Kaiser Wilhelm IInd and the Nazis
Alex Feinberg
untill 1941. What was his reaction when the Nazi's came to power? Why didnt he
return to the Third Reich? How was he treated when Nazis captured Holland in
1940. Any information or pointers to information may be nice.
--
Alex "strlen" Feinberg
str...@fix.no
Donald Phillipson
> Since Kaiser Wilhem IInd abdicted the throne in 1918, he has lived in Holland
> untill 1941. What was his reaction when the Nazi's came to power? Why didnt he> return to the Third Reich? How was he treated when Nazis captured Holland in
> 1940. Any information or pointers to information may be nice.
The Kaiser disapproved of the Nazis as republican
upstarts: which is probably why he made no attempt
to move his retirement home to Germany. The Nazis
recruited one of his sons as a member. See biographies.
--
| Donald Phillipson, dphil...@trytel.com |
| Carlsbad Springs, Ottawa, Canada |
Glenn A. Steinberg
> After the Kaiser's death his body returned to Germany where he was given a state
> funeral. I recall reading that he had been invited to return to Germany after the
> occupation of the Netherlands, but he refused.
Actually, you're quite mistaken about the Kaiser's funeral.
To repeat, the Kaiser refused in his will to be buried in Germany (if he had not
returned as Germany's monarch), and he stated that ABSOLUTELY NO SWASTIKAS should
be visible at his funeral (although Hitler succeeded in sneaking in a big, fat one
on the flower arrangement he sent).
But the Kaiser was most definitely *NOT* buried in Germany with a state funeral.
He was buried privately at Doorn Haus in the Netherlands, as he requested in his
will.
Jeff
state funeral. I recall reading that he had been invited to return to Germany
after the occupation of the Netherlands, but he refused.
Glenn A. Steinberg
> Since Kaiser Wilhem IInd abdicted the throne in 1918, he has lived in Holland
> untill 1941. What was his reaction when the Nazi's came to power? Why didnt he> return to the Third Reich? How was he treated when Nazis captured Holland in
> 1940. Any information or pointers to information may be nice.
The Kaiser was not very favorably impressed with the Nazis.
Before the war, he allowed one of his sons, Prince August Wilhelm, to
join the SA, but he was angry at how involved the Prince became in Nazi
politics and eventually all but disowned him.
The Kaiser's wife, Hermine (his second wife, whom he married in exile
after the death of his first wife, the Empress Auguste Viktoria), was
extremely pro-Nazi and even arranged for Goering to visit the Kaiser
several times before the war. But the Kaiser was never very impressed
with Goering's melodrama and bombast. And he generally made his
opinion of the Nazis pretty clear to anyone who happened to visit him
at Doorn Haus.
When Hitler invaded the Netherlands, the British government offered the
Kaiser asylum in Britain. The Kaiser appreciated the irony of the
British government's offering him (a man accused of war crimes by the
Allies after the First World War) protection from the German Army, but
he refused the British government's kind offer.
He also refused to reenter Germany, however, even despite a Nazi offer
to allow him to settle into retirement anywhere he wanted in the
Reich.
During the campaign in France in 1940, the Kaiser's grandson, Prince
Wilhelm, was killed in action. The funeral was attended by huge crowds
in Berlin, and Hitler, peeved, promulgated a secret protocol that all
Hohenzollerns were to be expelled from the Armed Forces as soon as
possible. This secret protocol affected one of the Kaiser's sons
(Major-General Prince Oskar of Prussia) and several of his grandsons
(including Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia, Prince Georg Wilhelm of
Hanover, and Prince Burkhard of Prussia), and even distant cousins
(including Prince Franz Joseph of Hohenzollern-Emden).
Hitler was very peevish about Prince Wilhelm's death. He ordered
General Baron Alexander von Falkenhausen (at the time, military
commander in the Netherlands) under no circumstances to go personally
to the Kaiser to break the bad news of his beloved grandson's death.
Hitler intended for Falkenhausen to send a lowly courier (a very clear
attempt at a slight to the poor old Kaiser). Falkenhausen, however,
sent General Alfred Streccius instead.
When the German Army entered Paris, the Kaiser sent Hitler a
congratulatory telegram. Some people hold that telegram against the
old Kaiser, but given that he had been at the head of the German nation
when it failed to defeat the French, he took pride in the victory of
*his* Generals in 1940 (since most the commanders of the French
campaign in 1940 had been trained during the First World War under the
Kaiser's command -- not by Hitler or the Nazis). The Kaiser sincerely
sent the telegram out of patriotism and pride in the truly
breath-taking German victory.
When the Kaiser died in 1941, Hitler wanted his body brought back to
Germany for a big funeral -- as a propaganda stunt. The Kaiser's will
was, however, extremely clear. If he did not return to Germany as its
monarch before his death, his body was to be buried at Doorn Haus in
exile -- and, the Kaiser added (repeating it three or four times in the
course of his will) that there were to be ABSOLUTELY NO SWASTIKAS
visible at his funeral.
Hitler was peeved once again. The Fuehrer made a point of sending a
huge flower arrangement with a big, fat swastika on it, but he didn't
attend the funeral himself, sending Dr. Arthur Seyss-Inquart as his
representative instead. He refused to allow any German military
officers to attend the funeral, but many did anyway -- out of uniform.
One who attended was General Karl-Heinrich von Stlpnagel, who was later
executed for his involvement in the 20 July 1944 coup attempt. The
World War I Field Marshal August von Mackensen (father of World War II
Colonel-General Eberhard von Mackensen and Nazi Ambassador to Italy
Hans Georg von Mackensen) defied the Fuehrer's orders and showed up at
the funeral in his Field Marshal's uniform with his Field Marshal's
baton, and he made a real point of being seen in a prominent position
in the funeral procession.
Goebbels ordered all German newspapers to note the Kaiser's passing
with a small, one-paragraph obituary on a back page. It was the Nazis'
final insult to the old Kaiser's memory.
Of the Kaiser's sons, one (Prince August Wilhelm, the SA Prince) was
very pro-Nazi. Three were very anti-Nazi (Major-General Prince Oskar,
Prince Adalbert, and Prince Eitel-Friedrich). The rest, including the
Crown Prince, were pretty much neutral, but Hitler looked upon all of
them very suspiciously. Little did he or any of the Nazis suspect
that, at the time of the Kaiser's death, the Kaiser's grandson and
eventual heir, Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia, was intimately
involved with the anti-Hitler conspirators who would eventually launch
the 20 July 1944 plot.
Sources:
Balfour, Michael. The Kaiser and His Times. New York: Norton, 1972.
Brunswick and L|neburg, Duchess Viktoria Luise of. The Kaisers Daughter. Trans.
and ed. Robert Vacha. London: W. H. Allen, 1977.
Hermine, German Empress. An Empress in Exile: My Days in Doorn. New York: J.
H. Sears, 1928.
Jonas, Klaus W. The Life of Crown Prince Wilhelm. Trans. Charles W. Bangert.
Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P, 1961.
Kaufmann, Walter H. Monarchism in the Weimar Republic. 1953; rpt. New York:
Octagon, 1973.
Louis Ferdinand, Prince of Prussia. The Rebel Prince: Memoirs of Prince Louis
Ferdinand of Prussia. Chicago: Henry Regnery, 1952.
Sweetman, Jack. 'The Unforgotten Crowns: The German Monarchist Movements,
1918-1945.' Diss. Emory University, 1973.
You may also be interested in my web page on the Hohenzollerns at my web site,
"European Royalty during World War II." The main page of the site can be found
at
<http://www.tcnj.edu/~gsteinbe/royalty.html>.
There's also an on-line biography of Prince Louis Ferdinand (the Kaiser's
grandson) at <http://www.eurohistory.com/hohenzollernheir.html>.
Jeff
what he did was send a special train bearing the imperial relations to Doorn
for the funeral.
Another interesting note about the Kaiser is that Churchill offered him refuge
in England at the time of the invasion, but he refused. (in Lukacs, The Hitler
of History)