GKN and the Great War 1914–18

Whilst trade rivalry itself neither triggered the Great War in August 1914, nor can it be seen as the principal cause of the conflict, the economic battle which had been fought over the previous thirty years created an atmosphere of mutual hostility and distrust, so making resort to war more likely. Many Germans argued that their undermining of Britain’s industrial hold over the European nations from the mid-1870s and eventual supremacy (ousting British exporters from first place in Austro-Hungary, Russia, Sweden, Denmark and Rumania) left her no alternative but to shatter their new-found manufacturing and commercial might in a Continental war.1 After 1895, the dominance of trade achieved by Germany was undeniable in chemicals, dyestuffs, optics, plastics and artificial fibres and this was also true of engineering by 1914; in textiles and coal mining, the UK offered a comparable performance, while a supremacy in quantity, if not always quality, was retained only in shipbuilding, Britain constructing 61 per cent of the world’s tonnage in 1910–14. Having overtaken Britain in the production of steel in 1893, Germany was making double her output in 1914, and in a war which was to be determined not just by manpower, but the ability to manufacture munitions, this lead proved to be of vital consequence. Such growth, often at the expense of British exports, had encouraged a leader in The Times for 1895 to argue that2 Germany is by far the most dangerous of our industrial competitors at the present moment all the world over, and one cannot but regret that the influence of German competition upon British industry has not yet received the full amount of official attention which [it] … deserves.