What did he do wrong? INB4 >carte blanche

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Built a navy

Lost Russian support for no damn reason.

became allies with A-H

>>1714341

Unironically this. His navy never managed to threaten Britain, but building it did annoy the Brits so much they sided with the Frogs against them. If Billy had stuck to playing with his soldiers, Britain would have sided with him or stayed neutral in WW1.

>>1714252
Trusting the erernal austrian.

Willy's main fault is that under his direction Germany didn't want to play by the rules which Bismarck himself had major role in setting up. Germany wanted to play the role of continental military hegemon and in the process he antagonized literally everyone around, which included Germany's natural ally - Russia. This made Germany increasingly isolated and the direct thread posed by German military was counter by a network of unlikely alliances throughout Europe. Few of us know that today, but France allying herself with Britain was be modern day's equivalent of USA striking military alliance with Russia or Iran.

>>1714341
>>1714383

That's bullshit. The Brits didn't flip their shit when the Russians or French tried to challenge them at sea. They didn't also when the Americans tried.

This is literally Germanboo-tier shit.

He's done everything wrong.

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>>1714982

New to the thread, but that is completely wrong, and scholarly opinion is generally of the opinion that Wilhelm's fleet building activities were of enormous alarm to Britain and France,, and led them to solidify their ties with Russia; that was the big power shift, not France and England allying with each other, which they had done as far back as the 1850s to contain the growth of Russia.


Check out pic related, it's a very good read on the subject.

>>1714982
For Britain a powerful germany is a lot more scarier than a powerful Russia since Germany is practically their neighbor. Or would be their neighbor if they expanded a bit more.

>>1714982
Didn't the Russians get pissed off at the Germans as early as the treaty of Berlin?

>>1714341
Almost certainly this.

Other things too, but most of his ills stemmed from this.

His interpersonal problems aside, nothing so diplomatically crippled Prussia as poking the British in the side of its navy and trying the Moroccan Crisis twice to split them off from France.

If he instead focused on the land game and, if not cosying up to his German relatives on Britain's throne, at least not alarming them; he might have been able to weaken Russia and France via the collapsing Austrians and Ottomans that everyone was eying up anyway.

One good local crisis in Byzantium, one 2nd Crimean war that no one but Germany had the stomach for, and for the price of giving the Russians and British joint control of the Dardanelles, they might have gotten away with serious expansion, perhaps even gobbled up all of Austria when Franz Joseph died and the rabble started demanding independence again.

No one in Europe would want that mess on their hands but Germany's martial mood at the time tempered by the appearance of British style paternalism toward the Balkans would carry the day on the world stage.

French pleas of German interest on the West front would fall on deaf ears, Russia would be busy scrapping with Britain for naval control as well as in India if no other war came, and Germany would be free to play the field as things developed, however they developed.

>>1715297
This is pretty good.

The narrative that everyone was out to get Germany from day 1 is some Nazi BS. If Wilhelm was not such an incompetent autist Germany could have prospered.

When Bismarck left, Germany had an alliance with Austria and, most importantly, Russia. After the first Moroccan crisis, the French backed off. Germany was in a good place.

Bismarck gave him a great hand, but this dumbshit somehow managed to fuck it all up.

>>1714383
>His navy never managed to threaten Britain
It was never supposed to threaten Britain. The literal goal was to build a navy that had two-thirds the strength of the Royal Navy. It was never meant to be an offensive threat, it was meant to be a defensive deterrent. A navy not large enough to beat Britain but large enough that an attack would be too expensive.

>>1715297
>>1716306
This wasn't exclusively Wilhelm's fault. The Eulenburg-Harden affair got rid of pretty much all moderate and Pro-British courtiers and replaced them with more hawkish ones.