A poll on if the Germans accepted the (admittedly one-sided) terms the British were offering to Germany for an alliance in turn of century.
???What offer?A poll on if the Germans accepted the (admittedly one-sided) terms the British were offering to Germany for an alliance in turn of century.
Seems far more likely to me.The British didn't offer terms Germany did. The Brits just wanted an informal understanding, while the Germans were offering a full alliance.
And the British were Germanphobes who were obsessed with building a fleet that let them threaten to shell Hamburg over a telegram.You would have to replace Kaiser Wilhelm II with a more competent leader, since Willy was an Anglophobe who was obsessed with building a navy to challenge the British, while trampling on the feet of the French, Russians, Japanese and Americans at the same time.
And the British were Germanphobes who were obsessed with building a fleet that let them threaten to shell Hamburg over a telegram.
A lot of the 'Willy was the source of all problems!' meme in history is that he was just an embarassment, not a cause of so much of these structural issues. British interests and those of Germany just diverged and were irreconcilable and regardless of who the Kaiser was that wouldn't change. Willy just happened to become the Kaiser around the time that Germany was expanding and was diverging from wha the British were comfortable with, as German economic expansion severely cut into British trade. Germany was the convenient scapegoat to frighten the British public into supporting major new outlays to modernize the fleet once the Dreadnought made all their previous BBs obsolete. In terms of historiography so much of the lead up to WW1 has been poisoned by British propaganda that sought to justify it's actions leading up to WW1 and during/after the war and since we in the US are Anglophone we have relied on the British official narrative for a lot of our understanding of European history until WW2 when we got involved on the world stage and could form our own opinions by being involved with all the politics going on. Bismarck wasn't wrong when he said the greatest historical development was that the US spoke English.The UK had relatively good relations with the German Empire before Willy II came along. Hence the OP starting this thread about the possibility of an Anglo-German alliance...
That's the victors writing the history books. Wilhelm II was exceedingly fond of his extended family and Victoria and the UK in particular. Funnily enough, neither he nor the British royals really decided foreign policy.The UK had relatively good relations with the German Empire before Willy II came along. Hence the OP starting this thread about the possibility of an Anglo-German alliance...
That's the victors writing the history books. Wilhelm II was exceedingly fond of his extended family and Victoria and the UK in particular. Funnily enough, neither he nor the British royals really decided foreign policy.
The British might have been of the opinion that relations were good... as long as Germany was forced to grin and bear it whenever they were threatened with the Royal Navy during the latest round of sable ratting. Coincidentally, they soon decided to build their own fleet for some reason.
Britain had it's Empire all it wanted was for the Continentals to keep the balance. Once Germany opted to break that pattern, an Anglo-German alliance wasn't going to happen