The accusations were explosive: a head of state had not only begun an illegal war but egged his troops on to a series of horrific atrocities that left thousands dead and an entire continent in ruins. By then, the accused was one of history鈥檚 most hated and debated figures, a monarch known for making erratic decisions and doubling down on his sometimes inexplicable actions.
There was just one problem: The accused, Wilhelm II of Germany, couldn鈥檛 testify. The accused had been dead for 75 years.
It could have been the trial of the century鈥攊f it had been conducted a century before. The of Wilhelm II, Germany鈥檚 emperor between 1888 and 1918, was a moot one, conducted by historians and legal experts grappling with one of the great mysteries of 20th-century history. Was Wilhelm II guilty of war crimes?
It鈥檚 a question that was never answered during Wilhelm鈥檚 lifetime. Though the Allies accused him of starting one of history鈥檚 bloodiest wars and violating international law, and his troops of committing barbaric acts, he never stood trial. Today, these accusations are remembered as the first stirrings of a modern conception of war crimes. But at the end of World War I, Wilhelm鈥檚 responsibility for the bloodshed was a hotly contested鈥攁nd ultimately unresolved鈥攊ssue.
The thought of trying him at all was a radical notion. Until World War I, going to war had been seen as the right of any nation or head of state, and were considered part of the war. A sense of victors鈥 justice held that atrocities committed by the winning side would go unpunished, while the victors could punish or even execute those on the losing side with impunity.
But World War I changed the face of war鈥攁nd combat norms鈥攆orever. Armed with newly destructive weapons of war like tanks, heavy artillery and gas, both sides sustained huge numbers of casualties while deadlocked in years of trench warfare. Over 6.6 million casualties and 8 million combatants during the war.
From the beginning, atrocities were part of the Great War. After Germany invaded Belgium in August 1914, German troops began murdering civilians. The, sparked in part by the false belief that Belgian villagers were snipers, claimed over 5,000 victims and sparked a fierce debate about which methods of violence were justified during the war.
As the war dragged on, and more and more civilians on both sides died, both the Allied and Central powers accused one another of war crimes. But when the war ended, only one side was taken to task for its conduct.
Germans believed that the sword had 鈥渇orced into [their] hand鈥 by threats from hostile powers. But to the Allies, it appeared that Wilhelm II, Germany鈥檚 emperor, had used his power to force the world into war. When the parties gathered at the end of the war to hash out the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, the Allies insisted that Germany not only accept full responsibility for the war but that Wilhelm be tried as a war criminal. As part of the treaty, the signatories agreed to assemble a special tribunal to try Wilhelm 鈥渁 supreme offense against international morality and the sanctity of treaties.鈥 The Allies formally requested his extradition.
It was an unprecedented move: Never before had a head of state been tried for starting a war, and though Germany was the loser it still had alliances and ties throughout Europe. At the time, Wilhelm was in the neutral Netherlands, where he had fled at the end of the war at the of the country鈥檚 sympathetic Queen Wilhelmina. There, he lived in splendid exile at a filled with his valuable possessions.
Despite pressure to extradite the Kaiser for trial, the Dutch refused to comply, claiming it would compromise their neutrality to take sides. The Kaiser鈥檚 guilt had become an article of faith to the Allies; in both France and Great Britain, it had been an important election issue, with Britain鈥檚 new prime minister, David Lloyd George, to both try and hang the Kaiser. But and infighting among the Allies, along with the Dutch refusal to extradite Wilhelm, meant he was never extradited or tried.
The treaty did result in other trials, though. In 1921, Germany鈥檚 highest court began a series of war crimes trials in Leipzig. The only affected a tiny fraction of the people initially accused of war crimes that ranged from looting to abusing prisoners. But no one could agree whether the trials were, in fact, legal, and the German court used German laws, not international ones, in the trials. No one was happy with the outcome. For the Allies, the Leipzig trials were an empty charade. For Germans, they were victors鈥 justice, a blatant overreach of international boundaries.
The trials with a whimper: Though over 901 cases of war crimes were identified, only 17 were tried. By the late 1920s, the rest had been dropped and few who had been convicted served any time whatsoever. Though the Leipzig trials and the debate over Wilhelm鈥檚 war guilt helped set the stage for both international law and the prosecution of war crimes, they failed to achieve the goal of actually punishing anyone who committed or enabled atrocities during the war.
Wilhelm was never tried and died in exile in 1941. Historians are still on his role in causing World War I. So how did the deposed Kaiser fare in his posthumous 鈥渢rial鈥? The verdict was mixed. Though the historians found him guilty of causing German troops to invade neutral Belgium, they acquitted him on all other counts.
