Achtung!

A colorful profile of Kaiser Wilhelm II:

He was given to bombastic speeches, once warning newly sworn-in recruits that, if ordered by him, they would have to shoot their parents. He gave astounding orders to departing soldiers at the time of the Boxer Rebellion that they should arouse fear as had the Huns of yore. He detested liberal critics. And he spoke disparagingly of foreign nations, especially of Great Britain. Some of this had to do with his Anglophobia; he totally distrusted his mother, the daughter of Queen Victoria. Worse, though, than his arrogant, bombastic statements, he supported ministers and military personnel who called for an ever greater German army—and, most ominously—for a high seas fleet that would eventually be strong enough to defeat the British navy. The details of government he shunned, for they interfered with his diversions. He wanted to reign, and he enjoyed his huge court—over two thousand subordinates from generals to servants to gardeners, whom he would at times affront with crude jokes and offensive pranks.