Meanwhile, in Minneapolis, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents shot dead Renee Good, a mother of three, and Alex Pretti, a nurse, during an operation. No federal investigation has followed.
Some observers reach instinctively for the ultimate, if clichéd, historical comparison, with Hitler and the Third Reich.
We must resist this impulse, partly because of Godwin’s Law. This internet adage holds that any argument, continued long enough, will invoke Hitler. At that point, useful discussion ends.
We must also resist it because casual comparisons cheapen the unique industrial horror of the Holocaust.
But the main reason to reject the comparison is that it is wrong. Trump is not a disciplined totalitarian with a coherent programme of racial extermination. He is far too chaotic, and not nearly ideologically motivated enough, for that.
A more useful parallel comes from an earlier chapter of German history. Donald Trump is the Kaiser Wilhelm II of our age.
Wilhelm II ruled Germany from 1888 to 1918. The tragedy of his reign was not that he destroyed German democracy, which barely existed back then. It was that he prevented it from developing.
Germany had the foundations for evolution toward parliamentary governance. But Wilhelm’s “personal rule” arrested that development, leaving the country stuck between absolutism and modernity. Worse, he dismantled the system of alliances Bismarck had constructed to keep Germany secure, replacing diplomacy with bluster.
Trump is doing something arguably worse. He has inherited a mature constitutional democracy with functioning institutions, independent courts and established norms – and he is breaking them. He is not the engine of a new order. He is sand in the gears of the old one.
The further parallels are striking. Wilhelm was a “media monarch,” addicted to public speeches, who bypassed his ministers to conduct foreign policy via telegrams and newspaper interviews.
The Daily Telegraph affair of 1908 illustrates the pattern. Wilhelm gave an unvetted interview to the British press in which he insulted the British, alarmed the French and Russians, and contradicted his own government’s foreign policy. His chancellor learned of it from the morning papers.
Trump has updated Wilhelm’s approach for the digital age. His account posts to Truth Social more than seventeen times daily on average. In contrast, he attended just twelve intelligence briefings in his first four months.
His secretaries of state and defence (sorry: of war) often learn of policy shifts only when their phones buzz. Officials scramble to interpret late-night posts and somehow turn them into policy.
Wilhelm had his so-called Camarilla, from the Spanish for “small room”: the circle of favourites who bypassed official channels to whisper into the Kaiser’s ear.
Trump has his own inner circle: Stephen Miller at the White House, Marco Rubio at State, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and Vice President J.D. Vance. The Venezuela operation was reportedly handled by a smaller group that included CIA Director John Ratcliffe. Career diplomats scrambled to explain actions nobody had consulted them about.
Wilhelm’s statecraft was personal. His childhood was emotionally abusive, leaving him with an insatiable hunger for recognition.
His motive for wrecking Germany’s alliance system was not strategic calculation, but spite. He craved the affection of his English relatives while simultaneously resenting them. He built a battle fleet to challenge Britain because he wanted admiration, not because Germany needed one.
Trump’s foreign policy runs on the same fuel. He tears at NATO not from strategic conviction but because European leaders do not flatter him enough. He prefers autocrats like Putin, Xi and Orbán because they understand that diplomacy, for him, is an exchange of compliments.
The Venezuela operation, according to reports, was accelerated because Maduro wounded Trump’s pride by mocking his dance moves. His Greenland obsession fits the pattern: beneath the talk about missile defence sits a real estate fantasy of the ultimate trophy acquisition.
Wilhelm believed in Gottesgnadentum, the divine right of kings. He answered to God alone, not to parliaments or constitutions.
Trump has developed a secular version of this doctrine. In February 2025, he posted to Truth Social: “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.” The quote is attributed to Napoleon. It echoes Nixon’s infamous claim: “When the president does it, that means it is not illegal.”
When asked what limits he recognised on his power, Trump suggested that the only real constraint was his personal morality.
Courts have blocked his executive orders. In immigration cases, judges have accused the administration of violating court orders, though some contempt findings have been contested on appeal. The message is plain: the leader stands above the law.
The killing of Renee Good showed where this leads. An American citizen died at the hands of a federal agent. The administration quickly defended the officer. The Justice Department has not opened a civil-rights investigation. With Alex Pretti, it appears there will not be one, either.
Then there is the grift. When he went into exile after World War I, Wilhelm arranged for dozens of railway carriages of furniture and possessions to follow him to his Dutch estate at Huis Doorn. Even in disgrace, the Kaiser thought of his comforts.
Trump has taken the monetisation of office to an industrial scale. Qatar gifted a $400 million Boeing 747 through a “presidential library” arrangement that critics say exploits a loophole in the Constitution’s ban on foreign gifts.
Reuters estimated that Trump-linked cryptocurrency ventures have generated more than $800 million in the first half of 2025 alone. This includes hundreds of millions from World Liberty token sales and an estimated $336 million from the $TRUMP meme coin. Top holders were offered invitations to a dinner at Trump’s private club outside Washington. The presidency has become a revenue stream.
Yet the grift, brazen as it is, is not the point.
Wilhelm II did not cause the Holocaust. But his reign destabilised Europe, isolated Germany and created the conditions for the catastrophes of the 20th century that followed. He was not the endpoint of German tragedy. That came later. He was the man who removed the guardrails.
Trump is no Hitler. He lacks the ideological discipline, the organisational capacity and the genocidal intent. That makes him more of a Wilhelm II figure. He is taking apart the institutions that constrain executive power, replacing professional governance with loyalty tests and treating public office as his property. And his motive for all this is nothing more than his own inflated ego.
The danger is not that America becomes the Third Reich. It is that America becomes Wilhelmine Germany: a great power made erratic by a leader who cannot distinguish his ego from the national interest.
Wilhelm’s reign ended in Germany’s defeat in World War I and imperial collapse. The Kaiser then spent his final decades in Dutch exile, raging against Jews and dreaming of restoration. He never understood what he had done wrong.
History does not repeat. But it sure rhymes.
Dr Oliver Hartwich is the Executive Director of The New Zealand Initiative think tank. This article was first published HERE.
We must resist this impulse, partly because of Godwin’s Law. This internet adage holds that any argument, continued long enough, will invoke Hitler. At that point, useful discussion ends.
We must also resist it because casual comparisons cheapen the unique industrial horror of the Holocaust.
But the main reason to reject the comparison is that it is wrong. Trump is not a disciplined totalitarian with a coherent programme of racial extermination. He is far too chaotic, and not nearly ideologically motivated enough, for that.
A more useful parallel comes from an earlier chapter of German history. Donald Trump is the Kaiser Wilhelm II of our age.
Wilhelm II ruled Germany from 1888 to 1918. The tragedy of his reign was not that he destroyed German democracy, which barely existed back then. It was that he prevented it from developing.
Germany had the foundations for evolution toward parliamentary governance. But Wilhelm’s “personal rule” arrested that development, leaving the country stuck between absolutism and modernity. Worse, he dismantled the system of alliances Bismarck had constructed to keep Germany secure, replacing diplomacy with bluster.
Trump is doing something arguably worse. He has inherited a mature constitutional democracy with functioning institutions, independent courts and established norms – and he is breaking them. He is not the engine of a new order. He is sand in the gears of the old one.
The further parallels are striking. Wilhelm was a “media monarch,” addicted to public speeches, who bypassed his ministers to conduct foreign policy via telegrams and newspaper interviews.
The Daily Telegraph affair of 1908 illustrates the pattern. Wilhelm gave an unvetted interview to the British press in which he insulted the British, alarmed the French and Russians, and contradicted his own government’s foreign policy. His chancellor learned of it from the morning papers.
Trump has updated Wilhelm’s approach for the digital age. His account posts to Truth Social more than seventeen times daily on average. In contrast, he attended just twelve intelligence briefings in his first four months.
His secretaries of state and defence (sorry: of war) often learn of policy shifts only when their phones buzz. Officials scramble to interpret late-night posts and somehow turn them into policy.
Wilhelm had his so-called Camarilla, from the Spanish for “small room”: the circle of favourites who bypassed official channels to whisper into the Kaiser’s ear.
Trump has his own inner circle: Stephen Miller at the White House, Marco Rubio at State, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and Vice President J.D. Vance. The Venezuela operation was reportedly handled by a smaller group that included CIA Director John Ratcliffe. Career diplomats scrambled to explain actions nobody had consulted them about.
Wilhelm’s statecraft was personal. His childhood was emotionally abusive, leaving him with an insatiable hunger for recognition.
His motive for wrecking Germany’s alliance system was not strategic calculation, but spite. He craved the affection of his English relatives while simultaneously resenting them. He built a battle fleet to challenge Britain because he wanted admiration, not because Germany needed one.
Trump’s foreign policy runs on the same fuel. He tears at NATO not from strategic conviction but because European leaders do not flatter him enough. He prefers autocrats like Putin, Xi and Orbán because they understand that diplomacy, for him, is an exchange of compliments.
The Venezuela operation, according to reports, was accelerated because Maduro wounded Trump’s pride by mocking his dance moves. His Greenland obsession fits the pattern: beneath the talk about missile defence sits a real estate fantasy of the ultimate trophy acquisition.
Wilhelm believed in Gottesgnadentum, the divine right of kings. He answered to God alone, not to parliaments or constitutions.
Trump has developed a secular version of this doctrine. In February 2025, he posted to Truth Social: “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.” The quote is attributed to Napoleon. It echoes Nixon’s infamous claim: “When the president does it, that means it is not illegal.”
When asked what limits he recognised on his power, Trump suggested that the only real constraint was his personal morality.
Courts have blocked his executive orders. In immigration cases, judges have accused the administration of violating court orders, though some contempt findings have been contested on appeal. The message is plain: the leader stands above the law.
The killing of Renee Good showed where this leads. An American citizen died at the hands of a federal agent. The administration quickly defended the officer. The Justice Department has not opened a civil-rights investigation. With Alex Pretti, it appears there will not be one, either.
Then there is the grift. When he went into exile after World War I, Wilhelm arranged for dozens of railway carriages of furniture and possessions to follow him to his Dutch estate at Huis Doorn. Even in disgrace, the Kaiser thought of his comforts.
Trump has taken the monetisation of office to an industrial scale. Qatar gifted a $400 million Boeing 747 through a “presidential library” arrangement that critics say exploits a loophole in the Constitution’s ban on foreign gifts.
Reuters estimated that Trump-linked cryptocurrency ventures have generated more than $800 million in the first half of 2025 alone. This includes hundreds of millions from World Liberty token sales and an estimated $336 million from the $TRUMP meme coin. Top holders were offered invitations to a dinner at Trump’s private club outside Washington. The presidency has become a revenue stream.
Yet the grift, brazen as it is, is not the point.
Wilhelm II did not cause the Holocaust. But his reign destabilised Europe, isolated Germany and created the conditions for the catastrophes of the 20th century that followed. He was not the endpoint of German tragedy. That came later. He was the man who removed the guardrails.
Trump is no Hitler. He lacks the ideological discipline, the organisational capacity and the genocidal intent. That makes him more of a Wilhelm II figure. He is taking apart the institutions that constrain executive power, replacing professional governance with loyalty tests and treating public office as his property. And his motive for all this is nothing more than his own inflated ego.
The danger is not that America becomes the Third Reich. It is that America becomes Wilhelmine Germany: a great power made erratic by a leader who cannot distinguish his ego from the national interest.
Wilhelm’s reign ended in Germany’s defeat in World War I and imperial collapse. The Kaiser then spent his final decades in Dutch exile, raging against Jews and dreaming of restoration. He never understood what he had done wrong.
History does not repeat. But it sure rhymes.
Dr Oliver Hartwich is the Executive Director of The New Zealand Initiative think tank. This article was first published HERE.
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