Spies in Uniform: British Military and Naval Intelligence on the Eve of the First World War

by Matthew S. Seligmann

Why did the British government declare war on Germany in August 1914? Was it because Germany posed a threat to British national security? Today many prominent historians would argue that this was not the case and that a million British citizens died needlessly for a misguided cause. This book counters such revisionist arguments. Matthew Seligmann disputes the suggestion that the British government either got its facts wrong about the German threat or even, as some have claimed, deliberately 'invented' it in order to justify an otherwise unnecessary alignment with France and Russia. By examining the military and naval intelligence assessments forwarded from Germany to London by Britain's service attachés in Berlin, its 'men on the spot', Spying on the Kaiser clearly demonstrates that the British authorities had every reason to be alarmed. From these crucial intelligence documents, previously thought to have been lost, Dr Seligmann shows that in the decade before the First World War, the British government was kept well informed about military and naval developments in the Reich. In particular, the attachés consistently warned that German ambitions to challenge Britain posed a real and imminent danger to national security. As a result, the book concludes that the British government's perception of a German threat before 1914, far from being mistaken or invented, was rooted in hard and credible intelligence.

286 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2006

Reviews

[Derek Nudd · Rating 5 out of 5]

In the febrile atmosphere of the years leading up to the First World War, British service attaches had to walk a narrow path between their role as accredited diplomats and their more or less overt intelligence commitment to the War Office or Admiralty.
Seligmann's study is structured around five questions specifically about Germany: where does intelligence fit into attaches' role profile? How did they gather that intelligence? How did they report what they learnt? Did Germany have the capacity and intention to attack Britain? Did their reports influence British policy? I don't think it's too much of a spoiler to say his answer to the last two questions is 'Yes'.
The scholarship is remarkable considering that so many of the sources have been 'weeded' out of existence. Even better, the result is readable - Seligmann is clearly not one of those academics who gain status from obscurantism. My main whinge is the price. I managed to find a second hand copy and even that, for about 280 pages with no illustrations, was eye-watering.