Ironically, both sides believed that this would be a conflict exclusively between each other.
The bombastic oratory of both leaders combined with a number of diplomatic faux pas (particularly Admiral George Dewey’s standoff with Admiral Otto von Diederichs in Manila Bay in 1898 and the Venezuelan Crisis of 1902) led the naval planners of both nations to prepare contingency war plans against each other. Roosevelt sought to defend America’s “place in the sun,” which he saw as comprising the recently acquired Philippine archipelago, defending his Open Door policy in China, and protecting America’s “sacred” Monroe Doctrine, which protected the United States’ traditional sphere of influence in Latin America. The Kaiser envisioned Germany’s “place in the sun” in the Far East and in the “economic” colonization of Latin America. Matters were not helped by the fact that these two economic and recently expansionist powers were led by strong-willed and ambitious men: Kaiser Wilhelm II and President Theodore Roosevelt, both of whom were looking for an international “place in the sun” for their respective nations. What is little known is that a tacit naval arms race developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries between these two powers, due primarily to soured foreign relations caused by a rivalry over colonial territory in the Pacific and an economic rivalry in Latin America. American naval expansion paralleled that of another upstart naval power, Germany, whose navy also saw meteoric growth in this period. The US Navy was seen as an upstart by much of the international community, after it experienced a rapid increase in strength in the wake of the SpanishAmerican War. US NAVY DREADNOUGHTS 1914–45 INTRODUCTION The United States was the second of the great naval powers to embrace the concept of the all-big-gun dreadnought battleship in the early 20th century.US DREADNOUGHT BATTLESHIP OPERATIONS 1939–45 35 t Neutrality Patrols t Actions in the European Theater t Actions in the Pacific Theater INTERWAR SCRAPPING, DISARMAMENT AND MODERNIZATION US DREADNOUGHT BATTLESHIP OPERATIONS 1914–18 20 t The Veracruz Occupation t World War I T Delaware Class Specifications t Florida Class Specifications ILLUSTRATED BY PAUL WRIGHT © Osprey Publishing
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