The pre-First World War arms race between Britain and Germany was fuelled by Britain's desire to protect its empire, Germany's desire to build an empire, and a general atmosphere of suspicion amongst the great powers, which led to the formation of two opposing alliance blocs. Dreadnought battleships became a particular point of competition between the Royal Navy and the Imperial German Navy, a race ultimately won by Britain. The arms race was not the only or even main reason war broke out in Europe in 1914, but it was certainly one of many causes of WWI.

Kaiser Wilhelm II (1859 to 1941) came to power as emperor of Germany in 1888 (reigning until 1918), and he pushed for more territorial and military expansion in order to secure the natural resources Germany's booming economy demanded. This new policy was called 'World Policy' or Weltpolitik. Wilhelm II's chancellor, Bernhard von Bülow (1849 to 1929), and the naval minister, Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz (1849 to 1930), were both in wholehearted agreement with this policy, which had the added advantage of distracting the population from domestic problems such as the weakening of the power of the Junker Prussian landowners in the ongoing process of industrialisation and democratisation. In short, Germany's empire was tiny compared to those of Britain and France. Something would have to be done to restore German pride. To take territory from rival powers required more spending on arms. Popular support for Germany's aggressive foreign policy and armament was whipped up by a jingoistic press. Kaiser Wilhelm certainly thought he could expand German territory at relatively little cost since he believed (as did most military experts) that a conflict in Europe would surely be a short one.

The policy of Weltpolitik only worsened the pervading instability in international relations. As the historian F. McDonough states: "The policy created a great deal of tension, accomplished very little, and soured international relations" (9). As the historian D. Khan adds: "From the 1890s imperial Germany was a fundamentally dissatisfied power, eager to disrupt the status quo and to achieve its expansive goals, by bullying if possible, by war if necessary" (209). In short, Germany was now widely seen as enemy number one when it came to world peace. Countries began to form alliances to counter Germany's rising power.

Germany's target in the arms race was to try and catch the global frontrunner: Great Britain. In 1897, the kaiser tasked Admiral Tirpitz with constructing a 'world-class navy', a project instigated by the 1898 and 1900 German Navy Laws. By the early years of the 20th century, France was "a second-class naval power" (Bruce, 139), and with the United States pursuing a policy of isolationism, Germany saw an opportunity to expand its navy, which could become a vital tool in the Weltpolitik programme of imperial expansion. Tirpitz's ambitious and highly secret plan was to build a giant fleet of 60 battleships by 1920.

Germany certainly felt threatened by the shifting international alliances, and a strong navy might well prove to be an effective deterrent. In 1894, France and Russia signed a treaty. In 1902, Britain signed an alliance with Japan. In 1904, Britain and France signed an agreement, the Entente Cordiale, which removed conflicts of interest in Africa and Asia but did not cover mutual assistance in the case of a war in Europe. The kaiser may have believed that if the German navy were powerful enough, it could deter Britain from entering any future war in Europe. The results of this armament policy were quickly in evidence: Germany built 14 battleships between 1900 and 1905. The problem for Germany was that keeping such huge things as battleships a secret from foreign spies was nigh impossible.

Another unfortunate problem for German naval ambitions was that Britain was not sitting on its laurels but remained determined to stay ahead of any arms race, particularly concerning the Royal Navy, the vital maritime link between the many distant points of Britain's global empire. This empire enclosed some 400 million people in over 50 countries. Thanks to the Industrial Revolution and following centuries of imperialism around the globe, Britain's resources and military made it the most powerful and wealthiest country of all. Determined to stay in front, Britain's dominance was enshrined in law and the "two-power standard", which required Britain's navy to be at least as big as those of the next two largest naval powers combined.

A consequence of Britain's naval strength was that successive governments believed they could stand in "Splendid Isolation" in world politics and need not rely on any alliance partners. As noted above, from the start of the 20th century, this policy began to change in response to other European powers forming alliances with each other. The Entente Cordiale was followed up in 1907 with the Anglo-Russian Convention, which diffused tensions over rival claims to Afghanistan, Tibet, and Persia (modern Iran). That same year, the Triple Entente was formed of Britain, France, and Russia. The trio also signed mutual naval agreements. In 1912, Britain and France strengthened their alliance, with the former promising the formation of an expeditionary force of 150,000 men to be sent to France if required. The navy remained Britain's strongest military arm, but there was a policy shift here, too, as the Admiralty began to consider the advantages of focusing less on the numbers of ships and more on their fighting capabilities compared to competitors.

The British dreadnought class of battleships was specifically designed to have such powerful guns and armour plating that they would render all enemy ships obsolete. The first dreadnought, HMS Dreadnought, was launched from Portsmouth in 1906. The design revolutionised naval warfare, at least on paper (WWI would see remarkably few naval encounters in the end). Dreadnought had ten 12-inch (305 mm) guns and a set of anti-torpedo guns. With the first all-turbine engine, the battleship could reach a top speed of 21 knots, faster than any other warship afloat. Even better for the Admiralty, this 18,000-ton ship had been built in just 12 months, meaning the navy could quickly expand its fleet to include a whole host of these giants of the sea.

After the Reichstag (German parliament) approved a new naval law in 1906, the German navy responded to HMS Dreadnought's launch with a similar upgrade to their battleships, which, in turn, spurred the Royal Navy to design the even more powerful capital ships of the super-dreadnought class. A game of one-upmanship in steel proceeded to drain the coffers of both governments over the next six or seven years.

Britain also built a new type of battlecruiser, armed like a dreadnought class battleship (but with only eight 10-inch guns) and yet capable of a faster speed of 25.5 knots thanks to its lighter armour. In 1913, Germany responded to this new class, too, launching such battlecruisers as Derfflinger and Lützow, which had a bigger armament (eight 12-inch guns), faster top speed (28 knots), and better armour plating than the British version. Britain then responded with an even bigger battlecruiser, HMS Tiger, which had eight 13.5-inch guns and a top speed of 29 knots.

By 1914, Britain had twice as many dreadnoughts as Germany and a superior number of battlecruisers. The ferocity of the arms race, the propaganda, and the cartoons in the press, "soured British attitudes towards Germany more than any other factor" (McDonough, 12). The race came at an ever-higher financial cost. Britain was obliged to increase its annual naval expenditure from £31.5 million to £50 million. But the race, which did create jobs in the steel and shipbuilding industries, was popular with the press and public, as the historian J. Keegan notes: "the race to outbuild Germany in modern battleships was the most important and most popular element of British public policy" (19).

The naval arms race and increased threat from German ships led to Britain moving its main naval base northwards to the greater safety of Scapa Flow in Scotland's Orkney Islands. This had some diplomatic consequences, as here explained by H. Strachan:

This in turn gave France the ability to argue that its naval forces were protecting British interests in the Mediterranean. This issue decisively influenced Britain's sense of obligation to its principal entente partner, France.

(12)

In the pre-WWI alliance system, the Triple Entente faced the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy. The Triple Alliance was the weakest on paper, since Austria-Hungary only had an antiquated army, and Italy was a wholly unreliable ally (and so it proved when Italy joined the Triple Entente group in WWI). Germany felt it had to test the Entente's resilience. This was achieved by sending a gunboat to Morocco in 1911. This was the second of two Moroccan Crises, but, like the first, it ended in Germany being obliged to back down as Britain, Russia, and France stood firmly together. The end result of the crisis was that everyone now expected a war between the great powers sooner or later. The arms race heated up accordingly. In 1912, the kaiser announced a major spending increase on both the navy and army. The result was that Germany had the world's second-largest navy after Britain, but the latter still possessed twice as many dreadnoughts. The army, however, was quite a different story.

In 1912, Germany had an army of just over 750,000 men. This compared to Russia's army of 1.5 million men and France's force of 600,000. Austria-Hungary had an army of around 450,000 men. If Britain's expeditionary force were added to the mix and Italy discounted as unlikely to be actively involved in a war, at least initially, then the combined land armies of the Triple Entente versus the Triple Alliance were 2.25 million men against 1.2 million. Most armies included infantry and cavalry divisions and were based on conscription, although Germany's army was stiffened by a backbone of well-trained and experienced officers. In addition, German conscripts came from reserves who had already had military training. Britain's army was the most professionally equipped and trained (particularly in terms of rapid rifle fire), but because of that country's focus on its navy, this land army was small. When war began, all sides dramatically increased their levels of conscription, and volunteers poured into the armed services to serve their country.

All the powers had spent big in the pre-war years to expand their armed forces, but this was, in all cases, still a relatively small amount of their total budgets. As a percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the spending on arms in 1914 was as follows: Britain - 4.9%, Russia - 4.6 %, France - 3.9%, Germany - 3.5%, and Austria-Hungary - 1.9% (McDonough, 34). It is perhaps significant that the state spending the least, Austria-Hungary, seemed the most willing to risk war, a fact which some historians use to support the position that the arms race was only a minor factor in the causes of WWI.

The German army was smaller and less well-funded than its major rivals, then, but it did possess certain strengths. One strength was the emphasis on mobility, something France, for example, had neglected in favour of static defences. Another German strength was its artillery units, which included the massive 'Big Bertha' 42-cm (16.8-inch) Krupp artillery guns, so big they were assembled on site.

Aircraft remained largely experimental and an untried aspect of warfare in 1914. Britain's Royal Air Flying Corps had 179 aircraft at its disposal (most of which were not actually operational) at the outbreak of WWI, and the Royal Naval Air Service had under 80 planes. The German Air Service had more aircraft than Britain, around 240, but again, air warfare was not taken seriously until 1915 when the first German fighter plane squadrons were formed.

Germany did develop its rigid airships, a move then copied by Britain and France to add a new aerial threat to modern warfare. The Zeppelin bombing raids of WWI turned out to have more of a psychological effect than a physical one. A much more damaging innovation was the submarine. Britain, France, and Germany had each developed a submarine fleet. Germany's U-boat fleet consisted of a paltry 20 in 1914 compared to the combined strength of 200 in the British and French navies. The German fleet was quickly expanded when war broke out, and, most significantly, they were adapted for use on the high seas where they could strike merchant shipping and slow-moving battleships with relative impunity. In the end, the race to possess the most dreadnoughts had missed the fact that giant battleships blasting away at each other was already an outdated concept. Modern naval warfare would be a much sneakier affair where civilian ships could become just as legitimate a target as naval ones.

Behind the scenes, Germany was indeed secretly preparing for war. The Schlieffen Plan, Germany's plan of attack on France, was drawn up in 1905, and modifications were made to it to fit the reality of 1914. Other generals in other countries were also preparing plans of attack on their neighbours, notably in France, Russia, and Austria-Hungary. The admirals of the British Royal Navy were not idle either, and, as early as 1908, they had prepared a feasibility study of how a total blockade of Germany might be achieved.

With the major European powers spending a combined £400 million (£40 billion today) on arms by 1914, Germany faced the very real possibility of fighting on two fronts (east and west) if a war in Europe broke out between the two main alliance blocs. In the summer of 1914 in Sarajevo, the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand (1863 to 1914), heir to the Habsburg throne that ruled Austria-Hungary, set in motion a series of diplomatic moves that ended in all the major powers in Europe declaring war on each other by the middle of August 1914. Unexpectedly, a long war followed, one dominated by infantry and static warfare. The glamour of the technological arms race leading up to 1914 was quickly lost in the mud, monotony, and massacres of trench warfare.