Imperial defense and the 'ultimate potential enemy': British foreign policy and the Anglo-German Naval Agreement, 1930--1935

The 1935 Anglo-German Naval Agreement has been given short shrift by historians of European diplomacy.; Close scrutiny reveals that the motivations behind the agreement concerned themselves more with maintenance of existing global ratios of naval tonnage, in an effort to protect Britain's sprawling imperial possessions, than with throwing a mad dog a bone hoping that would forestall war. It was an effort to preserve the naval ratios created at Washington and reaffirmed at London in 1930 by bringing Germany into the European sphere of naval limitation in order to equip the Admiralty to meet the Japanese threat. Although the report of the Defence Requirements Sub-Committee in 1934 designated Germany as Britain's 'ultimate potential enemy', towards whom defense preparations should be made, the agreement was intended to strengthen Britain's attempt to perpetuate the inferior Japanese naval ratio at the upcoming second London Naval Conference slated for 1935. By securing general agreement on naval limitation among the principal European powers, Britain hoped to present Japan with a strong diplomatic front capable of coercing the Japanese to abandon their claims to naval parity.; This thesis demonstrates that in the realm of domestic politics, as well as that of foreign policy, the Anglo-German Naval Agreement holds a greater significance than previous historians have allotted it. That the diplomatic front sought by Whitehall, and the second London Naval Conference, failed should not prevent a clearer understanding of the incentives which led Great Britain to conclude an agreement with the depraved reprobates of Nazi Germany. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)...