Military Leaders From Germany

"Prince Wilhelm justifies our very best hopes for the future. He will grow into the right man to maintaain Germany's power–perhaps to increase it."

"Prince Wilhelm has taken up an attitude strongly against England, a quite natural reaction for the most part against the efforts of his mother to make Anglomaniacs of her children."

"When the chancellor imagines I have the inclination to become his successor, he is mistaken tremendously. Right now, I wish that he continue holding his office and that he sees for himself how poorly he has operated recently. I consider anyone who wants to accept the succession to be very bold. When one or another successor has broken his neck, perhaps there is room for discussion."

"The Kaiser ... is not the right man to lead the Fatherland out of the many perils which threaten it."

"Prince Wilhelm seems to have a good deal of his grandfather about him. If his parents have aimed at training him to be a constitutional monarch ready to bow to the rule of a parliamentary majority they have failed."

"[Liberals are] on the one hand, insolent beyond measure, but creeping along on their bellies in front of the Kaiser!"

"The Social Democrats ... perhaps their view of the Kaiser is the truest."

"Too many people are under the influence of the Jews."

"It is really a good thing that the English should be unmasked at last and that the world should see what miserable hypocrites they are."

"In the cavalry sons of industrialists who have got rich quickly are pushing their way in and are ruining its simple customs."

""Democrat" is among officers simply a term denoting a bad lot."

"“How I despise the liberal gang that has captured the Chamber! They are prisoners of their own verbose unrealism, and are setting the country back further from year to year."

"To read the original, unexpurgated diaries of this war-mongering, pietistic general is to cross the border into the realm of abnormal psychology. Waldersee seems to have suffered from some form of paranoid megalomania. He believed in a world conspiracy of the 'entirety' of international Jewry in league with all democratic forces at home and the majority of foreign Powers abroad to destroy the heroic aristocratic warrior monarchy of Prussia."

"Never before has a ruler been so beloved by his own people, so highly esteemed by the whole world."

"Prince William is very keen on the idea of war and regrets that things seem now to look more pacific. He was pleased when I expressed to him my opinion that the enlargement of our army will soon set the stone rolling."

"Germany is the foundation for the mainstay for the whole of Europe, but if we become weak, the entire old world will fall apart."

"Waldersee’s anxiety to fight was so great that he was indifferent in his choice of enemies. He grasped at any opportunity to develop a small event into a casus belli. In rapid succession he advocated preventive wars, now against France, now against Russia, against them both."

"As a military man he is an ace. A strong will, a clear eye, smartness, decisiveness, initiative. He is of the same stuff as were Frederick the Great’s soldiers, and Napoleon’s marshals. But I see two rocks ahead. He is excessively ambitious, both on the military and political sides, and inclined to intrigues. I believe that if ever he is Chancellor he will take a very drastic line against the two parties he hates so much, the Centre and the Social-Democrats."

"People are telling me that I am regarded by the Chancellor (and indeed in wider circles) as the leader of the so-called War Party, and by no means favorably, as the Chancellor is most anxious to avoid war. I shall soon begin myself to believe that I am a thoroughly bad man! What will be brought up against me next?"

"Everywhere the masses are on the move, everywhere there is rebellion against authority, the negation of all religion, the generation of hatred and envy against those with wealth. We are probably facing major catastrophes."

"Another danger [to the new Kaiser] was Waldersee and his following. Waldersee was the opponent of Bismarck and considered himself capable of and fitted for everything. Who will guarantee...that these gentlemen will not begin the old game again and tell the Emperor ‘You are really nothing but a puppet. Bismarck reigns’?...Bismarck, therefore, wishes Waldersee’s removal and will even send him if he can to Strasbourg as General in Command."

"The ghost of socialism is beginning to show a very earnest face ... the Zentrum is a gang of hypocritical blackguards without a Fatherland, intent on the collapse of Germany and the destruction of Prussia."

"The successor of Marshal von Moltke is a man of average size, a little older than 50. The hair is very thick, but with the whiteness of snow. His eyes are clear and placid, but his look is of an unusual fixedness. When the Count speaks, it is slow, and each word is pronounced clearly and vigorously. The attitude of the man, the manners, the voice and the gestures, or rather the complete absence of gestures, give an impression of cold determination that nothing would disturb."

"I hear I am being attacked both in Prussian and American papers for being too hard on the Chinese and thus delaying the conclusion of peace. This is the outcome of ill-will and ignorance of the conditions ... One can advance things here only by taking as strong and as relentless measures as possible."

"Unfortunately I must state the fact that the rank and file will not return better men than they were when they started. They have seen too much of ruthlessness, brutality, robbery, executions etc., and have come into contact with altogether too many bad characters in the foreign contingents."

"We are living although the majority of the people do not realize it, in the midst of an immense revolution. What is radically wrong with our condition lies in the harsh contrast between rich and poor. This cannot go on forever, as we are human beings with human differences. No use is being made of religion, the only way towards alleviation and compensation; on the contrary, attempts are being deliberately made to excite the masses into asserting their equality with the middle and upper classes. The State contents itself with attempts to improve the material circumstances of the workers, with the only result that their covetousness has been intensified. The possibility of acquiring great sums of money by speculation has developed a fondness for luxury and enjoyment which has taken hold of wide circles. German family life is going to the dogs. Unfortunate marriages, divorces, youthful corruption, pleasure-seeking, the anxiety to seem richer than one is–all this is increasing terribly. In the lower classes of the great cities the demoralization has already reached a high degree ... The unequal distribution of wealth with all its consequences must lead in the end to a catastrophe."

"I know ... only one peril, that of Socialism, and I hope that all the Christian Churches would find a common aim in fighting against it."

"If at home there are people so innocent as to imagine that it is here a case of propaganda for Christian civilization and Christian ways, they would be disillusionized. Since the Thirty Years' War and the plundering campaigns of the French in the age of Louis XIV there has been nothing like it."

"I see a future for us only in a Great War in which we lastingly cripple an opponent, France or Russia. Unless there should be a great war, the only way out of our dilemma will be through internal commotion, preferably revolutions in France or Russia."

"I pray to God that I may not have to live through what I see coming."

"A good many men will be killed, however, as long as no man can prove to me that a man can die more than once, I am not inclined to regard death for the individual as a misfortune."

"Bismarck is the king's last mistress because only such a creature could have such power over an old man."

"Either we are tremendously clever or the French strategists dreadful bunglers."

"A war is essentially the most dreadful and ruthless thing imaginable, therefore one's object should be so to conduct it as to bring it to an end at the earliest possible moment, and to this end one should give the enemy a distaste for it as quickly as one can; and it is more humane if I do this by burning down houses than by shooting down quite innocent soldiers."

"We have far too many enemies, the French, the Slavs, above all the Catholics, and then the entire little rabble of the dispossessed, with their supporters"

"Waldersee was a muddle-headed politician on whom no reliance was to be placed. He wanted war because he felt that he would be too old if peace lasted longer. His remark was of no importance. It was particularly stupid to believe that Waldersee could become Imperial Chancellor. Even as Chief of Staff he was unsatisfactory and Moltke had only preferred him to Caprivi and Häseler because he could do what he wanted with him. That was a bad turn which old Moltke had done the Army."

"The Emperor often lies to other people, but still more often to himself."

"If he bears me a grudge because of his poor command of troops he shows that he lacks greatness of spirit and deserves to be treated as a little man. But if he has allowed himself to reflect calmly and to examine himself a little, he cannot but be grateful to me and tell himself that I acted without fear and did my duty. Then one could say: there is nobility in him after all."

"It suited Fürst Bismarck well to make me appear a hypocrite, a supporter of Stoecker, a black reactionary, an instigator of war, etc., etc., so that the average philistine felt a shudder, whenever my name was mentioned. Herr von Caprivi was pleased to blow on the same horn, and under his regime my reputation has not improved."

"[Wilhelm I’s] venerable personality, known throughout the world for the conscientiousness and devotion to duty he showed until his dying day, with all his past, and the fact that he never gave any reason for malicious tongues to wag, was for us a bulwark against the tide of revolution. The present Kaiser, on the other hand, positively cultivates Social Democrats."

"Should I rise to higher rank, this happiness can never compare to that which I enjoy in possessing you. Everything else is vastly secondary to this one great happiness. You are the greatest gift which God has bestowed on me."

"To say I desire war is absurd. I only wish one thing: that our enemies renounce completely the idea of attacking us. I know too well what war is and am convinced that it is my duty as an honest man to wish that it be used only as a last resort, as much in the interests of my Fatherland as in the interests of the entire world."

"He has an open head, a fresh mind, a great lust and energy to work, and a strongly developed Prussian feeling. Perhaps he is not excessively of much heart, but I believe that this is excellent for him and his future. In his outward behavior he is friendly and pleasant."

"I am not a politician. Once and for all, I beg you not to believe the absurdities which malicious people seem to be publishing about me. I am contented with my military calling and have no higher ambition than to do credit to the post with which my sovereign has entrusted me."

"The Jewish question will always remain a difficult one. In this case also the State should not take up the role of prosecutor and should not tolerate attacks by Christians upon the Jews; but it should not give the Jews the kind of protection they demand in their newspapers. It would be the most effective way of combatting Jewish doctrine for Christians to worship the Golden Calf less and to become simpler in their habits and in their desires. We should not forget that many Christians are as bad as the Jews in their covetousness and that they despoil as pitilessly anyone who falls into their hands."

"He is a very weak man, without firm opinions and most unclear in his goals. Unfortunately he is biased in extreme liberal ideas and does not want to accept that in these times a sovereign with such principles quickly digs his own grave. What an upheaval would arise in such a circumstance."

"It is wonderful that certain people and circles still believe I have the aspiration to become Chancellor and receive nightmares from this thought. How often I have declared that I would have to be a fool if I wanted to strive for this really unenviable position! I have already achieved some time ago everything a soldier can achieve, I hold a post that involves little work and no agitation or anger, and I know the position of a Chancellor under Kaiser Wilhelm II only too well that I would have to be mad to desire it."

"England will soon show us her true face: It is a fight for existence between us. England wants to destroy Germany, her most serious rival in the world market, and, if not today or tomorrow, will do so soon, before the German fleet has been further strengthened. I do not believe that the matter will be taken so seriously in official circles with us. As in their way, the Liberal papers try to disguise the gravity of the situation; it is really too hard on them that their paragon, England, should want to break with free trade. A bitter revenge is now in store for those who have sought to turn Germany into an industrial country pure and simple."

"[Wilhelm II] fishes for ovations and – as of course follows from that – is very open to flattery. All this has developed so quickly that I am constantly surprised by what he does. As Prince Wilhelm he seemed to have many of the excellent qualities of his grandfather, he was modest and simple in his way of life, avoided attracting attention, did not like being escorted by adjutants and was very considerate towards old people. Now he loves splendor to an alarming degree and is beginning to behave like Louis XIV."

"Four points about the election of Hindenburg are worth stressing. First, there was a close correlation between the electorate which voted for Hindenburg in 1925 and those who supported the National Socialists in September 1930 and July 1932. Second, both the election and Hindenburg Day took on counter-symbolic importance, underlining the fact that the ‘Reds’ were no longer masters of the streets, but could be challenged and defeated, not least by the Stahlhelm, with its sizable following of workers. Third, rightist activism had no consolidated political home, since the conservative nationalists and right liberals could not co-operate with each other, their leaders – Stresemann and Hindenburg – being personally antagonistic. And finally, although Hindenburg promised to uphold the constitution, his election meant a return to influence, often exercised through backstairs channels, of the armed forces and major landowners, for the new President was very much one of their own. Germany’s anti-democratic elites were back in business."