Germany and the Hohenzollerns

CNN: Germany's ex-royals want their riches back, but past ties to Hitler stand in the way

To single out the royal family and deny them their property seized by the equally evil Communists when the ancestors of millions of ordinary Germans also supported Hitler in the beginning is grossly unfair. (The article does not mention that Crown Prince Wilhelm soured on Hitler after his friend Kurt von Schleicher was murdered in the Night of the Long Knives in 1934, before most people did.) Germans should be bowing to their Kaiser, not “negotiating” with him. But I want Prince Georg Friedrich to be given back his throne, not only his property. It is republicans, not the royal family, who should be blamed for the rise of Hitler, which was only possible in the context of the vacuum created by the stupid and evil abolition of the monarchies. Still, this is a more thorough and balanced article on the Hohenzollerns than one would normally see in the American media. (Be sure to watch the video, with beautiful footage of Hohenzollern Castle.)

I can’t stand the way that virtually all mainstream commentary on 20th century German history treats the 1918 fall of the monarchies and 1919 establishment of the Weimar Republic as a good thing that all Germans should have immediately embraced, as it those who didn’t were the problem. No. Republicanism is cancer and the Republic was and is the problem. Crown Prince Wilhelm had every right and even the duty to seek the restoration of the monarchy, though as he eventually realised himself he was wrong to put any trust in Hitler. No country has the right to abolish its monarchy, let alone multiple monarchies as happened in Germany in 1918, which with all due respect to 2020 remains the worst year in history. It is those who thought Germany could manage without kings and princes who are to blame for the rise of Hitler, for they created the vacuum that facilitated it. As C.S. Lewis put it, “spiritual nature, like bodily nature, will be served. Deny it food and it will gobble poison.”