Kaiser Wilhelm II is one of the key figures in the history of twentieth-century Europe: King of Prussia and German Emperor from 1888 to the collapse of Germany in 1918 and a crucial player in the events that led to the outbreak of World War I. Drawing on a wide range of sources including unpublished archival material, this study focuses on: the character and extent of his power; his political goals; his success in achieving them; the mechanisms by which he projected authority and exercised influence; his role in the formation of foreign policy and his impact on the events of July 1914; and his part in the German leadership's world-historical decision to risk unconditional submarine warfare in 1917." "Following Kaiser Wilhelm's political career from his youth at the Hohenzollern court through the turbulent peacetime decades of the Wilhelmine era into global war and exile, the book presents a new interpretation of this controversial monarch and assesses the impact on Germany of his forty-year reign.