Raymond Poincare

Born August 20, 1860 in Bar-le-Duc France. The son of an engineer, he was educated at the Ecole Polytechnique. After studying law at the University of Paris, he was admitted to the bar in 1882. Elected a deputy in 1887, he became six years later the youngest minister in the history of the Third Republic, holding the portfolio of education. In 1894 he served as minister of finance and in 1895 again as minister of education. In the Dreyfus Affair he declared that new evidence necessitated a retrial.

Despite the promise of a brilliant political career, Poincare left the Chamber of Deputies in 1903, serving until 1912 in the Senate, which was considered comparatively unimportant politically. He devoted most of his time to his private law practice, serving in the cabinet only once. In March 1906, as minister of finance. In January 1912 however, he became prime minister, serving simultaneously as foreign minister until January 1913. In the face of new threats from Germany, he conducted diplomacy with new decisiveness and determination. In August 1912 he assured the Russian government that his government would stand by the Franco-Russian alliance, and in November he concluded an agreement with Britain committing both countries to consult in the event of an international crisis as well as on joint military plans. Although his support of Russian activities in the Balkans and his uncompromising attitude toward Germany have been cited as evidence of his being a warmongering revanchist. Poincare believed that in the existing state of contemporary Europe war was inevitable and that only a strong alliance guaranteed security. His greatest fear was that France might be isolated as it had been in 1870, easy prey for a military superior Germany.

Poincare ran for the office president; despite the opposition of the left, under Georges Clemenceau a lifelong enemy, he was elected on January 17th, 1913. Although the presidency was a position with little real power, he hoped to infuse new vitality into it and make it the base of a union sacree of right, left, and centre. Throughout World War 1(1914-18) he strove to preserve national unity, even confiding the government to Clemenceau, the man best qualified to lead the country to victory.

After his term as president ran out in 1920, Poincare returned to the senate and was for a time chariman of the reparations commission. He supported the thesis of Germany's war quilt implicit in the Versailles Treaty; and when he served again as prime minister and minister for foreign affairs(1922-24), he refused a delay in German reparation payments and in January 1923 ordered French troops into the Ruhr in reaction to the default. Unseated by a leftist bloc, he was returned as prime minister in July 1926 and is largely credited with having solved France's acute financial crisis by stabilizing the value of the franc and basing it on the gold standard. Under his highly successful economic policies the country enjoyed a period of new prosperity. Poincare died October 15, 1934 in Paris.

                                                              Kaiser Wilhelm II

Wilhelm was born on January 27th, 1859 in Berlin, the eldest child of Crown Prince Frederick of Prussia and Victoria, daughter of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom. A difficult birth left Wilhelm with a withered arm, which he always tried to conceal. In 1881, after a period of military service, Wilhelm married Augusta Victoria, Princess of Schleswig-Holstein, and they had 7 children.

In 1888, Wilhelm's father succeeded as Frederick III. He died shortly afterwards, making Wilhelm kaiser at the age of 29. Although he had previously admired the great German statesman Otto von Bismarck, withing two years Wilhelm had forced his resignation. He was a strong believer in increasing the strength of the German armed forces, particularly the navy. His policies towards Britain were contradictory. He alienated Britain with his naval expansion and a policy of aggressive German colonial expansion, and also supported the Boers in their fight against the British. But he was also closely related to the British royal family and was particularly fond of his grandmother, Queen Victoria.

Following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914, Wilhelm encouraged the Austrians to adopt an uncompromising line against Serbia, effectively writing them a "blank cheque" for German support in the event of war. He appeared not to realise the chain reaction this would trigger. Russia and her allies France and Britain entered the war against Germany and Austria. Wilhelm tried to scale back the mobilisation of Germany's armed forces, but was prevented by the Germany military. While theoretically supreme commander, Wilhelm found himself excluded from military decisions, but crippled chances of a compromise peace by encouraging the grandiose war aims of certain generals and politicians.

In 1918,  the United States' full scale entry into the war, combined with severe German shortages of men and materials from years of attrition-based trench warfare, led to Germany's military collapse. Wilhelm was forced to abdicate and went into exile in the Netherlands. Attempts by the victorious allies to extradite and try him for war crimes came to nothing. With Adolf Hitler's rise to power after 1933, Wilhelm had hopes of being restored but they came to nothing and he died on June 4th, 1941.