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January 26, 1859
Berlin, Prussia (now Germany)
June 4, 1941
Doorn, The Netherlands

Kaiser (emperor) of Germany

For thirty years, from 1888 to 1918, Wilhelm II led Germany as its kaiser, or emperor, until he was forced to abdicate (resign from the throne) and go into exile after Germany's defeat in World War I. He went to the Netherlands and lived there in virtual isolation for twenty-three years He died in 1941, during World War II (1939–45), when the Netherlands was under German occupation. Wilhelm II was a grandson of Queen Victoria (1819–1901) of Great Britain and of Emperor Wilhelm I (1797–1888) of Prussia (the most powerful of the several German states that unified into the nation of Germany in 1871). Wilhelm II led Germany during its period of rapid modernization in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. His ambitions to make Germany a major military...