Q&A · 1:41:41-1:43:48

Why French naval parity with Germany would break the treaty system

Giving Germany treaty parity with France and Italy after the Rhineland crisis would be unacceptable to France and destabilize Europe.

Question

What if Germany gained naval-treaty parity with France and Italy after the Rhineland crisis?

Short answer

France would reject it as a fundamental security threat, making treaty collapse and a wider crisis likely.

Notes

French security depended on avoiding a revived German naval great power while accepting only Italian parity. Matching Italy already left too little fleet strength for all of France's imperial commitments, so German parity would be treated as a fundamental threat rather than a technical treaty revision. France would likely leave the arrangement and could escalate the Rhineland crisis into war. Britain had just fought a world war to prevent Germany becoming a naval great power and would be unlikely to accept that result quietly. Poland would also have an incentive to join a coalition that could remove the East Prussian strategic problem. If treaty tonnage limits instead disappeared for everyone, British and American shipbuilding capacity would create a different but still severe problem for Germany.