The title is deceptive as this history only covers the last 3 German rulers of Prussia before World War I. The author uses papers of the Hohenzollern rulers & their wives to weave the story of their lives as Prussia reaches its height of power before the last ruler of the dynasty is forced to abdicate in November of 1918. As the story unfolds, the reader is led through the transformation of Prussia into the Germany of the late 1800s as William I who has no wish to be emperor, his son Frederick III who unfortunately is dying of cancer when his father dies, succumbing months afterwards. The grandson, William II, proves the undoing of Bismarck & Germany with his silly rants & threatening posturing exposing a personality that had no concept of the impressions he made on others. As he throws his weight, he ends up unraveling much of Bismarck's careful diplomacy & destroying his own dynasty with his ineptitude & incompetence. His reactions to the chaos of World War I exposes the real power in Germany, the German General Staff that ran the war & forced him & his dynasty to leave Germany forever. The author does a good job in using the family papers to bring to light the personalities & the tensions between them & the realities of political power & the changing nature of their world. Bismarck here is noted but not the focus as it focuses on William I, Frederick III, & William II's views & actions toward Bismarck. ( )

3112. The Kaisers, by Theo Aronson (read 17 Sep 1998) This is a 1971 book by a popularizing historian about the three German Kaisers of the Second Reich. The one--Frederick III--who had the shortest reign gets the most attention. There are no footnotes and I am not sure I learned much from this book.
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