Still More Embarrassing Chapters in German History

Wikipedia makes it sound like Bismarck was sacked because Wilhelm and he disagreed about the treatment of striking mine workers, not about expansionism: "When his arguments could not convince Wilhelm, Bismarck became excited and agitated until uncharacteristically blurting out his motive to see the bill fail: to have the socialists agitate until a violent clash occurred that could be used as a pretext to crush them. Wilhelm countered that he was not willing to open his reign with a bloody campaign against his own subjects."

Wilhelm never said this, it was Bernhard von Bülow in a parliament debatte in 1897. And the full sentence goes: "we do not want to put anybody in the shades, but we demand our place at the sun". Such sentence were phrased probably everyday in every european capital for centuries. It is thus quite odd that this particular sentence is still well-known.

By the way, it was not Wilhelm you ordered to gather colonies but German private enterpreneurs who "blackmailed" Bismarck to protect their private possessions in Africa by declaring them to German protectorates.

And finally, Wilhelm did not "pulled out" the Reinsurance Treaty with Russia. The treaty just expired in 1890 and the German government was not interested in an extension of this treaty as it was considered to be unfair and thus never planned to have a long lifetime.

And from all what we know, Wilhelm II was not the smartest monarch in history. And neither a particular powerful. In fact almost none of the Wilhelm II bashing is backed by historic records but rather by war propaganda which is for whatever reason still repeated.