Planning Armageddon: British Economic Warfare and the First World War

by Nicholas A. Lambert

*Winner of the 2013 Norman B. Tomlinson Prize

Before the First World War, the British Admiralty conceived a plan to win rapid victory in the event of war with Germany--economic warfare on an unprecedented scale. This strategy called for the state to exploit Britain's effective monopolies in banking, communications, and shipping--the essential infrastructure underpinning global trade--to create a controlled implosion of the world economic system.

Genres: History, Economics, World War I, European History

662 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2012

About the author

Nicholas A. Lambert is an associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (Whitehall) as well as visiting fellow at Australian National University. He has held fellowships at Yale University, Southampton University, Wolfson College, Oxford, and the University of Texas at Austin. Between 2016 and 2018, he held the Class of 1957 Chair at the United States Naval Academy.

Reviews

[Patrick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lambert’s Planning Armageddon is a fascinating, although controversial, look at pre-war British strategic planning as well as the internal British debate about economic warfare in the opening months of the war. Lambert spins a compelling narrative, although one supposedly refuted by others in the field.

But aside from the important history, Lambert’s book is a meaty masterclass in rigor, critical thinking, and research.

[Dropbear123 · Rating 4 out of 5]

4/5

Academic book about the planning of Britain's economic warfare pre-WWI and the (in)effectiveness of it during the first half of the war. The book covers the pre-WWI discussions within the admiralty about whether to engage in economic warfare and how to theoretically do it if/when war began. Then it covers the 1914-1915 period, ending at the beginning of 1916.

The basic argument of the book is that the British admiralty had a very strong economic warfare plan that can be summed up as triggering a global trade/economic meltdown, then using Britain's economic superiority and dominance to outlast Germany. But when the war began the government backed down on this for a variety of reasons, mainly domestic blowback from economic damage and a fear of alienating neutrals like the USA. The book then continues on saying that the British blockade in 1914-1915 was borderline useless with huge amounts of resources reaching Germany because the different government departments had different goals so the blockade wasn't enforced. The Board of Trade didn't want too many things designated as contraband as it would affect trade with neutrals and hurt UK exporters, even if it was clear that these were either being reexported to Germany or used to replace materials that had been exported to Germany (Sweden sells foodstuffs to Germany at a high price, buys cheaper food from the UK or USA to replace it for example). The Foreign Office didn't want to piss of the USA, the colonial office didn't want to offend Australia and Canada by affecting their exports with neutrals etc. Additionally there was the technological factor that at the time it was quite difficult to process the amount of shipping information available or to acquire accurate info about export figures from neutrals unwilling to provide it or info on how the blockade was affecting Germany.

Complaints - Despite being an academic book it is quite long at just over 500 pages without counting sources and notes. A lot of the book is about various committees or "X sent Y a memorandum saying Z" which as someone not reading the book for academic reasons did get a bit repetitive after a while (I think going into the book, I expected it to be a bit more analytical and big picture, less about internal bickering so I'm a little bit disappointed in that regard)

Overall it's a decent interesting book I wouldn't recommend to most people. If you already happen to know a decent amount about WWI and are specifically interested in the economic side of it or the internal politics of the British leadership, then it might be worth a read. Otherwise I think you'd find it a bit boring.

[Casey · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great book, providing an overview of Britain’s economic warfare campaign against Germany in the first half of World War One. The author, noted historian Nicholas Lambert, uses a wide range of contemporary sources to present the strategic decisions behind Britain’s unsuccessful attempts to destroy Germany’s war making capacity. Realizing the centrality of Britain’s merchant marine and banking systems to globalized trade, the Admiralty led a government effort to develop a campaign of economic warfare through distant blockades and credit denial. Lambert explains how this strategy fell apart as the damage to domestic and neutral interests became a deciding factor. The book is full of Lambert’s trademark deep dive into sources. His understanding of bureaucratic processes helps paint a more complete picture of the many factors at work. He shows the wide array of political, diplomatic, economic, financial, and cultural strands which had to be navigated by national leaders attempting to deny Germany the means of making war. A great book for anyone contemplating great power conflict in a globalized world. Highly recommended for those wanting to better understand the roadblocks to a campaign of economic warfare.

[Andrew Daniels · Rating 3 out of 5]

This shouldn't be your first book on the pre-WWI period, you should have ~5 books or so read before tackling this one. You are expected to already know the First Moroccan Crisis, the alliance structures from 1870-1914, the Russo-Japanese War, all of the major leaders, guerre de course,

It does talk about the jeune ecole, the introduction of battlecruisers, British naval reforms

Its fairly specialized