History Notes

1. Arms Race and the First World War:
Essential Background - 1
The Arms Race was as much about nations’ INSECURITY as about
their NATIONALISM and EXPANSIONISM.
e.g. the Daily Mail ran MANY stories
(such as this one by William Le Queux)
imagining German invasions.
c.f. also John Buchan, The Thirty-Nine
Steps (about German spies).

2. Arms Race and the First World War:
Increase in Spending
There was a four-fold increase in defence spending of the great
powers, 1870-1914.
Defence Spending, 1870-1914
50
100
150
200
250
300
350
400
£m 94 130 154 268 289 398
1870 1880 1890 1900 1910 1914

3. Arms Race and the First World War:
Attitude towards war
But note that militarism is also a government's attitude of mind, seeing
war as a valid means of foreign policy.
(GERMANY was especially militaristic.)

4. Arms Race and the First World War:
Armies - 1
GERMANY, worried because it was in-between France and Russia,
built up the largest land army. The German army was accepted as
being the biggest and the best in the world.

5. Arms Race and the First World War:
Armies - 2
But other countries built up their land armies too – in 1914, the fastest
growing army was that of RUSSIA. This worried GERMANY a lot.
This Russian postcard of
1914 shows Russia
(symbolised by a woman)
nailing the German eagle to
a pillory after a war.

6. Arms Race and the First World War:
Armies - 3
As well as their STANDING ARMIES, the nations introduced
CONSCRIPTION, so they also had large numbers of trained
RESERVES. All the nations except Britain had HUGE armies.

7. Arms Race and the First World War:
Essential Background - 2
IMPERIALISM led to an arms race … in 1900, Kaiser Wilhelm said
that GERMANY wanted ‘a place in the sun’ – i.e., that Germany
wanted an empire as big as Britain’s. This TERRIFIED the British.
This British postcard
interprets Kaiser Wilhelm’s
statement about wanting ‘a
place in the sun’ – it shows
him making everybody in the
world bow down to him.

8. Arms Race and the First World War:
Navies - 1
If GERMANY was to have an empire, it needed a navy, so in 1900
Admiral Tirpitz introduced the German Navy Law, which announced a
huge programme of building warships.

9. Arms Race and the First World War:
Navies - 2
Both BRITAIN and GERMANY started building Dreadnoughts – the
most advanced class of warship in the world. The Dreadnought
essentially reduced everybody else’s number of warships to zero.

10. Arms Race and the First World War:
Navies - 3
There was a race between Germany and Britain to build the most
Dreadnoughts. The graph shows the number built each year.
Building Dreadnoughts, 1906-1914
0
2
4
6
8
Germany 0 0 4 3 1 3 2 3 1
Great Britain 1 3 2 2 3 5 3 7 3
1906 1907 1908 1909 1910 1911 1912 1913 1914

11. Arms Race and the First World War:
Navies - 4
The British government planned to build four Dreadnoughts in 1909,
but the British public panicked, demanding: 'We want eight and we
won't wait'.
Reginald McKenna, First Lord
of the Admiralty 1908-11.
In 1909 he told Parliament that
the German navy was just about
to become more powerful than
the Royal Navy, and he
instigated the press scare-
campaign that forced Parliament
to build more Dreadnoughts.

12. Arms Race and the First World War:
Navies - 5
In the end, Britain’s built many more Dreadnoughts than Germany.
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
Total Dreadnoughts
Germany 0 0 4 7 8 11 13 16 17
Britain 1 4 6 8 11 16 19 26 29
1906 1907 1908 1909 1910 1911 1912 1913 1914

13. Arms Race and the First World War:
Effects
The arms race was tied in to both NATIONALISM and IMPERIALISM.
It increased SUSPICION and HATRED of other nations - and it gave
the nations the WHEREWITHAL to wage war.