In spite of initial reservations about the völkisch movement, the exiled Wilhelm had great hopes of Adolf Hitler after the latter’s swing to the right in 1928 and his pact with the press magnate Alfred Hugenberg in the 1929 campaign for a plebiscite against the ‘war guilt lie’ and the Young Plan fixing Germany’s reparation payments for decades to come. The astonishing electoral successes of the National Socialist German Workers’ (Nazi) Party and the transition to a presidential regime in Berlin seemed to clear the way for the restoration of the monarchy. The ex-Kaiser’s son, Prince August Wilhelm of Prussia, joined the Nazis and the Sturmabteilung and was invited by Hitler to the Nuremberg rally as a guest of honour. ‘Kaiserin’ Hermine also proved to be an ardent admirer of the Führer. She pleaded with Hitler to bring her husband back to Germany. Hermann Göring and his wife, Karin, came to spend two days with the imperial couple at Huis Doorn on 17 and 18 January 1931, the sixtieth anniversary of the proclamation of the German Reich at Versailles in 1871. Göring returned for a second visit on 20 and 21 May 1932. The Hohenzollerns believed they had almost reached their goal. ‘For months now the only thing one hears in Doorn is that the National Socialists will put the Kaiser back on the throne,’ Sigurd von Ilsemann, Count Bentinck’s son-in-law, noted in his diary at Christmas 1931.