If the British Army landed in Europe, I'd get the Belgian police to arrest them

If the British wanted Bismarck/Prussia/Germany destroyed they could have gotten it in a heartbeat. Obvious by the fact that a far weaker Britain defeated far stronger foes in the past and far stronger ones in the future.
>2016
>Not blaming that crafty old clown for the trainwreck his 'country' became.

You're a funny guy.

Not jking. Bismarck was terrible. Germany had a far better future before him and the rest of the Prussian mob came along.

Being an irrelevant, fractured backwater is a better future to you?

I hate krauts who disagree with me but i hate other countries more.

t. otto von bismarck

literally lol.

Scandanavia is a 'fractured backwater' and would be as 'irrelevant' as a divided Germany would be. Most Scandanavian countries are fantastic places to live. Most small European countries are fantastic places to live and are very safe high-trust high accomplishment societies. Even with all the migrants and especially before them.

A lot of the German states had far more humanitarian and less destructive approaches than the Prussians had.

Their myth of British military weakness and their own arrogance and greed is what brought their country and a lot of Europe to the state that it is in. Britain was a global superpower with hundreds of millions of subjects across the globe and more access to resources and capital than any other power. Even if it started with a small army, in the end, there could obviously be no easy victory against them.

Bruh

Holy Roman empire

What about it.

this level of delusion

>Most Scandanavian countries are fantastic places to live.

No they're irrelevant backwaters that are only kept afloat through dependence on oil and the arms trade.

>Most small European countries are fantastic places to live and are very safe high-trust high accomplishment societies. Even with all the migrants and especially before them.

They're only permitted to exist because of the protection granted to them by their larger neighbors.

>Britain was a global superpower with hundreds of millions of subjects across the globe and more access to resources and capital than any other power. Even if it started with a small army, in the end, there could obviously be no easy victory against them.

On paper the British are intimidating but the reality, as Bismarck pointed out, was that they were and are weak militarily. Even by Bismarck's time the British were struggling to support their empire, their monopoly system insured that the only place territory that was industrialized was the home islands and most of their colonial troops were equipped with out-dated gear. The British Army was tiny compared to the Prussians and it would have taken the British quite sometime to muster and equip a force large enough to actually be a threat and by then the Prussians would have already completed their objectives on the continent. That's why Bismarck didn't take the British seriously when they threatened to intervene at Schleswig.

I'm french and I don't particularly like Englishmen, but I have to remind you that English have always managed to accomplish their continental goals after the 100 years war. They always aligned themselves against the rising continental power threatening them and it always worked, be it France, Germany or Spain.

Now as for the military part, sure they had an underwhelming terrestrian force, but in WWI they suffocated Germany with their blockade, and in WWII they repulsed any attempt to conquer them. So even with a weak on land military, the english are far from being a non threat

>No they're irrelevant backwaters that are only kept afloat through dependence on oil and the arms trade.

That is such a stupid statement. Norway is the only one that has oil and even if you subtract its oil revenue it is still an extremely productive country with a high gdp per capita. I never knew Iceland was a major player in the international arms trade. By ever major metric on economics and development the Scandinavians are very high achievers. Also they are not irrelevant in science, economics and engineering - i.e. shit that actually matters. They tend to contribute very high levels of their GDP relative to other countries in R&D(with the exception of Norway).

>They're only permitted to exist because of the protection granted to them by their larger neighbors.

They are independent powers that gain a high level of security through their membership in supranational military organizations like NATO.

Small countries/tribes working collaboratively to deal with external threats to their security/independence is not a unknown or even uncommon or recent phenomenon. The ancient Greeks done it.

I am very confident that if they are so inclined a modern Germans could do what the ancient Greeks done and could have very easily developed a similar arrangement that would have allowed them to deal with external threats and act with a functional degree of unity in military and foreign matters.

>On paper the British are intimidating but the reality, as Bismarck pointed out, was that they were and are weak militarily.

It is 1870, when was the last serious war the British lost to a European power? The Anglo-Dutch wars? and that wasn't a particularly devastating defeat. The British got a bloody nose in some coalition wars and in the American revolution but the previous 3 centuries were overwhelmingly a success story for them.

1870 was the absolute zenith of British power. They were leaps and bounds ahead of everyone in industrialization.

The British were like the Austrians, they knew how to play the politics game but did it better. They always knew how to leverage the odds in their favor because they sure as hell weren't going to achieve their goals by military means alone as their repeated experience on the continent showed.

>WWI they suffocated Germany with their blockade

Wasn't a major effect on the Germans as you would think. Advances in agricultural science and technology, along with new modes of transportation such as the railroad made sea trade less vital for continental powers in maintaining wars. The only thing the blockade majorly impacted was Germany's ability to bring their colonial troops to front.

>WWII they repulsed any attempt to conquer them

Donitz nearly starved them into submission on more than one occasion. What spared them was America's entry into the war, so in that regards they were lucky.

>Wasn't a major effect on the Germans as you would think. Advances in agricultural science and technology, along with new modes of transportation such as the railroad made sea trade less vital for continental powers in maintaining wars. The only thing the blockade majorly impacted was Germany's ability to bring their colonial troops to front.
?!?!?
The blockade was absolutely vital to the defeat of Germany, and extremely stifling - German inbound and outbound trade was cut to about half (!!!), and perhaps even more importantly they lost the majority supplies of chemicals (such as fertilizer) and coal.

So you're telling me Germans were not starving at the end of WWI ?

And yeah it went close in WWII but they still got through.

Meanwhile Prussia disappeared from the face of the Earth and the prussian military superiority with it.

People see Bismarck as a good military leader but they forget he was way more than that. He was a good politician before being a good general. If Prussia defeated France in 1870, it's not only because they performed better on the field, it's also because France was completely isolated diplomatically, thanks to Bismarck.
He maybe shouldn't have supported the colonial initiative towards the end, and iirc he was against it at first.

So to conclude, what I mean is that Bismarck knew perfectly military alone is not a garantee in international relationships. A thing Germany forgot crucially after him

>Donitz nearly starved them into submission on more than one occasion. What spared them was America's entry into the war, so in that regards they were lucky.
The Battle of the Atlantic had turned to the Brits' favor with the adoption of new escort tactics and ASW radar models in early 41, that is more than half a year before the American entry into the war.

>By ever major metric on economics and development the Scandinavians are very high achievers. Also they are not irrelevant in science, economics and engineering - i.e. shit that actually matters. They tend to contribute very high levels of their GDP relative to other countries in R&D

In what universe is this true? The Scandinavian countries exist in the peripheral of Europe. They lack a diversity of resources and have low populations. Countries like that don't produce much of anything.

>inb4 Noble Prize

Nobel Prize is extremely political and the committee has a strong bias towards Swedish and other Scandinavian candidates so it's not to be taken seriously.

>Small countries/tribes working collaboratively to deal with external threats to their security/independence is not a unknown or even uncommon or recent phenomenon. The ancient Greeks done it.

The Greeks were conquered by the Romans, before that subjects of the Successors, and before them brought to heel by Philip and Alexander. In peace time confederacies bicker, fight and look to their own affairs and in wartime often fail against organized and determined opponents.

>1870 was the absolute zenith of British power. They were leaps and bounds ahead of everyone in industrialization.

Check your facts, by that time America had completely eclipsed them not only in terms of industrial infrastructure but population size as well, not counting the colonies. Even the British recognized that they simply couldn't keep up with the pace of industrialization as the other powers because they were too heavily invested in their monopoly system to actually develop their colonies outside the role of resource extraction. That's why around this time the British began to gravitate towards America politically more and more because they saw in their former colony a partner who could help save their empire.

Complete myth. The British never had large armies of conscript(except on their ships if you count press gangs). Their armies were generally small, very well supplied, trained and professionally led. This became more pronounced as warfare became more technological and asymmetrical.

Look at the actual statistics for ww2 for who actually done the real fighting and war winning.

Look at every great war that British Empire fought. From the Spanish Succession war, the Seven years war, the Napoleonic wars and the Two world wars. You will see the same pattern.

1)British start off military weak but economically and diplomatically powerful.
2)Quickly converts economic and diplomatic power into building strong alliances, even subsidies them through cash payments, bonds and equipment.
3)Slowly converts economic power into military power and escalates military involvement.
4) Reverses earlier setbacks in the war, leads and participates in many decisive victories.

The myth of British weakness comes from the post-war post-imperial declinist school of thought who were basically just a bunch of anti-aristocratic and tradition liberals/lefties who projected Britain's present weakness onto its history. Their interpretation is very different from what actually happened.

Without a continent of allies then they wouldn't even come close.

Lol. Britain has never been hegemonic. Britain rised after a war that devasted Europe and its old colonial rivals,mainly Spain.The days of the ""glorious Brittish empire"" mostly consisted in killing a bunch of niggers and farmers with advanced weaponery. Germany in a couple of years almost out did them navally,that tells you how ""strong""Britain really was.

The blockade did cause some supply problems in Germany and Austria but whether or not it majorly contributed to Germany's defeat is a subject of academic debate.

And yet the Germans adapted and still sunk convoys at a high rate. When America entered the war the destroyer escorts were beefed up; the number of u-boats being sunk by hunter killer groups and American naval bombers convinced Donitz that his u-boat strategy was no longer viable.

Want to post a link about ww2 statistics that will really help make my point but can't because of this stupid boards spambot.

google 'rethinkinghistory.blogspot statistical-confusion-whose-troops'

Also do any of you guys know a URL shortener that actually gets through the spam filter.

>It is 1870, when was the last serious war the British lost to a European power? The Anglo-Dutch wars? and that wasn't a particularly devastating defeat. The British got a bloody nose in some coalition wars and in the American revolution but the previous 3 centuries were overwhelmingly a success story for them.
Are you serious? Outside of some colonial skirmishes the Brittish failed most of the time. In the Austrian succession war,and the Napoleonic wars,it was proven how little real power projection they had in Europe.

The reason why Britain would lose a 1v1 war with Germany is because it's hard to transport and maintain a million Indian troops. Meanwhile, mainland Britain and Ireland had a smaller population and tiny
regular army compared to the German Empire.

>whether or not it majorly contributed to Germany's defeat is a subject of academic debate.
it's not

This
Britian could only pick on Those Less technologically advanced or Those with Smaller amount of people(the Boers)
Which is why they obsess with Balance of Power and Alliances

No it is

let's see a bunch of works going against the idea of the significance of the blockade then

James Edward Edmonds

Show me a credible author that proves your assertion that the blockade actually had any major effect.

All Scandinavian countries(Fin,Nor,Den,Swe,Ice) are in the top 20 countries for GDP per capita(IMF, 2015).
GDP means gross domestic product. That means total things produced domestically. If All Scandinavian countries are in the top 10% of productivity in the world they are obviously not unproductive, they produce a lot of things that other people value.

>The Greeks were conquered by the Romans, before that subjects of the Successors, and before them brought to heel by Philip and Alexander. In peace time confederacies bicker, fight and look to their own affairs and in wartime often fail against organized and determined opponents.

That might have happened to a divided Germany but what did actually happen to Germany was much worse.

>The last bit you wrote about Britain/American reliance/monopoly system/

That is a legit interesting viewpoint and I think it could be true. But that date is way too early. Britain was still the industrial-imperial superpower unrivaled in 1870. 1890 and the collapse of Barings bank and the Argentina crisis was the first pangs imo of the British elite getting nervous.

My rather rare view is that Britain was hyper dominant in technology, machinery, engineering and science and this is always where it got its power from even if it rarely appreciated it. Britain held this advantage from the age of Henry VIII with his Iron cannons and combined with their financial power(which dedication to science and technology got them) it made them very powerful. In the 1840s, especially, Britain adopted a complete free trade policy and pissed their great advantage away for easy money. Everyone with talent went into commerce. The smartest people, the Cambridge wranglers all become judges and lawyers dealing with commercial law. The bankers built palaces and Babbage failed.

In 1851 the British were universally accepted to have a very large technological lead. In 1867 at the Paris expo the French and Germans were the most impressive.

>I literally took the only name I could find in the wikipedia article as somewhat resembling opposing the view of the blockade even though I do not realize that Edmonds' only wrote about the impact of the blockade on the food shortages and his argument has nothing to do with the resource situation caused by the blockade, and furthermore he wrote about it in the FUCKING THIRTIES but because I do not know anything about the subject I used him to """"suport"""" my argument that there "is a debate".
That is literally you.

Meanwhile, people like Eric Osborne, Paul Vincent, Hew Strachan or Niall Ferguson will provide an answer to the other part of your post. Incidentally they have also not been dead for over half a century.

Which explains why there are no great military victories or famous generals/admirals from the British empire era.
>Oh shit nigga is that right?!?!

Well if it is just 1v1 how is Germany going to attack Britain. With its little navy?

Is it going to march through a bunch of Neutral countries and give Britain a bunch of free allies?

Whats it going to do except get blockaded? Indians don't need to go to Europe, Britain has plenty of Friends in Europe, not to mention itself, the foremost industrial nation on the earth. The Indians can help defend Britains treasure trove in the middle east and Africa.

What do you consider the Brittish enpire era? If we considered pre Napoleonic wars Britain a enpire,most of its generals were pretty mediocre. Navy wise they fared better,but is blown out of proportion by Brits themselfs. If you are just talking about XIX Britain, their military did nothing worth mention at that time.

Germany could outproduce Britain. In a matter of years they built a huge navy,just because the kaiser wanted. Time was running on Bismarks favour,the longer it passed,the balance of power would be more in favour of Germany,they had a bigger population(where it counts) and a economy as big as Britain's.

In what fucking bizarro world do you exist in where food isn't important, especially in wartime? That's the main resource that naval blockades are meant to hamper if you read Mahan you'd know that. The food shortages didn't even start effecting the Germans until towards the end of the war when the Americans became involved.

Nice attempts at evasion and goalpost moving and trying to make it sound like I said anything about food not being important rather than trying to defend your original """point""".

GDP should not be used as sole indicator of economic growth and activity. A government can invest heavily into public works but not produce anything of value or create wealth-generating activities.

The empire period is probably 1689-1945.

Compared to the Generals of other countries I would say the British actually had a far larger lead pre-Napoleonic wars. The real buffoon war for the British was the Crimean war but that was during the 19th century where Britain had such an advanced lead that it could afford to make lots of mistakes. You can replace bad leadership quickly if you need to.

The British Navy was generally very successful however. The navy officers were generally very well trained and very professional relative to others. It was a very meritocratic system. To really make it in the navy you had to become a post-captain at as young an age as possible. Once you became a post captain you advanced by seniority. To become a post-captain you generally had to show repeated success and reliability as a commander of most often small fast ships doing a broad range of activities, nearly all of them with a high risk of frequent conflict. Very few people made it and if you look at the life's of John Jervis or Admiral Cochrane you will see people of immense talent and depth.

Often times when Britain was at peace and many officers were landed and on half pay they would join the service of other nations who were at war. The fact that they were widely sought after proves that they must have been known as a talented and reliable lot.

The army could still be meritocratic but it was always burndened as an aristocratic dumping ground in a way which the navy never was because of its intensity of training in technical skills and time spent at sea.

But long story short. The British have never suffered any real long-term deficits in military power.

>Nice attempts at evasion and goalpost moving and trying to make it sound like I said anything about food not being important

That's exactly what you're saying, you dismiss Edmonds because he only wrote about a major factor that effects a nations ability to fight a war rather than war supplies in general.

Let me repeat again the naval blockade didn't do shit until the American's got involved. What really hampered Germany economically was that the Entente were able to politically isolate the Central Powers and prevent them from trading with neutral states for supplies.

>the British actually had a far larger lead pre-Napoleonic wars
How? In continenetal Europe they failed constantly,and the colonial wars against Spain were mostly failures. Besides the 7 years war, Britain didnt have much success in the XVIII century.

Germany could not outproduce Britain. Britain throughout the first half of the 20th century kept and maintained a strong industrial and technological lead over Germany. At the beginning of ww2 British percentage of population employed in Agriculture was 8%, Germany was 30%. That was as late as ww2. In ww1 the gap was even larger.

Germany's entire fleet was wasted. It was always dwarfed by combined British and French fleets.

Thanks Kennedy.

Just see the trend m8. If ww1 didnt happen Germany would surprassed the UK economically

That is just Britain, what about the rest of the Empire?

The rest of the empire was just used to get resources. Britain invested more money in Argentina than in Canada for example.

If you take the long 18th century, 1688-1815(that is a real term I didn't just make it up) then that is essentially Britains rise to power. Britain had a lot of setbacks and defeats but the whole point was that it was very rich and had much easier access and deeper penetration of international markets than everyone else so it could afford to make a lot more mistakes that its opponents because it could fight for a lot longer and secure more of its possessions very easily.

The rise of power happened because the competition disappear.Spain and France got davasted by the continental wars (30 years wars and Napoleonic wars),which allowed them to fill the void.

I am sure that is because a lot of Canadian investment came from the US. Britain could easily supply all industrial demands from the military by itself and if it needed subsidy from its Empire then it could do that, if it needed to relocate production to the colonies that was also an option that it could accomplish over time.

The French and Spanish lost out to Britain in the end because Britain kept building their foreign holdings and investments and domestic market in a way that the backwards systems in other countries couldn't compete with or copy.

>Germany in a couple of years almost out did them navally
This is completely wrong.
By 1914 Britain had 29 Dreadnoughts while Germany had 17.
When it comes to battleships overall it was 49 vs 29.
Where's that "out-doing" thing you were talking about?

If we'd add smaller ships like cruisers and destroyers the British advantage here was even bigger.

Not really. England just filled the void all the time. War between France and The Dutch? Britain/England uses this to win influence over the Dutch as they have to divert resources. If England was connected to mainland Europe they would have not been able to develop their empire,

The Dutch were the biggest losers in the Napoleonic wars. There whole commercial economy collapsed. Much to Britain's benefit.

>Their whole economy*

been in this thread for ages now and i am getting pretty tired but my main point is that what Bismarck said was very stupid and the Germans who shared his mindset consistently underestimated their rivals which led them to start stupid wars they could never win.

Britain's naval power and enormous amount of capital alone meant it couldn't be ignored. They did have a small army but their industrial productivity was still superior at this point and was quickly able to arm itself. The international resources France and Britain had access to were a major contributor to victory also.

Arthur Harris. He knew wehraboos would get buttmad at him in the future, and thus delivered some top-tier quotes for them.

en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Arthur_Travers_Harris

>Britain
>fighting their own wars
>ever

Not the guy you're talking to since I just arrived but It wasn't stupid at all. It's a fact that Britain had a tiny army since it was a professional army. As an island nation they have a completely different strategic planning than continental nations such as France for example or especially Germany, due to being surrounded by multiple great powers and lacking in natural defences. They didn't need a large army and it would be a waste of resources to maintain one if you're not in the process of waging war or preparing to do so.

That would be immediately apparent to anyone reasonable and it should be obvious that Bismarck's remark was less an insult than it was a bit of cheeky banter that obscures a bit of truth - namely that the true strength of Britain has always been the Royal Navy.

Only retards blinded by nationalist pride (even worse when you're not even British - as your lack of humour would indicate) would feel insulted enough to waste hours of pointless debate over it.