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I don’t see enough blame laid at Britain’s feet for the arms race that led to WWI; they knew they had to crush Germany because the German fleet was building enough to rival their own.

By giving France a blank check, they stoked their dreams of revenge for the Franco-Prussian War. When the “war to make the world safe for democracy” was over, the sun still never set on the British Empire. They were the ultimate enemy of democracy for anyone who wasn’t British.

Like I said, all major powers felt that they were becoming weaker than their rivals. This lead to the thinking that an earlier war would be better than the later war. The Brits were opposed to entering the war, until the Germans invaded Belgium. The British had signed a treaty, which they believed obligated them, required them to defend the sovereignty of Belgium. That's what changed minds in Britain, the naval issue could've been finessed, as the Germans were going back to greater Army funding.

During the run up to WWI, the French leadership was on a ship from St. Petersburg back to France and did almost nothing. Yes, there were people in the French leadership, who wanted to get Alsace-Lorraine back, but in light of growing German strength, they had given up on that possibility. The French entered the war after Germany determined that the partial Russian mobilization was an act of war and declared war on Russia. Then France joined with Russia as part of its treaty obligations.

Read the book, it's really very good.