The making of a monster

Kaiser Wilhelm II has had his fair share of historical attention in recent years and readers might be forgiven for imagining that we know all we need to about his early life after the publication of Thomas Kohut's psycho-historical study and Lamar Cecil's two-volume biography. In addition, all but the most ardent specialists may understandably find the prospect of reading John Röhl's bulky Young Wilhelm , originally published in Germany in 1993, a little daunting.

Nevertheless, appearances are deceptive and Röhl has written a riveting historical biography, a classic for the 1990s. Indeed, all parents and anyone who can remember being a child should profit from reading this book.

Probably few children in history were subjected to such close scrutiny - from parents and relations, nursemaids, governesses and tutors, military and civilian advisers, statesmen, ministers and diplomats, informed royal watchers and political commentators - as the young Kaiser Wilhelm II. As Röhl admits, "Every illness, every idiosyncrasy, every emotion felt by the small child was carefully recorded, conveyed from house to house and from court to court, and lovingly preserved for future generations in the royal archives of Europe." It is above all the voluminous correspondence written by Wilhelm's parents to each other (some 10,000 letters) and by Wilhelm's mother, Crown Princess Victoria, to her mother, Queen Victoria, that make it possible to reconstruct in such meticulous detail the early life of the prince.

From the very first chapter, when he subjects the historical record of Wilhelm's traumatic birth in January 1859 to an assessment on the basis of modern medical science, it is clear that, far from his modest claim in the preface to let the main characters "speak for themselves", Röhl is going to leave no stone unturned in his effort to understand the physiological and psychological development of the young prince. He details the medication administered to the suffering crown princess whose baby remained obstinately in the breech position and how the doctor worked "with all his might under the flannel skirt" to deliver the child, manoeuvring the infant out of the birth canal and rupturing the brachial plexus in its neck as a result. However well-intentioned, the treatment Wilhelm subsequently received for the paralysis of his deformed left arm, which included electromagnetic therapy and galvanism, salt, malt and "animal baths" (when the arm was wrapped for half an hour in the body of a freshly killed hare), head-stretching and arm-stretching machines, operations to the sternocleidomastoid muscle in his neck (to correct torticollis) and physiotherapy, was, in Röhl s view, "tantamount to cruel child abuse" and arose from a completely incorrect diagnosis of his condition.

Wilhelm did not merely have to suffer the consequences of a permanent physical disability, but his health and general well-being were affected in other ways too. He was born into a family over which both porphyria and haemophilia cast long shadows. His mother, who bore eight children in 13 years, suffered from a catalogue of imprecise illnesses, the symptoms of which suggest that she may have been carrying the rare, hereditary metabolic illness, porphyria, which in all probability afflicted her great-grandfather, George III. The prospect of yet more "damned English blood" - as Wilhelm once retorted after a nosebleed - probably lay behind the efforts of his mother to quash any ideas he had of marrying one of his cousins, the elder princesses of Hesse-Darmstadt whose youngest sister, Alix, the wife of Tsar Nicholas II, famously passed on haemophilia to the Romanov heir to the throne. Finally, Röhl's medical research reveals that Wilhelm contracted a serious ear infection in 1878-79 which eventually led to a radical operation to remove his right eardrum in 1896. Thereafter the monarch was deaf in his right ear.

The trials and tribulations that Wilhelm had to endure are graphically recounted by his parents and physicians. Yet as Rohl makes clear, all this was probably less significant in the longer term than the psychological scars of his early life, which are attributed in the main to maternal anxiety and ambivalence. Wilhelm grew up in a household dominated by his English mother, which became increasingly isolated within Berlin society on account of its enthusiastic endorsement of liberal values and which was frequently at loggerheads with the Prussian court of Kaiser Wilhelm I and its military ethos. Rohl is not without some sympathy for the young prince whose parents harboured wholly unrealistic expectations of him despite his manifest lack of talent and also made some very unfortunate educational choices for him. Yet he is also at pains to emphasise that Wilhelm developed into a very disturbed personality. The interpretation of his recurring dreams, the analysis of his infatuations, sexual proclivities and love affairs, his marriage to the dull and pious Augusta Victoria ("Dona") of Schleswig-Holstein, the growing estrangement from his parents and the discussion of his political views do little to dissipate the impression that here is a monster in the making, a future monarch who would be a catastrophe for Germany and "the nemesis of world history".

No historian alive today has a more comprehensive grasp of imperial German high politics and dynastic history than Rohl, who has devoted over 40 years to his subject. The later chapters of the book explore Wilhelm's increasing political importance and his relationships with such men as the reactionary warmonger and quartermaster-general, Count Alfred von Waldersee, the anti-Semitic court preacher, Adolf Stoecker, and the Bismarcks, both father and son, who initially protected and encouraged Wilhelm as an ally in their struggle against his liberal parents but whose gradual recognition of Wilhelm's destructive potential coincided with Wilhelm's own increasingly critical attitude towards them. Rohl's willingness to quote extensively from the diaries and correspondence of all those who moved in Berlin political circles helps him to provide a fascinating portrayal of high society in later Bismarckian Germany, riddled with political intrigues and collective war psychoses, obsessed and incapacitated by the issue of the succession, and, in December 1887, dependent upon a 90-year-old Kaiser and an 87-year old chief of general staff to safeguard the peace of Europe.

Rohl's biography is a stunning achievement by any yardstick, a definitive work which breaks new ground. For all the scrutiny, however, Wilhelm only begins to mature and come fully into focus in the latter stages of the book, and readers must eagerly await the next volumes before they can verify Rohl's judgements and assess his full impact.

Katharine Anne Lerman is senior lecturer in modern European history, University of North London.