What had changed by the end of the 1914-18 war? The Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires had disappeared. The Chinese Empire remained in place, just about. The Russian Empire had erupted into a socialist revolution. This revolution would focus the minds of the European and American ruling classes for the next 70 years, the new socialist leaders would nationalise the companies privately owned by wealthy Europeans. They tampered with private ownership; previously, private property had been untouchable.

The global relations of power were altered fundamentally after the turbulent period between 1914 and 1945. In 1914, Britain was the world’s leading industrial state. She controlled the global infrastructure for trade and finance on which the world’s stability depended. Thirty years later in 1944 and 1945, Britain had lost nearly everything she had fought for over the previous 400 years. The USA took over global leadership. Worse, as far as Britain was concerned: she was about to lose control of her huge global empire and become again a small island nation in the North Atlantic.

The 30 years from 1914 to 1944 represent years of such death and turmoil at every level that it is hard to exaggerate the suffering across the globe. Many of the events of this period have become so seared into people’s memory, contemporary events are frequently compared and contrasted with them. More people than ever were involved in, or affected by war, and at the times when there was no war, there was chaos across the global economy, which affected everyone’s lives.

There is a small body of historians who have argued the case that the British ruling classes or a powerful part of that class, did wish to go to war with Germany in 1914. And further that they prepared all the conditions for such a war. This small group of historians has in the main been ignored by the establishment historians who have been given prominence by the major publishers in both the USA and UK.

Britain wanted world dominance, and there was never any place for a competitor of any size like Germany. This thought, that Britain willed and manipulated the way towards the 1914 war, has been so unthinkable to British historians and the public alike that it has never been widely discussed. Unlike German scholarship - where the issue was widely discussed - those few scholars who suggested that a major section of the ruling classes consciously decided to go to war with Germany have been side-lined and ignored.