The German spies were sent by Admiral Otto von Diedrichs, chief of the Admiralty Staff, and a man who often dealt directly with the kaiser. Additionally, a letter written by Count Alfred von Schlieffen was recently discovered. At the time it was written, he was chief of the German General Staff, where he authored the infamous Schlieffen Plan for World War I. In his letter, General von Schlieffen complained that the attacks would cause a significant drain on the German army’s manpower.

The plans were important enough to be reviewed by those in highest authority in Germany ’s army and navy and, quite likely, by Kaiser Wilhelm himself, which indicates that they were more than war-gaming. However serious Kaiser Wilhelm might have been, the crises passed without incident as events in Europe began to take on greater importance. And, as time went on and the U.S. Navy grew stronger, the plans became less and less feasible.

1901is an attempt to show what might have happened had the kaiser’s Imperial German army landed on American soil.

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W AR, THOUGHT THE kaiser, was the natural order of the world, and only fools thought otherwise. It mattered not whether one was referring to animals, as Darwin had, or nations, as he now was. War was the lubricant that drove the successful to greatness and condemned the weak to a deserved obscurity. A nation that did not grow was doomed to shrivel and die. A nation that did not take from the weak was forever doomed to be weak herself. With so much of the world already under the jurisdiction of other powers, it was obvious that the essential growth that would spur Imperial Germany into the twentieth century could come only at the expense of others.