Excerpts from Books and Wikipedia
"Although the words were delivered on November 9, 1918, 'I herewith renounce for all time claims to the throne of Prussia and to the German imperial throne connected therewith,' strictly speaking, Kaiser Wilhelm II did not actually abdicate that day. The decision was officially announced on his behalf but without his consent by his distant cousin Prince Max of Baden. The prince was the last chancellor of imperial Germany and was struggling to stave off a full-blown revolution in Berlin in the dying days of the Great War. Wilhelm himself was in distant Spa, a small wooded town in Belgium that had become the war-time headquarters of his army." [Furtado: 1001 Days]