FROM COLONIAL RIVALRIES TO CONTINENTAL WAR SCARES, 1898-1907

1898: Germany launches a naval arms race

1904: Entente cordiale resolves colonial disputes between France and Great Britain

1905: First Morocco Crisis (Germany tests the Entente following Russia’s defeat by Japan)

1906: Germany suffers diplomatic isolation at the Algericas Conference

1907: Anglo-Russian Entente resolves Asian colonial disputes

THE SHIFTING BALANCE OF INDUSTRIAL POWER(Annual steel production in thousands of metric

tons)

YEAR United Kingdom

Germany France Russia

1880 1,317 690 389 307

1900 4,980 6,461 1,565 2,216

1913 7,787 17,609 4,687 4,918

BUT GREAT BRITAIN REMAINED THE WORLD LEADER IN COMMERCE AND

FINANCE(Shares of World Foreign Trade)

YEAR U.K. Germany France USA

1880 23% 10% 11% 10%

1900 20% 13% 9% 11%

1913 17% 13% 8% 11%

Wilhelm II, the first German monarch to seek publicity relentlessly

Queen Victoria and her three sons visit her daughter, Vicky, and grandson, Wilhelm II, in

Coburg in 1894

The future King Edward VII (1901-10) stands at the right.Wilhelm II proclaimed that Germany was a “World Power” like Britain.

Wilhelm was surrounded by flatterers, such asBernhard von Bülow (b. 1849, Reich Chancellor

1900-09)

He wrote a courtier in 1895: "I place my faith increasingly in the Kaiser. He is so impressive! He is, along with Frederick the Great, the most impressive Hohenzollern who has ever lived. In a manner which I have never seen before, he combines the most genuine and original genius with the clearest good sense. He possesses the kind of imagination that lifts me on eagle's wings above all triviality and, at the same time, the shrewdest appreciation of the possible and the attainable. And with it, what energy! What reflectiveness! What swiftness and sureness of conception!"

Grand Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz, Navy Chief, 1897-1917

Count Albert von Schlieffen, Army Chief of Staff, 1891-

1906

The “Schlieffen Plan” of 1895-1905 vs. the French “Plan XVII”

TIRPITZ’S “THEORY OF RISK”

In private Admiral Tirpitz acknowledged that Germany could never build a navy as large as Britain’s, but he argued from the study of naval history that if Germany could achieve a ratio of 2:3 in battleships, then the British government could not be certain of defeating it. That uncertainty, he concluded, would compel the British to seek the “friendship” of Germany. He also argued that the British could never base all their capital ships in home waters.His arguments contradicted those of the German Foreign Office, which opposed any provocation of the British after the Franco-Russian Alliance formed….

In 1898 Germany announced a plan to build 3 battleships a

year. Wilhelm II: “Germany must wield Neptune’s trident as well as Jupiter’s scepter.”

In response Britain launched the H.M.S.

Dreadnought in 1906:

It carried ten 12-inch guns and 11-inch armor plate, and

cruised at over 20 m.p.h.

Soliciting charitable donations for the German Navy (1899):One poster offers the Kaiser’s personal sketches of

the types of warship then afloat

Weltpolitik and Public Opinion:Imperialist Pressure Groups in Germany

• The Pan-German League: 20,000 members, led by Heinrich Class

• The German League for the Eastern Marches (Hakatisten): 220,000 members

• The Colonial Society: 40,000 members

• The Navy League: over 1,000,000 members

Their influence peaked under the “Bülow Bloc” of 1906-1909, when the Conservatives and Liberals all backed the government in the Reichstag

Friedrich Naumann (1860-

1919):Former Lutheran pastor, leader of the Social Gospel

movement, united all Left Liberals in the

Progressive People’s Party in

1910

Naumann, “National Socialism” (speech of 1899)

“For me and my friends the word ‘national’ means the new idea that Imperial Germany should become a world power. For us this idea of world power is the precondition for all social progress. What does socialism mean in material, economic terms? It means more food, clothing, housing, more goods for the working population! But already today our German soil cannot satisfy the needs of our current population. ...We must import more just to support our growing population. If we also want to raise the living standard of the masses we must import far more from abroad than we do today. But imports can only be purchased through exports. Given this position in the world market, as socialists we must promote an energetic export policy. Any socialism that does not is mere theory. ...This explains our position toward the naval policy of Kaiser Wilhelm II. We've been called navy fanatics; I've been called a "navy chaplain" - that doesn't matter! In fact the future of our German nation lies on the water. Since we can no longer have an agrarian state, we must go forward to a world power state, no matter how difficult and expensive this is….”

Squadron of the German “High Seas Fleet” on maneuver in the North Sea, ca. 1910 (with Zeppelin)

Admiral Sir John Fisher (at left),

First Sea Lord (1904-10), modernized the British fleet

Fisher converted the young Liberal,

Sir Winston Churchill, into a

champion of naval spending by 1911

The British Navy League, founded in 1894, took its motto from Lord

Nelson and grew to 14,000 members in 1901 and 100,000 by

1914 (including Kipling)

Souvenir of the Centenary of the

Battle of Trafalgar (1905)

The Anglo-French Entente Cordiale

of April 1904 resolved colonial disputes in Africa

and gradually evolved into

something like an alliance(cartoon in PUNCH to

celebrate its 10th anniversary)

The partition of Morocco

between France and Spain, 1905-1911:The German government

persuaded the vacationing

Kaiser to land his yacht in Tangier in

March 1905 to test the Entente

Punch ridicules thevisit by Wilhelm IIto Morocco in March 1905

The Moroccan Ambassador to Spain

signs the Final Act, April 7, 1906

Battle cruisers of the British Grand Fleet, anchored in the Firth of Forth: After 1905 the

British concentrated their navy in home waters to counter the German threat

The Anglo-Russian Entente of 1907

THE CROWE MEMORANDUM OF JANUARY 1, 1907(advice for the Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, by

Sir Eyre Crowe, senior policy analyst in the British Foreign Office)

“With the events of 1871 the spirit of Prussia passed into the new Germany. In no other country is there a conviction so deeply rooted in the very body and soul of all classes of the population that the preservation of national rights and the realization of national ideals rest absolutely on the readiness of every citizen in the last resort to stake himself and his State on their assertion and vindication. With ‘blood and iron’ Prussia had forged her position in the councils of the Great Powers of Europe.” [And now it took the same approach to overseas expansion….]“There is one road which…will most certainly not lead to any permanent improvement of relations with any Power, least of all Germany, and which must therefore be abandoned: that is the road paved with graceful British concessions—concessions made without any conviction either of their justice or of their being set off by equivalent counter-services. The vain hopes that in this manner Germany can be ‘conciliated’ and made more friendly must be definitely given up.”