Fall of Eagles: Wilhelm II

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19th Century Europe, 19th Century Germany, Barry Foster, BBC, Empress Victoria, Fall of Eagles, Frederick III, Gemma Jones, Kaiser Wilhelm II, Otto von Bismarck

In the BBC miniseries Fall of Eagles, Kaiser Wilhelm II looms large, and is probably the closest thing it has to a main character, figuring at some point in the stories of both Austria and Russia as well as Germany. So let’s look at him briefly.

The show devotes its second and third episodes, “The English Princess” and “the Honest Broker”, to the lives of Frederick III (Denis Lill) and his wife Victoria (Gemma Jones). They get along poorly with Frederick’s father Wilhelm I (Maurice Denham), who dislikes the couple’s Liberal political views, which contrast sharply with Wilhelm’s Conservatism. Bismarck (Curt Jürgens) convinces Wilhelm to exclude Frederick from all function in government in the second episode, and then in the third episode invites the young Wilhelm II (Barry Foster) to attend the Foreign Office. Frederick finds this insulting, but his son cannot understand why. The third episode focuses on Frederick’s growing incapacity due to his cancer of the larynx. Wilhelm I’s long life (he died at age 90), combined with Frederick’s cancer, meant that when Frederick finally became emperor in 1888, he only reigned for 99 days, during which his cancer left him almost speechless, and his long exclusion from government meant that he left almost no chance to shape government before it passed into the hands of Wilhelm II, who like his grandfather was essentially a Conservative.

The series emphasizes the poor relationship Frederick and Victoria had with their son. When his grandfather dies, he tentatively talks to Bismarck about a supposed law that says that a man who cannot speak cannot reign, but Bismarck slaps him down. When told that his father is dying, he suspects a plot by his mother. When Frederick dies a few hours later, Wilhelm enters the royal apartments with soldiers and tries to confiscate all of his father’s papers, a concern more important to him than paying his respects to his father. She laments that she feels like the ship of the nation is sinking at sea with all its hopes, and he contemptuously orders her to “go to your room!” This attempt to seize his parents’ papers did in fact happen, but Frederick and Victoria had already sent all of their papers to Windsor Castle the previous year.

Kaiser Wilhelm II

The series presents Wilhelm in almost entirely negative terms. He is vain, self-important, militaristic, foolish, and basically incapable of appreciating anyone else’s needs. He seems to just disrespect his parents for no particular reason, other than one line in which he angrily says she had no tenderness for him as a child.

This depiction is probably unfair to Wilhelm in some respects. Far from the cold relationship with his father the series offers, Wilhelm had great respect for his father, regarding him as a hero of the German Unification. It was his relationship with his mother that was poor. When she went into labor while carrying him, complications resulted in Wilhelm’s left arm being damaged. It never healed, so his arm was crippled his whole life.

Empress Victoria of Germany

This was a difficult issue between mother and son. Both of them blamed her for the injury, and Victoria seems to have considered his handicap an embarrassment. Victoria insisted that Wilhelm learn to ride at a very young age, even though his bad arm made this difficult, and when he fell off, as he did frequently, he was forced to get back on, even when he was crying not to. Later he wrote longingly to her of his desire for her affection, but instead she coldly corrected his grammar. So Wilhelm came to view his mother as harsh and domineering, and consequently he resisted her attempts to give him an more Liberal English-style education, and in later life he came to view his father as having been somewhat emasculated by his mother. So the poor relationship came from both sides, not simply from Wilhelm.

The series provides only hints of this dynamic. In the second episode, the young Wilhelm is shown struggling to learn to ride in one scene, but it’s not clear that his mother was demanding it. That and his comment that she had no tenderness for him (a comment that comes while he is treating her remarkably poorly) are the only hints that there was a more complex dynamic at work, and it’s clear that the series takes Victoria’s side at Wilhelm’s expense. So rather than trying to understand the man, the series simply wants to show why he was such a problematic ruler.

Gemma Jones as the widowed Victoria

The show perhaps betrays a distinctly British view of German history. Bismarck treats Frederick and Victoria poorly and forces them into an isolated position because he wants more power than Frederick’s Liberalism will allow him. He encourages young Wilhelm’s aspirations as a way to remain in power, even though he privately disdains Wilhelm. So he supports Wilhelm against his parents. Then, at the end of the episode, the young Kaiser Wilhelm turns on Bismarck, whom he considers old-fashioned and not aggressive enough in his foreign policy. Bismarck throws one of his tantrums, which had always previously gotten him way with Wilhelm I, only to discover that it weakens his position with the young kaiser even further. Bismarck goes to the Dowager Empress Victoria seeking her help, but she points out that he’s already destroyed her political influence, so she cannot help him. So the show traces the slow growth of Conservatism, the emperor’s dominance of the government, and German aggression through the inability of Frederick and Victoria to influence the political events around them and through Bismarck’s toxic influence on Wilhelm II. If only, the show suggests, Victoria had been allowed more influence, then maybe the Great War would never have happened.

Later episodes continue this portrait of Wilhelm. He insists on commissioning bad allegorical paintings and sending them to his cousin Nicholas II of Russia, even though Nicholas doesn’t particularly want them. He thinks poorly of his relations but imagines that they respect him a great deal. He sees himself as a master statesman, despite being almost totally out of touch with popular opinion and having rather unrealistic ideas of renewing the League of the Three Emperors. None of this is untrue, but the show makes no effort to show any of Wilhelm’s more positive traits such as his intelligence, his preference for modernism over tradition, and his support for science. Contrary to his current reputation as a hawk, in 1913, the New York Times was celebrating him as one of the most important peacemakers of the previous quarter-century. Nor does the series really explore the idea that his crippled arm might have psychologically led him to embrace militarism as a way to compensate for his lack of traditional manliness. Wilhelm was a profoundly erratic and inconsistent man in some ways, but he was probably not quite the boob the series presents him as.

This review was made possible by a reader who made a generous donation to my Paypal account and requested I review this series. If you have something you’d like me to review, make a donation and tell me what you’d like me to watch.

Want to Know More? 

Fall of Eagles is available on Youtube. The series is available through Amazon, but if you decide to buy it, make sure you’re getting a format that will play on your DVD player; some versions only play British and European formats. If you’d like to know more about Wilhelm II, John CG Röhl’s Kaiser Wilhelm II: A Concise Life is a condensed version of Röhl’s prize-winning three-volume biography of the man and would be a good short (262 pages) introduction to him.

Fall of Eagles: The Unification of Germany

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19th Century Europe, 19th Century Germany, BBC, Curt Jürgens, Fall of Eagles, Frederick III, Gemma Jones, Liberalism, Nationalism, Otto von Bismarck, Unification of Germany, William I of Prussia

As I discussed in my previous post, Fall of Eagles deals with major political events from the perspective of the royal families of Austria, Prussia/Germany, and Russia, but doesn’t both to explain the wider political movements that were driving many of the major events. Liberalism is frequently referenced, but never explained, and nationalism isn’t even mentioned as an ideology. The first episode deals with the Revolutions of 1848 on Austria and Hungary while focusing mostly on the limited viewpoint of Empress Elisabeth. The second episode, “The English Princess”, takes the same approach to the unification of Germany in the 1860s.

The main viewpoint character in this episode is Crown Princess Victoria (Gemma Jones), daughter of Queen Victoria and wife of the Prussian Crown Prince Frederick (Denis Lill), son of King William I (Maurice Denham), who is depicted as hesitant, unsure of himself, and prone to fits of tears. Historically. Victoria and Frederick were Liberals, which as I explained in my previous post means they favored a strong Parliament and other representative elements of government, whereas William I and his Chancellor Otto von Bismarck (Curt Jürgens) were Conservatives, so that they favored a strong monarch with few limits on his authority. But the viewer is left to figure this out mostly through William and Bismarck’s preference for an unrestrained military and a willingness to ignore the Prussian Parliament.

The episode focuses on the tensions between William and his son and daughter-in-law. William demands that Frederick express support for press censorship, and when Frederick gives a speech that dodges the issue, William feels betrayed and accuses Frederick of wanting to usurp the throne, and Bismarck counsels William to cut Frederick out of government duties and isolate them. The series frames this as William being unable to conceive of the idea of ‘loyal opposition’, an idea deeply embedded in British politics. Both Victoria and Frederick resent this isolation and their viewpoint is championed in the series with the way the individual scenes frame the situation.

 

The Unification of Germany

The Revolutions of 1848 demonstrated that there were many Germans who wished to see the unification of the fragmented German nation into a single nation-state. Bismarck, however, wanted to strengthen Prussia and turn it into the greatest European power. While a unified Germany was a way to make Prussia more powerful, there was a serious problem. Austria was a rival of Prussia, and unifying the Germans meant bringing both Austria and Prussia into a new German nation-state, which meant that Prussia would not be able to dominate the new Germany. So Bismarck’s Conservatism was at odds with the goals of German Nationalists.

Otto von Bismarck

Bismarck’s solution to this problem was to use Nationalism as a way to disguise his ambitions for Prussia. Over the 1860s, he waged three wars: the Second Schleswig War in 1864, the Austro-Prussian War in 1866, and the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. He used the Second Schleswig War as an opportunity to promote himself as the defender of the German Nation from Danish oppression, this winning favor with the German Nationalists. When Austria tried to revise the settlement by appealing to a German Diet, Bismarck accused them of violating the terms of the peace treaty and declared war. In fact, Bismarck’s goal was to force Austria into withdrawing from German politics, and the Prussian military trounced Austria brutally at the Battle of Königgrätz, forcing Austria to sue for peace.

Bismarck watching the battle of Königgrätz

Then Bismarch orchestrated the Franco-Prussian War, editing a telegram from William I to the French ambassador in a way that suggested that William had insulted the French. This tricked Napoleon III into declaring war on Prussia. In the brief war that followed, Prussia again triumphed handily. This gave Bismarck the political capital to press for a German unification that excluded Austria and which allowed Prussia to dictate the terms of the unification. The Nationalists rejoiced to see their goal of German unification advanced so far, while the Liberals looked away from Bismarch’s violent methods and toward the constitution that he offered.

On the surface, the constitution appeared to be a Liberal document, establishing universal manhood suffrage and vesting substantial power in what was essentially a two-house Parliament. The Reichstag (functionally the Lower House) was elected by all male citizens over 25, while the Bundesrat (functionally the Upper House) was appointed by the heads of the individual German states, with Prussia getting as many votes as the next four largest house combined and slightly more than 25% of the total votes. The Bundespräsidium or presidency of the German Confederacy was held by the Prussian king, who received the title of Emperor. But when looks closely at the details of the constitution, it actually grants the king of Prussia enormous power, because the Bundesrat held much more power than the Reichstag, and it was dominated by Prussian appointees, which allowed the king of Prussia to issue orders that the Bundesrat carried out. In practice, this was a Conservative constitution dressed up as a Liberal one, and it vastly increased the power of Prussia by making in the dominant state in Germany.

In the series, William I feels so unable to govern that he attempts to abdicate in favor of his son, but Frederick refuses on the grounds that Hohenzollerns do not abdicate. (Whether this detail is true I am unsure of. I haven’t been able to find any confirmation of it.) Instead, William turns to Bismarck, who takes advantage of the fact that the old man just wants to be told what to do, and sets about engineering the unification of Germany to make himself more powerful. The series makes no mention of the Second Schleswig War, and then focuses on the Austro-Prussian War, which is simply blames on Bismarck’s aggression. There is an extended scene in which Bismarck, having defeated Austria in three battles in as many days now wants to negotiate for peace. William and General von Moltke want to press onward and occupy Vienna, hoping to take Austrian land. Bismarck (backed by Frederick, who dislikes war) says that Austrian land has no value to Prussia. It’s understandable why William and von Moltke can’t understand what Bismarck wants because Bismarck never clearly explains what his purpose for the war is. He gets his way by threatening to quit and then orchestrates the Franco-Prussian War, again failing to explain what his motives are. Somehow, victory over France leads the other German states to press William to become emperor, which he resists but which Frederick presses for.

If one does not know what Bismarck was actually up to, this episode would certainly not enlighten one much about the process of German unification. Bismarck comes off as a steely but emotional man who cares little for human lives other than his soldiers and has little respect for the ruler he serves.

This review was made possible by a reader who made a generous donation to my Paypal account and requested I review this series. If you have something you’d like me to review, make a donation and tell me what you’d like me to watch.

Want to Know More? 

Fall of Eagles is available on Youtube. The series is available through Amazon, but if you decide to buy it, make sure you’re getting a format that will play on your DVD player; some versions only play British and European formats.  For those interested in Bismarck himself, try Jonathan Steinberg’s Bismarck: A Life. If you want to know more about Bismarck’s unification of Germany, take a look at DG Williamson’s Bismarck and German Unification, 1862-1890.

Fall of Eagles: First Thoughts

Tags

19th Century Austria, 19th Century Europe, 19th Century Germany, 19th Century Russia, Barry Foster, BBC, Charles Kay, Fall of Eagles, Nicholas II, Wilhelm II

Apparently my requested reviews of I, Claudius inspired another reader to donate to my Paypal account and request a review of Fall of Eagles, a 1974 BBC miniseries. So my next couple of posts are going to be looking at this sprawling series. 19^th century European history is a good ways outside of my wheelhouse—I’m not familiar with the current scholarship on Imperial Germany or Russia, for example—so watching the series was a fun expedition into a period I know less about than I would like. Unfortunately, that also means that I’m less likely to catch serious errors of fact or interpretation. Hopefully I won’t make too many mistakes in my comments.

Fall of Eagles tells the story of the end of three great empires brought to ruin by the Great War, namely Hapsburg Austria, Hohenzollern Germany, and Romanov Russia (each of which used an eagle in their heraldry, hence the title of the series). It starts in 1848 and runs down to 1918, managing to cover about 70 years of history in 13 episodes. Unlike most miniseries, such as I, Claudius, Fall of Eagles is not a continuous narrative but is more like 13 fifty-minute plays that attempt to show the viewer the reasons why World War I was fatal to these three dynasties. Each episode focuses on one of the three states in question. The three Austria episodes are almost entirely self-contained in terms of their cast. The later Germany and Russia episodes do occasionally have some cross-over, with Kaiser Wilhelm II (Barry Foster) appearing in a couple of the Russia episodes. In some cases, the same actor plays a particular character in multiple episodes, while in others, the same person is played at a later stage of life by a different actor. Like I, Claudius, one fun element is spotting famous British actors in these historical roles. Among the bigger names in the series are Michael Gough, Freddie Jones, Gemma Jones, Colin Baker, Patrick Stewart (in a particularly impressive performance as Lenin), John Rhys-Davies, Miriam Margolyes, and Marius Goring. It’s amusing to watch Alfred Pennyworth plot to smuggle Captain Picard and Gimli son of Gloin into Russia to establish the Soviet Union.

One downside to this 13 short plays approach is that the episodes are somewhat inconsistent in their quality. Whereas most episodes of I, Claudius were written by Jack Pulman and therefore had a consistent voice and characterization, most of these episodes were written by different authors, with the result that the episodes veer in their treatment of various characters. Foster’s Wilhelm II is mostly a vain, foolish man given to absurd gestures such as mailing his cousin Nicholas II (Charles Kay) unwanted allegorical paintings, but in the last episode he suddenly becomes much more reflective, insightful, and serious; in some episodes he loves Nicholas, while in others he thinks the Tsar an idiot. In some episodes the Russian city is referred to as St Petersburg, while in others it’s Petrograd. In one of the Austrian episodes, the emperor is consistently referred to as the All-Highest, following the strict court protocols, but in the other episodes, he’s referred to more familiarly.

Willy loves fancy clothes

The series has a LOT of story to tell, and sometimes struggles to find a way to convey all the necessary information. The series mostly concentrates on the three royal families, but episode 9, “Dress Rehearsal,” rather jarringly focuses on the Russian Foreign Minister Alexander Izvolsky and his meetings with other European foreign ministers as he tries to orchestrate free Russian passage through the Dardanelles. Most of the episodes employ an omniscient third-person narrator (Michael Hordern), who explains developments like riots and battles as the series shows maps, line drawings, photographs, and early film footage. At other times, one of the characters offers in-story narration in the form of letters or diary entries from their point of view. The result is a valiant but not entirely successful mélange of drama, history lecture, and primary source reading that makes the series half-documentary, half-dramatization.

But if you watch the series closely, you realize that each episode shows one or more steps down the road to ruin. For example, episode 7, “Dearest Nicky,” shows how the 1905 Russo-Japanese War revealed Russia’s profound military weakness and how Wilhelm II tried to use the situation to persuade Russia to abandon its alliance with France and Great Britain. The failure of those negotiations meant that Russia remained committed to going to war against Germany even though it was clear that it lacked the resources to do so successfully. “Dress Rehearsal” deals with Austria’s decision to annex Bosnia-Herzegovina, thereby setting up the motive for the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand (Peter Woodthorpe) in the next episode, and Izvolsky’s failed maneuverings reveal just how politically incompetent Russian leadership was by this point. So unlike most historical series, this one is actually intent on teaching the viewer something about the past more than just telling an entertaining story.

Another problem with the series is that it wasn’t willing to directly depict violence, even when that violence was integral to the story. Episode 4, “Requiem for a Crown Prince,” opens with the discovery that the Emperor’s son and heir has just committed suicide and closes with the narrator basically saying “Oh, by the way, the Empress was assassinated a few years later.” Episode 10, “Indian Summer of an Emperor” culminates in the assassination of the Austrian Archduke, but the whole incident is simply described by someone rather than shown. In the next episode, “Tell the King the Sky is Falling” Grigory Rasputin (Michael Aldridge) is shown becoming an enormous problem for the Tsar’s government, undermining every attempt to solve the empire’s political problems. The following episode starts with the narrator essentially telling us “Rasputin was murdered and thrown into a river.” The whole effect is to somewhat obscure key moments in the narrative by shoving them off-screen. The fate of the Romanovs is only obliquely described by the German empress, leaving the viewer entirely in the dark as to why they were executed. Obviously, standards for violence on television were quite different in the 70s than they are today, but they could easily have shown scenes leading up to the violence and then cut away.

The series offers some fine performances. In addition to Stewart’s excellent turn as Lenin, there’s Foster’s pompous Wilhelm II, Gemma Jones’ bitter Empress Victoria of Germany, Rachel Gurney’s grieving Empress Elisabeth of Austria, and Gayle Hunnicutt’s increasingly neurotic Empress Alexandra. Kay manages to make Nicholas II simultaneously ineffectual and sympathetic, which is no easy feat.

The doomed couple

Overall, Fall of Eagles is not as good as I, Claudius, and in some ways it feels a bit like a dry run for the more successful BBC series that came the next year. But as a historical series that actually tried to educate its viewers, it’s an impressive experiment, though one that was never repeated (to the best of my knowledge).

As noted, this is a requested review. If there is a movie or tv show you would like me to review, please make a generous donation to my Paypal account and let me know what you would like me to review. If I can get access to it (and think it’s appropriate for this blog), I’ll review it. Just don’t make me review Empire again.

Want to Know More? 

Fall of Eagles is available on Youtube. The series is available through Amazon, but if you decide to buy it, make sure you’re getting a format that will play on your DVD player; some versions only play British and European formats.