Frederick 3

No, he could have gotten Germany out of the war!

Whhich wouldn't exactly be a bad thing, given how Bismarck was a far more competent statesmen than any of the Emperors

he took power knowing that he had months at best to live and would not live to see any reforms pushed through.

he appears to have a) not been physically up to the task due to his advanced illness b) been aware that a hasty and incomplete set of reforms would cause more harm than good especially given that it would lack a sponsor/driving force once he died.

had he inherited the throne in good health and with a prospect of living at least 20+ years as emperor he likely would have pushed liberalisation of germany and a policy of general peace as opposed to his idiot sons policy of seeking world power and massive egotism

No, Wilhelm 1 was a great emperor

>became Emperor against his will
>he was staunchly against it but agreed to it anyway
He was Bismarck's bitch

>citation needed

Germany and Britain could have actually been great allies. Both were enemies of France and had cultural/monarchical ties.

The only reason they became enemies was because Willy wacted Germany to have a big colonial empire and a massive navy to rival Britain's. This is what drew the ire of Britain.

Honestly, if a the Kaiser had been content with staying in Europe and being a land power, Britain would have allied German.

>die glänzende preußische Krone mit dieser Schmutzkrone vertauschen müssen
>[I had to] exchange the sparkling Prussian crown against this gutter crown
Wilhelm to his son, the crown prince
>Morgen ist der unglücklichste Tag meines Lebens! Da tragen wir das preußische Königtum zu Grabe
>Tommorow's the unluckiest day in my life. We will bury the Prussian Kingship
Wilhelm again, on the eve of the coronation

Is that why they hated him?

I thought the reason Britain allied with France was because of the triple entente

>I thought the reason Britain allied with France was because of the British alliance with France
You're not so smart, are you?

Then why didn't Otto become king?

Yes, that is literally what I meant

Frederick was a Bongaboo. His wife was Queen Victoria's eldest child and his mother was a massive liberal (for the time period) from Weimar who insisted on him getting a classic liberal education and both he and his wife were liberals who hated the fact that the German Empire was created through military action. They were so liberal that they would attend synagogues in full regalia to denounce anti-semitism which, for the 1800s, is the equivalent of when you see Trudeau at a mosque or whatever.

He and Victoria greatly admired British liberalism and the British parliamentary system and had wanted to basically limit the power of both the emperor and the Chancellor in favor of a more liberal, British style system of government. He would definitely have sucked up to the Brits as the 1890s wore on and I suspect, if he lived until 1914, would've stayed neutral regarding Austria-Hungary.

Of course by that point he would've been in his 80s and even if he doesn't die of cancer after a few months I doubt he makes it that far. If he does succeed in "liberalizing" Germany then I suspect the junkers and other elite classes that hated him would've done what they could to dismantle things though I suspect they'd increase the Chancellor's powers while keeping the monarch's limited thus avoiding the frenzied and bi-polar foreign policy whims of Wilhelm.

>had he inherited the throne in good health and with a prospect of living at least 20+ years as emperor he likely would have pushed liberalisation of germany and a policy of general peace as opposed to his idiot sons policy of seeking world power and massive egotism
That was likely the idea: William reigns for a few years (he was already in his mid-60s when unification happened) and then Frederick takes over. Likely this then plays out in a political battle between the liberal idealist Frederick and the pragmatic realist Bismarck.

But William had to go and fuck it up by living another 25+ years.

It was a bunch of different things and you should really read The Sleepwalkers to understand the pragmatism that went into Britain's alliances at the turn of the century.

There was the Fashoda Incident in 1898 where the French tried to send a party to kick the British out of Sudan but got diplomatically trounced, realized that they were in a weak position colonially and started gravitating more towards the British sphere. After the Boer War, the Brits realized they had no allies in Europe so the Entente Cordiale comes about.

Meanwhile after getting beaten by Japan, the Russians decided to turn westward for their ambitions and the Brits, desperate to protect India, entered into alliance with them while the Russians began stoking the fires of pan-Slavism in the Balkans to try and create puppet states and eat away at A-H's dominance in the region.

Germany was becoming an industrial rival to Britain (and IIRC was surpassing it) and threatened to throw the balance of power on the continent out of whack. Wilhelm was pretty much seen as a dog barking way too much as well but a lot of the upper levels of British government absolutely hated the Germans to an almost racist degree: see Eyre Crowe's "Memorandum on the Present State of British Relations with France and Germany" where German's are a slobbering violent horde out for world domination against poor Britain and are like the second coming of Napoleon. Edward Grey loved it and gleefully passed it around to anyone he could.

>become the Bismarcks bitch once he took power
THAT'S NOT A BAD THING

I agree, but he claimed that Fritz would ally with Britain when he would actually ally with Russia

>Willy starts WWII

Correct but Fashoda was a joke of a French expedition. A handful of underfed poorly dressed French officers and colonial troops vs. like 1500 British and Egyptian soldiers under Kitchener

Also, like a lot of modern French cololnial history the whole thing was led by rogue French officers who were acting on their own initiative, so it wasn't really French gov't approved

German aristocrat detected

I wish the DreiKaiserBund evolves into a modern alliance

Not saying it was competent or anything, just that the French got their asses kicked diplomatically and started sucking up to the Brits soon after.

Really, the whole pre-World War I period is just a series of colonial dick waving and tantrums, alliance shifting, stubborn ideals of pride and honor and paranoia leading governments to out think themselves.

Bismarck himself was paranoid that Frederick was going to try and minimize his influence/kick him out eventually... which Frederick and Victoria (because it wasn't going to be JUST Frederick, he and his wife planned on co-ruling) were almost certainly planning on.

i only pointed it out cause it's a hilarious case of french inferiority complex if there ever was one

>Otto thinks his job is safe when Frederick bites it
>Willy fires him the next week
Kek

His wife co-ruling was Fritz's greatest weakness, she was despised by all of Germany

Bismarck actually predicted that Willy was gonna fire him, he shed tears of frustration when he heard that Fritz was gonna die

It's pretty funny because Bismarck tried to drive a wedge between Willy and his parents and use him as a tool against them. To paraphrase Jeru, Bismarck played himself.

Frederick and his bong wife Victoria were bunch of liberals who desperately wanted to make Germany a constitutional monarchy and even more liberal than Weimar Germany.
They would have fired Bismarck even earlier than Willy and plunge the Reich into eternal reformation which would piss off Prussians and the military.
The only good thing it would accomplish, is that Germany would permanently become British ally and become much less absolutist which ruined Willy's Germany.

Because why would he? He had no legitimacy to claim the crown and had all the power he needed as Reichskanzler.

>tfw Bismarck dynasty will never rule the throne

The military thing is always kind of funny. Frederick hated war and wasn't a fan of the military yet, by all accounts, he was a great soldier and a very good leader who inspired loyalty in his men and impressed even his enemies with his humanity.

Dude was a fucking Gundam protagonist irl. I bet he yelled about wishing "we could just understand each other" as he kills enemy soldiers.

He had no political pull because his father excluded him from politics all his life

I don't blame willy, Bismark was a senile old fuck and kept constantly fucking up after unifying Germany. If I was Wilhelm 1 I would have fired Bismark the second the German Empire was created.

>Dude was a fucking Gundam protagonist irl. I bet he yelled about wishing "we could just understand each other" as he kills enemy soldiers.
lol