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Alfred von Waldersee Quotes (1832-1904)
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About Alfred von Waldersee
Alfred Ludwig Heinrich Karl Graf von Waldersee (8 April 1832 – 5 March 1904) was a German field marshal (Generalfeldmarschall) who became Chief of the Imperial German General Staff.
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“Either we are tremendously clever or the French strategists dreadful bunglers.”
“The Kaiser ... is not the right man to lead the Fatherland out of the many perils which threaten it.”
“What he is most lacking in are fixed aims and the faculty of persisting in the line he has taken up.”
“There can be no doubt as to the measureless shamelessness of the English in combating our really modest colonial efforts.”
“In the cavalry sons of industrialists who have got rich quickly are pushing their way in and are ruining its simple customs.”
“Germany is the foundation for the mainstay for the whole of Europe, but if we become weak, the entire old world will fall apart.”
“It is really a good thing that the English should be unmasked at last and that the world should see what miserable hypocrites they are.”
“Prince Wilhelm justifies our very best hopes for the future. He will grow into the right man to maintaain Germany's power–perhaps to increase it.”
“We have far too many enemies, the French, the Slavs, above all the Catholics, and then the entire little rabble of the dispossessed, with their supporters”
“We and the English are and must remain natural opponents. The world out to be big enough for both of us, but English covetousness oversteps all possible limits.”
“[The Americans] have been involved in looting affrays in the streets of Tien-tsin. When they are not with their regiments they must be regarded by the inhabitants as a scourge.”
“A good many men will be killed, however, as long as no man can prove to me that a man can die more than once, I am not inclined to regard death for the individual as a misfortune.”
Quotes About Alfred von Waldersee
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Otto von Bismarck on Alfred von Waldersee
“Waldersee was a muddle-headed politician on whom no reliance was to be placed. He wanted war because he felt that he would be too old if peace lasted longer. His remark was of no importance. It was particularly stupid to believe that Waldersee could become Imperial Chancellor. Even as Chief of Staff he was unsatisfactory and Moltke had only preferred him to Caprivi and Häseler because he could do what he wanted with him. That was a bad turn which old Moltke had done the Army.”
Gerson von Bleichröder on Alfred von Waldersee
“Another danger [to the new Kaiser] was Waldersee and his following. Waldersee was the opponent of Bismarck and considered himself capable of and fitted for everything. Who will guarantee...that these gentlemen will not begin the old game again and tell the Emperor ‘You are really nothing but a puppet. Bismarck reigns’?...Bismarck, therefore, wishes Waldersee’s removal and will even send him if he can to Strasbourg as General in Command.”
Description of Waldersee on Alfred von Waldersee
“The successor of Marshal von Moltke is a man of average size, a little older than 50. The hair is very thick, but with the whiteness of snow. His eyes are clear and placid, but his look is of an unusual fixedness. When the Count speaks, it is slow, and each word is pronounced clearly and vigorously. The attitude of the man, the manners, the voice and the gestures, or rather the complete absence of gestures, give an impression of cold determination that nothing would disturb.”
Isabel Hull on Alfred von Waldersee
“Waldersee’s anxiety to fight was so great that he was indifferent in his choice of enemies. He grasped at any opportunity to develop a small event into a casus belli. In rapid succession he advocated preventive wars, now against France, now against Russia, against them both.”
John C. G. Röhl on Alfred von Waldersee
“To read the original, unexpurgated diaries of this war-mongering, pietistic general is to cross the border into the realm of abnormal psychology. Waldersee seems to have suffered from some form of paranoid megalomania. He believed in a world conspiracy of the 'entirety' of international Jewry in league with all democratic forces at home and the majority of foreign Powers abroad to destroy the heroic aristocratic warrior monarchy of Prussia.”
Field Marshal Walter von Loë on Waldersee on Alfred von Waldersee
“As a military man he is an ace. A strong will, a clear eye, smartness, decisiveness, initiative. He is of the same stuff as were Frederick the Great’s soldiers, and Napoleon’s marshals. But I see two rocks ahead. He is excessively ambitious, both on the military and political sides, and inclined to intrigues. I believe that if ever he is Chancellor he will take a very drastic line against the two parties he hates so much, the Centre and the Social-Democrats.”
About Alfred von Waldersee
Alfred Ludwig Heinrich Karl Graf von Waldersee (8 April 1832 – 5 March 1904) was a German field marshal (Generalfeldmarschall) who became Chief of the Imperial German General Staff.