German Leadership

"Where did you get that hat ?"

Georg Pahl - Bundesarchiv

Hitler adopts what looks like a fawning attitude as he converses with Crown Prince Wilhelm, the latter in Hussar uniform, 1933. The Prussian/German Electoral, Royal and Imperial House of Hohenzollern appears to have courted, and to some extent to have been courted by, the Nazis in the early/mid 1930s. The former may have seen the latter as possibly providing some route back into German society - even a restoration of the Monarchy in some form. However, it is hard to believe that the Nazis regarded contacts like this as much more than photo-ops to put a smile on the faces of Monarchist military officers (most of whom did not really want the Monarchy actually to return at this stage, anyway). As to the quality of the potential monarch, one suspects that both Hitler and the old-style generals would have shared the view of their WW1 British enemies, who referred to the Crown Prince dismissively as "Little Willie". The Prince's popularity among WW1 German veterans was hardly improved by the perception (correct) that his intervention had been responsible in part for turning the Battle of Verdun from what could have been a strategic victory (albeit in purely attritional terms) for Germany to a strategic defeat in exactly the same terms - meaning simply that a lot of German soldiers were killed unnecessarily. In any event, the Hohenzollerns were allowed to fade back into the white sound zone. Kaiser Wilhelm died in 1941, still in exile at Doorn, Netherlands. "Little Willie" lived on his family's ancient estates in southern Germany until his death in 1951. But the family goes on; the present head of the family, Prince Georg Friedrich, is the image of his great-uncle, the late "Little Willie". There is no shortage of Hohenzollern "issue" around, should they ever be needed for ... well ... something. Anything ... Best regards, JR. (Bundesarchiv Bild 102-14437)