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Kaiser Wilhelm II was the King of Germany from 1888-1918. He became the King of Germany after his father, Frederick III, died. Kaiser Wilhelm II was 29 years old when he took over for his father ...
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Under the Treaty of Versailles, the German emperor was supposed to be tried as a war criminal. Why wasn't he?
The accusations were explosive: a head of state had not only begun an illegal war but egged his troops on to a series of horrific atrocities that left thousands dead and an entire continent in ruins. By then, the accused was one of history’s most hated and debated figures, a monarch known for making erratic decisions and doubling down on his sometimes inexplicable actions.
There was just one problem: The accused, Wilhelm II of Germany, couldn’t testify. The accused had been dead for 75 years.
It could have been the trial of the century—if it had been conducted a century before. The trial of Wilhelm II, Germany’s emperor between 1888 and 1918, was a moot one, conducted by historians and legal experts grappling with one of the great mysteries of 20th-century history. Was Wilhelm II guilty of war crimes?
It’s a question that was never answered during Wilhelm’s lifetime. Though the Allies accused him of starting one of history’s bloodiest wars and violating international law, and his troops of committing barbaric acts, he never stood trial. Today, these accusations are remembered as the first stirrings of a modern conception of war crimes. But at the end of World War I, Wilhelm’s responsibility for the bloodshed was a hotly contested—and ultimately unresolved—issue.
The thought of trying him at all was a radical notion. Until World War I, going to war had been seen as the right of any nation or head of state, and war crimes were considered part of the war. A sense of victors’ justice held that atrocities committed by the winning side would go unpunished, while the victors could punish or even execute those on the losing side with impunity.
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Despite pressure to extradite the Kaiser for trial, the Dutch refused to comply, claiming it would compromise their neutrality to take sides. The Kaiser’s guilt had become an article of faith to the Allies; in both France and Great Britain, it had been an important election issue, with Britain’s new prime minister, David Lloyd George, promising to both try and hang the Kaiser. But quibbling and infighting among the Allies, along with the Dutch refusal to extradite Wilhelm, meant he was never extradited or tried.
The treaty did result in other trials, though. In 1921, Germany’s highest court began a series of war crimes trials in Leipzig. The Leipzig Trials only affected a tiny fraction of the people initially accused of war crimes that ranged from looting to abusing prisoners. But no one could agree whether the trials were, in fact, legal, and the German court used German laws, not international ones, in the trials. No one was happy with the outcome. For the Allies, the Leipzig trials were an empty charade. For Germans, they were victors’ justice, a blatant overreach of international boundaries.
The trials ended with a whimper: Though over 901 cases of war crimes were identified, only 17 were tried. By the late 1920s, the rest had been dropped and few who had been convicted served any time whatsoever. Though the Leipzig trials and the debate over Wilhelm’s war guilt helped set the stage for both international law and the prosecution of war crimes, they failed to achieve the goal of actually punishing anyone who committed or enabled atrocities during the war.
Wilhelm was never tried and died in exile in 1941. Historians are still split on his role in causing World War I. So how did the deposed Kaiser fare in his posthumous “trial”? The verdict was mixed. Though the historians found him guilty of causing German troops to invade neutral Belgium, they acquitted him on all other counts.
Kaiser Wilhelm II was the monarchical ruler of Germany from June 1888 until its 1918 defeat in World War I. Many historians consider Wilhelm the individual most responsible for the outbreak of war – as much as one individual can be. Opinions about this do vary, nevertheless there is a consensus that Wilhelm II’s brash, ambitious and ...
7 Feb 2014. The Kaiser and the First World War. John C. G. Röhl. General Paul von Hindenburg, Kaiser Wilhelm II, and General Erich Ludendorff in 1917. Inevitably Kaiser Wilhelm II, German emperor, king of Prussia and Supreme War Lord, is in the forefront of the current very lively debate on the origins and nature of the First World War.
Apr 14, 2010 · Wilhelm II (1859‑1941) was the last German kaiser (emperor) and king of Prussia from 1888 to 1918, and one of the most recognizable public figures of World War I (1914‑18). He gained a ...
Hohenzollern, Friedrich ''Wilhelm'' Viktor Albert. (William, Willy) German Emperor, King of Prussia, Supreme War Lord. Born 27 January 1859 in Berlin, Germany. Died 04 June 1941 in Huis Doorn, The Netherlands. Kaiser Wilhelm II’s ambitious policies played a major part in bringing about the First World War, yet with the onset of hostilities he ...
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Aug 3, 2021 · 9. The Bolshevik Revolution (November 1917) Between 1914 and 1917, Russia’s poorly-equipped army lost more than two million soldiers on the Eastern Front. This became a hugely unpopular conflict, with rioting escalating into revolution and forcing the abdication of Russia’s last Tsar, Nicholas II, in early 1917.
