Leaving aside the delusion of the effectiveness of the “citizen militia” for defense, there is also the teeny tiny issue of needing to project force if you want to protect your merchant marine far from home… #drachinifel

Finally we have the early USN and the cultural belief in favour of “citizen militias” #drachinifel

The idiocy was that they kept TRYING to do this even after learning that it was a great way to reinforce the Royal Navy with French built ships… #drachinifel

Number 3 is age of Sail France’s various attempts to invade Ireland… #drachinifel

Part of the problem is that for Germany a navy was a tool of power, for Britain (at the time) the Royal Navy was EXISTENTIAL in terms of maintaining the empire and the merchant fleet… #drachinifel

The core problem being that the theory assumed that the British wouldn’t react to the German build up, which because Fisher they absolutely did… #drachinifel

Plus Germany is (or was) a continental power, predominantly, it needed a large army before it needed a navy. This gave rise to the stupid risk theory… #drachinifel

Number 3 is the German Naval build up prior to WWI which completely failed to understand naval power #drachinifel

Then there were the ships still under design/construction… and again the Royal Navy did a stupid. #drachinifel

In terms of the Colossuses and Majestics, keep those and dispose of the older classes. Instead of which, they were mostly sold off. #drachinifel