The self-serving delusions of the ‘Swastika Kaiser’

Whenever a new study of the Nazi regime appears, it is taken as a given that after Adolf Hitler seized power and became dictator of Germany in 1933 an egalitarian society emerged, very different to previous decadent, backward-looking generations. In this modern era, it is assumed, the concerns of the Kaiser and the German elite were at best ignored and at worst made another target of the Führer’s purges.

It’s a tempting summation, but an over-simplistic one. As a biographer of the Duke of Windsor, I drew on documents that suggested that Hitler was in fact deeply impressed by the former Edward VIII. He not only hoped that he would prevail during the abdication crisis, but was delighted to receive him and his wife Wallis with all due ceremony and warmth in Germany in October 1937.

Stephan Malinowksi’s comprehensive history of the Hohenzollerns, ably translated by Jefferson Chase, emphasises that Hitler, for all of his vaunted commitment to a new classless Germany based on the principle of Volks-gemeinschaft, or ‘people’s community’, was still dazzled by the breeding and advantages that an aristocratic title conferred. This was doubly true if the bearer of that title was Crown Prince Wilhelm of Prussia, the eldest son of Kaiser Wilhelm II, the last German Emperor and King of Prussia, who was compelled to abdicate in humiliating circumstances after Germany’s defeat in the first world war and the subsequent November Revolution of 1918.

Born in 1882, Prince Wilhelm had fought for his country with distinction, commanding troops at Verdun and displaying conspicuous loyalty to his father the Kaiser at all times. Yet when the balance of power shifted, he (who was nothing if not self-interested) decided that he was best off associating with the coming regime and seeing what he could obtain for himself and his family in the process.