by the mid-1880s the socio-political mood in Germany was changing. Socialists were gaining seats in the Reichstag, and the liberal middle-class had a friend in the crown prince. Bismarck, seeking to retain his own power, now looked to an alignment with the army, but he was weary and suspicious of Waldersee. Effectively already chief-of-staff in all but name, the count was "able but extravagantly ambitious, restlessly intriguing, [and he] more or less openly aspired to the chancellorship [himself]." In 1885, Waldersee wrote in his diary: "We have far too many enemies, the French, the Slavs, above all the Catholics [emphasis in the original], and then the entire little rabble of the dispossessed, with their supporters". In 1886, Waldersee wrote in his diary: "Everywhere the masses are on the move, everywhere there is rebellion against authority, the negation of all religion, the generation of hatred and envy against those with wealth. We are probably facing major catastrophes". In another diary entry, Waldersee wrote "The ghost of socialism is beginning to show a very earnest face" while he called the Zentrum a gang of "hypocritical blackguards without a Fatherland, intent on the collapse of Germany and the destruction of Prussia". Waldersee's view of the international situation was equally bleak with democracy established in France, Italy and Britain and autocracy faced with challenges in Russia, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman empire. For Waldersee, only if the Reich held firm, which provided the foundation for the "mainstay for the whole of Europe, but if we become weak, the entire old world will fall apart". Waldersee believed that he would one day lead the forces of the Reich against all he hated in some apocalyptic war. Before the war could be launched, Waldersee argued that the "inner enemy" which consisted of the Progressive Party, the entire German Jewish community and the liberal Crown Prince Frederich and his British wife, the Crown Princess Victoria would have to be disposed of first. Waldersee dreaded the prospect that the Crown Prince Frederich would ascend to the throne as Waldersee believed that with Frederich as Emperor, Germany would become a democracy, the Junkers and the rest of the nobility would lose their privileged position and the Army would lose its "state within the state" status by bringing the military under civilian control. To stop all this from happening, Waldersee plotted to have the military stage a coup d'état to depose