Why Kaiser Wilhelm was never put on trial

The Trial of the Kaiser
By William Schabas
OUP, 412pp, £25/$35

"We’re going to hang Jeff Davis from a sour-apple tree,” sang Yankee soldiers. But though the president of the Confederacy was put in leg-irons and imprisoned, he wasn’t put on trial, let alone hanged. Nor was Kaiser Wilhelm II, despite the British election call to “Hang the Kaiser”, and the French prime minister Georges Clemenceau’s view that a trial of the Kaiser “would be one of the most imposing events in history, and that the conception was well worthy of being pursued”.