Comments by "Bruce Tucker" (@brucetucker4847) on "Sean Munger"
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An excellent presentation! The one important thing I think is missing is the Anglo-German naval arms race and its vital role in causing the UK to seek an understanding, if not an alliance, with France to oppose German territorial expansion in western Europe. While the Belgian treaty may have been the cause that roused the common people to support war, the vital interest the cabinet was most concerned with was keeping the German battleship fleet bottled up in Kiel - a German navy mostly limited to operating in the Baltic was not an existential threat to the British Empire, but a German battleship fleet based in Belgium or northern France, with free access to the Channel and the North Sea, absolutely was.
This is something the German government apparently failed to appreciate in the slightest: they expressed surprise that the UK would go to war over a "scrap of paper" (the Belgian treaty) without realizing that the UK was NOT going to war over Belgium, Belgium was just an excuse the Germans had given the British government to enter a war that they already knew they had to fight over the German naval threat.
Many historians regard that naval race as a terrible strategic mistake on the part of Kaiser Wilhelm (who had read Alfred Thayer Mahan's book more than was good for his limited intellect) because it transformed Germany from a continental power that was not much of a threat to British world interests into a potential world power that was the greatest threat to those interests. In the late 19th century, when Germany had no oceangoing navy to speak of, the British had regarded Russia as its main potential enemy, fearing a Russian push from its Central Asian provinces towards India. The prospect of German battleships poised to descend on the Home Fleet at a moment's notice made the Russian threat seem insignificant in comparison. But because the Germans had to spend most of their resources on their land army, while the British did not, it was inevitable that the British would win the naval race and consequently that the German navy would be just powerful enough to force the British to fight a war to keep it out of the Atlantic, but not powerful enough to win the war at sea or to deter the British from going to war.
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