Kaiser Wilhelm II (1859 1941) is one of the most fascinating figures in European history. Inheriting the 'mightiest throne on earth' in 1888, he played a central part in fashioning the policies which culminated in the catastrophe of 1914 18, the collapse of the Reich, and his own abdication. To an extraordinary extent he was also representative of his epoch: brilliant, bizarre, aggressive, insecure. Yet German historians have virtually ignored him. They have written the history of the Kaiserreich without the Kaiser, of Wilhelminism without Wilhelm, leaving the field to the amateurs. Recently,...