Did Kaiser Wilhelm II say something like this on his abdication? I am fairly sure I read this in some book or another, but oddly I cannot find it on the Google. Can anyone set me straight?
Is it maybe spelled schweinisch? Not that that’ll help with your googling I have to say.
Schweinebande
Found it!
By any chance can you translate that gibberish into English?
Google Translate gives it in fairly understandable English.
Which makes it clear that while the title is attributed to the Kaiser, the link does not indicate any source or cite for that attribution. Does this mean it is common knowledge among Germans? I would still be interested in when he said it. Presumably after exile; was he talking about the Germany of Weimar, of the Nazis, or something else?
FWIW, Wikipedia says he was appalled by the events of Kristallnacht and quotes him as saying “For the first time, I am ashamed to be a German.” That was in 1938.
The Deutschlandfunk link refers to fiction.
There are a few other mentions of this quote online, none of them citing primary sources. I’m inclined to think it might be apocryphal.
I doubt that expressed any true feeling about German treatment of Jews, considering how many times he had expressed rather violent anti-Semitic sentiments in the past. The Nazis refused any public association with the former Kaiser or his family around 1934, I believe, and so his spite against the Nazis might have overcome his dislike of Jews.
Well, it’s late here, and I can’t go into every historical detail, because the end of WWI and the revolution in Germany was a complicated story, but the quote “Das deutsche Volk ist eine Schweinebande!”, “The German people is a band of swines”, was a direct reaction to what Willhelm II called the treason of the Social Democrats collaborating with Max von Baden to finally proclaim the German republic on November 9th, 1918.
Cite: this very long (9 pages) historical article from the “Zeit”, a very respected German newspaper.
He felt betrayed by this proclamation (which led to his forced abduction) and especially picked out “Jewish freemasons” and “the German people” as responsible and a band of swines, notably differentiating between the two. Willi II was antisemitic through and through and remained so his whole life. He also resented Social Democrats. He congratulated Hitler after taking the Reichstag.
For further context: German November Revolution of 1918.
Sorry, I meant “abdication” there :smack:.
Thank you all.