Arms Race and World War I, Essay Example

World War I was an international war that lasted from 1914 to 1918. It is also known as the Great War and it deeply affected the world’s most powerful nations in Europe, Russia, the United States, and the Middle East. World War I was a war fought between what was known as the Central Powers and the Allies. The Central Power countries included Turkey, Austria-Hungary, and Germany. The Allies included the United States, Great Britain, France, Russia, Italy, and Japan. The magnitude of conflict among such great world powers resulted in devastating and catastrophic warfare punctuated with widespread carnage and destruction for both sides, although it ended with a victory for the Allies who eventually defeated the Central Powers (Graham Royde-Smith).

The causes of such a great power conflict were many, for example, conflicts over the territories, political agendas, cultural divides, and economies of the Central Powers and the Allies. However, one cause, in particular, stands out as one of the most contributory causes of World War I, and that is the arms race between Germany and the United Kingdom (UK) (Colucci). This essay aims to answer the following research question: How did the arms race between Germany and the UK contribute to the outbreak of World War I?

The Outbreak of World War I

The outbreak of World War I in August of 1914 was greeted favorably by the public in Europe. They actually had much confidence and rejoiced in the prospect of it, because they were very patriotic and celebrated the idea. However, they did not imagine how long the war would be, nor did they have any idea of how disastrous a war would be between the great Europe nations. Many people on both sides of the war believed that their country’s side would win within a matter of months. World War I was welcomed either in a patriotic sense or in a defensive sense driven by national necessity. It was also seen by some as idealistic for the purpose of upholding the rights of the people against the might of the countries, treaties sanctity, and international morality (Graham Royde-Smith).

Arms Race Definition

The term “arms race” is defined as “a situation in which countries that are enemies each try to build or collect weapons faster than the other can”, according to Merriam-Webster dictionary. Oxford Dictionaries defines arms race as “A competition between nations for superiority in the development and accumulation of weapons”. Additionally, “an arms race denotes a rapid increase in the quantity or quality of instruments of military or naval power by rival states in peacetime” (Arms Race).

The Arms Race as a Contributory Factor

The first arms race took place in the late nineteenth century between Britain and France and Russia (combined). This continued into World War I when Germany competed to gain more arms than Britain (Arms Race). Britain was heavily active in increasing the size of its armed forces, which led to a race against the other countries to build more powerful military operations. In the 1900s, travel by ship was the only means of travelling around the world; therefore, the nation with the largest navy had the most power, which was Britain (or the UK). Germany challenged the UK in a naval arms race. Germany was poised to become a world power, which justified the development of its large battle fleet, to which the British responded to ensure it could protect the British Empire. This was the Anglo-German naval race between Europe’s two super powers, Germany and Britain, which went on to precede World War I (Maurer). It was a battleship building rivalry, as explained by Britain’s foreign secretary. It was also a competition for “mastery in Europe and hegemony of the world’s oceans” (285).

The British participation and entry into the war was precipitated by Anglo-German tensions prior to the start of World War I in 1914, which was a contributory factor in the cause of the war. In addition, competing interests regarding increasing arms surfaced in the Balkans, Russia, and Austria Hungary, which caused them to become involved in the war. However, France became involved indirectly because of the arms race through German invasion. German aggression, particularly in the interest of the naval arms race, prompted the UK to enter the war in an effort to maintain a balance of power (Keefer). In other words, the UK’s decision to enter the race was likely due to the arms race.

The arms race that occurred prior to World War I was a game of logic and political calculations that regulated the pace of the war. Each side of the conflict was driven by the activity of the other side, instead of each side being driven by its own motives. This type of assertion increases the likelihood of war, as each side accumulates more arms. This is because the course of the arms race made the sense of rivalry between the Central Powers and the Allies more intense and led to war in its own time (Arms Race). The British government did not trust the intentions of the Germans after the Germans published the Navy Law of 1898, which was passed by the Reichstag (Maurer).

Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz, the navy secretary of Germany, was mainly responsible for building Germany’s naval power. He envisioned establishing Germany as a world power, which was his main motivation for building Germany’s battle fleet. The purpose of this was to effect a “major power transition in world politics by shifting the relative balance of naval forces to Germany’s favour and undermining Britain’s leading position at sea” (Maurer 287). This would be significant because, as mentioned, the country with the largest naval fleet could rule because the only way to travel or import and export goods around the world was by sea.

The Navy Law of 1898 established how many battleships were to be built for the fleet and the rate at which they were built and replaced. These battles ships were named dreadnoughts and were very costly. Military spending in this area rose dramatically. Admiral Tirpitz quickly got into financial trouble trying to match the pace and class of ships built by the British, with one battleship costing 44 million marks. Tirpitz was under pressure to build battleships like the British battle cruisers, which were 20,000 tons with 12-inch guns (Steinberg). England’s threat loomed and it turned out that the Germans were unable to keep up with the British in race for arms. This was due to domestic difficulties that included a rise in taxes and pressures to place more priority spending on the army, rather than the navy. Therefore, the navy arms race did have a profound effect on Anglo-German relations, which also led to the army’s actions being contributory factors that led to World War I in 1914 (Keefer).

Conclusion

The question asked in this essay was, “How did the arms race between Germany and the UK contribute to the outbreak of World War I?” As seen in this essay, the arms race contributed to the outbreak of this war by driving the need for the super powers of the world to be the biggest and the best in terms of military power, and hegemonic power to govern the seas. In addition, political agendas and the desire to conquer and acquire territory was also a driving force behind the arms race. Each being driven by the need to rush to overgrow, in an attempt to overthrow, the other side kept the arms race moving at a steady pace, which built up tensions to precipitate war. The great power conflict of World War I ultimately has gone down in history as “one of the great watersheds of 20^th-century geopolitical history” (Arms Race) that resulted in the fall of the great dynasties of Germany, Russia, Turkey and Austria-Hungary and the destabilization of society in Europe, which ultimately paved the way to World War II.

Works Cited

Arms Race. n.d. Web. 11 March 2015. <http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/arms%20race>.

Arms Race. Ed. R. Cowley and G. Parker. 1996. The Reader’s Companion to Military History. Web.

Colucci, L. “Great Power Conflict.” World Affairs 177.5 (2015): 44-53. Print.

Graham Royde-Smith, J. World War I. 11 January 2015. Web. 11 March 2015. <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/648646/World-War-I>.

Keefer, S. A. Reassessing the Anglo-German Naval Arms Race. Working Paper. University of Trento. Trento, 2006. Print.

Maurer, J. H. “Arms Control and the Anglo-German Naval Race before World War I: Lessons for Today?”Political Science Quarterly 112.2 (1997): 285-306. Print.

Steinberg, J. “The Novelle of 1908: Necessities and Choices in the Anglo-German Naval Arms Race .”Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 21.1 (1971): 25-43. Print.