Curated playlist
Recipients of the Pour le Mérite (military class)
- Wilhelm IIWilhelm II, the last German Emperor, spent much of his adult life holding a pair of white gloves in his left hand. The gloves made that arm look longer than it was. He reigned from 1888 to 1918 over a country that had become Europe's…
- Hermann GöringHermann Göring swallowed cyanide the night before his hanging in October 1946. He had asked for a firing squad.
- Victor Emmanuel IIItalian politicians called Victor Emmanuel II an imbecile, yet he became Italy's first king.
- Alexander III of RussiaAlexander III of Russia answered an Austrian ambassador's threat by twisting a silver fork into a knot.
- Erwin RommelErwin Rommel was forced to swallow cyanide in a German staff car a few miles from his own home.
- Alexander II of RussiaOn the morning a bomb killed him, Alexander II signed a step toward representative government.
- Franz Joseph IOn the evening of the 21st of November 1916, inside Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna, Emperor Franz Joseph I gave his valet a final instruction. "Tomorrow morning, at half past three." Those were his last words. He was 86 years old. Franz…
- Paul von HindenburgPaul von Hindenburg left retirement in 1914 and destroyed a Russian army. The battle became known as Tannenberg.
- Gebhard Leberecht von BlücherAt 74, Blücher marched through mud to rescue Wellington at Waterloo. Days earlier, cavalry horses had trampled him.
- Otto von BismarckIn 1889, Otto von Bismarck was recorded on an Edison phonograph, quoting the opening verse of La Marseillaise among other lines. That recording is the only known capture of his voice. One biographer argues that he chose the French song to…