Interwar naval planning has to be judged from the information available at the time rather than from the outcome. A British admiral seeking preparations around 1930 or 1931 would have needed politicians to accept a war nine years later in which Germany conquered Denmark, Norway, and France, Italy joined the conflict, and Japan followed. That sequence lay beyond the Royal Navy's already severe worst-case assumptions and would have sounded politically incredible. Operation Berlin became possible because an extraordinary cascade of defeats overturned the geography on which British plans rested.
Notable Point · 28:08-29:38
Hindsight hides how extreme Britain's 1941 position was
Years earlier, planners would have had to predict Germany taking Denmark, Norway, and France before Italy and Japan widened the war.