Churchill, Hitler, and "The Unnecessary War": How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World

by Patrick J. Buchanan

As Germany began building dreadnoughts every year, the young new First Lord of the Admiralty spoke in Scotland in 1912, in pointed words of warning to the Kaiser and Admiral Tirpitz. Said Winston Churchill: There is … this difference between the British naval power and the naval power of the great and friendly empire—and I trust it may long remain the great and friendly empire—of Germany. The British Navy is to us a necessity and, from some points of view, the German Navy is to them more in the nature of a luxury. Our naval power involves British existence.… It is the British Navy which makes Great Britain a great power. But Germany was a great power, respected and honored, all over the world before she had a single ship.61 IN GERMANY, the deliberate mistranslation of Churchill’s word “luxury” as “‘Luxusflotte,’ suggesting that Tirpitz’s fleet was a sensual indulgence, stoked the fires of public outrage.”