The First World War

by Hew Strachan

Despite its title Weltpolitik also carried a domestic and internal purpose. The chancellor of Germany held office because he was the Kaiser’s choice, not because he enjoyed a majority in the Reichstag. His success as chancellor largely depended on his ability to manage the Reichstag despite the lack of a party base. Weltpolitik was Bülow’s solution to this problem — an effort to use foreign policy to appeal to different constituencies within Germany. But the funding of the navy undermined the internal coalition on which Bülow relied. He planned to increase inheritance tax to pay for warships but this challenged the interests of conservative landowners. The conservatives and the Catholic Centre Party crushed the proposal in favour of a tax on mobile capital, which of course struck at business and urban interests. Confronted with domestic discord, Bethmann Hollweg, Bülow’s successor as chancellor, therefore abandoned Weltpolitik and attempted to curb naval spending. He aimed at detente with Britain, using the idea of an Anglo-German naval agreement to do so. This, too, was not without domestic problems, as both Tirpitz and the Kaiser were bound to oppose him. But it might appease the socialists, who became the largest single party in the Reichstag in the 1912 elections.