When a butterfly instigates its wings, it will affect not only your enemies, but also your allies, the international situation is ever-changing, the two sides may be allies today, and tomorrow, the two sides may become potential enemies, such as the United States and the Soviet Union during World War II. In this plane that has crossed over, Xu Jie's appearance not only brings a better future to Huaxia, but at the same time, the international situation has also undergone some changes, which Xu Jie did not expect!

The British actually agreed with the French in advance on the issue of colonies and the division of interests! Historically, this should have started around 1904, and now it's only April 1901! When Xu Jie heard the news, he subconsciously felt a little bad! It takes a lot of courage and determination for Britain and France, who have fought for global hegemony since the time of the Sun King Louis XIV, to put aside their old suspicions and sit together to deal with a common threat! This meant that the two sides could tolerate many aspects of the other, such as the French recognizing the British supremacy at sea. And the British have to tolerate France's unpopular ally, Russia!

Historically, the direct cause of the alliance between Britain and France was the growing power of Germany and its younger brother Austria-Hungary. The old feud between France and Germany had reached the point where it had to be settled by a war, and the contradiction between Britain and Germany was not only due to the growing naval strength of the German Empire, but to the fact that the emerging empire was putting pressure on the British Empire on all fronts!

In terms of national strength, Germany's gross industrial production has long surpassed that of Britain. Trailing only the United States and second in the world, the Germans maintained an average annual industrial growth rate of 2.9 percent for the 40 years from 1873 to 1913. At that time, the British were only 2.2% per year, and the French were even lower, only 1.6%! By 1913, Germany's GDP had reached 16%, the second highest in the world, compared to 14% in Britain and 6% in French.

And if you look at it from the industrial sector, Germany's advantages are even more obvious. In 1910 the Germans were already far more productive than the British in terms of steel and pig iron, with 13.1 million tons of steel. And the British had only a pitiful 7.6 million tons. In terms of pig iron, the Germans were 14.8 million tons, while the British were 10.2 million tons! By 1913, Germany's steel production surpassed that of Britain and France combined. In this year, the Germans produced 19.33 million tons of pig iron and 19.3 million tons of steel! Such a powerful production capacity can only be matched by the United States!

This is just a contest between primary industrial goods, let's take a look at Germany's capabilities in the three emerging industries of machining and chemicals, electrical appliances and optics. In 1907, German industrial manufacturing had reached an unrivalled level in Europe! If you have to express it in numbers, then German industry can be described as 1.12 million machine tools! In the chemical industry, in 1907 there were already 270,000 employees in Germany. More than 90% of the dyes in the world are made in Germany! Siemens also employed 142,000 people during the year. More than 50% of the world's electronic products come from Siemens! In terms of optics, German optical products before World War 1 were unique in the world. "madeinGermany" is all over the world, and it is the guarantee of quality!

If a country's industry becomes strong, then the demand for raw materials and the desire for overseas markets will be extremely inflated, for the simple reason that so many industrial products are simply not digestible by themselves! In order not to keep the product backlogged, in order to earn more money, the only thing the Germans can do is even export, export, re-export! At the same time as a resource-poor country. Germany also has to import a lot of primary products and raw materials from abroad! To this end, the Germans formed the second largest merchant fleet in the world. With the support of a strong domestic industrial and merchant fleet, the Germans imported a total of 10.77 billion marks in 1913. And the total export volume reached 10.097 billion marks! Germany accounted for 13% of the world's trade that year, second only to the UK's 15%. Compete with the British for raw material origin and product market, the British can endure it!

In the eyes of the British, the proximity of a country that had already suppressed the British Empire in all respects was already quite uneasy for the British. To a certain extent, Germany at this time had given the British the impulse and reason to do so. At the beginning of the 20th century, the world completely followed the principle of a law of the jungle, everyone was competing for limited resources, and they didn't think about whether they needed win-win cooperation, they just thought about how to defeat their opponents to determine their own status, even if the Germans were not so sharp, the British would be jealous, not to mention that several things that Germany did stimulated the fragile nerves of the British!

The expansion of the German High Seas Fleet and the insistence on building a railroad to Baghdad brought Britain and Germany inevitably into opposition! If the problems of national strength, market and resources have made Britain and Germany potential opponents, then these two things have made it inevitable for Britain and Germany to take action! You and the British are just grabbing the market and resources, and you have to build a navy that is enough to threaten the British!

This has challenged the bottom line of the British, and the British's double-strong plan is not a joke, it is to be real! The British wanted to position the tonnage ratio of the capital ships of Britain and Germany by 2 to 1, but the Germans said that it must be 16 to 10, but what if they didn't talk about it? The result of neither side backing down is that everyone builds ships together and plays an arms race!

And the impact of the Baghdad railway is no worse than that of the naval arms race! In Xu Jie's time, people's first reaction when they think of the Middle East is that the Middle East is a good place, oil is everywhere, and you can make money by digging a pit! (During the Cold War, 70 to 80 percent of the Middle East's oil fields were self-blowing wells!) In other words, dig a mouthful of oil and it will come out by itself! There is no need to pressurize at all, Daqing, which is second to none in China, is at most a medium-sized oil field in the Middle East! At the beginning of the 20s, although the oil of the Middle East was not as popular as it was in later generations, it was also known that there was oil in this place! The British and French have long coveted places like what is now Iraq and Saudi Arabia, and it would take little effort to deal with a Turkish empire that had already decayed.

As a result, just when the British and French were about to slaughter the fat sheep, the Germans said that they could not stand by and decisively joined the feast! The Germans told Turkey that I could help you train the army and help you build a railroad, and this temptation was much greater than that of the British and French. The Turkish government began to tilt towards Germany, which in turn led to a warming of relations between the two sides, and the benefits to Germany were also increasing! And this inevitably offends the British.

More importantly, Turkey is located at the crossroads of Asia, Africa and Europe, and if the British want to connect with their colonies in Southeast Asia in the Far East and South Asia, the shortest route must be to cross the Indian Ocean, cross the Red Sea into the Mediterranean, and then from the Atlantic to Britain. But if Germany gains a foothold in the Middle East, you may be able to avoid it by going to the Indian Ocean, but if you cross the Red Sea, can you avoid it? Didn't the British bother to fix the Suez Canal in vain? Also around the Horn of Africa! This is unacceptable to the UK!

So, when Germany showed interest in sea power and the Middle East, the British said, "Needless to say, young man, get ready to show your weapons!" And the Germans were also very confident in themselves, and after a few months of defeating France, Wilhelm II said that within one year the German soldiers would be able to return home! Even before the war, they said that they were ready for war, and the sooner they went to war, the better it would be for them, and when both sides were ready for war, then war was inevitable!

On the one hand, in the eyes of the British, as long as the Russians' access to the Far East could be locked up and not pose a threat to their sea power and colonies, Vladivostok had become the territory of the Chinese Republic, and the Russians did not even have a port in the Far East, let alone compete in the Pacific Ocean. So from this point of view, the goal of the British has almost been achieved, and if Russia loses again this time, then the goal will be completely achieved!

As for the second reason, the contradictions between the Russians and the Germans are actually irreconcilable. On the one hand, it was because of Germany's own fear and distrust of Russia, before the Franco-Prussian War, the Russians gave Europe the impression that it was a backward but powerful country, and that European steamrollers were not called in vain! This, combined with an alliance with France, made the Germans themselves feel insecure.

On the other hand, there is the Pan-Slavism that Russia is pursuing at this stage! This not only added to Austria-Hungary, which wanted to occupy the Balkans, but also caused a lot of trouble for the Germans. At that time, Germany, Austria-Hungary and Russia had done one thing, that is, the three countries divided Poland, but the Poles were actually Slavs, and when the Russians sacrificed the banner of their pan-Slavic ideas, they themselves had a certain influence on the Poles under German occupation, coupled with the Russians' covetousness of the Balkan territories, so that Germany had to suspend the Three Emperors Alliance after thinking twice, and then firmly stood on the side of Austria-Hungary.

And after Europe gradually divided into two hostile alliances, its impact was not only in Europe, but also gradually expanded to the world, and the results of hostility to the Chinese Republic were not what Xu Jie wanted to see!

Thank you for the reward for the beginning of your new life~~~. Thank you very much~~~. (To be continued......)