GERMANY: The plan to attack the United States could have been written by al-Qaeda terrorists. A twin strike on New York and Boston, confusion on Washington's Capitol Hill, followed by a swift capitulation to the aggressor.
"Panic will break out in New York at the thought of a possible bombardment," reads the document that could be a plan for last September's terrorist attacks.
However the yellowing document isn't written in Arabic, but old German script. This is the masterplan of Wilhelm II, Germany's last Kaiser, to attack the US in 1901, over a decade before the outbreak of the first World War.
The motive behind the attack was Wilhelm's frustration at being unable to build up a network of colonies, then the surest route to international prominence.
The plan, outlined yesterday in German newspaper Die Zeit, was one of the Kaiser's most ambitious and risky attempts to push Germany to the top table.
In the winter of 1897, Wilhelm ordered Eberhard von Mantey, a marine lieutenant, to draw up plan to attack "the United States of North America".
He wanted to force President William McKinley to sign an agreement "recognising German interests on the continent of North America" and ceding control to Germany of the planned Panama Canal.
The plan would be the crowning moment of Wilhelm's militaristic dreams, realised by the navy which he had just expanded to 38 liners and 58 warships, rivalling the fleets of Britain and the United States.
The plan went through at least three incarnations but was finalised in 1899 when the Kaiser was in sabre-rattling mood after reading The Influence of Seapower upon History by an American war strategist.
He planned to send the German navy to Puerto Rico to establish a base. From here they would launch a warship attack on New York and Boston. Then "two to three battalions of infantry and one battalion of ground troops would suffice" to take the two cities, the report says.
A surprise attack would "hopefully leave the Americans with as-yet untrained troops and coastal fortifications not yet reinforced".
Kaiser Wilhelm ordered officials in Washington to scout out suitable landing locations for German warships near Boston. But the investigations attracted the attention of the US navy, who began tightening up their sea defences.
Wilhelm kept tinkering with his plan but by 1906 the United States had sealed its coastline.
Faced with his own political difficulties at home, he reluctantly dropped the plan.
