Talk:German Empire
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the German Empire article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the subject of the article. |
Article policies
|
| Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
Archives: 1, 2Auto-archiving period: 6 months  |
 | This article is written in American English, which has its own spelling conventions (center, color, defense, realize, traveled) and some terms may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus. |
 | A fact from this article was featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the On this day section on January 18, 2005, January 18, 2006, January 18, 2007, January 18, 2008, and January 18, 2009. |
 | This  level-4 vital article is rated B-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.It is of interest to multiple WikiProjects. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
.svg)
Opinions are not facts
"The emperor's inconsistent and often unpredictable decisions contributed to the tensions that culminated in the outbreak of the war."
This is a completely subjective opinion and seems to be mostly based on Allied propaganda. WWI and its development and outbreak are a complex topic... This part should either be removed completely or at least changed heavily.... Moctezuma1466 (talk) 22:30, 18 April 2026 (UTC)
The Empire as a military dictatorship
I would like to eliminate note [a] and rewrite the paragraph at the end of the 'Domestic affairs' section that calls the Empire a 'military dictatorship'. It needs to reflect that by no means all historians agree that it was. The rewrite would briefly note the main reasons why some historians call it a dictatorship and then the reasons why many don't.
Of the 10(!) citations in this article that support it being a military dictatorship, 3 include no page number so can't be verified: Cecil [9] & [100]; Kitchen [101]; Ryan [15] (plus a search of the article for 'dictator / dictatorship' gets no hits). Four support the claim: Wheeler-Bennett [8], Haffner [13], Hirschfeld [14] (although the support is qualified), and [16], which is a thin website with one mention of a dictatorship without support. Three on closer look argue against a dictatorship: Feldman [11] (the cited page 180 has nothing to do with dictatorship, but pages 407 & 456 state that it was not a military dictatorship); Tipton [12] (a few paragraphs after the cited location it states that Ludendorff was not a dictator); [17] has no page number, but p. 131 states that the OHL was not powerful enough to be dictatorial.
I could find only one other major source that supports a dictatorship – Christopher Clark in "Wilhelm II", p 321 (in the German translation). Three major sources argue against it: Nipperdey in "Deutsche Geschichte 1866–1918" vol. 2, p. 833; Ullrich in "Die Nervöse Grossmacht" p. 618 cites Nipperdey; and Wehler in "Deutsche Gesellschftsgeschichte" vol. 4, p. 113.
Winkler in "The Long Road West" vol. 1 doesn't use the words 'dictator' or 'dictatorship' (e-book search in an English translation). In addition, the Wiki article History of Germany during World War I has no mention of dictatorship.
Please respond if you have objections or suggestions. GHStPaulMN (talk) 18:30, 2 August 2026 (UTC)
- Support per GHStPaulMN. Fengrímur (talk) 12:19, 3 August 2026 (UTC)
- Support per your analysis above. JeanClaudeN1 (talk) 17:39, 3 August 2026 (UTC)