I was going to mention them. And look at the state of Venezuela now. It’s a mess. Do we have that looming in our near future? It can happen here. Even Rome fell.
Boy oh boy, that isn’t very encouraging.
Hard though this might be to believe, Wilhelm was even more temperamental and erratic than Donald Trump and more belligerent than a pissed off grizzly bear. He had a weird love-hate thing for Britain and all things British that made The Donald’s little feuds with China and Mexico pale by comparison; imagine if Trump was himself part Chinese and obsessed about how he hated China almost 24/7 while at the same time desperately trying to prove he was better at Go and ping pong and making dim sum better than anyone in China. That’s Wilhelm II. Wilhelm II was such a massive doofus that there were calls for his abdication several years before the war started just because he was a huge embarrassment.
Even after Hitler’s ascendance he wasn’t allowed back into Germany - despite repeated requests - in part because everyone who had been the Imperial Army (which included Hitler) hated him, in part because Hitler didn’t trust the old bastard to not try to seize power, and in part because Hitler assumed, probably correctly, that Wilhelm might be greeted at the border by a mob of angry Germans carrying rope.