Hello, my name's David Rumsman and this is past, present, future, the History of Ideas

podcast. Today, we're talking about a familiar theme, but I hope it's an unfamiliar angle.

I'm joined by PPF regular guest, the historian Chris Clark,

to explore how history can help us understand the leadership of a politician like Donald Trump.

And we are going to be looking specifically at German history,

but we are not going to be talking about Hitler,

or the Nazis, or the 1930s. We're going to be going further back. And today, our comparison

is not with an elected politician. It is not with a tyrant or a dictator. It is with

an emperor king, a Kaiser, Kaiser Wilhelm II. The man who presided over

Germany's entrance into the First World War, Germany's destruction in the First World War,

is Kaiser Wilhelm II the Trump-like leader in German history.

Chris, we're talking about Kaiser Wilhelm the second as Donald Trump, or maybe we're talking about Donald Trump as Kaiser Wilhelm. I'm not sure. We'll have to work out which

way around it goes. But let's start with Wilhelm, because I think he's the one who needs

probably more background explanation for people listening, and then we'll get on to the

comparison. So just tell us a bit about him, but particularly, why is he still an object of such

fascination for historians? Well, he was the last German Kaiser. So he was the last example of a monarchical head of state in Germany.

He was a colorful figure.

He was in some ways the first truly imperial figure in that line of Kaiser's,

which was actually still a very young line.

The German empire, the Kaiser Reich, had only been created in 1871.

Its first emperor, Kaiser Wilhelm I was on the throne until 1888, from 1871 to 1888.

That was Wilhelm's grandfather.

...