Abdication of Wilhelm II

Wilhelm first learned that Germany could not win World War I militarily on 10 August 1918, two days after the Allies broke through the German lines at the Battle of Amiens.

[1] The Emperor spent the next few weeks at Wilhelmshöhe Palace near Kassel and returned to Army Headquarters at Spa, Belgium on 10 September, where he was not told the truth about the rapidly deteriorating military and domestic political situations.

"[2] On 26 September, the Supreme Army Command (OHL) summoned government leaders to its headquarters and informed Chancellor Georg von Hertling and his state secretaries (equivalent to ministers) that the war was lost.

[6] In order to shift responsibility away from himself, Ludendorff had planted the seeds of what later became known as the stab-in-the-back myth, the belief that Germany had not lost the war militarily but had been betrayed by people on the home front, notably socialists and Jews.

The myth was fuelled by the fact that until the war was all but lost, Ludendorff left the public in the dark about the seriousness of the military situation and had even spread optimistic propaganda.

[11] For the political scientist Herfried Münkler, the rise of Hindenburg and First Quartermaster General Erich Ludendorff to the top of the Army command had marked the "beginning of the end of the Hohenzollern monarchy in Germany".

[12][13] On 4 October, as called for by the OHL, the new chancellor sent a diplomatic note to President Wilson asking him to mediate an immediate armistice and a peace based on his Fourteen Points.

"[14] As a precondition for negotiations, Wilson demanded the withdrawal of German troops from all occupied territories, the cessation of submarine activities and, implicitly, the Emperor's abdication, writing on 23 October: "If the Government of the United States must deal with the military masters and the monarchical autocrats of Germany now, or if it is likely to have to deal with them later in regard to the international obligations of the German Empire, it must demand not peace negotiations but surrender.

[17] Prince Max then told Wilhelm that in order to preserve the monarchy and obtain a peace that Germany would find bearable, the establishment of a parliamentary government and a reshuffle of the OHL were unavoidable.

[27] In view of Germany's impending defeat, the High Seas Command, without the authorization of the government, made plans for a final battle against the British fleet.

[31] Whether it was Hindenburg, members of his entourage or someone else who persuaded him to go is not known for certain,[32][27] Wilhelm at that point had four possible courses of action: lead the troops to Berlin to put down the revolution, die on the battlefield, continue to delay, or abdicate and leave Germany.

On 1 November, Prince Max sent the Prussian state secretary of the interior Bill Drews to the Emperor to persuade him to abdicate, but Wilhelm insisted on his oath.

According to a letter dated 3 November, he made the following comments to Drews:[34]All the dynasties [referring to the other monarchical Central Powers] are caving in, the Army has no leader, the front is disintegrating and flooding across the Rhine.

The military responded by pointing out the central role of the emperor as supreme warlord: "If he leaves, the Army will fall apart and the enemy will break into the homeland unhindered.

Colonel Wilhelm Heye reported that a survey of 39 front-line officers showed that only one considered a march on Berlin to be realistic, 23 denied any prospects of success and 15 rated them as "very doubtful".

In a final official act, Wilhelm handed over supreme command of the German Army to Hindenburg and then proposed that he step down as Emperor but remain King of Prussia.

[46][47] The proclamation, written by privy counsellor Theodor Lewald and broadcast via the news agency Wollf's Telegraph Bureau read:[48]The Emperor and King has decided to abdicate the throne.

The Chancellor will remain in office until the questions connected with the Emperor's abdication, the renunciation of the throne by the Crown Prince of the German Empire and Prussia, and the establishment of the regency have been settled.

The Imperial Chancellor, Prince Max von Baden.The final statement refers to the potential union of German-Austria with the rest of Germany following the dissolution of the multi-ethnic Austro-Hungarian empire.

[54][55][56][57] He wrote a letter to his wife which makes clear how helpless he was and how much he misjudged the situation:[58] Max has fully implemented the betrayal he has been plotting with Scheidemann for weeks.

Since the Field Marshal told me this afternoon that he could no longer vouch for my safety among the troops, I am leaving the Army on his advice after terribly difficult [internal] struggles.On 10 November, Wilhelm left for exile in the Netherlands, which had remained neutral throughout the war.

Legal scholar Carola Schulze thought that a timely abdication by Wilhelm II might have saved the dynastic throne, since the November Revolution was "in its essence not anti-imperial and hardly anti-dynastic".

[64] Lothar Machtan saw the end of the monarchy in Germany primarily as the result of the actions of three men who had in fact wanted to preserve it: Wilhelm II, Prince Max and Friedrich Ebert.

[65] They had created a power vacuum which led to a "stillborn" republic: "The transition to democracy thus had to remain inadequate in many respects, and the German revolution's impulses for change did not bring about an irreversible departure towards freedom.

"[69] The Emperor's flight to the Netherlands without thanking his people and the members of the Army who had fought in his name, as well as his refusal to seek a hero's death, became the subject of a lively debate in the early years of the Weimar Republic.

The radical right-wing captain Hermann Ehrhardt, later head of the terrorist Organisation Consul, wrote that Wilhelm was "finished" for him and his officers with his flight to the Netherlands.

[72] The historian Friedrich Meinecke judged in 1919 that although most Germans continued to feel themselves to be monarchists, the "monarchy itself dealt the death blow to all loyalty through the unworthy manner of its end, through the complete failure of its last representative in the Empire.

In the late 1920s, Wilhelm's second wife, Hermine Reuss of Greiz, constantly recommended the Nazi movement to her husband as the only force that could bring him back to the throne.

Gauleiter of Berlin Artur Görlitzer and Gestapo chief Rudolf Diels had previously warned against paying homage to Wilhelm and that monarchist activities would be prosecuted in the same way as those by communists.

Over the following months, the hopes harboured by the former emperor's family and their supporters that the National Socialists could be used as a vehicle to return Wilhelm to the throne increasingly faded.