Danger Zone: The Coming Conflict with China

by Hal Brands

On the surface, Kaiser Wilhelm II had every reason to be optimistic in 1914. A century earlier, Prussia—the forerunner to Wilhelm’s German Empire—had been thrashed by Napoleon. Into the 1850s, a loosely confederated Germany was, one British observer later said, a “cluster of insignificant states under insignificant princelings.”1 Since the unification of those states in 1871, however, Germany had been a great power on the make. Its factories churned out iron and steel, erasing Great Britain’s once-unassailable economic lead. Germany built an army unparalleled in Europe; its growing navy threatened British supremacy at sea. By the early 1900s, Germany was a continental heavyweight pursuing an audacious “world policy” aimed at grabbing colonies and global power. “Germany towered above all the other continental states,” historian A. J. P. Taylor wrote; it seemed destined for dominance in Europe and perhaps beyond.2 Yet the kaiser and his aides didn’t feel confident. In the East, one enemy—Russia—was building up its army, enlarging its fleet, and slashing the time required to ready its forces for war. In the West, another enemy—France—was dramatically enlarging the army it could hurl at Germany. Even worse, a Franco-Russian-British entente had Germany surrounded, while the kaiser’s allies, he complained, were dropping away like rotten fruit.3 Perhaps time was not on Berlin’s side: If Wilhelm did not make a dash for greatness soon, Germany’s military position and hopes for worl...