Two habits distort popular accounts of interwar naval history. The first is anachronism: fleets of the 1920s and 1930s should not be judged as though they operated in the strategic and technological world of the 1960s and 1970s. The second is a zero-sum habit of declaring one nation wholly excellent and all others failures. National strengths and weaknesses need to be judged against their period and each navy's strategic requirements. Even overwhelming military advantages may bring other states together through means short of war, so a simple ranking table explains little.
Notable Point · 5:35-7:05
Avoid anachronistic, zero-sum fleet rankings
A methodological aside warns against projecting the naval world of the 1960s and 1970s backward onto the interwar treaties or treating one nation's success as proof that every rival was incompetent.