For Wilhelm II and his entourage the bloody conflict that broke out between the nations of Europe in August 1914 was, not least, also a worldwide struggle between the divine principle of monarchy and the diabolical notion of democracy. ‘If you do not want to see God’s hand in everythng, even in the most unbearable, you are lost,’ wrote the head of his Military Cabinet, General von Lyncker, in his diary after losing two of his sons. The Kaiser’s absolutist convictions came vividly to light in conversations he had with the American ambassador, James Gerard, in late 1915, after the war had been raging for eighteen months. As Colonel Edward House noted,

Not surprisingly, Colonel House wondered whether the Kaiser ‘was crazy or whether he was merely posing’. On another occasion Wilhelm announced that the ‘pointless bloodletting’ had to be ‘brought to an end through an agreement between the monarchs’, since ‘in the other countries a conscienceless lawyer class without any sense of responsibility to God is at the helm’. As late as in March 1918, when Ludendorff seemed to have achieved a breakthrough on the western front, the Kaiser exclaimed: ‘The battle is won, the English are utterly beaten [and] if an English officer comes with a flag of truce he will first have to kneel before the Kaiser’s standard, for this marks the victory of Monarchy over Democracy.’