>Your first point reminds me of the old Anglophobe question, “What is it
>about the British that gives them the ‘divine right’ to have the world’s
>most powerful navy?”
>

No divine right, but in the context of the time and given Britain’s
geographic position and four hundred years of historic momentum, I think
it’s safe to say the Bitish were not going to yield naval supremecy to
Germany without a struggle.

>The second point clarify’s your interpretation. All I can say is that
>anyone who swallows Fischer’s socialist polemics needs to do some more
>reading on the neutral nature of the “relative balance of power.” Paul
>Kennedy’s “The Realities Behind Diplomacy” is a good place to start.

Fischer’s books are tough to take on every point. Yet there is no doubt that
he found the diplomatic smoking guns and nobody will ever look at Imperial
Germany in quite the same way. The German “wish list” very much included
colonial gains. They were secondary to central Europe, as one might expect
given the map, but they were there. I am not trying to deny the differences
between the 2d Reich and the Third. However, the perception throughout most
of Europe of Germany as a threat, as opposed to the bastion of a
conservative political order, was the gift of the Kaiser to his grateful
nation. For what its worth, many of his own ministers cringed when their
Ceaser had a bad day. The German Navy, as designed by Tirpitz, and supported
by the Kaiser, was a prolonged bad day and did more than any single factor
in bringing England into the midst of pre-1914 European diplomatic affairs.
It is true that on some issues London and Berlin cooperated. Yet the outline
of two hostile alliances was clear to anyone with eyes by August 1914. In my
opinion, this development would have been very unlikely without the
poisoning of relations between Britain and Germany. Perhaps the war would
have taken place anyway: if it had, there may well have been a
different winner.

>Fischer is an odd choice for you to use anyway, as the main victims of
>expansionist wartime (I won’t even bring up Fischer’s retroactive
>errors) German war aims were in Eastern Europe, not the British or
>French overseas empires.
>
>Timothy L. Francis
>Historian
>Naval Historical Center
>email address: Francis.Timothy@nhc.navy.mil
>voice: (202) 433-6802
>
>The above remarks are my opinions, not those of the U.S. Navy or the
>Department of Defense
>
>> ———-
>> From: rickt@cris.com[SMTP:rickt@cris.com]
>> Reply To: mahan@microworks.net
>> Sent: Wednesday, January 21, 1998 8:53 PM
>> To: mahan@microworks.net
>> Subject: RE: The Kaiser’s Fleet
>>
>>If I may respectfully disagree with Mr. Francis there was a very big
>>difference between the High Seas Fleet and any other European Navy. As
>>Hegel reminds us, “quantity changes quality.”
>[snip]
>>In light of Fritz Fischer’s findings, I don’t think we
>>dismiss the threat as simple paranoia.
>
>
>
>
Eric Bergerud, 531 Kains Ave, Albany CA 94706, 510-525-0930