Comparing Trump to A German President, Not Hitler But the Kaiser

By Nick Babel

The easy comparison made about Donald Trump is one to the infamous Adolph Hitler. While there certainly is some similarities, i.e. populist rhetoric, over the top goofy appearance, a better comparison can be made to the man that forced Germany into the Great War, WWI. That man was Kaiser Wilhelm II and he was a man whose inferiority complex led to millions of deaths.

Kaiser Wilhelm has been historically described as “Bombastic and impetuous, he sometimes made tactless pronouncements on sensitive topics without consulting his ministers.” Now there was no Twitter back in Wilhelm's day but this seems like an apt description for the current leader of the “free world” Donald Trump.

Both Wilhelm and Trump suffer/suffered from a massive inferiority complex. For Wilhelm there were several factors for this complex. Wilhelm was born to parents Prince Frederick William of Prussia (the future Frederick III) and his wife, Victoria, Princess Royal, the eldest daughter of Britain's Queen Victoria. This made him half British. A fact that led him to always feel like an outsider.

Historian David Fromkin described Wilhelm's self loathing.

“From the outset, the half-German side of him was at war with the half-English side. He was wildly jealous of the British, wanting to be British, wanting to be better at being British than the British were, while at the same time hating them and resenting them because he never could be fully accepted by them.”

As for Donald, there are several factors for his inferiority complex, the first also involves his parents, more accurately his father Fred Trump. Fred Trump was an entrepreneur that built his business with an $800 loan from his mother and later became a huge builder/slumlord/landlord. Donald was given a $1 million dollar loan according to him, others have speculated the loan was closer to $40 million as that was the price of the company that was given to him. Donald on the other hand was never as successful as his father at being a businessman. He has gone through 6 bankruptcies with his business ventures. Yes he is reportedly (won't release tax returns) worth more than his father ever was but that has been acquired through celebrity, television, and branding, not through the actual growth of his business like his father. The $800 dollar loan Fred received and became a billionaire with compared to the $1 million to $40 million that Donald received is a worthy reason to feel inferior to your father. Trump knows these facts and deep down inside it bothers him greatly.

The second reason for their inferiority complex's is that they are/were both somewhat physically impaired men. Wilhelm was born with Erb's Palsy which left his left arm about 6 inches shorter than his right arm. He often tried to conceal this fact with his clothing and many believe this contributed to his inferiority complex.

Trump as it is well known and documented has tiny hands and probably another tiny appendage that makes his inferiority complex so strong. Trump loves to tell everyone how “big, huge, great, etc.” that he is or that his “accomplishments” are. This is a man compensating for his smallness just like the Kaiser did with his arm deformity.

Historian Thomas Nipperdey described Wilhelm's personality as “...gifted, with a quick understanding, sometimes brilliant, with a taste for the modern,—technology, industry, science—but at the same time superficial, hasty, restless, unable to relax, without any deeper level of seriousness, without any desire for hard work or drive to see things through to the end, without any sense of sobriety, for balance and boundaries, or even for reality and real problems, uncontrollable and scarcely capable of learning from experience, desperate for applause and success.”

You could literally put that same quote next to a historian talking about Trump and even Pro-Trump advocates would have to nod their head at the description of him. He knows he's a con-man and he knows that he is on the wrong side of a lot of issues but it doesn't matter to him. He just wants to be worshiped. He also loves platitudes and simplifications of complex issues. His “Build A Wall” is the kind of thing someone says when they have no real factual arguments to make. Immigration is a complex issue and it does need to be fixed but “build a wall” is the kind of thing someone who lacks a “deeper level of seriousness” would come up with.

Bismarck said early on in his life, he wanted every day to be his birthday—romantic, sentimental and theatrical, unsure and arrogant, with an immeasurably exaggerated self-confidence and desire to show off, a juvenile cadet, who never took the tone of the officers' mess out of his voice, and brashly wanted to play the part of the supreme warlord, full of panicky fear of a monotonous life without any diversions.

Trump has lived his life in much the same way. Putting his name on buildings, casinos, hotels, hats, clothing, etc. He loves to let everyone know he thinks very highly of himself. He's built his con game on complimentary adjectives. He loves to tell you how, “bigly, huge, great, magnificent” everything about him is. The word “Con-Man” comes from the word confidence man. Trump is nothing but false confidence, it's almost awkwardly see through but somehow many don't quite see through it.

Wilhelm was a known anti-Semite. He was quoted as saying, "deepest, most disgusting shame ever perpetrated by a person in history, the Germans have done to themselves... egged on and misled by the tribe of Judah... Let no German ever forget this, nor rest until these parasites have been destroyed and exterminated from German soil!"

Trump, while not necessarily an anti-semite is a known racist that has had issues with this well before he rose to power. Trump initially came to public attention in 1973 when he was accused by the Justice Department of violations of the Fair Housing Act in the operation of 39 buildings. The Department of Justice said that black "testers" were sent to more than half a dozen buildings and were denied apartments, but a similar white tester would then be offered an apartment in the same building. The government alleged that Trump's corporation quoted different rental terms and conditions to blacks and made false "no vacancy" statements to blacks for apartments they managed in Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island.

Trump has also been openly supported by the KKK, (which his father was allegedly a member of) David Duke, & the new Alt-Right (New Nazi's) movement.

German foreign policy under Wilhelm II was faced with a number of significant problems. Perhaps the most apparent was that Wilhelm was an impatient man, subjective in his reactions and affected strongly by sentiment and impulse. He was personally ill-equipped to steer German foreign policy along a rational course.

Oh Shit! Once again you could describe Trump as an “impatient man, subjective in his reactions and affected strongly by sentiment and impulse”. Trump has already taken to alienating China, and Mexico through his actions and he's only been President for 6 days!

Wilhelm was also known for his blunders with the press. He famously did an interview with the British paper the “Daily Telegraph” which was full of wild statements and angry outbursts. He implied, among other things, that the Germans cared nothing for the British; that the French and Russians had attempted to incite Germany to intervene in the Second Boer War; and that the German naval buildup was targeted against the Japanese, not Britain. One memorable quotation from the interview was, "You English are mad, mad, mad as March hares."

Trump has had so many blunders with the press I could write another whole essay that just mentions all of them. He's currently feuding with the biggest news network in the country CNN, calling them “fake news” in his first press conference. Not to mention his sexual assault confessions with Billy Bush when he didn't know the microphone was on. That is just a couple of examples.

There are darker comparisons that have yet to happen that could easily become reality down the road. Wilhelm was largely responsible for WWI, if he had listened to the great German General Otto Von Bismark he would have made sure he had an alliance with Russia before invading France. He also could have possibly avoided British involvement in the war if he had not decided to go through Belgium to invade France.

As for Trump who knows what war/wars he could lead us into? Picking fights with China, & our neighbors in Mexico. I hope the comparisons end with what has already happened, but Trump is the kind of guy that does things to boost his bravado and lives with the same mentality as Wilhelm did.

Below is a quote that should be inscribed onto Trumps tombstone but hopefully won't be inscribed on our nations tombstone.

“Uncontrollable and scarcely capable of learning from experience, desperate for applause and success”- Donald Trump/Kaiser Wilhelm II