Daily Telegraph Affair

Wilhelm fell into a serious bout of depression, stepped back from his attempt at "personal rule" and played little role in German foreign affairs for the rest of his reign.

It was generally meant pejoratively: Wilhelm insisted on his divine right, intervened unpredictably in affairs of state and made impromptu speeches that frequently "broke the porcelain of domestic and foreign policy".

[5] Under the Constitution of the German Empire, foreign policy lay largely outside the competence of the Reichstag, leaving it at least theoretically open to the Kaiser to exercise his influence.

[6] Wilhelm frequently made use of his family connections with European royalty, especially the British, to engage in personal diplomacy in the belief that he had a special gift for it.

In 1901 he boasted unrealistically to King Edward VII of England: "I am the sole arbiter and master of German foreign policy, and the government and country must follow me.

Great Britain was outraged at the "Kruger telegram" and its intemperate language, although at home Wilhelm's stance reflected the opinions of many middle and upper-middle class Germans, who showed an increased sympathy for the Boers after the raid.

The Kaiser's visit to Tangier in 1905, which sparked the First Moroccan Crisis and heightened tensions between France and Germany, was the idea of Chancellor Bernhard von Bülow.

Bülow also drafted the 1905 Treaty of Björkö between Germany and the Russian Empire, which was triumphantly signed by Tsar Nicholas II and Kaiser Wilhelm.

[9][10] The cumulative effect was that even before 1908, German contemporaries across the political spectrum had come to view Wilhelm's personal interventions in foreign policy as harmful to the nation's reputation.

The sympathetic Stuart-Wortley decided that relations between Great Britain and Germany could be improved if the English people knew Wilhelm's true feelings.

Recent scholarship has largely disproved Bülow's claim that he never read the draft and had relied on the Foreign Office to make any necessary changes and approve it.

The officials there made a few minor factual corrections and sent it back to Bülow on the assumption that he would make the final decision on publication, since the matter was so highly political.

Jenisch sent the draft back to Wilhelm with a letter outlining three places where "exception can be taken to the wording" and noting changes in the margins based on the comments Bülow had made.

[17] The British press took Wilhelm's "stunning admission" that he was in a minority of Germans friendly to Britain as proof of the need to take a firm stance towards Germany.

The nationalist Rheinisch-Westfälische Zeitung wrote: "The soul of the German nation will be deeply wounded by the knowledge that its Kaiser worked up a war plan with which to annihilate the valiant Boers, a people of a kindred race.

In light of the commonly perceived German threat and an increased level of public concern, the Liberal government, which had promised expensive social reforms including old age pensions, changed course and backed the immediate building of four costly dreadnoughts.

[26] Sir Eyre Crowe, an expert on Germany in the Foreign Office, concluded that the "interview" was part of a German attempt to mislead British opinion about its true motives, while Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey wrote privately of Wilhelm: "He is like a battleship with steam up and screws going, but with no rudder, and he will run into something some day and cause a catastrophe.

There were loud calls for an end to his personal rule and even open discussions, such as the one initiated by the journalist Maximilian Harden, suggesting that Wilhelm abdicate.

[38] A proposal to summon Germany's ruling princes to Berlin for a formal protest was dropped, and the scandal around the Daily Telegraph interview gradually faded from public view.

One confidant said, “I had the feeling that in William the Second I had before me a man who was looking with astonishment for the first time in his life on the world as it really is.” Rudolf von Valentini, Wilhelm's chief of the Privy Cabinet, described the Kaiser's later mood as one of "tired resignation" and without vitality.

Although he had no alternative but to restrain himself in his speeches for the time being, in his letters and conversations – above all with foreign sympathisers – he gave vent to extravagant tirades of hatred for those who he considered had ‘betrayed’ him.