How HMS Dreadnought Started the Arms Race That Led to World War I

The British Royal Navy's revolutionary HMS Dreadnought, the world’s first all-big-gun battleship, circa 1906. Public Domain

Commentary

Europe in the 19th century was, relatively speaking, free of the serious bouts of warfare that had plagued it in the 1600s and 1700s. After the defeat of Napoleon in 1815, the continent settled into a peace based on the notion of a “balance of power”—no one state was big enough to dominate the others. France, the Russian Empire, the Austrian Empire, and Prussia (the biggest of the German territories) were roughly equal in military might. As for Britain, it had decided to stay out of European affairs and concentrate on its worldwide colonial holdings. “Splendid isolation,” it was called.

By 1900, however, that sense of balance had been lost. In 1870, Prussia had smacked down France so decisively in the short Franco-Prussian War that all the various German states were motivated to unite under the leadership of the Prussian king whom they now called Kaiser, or Emperor. This new state was nakedly aggressive, busying itself about the globe snatching up parts of Asia and Africa for colonies, interfering in the affairs of other powers, and giving off rather nasty vibes that caused uneasiness amongst the foreign ministries of Europe. In 1900, Kaiser Wilhelm II instructed the troops he was sending to put down a rebellion in China to behave in a blood-thirsty way.

“If you come before the enemy, he will be defeated!” he said. “No quarter will be given! Prisoners will not be taken! Whoever falls into your hands is forfeited! Just as a thousand years ago the Huns under their king Attila made a name for themselves, one that even today makes them seem mighty in history and legend, so may the name Germany be affirmed by you in such a way in China that no Chinese will ever again dare to look cross-eyed at a German!”

Talk like that encouraged a new look at international diplomacy. Maybe the long period of peace was coming to an end and countries should be looking to beef up their militaries.

A cartoon in an edition of Puck magazine in 1909 shows the United States, Germany, Britain, France, and Japan engaged in a "no limit" naval race game. Public Domain

With the exception of Great Britain, all of the major European states had adopted universal military service by 1900. Standing armies grew enormously, with millions of men under arms in many countries. Moreover, all had copied the German General Staff whose methods had proved so effective in 1870 and had adopted their ideas on the scientific study of war and preparation for war. Thousands of specialists in each country pored over maps, employed spies, sought out enemy spies, assessed intelligence, and considered the problems of topography, ordnance, transportation and logistics.

Once this sort of war machinery was put in motion, it was inevitable that it began to have an influence on policy decisions. This was particularly true in France with its obsession about revanche (a war of revenge) and Germany, fully aware of French feelings and planning a “preventive war.” Militarism took an increasingly large part of national budgets; government spending on the machinery of war tripled and, in some countries, even quadrupled.  The dreadnought naval race between Great Britain and Germany is symptomatic of this.

In 1906, the Royal Navy launched a new type of battleship: heavily armoured, all-big-gunned, steam-turbine-powered, and fast. It made all other battleships obsolete. The problem was that the HMS Dreadnought also made British naval superiority obsolete at a stroke. Hitherto, Britain had insisted that its navy be as large as the next two navies combined so that no alliance could challenge its power at sea. Now, however, its numerical advantage was useless; what mattered was how many ships of the dreadnought class a nation could produce. Germany was particularly eager to compete and started building similar ships of their own, forcing the British into an ever more expensive arms race.

This contest to build the biggest fleet stretched budgets to the extent that Britain was forced to ask its independent dominions to chip in and finance a dreadnought or two. Australia, South Africa, and New Zealand chipped in to pay for the construction of battle-cruisers, but the Liberal government in Canada under Wilfrid Laurier declined. Instead, the government offered to help by relieving Britain of the cost of defending Canada’s coastline in return for two obsolete cruisers, one for each ocean.

The zest with which the Germans were enlarging their deep-sea fleet—and thus posing a mortal threat to Britain’s command of the waves—convinced London that Kaiser Wilhelm was bent on a policy of expansion that threatened European peace and civilization itself. The outbreak of World War I in August of 1914 was the logical consequence of the dreadnought race.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.