ABSTRACT
Between 1806 and 1820 there was only a transitional opportunity to have Britain as an ally. As soon as Napoleon was defeated, Prussian-British interests diverged again and Britain lost interest in intervening in Central European affairs. After 1871 it was hardly in any Western neighbor’s interest to contemplate an alliance with Germany. With France’s defeat in the Franco-Prussian War and the establishment of a new German Reich, only Russia had a position like the United States in 1990, namely that it was too big to feel threatened by a greater Germany. So again Germany looked eastward for greater security. The Weimar Republic of 1919 felt itself a humiliated underdog of the international system with a certain kinship to
the new Soviet Union. In the Treaty of Rapallo it sought and found an understanding with Moscow on secret economic and military cooperation that undermined the Treaty of Versailles.
