You Did What__ Mad Plans and Great Historical Disasters - Bill Fawcett [26]
She was, after all, the daughter of the greatest ruler of the greatest empire then existing. Growing up Victoria’s eldest child did not — could not — make for sweet humility. She made no friends; she thought, and said that English ways were better than Prussian ways, in everything from food to footwear.
When her first child, William, was born, those who could not put a wedge between Vicky and Fritz began to insert one between this heir to the throne and his parents. Willy, as the family called him, was encouraged to blame everything he didn’t like on his mother and on her nationality. (His brachial birth injury, resulting in a withered arm, was not her fault — he’s the one who wiggled around into breech position and had to be pulled out.) The riding lessons he feared were her fault (though all riding in Germany, then and for long after, was taught using harsh methods and long, painful hours in the saddle). The long days of lessons were her fault; the sternness of his tutors was her fault (though Prussian methods of child rearing were a long way from Spock or Montessori). Prussia had long envied England’s imperial might and reputation; Prussian dislike of England seeped into Willy through nurses, tutors, his grandfather, the men of the court.
When he was sent away to school, and then joined the Guards, he was surrounded by men who hated England and anything remotely liberal, and his dislike of his mother grew ever stronger. He got along well with his grandfather and with Bismarck; they formed a triumvirate that excluded Frederick and Vicky. The finale to his anger with his mother came with his father’s fatal illness. Frederick contracted cancer of the throat. Early in the course of the illness, German doctors recommended radical surgery, removal of the larynx, which would have left Frederick mute (a serious disability for the future German emperor). Naturally the family were reluctant to take this step if it was not absolutely necessary. Both Willy and his grandfather forbade the surgery until another consultation had been made.
That consultation was with the presumably preeminent throat specialist of the era…who happened to be British. He insisted that the growth on Frederick’s vocal cords was not from cancer but overuse, and prescribed months of rest in less stringent air than that of north Germany. Vicky and Fritz went to England.
But the growth was cancer and quickly grew past the point where surgery might save Frederick’s life. Frederick’s father had lived much longer than expected (he died at ninety-one), so Frederick had only ninety-nine days as kaiser before he died of cancer and Willy — known to history as Kaiser Wilhelm of World War I — took over.
Willy and much of the rest of Germany blamed Vicky for the misdiagnosis, for the trip to England, for her attempt to spare her husband worry and stress during the last months of his life. He set himself steadfastly against her and everything he believed she wanted or stood for.
None of the hopes and ambitions of Frederick and Vicky came to pass; the friendship between England and Germany that they both longed for — which Albert, Queen Victoria’s husband, had longed for — was never to be. A stable, peaceful Europe, governed by enlightened constitutional monarchies, with ample resources for science and technology, with happy, productive citizens, would never exist.
Instead, Kaiser Wilhelm plunged eagerly, full of envy and pride, into the great arms race that produced great iron battleships, bigger guns, more poison gas, and detailed plans for invading neighboring countries, and into colonial expansion, expressing the racism and arrogance that were characteristic of not only his but, later, German ambition. Germany should be the one great world power, toppling Britain, overpowering all others, taking its rightful place (so he said) at the apex of the world’s nations.
Millions of deaths, more millions of injuries, landscapes changed from farm and