CZM Rewind: Part One: Kaiser Wilhelm: The Saddest Warlord In History

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Hey, motherfucky's and motherfuck ats. Wow, that's not how I should introduce this anyway. Hello everybody, Robert here, and this is our last week of what you might call him rerun episodes. We are still on vacation here at cool Zone, having a great time. Actually not on vacation. We were on vacation, but this is the week where I have to write so that we can catch up and have episodes for you all in the new year. But you know, because I have one more week of blessed relative freedom,

I'm good. I'm having a lovely day. I'm too cold.

Bruce Deep ooh too, Cole, Bruce Deep. Are you feeling optimistic and and and positive about the world.

I'm feeling like who we talk about today is gonna might end up actually being a pretty good guy.

That's a good guy.

That's how I go into every Bastards episode. Now, I'm just like, you know what, this guy's gonna end up being pretty nice.

I think I might change my opinion on this fella.

I think that I'm going to really have some arguments in his name.

You you might have a couple because the guy we're talking about today is Kaiser motherfucking Wilhelm. Yeah, yeah, yeah, your reaction was pretty intense when I told you that right before the episode.

I was, well, I'm never allowed to know in advance. And then I just and then I sit down, and it's what fresh hell in terms of in terms of person, in terms of facial hair, in terms just in every this is a brutal one for me, strictly on a facial hair level.

You're not a fan of his Walris mustache, Listen.

I respect someone who makes a choice.

Right, he made a choice. You have to give him that.

I will hand it to him. Much like Robert Pattinson in the Lighthouse, he is making a choice. Choices don't always work out. This is actually I think this is one of the first subjects that I actually like. No affair amount about I took a I took a in high school. For some reason. My last two years of high school I only learned about World War One.

That's great, it was. I love World War One.

I mean, I'm I stand and we stand.

You have no choice to stand. Oh the so good.

The trench I love there. We like acted out the assassination and of Archduke friends Ferdinand.

It was a black one of my favorite assassinations. Of the assassinations.

The fashion, the fashion, the fashion, the trench helmets that didn't stop bullets.

I love them, you know what, you love it. It's also good.

An underrated World War I amo, oh yeah.

Yeah, no, way better than the sequel.

In my opinion, I totally agree sequel is over hyped. We get it, you know.

I mean, I'll pick Terminator two over Terminator one. I'll pick Aliens over alien But I'm going to pick World War One over World War Two every day of the.

We're going to pick the Cheeta Girls two over Cheatah Girls one. And that's a controversial opinion.

For those cheating girls.

I know you don't wrong. I'm still I had to tell you who Ariana Grande was last year, which is something that it just I still it still shakes me to my marrow that that happened. Wells are wait, no, we can't stark the show until you know who the cheat girls are. You don't know who the Cheata girls.

Are, but of course I don't.

I know, But I'm just always waiting for girls. They wish they do, wish they were like the Spice Girls, but they're a band that was started by well some great novellas for young girls. But it's it's like Raven Simone. Two of the girls, shit, yeah right, she's the alpha, and then two girls from three l W which you also don't know what that is, and then a fourth girl who has dropped off the face of the planet. We don't know what happened to her. The point is

Oh I do love tracksuits. I am a big tracksuit fan.

I love people in matching track suits. They wore like complimentary pastel track suits. And then the second one they go to Barcelona.

I think when it comes to like you're talking about the fashion in World War One and how good it was, I hope when we have our next World War that it's basically the same as World War one, but we're all wearing tracksuits, like that's that is my dream.

Imagine the Yeah, World War three will be waged in juicy couture head to toe like form fitting track suits.

Yes, comfortable waistbands by god.

Yeah. I don't want those royal ten in bombs track suits missing.

I want like all those goddamn belts and.

Like the yeah, the ones that have like rhinestones on them and that till you don't know who's on what side.

Yeah, yeah, but the color of the rhinestones. Yeah, it'll be a great war.

Yeah. I think that this is actually going to be the best World war yet.

I feel like we have a real chance to make it so. But before we start, before we start another world war, we should learn about one of the guys who is most behind the First World War. Yes, Now, one I think it's interesting about the Kaiser is that, like most of the people we talk about on the show make a decision at a certain point to be shitty people who do like horrible, exploitative, violent things to other people, like they make a choice to be bastards

How could you? Yeah? How could you have learned? Who would you have learned how to be a good person from?

Exactly? Like how was this not gonna suck? And that's the story of Kaiser Wilhelm.

Oh that's a good that'll be the name of the biopic.

Yeah, how could this have not sucked? Yeah?

Okay, cool? Yeah.

Kaiser Wilhelm was born of the hollenz All Learned dynasty, a family of German nobles whose history stretches back nearly a thousand years. To understand where he comes from, we have to start this episode but talking about his father's birth on October eighteenth eighteen thirty one. Now this is long before Germany was a thing. Prince Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia was born in Potsdam. His father was also named Wilhelm. All of the men in this story are named fucking

Wait is the numbering out of order?

It's weird. I think it's because of like their middle names and shit, because they have a bunch of names other than Friedrich Wilhelm, but they're all known as Friedrich Wilhelm. Yeah, it's very dumb.

The god I don't like when rich people try to bamboozle me.

Yeah, they don't have to have the same name, God damn it. Yeah, I would love it if the reasoning for that was just that the common people like couldn't be trusted to learn a new king's name. But I know it's something dumber and more arrogant than that.

It's still it's still like I don't know, like, why are there five hundred Hollywood agents named Scott and that are all the same man?

You know, it's Oh, that's that's nominative determinism. That's because if you're born Scott, you get fast tracked into Cia.

You got it. There's a lot of you know, the Scotts and the Mics, and you know we love them, but do we can we tell them apart?

No, now, So Prince Friedrich Wilhelm, who is the dad of the Prince Friedrich Wilhelm will be talking about this episode, entered the world second in line to the throne of Prussia after his brother, the Crown Prince, who was also named Friedrich Wilhelm. His parents had a typically loveless royal marriage.

Okay, so Wilhelm, the previous Wilhelm.

His brother, Yeah the he his dad does his name Wilhelm, right, Yeah, he sure does. He sure does. His dad dies and his brother who is the same name as him, and his dad becomes the king and he is now the crown Prince.

How does that work when it's dinner time? You just shall want I don't know. I don't know how they told each other apart. It sucks so much getting it, Like.

Writing this part sucks because it's just incredibly confusing, Like reading about royal I don't understand people who like royal families because it makes me just want to start punching and never stop.

Yeah. I hope that there were some really disturbing nicknames in the mix. It seems like the only way that this would work.

Yeah, I don't know. So when he was eighteen, a very right wing general named Leopold von Gerloch told Kaiser Wilhelm's dad that he envied the Prince's youth, for he would no doubt survive the end of this absurd constitutionalism because there were a lot of democratic movements going through the German states at this point, including Prussia, which is when they established the Reichstag and stuff like that, So

He's not like the other Kaiser's or prince.

He's he's a prince. He's yeah, he's the crown prince at this point, the prince, which is like the next in line for the throne. There's a fuckload of princes, the crown Prince is the one who's going to be the king next. Okay, yeah, that's the way it works all over in all the different royal families, right right, So the Kaiser's dad again, who's also Prince, Wilhelm, spent a shipload of his youth in England due to a friendship with the British royal family that was orchestrated in

Wow, Leopold, what a problem solving. They're like, well, what if this whole family fucked each other? That would really solve politics? And he was right for a while there, for a.

While there, for a while there. If he if he'd been to the American South, he would have known that having a family that fucks each other does not stop them from shooting at each other.

But alas I mean, the American South once again coming out on top. They're way ahead of their time in terms of fucking and also killing their family.

Yeah. Yeah. Now, in eighteen fifty five, Prince Wilhelm was invited to Britain without his parents to stay with Queen Victoria and her family and proposed to the Princess, who was also named Victoria, because the British royal family is just as insufferable as the German Yeah. Now. Happily enough, it turns out that the Kaiser's dad and his mom, Princess Victoria, were actually a very rare love match, which

So.

By the summer of eighteen fifty eight, Princess Victoria was pregnant and expecting. This was not treated with joy by Queen Victoria. She considered this horrid news which would all end in nothing. Because the Princess got sick almost immediately and stayed ill throughout much of the pregnancy. Queen Victoria

Miss Innocent yeah, named.

After Pope Innocent.

I think, oh, that's what I feel like. I had a shirt this so that in junior high different meaning I had miss Innocent, miss independent after the Kelly Clarkson song. Yeah, miss that was.

That's another pope.

Yeah angel one percent devil.

That yet another pope. A lot of popes that you had shareds based off. He was the He was of the popes, one of the top, I mean.

Pretty close to being a complete angel.

Yeah. Now we don't know precisely what went wrong with Kaiser Wilhelm's birth, but it is certain that the doctors who managed the birth fucked up in some way. Some of this is due to the fact that the infant Kaiser was a breech berth. At that time, in Central Europe, about ninety eight percent of babies born in breach were stillborn, so almost all of the babies born this way died.

That is absolutely savage take on that infant.

Yeah, yeah, really roasting the baby Kaiser.

Jeez.

His survival was considered close to miraculous. And I'm going to quote next from the book Kaiser Wilhelm, the Second Germany's Last Emperor by John vanderkist Okay. Three or four days after the birth, Miss Innocent drew doctor Martin's attention to the baby's left arm hanging lifelessly from the shoulder

He reminds me of Nemo, who Robert from finding Nemo the one that gets found.

Oh oh yeah, yeah, yeah he is. He is, And like Nemo, he grows up to spark a war that kills seventeen million people. That is Whatsar hasn't gotten to that movie yet, but that's how the story goes.

Well, they're all about revisionist history over there. It's a disaster.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Nemo did become yeah, like a brutal general. He's he's actually people blame global warming for the whole like coral reef dying off, but that's simply yeah.

It's And also like the Kaiser, super anti Semitic didn't come up in the movie Lunch, but really really really far off.

If you get the feeling that they're just cutting away just before something terrible happens.

Yeah, in every scene in that movie, he has a copy of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion tucked beneath his good fin.

Oh my god.

Yeah, you know again.

I love fun fat, I love movie trivia.

Uh So, the young Kaiser's hand looked normal when he grew up, but it is the actual arm in hand itself were too weak to hold anything much heavier than a piece of paper. He spent his life hiding it out. Yeah, it's that's fucking hard. Yeah. Yeah. If you look at pictures of him, he's always hiding his left arm out of sight in a coat pocket or like like kind of up to his side with like a glove on.

I've decided I forgive him.

Now we're cool.

Yeah.

Yeah, you're going to wind up feeling very sympathetic throughout a significant chunk of this until we get to the parts of it where he's a giant piece of shit.

Okay.

Yeah, Now, as Vanderkiss's book notes, hiding this deformed arm became a guiding motivation for the young prince. Throughout his life, few photographs showed his left arm clearly, let alone the hand. From an early age, the art of concealing it from the camer lens became second nature to him. At meals, he could not manage an ordinary knife and fork, but his bodyguard always carried a special combined one, while the person sitting next to him discreetly cut up his food

He's getting a bit. Yeah, I mean, I guess you have to. It begs the question like, if I had power influence as a twelve year old with a backbras, would I have oppressed other people? I don't know, yes, I feel.

Like probably alteah.

Any any furious twelve year old that feels out of place if they had the it just no twelve year old to have the ability to He's the rare one.

Yeah. If I had absolute power at the age of twelve, when I was like like an insecure, fat kid who didn't know how to be social, I would have killed millions, millions.

What wouldn't I? I know, like I was a gigantic walking rectangle for most of my formative years. What if? What if someone could have suffered for that?

Yeah? Exactly? Yeah, Okay. Now, the Kaiser's hand was not the only part of him injured by the circumstances of his birth. His neck was also damaged and his head tilted to the left his entire life. His left ear was likewise unformed, and he was partly deaf and had

I mean, and being I feel like especially for like young Oh god, just an emasculated twelve year old. Is there anything with more more potential for danger?

Yeah? No, not really no. So the princess was a devoted and loving mother. In a letter to his grandmother, Queen Victoria, the kid who would become Kaiser Wilhelm was Queen Victoria's first grandchild, right so. In a letter to his grandmother, his mother wrote, your grandson is exceedingly lively, and when awake, will not be satisfied unless kept dancing about continually. He scratches his face and tears his caps and makes every sort of extraordinary little noise. I am

Oh yeah, like, sure he was a preached birth, but at least he wasn't a girl child. We would have hated that.

Well, you know, I think I don't get that feeling from her. I get the feeling more that she just like number one, like one of your jobs as a princess in this period is to like give birth to an air Like they had daughters, and she treated the daughters well like they like they weren't like, didn't hate their daughters.

That's it.

Yeah, Well, there's just a lot of shit built up around having a son to continue the line, and the fact that her first child was a son like that takes a lot of the pressure.

Well that's good for her her because then people stop giving.

Her shit exactly. I think that's a big part of why she feels that way. It's also you know, like even today, like my friends who get married have expressed preferences like, oh, I hope it's a boy. I hope it's a girl for whatever whatever thing they want to do with the kid. Like I don't get the feeling that like she was being shitty by saying that, which

As Yeah, as far as that situation goes, I guess that's one of the better ways it could shake.

Yeah, all right, yeah, cool. So we know a lot about the life and particularly the childhood of the Kaiser, more than we know about the life and childhood of literally anyone else I've ever talked about on the show, because he was born to be king, so every scrap of correspondence from his parents and his teachers and his relatives about him and from himself has been saved and

Care when you know that much about a kid's miserable childhood one way.

Yeah, exactly, that's tough.

Yeah, Nemo, that's why they made finding meme.

That's why they made finding names.

With a monster there. He lost his mother young, he got he got kidnapped by the ocean, and he had a he had a difficult fin. So we should forgive him for his sins.

Yeah, for his rabbit anti Semitism.

I mean, I can't say it enough.

It's really impossible to owe emphasize. So Prince Wilhelm was baptized on March fifth, eighteen fifty nine. Queen Victoria was unable to attend and was represented by Lord Ragland, the British commander during the Crimean War and one of the guys in charge of the Light Brigade. He's that dude. So that's who like represents his grandmamma at the at the at the baptism.

Well that's nice.

Yeah. In general, the future Kaiser had a very British upbringing. His nurse, Missus Hobbs, was English. His chief doctor, Sir Benjamin Brodie, was also British.

The most British as names I've ever heard.

Yeah, very Yeah, this kid is half British. You have to remember that because like his mom is an English princess. His grandmother is the fucking literal Queen Victoria, and he has he's raised by like he grew up without it. He spoke English perfectly with almost no accent. You can listen to speeches by this guy in English and yeah, you can barely notice the accent. So posh. Yeah, it's

Those are my favorite letters I wish I haven't like it's been like almost ten years now, but like the reading through the letters between cousins where they're like, are we gonna start a war, like.

Are we gonna are we going to get all these people killed? Yeah?

So fuck, it's so bizarre being like what if I could just write my cousin Tammy and be like, so, like how attached are we to people?

How much do we like four to six million of our young men, Like.

Just do you feel able to just it's so bizarre knowing that their cousins that like, for the most part, know each other, like, it's just very weird.

Yeah, and love each other.

Yeah, yeah, we'd where like there's those like the letters between Wilhelm and this and the are they're so bizarre.

It's just yeah, yeah, you know what's not bizarre, Jamie, what Robert the products and services that support this podcast with their advertising.

Patron I love a product and I love a service.

Well here's both.

Okay, we're back. Oh what a nice product or service? Though? Is just described?

It was nice. Now let's get back to talking about Prince Wilhelm's misshapen arm.

But his plot Finn won't swim right.

Yeah, his damaged arm was a matter of serious concern for the Royal family or Prussian at this point, royal family. His nurse rubbed massage oil on it daily to try and stimulate growth. Wilhelm's doctors ordered that his arm be tied to the side of his leg for an hour a day in order to try to force it to grow normally.

Oh my god, he is a back brace for his arm.

Oh we were getting to the back brace. Oh yeah, yeah, Now the infant prints had almost no feeling in the limb and barely noticed most of this. While most of his treatments were ineffective but benign, some were really brutal. And I'm going to quote now from the book Kaiservillhelm the Second A Concise Life by John Roll. Okay, When the infant was six months old, Professor Bernhard von Langenbeck of the Charite Hospital in Berlin prescribed animal baths twice

You're just like, how is how would this grow up to be a good person? This is like biblical curses. They're fosting upon a.

Baby, shove a fresh bloody corpse on the literal infant child's arm for an hour. How does that not talk about it?

I hate there's someone in the room like, We've got to make sure that this is remembered, because what if it works?

What if it works? If he's the best king ever?

I mean science, We're going to do about science and the utal and does it's never gone wrong?

Amazing?

Oh god, that's again brutal.

He's the Prince of Pruscius. So this is like the best doctor you can get at the time. And the country Germany at this point is renowned as having some of the best doctors on the world. That's really like the height of medical science.

What is it? Does everyone else? You know? Honestly, I would rather die at twenty four than have that be my medical regimen. I would rather have died years ago.

It's terrible. Now. Perhaps the most damaging treatment came at the direct orders of Queen Victoria. And I'm gonna quote now from John Vanderkist's biography, Queen Victoria's a piece of shit, by the way, Just as it heads up.

I did the I went to England over the summer brag and we did the Buckingham Palace tour because I just didn't. I just wanted to see what it was like. And the oh, the revisionism aunt like, there's no mention of Wilhelm. There's no mention of you know, it's just too messy. They're like, she was really nice, she hated when her husband died. Thanks for the forty dollars.

Yeah, yeah, Well here's a little bit more about Queen Victoria.

Hit it.

The princess we're talking about Kaiservillhelm's mom doated on babies, and within a few days of his birth, she had started breastfeeding him, to the revulsion of her mother in law. Knowing Queen Victoria's views on the subject were it won with hers, she the mother in law wrote to the Queen asking for her approval and putting it into this odious habit. Much to the young mother's disappointment, her baby was comply handed over to a wet nurse whose milk

You know what, My mom did the same thing, except with formula. So you know, my mom was just like, I'm you stay away from me. Here's some NESI, here's some nessli chemicals. Good luck with your life now.

Years later, his grandmother, the Empress Augusta, his other grandmother, would lie to Kaiser Wilhelm and tell him that his mother had refused to breastfeed him because she found his arm disgusting.

Oh, but his mom was nice.

Oh that's his mom was nice. She's just a bitch who hates his mom and is like he's like I said, how does this kid not grow up fucked up?

Like I don't like I don't like women on I don't like women on woman conflict. It's not fair. We don't need it. It makes me upset, although it might did that though to my mama.

Yeah, and it's it's less damaging when the babies that are getting like manipulated by the fucked up people aren't growing up to be the emperors of Germany.

Yeah, oh it's it's not. I mean, just regular fucked up people are the best.

Yeah, we do enough damage as it is. Yeah, don't give anyone any power. Nobody turns out great. No, everyone's a disaster. Like every now and then, every now and then you get a Danny DeVito, but most of us don't turn out.

We're obsessed with Danny DeVito.

I love Danny.

What about Billy Zayin.

I don't know anything about Billy z an Is he nice?

He's nice?

Good? Good for Billy's aye?

Everyone.

Let's replace Congress with Danny DeVito and Billy You.

Know what, the only two white men we can support at this point.

Yeah. Now. In eighteen sixty, when the Prince was one year old, his doctors began giving him daily electromagnetic therapy, applying constant galvanic current to his net for hours every day to attempt to stimulate blood flow in his arm. Electrocuting the infant Kaiser for hours a day did not work either.

No kidding, God, it's just like your child has a disability.

We're four pages in and we haven't stopped talking about the fucked up ways they damaged this kid trying to heal his arms.

We feel so God, it is hard not to feel.

For a you like that's a lot to deal with.

Hell, your family's electrocuting you because they find you to be gross. That's a nightmare.

That's a cross to bear that it certainly is. On January second, eighteen sixty one, King Friedrich Vilhelm the fourth died and Princevillelm's grandfather became KAISERVILLELM the First. He was sixty three at the time. Two years later, in eighteen sixty three, when the Prince who would become the Kaiser that we're talking about, I know this is confusing. I'm going to call, like when I say King Frederick Wilhelm fourth,

That sounds safe, sounds.

He had to worry an hour a day every day, and in a letter to Queen Victoria, the prince's mother described it thusly, a belt around his waist to the back of which an iron bar is affixed. The bar leads up the back to something which looks exactly like a horse's bridle. The head is then fixed in this and positioned is desired by means of a screw, which is just the iron bar.

Ah. Why this is Oh, I feel I'm sad, Robert.

This sucks now. The young prince eventually went through facial surgery to correct this, which alleviated the problem at the cost of some permanent disfigurement. He was also subject to an arm stretching machine, which was used on him for years and was similar to the next stretching machine.

These are medieval torture devices. This is not helpful. Yeah.

The thing that actually did help his arm to grow somewhat was a course of regular gymnastics, which oh stuff worked, figure just actual exercise. Yes, that one didn't seem to help there.

It's so I'm like, I mean, these these these doctors have to have at least the foresight to give the arm stretching machine a confusing name so you don't notice it's an arm stretching machine.

Yeah, I mean, I've only hearder referred to as the arms stretching machine, but it probably had a fun German nickname.

A doctor sue sounding thing. Yeah.

Yeah. Now, in spite of all this horror, Wilhelm's early childhood was considered. He remembered it at least as fairly pleasant. His mother and father were both doting parents, which was unusual Imprussian families of that era. He was the baby of the global royal family and for a time Queen Victoria's favorite grandchild. Starting in eighteen sixty three, he began to regularly visit his aunts and uncles and cousins in

What a sweet kid.

I mean, I gotta love that he bites King Leopold of Belgium, the slaughterer of the Congo, in the leg for yelling at him for throwing a knife during a wedding, Which is awesome.

That actually does sound like what you would have done. Yes, I, little knife thrower.

Have bonded over knife throwing. I love throwing knives. If I anytime I get really drunk, I'm gonna throw knives.

I you know, I know that to be true. Yeah, it's great. I think I also had a shirt that said aunt baby. In middle school, there's a lot of these phrases are bringing or bring back some memories. Aunt baby, that's actually a sick.

Burn, for that is a sick bird. He was. He was not not witless. Quick Yeah, that's quick for like a four year old too not bad to.

Be like aunt bait. Fuck you on, baby, baby, I can't I have no punch ups.

That's great, hell yeah kid.

Now.

In eighteen sixty four, the Prince's father, who was the Crown Prince, fought in the Prushio Danish War and returned home a war hero. The future Kaiser's father would again win laurels in the Franco Prussian War of eighteen seventy one, which is what led to the establishment of the German Empire. Some of the Prince's earliest strong memories, the future Kaiser's strong memories where his father sending back captured battle flags

If only the Germans were more British.

If only the Germans were were more humble like us. All we did was conquer a quarter of the world's land surface, unlike these arrogant Germans notoriously.

Chill and tolerant British.

Yeah yes, yeah, now. The Prince's parents seemed to have listened to this advice. Starting in mid eighteen sixty six, when the future Kaiser was seven and starting school, George Hinspeter was chosen to be his tutor. Now Hinspeter was a Calvinist, which means he believed that only a predetermined elect few ever got to heaven, and the vast majority of humanity was destined for hell no matter what they did.

Like calculated shit, yeah yeah.

Yeah, No matter how well Princevillehelm performed, George Hinspeter never gave him so much as a kind word. The impossible was expected of the pupil in order to force him to meet the nearest degree of perfection. Naturally, the impossible goal could never be achieved logically. Therefore, the praise which registers approval was also excluded.

God, yeah, just with a whole love from your child. And see that's such a ugh God, why did I feel like sometimes parents? I mean again, if this is just like every bad parenting technique turned up to an eleven for no reason.

Amazing, how many different bad types of parenting he receives from really everyone but his parents. But he's got carried so.

Many sets of stop us. Yeah, God, that's so brutal. Yeah, they're like, oh, watch your cousin Edith Pieza. I feel like that happens to kids sometimes as punishment, you know, you're like, oh, look, everyone's gonna get birthday cake, but you whatever, you shit on the floor, so you got to eat a cracker.

And some of those people grow up to be shitty managers at a sonic. But since they don't have them, they don't inherit the German military, so it's not a huge problem.

There's a version of Wilhelm had he been from you know, like from a normal class of person, where he would have just been a perfectly happy manager of a lids that didn't talk to his family that much.

No, no, and he would have denied his employees lunch breaks for shitty reasons because.

He's got some hurt in his heart.

Yeah, the damage would have been contained, right, right, Not.

That we condone this behavior from Lydd's managers, we don't.

But I prefer people like Wilhelm become Lydd's managers than Imperial German Army managers.

Okay, okay, I'm listening.

Yeah, yeah, Now, every Wednesday and Saturday, hens Peter and Wilhelm would visit museums and art galleries. They would also visit factories, foundries, workshops, farms and the like. The goal was to show the would be what life was like for the manual laborers who actually built his country. To Hinspeter's credit, he also wanted the royal family to gain an understanding of social inequality and the suffering of workers.

It's almost like they should have just let him learn how to do things with one hand the entire.

Time, rather than the torture machines.

Rather than the evil torture machines.

Jamie, your anti torturing baby's agenda has been clear for quite some time, and I think you might be biased on this.

Think you know what, it's true. And people have been calling me out a lot. They're like, no, but what if we did torture the babies. How will you know until you've tried it?

How will you know until you've tried it?

Right? And that's fair. I haven't tried it yet.

Yeah, well.

Sure of course, yeah, yeah.

Well who are they going to tell exactly what are they going to do? Because they can't speak English.

I'm about to get a kitten, so you know it's going to be there.

There is a specific type of torture that you have to do to young kittens if you want them to be affectionate, which is that you mean from a very young age? Do you know what the ca gun is?

The cat gun?

It's when you hold your cat like a gun, with its back legs as the handle and its front legs like a foe grip, and you pretend it's a little machine gun. If you do that from the time that they're at what if you do that when they're a kitten, then they grow up just knowing that people are going to pick them up and fuck with them, and they're fine with it. You know.

You hold it with anything that you hold with two and you're like, you know, like a machine guns, machine gun, you pretend it's yeah, it just feels natural and right. I'm bringing you to the hospital, Robert.

It's it's how you raise a baby kitten, and then they grow up being very affectionate. Yeah, because they just know that people pick them up and do weird things to them and it's fine, that's nice.

I almost dressed my dog up like a gun for Halloween, but I didn't want it to be interpreted as political, so I changed it to a knife.

Your radical pro knife agenda has also been clear for some time.

I have been in favor of knives. Look someone in the eye. Look, I just want icon.

Now. When Ilhelm was ten in eighteen sixty nine, he was awarded the Order of the Black Eagle, a Prussian chivalric award that was supposed to be very prestigious but kind of loses its luster to me when awarded to children. He received fucking hundreds of awards and orders in knighthoods and dukedoms over the course of his life. We're going to ignore basically all of them, although his biographies always

Become They're nice to have, but eventually they become meaningless.

Yeah, he loves he loves these. Yeah, he loves his military unit, sure, made up of real men. In eighteen seventy France and Prussia went to war. Prussia one in Germany was born from here on out, the Kaisers, the Kings of Prussia, were kings of the entire German Empire. Now there were like twenty two other kings in Germany, but the Kaisers were like the chief kings of all

I like that, Robert, you choose moments to go to ad breaks where I feel I'm at the peak. I'm on the edge of my seat and my hand is on my wallet as well. Yeah, that could have done another way, but it went wallet.

You know, you have a weird habit with that wallet of holding it out before ad breaks.

Yeah, my hand's trembling. I'm helpless in the face of capitalism. I need the products. I need the serve.

Pull out your credit cards, everybody, ignore what the actual products are and just immediately buy them without a thought.

Don't even put in the discount, Cook.

Don't even put in the discount. Well, no, do because then we get Then it helps us.

Oh sorry, Robert, it's good for the show.

Fine, I do. Here they go, We're back.

We're back.

So, after eighteen seventy one Franco Prussian War happens, the Prince's mother, the Crown Princess, who was you know, British and not Prussian, was very concerned about all of the

At least it occurred to her that it might happen.

Oh, this could be a problem. So she sent the future Kaiser off to Germany in January of eighteen seventy one to remove him from Prussia in these negative military influences for a while now. That month, she wrote to Queen Victoria about her son's pleasant, amiable ways. She admitted that he was not possessed of brilliant qualities, nor any strength of character or talents. But he is a dear boy, and I hope and trust he will grow up into a good and useful man.

I've described a lot of my boyfriends that way. I think I'm just like he looks like shit, he like can't seem to stay clean for some reason. But you know, he's nice. I don't know. Grew I spill one day, grow up. I'm trying to raise him as best I can, of course. Yeah, so you know I get it. I get it.

Yeah, now the bar Yeah, and you know, at some point, you know, the Kaiser read these letters his mom wrote about him to his grandmother, which has to have done some damage.

Yeah that sucks if you like, that's like going into your mom's text and finding out how disappointed she actually is. You're like, oh, yikes, Okay.

Now the Prince loved his time in England. He spent a lot of it making butter and cheese at the Royal Dairy and looking over Britain's incredible collection of old wooden ships, normal things. He really liked England. He was set for most of his life. He said that he would be happier as an English country gentleman than as the King of Prussia. It was probably true.

I was like that tracks yeah.

Yeah, yeah, we all wish that had been the case.

Well, honey, you and the baby.

In eighteen seventy four, fifteen year old Prince Wilhelm started classes at Castle Polytechnic, a public school. Now, this was hugely controversial among and by public school, I mean in like the sense of only rich noble kids got to go there, not in the sense of everybody from all walks of life went there. But they weren't royals, they weren't like aristocrats.

It wasn't like excluicy enough.

Yeah, yeah, And this was very controversial among his family, many of whom were horrified of the idea of a noble child competing against commoners for grades. But hins Peter thought it would be good for the prince, he knew was not all of that bright to be humiliated by getting bested by his social inferiors. For some reason I do not grasp, he thought that this would push the prince to develop a sense of superiority over common people.

I get it. It tracks to me because it's just I feel like that's like a way for Wilhelm to realize exactly how powerful he is. He's like, Oh, I'm dumb is rock and it doesn't fucking matter. I'm still finally like how much smarter someone is than me, I'll just have him fucking killed.

Maybe, yeah, that may that may have been kind of the reasoning there.

I don't like that, I get it, but I think I guess.

Yeah. Now, at school, Wilhelms started his days at five am and didn't end them until nine pm. So this is this is a brutal school schedule. He was a decent student, he got okay grades, but he was not exceptional. His best friend at Castle was Siegfried Sommer, a Jew in top of the class. Now this is noteworthy because, as we'll cover, the Prince grew into probably Germany's second most anti Semitic leader of all time. O.

Wait, who's number one? I'm kidding Okay, Now, he's not number one at anything.

He's number two. And fairness, I will say this in fairness to the Kaiser, there is a big gap between two and one in most anti Semitic German leader the contest. There's a sizable gap between the two.

This is Jojo rap it.

Yeah, I can't wait to see that. And you say that is it good?

Yeah, I saw it the other day. I liked it.

It looks good. I just haven't had a chance to get down to the theater.

It's fun, it's it's a romp.

Jamie says, it's a romp. Check it out, people, itsicha plays Hitler.

I'm so. I'm so easily bothered by like child actors. And they got a good one.

No, I hate most children.

They're okay, well, let's take us to the next level. It's good. It's good, though. I liked it.

Yeah, Now is probably the right time to talk about the prince's bizarre feelings towards his mother. Now, Freud would tell us that it's not unusual for young boys to have a childish sort of infatuation with their mother. But even by Freudian standards, Wilhelm was fucking odd.

I mean, it's not that she's the only person that was nice to him.

Yeah, I'm still gonna say this is I'm just gonna read this quote from the biography Kaiser Wilhelm a concise life, and you can tell me what you can help analy Okay, This is a long one, Jamie, and there's a lot to unpack here.

Isn't it horny.

I let me just read the quote and we'll discuss it, okay. Quote. In the winter of eighteen seventy four or seventy five, Wilhelm began a series of letters to his mother in English, naturally recounting a recurring dream. He was having letters that are remarkable not only for their evidently incestuous character, but also for their fetishistic emphasis on her gloved left hand. A poignant cry for unconditional acceptance in love, if ever there was one. I have got the little secret which

No, no, no, that's odd, right, So that's peculiar. He's just like writing his mom being like, I want to fuck you? Is that okay?

I want to I want to fuck your hands.

Well that's well, I think, well that's like very telling, right, that he's like fixated on hands and arms. That makes sense because everyone like it's obsessed about. Of course, that this man becomes this like erotic fixation left a left hand fetish if.

You will, Oh, that's just.

Like baby boy, put it in your journal and then light it on fire.

Do not send it, burn that fucker.

Yeah, send to mama and wait so waits So we there was h He sent a letter and then presumably got a reply that was like, yeah, tell me more.

Yeah, we're going to get into that a little bit.

Now.

I've read a few biographies of Wilhelm, and most of them mention this weird fixation, but they kind of breeze past it, like they'll note it was weird, but they don't go into that much detail. Ralph's book is the one I found that really does the best job of highlighting how fucking peculiar this all was.

I'm going to.

Continue quoting here.

Yeah, I mean the hand fixation's very telling.

Yeah. Yeah, he could hardly wait for his dream to be fulfilled. In eight days, he wrote, we will go to Berlin and then what I dream about we will do in reality when we are alone in your rooms without any witnesses. No, this is the second secret. He's like fourteen or fifteen, he's yeah, he's like a little horny teens.

For mama, Oh, okay, kiss, sorry, keep eying.

This is the second secret. For you. Pray, write to me what you think about it, and promise to do so really as you did in my dream to me, for I do so love you. The Correspondent's continued in this vein for several months. In May eighteen seventy five, he urged his mother again to keep your promise you gave me at Berlin. Always give me a loan the soft inside of your hand to kiss. But of course you keep this as a secret for yourself.

Over to him. Yeah, definitely, he's like, your left hand is a pussy, like that's his energy. Okay, so yeah, we keep going. Wow.

With less than four weeks to go before the holidays, he wrote, thanking her for her most recent letter. How glad I was to see the promise written down that I could kiss your hands as much as I liked. Be sure of it, I shall do it shortly before

Yeah hands, Robert, Yeah.

The man likes man loves his mom.

To touch mommy's hand. I well, here's my question. What is she replying to this? Because it doesn't sound like she's saying, please stop talking about fucking my hands.

I think we can forgive the Crown Princess for not knowing how to respond to her teenage son's sexual obsession with her hands.

I'm just trying to get a feel for like, is she weirded out by it but doesn't know how to handle the situation, or is she like this is.

Cool she's weirded out, she says. You know. At first she's like, okay, yeah, you can kiss my hands, and she tries to like move the letters along to something more normal. She tried to, and then she tried politely ignoring it. She would return his letters to him with like the spelling corrected and stuff, correcting his grammar and stuff, and not really.

How he wants to fuck herate, like, if you're gonna suck my hands, say say it.

Right, Yeah, we can safely say. She felt very strange about it, and eventually she did what she thought was the responsible thing and pushed her son away just a little bit to try and like get some distance boundaries. Yeah, he found this deeply painful. This led to a start of a split between mother and son, which many, like people who like write about the Kaiser, have seen as

Someone shut up about wanting to kiss your hand like that. Yeah, God, what it's predicament.

That's what a predicament.

And then you think back of like, well, maybe if everyone wasn't complaining about this kid's hands his whole life, he wouldn't have this weird, horny hand thing.

And again, this is why you shouldn't have kings or leaders with any kind of significant amount of power like this, because like they grow up with like this weird hand thing is something that like, you know, Wilhelm couldn't help, but he felt that way. It was where like he was like, this was going to happen. His mom kind of drawing away from him wasn't unreasonable, having really complicated feelings about England as a result of this wasn't unreasonable.

You just have too much to lash out with. You can't just like take your mom's car, Like, yeah, god, I think that so far, the villain of this story is power.

I know it'll be exactly but right now, but it's still mostly power, even though like there are points at which he does make choices that make him into a villain. The primary villain is still power. If he had just been a normal dude and like, gotten some fucking therapy, I get the feeling, just knowing kind of everything about his life. I get the feeling with a competent therapist. He could have been a decent man who would have raised a relatively healthy family and like, not damaged.

He would have been a perfectly like, you know, in in offense of like whatever, guy. He just would have been a guy.

I don't think he was. He inherently moved to commit acts of horrible evil, but he did. And yet yeah, yeah, Now Wilhelm reached adulthood and did the normal things that Prussian kids did. At that point, he joined the military, He went to military school, he got command of his first military units. Now he was noted by everyone as having no real ability to focus on the finer points of strategy and tactics, but having a deep and abiding

Good now, good, Yeah, I'm just like feeling for his mom of just like, oh, mom obsessed with me and he won't stop mutilating animals.

Yeah, what do I do it? Even though her son didn't do it. The guy who killed the cat mutilated it to scare off other cats.

Oh okay, that's still not okay.

But okay, it's not okay. It is pretty normal. Like, you know, I have friends and family with farms, and like, if you kill a coyote on your farm and you have livestock, it's not abnormal to like hang the corpse of the coyote up to scare off other coyotes to protect your cows and shit. Like It's something that people do when they're trying to maintain a population of prey animals.

Very game of Friends.

Yeah, it's fucked up, but it's like it's also like life in the rural world. Although killing somebody's pet cat to protect a pheasant population, I would argue, is not the healthy way to deal with that. Maybe keep the cat indoors.

It's yeah, like there was a clear solution to that, and it was like a pack.

Of Yeah, it's not like a pack of wild wolves. Like, there are other ways that this could have been handled.

The worst case scenario is that there were a couple more cats around.

Yeah.

Oh boy.

Now, as a young adult, Wilhelm fell madly in love with his cousin Ella, but Otto von Bismarck was not a fan of the pairing. Now, Bismarck is a guy will probably we do an episode on at some point. He's one of the most important people who's ever lived. He was the actual mind behind the formation of the German Empire. He engineered the Franco Prussian War, and is again probably the single man most responsible from making Germany a thing.

We did a whole unit on that motherfucker.

Yeah, he's a very important, influential guy. Yeah, he's an influence and yeah, as he's a dick, but he's also he's also very smart and very capable. Yeah, Like he's not one of these powerful people who's also an idiot. He knows what the fuck he's doing. Now. The Kaiser Prince, Wilhelm's grandfather was the monarch of Germany. But Bismarck made

That's description of her. But I'm not super into that, okay, but good to know now.

When the marriage was announced, Hinspeter was a static that his dearly beloved problem child was going to marry someone who understands him and sympathizes with him in his weaknesses. Kins Peter was on record as saying that Wilhelm needed people around him who gave him unconditional love and admiration

And again it's like if you're just an irregular person with daddy issues. You're just one of the many daddy issues with power who people are gonna die?

Real problem. Yeah, now this gets at one of the things I think is wildest about the very idea of a monarchy. When you really look into the letters everyone around the future Kaiser was writing, as both Rolf and Vanderkiss, the main biographers who were sources for this episode, did. It's obvious that one hundred percent of the people who knew Willhelm when he was young knew ahead of time

But he's boy, that'll suck. When that inevitably happened.

It's a shame. There's no other possible thing we can have than a monarchy.

Oh well, too bad, Jesus Christ. Okay, all right, yeah, that is I mean that does make me slight. I mean, obviously we're in a terrible version of democracy, but like, at least some things aren't inevitable from that far away.

No, it's an iterative sort of thing. Yeah. Now, the prince's parents hoped that the marriage would have a soothing effect on his worst characteristics, but unfortunately, his wife, Donna, was what one biographer describes as a reactionary bigot whose small minded views only reinforced his own oh whis yeah to make matters worse, She despised the British, which helped push Prince Wilhelm further away from his mother. She was against liberal politics and the growing mood towards democratization and

God, so it's really hard not to feel for this guy, like he's it's rough man. Yeah, he's got a lot of forces working against him. It's oh it's not.

Oh yeah, he's disabled bi sexual abuse victim.

Yeah, that he and his boyfriend should just move away.

Yeah. Oh if only they'd gotten a house in Paris or something together. Oh so nice that painted pictures. Yeah, yeah, and he was Wilhelm had like some aptitude for art. He was described by someone as a gifted artist who never found his art, so like, he was good at a bunch of different things, but he never really well, No,

What if this was the point where you found out that I actually thought Hitler's art was really good, that he like, oh yeah, like yeah, no, Hitler is a terrible artist.

Obviously, Jamie Loftus has a Hitler. I mean, I'm not gonna lie I would actually love to have an original Hitler just for talking about it. Yeah, but I love haunted things.

I do love Hanton thing. That's very absolutely Oh my god. Yea, so he would but he was like he was a better artist, you.

Know, I just he seems to have been good. He just never quite like found something that he was really into, throwing his whole interests behind. And obviously he had to be the Kaiser, so there was a lot of other shit.

On his same time for painting when you're the ki.

No time for painting when you're the cut. Some time for painting, but not enough right now. Bismarck saw Wilhelm as a pliant, muldable dummy he could direct in whichever direction he chose. The key for Bismarck was to deepen the rift between the Prince and his father. In the mid eighteen eighties, he went behind the Crown Prince's back and made the future Kaiser the chief envoy of the

No.

Yeah, God, what a dufus. Yeah. So the Prince's career did not start with great promise, but at least he was everyone knew, everyone knew was happening. Yeah, I will say, though he enjoyed some fringe benefits of the gig as envoid to Russia. According to Vanderkist's book quote, he relished the attention paid to him as chief envoy of the German Empire, and he was deeply impressed with the bearing

He doesn't understand when to like, not be horny over shit.

You're over sharing, man, may he's horny on Maine all the time. Jes b.

Yeah, he's like, yeah, at least make a like a fake account, don't.

Yeah, Pola Mitt Romney write these under another name.

He is being horny on the main it's so such a bad look.

Oh, I mean, like I'm fine with it, Like no judgment, bro, but like.

Don't judge it. Don't be horny on the main.

Yeah, you are being horny in your official job as international diplomat, which is probably inappropriate.

That's the line. That's the line, Wilhelm.

Now. Wil Helm also had mistresses, but he was no better at managing them than he was at managing international diplomacy. In eighteen eighty six, he arranged to have two of his mistresses follow his train at a birth lynn and meet him in a small village in Austria. The women did so, but when they arrived, he refused to reimburse them for their travel costs and a should know now that he was the wealthiest man in Germany.

I yeah, I mean, I said, well, that's just dating a rich guy.

Yeah, yeah, like the going to be great.

And then then it turns out that they're they're fucking mean misers.

Yeah left, yeah. Yeah. The women left in a rage, and one of them stole one of the Prince's monogrammed cuff links, so she displayed around town to prove that she had with the prince. When the Kaiser realized this.

Came I flew southwest for this, take this ship and runs that day.

Now, when the Kaiser realized this, he begged them to come back, and he offered to pay for their travel costs. They returned and finally foun now ensuing.

Yeah.

The ensuing threesome was so loud that it woke up other guests in the hotel. People could actually hear them talking post coitus. A number of random Austrians heard the future Kaiser complaining to prostitutes about his parents. He called his dad a conceited popularity seeker under Jewish influence. He also loudly insulted Austria, his nation's closest ally, as rotten,

I hope that the sex worker has got like an emotional support bonus. You know, it's like, that's not what you well.

He made one of them pregnant and she blackmailed him and she got a shitload of money out of it.

This guy's a loser. Take his stub there.

Oh, word of all this got back to the Austrian crown Prince, which sparked another international incident. This all voted particularly ill for the future. In the space of a year, the young prince had insulted both of his nation's chief military allies, the Emperor, his grandfather was ill and near death, and right as his grandfather starts dying, his father also gets sick, which would prove to be throat cancer. So none of this bodes well for the future of peace in Europe.

Right, They're like, oh no, the fuck up is the only one who will live. Okay.

In eighteen eighty eight, the Emperor died and the Crown Prince became Kaiser. The Crown Prince, you know, the Kaiser's the future. Kaiser's dad. He would only rule for ninety nine days, and he was very ill for all of them. By the time he died on June fifteenth, eighteen eighty eight. Now Crown Princevillehelm had already been taking on and botching many of his dad's duties. That same day, Kaiservillehelm ascended

I got some pluggies. I'm releasing a podcast on Thanksgiving call My Year in Mensa is about what the title is about. It's Apelled my Ear and mensa, How I got in and how I almost got bullied out.

Uh.

And then you can listen to the Bechdel Cast every week. Uh. You can follow me on Twitter at Jamie Lofts Help. And that's what you can do. That's what you're able to do. At this time.

Now you can find me on Twitter and Instagram at Bastard's pod. You can find me personally on Twitter at I write okay, where I am not horny on Maine because that's inappropriate, especially with all of the diplomacy I have to do with the Russian Army.

Right, Yeah, I mean would make you a terrible kaiser.

It would make me a terrible kaiser. And my whole job is to become a very good kaiser.

Yeah, your Fensta is horny as hell.

Yes, Oh my god, it is nothing but thirst posting shameless. I muted it now, Jamie, what is a Fensta?

I'm gonna jump off the balcony. I cannot possibly explain to you what a Finsta is. It's a fake Instagram. That's where you it's where you do your horn I don't actually have one, which is what everyone who has one says. But but it's like where you post, uh, you know, you post you know the illusion on the main right, You're like, I'm so happy, everything's great, and then you post depression memes and thirst posts on the fin staff. Oh that's where you're like your your your you know, two extremes.

See, I write my thirst posts on a sheet of paper, and then I cut my finger and block them out with blood, and then I burn them in a bonfire at night in order to wipe away my shame in front of God and the heavens.

I know, but unfortunately that is a spell. That means it's in a book somewhere far away. So your thirst posts are uh, they're they're documented somewhere. You shouldn't drop blood on it. That that's that activates the curse.

Damn it.

I'll send you some more.

If you want to activate a curse, buy some t shirts from teapublic dot com. All of our shirts come cursed, so that's good. The episode's over, okay.

Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media. For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.