Bernhard von Bulow was the longest-serving Reich Chancellor of Imperial Germany under Kaiser Wilhelm II. Appointed State Secretary of the Foreign Office in 1897 and Chancellor in 1900, he played a crucial role in the political history of the German Empire for twelve important years before the First World War. Bulow was chosen by Wilhelm II to be 'his Bismarck' and he was widely regarded as the most talented and intelligent of Bismarck's successors. Nevertheless his Chancellorship failed to fulfil its political promise, and when he resigned in 1909 he left a bitter legacy of domestic...