footage of president george bush and bob dole with speeches from president's johnx1e kennedy and ronald reagan. at noon fashion ex pert s on first lady's fashion choices and how they represented the styles at the time in which they lived. and tom brokaw on more than 50 years of reporting on world events this christmas day on the c-span networks. for a complete schedule go to c-span.org. >> american history tv visited the macarthur he moirl in norfolk virginia hosting a symposium marking the world war 1 centennial. author katrine clay talks about royal cousins george v of ing gland, kaiser will hem. of germany and nicholas ii, of russia on the eve of the first world war with and how itir impacted the coming global conflict. this is about 50 minutes.ne2b

>> our first speaker today is catrine clay who had two years. from the 1980s to 2003 she was a writer, director and producer for the british broadcasting corporation, the bbc, where she directed numerous documentary skbroekts and worked as a produc producer. in her second career ms. clay left the bbc to become a full time writer. accomplished researcher and outstanding story teller.

king kaiser czar is more closely tied to the topic today and recounts the lives of the three royal cousins, georgeie, willie and nicky who became king george v of great britain, kaiser wilhelm ii of germany and czar nicholas ii of russia. all relatives of queen victoria, three royal cousins. in a compelling exploration of oh family drama clay reveals how family dynamics had real historical significance, especially for world war i which toppled kaiser wilhelm the second, el killed czar nicholas ii and left only george v in place on his throne. her book recounts the majesty and dysfunction of three royal boys turned heads of state in the lead up to world war i.

i welcome to you today catrine royal countdown to war." >> thank you. the royals is ale small strand in an incredibly complicated story, as you know.?çw=

nicholas the czar beg marrieded to yet another grandchild of queen victoria's. there they are. it's their relationship which to an extent contributes this huge labyrinth of oh what leads to the first world war. it is the problem really of everything that is private as far as some concerns. that is to say their cousins. they are in a family with loves and hates. in a sense one of the things you could look at with me is, you

know, if they have friendships, suddenly they become alliances. you think you are doing something private but you're not. you're going on a visit to a country. of course suddenly everyone says, ah-ha. this is significant. they were unaware of oh how much their private lives and private hates and love s and preferenc played out on the big stage. there are various reasons for this of course. which we'll look at today. let's have a quick look at the first cousin. this is nicholas a young 5-year-old. what i think you should know about him is he was absolutely adored by his parents. a loved child.

a child who grew up to be an autocrat. not necessarily extremely bright, but bright enough, you know. if he hadn't been -- if he had been a constitutional monarch with good advice, which he took, i think there would have been a great deal less trouble for russia and for all of us. he was a decent man and a nice man. his cousin kaiser wilhelm when he was grown up, he said about him, the czar is not false. he is weak. weak is not treacherous. but it fulfills the same function. and that's such an interesting thing to say. quite honestly, i think the kaiser was one of the more intelligent of the three. but he was so messed up, as we

know that that's a dangerous combination and dangerous he certainly was. nicholas grew up. he was very shall and frail. his grand duke uncles were huge, towering. he was always battling. he never wanted to be czar. of course he married alex, queen victoria's favorite grand daughter who was absolutely certain about one thing. that was the autocracy of oh her husband. she was forever saying to him, be firm. that's just what he could not be. here is george v. his brother died.

so he married his brother's fiancee and became prince of wales and then george v. likewise a happy childhood, as a matter of fact. queen victoria called them wild as hawks. these children of edward vii and princess alexandra who were the parents and were indulgent. if they were doing lessons and felt like taking them out for a nice walk or a party they walked in and said, come on. away we go. this is how they grew up. he went into the navy. again, had not wanted to be king. but had to leave, had to become prince of wales and then king. but a happy childhood. it's worth remembering this when we compare to the ne8#""e. there he is. that's willie. he became kaiser wilhelm ii.

i'm sure you all know when he was born it was a breach birth. it wasn't just his left arm. it was all half size. you know i'm sure. it also affected his inner ear. he had no balance. our prime minister in england when he talked about him would say "not quite there." he was extremely damaged. moreover in being damaged his mother found she could not really love him. so he grew up very disturbed and prone to be flattered and flattered he most certainly was. so in due course he came into the hands of some very are rabid monarchists. they told him what he needed was to have his personal rule.

that was the great phase they used. personal rule. the trouble with that is that, of course, they influenced him by the back stairs. what they felt was absolutely a hate for britain. you have a line-up gradually building up in europe. of this young kaiser being taught in a way to hate. to an extent the thing he was because he was half english. in england when he was with the english family, he was called william with. in germany he was called wilhelm with a german family. he's a split character which is equally a problem.

he earned their undying hate because he took away from their beloved father's kingdom rather a large piece which they never retrieved. so they hated germany and bismark. then they married, the king of eng gland, edward vii. they influenced very, very strongly. husbands and sons in due course. there is a strong feeling in both the russian family and the english family that really they ostracized willie a lot of the time. they snub him. they don't like him. this does play into the whole story. one of the things that happened

is that when alexandr who is on the left when her husband became edward vii. the very first thing they did was to organize a trip to france. it is the one essentially unconstitutional act he committed in his reign because he was, of course, a constitutional monarch whereas the others were autocrats. he told no one he was going. frederick, his query wrote an interesting memoir. said no one knew where he was going. he was going to have a trip, a nice happy trip around europe in his yacht and so on and so forth. that's all it was -- innocent. he was going straight for france and courting the french. out of it -- that was in 1903. by 1904 you had the entante

korle jko cordi cordial. it meant line-up against germany. it was about the colonies. what they managed to do at the conference a couple of years later is that it then+fg morac and northern france but not for germany. one of the great phrases willie liked was a place in the sun. they were not given a place in the sun because, of course, germany getting big and powerful was a threat to the others. so there was none. that caused yet another line of antagonism. there is willie.

dressed in -- you know, this is his split personality. queen victoria had given him a splendid outfit. had his photograph taken. but underneath he writes, i bide my time. he calls himself william, prince of prussia, 1884. if ever there was a split personality. william on the one hand and prince of prussia on the other. then, "i bide my time" which was under his friends who hated britain. what was he biding his time for is this you may ask yourself. he was going to get his revenge is sort of how he felt. at that stage. but of course another part of him loved the english family and was devastated when it went wrong. so the personality s of these people play very largely into the events.

he fell off that horse again and again. he got on and eventually he could do it. what's more, he could feed himself because he was given a special implement with a fork, a soon, a knife and all that. he cope ed -- this is what's interesting about him, it seems to me. he coped with his very, very

difficult situation rather well. emotionally he didn't cope well. i think that's where the gap comes. so here he is once again. signing william. he is posing. people were struck that he didn't really look like that. he wasn't tall, wasn't all that commanding. these are the pictures that ordinary german family had in their house. rather like in the second warld war. they all had hitler. they had him. people believe this is how he was. he wasn't. inyou have the other two who were terrifically good mates. this photograph is often called the twins. they look so alike. both loved their royal yachts with 400 ratings and whatever

else they had. they used to meet in places. they just -- there is a friendship, a family alliance which plays out very strongly on the big stage. it is constitutional. this is what desperately was needed for willie in germany and nicky in russia.

you may know this drawing. there are no photographs of it. it also gives you an idea of the splendor. this was kaiser wilhelm's youngest child. he only had one daughter. six strapping sons and one daughter. they all arrived in the royal yacht. it appeared grand and splendid. you can probably pick them out

this is the letter george is sending to in this casy. i will read toyota you if i can read my handwriting. >> my dearest nicky, you will remember the many satisfactory conversations we had last year in berlin. when we both so entirely agreed upon the great importance of maintaining our friendly relations between our two countries. i confess i feel so anxious upon this subject that i write this private letter to explain what is causing this anxiety.roñ

he calls it private. in the archives where i was lucky enough to work in windsor castle in the big stone tower which you have probably seen. very fascinating to read. there is a copy of this letter. it's written in lord stanfordan's hand, his private secretary. previous to that, there is a draft written by the foreign office. so you see here is this fatal thing, of so called private letter.

there were kreeg s in germany and the previous month, not the later but the previous month there was a war council in england, too. that's talking about 1912. this is a long time before nothing went up. i would just perhaps read out to you, if i eve got time what you might call the royal countdown to war. do i have five minutes and i can do this? okay. well, in february 1914, nicky's minister of internal affairs advised against war with germany. he wrote a memo about it.

he said it would not be a short war. there is no possibility it would be a short war and that revolution would likely follow. russia was not prepared for war neither economically nor politically. anyway, the main belligerence was his opinion was britain, not russia. this is february of 1914. that's the advice in russia. it's true that russia wasn't ready for war. by the 16th of june 1914 , george is writing the private letter that you see above there. by the 28th of june people used to. 23rd of july, making it

impossible on the 25th of july, henry returns to germany from buckingham palace. who is henry? the two danish princesses because the dowager czarina is visiting her sister. now they have to race for russia. and henry has to race for germany. along with everything else.

the one thing the cousins share always and call themselves royal ñ÷ socialists, anarchists in the case of the russians and agitators. what they call the monkey house. entirely in agreement these three cousins as to what a shower they are. of course the danger of revolution. it is the single reason why one cousin, george v who loved his other cousin nicholas ii didn't help him to find asylum in july

austria declared war on serbia. the balkans have been troubled for a long time as well. that didn't come out of the blue either. it was the great powers like austria hungary, germany and russia behind the wings, pulling the puppet strings. as always. now wilhelm moves into one of his favorite roles which is as kriegs heir, the warlord. he struts around full of bombast, hardly knowing who he is. until one day it dawns on him that it means he might be having to fight his cousins.

he's absolutely appalled and goes around the palace saying too many enemies, how can my cousins do this to me? there he is, a child that was split as a child, still in the same psychological situation. so he finds that his navy is prepared. the reason for that as we know is turpits who got the army going with the army bill of 1913. but had his risk theory so for every great battleship. every three of britain, germany was to have two. interesting actually to my mind. you know, he didn't say three for three. he said two for three. anyway, the risk theory worked. they were ready. russia was not. germany was ready.

so willie, sends his cousin in russia a telegram -- cipher as always. this is the most horrible war that will ever be witnessed. he thinks it is an act of treachery from one royal colleague to another to be doing the this by which he ignores the fact that austria-hung gary has started the ultimatums and things. he says, well, what's he talking about? had i gone mad? it can't happen. we can't stop all this now. george v in his diary on july 30th writes things look very black. i saw it myself. his diary is bound in green leather. the handwriting ise sis, as you here, very schoolboy

handwriting. things look very black, true enough. willie wrote at the same time, so the celebrated encirclement of germany has finally become an established fact. the purely anti-german policy which england has been pursuing all over the world has won the most spectacular victory. even after his death edward vi is stronger than i although i am still alive. that's his point of view, obviously. not everyone's point of view. so by the 31st of july, momentum is more unstoppable. george v sees kitchener in the afternoon. in the evening he's looking through his stamp collection which is a nice, calming thing to do. goes to bed at :)!az11:30. awoken by his query.

asqeth in the telegram room with a draft for the czar which of course is to the point. it means that means that this w war. so at 1900 hours, germany declares war on russia. he writes in his diary, whether we will be dragged into it, god only knows. at this moment, the public is dead against it. dead against our joining in the war. but we cannot allow france to be smashed. to me that's terribly interesting. this is three days before it settled that we are going to war. britain is still dead against it. obviously the machine gets going.

the newspapers and whatever are going and within two days, the public's mood is changing. that is really how powerful the monarchy can be actually and also the press. and so what do the king and queen do? they choose their russian carriage to go out into the crowds and the streets and out of buckingham palace and around. what do they find? they find streets and streets of cheering people. the whole mood completely turned around. we were forced to go inhz balcony three times he writes that evening. and then the statement of the house of parliament, britain could not allow german tow pass through the english channel nor so there is the 12-hour

ultimatum=[÷ that passes and ine end on the fourth of august in his diary, he writes showers and windy. that's because he remains a good naval man and nearly every entry in his diary starts with the weather. at 10:45, i held a council to declare war on germany. it is a terrible catastrophe, but not our fault. i always love that. really nice. okay, then finally as a final thing here, we have august 6th, austria declares war on russia. he was heard all day and so many enemies. so many enemies. but in the speech to the people wearing one of his grand

uniforms, he shouts out, i am the instrument of the most high. i am his sword. woe on death to all who resist my will. as we know by the end of the war, he was in exile. monarchy gone to the dead. george the 5th. >> i will happened you the mike and you need to speak into it.

questions? yes? >> would you tell us how you got the queen's permission to use the archives? >> what a good question. >> the queen gave me a medal which is nice. it's the medal of the role of victorian order. i'm a tenant of the royal victorian order. it's a shaming thing in a way. for a year we followed her around making a documentary. this is when i was at bbc before i had retired and we were following her around. for a year. actually we came to america and did all of those things and it was riveting. later on i made another documentary. i have to assume she liked the films. i went to buckingham palace and got my medal and things and later when i left the bbc and wanting to write my first proper

book, the others were tie in books and what i thought i would ask him where i use the royal archives. they have riveting and gave me permission. not many give permission. it's a rather precious place really. when you are out there. you have all the diaries there and longing to spend every minute looking at them. you have to go downstairs into a little sitting room with the arm chairs and you have said that you have the coffee and you are allowed to have two biscuits and you sit there with a couple of other privileged researchers and you say i say to jane ridly, what are you writing?

he said i am doing the queen mother. then you share a bit of talk. half hour later, you go upstairs again and you get back to the letters and the diaries. >> more questions. was there any contact after the war? >> honestly, you may have detected, i feel sorry for poor old willie. never one single word neither written or spoken ever passed between them ever again. actually georgy wrote in his diary at one point he is the

greatest -- what did he call him? a criminal. i think he used the word criminal. he was simple. a good simple man, george 5th. he saw things in fairly straight forward terms. he just -- that's it. he was seen as the criminal. in many ways he was. obviously some of the russian family did come over to england, but not the family, not the imperial family. >> in your talk today and most of the things i head, there is an air of inevitability about the start of the war in your opinion was there a point where either one of the three monarchs could have stopped it?

>> short answer? not me. i don't think so. other speakers will i'm sure which is one of the good things about an event like this. you get all the different views of a situation, but i would say no. to give you a different kind of answer, maybe we could hop to switzerland for a minute to zurich in 1915. i'm sure you know it was full of spies and god knows. pass vifts and socialists. you name it they ended up in neutral switzerland including lenin. he wrote a book on imperialism and capitalism. it was certainly imperialism and the thesis or was it predictabye

and it was banned to lead to imperialism because of course you need more profit. so you have to go elsewhere to get your profit. that in turn will lead to war. that was one way of looking at it and that was what he went off and disappeared from zurich in april 1917 to make revolution elsewhere. there was also that going on. one has to remember the huge thing we were showing earlier on. i think there was all this happening. an awful lot of stuff happening. i doubt that any of the three could have had anything about it. in the early years, if this is just throwing out an idea, but in the early years, if people -- if the family handled willie write or an even bigger what if,

if he hadn't had that breech birth and he was the brightest of those three and hadn't fallen into the hants of them, you could imagine a different out come. that's not the way it was. >> hello. i recently pleaded or read a history of world war i by john keegan. he expressed a view i had not heard before. what he said was before serbia issued the ultimatum, before austria which was very weak and crumbling even then, they sent the ultimatum to serbia, he first contacted the kaiser as to whether the kaiser would support

him if he invaded in a punitive type of war, serbia. and the kaiser answered yes. and his view was that was the real spark that brought up at world war i and in essence caused the allies to blame germany for the beginnings of war. i wonder if you have a view on that. >> i knew john keegan actually just not because we shared the subject, but we talked about this. i think that was a really very valuable way of looking at it to tell you the truth. the only thing i would add is i am talking about it today. if willie had been different, if the kaiser had been different, he may not have said yes. the alliance was there and the link as the germans like to call

the two danish sisters and the way they influenced the respective husbands, that was very active as well. you did really have two camps. >> the question here in the back. can you speak a little bit about the danish princesses and their fashion and how that had a political -- >> i'm glad you asked. shortening the talk, i left out all sorts of things saying i better leave that out. that was one of the things i left out. the danish princesses were brilliant at the politics of fashion. so they would appear in identical clothes to make it perfectly obvious that the alliance was between britain and russia. they did it of all sorts of very key moments. and the public was completely enchant and they didn't realize they were being brainwashed in this way.

they did this and both of them had the habit if germans came to the russian court ord)ow to buckingham palace. they frequently froze out. there was once when the king of prussia went to visit. they were in the garden at the time. virgie was there for a bit of gambling, but there they were.3 spying and sparring. she insisted that she wouldn't see him and she was ill. and unbelievable thing to do. in a private family. you can just about do it. this had huge political significance. the very next day she was partying. and at the beginning of the war, the arena said to anyone who

would listen to her, thank goodness we are at war with germany. i can't tell you how pleased i am. when they were dressing in identical clothes, the british public and the russian public knew what this meant. >> there is a question. >> thank you. could you tell us please because i don't know who did willie marry, what did she think about this. >> who? >> willie. his wife. >> donna. william's wife. she had nothing to say about anything. donna, no. actually they were very rude about it. the two princesses were phenomenally rude about donna. i think they called her a cow, but meaning that she just was there to breed. she did in fact. she had at least six boys and

sissy. seven children. it was not -- it's a big subject. a very, very big subject about his and so on and so forth. we will not begin to go into it. she was just the mother of the relationship, but he was not going to be listening to her opinions. is that who you meant? absolutely. yeah. she was in a way a good wife to him because she did what was needed. >> i saw in one of the  that look said like she was wearing a royal navy uniform. i was wonder figure you can talk about the relationship with the royal navy and in the split personality and how that impacted the naval race and the tensions in europe. >> that are is the right kind of question to ask here. it's so true. another thing i cut out of the talk so i am pleased.

it was an extraordinary thing. these royal colleagues, the three of them were forever exchanging uniforms. they would make each other admirals and their navies. or colonels in the russian army. he was wearing all this sort of thing. it's an extraordinary thing. in william's case, shall we call him william. he is wearing the english admiral's uniform. he was fantastically proud of it. he really was pleased to be it. at the same time he makes fun of it. this is the terrible thing. in the end of course once they are all at war with one another, they have to give each other back. the medals and it's sort of a crazy situation they are in. unavoidable i guess. all the flags had to be taken down. the castle chapel and the castle

and alexandra said this is ridiculous. take them down. that's how it was. very lucky you mentioned it. i forgot to say it was an english admiral which is the whole point of him signing it william. >> my curiosity got the better of me with your letter there on the screen. i would love to see the second page. could you explain what he was referring to when he talks about pursia with the last line? the president and the unsatisfactory statement? >> i hope one of your other speakers will tell me about that. we forget completely where else trouble was brewing all the time. at that time persia was a big issue. it sort of got lost in history

after a while. it was. it was the big concern and the empire and who was going to get what. all that was going on. afghanistan. all sorts of things. of course eventually it focused on our essentially european war. i need to add my personal opinion. it's probably anyone's opinion. we couldn't have won this war without you americans coming in. i am not sure we would ever have won it. i shall thank you on behalf of the british nation. >> was there much of a movement or feeling of going after them after the war? putting pressure on the dutch to give give him up for some sort

of -- >> not a thing. not a thing. there famous photographs that i'm sure you have seen of him chopping wood and things like that. being an old man, he had a little bit of a court and things, but no one until hitler sent a reef when he died. no. nothing. he was just abandoned or forgotten. >> what was the reaction of king george when nicholas advocated the throne or was overthrown. what was the correspondence with that? >> yes. i mean that is probably a lot of books have been written about it. it's a book on its. it was a terriblevation for him to be in. it was brought to bear on him.

because it's a constitutional monarchy and he had to do what he was told. he could not help and he just wrote in his diary, i can't remember the wording. he was devastated and the terrible, terrible thing was happening. he sort of felt to an extent he hadn't been able to help. he hadn't been able to. there other questions? there is a couple more back here. >> doing much better for time. >> clay farington from the naval museum. all three of these men wore uniforms and gave each other medals and look for splendid in them to be sure, but to what extent were they military men? what kind of hands on role, what and strategy did they medal or

were they content to remain aloof from the actual prosecution of the war? >> not much is the answer. georgy was the only one who was genuinely military. not military, but in the navy. if his brother had not died. he would have carried on, i guess. he had actual experience, but being a monarchy, he cook part in anything. he would go to france and see the troops and award medals and things like that. william had it much more complicated. he believed he was. he had not understood they were bypassing him all the time. what they did was used the imperial train cleverly. a nice train. they put him in there and told him to go east or west or --

they kept him. you have to bear in mind before the war, his experience to go on maneuvers. you didn't have to do anything. it was pageantry and you say there was no real experience and he had no idea about strategy. it was quite a problem actually. the czar did go to the front. that was -- he took command and i hope someone may be talking about this properly. that's another huge subject. a terrible mistake for the simple reason that when things went worse and worse for russia which is most certainly did, they blamed him and he was not a strategist really.

he thought he should lead his men. the suffering was=$ quite terrible. >> i wanted to ask about the movie clips that show him hunting. were they close and what was his relationship with the imperial family. they would stand against the forces. they had that definitely. definitely shared that. they didn't have at all a close relationship. it wasn't his feeling. his emotion. i will be pretty sure lay with

his english family. he was massively upset by the snubs and rejections and furious. that's where his heart lay if he had been!7able to somebody else may answer that different low. >> i will answer this differently. when you are writing about individuals in i biographical fashion, authors find themselves growing very close to the people they write about. i was just wondering in terms of reading all the archive, where do you stand with regard to nicky, georgey and willie? did you find yourself siding with nicky and georgy at times?

>> the concern i would like to have had lunch or dinner with is edward xii. let's all give a han >> let's all give a hand. >> here on c-span 3, we are featuring american history tv programming. we would like to get your thoughts on our shows. e-mail us at american history tv at c-span.org to leave comments and suggestions. with live coverage of the u.s. house and the senate on c 1357b 2, here on c-span 3, we compliment the coverage by showing you the most relevant hearings and public affairs events and on weekends, c-span 3 is the home to american history with programs that tell the nation's story. including six unique series and the civil war's anniversary with

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