Daily Telegraph Affair

The Daily Telegraph Affair of 1908 was a major diplomatic blunder by German Kaiser Wilhelm II that increased European tensions in the years before the First World War. It was his most damaging personal mistake and cost him much of his prestige and power and had a far greater impact in Germany than overseas. The Daily Telegraph was a London newspaper that published an interview with the Kaiser. It included wild statements and diplomatically damaging remarks.

Wilhelm had seen the interview as an opportunity to promote his views and ideas on Anglo-German friendship, but due to his emotional outbursts during the course of the interview, he ended up further alienating not only the British, but also the French, Russians, and Japanese. 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." The effect in Germany was quite significant, with serious calls for his abdication.

The conservative Junker politician Elard von Oldenburg-Januschau was the only member of the Reichstag to defend the Kaiser throughout the Affair. Wilhelm kept a very low profile for many months after the Daily Telegraph fiasco, but later exacted his revenge by forcing the resignation of the chancellor, Prince Bülow, who had abandoned the Emperor to public scorn by not having the transcript edited before its German publication. The Daily Telegraph crisis deeply wounded Wilhelm's previously unimpaired self-confidence, and he soon suffered a severe bout of depression from which he never fully recovered. He lost much of the influence he had previously exercised in domestic and foreign policy.