Prussian Princes in World War II

During the years of the Nazi dictatorship in Germany, some royals embraced the new regime while others opposed it. Those who joined the Nazis were mostly from minor families who felt they had nothing to lose by doing so and would have gained little if the old monarchy system had been restored. However, it was the Prussian royals who were the focus of the most attention as they had previously been not only the Royal Family of Prussia but the Imperial Family of the whole of Germany. Of those, it is important to note that only one son of the former Kaiser, Prince August Wilhelm and his family, took up the Nazi cause. His father, Kaiser Wilhelm II, practically disowned him for doing so as he refused to have anything to do with any government in Germany that was not the old monarchy. Some thought that Prince August Wilhelm harbored ambitions of gaining the imperial throne for himself or perhaps his son but, of course, that is something the Nazis would never have done. In the end, Hitler would turn on him as he turned on all the German royals when they could no longer be of use to him.

Hitler & Prince Charles Edward of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha

Numerous Prussian princes, while shunning the Nazi Party, did join the Wehrmacht (German armed forces) and fight in the war, at least early on. It is important to understand who these men were and why they served considering that the Nazis and everything connected with them have been vilified to the point of appearing as almost fictional caricatures of pure evil so that the actual facts of the situation are often ignored. Not every German was a Nazi and not even every Nazi chose to be so because they wanted to be on the most evil “team” on the world stage. Many men fought for Germany in World War II who were not members of the Nazi Party and, on the other hand, there were examples like the famous case of Oscar Schindler who was a card-carrying member of the Nazi Party who is honored to this day for all of the Jewish lives he saved during the Holocaust. The problem that plagued the German royals was the same as has been faced by many royals around the world whose countries have abolished their monarchies; whether to place themselves in opposition to their country because of its government or to defend their homeland regardless of the political situation.

In the absence of the Kaiser, exiled in The Netherlands, the highest ranking royal in Germany was Prussian Crown Prince Wilhelm. Of his sons, all who were able to, served in the German military during World War II in some capacity, at least for a time. The only one who did not was his youngest son, Prince Friedrich of Prussia, who was studying in England when the war broke out. He was arrested by British authorities as an “enemy alien” and placed in an internment camp in England and later moved to Canada. In both camps, his fellow inmates elected him their leader and he became a British citizen after the war in 1947. The first and third sons served in the German army while the second served in the Luftwaffe. Crown Prince Wilhelm himself is sometimes portrayed as a Nazi Party member or supporter. Neither is true. A veteran of the First World War and army group commander on the western front, the Crown Prince was as opposed to the Versailles Treaty as any patriotic German was, opposed the Weimar Republic and supported Germany reasserting itself as a proud member of the world community. However, he was never a member or supporter of the Nazi Party.

Crown Prince Wilhelm

Assumptions to the contrary mostly arise from the fact that numerous photos of the Crown Prince wearing what appears to be the standard Nazi Brownshirt uniform can be found. Despite appearances, the Crown Prince was not a Brownshirt but rather did belong to the National Socialist Motor Corps (NSKK) which was a subsidiary organization for automobile and motorcycle enthusiasts. It was a fact of life in Germany that, under the Nazi regime, virtually all such organizations had to adopt Nazi-style uniforms including the ubiquitous brown shirts and swastika armbands. However, there was nothing sinister about the NSKK itself. It trained drivers, held rallies and helped motorists, similar to organizations such as AAA in America or the British Automobile Association. Crown Prince Wilhelm was never a member of the Nazi Party and never endorsed Adolf Hitler or his movement. The Nazi leadership certainly never saw the Crown Prince as an ally but rather the opposite and their feelings on that score would become very clear during the course of World War II. While, early on, they tried to recruit royals as window-dressing to add legitimacy to Nazi gatherings, the Nazis were paranoid about any sympathy for the old monarchy and took action against the royals even if they were serving in uniform with the German armed forces.

Prince Wilhelm in East Prussia

Prince Wilhelm, the eldest son of Crown Prince Wilhelm, was born with every expectation of becoming German Kaiser one day. That all changed with the German Revolution in 1918 of course. However, as he reached adulthood, romance barred the way for his expected leadership of the House of Hohenzollern. In 1933, against the wishes of his grandfather, Prince Wilhelm married Dorothea von Salviati who he had met while in school in Bonn. Due to dynastic rules he had to renounce his claim to the throne and the rights of succession for any future children in order to marry the woman who had his heart. Upon doing so, the future of the House of Hohenzollern became the responsibility of his younger brother Prince Louis Ferdinand. He had been far away from Germany for a long time, having settled in the United States and taken a job in Detroit, Michigan where he was taken in by Henry Ford. President Roosevelt was also fond of the young man. When the actions of his brother called him back to Germany in 1934 he seemed the odd man out with some whispers that he was too taken with America and American ideas about democracy to be a potential Prussian monarch. Prince Louis Ferdinand was not pleased with the marriage of his brother and how it thrust him into the position of future leader of the family but it would be his line who would carry on the Hohenzollern legacy to the present day.

Prince Hubertus of Prussia

Prince Louis Ferdinand took a job in the aviation industry in Germany and later joined the Luftwaffe as a training officer. His older and younger brothers, Prince Wilhelm and Prince Hubertus both joined the army. Prince Wilhelm became an officer in the First Regiment of the First Division, rising to command the 11th Company in 1938. Prince Hubertus was to see service in the Eighth Regiment, Third Infantry Division (he later transferred to the Luftwaffe). When war broke out, Prince Wilhelm and Prince Hubertus both saw action in the German invasion of Poland. Another Prussian royal at the front was Prince Oskar Wilhelm who was a reserve officer. He was killed in action at Widawka, Poland on September 5, 1939. This Nazis noticed this but took no immediate action. Later, however, Prince Wilhelm was fighting at the front in the invasion of France and was mortally wounded at Valenciennes and died a few days later in Nivelles on May 26, 1940. Two Prussian princes being killed at the front disturbed the Nazi leadership who did not want the royals to have any share of the glory. However, they were more disturbed by what happened later.

Prince Alexander Ferdinand

When news of the deaths of Prince Oskar and Prince Wilhelm reached Germany there was an outpouring of sympathy toward the Prussian Royal Family. When the funeral for Prince Wilhelm was held at the Church of Peace more than 50,000 Germans turned out to show their support for the House of Hohenzollern. The sheer number of mourners caused the Nazi leadership to panic and they immediately enacted the so-called “Prince’s Decree” which banned all Prussian royals from military service. Prince Hubertus was pulled out of the line and basically forced to end his military career while Prince Louis Ferdinand in the Luftwaffe was prevented from ever seeing action. The only Prussian prince who was allowed to remain at his post was Prince Alexander Ferdinand, the son of Prince August Wilhelm and, like his father, a member of the Nazi Party and originally a member of the SA Brownshirts. When the decree was issued, it coincided with a Nazi crackdown on royals and monarchists in general. Any pretense of being in any way sympathetic to the old monarchy was dropped and even the few really pro-Nazi royals in Germany were pushed to the side and became subject to state scrutiny. Prince Alexander Ferdinand, who had once harbored hopes of becoming Hitler’s successor, was sidelined and his pro-Nazi politics also caused him to be shunned by his family. When he married in 1938 none of his Hohenzollern relations attended the wedding.

Prince Wilhelm Karl & Prince Oskar

Most of the Prussian Royal Family had much closer ties to the anti-Nazi underground than they did to the ruling party. Crown Prince Wilhelm, who some people regarded as too friendly with the Nazis, showed his true colors in subtle ways so as not to endanger his family such as the regular gift of cigars he sent to anti-Nazi monarchist Reinhold Wulle who was sent to a concentration camp for organizing a monarchist opposition party. Today, most tend to think that the Crown Prince had virtually nothing to do with the anti-Nazi movement but the Nazis themselves certainly did not think so and kept the Crown Prince under close surveillance throughout the war and after the assassination attempt on Hitler made in 1944 the Gestapo were ordered to shadow him at all times. The German resistance group which orchestrated that assassination attempt had numerous ties to the Prussian Royal Family. The man who would have been chancellor of Germany had the bomb plot and coup succeeded, Carl Friedrich Goerdeler, was a monarchist and most of the attention was on Prince Louis Ferdinand as a potential German Kaiser going forward. Many of the plotters were also members of the German branch of the Knights of St John which was presided over by Prince Oskar of Prussia and whose son (and successor in that position) later wrote a history of the German resistance movement.

Prince Louis Ferdinand

Although he was not personally involved in the assassination plot, the connections between the resistance and Prince Louis Ferdinand were sufficiently known for the Prince to be arrested, interrogated by the Gestapo and then imprisoned at the Dachau concentration camp. Adolf Hitler himself stated that, “the Crown Prince is the actual instigator” of the attempt on his life. Propaganda Minister Goebbels said of the German royals and aristocrats, “…We must exterminate this filth,” and SS chief Heinrich Himmler said, “There will be no more princes. Hitler gave me the order to finish off all the German princes and to do so immediately.” That, thankfully, did not happen but Prince Louis Ferdinand was sent to a concentration camp and the anti-royal crackdown was so widespread that even the pro-Nazi Prince Philip of Hesse and his wife Princess Mafalda of Italy were arrested and put in (separate) concentration camps. Princess Mafalda died there from injuries sustained when the Allies bombed an ammunition factory in the camp where she was being held. Estimates are that five to six thousand royals and aristocrats were murdered in the purges following the bomb plot. Himmler wanted all German princes to be paraded through Berlin to be spit on before they were killed and their property seized and redistributed to loyal Nazis.

Prince Wilhelm

It seems strange that some modern historians will go out of their way, grasping at straws, in a desperate effort to link the royals with the Nazis (in an effort to discredit them of course) when the Nazis themselves were absolutely certain that the royals were the heart and center of their most dangerous internal opposition. Those Prussian and other royal princes who fought in the German armed forces, almost without exception, did so purely out of their devotion to Germany and the German people and not because of any sympathy at all with the Nazi regime. Those princes and aristocrats who were truly devoted to the Nazi cause were very few and found themselves betrayed by the party they served and shunned by the rest of their class and often by their own families. The handful that the party did not turn against, such as Prince Josias zu Waldeck und Pyrmont, a notorious general in the SS, faced retribution at the hands of the Allies when the war was over. For the House of Hohenzollern, the Crown Prince was held under house arrest as some considered prosecuting him for “war crimes” during the First World War, which was plainly absurd but his death in 1951 saw leadership of the family pass to the capable hands of Prince Louis Ferdinand, a man with friendly ties to the Allies and a staunch opponent of the Nazi regime throughout his life.

The Great Frederick

It was on this day in 1712 that the future King Friedrich II of Prussia was born, better known as Frederick the Great, one of the "Enlightened Despots" and the military genius who held off almost all the great powers on the continent with his small but matchlessly efficient army.

Consort Profile: Louise of Mecklenburg-Strelitz

Probably no other Queen-consort in German history is so famous as Queen Louise of Prussia, wife of King Friedrich Wilhelm III. In the face of the greatest threat the Kingdom of Prussia would ever face it was this young queen who provided her people with a source of inspiration and moral courage. She was born Duchess Louise Augusta Wilhelmina Amalie of Mecklenburg-Strelitz in Hanover on March 10, 1776. Her father the Duke was governor of Hanover for King George III of Great Britain and her mother was of the Hessian ruling family. Her mother died when she was only six and this left Louise with a lifelong sympathy for orphans, reinforced by her own upbringing which was rather more modest than most would expect of a princess and in which charity was stressed. Her father remarried and Louise got along well with her stepmother but when she died as well her broken father took his children to Darmstadt to be raised by his Hessian mother-in-law Landgravine Marie Louise.

Louise grew up well educated, more fluent in French than German (which was not uncommon at the time), very well read and early on was recognized as a great beauty. Her father arranged for her to meet the heir to the Prussian throne when she was 17 and the serious, conservative, Christian crown prince immediately fell in love with her, as planned, and quickly announced that he would have no other for his wife. On December 24, 1793 the couple were married and the new crown princess was welcomed to Berlin with ecstatic enthusiasm. She was described as possessing an “inner nobility” and a heart of “angelic goodness”. Her husband called her “the princess of princesses” and the two were very devoted to each other. Sadly, their first child was stillborn but, fortunately, nine healthy children followed in quick succession. Famous for her compassion and charity, when she became Queen on November 16, 1797 when her husband became King Friedrich Wilhelm III of Prussia, her only thought was how much more she would then be able to help.

The new King and Queen toured Prussia and for the first time a royal consort became a celebrity. She was remarkable for being so different from those who had gone before her and yet, unlike others in similar situations, she was always supportive of her husband from first to last and never tried to compete with him or rival him even though many whispered that she was the more intelligent of the two. Despite the efforts of some to gain her support for war she sided with her husband in trying to keep Prussia out of the French Revolutionary and later Napoleonic Wars. Yet, war finally came and the King cast his lot with the recently victorious French. The Queen preferred war against France and after a time the King was finally persuaded to join the Allies. Queen Louise, appearing like an Amazon one observer said, accompanied her husband on campaign to the battle of Jena where, unfortunately for them, the Prussians were soundly defeated by Napoleon and the King and Queen had to hastily abandon the field to avoid capture.

In probably the darkest period of their history before 1945, French troops occupied Berlin and Queen Louise, who had taken ill, had to flee with the King to East Prussia with no food or water. Few people despised the French Emperor as much as Queen Louise, yet she met with him at Tilsit to try to obtain better terms of peace for Prussia. Napoleon was impressed by her but not moved to mercy. From that point on Queen Louise did all in her power to encourage her people to hold on until the day of vengeance. She backed reform efforts in the government and military, boosted morale in the army and the public at large, leading Napoleon to remark that Queen Louise was, “the only real man in Prussia”. She tried to look at the bright side even in so dark a period and from the soldiers and ministers to her own children expected that their suffering would only steel them to greater accomplishments in the future.

Her marriage remained a happy one but observers noted that the Queen who was once so joyful and boisterous had taken on an aura of iron determination. She would not, alas, live to see the final victory of her beloved country. After being frequently ill for quite some time she passed away in the arms of her beloved husband on July 19, 1810. The Prussians went into deep mourning and even the French Emperor remarked that the King, “has lost his best minister”. Her people, however, did not forget her and she became something of a patron saint in the wave of patriotic nationalism that ultimately swept Prussia to final victory over Napoleon.

Monarch Profile: Kaiser Friedrich III

The sad distinction of having the shortest reign of all the German Emperors goes to Kaiser Friedrich III and yet he is a figure that continues to fascinate many people, wondering how Germany might have developed had he remained longer on the throne of Prussia and the German Empire. He was born Friedrich Wilhelm Nikolaus Karl of the House of Hohenzollern at the New Palace in Potsdam, Prussia on October 18, 1831 to Prince Wilhelm and Princess Augusta of Saxe-Weimar. At the time Prussia was ruled by his uncle King Friedrich Wilhelm IV. His parents had an often troubled relationship. Wilhelm had wanted to marry a Polish princess but his brother would not allow it and arranged the match with Princess Augusta. A known and opinionated liberal she clashed frequently with her very conservative Prussian husband and their children grew up rather troubled and isolated because of this.

Young Prince Friedrich was given a normal upbringing for a Prussian prince with a great deal of discipline, ‘tough love’ and a focus on the military. However, during these years liberalism was running rampant throughout Europe and even then Friedrich began to take a somewhat sympathetic view of them. It was the liberals who conjured up that thing called German nationalism and who advocated the unification of all the German peoples into a single empire under a constitutional monarchy. In most royal courts “constitution” was still a dirty word but Friedrich was at least sympathetic to the idea of a united Germany and this opened the way to his becoming at least more willing to consider the other liberal ideas they espoused. He was also influenced by his mother who insisted that he be given a more liberal education than was normal for Prussian princes. He grew up to be multi-lingual, speaking German, French and English with at least some knowledge of Latin. He was very athletic, particularly good at gymnastics and showed promise as a soldier. When he was 18 he went to study at the University of Bonn which strengthened his liberal leanings, as did his membership in the Freemason secret society, and rather alarmed the more traditional members of his family, particularly his father who was a very ‘old school’ Prussian royal.

This tension only increased with the search for a wife for Friedrich. His father, being sympathetic toward royal autocracy, favored a Russian bride while his mother looked to the most well established constitutional monarchy of Great Britain. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were anxious to maintain the German ties of the British Royal Family and the Belgian King Leopold I (who had helped arrange the very successful match of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert) thought Prince Friedrich would make an ideal husband for the Princess Royal Victoria. Prince Albert was especially enthusiastic, thinking that the marriage of his daughter to the heir to the Prussian throne would be the turning point in making the most powerful German kingdom a model of liberal enlightenment and constitutional monarchy for the other states. Prince Wilhelm conceded at last and on January 25, 1858 Crown Prince Friedrich and Princess Royal Victoria were married at the St James Palace chapel in London (to the consternation of many Prussians who thought the wedding should be in their own country). Despite being an arranged marriage it was a winning match. The two were quite taken with each other from the start and would remain staunchly devoted to each other for the rest of their lives.

If Friedrich was a liberal by Prussian standards his new British bride was positively revolutionary. She did not find much satisfactory about Prussia when she arrived and determined that practically everything needed changing, quickly and drastically. Friedrich, for his part, tended to agree with her but was a little more realistic about the time it would take to effect this transformation. Prussia had struggled to the top of the German-speaking world by absolute royal rule and an incredibly strong army so becoming a moderate, liberal, constitutional monarchy was not a change that could be done quickly or easily. Between 1858 and 1872 Fritz and Vicky (as they were informally known) had eight children of whom the most famous and troublesome to the royal couple would be their firstborn the future Kaiser Wilhelm II.

On January 2, 1861 Friedrich became Crown Prince upon his father’s elevation to the status of King Wilhelm I of Prussia. Although liberal elements were on the ascendant in Prussia the King clashed with the parliament and would not bend to their will. He finally appointed Otto von Bismarck Minister-President and he was able to bring the politicians to heel. Crown Prince Friedrich was frequently at odds with both his father and Bismarck. The more he opposed them, the more they distrusted him and kept him out of state affairs which in turned hardened Friedrich against them. He often escaped Berlin to the more favorable political climate of Great Britain where his ideas were more mainstream. He went into battle for the first time during the war with Denmark in which he performed well. In the subsequent war with Austria he led one of the three main Prussian armies and again proved himself a capable soldier, ensuring victory over the Austrians at the Battle of Koeniggraetz. However, he had no love of warfare and actually sided with his enemy Bismarck against the other Prussian leaders who wanted to continue the war against Austria. Yet, not long after he commanded an army again during the 1870 war with the Second French Empire.

Once again, Crown Prince Friedrich won many laurels and several victories, becoming widely respected among the international community for his humanity toward the French and adored by his soldiers for the care he took of them. The German Empire was achieved, Wilhelm I became German Kaiser and Friedrich became an imperial crown prince. Yet, he remained at odds with his conservative father and increasingly so with his son who had been taken in by Prince Bismarck. Fritz and Vicky were as devoted to each other as ever but often felt quite isolated, which they were, but bided their time for when the Hohenzollern crown would pass to Friedrich and he could make, not only Prussia but now all of Germany, the liberal constitutional monarchy he and his wife envisioned.

However, when the time finally came Friedrich had already been stricken with the throat cancer that was soon to take his life. In 1888 Wilhelm I passed away at the age of 90 and his son became Kaiser Friedrich III but his illness was already so advanced he could not attend most of the festivities honoring the occasion. He bestowed honors on his wife, long unappreciated in his view by the conservative court of his father, and he did work as hard as he could in spite of the fact that he could not speak and all the doctors and all of their efforts proved ultimately useless. As his condition grew even worse Empress Victoria acted as his guardian, doing her best to thwart those who were already rushing to gain the good graces of Wilhelm II in expectation of his rapid elevation. After only 99 days on the throne Kaiser Friedrich III died on June 15, 1888 lamenting what would become of Germany when he was gone.

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