I've heard that at the start of World War 1 there was debate in Britain as to which side to join...

The chance of Britain siding with German probably ended about the turn of the century. By 1914 it was inevitable.

Dammit

*inevitable that they would side against them

It might have been possible for them to stay neutral though.

Brits and Germans had fairly cordial relations until Wilhelm II unleashed his turbo autism. This was well before World War I. I'm also not sure Britain would have cared otherwise given Germany's invasion of Belgium. Britain's foreign policy was always to ensure Belgian neutrality, so that no particular country or coalition could totally block them from continental trade. Germany threatened that, so the Hamburgers had to go.

They had secret deals with France already that theyd join the war against germany. Belgium just was a good excuse to the public.

>the invasion and rape of a neutral country was a good excuse to the public
No shit Sherlock.

>Britshits making a huff about "muh neutral belgium" when they built their entire empire off raping and enslaving """neutral""" powers european or native

lyl

So, the days before the outbreak of war 1914 are filled with a lot of "who said what, to who, and when?".

There was sympathy for Germany at the top of Britain's power structure, but there was also fear. I do not believe it was ever even close to likely that Britain would side with Germany though.

Britain was always gonna get involved, no two ways about it in my book. Senior members of the Liberal government had made semi-secret deals with France that even the British Cabinet wasn't fully aware of. Before Belgium got invaded, there was not a majority in favour of war in the Cabinet, but several key figures threathened to resign if Britain didn't come to the aid of France, in accordance with the secret negotiations. This would have meant the fall of the Liberal Government, and a new Conservative government would not have hesistated to get involved.
tl;dr Britain was always gonna get involved, but the invasion of Belgium just made it a lot more convenient for government to justify it to its people.

I can recommend the BBC production "37 Days" on this topic.

Germany faced a war on two fronts. NOT going through Belgium would have meant trying to break through the Maginot Line. The Schlieffen plan called for a quick and decisive campaign to knock out France, before turning to face the Russian juggernaut.

>Maginot Line
lad

>Maginot Line in WW1
>"Germany was totally justified and it was Belgium's fault for being in the way"
Okay.

Yeah ok, that was a brain fart on my part. My point still stands though, Germany wanted to avoid having to batter its way through the French defenses along the shared border.

>Germany wanted to avoid having to batter its way through the French defenses along the shared border.
So what?

And it is not a justification, I'm just trying to explain why the Germans did what they did. Understanding and condoning are not the same thing.

My bad, I just saw too many people blaming Belgium for the German invasion and assumed you did the same.

We're entering the realm of pure speculation here, but Germany did promise to not harm Belgium if it granted passage for the German armies.

Some people have argued here that Belgium, by refusing to fold to German demands, brought what followed onto itself.

Denying that Germany was the aggressor in that case is frankly weird. Belgium had no reason to trust any promise.

Nah they had a liberal government that was committed to splendid isolationism, their PM broke down into tears when Germany refused to leave Belgium.

By virtue of being small and powerless I don't think Belgium even has the right to be neutral. As far as I'm concerned they should have picked a side, the war wasn't about them. In truth they were in alliance with the British.

>their PM broke down into tears when Germany refused to leave Belgium.
Wow that explains a lot.

Considering Britain's main worry during the time was Germany building up their navy fast and threatening the supremacy of the Royal Navy, there's no way they would have joined the Central Powers unless they had some weird deal where Germany would stop building ships or something.

>Britain for once actually stands up for the little guy and keeps a promise instead of breaking it
>Veeky Forums still finds a way to turn this action into a negative

The Anti-Brit sentiment on this board is just embarrassing sometimes.

Why did Germany even need to batter France? With such a short border defense would be easy and they could focus their energies almost entirely on Russia as well as helping their shitty allies.

>English
George was born in England, and learned English as his first language. He's English.

It's because of the fact that Britain is overwhelmingly represented well in media, so other european nations feel anger towards it.

Source on secret negotiations with the French?

He's British not English.

>>Britain for once actually stands up for the little guy and keeps a promise instead of breaking it
And it was the biggest mistake in British history.

>It's because of the fact that Britain is overwhelmingly represented well in media, so other inferior nations feel anger towards it.

Belgium was Britain's Lusitania.

British were always trying blockade Germany from heliogland to their number of boats, meanwhile they were crypto aligned with France and worked with them in Crimera, China, and Africa

The Schlieffen Plan was fucking retarded