Deleted member 1487
I would say it would want a small fleet, something to protect its coastlines and contest the Baltic with the Russians. However once the Russian lose their Baltic fleet, presuming we have a Russo-Japanese war along OTL lines, this could be fairly small while light vessels could be a sizeable part of it.
This would be a much better use of resources. Both because the army would be stronger and most of all because you have more chance of having Britain as at least a friendly neutral. Still a problem here if the army leadership insists on the attack through Belgium but a lot less need for that under those circumstances.
I think stockpiling a decades worth of supplies is highly unlikely. Largely because virtually no one expected any future conflict to last more than a year or so or even thought a full scale conflict would be able to last that long. That probably even more than such moves being seen as provocative or more likely as massively wasteful is likely to sink the idea. As I say, if Germany doesn't seek to make Britain an enemy its unlikely to face a blockage - if for no other reason than that Britain can take American's role as see the combatants as valuable markets. [Britain would have the advantage here of being able to sell to both sides and I doubt either side would be stupid enough to seek to antagonise the RN].
If for whatever reason Britain does end up at war with the central powers Germany is definitely still better off not doing something stupid like unrestricted U-boat warfare or the insane Zimmerman telegraph. Much better would be actually allocating resources more efficiently and making the military less dominant but that might be ASB without hindsight.
Its possible for the central powers to win a war with the OTL entente, including Britain but they need to be better lead or very lucky. I think Germany might even have a chance of getting a draw post the US entry into the war but they would need much better leadership and a good measure of luck.
Steve
I have the perfect person in mind, as after the last post I have done some reading in order to flesh out the proper POD. If Colmar von der Goltz took over from the War Minister Gossler in 1903 or before (which would be even better) then the German army is going to bet much much more modern and prepared for war than its historical counterpart. I can post some of his platforms that Kaiser Wilhem was crazy about OTL, but ultimately dropped due to protests from Schlieffen, Gossler, and the head of his military cabinet (lots of overlap there). Luckily Moltke and von der Goltz were friends; they had many similar ideas, but Moltke was very hands off about army composition and let the traditionalist fight it out with the technophiles. With Goltz working with Moltke massive changes are coming and Germany will have a firepower focus going to war in 1914, with a society that has been prepared for exactly the war that was fought historically.
I'm seriously thinking about a writing a timeline for this....
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