In Europe

the century of the French, and the nineteenth the century of the British, in their eyes the twentieth century was to be German. And, in a certain sense, it was. Around the turn of the century they began assembling a gigantic fleet, as a retort to British naval power. They cultivated the old enmities with Russia and France, thereby driving those countries into each other's arms. They began an arms race. Their thinking and behaviour focused increasingly on an altered version of stability: outside Europe, balance rules; inside Europe, Germany rules.
    Yet despite its appropriation of power, the new German nation lacked the natural status of older countries such as France and Great Britain. On the one hand, a modern civil society was developing, with prospering trade and industry; on the other, however, real power was still in thehands of a few hundred aristocratic families and an associate caste of top officials and officers who danced to the kaiser's tunes. On the one hand, the Germans’ self-awareness was growing with each passing year; on the other, Germany continued to live in a state of uncertainty about its national character and even its national boundaries, beyond which there were Germans living as well. The German state, in short, was much smaller than the German nation.
    Wilhelm II's task, therefore, was somehow to provide emotional cohesion for this disconnected land. As in every brand-new nation, the new subjects had to be given the feeling ‘this is something to which I want to belong, this is a great thing, this will lift us out of the mire of our existence’. That is why young nations build monuments, grand government buildings and sometimes even whole capitals. But Kaiser Wilhelm took things a step further. He adopted a quasinational style of government as well, a brand of theatre that fit his own person to a tee. The result, in the words of the German historian Michael Stürmer, was a ruling style consisting of ‘a great deal of propaganda, sweeping gestures and alluring prospects, a pinch of the very old and a pinch of the very new, and none of it real: pure bread and games.’
    Wilhelm's theatricality lacked conviction in other ways too. Germany had long ceased to be the country of regimental colours, laurel wreaths and Electors chiselled in marble. Beneath the great display of tradition, it had, like Britain, become a modern and pluriform nation with countless intellectual, economic and cultural ties with the rest of the world. In Britain, many of the traditions still had a certain historical basis, and enjoyed broad popular support. The superficial forms created by Wilhelm, however, were empty and came far too late.
    The remarkable thing was that these same contradictions were a part of Wilhelm himself. His manner was nostalgic, but at the same time his interests enthusiastically embraced all things new. When he heard about the incredible speed at which the American Barnum & Bailey's circus, which was touring Germany at the time, could load and unload its circus trains, he immediately sent a few officers to take a look. The Germany Army then actually adopted several of the circus’ techniques. Many such modernisations were spurred on by Wilhelm's enthusiasm. During his reign, Berlin, alongside New York, became the world's major centre forthe chemical industry and electrical engineering. The mega-concern Siemens, for example, owed its success primarily to the enormous sums spent by the German imperial army on the development of telegraph, telephone, radio and other modern communications systems. With more than half a million employees, the Prussian rail network was the largest and best-organised enterprise in Europe. Contemporaries described the hustle and bustle of the Potsdamer Platz as ‘deafening’: in 1896, the square was crossed each day by 6,000 freight cars, 1,500 private coaches, 7,000 hansom cabs, 2,000 omnibuses and 4,000 trams.
    Under Wilhelm, therefore, Germany was more than a relic of a mystical, nonexistent past. It was, as the British urban historian Peter Hall correctly describes it, the world's first modern military-industrial state. It was a meeting place of extremes, a disconcerting clash between old dreams and the modern age.
    Much of that Berlin has since been obliterated, but Wilhelm's cathedral, the Dom (1905), survives. Here the kaiser's voice can still be heard. In his younger years he believed that he was God's instrument on earth, and that any criticism of his