| December 9 |  |
Editor says, what if Kaiser Wilhelm II had met Anne Frank, and she had encouraged him to fight against the Nazi atrocities? This article was collaboratively written by Jackie Rose, Ed & Stan Brin and assumes that Wilhelm II lived for a further couple of years than in OTL. Please note that the opinions expressed in this post do not necessarily reflect the views of the author(s). This story was published in the May 2012 edition of Changing the Times Magazine.
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In 1918, on this day Wilhelm Hohenzollern II the last Emperor (Kaiser) of Germany and King of Prussia abdicated the throne and fled to the Netherlands where he remained in exile for the rest of his life. In an angry, hate-filled letter to Field Marshal August von Mackensen dated 2 December 1919, he denounced his abdication as the "deepest, most disgusting shame ever perpetrated by a person in history, the Germans have done to themselves [..] egged on and misled by the tribe of Judah [the Jews] .. Let no German ever forget this, nor rest until these parasites have been destroyed and exterminated from German soil!".
The Kaiser's meeting with Anne FrankAt first, the probability of a restoration of the monarchy was absolutely zero partly because the elite of the Weimar Republic considered him to be an anacronistic throwback to a militaristic past. But their future went awry and his enemy's enemy became his friend; the rise of the Nazi Party was an interesting development to him, and he became one of their initial supporters despite the jarring contradiction that Adolf Hitler blamed him (along with the Jews) for Germany's loss of the Great War.
And of course the Weimar Republic collapsed under circumstances that were not dissimiliar from its creation, with society gripped by mindless gang violence. But to the surprise of many, he condemned Kristallnacht, declaring that "For the first time, I am ashamed to be a German".
Wilhelm made no overt move against the leadership, and after the occupation of the Netherlands, German Stormtroopers provided an honour guard for his residence the Huis Doorn. But then fate intervened, and he was presented with a final opportunity to demonstrate his greatness, a moral authority that he could restore to Germany even if he could never hope to rule his country once again. Because he was visited by a fellow German, who was also a refugee in Holland ... a thirteen-year-old girl who was called Annelies Marie ("Anne") Frank.
She slipped onto his estate while he was following his favorite pastime of chopping down trees. Before he could summon his guards, she quickly told him that her older sister Margot had received a call-up notice from the Zentralstelle für jüdische Auswanderung (Central Office for Jewish Emigration) ordering her to report for relocation to a work camp. Father Otto Frank told his family that they would go into hiding in rooms above and behind Opekta's premises on the Prinsengracht, a street along one of Amsterdam's canals, where some of his most trusted employees would help them. As the Kaiser listened to the young girl, he was impressed by her cleverness, courage and lively spirit. It made him recall the shame of Kristallnach and realize that he had been presented with what was surely a last chance to be lifted up on the wings of imperial eagles.
To protect her, he made her and his family servants in his imperial household, where they were safe from arrest. As time went on, they encouraged him to seek out other Germans who shared his feelings. This eventually led to his supporting Col. Claus Von Stauffenberg's plot to kill Hitler. Of course, Wilhelm had the added incentive of being restored to the throne once Hitler was dead. The Bomb Plot failed, and he was allowed to commit suicide rather than going on trial, thus sharing the fate of another revered figure ... Field Marshall Erwin Rommel. But the Frank family fled the castle and survived to tell the tale .. which was, of course, filled with praise for their imperial protector.
Entry posted by Todayinah Editor
© Alternate Historian, 2004-.Story Tags
Permalinks: Post, Day. Browse Thread: Politicians Source: Wikipedia Labels: Wilhelm II, Anne Frank, Final Solution, Germany, Kaiser. Editor says, in real life, the entire Frank family died in Nazi concentration camps, except for the father, who survived to publish the famous diary of Anne Frank. The Kaiser remained in seclusion until he died during the war.
~ Interesting fantasy. What's next?
~ My interest is certainly piqued.
~ A surrogate grandfather-granddaughter relationship could have worked. Wilhelm would be enthralled with the attention.
~ No Comment
~ i THINK IT WAS THE EARLIER BOMB PLOT IN THE BEERKELLER HITLER WAS SUPPOSED TO HAVE BLAMED HIM FOR - ALTHOUGH THE NAZIS SEEM TO HAVE REALISED A FOREIGN INTELLIGENCE SERVICE WAS INVOLVED.
A delegation had gone to Hitler in 1933 and asked for the restoration of the monarchy.
"A Fall of Eagles" is very good and well worth watching.
~ What I really want to know is, where did the Germany was stabbed in the back theory come from? At least one Jew Benjamin Freedman
came out and said it was all true. http://www.erichufschmid.net/TFC/Ben_Freedman.html
~ The "stab in the back" theory was the product of bitter German nationalists who refused t believe that the Fatherland could possibly have been legitimately defeated. But it was, even though Germany wasn't occupied as at the end of world War II (and there's an interesting POD: what if after WWI Germany had been occupied and divided, perhaps between a Britain and a France which had had a falling-out?)
~ I'm not sure whether Hitler would have left the Kaiser alone if the Kaiser had been actively resisting him. That said, I always liked what Kaiser Wilhelm said when offered a chance to be evac'd to England during the invasion: "The Netherlands stood by me in my hour of need and I shall stand by them in their hour of need."
~ The odds of a unified, if demilitarized and neutral, post-WWII German Monarchy are not impossible (although Kaiser Bill's son ruling from Bonn or Frankfurt is more likely)
~ We should have restored the monarchy after the war.
~ I believe the stab-in-the-back-legend came from the Quartermaster General of the Imperial General Army Erich Ludendorff at a period when he was completely out of his senses. Given his direct involvement in right wing forces e.g. Beer Hall Putsch, we can be confident that he used this excuse to retain influence and profile by avoiding the taking of responsibility for the military failure. More broadly this convenient lie was readily accepted by right wing/nationalist forces through a combination of shame, wounded pride and the need to prevent pacifists challenging future belligerent actions which were as much a part of their arrogance as their misplaced backlash against Jews, Socialists and all the innocents who ended up in Hitler's concentration camps. In short, it was an attempt to prevent forces of the opposition from taking over Germany and taking it in the left-wing direction that has existed to a degree since 1945, and in that sense had a short life of 25 years.
© Today in Alternate History, 2013-. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
