ABSTRACT
Between the wars France feared German rearmament and struggled to enforce the Versailles Treaty as a means of preventing this. The British thought the French worried too much. For example, in 1929, Harold Nicolson dismissed France’s fears.1 But France was right to be afraid. And the British should have been more concerned about the dangers posed by German rearmament-particularly when such measures had involved submarines. Germany’s military and civilian leaders had never accepted the restraints of Versailles and it is well known that the German Army trained clandestinely with the Soviet Union after Rapallo. But the German Navy worked just as diligently to prepare for the next war, systematically violating Versailles to do so. Several countries helped Berlin, including a few that had signed the Versailles Treaty: Japan, Italy, Spain, and Turkey. Arguably, the one that helped the most was Finland, a country the British believed they had ‘all wrapped up’. But even with German help, the Finns still needed a naval program to build their fleet, because a naval program meant funding.
