The Naval Race By Josh Evans and Katy Tartala

Thriller Kaiser pushes for a greater navy which helps to isolate Britain, unintentionally, and helps to enforce the Triple Entente. In 1903 a series of thrillers was printed in which the Germans invade Britain, where the German Army easily sweeps to victory. William Le Queux's The Invasion of 1910 was published which sold over a million copies, which even caught the attention of the French Foreign Office. “the Germans’ aim to push us into the water and steal our clothes.”

, British Conservatives push for four large warships to be constructed annually. Admiral Sir John Fisher was promoted to First Sea Lord, bolstering confidence and improvement within the Navy; i.e.. Battle tactics, gunnery training, recruiting techniques, renovation of the fleet. British Fleet moved to concentrate on Europe.

H.M.S. Dreadnought

Fisher’s Big Idea Fisher wanted the entire fleet to be comprised of Dreadnoughts, a new highly advanced and more powerful ship. Construction of the fleet of Dreadnoughts leveled the playing field in the naval race. With the introduction of the Dreadnought the quantitative naval race immediately switched to a qualitative race, causing conflict in German politics, as there weren’t enough resources to fund the construction of a new fleet.

Tirpitz In 1906 Tirpitz presented a new bill, which included 1) building 6 new cruisers, 2) changing to Dreadnought battleships, 3) prolonging the annual 3 battleship per year construction by 7 more years.

British Liberal Party The Liberals were pleased with Tirpitz for getting rid of the useless ships, which guaranteed more money for social programs. They wanted to cut back to three ships being constructed between , as opposed to four, as a reaction to the German’s construction of a naval fleet. Liberals proposed disarmament talks, Germans refuse and persist to build four ships a year instead of three and would replace each ship after 20 years instead of 25 years.

The British Naval Scare The rivalries between the two navies spread to politics which propagated a divide in British politics. In there was a naval scare in Britain, being afraid of a German naval attack. In October 1909 the Kaiser, in an interview, announced that he was friends with Britain, yet the British had their suspicions.

Debate in Parliament In 1909, extreme navalists push to construct 8 Dreadnoughts a year instead of 3. There was a large debate over how many ships to build, Herbert Asquith (the new P.M.) made the compromise of four ships now, and four in the next year, as long as Germany behaves. Panic spread through the country because of the debates in Parliament

In 1909 the final four ships were constructed because Austria and Italy were also building a navy of Dreadnoughts Had the British not built the final four Dreadnoughts, Britain would have had 21 ships to the German fleet of 20 ships. It was these four ships that gave Britain a narrow margin of security at the onset of the Great War.