding, God, it's just like your child has a disability.
Speaker 2: We're four pages in and we haven't stopped talking about
Speaker 2: the fucked up ways they damaged this kid trying to
Speaker 2: heal his arms.
Speaker 1: We feel so God, it is hard not to feel.
Speaker 2: For a you like that's a lot to deal with.
Speaker 1: Hell, your family's electrocuting you because they find you to
Speaker 1: be gross. That's a nightmare.
Speaker 2: That's a cross to bear that it certainly is. On
Speaker 2: January second, eighteen sixty one, King Friedrich Vilhelm the fourth
Speaker 2: died and Princevillelm's grandfather became KAISERVILLELM the First. He was
Speaker 2: sixty three at the time. Two years later, in eighteen
Speaker 2: sixty three, when the Prince who would become the Kaiser
Speaker 2: that we're talking about, I know this is confusing. I'm
Speaker 2: going to call, like when I say King Frederick Wilhelm fourth,
Speaker 2: he's also a Kaiser Wilhelm. I'm only gonna call the
Speaker 2: Kaiservillehelm from World War One that we're talking about this
Speaker 2: episode the Kaiser for the sake of like making this
Speaker 2: make sense. Sure, So, when the future Kaiser was four,
Speaker 2: his doctors presented him with a terrifying and barbaric machine
Speaker 2: designed to help him treat another one of his ailments
Speaker 2: see four years after birth, Wilhelm had developed torti collis,
Speaker 2: caused by the healthy muscles on the right side of
Speaker 2: his neck pulling his head downwards in that direction. Oh, now,
Speaker 2: this would obviously be way too visible an ailment to
Speaker 2: possibly let the King of Prussia have the future King
Speaker 2: of Prussia have. So to treat this, his doctors prescribed
Speaker 2: him what his mother called a head stretching machine.
Speaker 1: That sounds safe, sounds.
Speaker 2: He had to worry an hour a day every day,
Speaker 2: and in a letter to Queen Victoria, the prince's mother
Speaker 2: described it thusly, a belt around his waist to the
Speaker 2: back of which an iron bar is affixed. The bar
Speaker 2: leads up the back to something which looks exactly like
Speaker 2: a horse's bridle. The head is then fixed in this
Speaker 2: and positioned is desired by means of a screw, which
Speaker 2: is just the iron bar.
Speaker 1: Ah. Why this is Oh, I feel I'm sad, Robert.
Speaker 2: This sucks now. The young prince eventually went through facial
Speaker 2: surgery to correct this, which alleviated the problem at the
Speaker 2: cost of some permanent disfigurement. He was also subject to
Speaker 2: an arm stretching machine, which was used on him for
Speaker 2: years and was similar to the next stretching machine.
Speaker 1: These are medieval torture devices. This is not helpful. Yeah.
Speaker 2: The thing that actually did help his arm to grow
Speaker 2: somewhat was a course of regular gymnastics, which oh stuff worked,
Speaker 2: figure just actual exercise. Yes, that one didn't seem to
Speaker 2: help there.
Speaker 1: It's so I'm like, I mean, these these these doctors
Speaker 1: have to have at least the foresight to give the
Speaker 1: arm stretching machine a confusing name so you don't notice
Speaker 1: it's an arm stretching machine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I've only hearder referred to as the
Speaker 2: arms stretching machine, but it probably had a fun German nickname.
Speaker 1: A doctor sue sounding thing. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Now, in spite of all this horror, Wilhelm's early
Speaker 2: childhood was considered. He remembered it at least as fairly pleasant.
Speaker 2: His mother and father were both doting parents, which was
Speaker 2: unusual Imprussian families of that era. He was the baby
Speaker 2: of the global royal family and for a time Queen
Speaker 2: Victoria's favorite grandchild. Starting in eighteen sixty three, he began
Speaker 2: to regularly visit his aunts and uncles and cousins in
Speaker 2: Great Britain. John Vanderkiss describes him as a spirited child. Quote,
Speaker 2: on his way to Saint George's Chapel, Windsor, he threw
Speaker 2: his aunt Beatrice's muff out the carriage window. Beatrice was
Speaker 2: only five years old at the time and in no
Speaker 2: position to exercise any authority over him. Queen Victoria's youngest child,
Speaker 2: she wasn't always remained for her mother's baby, a name
Speaker 2: her nephew soon picked up. When she told him petulantly
Speaker 2: that he must address her as an aunt, he snapped back,
Speaker 2: aunt baby. Then bored during the long marriage service, while
Speaker 2: most of his relations were shedding emotional tears, he pulled
Speaker 2: his dirk, which is a knife, from his stocking and
Speaker 2: threw it noisily across the chapel floor. When his young
Speaker 2: uncles Arthur and Leopold remonstrated with him, he bit them
Speaker 2: in the legs.
Speaker 1: What a sweet kid.
Speaker 2: I mean, I gotta love that he bites King Leopold
Speaker 2: of Belgium, the slaughterer of the Congo, in the leg
Speaker 2: for yelling at him for throwing a knife during a wedding,
Speaker 2: Which is awesome.
Speaker 1: That actually does sound like what you would have done. Yes, I,
Speaker 1: little knife thrower.
Speaker 2: Have bonded over knife throwing. I love throwing knives. If
Speaker 2: I anytime I get really drunk, I'm gonna throw knives.
Speaker 1: I you know, I know that to be true. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's great. I think I also had a shirt that
Speaker 1: said aunt baby. In middle school, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: these phrases are bringing or bring back some memories. Aunt baby,
Speaker 1: that's actually a sick.
Speaker 2: Burn, for that is a sick bird. He was. He
Speaker 2: was not not witless. Quick Yeah, that's quick for like
Speaker 2: a four year old too not bad to.
Speaker 1: Be like aunt bait. Fuck you on, baby, baby, I
Speaker 1: can't I have no punch ups.
Speaker 2: That's great, hell yeah kid.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: In eighteen sixty four, the Prince's father, who was the
Speaker 2: Crown Prince, fought in the Prushio Danish War and returned
Speaker 2: home a war hero. The future Kaiser's father would again
Speaker 2: win laurels in the Franco Prussian War of eighteen seventy one,
Speaker 2: which is what led to the establishment of the German Empire.
Speaker 2: Some of the Prince's earliest strong memories, the future Kaiser's
Speaker 2: strong memories where his father sending back captured battle flags
Speaker 2: and glorious reports of conquest from the front lines. So
Speaker 2: he grows up like with some of his earliest memories
Speaker 2: being his dad being a legitimate war hero, Like he
Speaker 2: was really close to the front, obviously not in as
Speaker 2: much danger as an infantrymen, but he was like participating
Speaker 2: in battles and leading troops in combat and stuff. Okay,
Speaker 2: So as he grew into an lessent, the young Prince
Speaker 2: gradually overcame many of his physical limitations. He learned how
Speaker 2: to swim and row, and was quite good at it.
Speaker 2: His grandmother, Queen Victoria, was ever on the watch for
Speaker 2: signs of pride from her first grandchild. She told the
Speaker 2: Crown Princess to bring him up simply, plainly, and not
Speaker 2: with that terrible Prussian pride and ambition which grieved dear
Speaker 2: Papa so much, and which he always said would stand
Speaker 2: in the way of Prussia taking that lead in Germany,
Speaker 2: which he ever wished her to do.
Speaker 1: If only the Germans were more British.
Speaker 2: If only the Germans were were more humble like us.
Speaker 2: All we did was conquer a quarter of the world's
Speaker 2: land surface, unlike these arrogant Germans notoriously.
Speaker 1: Chill and tolerant British.
Speaker 2: Yeah yes, yeah, now. The Prince's parents seemed to have
Speaker 2: listened to this advice. Starting in mid eighteen sixty six,
Speaker 2: when the future Kaiser was seven and starting school, George
Speaker 2: Hinspeter was chosen to be his tutor. Now Hinspeter was
Speaker 2: a Calvinist, which means he believed that only a predetermined
Speaker 2: elect few ever got to heaven, and the vast majority
Speaker 2: of humanity was destined for hell no matter what they did.
Speaker 2: As you might expect, he was a gigantic dick. He
Speaker 2: also looked exactly like the dude who played Taiwin Lanister
Speaker 2: on Game of Thrones, Like if Sophie looks up his picture,
Speaker 2: like exactly like him. It's really weird now. Hinspeter's educational
Speaker 2: program involved twelve hour days of mixed study and exercise.
Speaker 2: It was, in his words, based exclusively on a stern
Speaker 2: sense of duty and the idea of service. The character
Speaker 2: was to be fortified by perpetual renunciation, the life of
Speaker 2: the prince to be molded on the lines of old
Speaker 2: Prussian simplicity, its ideal being the harsh discipline of the Spartans.
Speaker 2: Now it's here I should say a few words about Prussia.
Speaker 2: Prussia no longer exists as a state, or as a
Speaker 2: political entity in any way. Prussia's disillusion was one of
Speaker 2: the British requirements for the end of World War II.
Speaker 2: Prior to that, Prussia was the most powerful German state,
Speaker 2: and the source for all of our modern stereotypes of
Speaker 2: Germany and Germans as disciplined, sterned, humorless, and militaristic. The
Speaker 2: Prussian military was one of the chief military forces in
Speaker 2: Europe for centuries and became world famous for their discipline
Speaker 2: and skill. During the US Revolutionary War, a Prussian nobleman,
Speaker 2: Baron von Steuben, built the entire American military from scratch.
Speaker 2: The core of our military's organization to this day is
Speaker 2: still based along Prussian lines, So it makes sense that
Speaker 2: the young prince would be raised in a strict, militaristic,
Speaker 2: spartan way. Ok. But while Prussian discipline made for an
Speaker 2: effective military, it also made for profoundly damaged young men,
Speaker 2: which is why we got two yeah Hinspeter declared that
Speaker 2: the growing Wilhelm could never ever receive any kind of praise, approval,
Speaker 2: or encouragement for any reason. He was ordered to eat
Speaker 2: dry bread for breakfast. When he and his siblings hosted
Speaker 2: their cousins, they were required to give them cakes and
Speaker 2: cookies without eating any sweets for themselves, no matter how
Speaker 2: well yeah, this guy's this is so fucked up, This is.
Speaker 1: Like calculated shit, yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, No matter how well Princevillehelm performed, George Hinspeter never
Speaker 2: gave him so much as a kind word. The impossible
Speaker 2: was expected of the pupil in order to force him
Speaker 2: to meet the nearest degree of perfection. Naturally, the impossible
Speaker 2: goal could never be achieved logically. Therefore, the praise which
Speaker 2: registers approval was also excluded.
Speaker 1: God, yeah, just with a whole love from your child.
Speaker 1: And see that's such a ugh God, why did I
Speaker 1: feel like sometimes parents? I mean again, if this is
Speaker 1: just like every bad parenting technique turned up to an
Speaker 1: eleven for no reason.
Speaker 2: Amazing, how many different bad types of parenting he receives
Speaker 2: from really everyone but his parents. But he's got carried so.
Speaker 1: Many sets of stop us. Yeah, God, that's so brutal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're like, oh, watch your cousin Edith Pieza. I feel
Speaker 1: like that happens to kids sometimes as punishment, you know,
Speaker 1: you're like, oh, look, everyone's gonna get birthday cake, but
Speaker 1: you whatever, you shit on the floor, so you got
Speaker 1: to eat a cracker.
Speaker 2: And some of those people grow up to be shitty
Speaker 2: managers at a sonic. But since they don't have them,
Speaker 2: they don't inherit the German military, so it's not a
Speaker 2: huge problem.
Speaker 1: There's a version of Wilhelm had he been from you know,
Speaker 1: like from a normal class of person, where he would
Speaker 1: have just been a perfectly happy manager of a lids
Speaker 1: that didn't talk to his family that much.
Speaker 2: No, no, and he would have denied his employees lunch
Speaker 2: breaks for shitty reasons because.
Speaker 1: He's got some hurt in his heart.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the damage would have been contained, right, right, Not.
Speaker 1: That we condone this behavior from Lydd's managers, we don't.
Speaker 2: But I prefer people like Wilhelm become Lydd's managers than
Speaker 2: Imperial German Army managers.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, I'm listening.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Now, every Wednesday and Saturday, hens Peter and
Speaker 2: Wilhelm would visit museums and art galleries. They would also
Speaker 2: visit factories, foundries, workshops, farms and the like. The goal
Speaker 2: was to show the would be what life was like
Speaker 2: for the manual laborers who actually built his country. To
Speaker 2: Hinspeter's credit, he also wanted the royal family to gain
Speaker 2: an understanding of social inequality and the suffering of workers.
Speaker 2: Wilhelm was required to remove his hat and deliver a
Speaker 2: thankful speech at every place of business they visited after
Speaker 2: their tour. So Hinspeter did a lot of the job
Speaker 2: of raising Wilhelm, and that had positive and negative echoes.
Speaker 2: As we'll see. One of his big demands was that
Speaker 2: the prince develop and express an opinion of every single
Speaker 2: person he met. This was part of Hinspeter's plan to
Speaker 2: get the young man to express his views at all
Speaker 2: times so that he would not be dominated by his
Speaker 2: advisers in the future. This one would wind up backfiring
Speaker 2: on the entire planet. No Now, as he grew into
Speaker 2: a young boy, Queen Victoria noticed some unpleasant changes taking
Speaker 2: over her darling grandson. He is inclined to be selfish,
Speaker 2: domineering and proud, but I must say they are not
Speaker 2: his own faults, as they have been hitherto more encouraged
Speaker 2: than checked. Hinspeter taught Wilhelm to ride a horse by
Speaker 2: letting him fall off of it repeatedly, ignoring the Prince's
Speaker 2: tears and forcing him back on the horse for weeks
Speaker 2: until he got good at writing one handed, and he
Speaker 2: was said to be an excellent horseman. So he learns
Speaker 2: how to one handed ride a horse.
Speaker 1: It's almost like they should have just let him learn
Speaker 1: how to do things with one hand the entire.
Speaker 2: Time, rather than the torture machines.
Speaker 1: Rather than the evil torture machines.
Speaker 2: Jamie, your anti torturing baby's agenda has been clear for
Speaker 2: quite some time, and I think you might be biased
Speaker 2: on this.
Speaker 1: Think you know what, it's true. And people have been
Speaker 1: calling me out a lot. They're like, no, but what
Speaker 1: if we did torture the babies. How will you know
Speaker 1: until you've tried it?
Speaker 2: How will you know until you've tried it?
Speaker 1: Right? And that's fair. I haven't tried it yet.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well.
Speaker 1: Sure of course, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: Well who are they going to tell exactly what are
Speaker 2: they going to do? Because they can't speak English.
Speaker 1: I'm about to get a kitten, so you know it's
Speaker 1: going to be there.
Speaker 2: There is a specific type of torture that you have
Speaker 2: to do to young kittens if you want them to
Speaker 2: be affectionate, which is that you mean from a very
Speaker 2: young age? Do you know what the ca gun is?
Speaker 1: The cat gun?
Speaker 2: It's when you hold your cat like a gun, with
Speaker 2: its back legs as the handle and its front legs
Speaker 2: like a foe grip, and you pretend it's a little
Speaker 2: machine gun. If you do that from the time that
Speaker 2: they're at what if you do that when they're a kitten,
Speaker 2: then they grow up just knowing that people are going
Speaker 2: to pick them up and fuck with them, and they're
Speaker 2: fine with it. You know.
Speaker 1: You hold it with anything that you hold with two
Speaker 1: and you're like, you know, like a machine guns, machine gun,
Speaker 1: you pretend it's yeah, it just feels natural and right.
Speaker 1: I'm bringing you to the hospital, Robert.
Speaker 2: It's it's how you raise a baby kitten, and then
Speaker 2: they grow up being very affectionate. Yeah, because they just
Speaker 2: know that people pick them up and do weird things
Speaker 2: to them and it's fine, that's nice.
Speaker 1: I almost dressed my dog up like a gun for Halloween,
Speaker 1: but I didn't want it to be interpreted as political,
Speaker 1: so I changed it to a knife.
Speaker 2: Your radical pro knife agenda has also been clear for
Speaker 2: some time.
Speaker 1: I have been in favor of knives. Look someone in
Speaker 1: the eye. Look, I just want icon.
Speaker 2: Now. When Ilhelm was ten in eighteen sixty nine, he
Speaker 2: was awarded the Order of the Black Eagle, a Prussian
Speaker 2: chivalric award that was supposed to be very prestigious but
Speaker 2: kind of loses its luster to me when awarded to children.
Speaker 2: He received fucking hundreds of awards and orders in knighthoods
Speaker 2: and dukedoms over the course of his life. We're going
Speaker 2: to ignore basically all of them, although his biographies always
Speaker 2: note whenever he was given a new one. He was
Speaker 2: also inducted into the first Infantry Regiment of the Guards
Speaker 2: and made a German officer when he was ten years old.
Speaker 2: So yeah, he's in the military from a very young age,
Speaker 2: and he's continually gifted more military units and made honorary
Speaker 2: member and commander of different military regiments in the Prussian
Speaker 2: Army over the course of his childhood. This is like
Speaker 2: getting micromachines was for me right right.
Speaker 1: Become They're nice to have, but eventually they become meaningless.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he loves he loves these. Yeah, he loves his
Speaker 2: military unit, sure, made up of real men. In eighteen
Speaker 2: seventy France and Prussia went to war. Prussia one in
Speaker 2: Germany was born from here on out, the Kaisers, the
Speaker 2: Kings of Prussia, were kings of the entire German Empire.
Speaker 2: Now there were like twenty two other kings in Germany,
Speaker 2: but the Kaisers were like the chief kings of all
Speaker 2: of them. So that's the story. As we go in
Speaker 2: to our second AD break, still, LI think we're all
Speaker 2: kind of on the future kaiser side at this point.
Speaker 1: I like that, Robert, you choose moments to go to
Speaker 1: ad breaks where I feel I'm at the peak. I'm
Speaker 1: on the edge of my seat and my hand is
Speaker 1: on my wallet as well. Yeah, that could have done
Speaker 1: another way, but it went wallet.
Speaker 2: You know, you have a weird habit with that wallet
Speaker 2: of holding it out before ad breaks.
Speaker 1: Yeah, my hand's trembling. I'm helpless in the face of capitalism.
Speaker 1: I need the products. I need the serve.
Speaker 2: Pull out your credit cards, everybody, ignore what the actual
Speaker 2: products are and just immediately buy them without a thought.
Speaker 1: Don't even put in the discount, Cook.
Speaker 2: Don't even put in the discount. Well, no, do because
Speaker 2: then we get Then it helps us.
Speaker 1: Oh sorry, Robert, it's good for the show.
Speaker 2: Fine, I do. Here they go, We're back.
Speaker 1: We're back.
Speaker 2: So, after eighteen seventy one Franco Prussian War happens, the
Speaker 2: Prince's mother, the Crown Princess, who was you know, British
Speaker 2: and not Prussian, was very concerned about all of the
Speaker 2: war focus in her son's childhood. Again, she wanted relations
Speaker 2: between Britain and Prussia to be good, and she knew
Speaker 2: there was always a chance that there would be war
Speaker 2: between them, So she was very concerned, like everyone in
Speaker 2: Europe about prussia militarism, and she didn't want her son
Speaker 2: to say, grow into a man whose ambition helped Europe
Speaker 2: plunge into a war that killed seventeen million people. She
Speaker 2: didn't want that to happen a for export, I guess
Speaker 2: ay for effort.
Speaker 1: At least it occurred to her that it might happen.
Speaker 2: Oh, this could be a problem. So she sent the
Speaker 2: future Kaiser off to Germany in January of eighteen seventy
Speaker 2: one to remove him from Prussia in these negative military
Speaker 2: influences for a while now. That month, she wrote to
Speaker 2: Queen Victoria about her son's pleasant, amiable ways. She admitted
Speaker 2: that he was not possessed of brilliant qualities, nor any
Speaker 2: strength of character or talents. But he is a dear boy,
Speaker 2: and I hope and trust he will grow up into
Speaker 2: a good and useful man.
Speaker 1: I've described a lot of my boyfriends that way. I
Speaker 1: think I'm just like he looks like shit, he like
Speaker 1: can't seem to stay clean for some reason. But you know,
Speaker 1: he's nice. I don't know. Grew I spill one day,
Speaker 1: grow up. I'm trying to raise him as best I can,
Speaker 1: of course. Yeah, so you know I get it. I
Speaker 1: get it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, now the bar Yeah, and you know, at some point,
Speaker 2: you know, the Kaiser read these letters his mom wrote
Speaker 2: about him to his grandmother, which has to have done
Speaker 2: some damage.
Speaker 1: Yeah that sucks if you like, that's like going into
Speaker 1: your mom's text and finding out how disappointed she actually is.
Speaker 1: You're like, oh, yikes, Okay.
Speaker 2: Now the Prince loved his time in England. He spent
Speaker 2: a lot of it making butter and cheese at the
Speaker 2: Royal Dairy and looking over Britain's incredible collection of old
Speaker 2: wooden ships, normal things. He really liked England. He was
Speaker 2: set for most of his life. He said that he
Speaker 2: would be happier as an English country gentleman than as
Speaker 2: the King of Prussia. It was probably true.
Speaker 1: I was like that tracks yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, we all wish that had been the case.
Speaker 1: Well, honey, you and the baby.
Speaker 2: In eighteen seventy four, fifteen year old Prince Wilhelm started
Speaker 2: classes at Castle Polytechnic, a public school. Now, this was
Speaker 2: hugely controversial among and by public school, I mean in
Speaker 2: like the sense of only rich noble kids got to
Speaker 2: go there, not in the sense of everybody from all
Speaker 2: walks of life went there. But they weren't royals, they
Speaker 2: weren't like aristocrats.
Speaker 1: It wasn't like excluicy enough.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And this was very controversial among his family,
Speaker 2: many of whom were horrified of the idea of a
Speaker 2: noble child competing against commoners for grades. But hins Peter
Speaker 2: thought it would be good for the prince, he knew
Speaker 2: was not all of that bright to be humiliated by
Speaker 2: getting bested by his social inferiors. For some reason I
Speaker 2: do not grasp, he thought that this would push the
Speaker 2: prince to develop a sense of superiority over common people.
Speaker 2: Like it's one of those things where at the start
Speaker 2: where he's like, oh, you want him to realize that
Speaker 2: he's not the smartest person in the room. Okay, this
Speaker 2: could actually be really healthy. Oh no, you want him
Speaker 2: to get a sense of superiority of people over learning
Speaker 2: that they're better at school than him. How did this
Speaker 2: track to you, Peter?
Speaker 1: I get it. It tracks to me because it's just
Speaker 1: I feel like that's like a way for Wilhelm to
Speaker 1: realize exactly how powerful he is. He's like, Oh, I'm
Speaker 1: dumb is rock and it doesn't fucking matter. I'm still
Speaker 1: finally like how much smarter someone is than me, I'll
Speaker 1: just have him fucking killed.
Speaker 2: Maybe, yeah, that may that may have been kind of
Speaker 2: the reasoning there.
Speaker 1: I don't like that, I get it, but I think
Speaker 1: I guess.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Now, at school, Wilhelms started his days at five
Speaker 2: am and didn't end them until nine pm. So this
Speaker 2: is this is a brutal school schedule. He was a
Speaker 2: decent student, he got okay grades, but he was not exceptional.
Speaker 2: His best friend at Castle was Siegfried Sommer, a Jew
Speaker 2: in top of the class. Now this is noteworthy because,
Speaker 2: as we'll cover, the Prince grew into probably Germany's second
Speaker 2: most anti Semitic leader of all time. O.
Speaker 1: Wait, who's number one? I'm kidding Okay, Now, he's not
Speaker 1: number one at anything.
Speaker 2: He's number two. And fairness, I will say this in
Speaker 2: fairness to the Kaiser, there is a big gap between
Speaker 2: two and one in most anti Semitic German leader the contest.
Speaker 2: There's a sizable gap between the two.
Speaker 1: This is Jojo rap it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I can't wait to see that. And you say
Speaker 2: that is it good?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I saw it the other day. I liked it.
Speaker 2: It looks good. I just haven't had a chance to
Speaker 2: get down to the theater.
Speaker 1: It's fun, it's it's a romp.
Speaker 2: Jamie says, it's a romp. Check it out, people, itsicha
Speaker 2: plays Hitler.
Speaker 1: I'm so. I'm so easily bothered by like child actors.
Speaker 1: And they got a good one.
Speaker 2: No, I hate most children.
Speaker 1: They're okay, well, let's take us to the next level.
Speaker 1: It's good. It's good, though. I liked it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Now is probably the right time to talk about
Speaker 2: the prince's bizarre feelings towards his mother. Now, Freud would
Speaker 2: tell us that it's not unusual for young boys to
Speaker 2: have a childish sort of infatuation with their mother. But
Speaker 2: even by Freudian standards, Wilhelm was fucking odd.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's not that she's the only person that
Speaker 1: was nice to him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm still gonna say this is I'm just gonna
Speaker 2: read this quote from the biography Kaiser Wilhelm a concise life,
Speaker 2: and you can tell me what you can help analy Okay,
Speaker 2: This is a long one, Jamie, and there's a lot
Speaker 2: to unpack here.
Speaker 1: Isn't it horny.
Speaker 2: I let me just read the quote and we'll discuss it, okay. Quote.
Speaker 2: In the winter of eighteen seventy four or seventy five,
Speaker 2: Wilhelm began a series of letters to his mother in English,
Speaker 2: naturally recounting a recurring dream. He was having letters that
Speaker 2: are remarkable not only for their evidently incestuous character, but
Speaker 2: also for their fetishistic emphasis on her gloved left hand.
Speaker 2: A poignant cry for unconditional acceptance in love, if ever
Speaker 2: there was one. I have got the little secret which
Speaker 2: is for you alone, viz. A peculiar dream. He wrote
Speaker 2: to Vicky, his mom, on March eighteen seventy five, shortly
Speaker 2: after her visit to Castle for his sixteenth birthday. I
Speaker 2: dreamt last night that I was walking with you in
Speaker 2: another lady and walking you were discussing who had the
Speaker 2: finest hands, whereupon the lady produced a most ungrateful hand,
Speaker 2: declaring that it was the prettiest, and turned us her back. I,
Speaker 2: in my rage, broke her parasol. But you put your
Speaker 2: dear arm around my waist, led me aside, pulled your
Speaker 2: glove loved hand off your dear left hand, which I
Speaker 2: so often kissed at castle, and showed me your dear
Speaker 2: beautiful hand, which I instantly covered with kisses. Wilhelm hoped
Speaker 2: that his dream would become reality. I wish that you
Speaker 2: would do the same when I am at Berlin alone
Speaker 2: with you in the evening, and he continued, craving reassurance. Pray,
Speaker 2: write to me what you think about this dream. It
Speaker 2: is quite true as I have written it, you say.
Speaker 2: I always think of you, my dear mamma. I sometimes
Speaker 2: dream of you. I am so glad that soon we
Speaker 2: will sit together in your dear library and sit together.
Speaker 2: But this dream is alone for you to know, he insisted.
Speaker 2: Several days later, the dream recurred. I am very glad
Speaker 2: that you liked my little secret about your dear hands.
Speaker 2: Since then I have again dreamt about you. This time
Speaker 2: I was alone with you in your library when you
Speaker 2: stretched forth your arms and pulled me down to your
Speaker 2: chairs that my head rested on your left arm. Then
Speaker 2: you took off your gloves and laid your hands gently
Speaker 2: on my lips for me to kiss it, asking me
Speaker 2: at the same time if I remember dreaming about you
Speaker 2: I instantly seized your hand and kissed. Then you gave
Speaker 2: me a warm embrace, putting your right arm around my
Speaker 2: shoulder and neck, and got up and walked round the
Speaker 2: rooms with me.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, that's odd, right, So that's peculiar. He's
Speaker 1: just like writing his mom being like, I want to
Speaker 1: fuck you? Is that okay?
Speaker 2: I want to I want to fuck your hands.
Speaker 1: Well that's well, I think, well that's like very telling, right,
Speaker 1: that he's like fixated on hands and arms. That makes
Speaker 1: sense because everyone like it's obsessed about. Of course, that
Speaker 1: this man becomes this like erotic fixation left a left
Speaker 1: hand fetish if.
Speaker 2: You will, Oh, that's just.
Speaker 1: Like baby boy, put it in your journal and then
Speaker 1: light it on fire.
Speaker 2: Do not send it, burn that fucker.
Speaker 1: Yeah, send to mama and wait so waits So we
Speaker 1: there was h He sent a letter and then presumably
Speaker 1: got a reply that was like, yeah, tell me more.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're going to get into that a little bit.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: I've read a few biographies of Wilhelm, and most of
Speaker 2: them mention this weird fixation, but they kind of breeze
Speaker 2: past it, like they'll note it was weird, but they
Speaker 2: don't go into that much detail. Ralph's book is the
Speaker 2: one I found that really does the best job of
Speaker 2: highlighting how fucking peculiar this all was.
Speaker 1: I'm going to.
Speaker 2: Continue quoting here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean the hand fixation's very telling.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, he could hardly wait for his dream to
Speaker 2: be fulfilled. In eight days, he wrote, we will go
Speaker 2: to Berlin and then what I dream about we will
Speaker 2: do in reality when we are alone in your rooms
Speaker 2: without any witnesses. No, this is the second secret. He's
Speaker 2: like fourteen or fifteen, he's yeah, he's like a little
Speaker 2: horny teens.
Speaker 1: For mama, Oh, okay, kiss, sorry, keep eying.
Speaker 2: This is the second secret. For you. Pray, write to
Speaker 2: me what you think about it, and promise to do
Speaker 2: so really as you did in my dream to me,
Speaker 2: for I do so love you. The Correspondent's continued in
Speaker 2: this vein for several months. In May eighteen seventy five,
Speaker 2: he urged his mother again to keep your promise you
Speaker 2: gave me at Berlin. Always give me a loan the
Speaker 2: soft inside of your hand to kiss. But of course
Speaker 2: you keep this as a secret for yourself.
Speaker 1: Over to him. Yeah, definitely, he's like, your left hand
Speaker 1: is a pussy, like that's his energy. Okay, so yeah,
Speaker 1: we keep going. Wow.
Speaker 2: With less than four weeks to go before the holidays,
Speaker 2: he wrote, thanking her for her most recent letter. How
Speaker 2: glad I was to see the promise written down that
Speaker 2: I could kiss your hands as much as I liked.
Speaker 2: Be sure of it, I shall do it shortly before
Speaker 2: their reunion. Willhelm could hardly contain his excitement, calculating that
Speaker 2: it was now only days or eighty four hours, or
Speaker 2: in five forty minutes or in three hundred and two
Speaker 2: four hundred seconds before he would be able to embrace
Speaker 2: his mother again in Potsdam and kiss her sweet beautiful hands.
Speaker 1: Yeah hands, Robert, Yeah.
Speaker 2: The man likes man loves his mom.
Speaker 1: To touch mommy's hand. I well, here's my question. What
Speaker 1: is she replying to this? Because it doesn't sound like
Speaker 1: she's saying, please stop talking about fucking my hands.
Speaker 2: I think we can forgive the Crown Princess for not
Speaker 2: knowing how to respond to her teenage son's sexual obsession
Speaker 2: with her hands.
Speaker 1: I'm just trying to get a feel for like, is
Speaker 1: she weirded out by it but doesn't know how to
Speaker 1: handle the situation, or is she like this is.
Speaker 2: Cool she's weirded out, she says. You know. At first
Speaker 2: she's like, okay, yeah, you can kiss my hands, and
Speaker 2: she tries to like move the letters along to something
Speaker 2: more normal. She tried to, and then she tried politely
Speaker 2: ignoring it. She would return his letters to him with
Speaker 2: like the spelling corrected and stuff, correcting his grammar and stuff,
Speaker 2: and not really.
Speaker 1: How he wants to fuck herate, like, if you're gonna
Speaker 1: suck my hands, say say it.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, we can safely say. She felt very strange
Speaker 2: about it, and eventually she did what she thought was
Speaker 2: the responsible thing and pushed her son away just a
Speaker 2: little bit to try and like get some distance boundaries. Yeah,
Speaker 2: he found this deeply painful. This led to a start
Speaker 2: of a split between mother and son, which many, like
Speaker 2: people who like write about the Kaiser, have seen as
Speaker 2: the seeds of the split between Germany and Britain. As
Speaker 2: the future Kaiser began to push back against the British
Speaker 2: site of his ancestry since his mother was British, so well,
Speaker 2: it's significant repercussions. I mean, you can't blame her, she said,
Speaker 2: like what do you do? What do you do you do?
Speaker 1: Someone shut up about wanting to kiss your hand like that. Yeah, God,
Speaker 1: what it's predicament.
Speaker 2: That's what a predicament.
Speaker 1: And then you think back of like, well, maybe if
Speaker 1: everyone wasn't complaining about this kid's hands his whole life,
Speaker 1: he wouldn't have this weird, horny hand thing.
Speaker 2: And again, this is why you shouldn't have kings or
Speaker 2: leaders with any kind of significant amount of power like this,
Speaker 2: because like they grow up with like this weird hand
Speaker 2: thing is something that like, you know, Wilhelm couldn't help,
Speaker 2: but he felt that way. It was where like he
Speaker 2: was like, this was going to happen. His mom kind
Speaker 2: of drawing away from him wasn't unreasonable, having really complicated
Speaker 2: feelings about England as a result of this wasn't unreasonable.
Speaker 2: But power, with the German Army as his inheritance, so
Speaker 2: it became an issue.
Speaker 1: You just have too much to lash out with. You
Speaker 1: can't just like take your mom's car, Like, yeah, god,
Speaker 1: I think that so far, the villain of this story
Speaker 1: is power.
Speaker 2: I know it'll be exactly but right now, but it's
Speaker 2: still mostly power, even though like there are points at
Speaker 2: which he does make choices that make him into a villain.
Speaker 2: The primary villain is still power. If he had just
Speaker 2: been a normal dude and like, gotten some fucking therapy,
Speaker 2: I get the feeling, just knowing kind of everything about
Speaker 2: his life. I get the feeling with a competent therapist.
Speaker 2: He could have been a decent man who would have
Speaker 2: raised a relatively healthy family and like, not damaged.
Speaker 1: He would have been a perfectly like, you know, in
Speaker 1: in offense of like whatever, guy. He just would have
Speaker 1: been a guy.
Speaker 2: I don't think he was. He inherently moved to commit
Speaker 2: acts of horrible evil, but he did. And yet yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: Now Wilhelm reached adulthood and did the normal things that
Speaker 2: Prussian kids did. At that point, he joined the military,
Speaker 2: He went to military school, he got command of his
Speaker 2: first military units. Now he was noted by everyone as
Speaker 2: having no real ability to focus on the finer points
Speaker 2: of strategy and tactics, but having a deep and abiding
Speaker 2: love of making men march around in fancy uniforms. It
Speaker 2: became instantly apparent that the prince would not be the
Speaker 2: great warlord that his father was. Now, on the twenty
Speaker 2: seventh of March eighteen seventy nine, Wilhelm's eleven year old
Speaker 2: younger brother Waldemar died from diphtheria along with one of
Speaker 2: his aunts. Wilhelm had been jealous of the little boy,
Speaker 2: who was widely seen as his parents' favorite, but he
Speaker 2: was a dutiful mourner for his brother and held an
Speaker 2: all night vigil at the coffin. He described the family
Speaker 2: pain as deep and cruel beyond words, which is a
Speaker 2: reasonable way to react to the death of an eleven
Speaker 2: year old sure, But a few months later Wilhelm was
Speaker 2: back to acting like a dick to his mom. His
Speaker 2: little brother had owned a cat, which his mom had
Speaker 2: adopted once he died, and she loved the animal, and
Speaker 2: it clearly gave her some comfort in the absence of
Speaker 2: her beloved boy. While they were out vacationing, the housekeeper
Speaker 2: of one of their vacation homes shot the cat, cut
Speaker 2: off his nose, and hung it up against a tree.
Speaker 2: Can did this because it was his job to ensure
Speaker 2: the pheasant population of the property stayed healthy so the
Speaker 2: nobles could hunt. Wilhelm's mother and sisters were horrified, but
Speaker 2: the prince defended the keeper, saying the cat murder had
Speaker 2: been laudable zeal in the pursuance of his duty. So
Speaker 2: we're seeing as he grows into a young man. This
Speaker 2: guy has some emotional depth issues, some difficulty understanding why
Speaker 2: certain things are horrifying to other people.
Speaker 1: Good now, good, Yeah, I'm just like feeling for his
Speaker 1: mom of just like, oh, mom obsessed with me and
Speaker 1: he won't stop mutilating animals.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what do I do it? Even though her son
Speaker 2: didn't do it. The guy who killed the cat mutilated
Speaker 2: it to scare off other cats.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, that's still not okay.
Speaker 2: But okay, it's not okay. It is pretty normal. Like,
Speaker 2: you know, I have friends and family with farms, and like,
Speaker 2: if you kill a coyote on your farm and you
Speaker 2: have livestock, it's not abnormal to like hang the corpse
Speaker 2: of the coyote up to scare off other coyotes to
Speaker 2: protect your cows and shit. Like It's something that people
Speaker 2: do when they're trying to maintain a population of prey animals.
Speaker 1: Very game of Friends.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's fucked up, but it's like it's also like
Speaker 2: life in the rural world. Although killing somebody's pet cat
Speaker 2: to protect a pheasant population, I would argue, is not
Speaker 2: the healthy way to deal with that. Maybe keep the
Speaker 2: cat indoors.
Speaker 1: It's yeah, like there was a clear solution to that,
Speaker 1: and it was like a pack.
Speaker 2: Of Yeah, it's not like a pack of wild wolves. Like,
Speaker 2: there are other ways that this could have been handled.
Speaker 1: The worst case scenario is that there were a couple
Speaker 1: more cats around.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Oh boy.
Speaker 2: Now, as a young adult, Wilhelm fell madly in love
Speaker 2: with his cousin Ella, but Otto von Bismarck was not
Speaker 2: a fan of the pairing. Now, Bismarck is a guy
Speaker 2: will probably we do an episode on at some point.
Speaker 2: He's one of the most important people who's ever lived.
Speaker 2: He was the actual mind behind the formation of the
Speaker 2: German Empire. He engineered the Franco Prussian War, and is
Speaker 2: again probably the single man most responsible from making Germany
Speaker 2: a thing.
Speaker 1: We did a whole unit on that motherfucker.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's a very important, influential guy. Yeah, he's an
Speaker 2: influence and yeah, as he's a dick, but he's also
Speaker 2: he's also very smart and very capable. Yeah, Like he's
Speaker 2: not one of these powerful people who's also an idiot.
Speaker 2: He knows what the fuck he's doing. Now. The Kaiser Prince,
Speaker 2: Wilhelm's grandfather was the monarch of Germany. But Bismarck made
Speaker 2: a lot of the critical decisions. He was kind of
Speaker 2: the he was kind of the it's not fair to
Speaker 2: compare Prince Wilhelm's grandfather or father to George W. Bush,
Speaker 2: But Bismarck is kind of like a Dick Cheney type,
Speaker 2: you know, the power behind the throne. Yeah, and Otto
Speaker 2: von Bismarck was worried that Ella was too closely related
Speaker 2: to Kaiser Wilhelm, so he he didn't, you know, let
Speaker 2: that relationship come to pass. So Kaiser saw this as
Speaker 2: Ella rejecting him, and he wrote to Hinspeter that he
Speaker 2: thought his fucked up arm had made him unlovable, which
Speaker 2: was a normal thing for him to feel, considering that
Speaker 2: his grandmother had told him that his fucked up arm
Speaker 2: made him unlovable. Now, thankfully there was another princess waiting
Speaker 2: in the wings, Donna Augustenberg. She was a low rint princess,
Speaker 2: basically the Safeway Select equivalent of a Hollands Aalern the
Speaker 2: family of the Kaisers. She was yeah, yeah, she's not
Speaker 2: like a high level princess. But Bismarck liked that she
Speaker 2: was not closely related to Wilhelm. He called her a
Speaker 2: Holstein cow and thought that she would inject fresh blood
Speaker 2: into the hahens Allern line illness.
Speaker 1: That's description of her. But I'm not super into that, okay,
Speaker 1: but good to know now.
Speaker 2: When the marriage was announced, Hinspeter was a static that
Speaker 2: his dearly beloved problem child was going to marry someone
Speaker 2: who understands him and sympathizes with him in his weaknesses.
Speaker 2: Kins Peter was on record as saying that Wilhelm needed
Speaker 2: people around him who gave him unconditional love and admiration
Speaker 2: because he just couldn't exist without it. Sure, And one
Speaker 2: of the weird notes is that, like, I think we
Speaker 2: can all look at how heins Peter had him raised
Speaker 2: as like profoundly abusive, but Kaiser Wilhelm loved hins Peter
Speaker 2: till the day he died, and wrote him letters up
Speaker 2: until the older man's death, like almost on a daily basis,
Speaker 2: he would write, like desperately seem to crave this man's
Speaker 2: affection and approval. It's like devastating, Yeah, yeah, it's fucked
Speaker 2: up man, this kid, Like how does that? There's no
Speaker 2: way this guy ends up healthy, you know.
Speaker 1: And again it's like if you're just an irregular person
Speaker 1: with daddy issues. You're just one of the many daddy
Speaker 1: issues with power who people are gonna die?
Speaker 2: Real problem. Yeah, now this gets at one of the
Speaker 2: things I think is wildest about the very idea of
Speaker 2: a monarchy. When you really look into the letters everyone
Speaker 2: around the future Kaiser was writing, as both Rolf and Vanderkiss,
Speaker 2: the main biographers who were sources for this episode, did.
Speaker 2: It's obvious that one hundred percent of the people who
Speaker 2: knew Willhelm when he was young knew ahead of time
Speaker 2: that he was going to be a terrible Kaiser. The
Speaker 2: best anyone would say about him was that he could
Speaker 2: be sweet and charming, but nobody thought he was gifted
Speaker 2: in any intellectual capacity. As he grew older, his family
Speaker 2: wrote increasingly about his startling arrogance, his inability to take
Speaker 2: advice or criticism, and his frequent tendency to snap into
Speaker 2: blind rages. So everyone's like, oh, this guy shouldn't be king,
Speaker 2: but he's gonna.
Speaker 1: But he's boy, that'll suck. When that inevitably happened.
Speaker 2: It's a shame. There's no other possible thing we can
Speaker 2: have than a monarchy.
Speaker 1: Oh well, too bad, Jesus Christ. Okay, all right, yeah,
Speaker 1: that is I mean that does make me slight. I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously we're in a terrible version of democracy, but like,
Speaker 1: at least some things aren't inevitable from that far away.
Speaker 2: No, it's an iterative sort of thing. Yeah. Now, the
Speaker 2: prince's parents hoped that the marriage would have a soothing
Speaker 2: effect on his worst characteristics, but unfortunately, his wife, Donna,
Speaker 2: was what one biographer describes as a reactionary bigot whose
Speaker 2: small minded views only reinforced his own oh whis yeah
Speaker 2: to make matters worse, She despised the British, which helped
Speaker 2: push Prince Wilhelm further away from his mother. She was
Speaker 2: against liberal politics and the growing mood towards democratization and
Speaker 2: in Europe. She treated the Crown Prince and Princess Wilhelm's
Speaker 2: parents coldly and further pushed them away from him. Wilhelm
Speaker 2: started referring to his family as the English colony and
Speaker 2: complained that his father treated him as if he were
Speaker 2: a dumb child. Now Otto von Bismarck also took advantage
Speaker 2: of the growing rift between Wilhelm and his parents. While
Speaker 2: the Crown Prince wanted Germany to draw closer to England.
Speaker 2: Bismarck was deeply suspicious of the British. He'd spent his
Speaker 2: entire life building an intricate series of alliances that he
Speaker 2: believed would render Germany essentially impossible to invade. Under Bismarck's guidance,
Speaker 2: the German Empire had forged a strong defensive pact with
Speaker 2: Russia and Austria Hungary. This meant that roughly eighty percent
Speaker 2: of Europe would be on one side Germany side if
Speaker 2: a war broke out, which would essentially make it impossible
Speaker 2: to have. Nobody's going to go to war with you,
Speaker 2: Like the Russian Empire at this point is one sixth
Speaker 2: of the world's land mass, so like, and Germany has
Speaker 2: by all accounts the best army in Europe, So nobody
Speaker 2: is going to war against that. Like, it's just impossible.
Speaker 2: Nobody would make a decision that stupid and azaes and
Speaker 2: they're all cuzos. Yeah, but Bismarck doesn't have much faith
Speaker 2: in royal diplomacy, which would prove to be wise. He
Speaker 2: had faith in if we have Essentially this is the
Speaker 2: nuclear arms race of its day, is having an alliance
Speaker 2: that no one could dare to fight, and so that
Speaker 2: was Bismarck' strategy, like, well, as long as we're in
Speaker 2: good with Russia, nobody will fuck with us, and that
Speaker 2: ensures peace in Europe. And he's right, as long as
Speaker 2: Russia is allied with Germany, there are no wars between
Speaker 2: European states and like a mass scale. Now there are
Speaker 2: some very persistent rumors that Wilhelm was homosexual. It seems
Speaker 2: more accurate to say that he might have been bisexual. Okay,
Speaker 2: he fell in love with a guy named Yulenberg, another noble,
Speaker 2: who Wilhelm described as my bosom friend, the only one
Speaker 2: I have. Now it's very unlikely either boy ever consummated
Speaker 2: their attraction, but for years they were inseparable. In his
Speaker 2: biography of Wilhelm, Emil Ludwig wrote that Ulenberg was the
Speaker 2: first to open the gates of the garden of romance
Speaker 2: to the young man who had been forced into the
Speaker 2: part of hard bitten Prussian prints and was now taking
Speaker 2: leave of an adolescence poor alike and love and the
Speaker 2: dreams of youth.
Speaker 1: God, so it's really hard not to feel for this guy,
Speaker 1: like he's it's rough man. Yeah, he's got a lot
Speaker 1: of forces working against him. It's oh it's not.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, he's disabled bi sexual abuse victim.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that he and his boyfriend should just move away.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Oh if only they'd gotten a house in Paris
Speaker 2: or something together. Oh so nice that painted pictures. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: and he was Wilhelm had like some aptitude for art.
Speaker 2: He was described by someone as a gifted artist who
Speaker 2: never found his art, so like, he was good at
Speaker 2: a bunch of different things, but he never really well, No,
Speaker 2: because Hitler was shitty at it, like Willhelm. You get
Speaker 2: the feeling if he'd like gotten some actual if it
Speaker 2: had been made a real like, if people had made
Speaker 2: a point of really giving him some serious art training,
Speaker 2: he would have figured out what he was into. It
Speaker 2: could have been really talented.
Speaker 1: What if this was the point where you found out
Speaker 1: that I actually thought Hitler's art was really good, that
Speaker 1: he like, oh yeah, like yeah, no, Hitler is a
Speaker 1: terrible artist.
Speaker 2: Obviously, Jamie Loftus has a Hitler. I mean, I'm not
Speaker 2: gonna lie I would actually love to have an original
Speaker 2: Hitler just for talking about it. Yeah, but I love
Speaker 2: haunted things.
Speaker 1: I do love Hanton thing. That's very absolutely Oh my god. Yea,
Speaker 1: so he would but he was like he was a
Speaker 1: better artist, you.
Speaker 2: Know, I just he seems to have been good. He
Speaker 2: just never quite like found something that he was really into,
Speaker 2: throwing his whole interests behind. And obviously he had to
Speaker 2: be the Kaiser, so there was a lot of other shit.
Speaker 1: On his same time for painting when you're the ki.
Speaker 2: No time for painting when you're the cut. Some time
Speaker 2: for painting, but not enough right now. Bismarck saw Wilhelm
Speaker 2: as a pliant, muldable dummy he could direct in whichever
Speaker 2: direction he chose. The key for Bismarck was to deepen
Speaker 2: the rift between the Prince and his father. In the
Speaker 2: mid eighteen eighties, he went behind the Crown Prince's back
Speaker 2: and made the future Kaiser the chief envoy of the
Speaker 2: German Empire. Now this by all right should have been
Speaker 2: his father's job, but Bismarck worried the Crown Prince's English
Speaker 2: sympathies would look bad to the Russians, since Russia and
Speaker 2: England had just fought a war over the Crimea, so
Speaker 2: he pushed Wilhelm into the role. Wilhelm's father complained that
Speaker 2: this was a terrible idea in view of the immaturity
Speaker 2: as well as the inexperience of my eldest son, together
Speaker 2: with his tendency towards over barness and self conceit, I
Speaker 2: cannot but frankly regard it as dangerous tool how him
Speaker 2: at present to take part in any foreign affairs. Woo Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Prince Wilhelm was a terrible diplomat. His arrogance came off badly,
Speaker 2: and he had a nasty habit of insulting the world
Speaker 2: leaders he talked to. He botched his first meeting with
Speaker 2: the Russian Tsar by basically giving him approval to conquer Constantinople,
Speaker 2: something the Czar didn't think he needed. Approve he didn't
Speaker 2: need to get from an upstart boy who wasn't even
Speaker 2: kaiser yet.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 2: Yeah, God, what a dufus. Yeah. So the Prince's career
Speaker 2: did not start with great promise, but at least he
Speaker 2: was everyone knew, everyone knew was happening. Yeah, I will say,
Speaker 2: though he enjoyed some fringe benefits of the gig as
Speaker 2: envoid to Russia. According to Vanderkist's book quote, he relished
Speaker 2: the attention paid to him as chief envoy of the
Speaker 2: German Empire, and he was deeply impressed with the bearing
Speaker 2: of the young infantry recruits on parade at the Winter Palace. Nevertheless,
Speaker 2: he betrayed rather more than he when he wrote in
Speaker 2: the Tale about the physical appearance of the soldiers a
Speaker 2: very nice looking lot, though the fact that hardly any
Speaker 2: of them had any hips made their white capes look
Speaker 2: as though they had been poured into their slim bodies.
Speaker 1: He doesn't understand when to like, not be horny over shit.
Speaker 2: You're over sharing, man, may he's horny on Maine all
Speaker 2: the time. Jes b.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's like, yeah, at least make a like a
Speaker 1: fake account, don't.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Pola Mitt Romney write these under another name.
Speaker 1: He is being horny on the main it's so such
Speaker 1: a bad look.
Speaker 2: Oh, I mean, like I'm fine with it, Like no judgment, bro,
Speaker 2: but like.
Speaker 1: Don't judge it. Don't be horny on the main.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you are being horny in your official job as
Speaker 2: international diplomat, which is probably inappropriate.
Speaker 1: That's the line. That's the line, Wilhelm.
Speaker 2: Now. Wil Helm also had mistresses, but he was no
Speaker 2: better at managing them than he was at managing international diplomacy.
Speaker 2: In eighteen eighty six, he arranged to have two of
Speaker 2: his mistresses follow his train at a birth lynn and
Speaker 2: meet him in a small village in Austria. The women
Speaker 2: did so, but when they arrived, he refused to reimburse
Speaker 2: them for their travel costs and a should know now
Speaker 2: that he was the wealthiest man in Germany.
Speaker 1: I yeah, I mean, I said, well, that's just dating
Speaker 1: a rich guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, like the going to be great.
Speaker 1: And then then it turns out that they're they're fucking
Speaker 1: mean misers.
Speaker 2: Yeah left, yeah. Yeah. The women left in a rage,
Speaker 2: and one of them stole one of the Prince's monogrammed
Speaker 2: cuff links, so she displayed around town to prove that
Speaker 2: she had with the prince. When the Kaiser realized this.
Speaker 1: Came I flew southwest for this, take this ship and
Speaker 1: runs that day.
Speaker 2: Now, when the Kaiser realized this, he begged them to
Speaker 2: come back, and he offered to pay for their travel costs.
Speaker 2: They returned and finally foun now ensuing.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The ensuing threesome was so loud that it woke up
Speaker 2: other guests in the hotel. People could actually hear them
Speaker 2: talking post coitus. A number of random Austrians heard the
Speaker 2: future Kaiser complaining to prostitutes about his parents. He called
Speaker 2: his dad a conceited popularity seeker under Jewish influence. He
Speaker 2: also loudly insulted Austria, his nation's closest ally, as rotten,
Speaker 2: close to dissolution. God called the Austrian He called the
Speaker 2: Austrian people useless, pansies and gormands, no longer fit for life.
Speaker 1: I hope that the sex worker has got like an
Speaker 1: emotional support bonus. You know, it's like, that's not what
Speaker 1: you well.
Speaker 2: He made one of them pregnant and she blackmailed him
Speaker 2: and she got a shitload of money out of it.
Speaker 1: This guy's a loser. Take his stub there.
Speaker 2: Oh, word of all this got back to the Austrian
Speaker 2: crown Prince, which sparked another international incident. This all voted
Speaker 2: particularly ill for the future. In the space of a year,
Speaker 2: the young prince had insulted both of his nation's chief
Speaker 2: military allies, the Emperor, his grandfather was ill and near death,
Speaker 2: and right as his grandfather starts dying, his father also
Speaker 2: gets sick, which would prove to be throat cancer. So
Speaker 2: none of this bodes well for the future of peace
Speaker 2: in Europe.
Speaker 1: Right, They're like, oh no, the fuck up is the
Speaker 1: only one who will live. Okay.
Speaker 2: In eighteen eighty eight, the Emperor died and the Crown
Speaker 2: Prince became Kaiser. The Crown Prince, you know, the Kaiser's
Speaker 2: the future. Kaiser's dad. He would only rule for ninety
Speaker 2: nine days, and he was very ill for all of them.
Speaker 2: By the time he died on June fifteenth, eighteen eighty eight.
Speaker 2: Now Crown Princevillehelm had already been taking on and botching
Speaker 2: many of his dad's duties. That same day, Kaiservillehelm ascended
Speaker 2: to the throne of the German Empire. So in part
Speaker 2: two we're going to talk about what happened once he
Speaker 2: was in charge. All Right, it's time is over, Jamie.
Speaker 2: You got some pluggables to plug.
Speaker 1: I got some pluggies. I'm releasing a podcast on Thanksgiving
Speaker 1: call My Year in Mensa is about what the title
Speaker 1: is about. It's Apelled my Ear and mensa, How I
Speaker 1: got in and how I almost got bullied out.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 1: And then you can listen to the Bechdel Cast every week. Uh.
Speaker 1: You can follow me on Twitter at Jamie Lofts Help.
Speaker 1: And that's what you can do. That's what you're able
Speaker 1: to do. At this time.
Speaker 2: Now you can find me on Twitter and Instagram at
Speaker 2: Bastard's pod. You can find me personally on Twitter at
Speaker 2: I write okay, where I am not horny on Maine
Speaker 2: because that's inappropriate, especially with all of the diplomacy I
Speaker 2: have to do with the Russian Army.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, I mean would make you a terrible kaiser.
Speaker 2: It would make me a terrible kaiser. And my whole
Speaker 2: job is to become a very good kaiser.
Speaker 1: Yeah, your Fensta is horny as hell.
Speaker 2: Yes, Oh my god, it is nothing but thirst posting shameless.
Speaker 2: I muted it now, Jamie, what is a Fensta?
Speaker 1: I'm gonna jump off the balcony. I cannot possibly explain
Speaker 1: to you what a Finsta is. It's a fake Instagram.
Speaker 1: That's where you it's where you do your horn I
Speaker 1: don't actually have one, which is what everyone who has
Speaker 1: one says. But but it's like where you post, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, you post you know the illusion on the
Speaker 1: main right, You're like, I'm so happy, everything's great, and
Speaker 1: then you post depression memes and thirst posts on the
Speaker 1: fin staff. Oh that's where you're like your your your
Speaker 1: you know, two extremes.
Speaker 2: See, I write my thirst posts on a sheet of paper,
Speaker 2: and then I cut my finger and block them out
Speaker 2: with blood, and then I burn them in a bonfire
Speaker 2: at night in order to wipe away my shame in
Speaker 2: front of God and the heavens.
Speaker 1: I know, but unfortunately that is a spell. That means
Speaker 1: it's in a book somewhere far away. So your thirst
Speaker 1: posts are uh, they're they're documented somewhere. You shouldn't drop
Speaker 1: blood on it. That that's that activates the curse.
Speaker 2: Damn it.
Speaker 1: I'll send you some more.
Speaker 2: If you want to activate a curse, buy some t
Speaker 2: shirts from teapublic dot com. All of our shirts come cursed,
Speaker 2: so that's good. The episode's over, okay.
Speaker 1: Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1: For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website Coolzonemedia
Speaker 1: dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
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