The immediate shipbuilding picture includes Maryland already in service, Colorado not yet commissioned, and further American and Japanese hulls under construction. That concrete programme differed from the paper possibility of a future race, and the video rejects the claim that a full building race was already under way in 1921-22. The analysis also separates the Anglo-German quantitative contest from wider political tensions and the qualitative competition among Britain, the United States, Japan, and Italy. The prewar naval race is presented as a symptom of a larger Anglo-German struggle for status and an insufficient cause of the First World War by itself. This makes disarmament policy a response to strategic fear and political history as well as ship totals.
Notable Point · 9:34-12:40
Treaty fears and the naval-race explanation
The Colorado and Nagato building programmes anchor a challenge to the idea that the Washington Treaty simply halted an active postwar naval race or that naval competition alone caused the First World War.