To Eulenburg Bülow owed his whole career—which, when all is said, remains the only statesmanlike one of the William the Second’s reign. - Emil Ludwig

And so the Emperor-King, in his oath, had sworn only to his own actual authority to decide all vital national questions “to the best of his ability”—and on what other principle does any reasonable human being proceed? None the less he remained, whatever the consequences, inviolable, unindictable, or, as it was expressed in other German National Constitutions, “hallowed.” At the beginning of the twentieth century, in the Old and the New Worlds, there was—besides the Tsar and the Sultan—no one who possessed such authority as William the Second.

Bismarck was an oppression on the realm.
For a decade no political intelligence had dared to raise its head, unless prepared to defy him; thus the best brains in the Opposition were repressed, instead of ripening to potential authority. No official could develop under his rule, for all feared him who drew all things into his orbit, and decreed. Justly could the young Emperor say: “I have no Ministers; they are all Prince Bismarck’s Ministers.”

That is the language of a gambler—of a man who stakes his all in one card... when the other players simply refuse to call a bluff, he may safely risk his stake.
And yet, with the great triumphs Hitler has flaunted, with the increase in power and population... how are we to explain the apathy shared by... Germans, with exceptions of the few thousand commandeered to function at processions? They do not revolt, yet they are neither happy nor content... the enthusiasm wanes... as it has been since the third year of the Hitler régime...