Sparked Berlin’s surrender

a love of the Royal Navy from his grandmother, he had long aspired to have a “fleet of my own some day” and so it was that during the early years of his reign he had embarked on a policy of massive naval construction to fulfil his ultimate goal – the creation of a mighty battle-fleet, able to take on Britain at its own game in the North Sea.

But rather than bring him victory and prestige, it was to lead directly to his own downfall via the Kiel Mutiny.

The seeds of Kaiser Bill’s vanity and insecurity had been apparent from the moment he joined the German military as a young man.

Although Queen Victoria had been so fond of her eldest grandchild that she awarded him the Order of the Garter on his 18th birthday, as time went on he developed a reputation for being bombastic and impetuous.

His military training saw him assigned to the First Regiment of Foot Guards, and his attitudes began to harden as he started to strut and bark out orders. “In the Guards,” he once said, “I really found my family, my friends, my interests – everything of which I had up to that time to do without.” His damning words were indicative of his growing estrangement from the family that had raised him and his growing antipathy towards the nation that his grandmother UNSTABLE: Queen Victoria’s grandson Wilhelm II ruled. On June 15, 1888 Wilhelm ascended to the German throne at the age of 29. By then, he had grown into an emotionally unstable and impatient man destined to launch Germany on a hardline “New Course” in foreign affairs that would culminate in support for Austria-Hungary – a decision that would lead in a matter of weeks to the start of the First World War following the assassination of the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand on June 28, 1914.

Despite being supreme commander, however, the last German Emperor soon found himself excluded from key military decisions as war took hold.

Crucially, he crippled chances of a peace deal by encouraging the grandiose war aims of his leading generals, Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff, with little concern for the wishes of the civilian government.

And, when the Kiel Mutiny broke out, the Kaiser chose to remain at his headquarters in Spa, Belgium.

This was perhaps the ultimate evidence that in war he had become little more than a “shadow Kaiser”, relegated to the sidelines, despite his former bombast.

In his failure to be an effective head of state Wilhelm not only cost his country victory in the war, he also toppled the institution of monarchy in his homeland – a tradition that some date back as far as Charlemagne, the so-called Emperor of the Romans, in 800.

His catalogue of blunders had begun in 1908 with an interview with a British newspaper in which Wilhelm had intended to promote his ideas on Anglo-German friendship. However, as he spat out the words “you English are mad, mad, mad as March hares” he revealed his own instability.

HE also managed to insult the French, the Russians and the Japanese. His diplomatically challenging remarks were seen as such a blunder that they even led to calls in Germany for his abdication and he lost much of the influence he had previously wielded. The Daily Telegraph interview also plunged him into a prolonged period of depression from which he would never recover.

By the last week of October, 1918, and with the end of the war in sight, three of the Central Powers – Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire – were in talks with the Allies about reaching an armistice.

It was then that the German naval command decided to launch its last-ditch effort against the British in a desperate bid to prove the prestige of the Kaiser’s hugely WAR GAMES: Kaiser Wilhelm II, left, with Field Marshal von Hindenburg, whose grandiose military aims he encouraged. Inset, how a contemporary German magazine grapically reported the Kiel mutiny expensive navy. “An honourable battle by the fleet – even if it should be a fight to the death – will sow the seed of a new German fleet of the future,” crowed Reinhard Scheer, chief of staff of the German Admiralty.

But although the order to set sail was given five times, beginning on October 28, the sailors would have none of it.

By October 30, the resistance movement had engulfed the naval base at Kiel and within a week it had spread across the country.

The mutiny of the Kaiser’s beloved navy is said to have profoundly shocked its creator.

On November 9, the German parliament declared the country a republic, Kaiser Bill abdicated and two days later the war was over. Exiled to Holland, he died there in 1941 having been described by his cousin, George V, in the most damning terms.

“I look upon him as the greatest criminal known for having plunged the world into war,” the King is alleged to have said.

Despised by his family he was certainly the target of deep opprobrium in his homeland. “Germany lost the war and, because of the Kaiser, large parts of the German public lost all confidence in the monarchy,” says Dr Gehrig.

Queen Victoria’s eldest grandson certainly left a legacy, but not for any of the reasons he had hoped.