Stephen M. Walt, in the October 12, 2017 edition of Foreign Policy, (http://foreignpolicy.com/author/stephen-m-walt/) comments on the the parallels between Trump and the last Hohenzollern emperor: Kaiser Wilhelm II. The common features go beyond their individual characteristics. Not only do Trump and the kaiser share some unfortunate personality traits, but there are also striking similarities between conditions in Wilhelmine Germany and the situation in the United States today. There are also some important differences, but they are not entirely reassuring.

Consider first the personalities of these two leaders. Wilhelm II was by all accounts a pretty smart guy, but he frequently acted like a spoiled teenager and was prone to rash and bellicose remarks that undermined Germany’s image and international position. In a notorious 1908 interview with the London Daily Telegraph, for example, he declared, “You English are mad, mad, mad, as March hares.” One wonders what he would have said on Twitter. Wilhelm also had little patience for domestic opposition, saying, “I regard every Social Democrat as an enemy of the Empire and Fatherland.” Not to be outdone, Trump has called the U.S. media the “enemy of the American people.”

Historian Thomas Nipperdey once described Wilhelm as “superficial, hasty, restless, unable to relax, without any deeper level of seriousness, without any desire for hard work or drive to see things through to the end, without any sense of sobriety, for balance and boundaries, or even for reality and real problems, uncontrollable and scarcely capable of learning from experience, desperate for applause and success — as Bismarck said early on in his life, he wanted every day to be his birthday.”

The late historian, Gordon Craig of Stanford, offered a similar appraisal, writing that “[Wilhelm] had as much intelligence as any European sovereign and more than most, but his lack of discipline, self-indulgence, his overdeveloped sense of theatre, and his fundamental misreading of history prevented him from putting it to effective use.”

Craig also describes Wilhelm as “never having learned anything thoroughly” and “constantly on the move,” and German Army Chief of Staff Alfred von Waldersee described Wilhelm in the 1890s as having “a certain understanding of parade-ground movements, not, however, of real troop-leading.… He is extraordinarily restless, dashes back and forth, … intervenes in the leadership of the generals, gives countless and often contradictory orders, and scarcely listens to his advisers. He always wants to win and when the decision … is against him, takes it ill.”

Sound familiar? The similarities don’t end there. Both men led lives of privilege from birth: Wilhelm was heir to the German throne and Trump inherited a sizable fortune from his father. Wilhelm was understandably sensitive about his withered left arm; Trump seems defensive about his “small hands.” Wilhelm loved military displays and said he had “found his family” while serving in the Potsdam Guards; Trump attended military school and admires generals despite his ignorance of military affairs and his own efforts to evade military service. And, like Trump, Wilhelm was fond of traveling with a large and expensive entourage (at public expense, of course), while neglecting his public duties. (Stephen Walt, Foreign Policy – an exited version)

Comment: Rather than go to all the bother of impeachment – long-winded and possibly a damp squib in the end – wouldn‘t it be both neat and appropriate to exile Trump to the same country as the Kaiser, that is, The Netherlands, where he would be unable to speak the language and be deprived of access to Twitter? A North-facing house on the edge of the rising seas off Friesland would be ideal.

Tomorrow: The similarities between Wilhelmine Germany and contemporary United States.