Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany’s last telegram to Tsar Nicholas II of Russia (it was received after the declaration of war, which is written on the top in Russian)

10 comments

1. [Their telegrams](https://wwi.lib.byu.edu/index.php/The_Willy-Nicky_Telegrams)

2. Signed – your friendly neighbour Willy. 😛

3. They sent telegrams in English?

4. I must officially request you to oblige your army not to cross our borders to avoid endless misery

   — Willy

5. It really is kind of sad to see how much death and misery would have possibly been avoided if the Queen mothers had been alive to haul their screaming kids up from the ear in to the table to discuss and apologize or they’d get no dinner… figuratively ofc.

   But no really, had they arranged a conference and actually hashed things out tete-a-tete the might not have been a war at all.

6. It looks like they substituted a “ya” for an R in some places, e.g. “army” on the fifth line.

7. I wish some history buff explained to me the following apparent contradiction in German policy in those days. In the German declaration of war, we read that Germany declared war because the Russian mobilization represented an existential threat. Therefore they demanded that the Russians cancel the mobilization and when they didn’t, they declared war. But German experts famously estimated that Russian mobilization would take six weeks before Russia became combat-ready, while Germany mobilized much quicker. So why did Germany declare war on the 1st August? Even if we accept that mobilization equals war and if Russia doesn’t cancel mobilization then Germany has no choice but declare war, they could have waited another two or three days (or weeks), so why didn’t they?

8. pretty serious family feud

9. Willy and Nicky…
   The suicide of Europe.

10. This letter made USSR…