Tirpitz turns competition into a threat

Britain could tolerate other powers building a limited number of high-quality battleships for their own needs. Tirpitz created a different political signal by pursuing enough ships to challenge the world's largest maritime power and openly presenting Britain as the fleet's reference enemy. This quantitative challenge made the German program look aggressive in a way that American or Italian qualitative competition did not. It helps explain why a German plan conceived when Britain looked like a possible partner had become dangerous by 1914.