Herman Bernstein - Secret Correspondence Between The Kaiser and The Tsar

Secret Correspondence Between The Kaiser and The Tsar

In 1918, Bernstein revealed a secret correspondence between Tsar Nicholas II and Kaiser Wilhelm II and published it in a book, The Willy-Nicky Correspondence, published by Knopf with a foreword by Theodore Roosevelt. Bernstein summarized the contents as follows:

During my recent stay in Russia I learned that shortly after the Tsar had been deposed, a series of intimate, secret telegrams were discovered in the secret archives of Nicholas Romanoff at Tsarskoye Selo. . . The complete correspondence, consisting of sixty-five telegrams exchanged between the Emperors during the years 1904, 1905, 1906 and 1907, forms an amazing picture of international diplomacy of duplicity and violence, painted by the men responsible for the greatest war in the world's history. The documents, not intended for the eyes of even the Secretaries of State of the two Emperors, constitute the most remarkable indictment of the system of governments headed by these imperial correspondents.

He remarked that "the Kaiser is exposed as a master intriguer and Mephistophelian plotter for German domination of the world. The former Tsar is revealed as a capricious weakling, a characterless, colourless nonentity." The two, Bernstein wrote, “both talked for peace and plotted against it.”