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The European foreign policy of the Chamberlain ministry from 1937 to 1940 was based on British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's commitment to "peace for our time" by pursuing a policy of appeasement and containment towards Nazi Germany and by increasing the strength of Britain's armed forces until, in September 1939, he delivered an ...
The first Chancellor of united Germany Otto von Bismarck had skillfully guided Germany's foreign relations so it was not firmly attached to any other European power. After his departure in 1890, Germany's foreign policy drifted into deeper commitment with the Triple Alliance of Austria-Hungary and Italy .
From 1920 to 1933, Britain and Germany were on generally good terms, as shown by the Locarno Treaties [48] and the Kellogg–Briand Pact, which helped reintegrate Germany into Europe. At the 1922 Genoa Conference , Britain clashed openly with France over the amount of reparations to be collected from Germany.
Britain, France and Russia became committed to the destruction of German military power, and Germany to the dominance of German military power in Europe. One month into the war, Britain, France and Russia agreed not to make a separate peace with Germany, and discussions began about enticing other countries to join in return for territorial gains.
HMS Dreadnought.The 1902, 1904 and 1907 agreements with Japan, France and Russia allowed Britain to refocus resources during the Anglo-German naval arms race. In explaining why Britain went to war with Germany, British historian Paul Kennedy (1980) argued that a critical factor was the British realisation that Germany was rapidly becoming economically more powerful than Britain.
The goal was naval disarmament of the major powers and it worked until 1933. Then disarmament collapsed and the issue became the risk of war with Germany. [31] Britain faced a large debt of money to the US Treasury it borrowed to fight the war. Washington refused to cancel the debt but in 1923 the British renegotiated its £978 million war debt.
Thus, the Americans concurred with the British in the grand strategy of "Europe first" (or "Germany first") in carrying out military operations in World War II. The UK feared that, if the United States was diverted from its main focus in Europe to the Pacific (Japan), Hitler might crush the Soviet Union, and would then become an unconquerable ...
In keeping with that theme, German propaganda stressed that Britain had to maintain its hegemony over the centuries by manipulating the other European states into war, and Germany, the "guardian of Europe", was now standing up for all nations of Europe in putting an end to British "causing trouble on the continent". [35]