Paul Gottfried, Kaiser Bill: the workingman’s emperor

For the record, Kaiser Wilhelm II was not a socialist, as Preston would learn from reading Eberhard Straub’s study Kaiser Wilhelm II in der Politik seiner Zeit (2008). The last German emperor ruled over a highly decentralized federal state, in which most internal governance took place in the constituent administrations of the Empire, which were a collection of kingdoms, duchies, and free cities. The total tax burden for German citizens in 1900 was somewhere below 7 percent for those who were employed, which was the lowest tax rate in Europe at the time. Although the German working class was the most literate and enjoyed the highest living standard in the world, the German welfare state had hardly taken off in 1900, if one discounts modest workers’ pensions and something like medical insurance. Wilhelm described himself as a “Volkskaiser” and oozed sympathy for the German Arbeiterschaft, but he did not place his country on the road to Obamaism. And one suspects that at least some of his rhetoric about standing up for the workers was related to his concern that the Socialist Party of Germany, which was theoretically Marxist and which by 1914 had become the largest party in the Reichstag, would not become a true revolutionary force. By the way, I have never encountered the statement ascribed to Wilhelm, that he would support American socialists if they became Prussian militarists. It sounds like something The Weekly Standard would manufacture to kill two birds with one stone, by beating up on the Krauts for the umpteenth time while linking socialism to evil reactionaries.