Who or what is kaiser?

Answer 1

The Kaiser was the Emperor of Germany. During WWI he was Wilhelm II, who inherited his job when the first Kaiser, his father, died in the late 1880s. These were the only two Kaisers of Imperial Germany, because Germany was not united into the single nation of Germany until 1871. They were of the House of Hohenzollern, who before German unification were the Kings of Prussia. "Kaiser", like "Tsar" or "Czar" (who was the Emperor of Russia) are titles derived from the ancient Ceasar of Imperial Rome two thousand years ago. Wilhelm II was an unpleasant, vain, pompous man whose wild and reckless enthusiasms helped destabilize Europe in the decades before WWI. He lived on in exile in the Netherlands until 1940, long enough to see the Nazis come to power in Germany. They would have welcomed him back home for the legitimacy he would have given the Nazi regime in the eyes of many Germans, but Wilhelm despised the Nazis. Imagine, a corporal running his country! There are still Hohenzollern descendants rattling around Europe, waiting for the world to come to its senses and restore them to their rightful place lording it over everybody else.