When a narcissist autocrat led the world into war

[marmar]

When a narcissist autocrat led the world into war
Kaiser Wilhelm II was an erratic despot known for unhinged foreign policy schemes. The result was catastrophe

By Andrew O'Hehir
Executive Editor
Published March 15, 2026 10:30AM (EDT)


(Salon) He was a grandiose personality with a massively inflated sense of his own historical importance, given to outlandish foreign policy proposals that his advisers and underlings had to ignore or walk back or pretend to take seriously. He loved military pomp and ceremony and viewed himself as a brilliant strategist, despite a total lack of expertise or experience. His intemperate public remarks sparked international outrage, creating crises his subordinates were forced to repair. He finally walked his country into a disastrous and entirely avoidable war that destroyed his reputation and inflicted enormous worldwide damage, with devastating ripple effects that extended decades into the future. One prominent historian described his personality as

superficial, hasty, restless, unable to relax, without any deeper level of seriousness, without any desire for hard work or drive to see things through to the end, without any sense of sobriety, for balance and boundaries, or even for reality and real problems, uncontrollable and scarcely capable of learning from experience, desperate for applause and success … romantic, sentimental and theatrical, unsure and arrogant, with an immeasurably exaggerated self-confidence and desire to show off.

I mean, right? If you started this article at the top, you already know that I’m comparing a certain contemporary leader with Kaiser Wilhelm II, the last emperor of Germany and king of Prussia, who may bear more responsibility than any other single individual for the ghastly carnage of World War I. (I’m not making a definitive historical claim; there’s plenty of blame to go around among the self-involved leaders of the so-called great powers.) The similarities are striking on various levels, as well as comical and more than a little disturbing. To rework Karl Marx’s famous maxim, sometimes historical events can be tragedy and farce at the same time, and repeat themselves in the same register.

....(snip)....

Wilhelm professed the same kind of grandiose and delusional self-confidence, writing in a letter to the Prince of Wales and future king of England — who was his uncle, by the way, since all the royal houses of Europe were closely related — “I am the sole master of German policy, and my country must follow me wherever I go.” But here’s the thing: That was definitely not true. The German Empire, which had only existed for 17 years when Wilhelm took the throne in 1888, was a half-baked constitutional monarchy. While the kaiser could appoint or dismiss government ministers and was “consulted” on important matters, he had little or no control over the daily affairs of state. If he floated an absurd or dangerous idea — seizing Greenland from the Danes, just for instance — his ministers were largely free to roll their eyes, assign a junior flunky to write a memo on the subject, and get back to work.

....(snip)....

Trump’s first-term brainstorm about setting off nuclear bombs inside a hurricane might well have appealed to Wilhelm, at least if nuclear weapons had existed and if tropical storms were ever an issue in northern Europe. Perhaps the point here is that both of these overconfident and ill-informed men were thoroughly convinced of their own brilliance, on a level well above the ordinary mortals around them, but that one of them — at least for most of his career — posed no serious threat to the world order. Germany’s imperial navy was not going to attack New York under any imaginable circumstances, and Wilhelm’s insistence on colonizing Brazil (or, on another occasion, “Mesopotamia”) came to “absolutely nothing,” as Clark puts it. ......................(more)

https://www.salon.com/2026/03/15/when-a-narcissist-autocrat-led-the-world-into-war/

[biophile]

1. Seems like history is full of these types of dangerous idiots

And the devastation they caused. Guess we are living through it all over again.

[The Blue Flower]

2. But we voted for this nutball

Who voted for the Kaiser?

[biophile]

3. True -but I voted for neither one! I'm sure you didn't either

☺️