Is History Repeating?

At the start of the 20th century, Britain had the largest empire the world had ever seen, and the navy to hold it together. Germany had only been a single country since 1871. It had the fastest-growing economy in Europe, and it wanted an empire and a navy to match.

In 1906 Britain launched HMS Dreadnought, a battleship so far ahead of the rest that every older warship was suddenly out of date.³ That reset the race to zero, and Germany set out to catch up. In Britain it became a public panic. In 1909 crowds chanted "we want eight and we won't wait", demanding eight new battleships in one year.⁴

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Britain won that race. By 1914 it had 29 of the new battleships, counting battlecruisers, to Germany's 17.⁴⁵ So Germany turned to its army. And that's where the real danger lay.

Europe had split into two blocs: Germany and Austria-Hungary on one side, France and Russia on the other, with Britain loosely tied to them. Each side's plans assumed the other might strike first.

In 1913 Russia approved a huge programme to expand its army, adding about half a million men by 1917.⁶⁷ Germany's generals did the arithmetic. Every year they waited, the odds got worse.

At a meeting with the Kaiser in December 1912, the head of Germany's army, Helmuth von Moltke, said he considered war inevitable, and "the sooner the better". That comes from an admiral's diary of the meeting.⁸ Historians still argue over how much it shaped what Germany did in 1914.⁹ But it shows the thinking: when you can see the balance turning against you, a deadline can look like a reason to fight now.

In June 1914 the heir to Austria-Hungary's throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, was assassinated in Sarajevo, in Bosnia, which his empire had annexed six years before. That set off a crisis. Within six weeks, the alliances had pulled in every great power in Europe.¹⁰

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One more thing. Just five years earlier, a best-selling book, The Great Illusion, had argued that Europe's economies were so bound together by trade and credit that war would ruin the winners as well as the losers.¹¹ It was right about that. But it didn't stop the war.

After 1918, Britain went the other way. From 1919, its forces were told to plan on the basis that there would be no major war for ten years, and from 1928 the clock was reset each year. Spending was cut hard. The rule was only dropped in 1932.¹²

By then, the Great Depression had hit. Millions were out of work, and democracies turned inward. In Paris, on 6 February 1934, a night of rioting outside parliament left more than a dozen dead.¹³ Across the Atlantic, the United States passed a series of Neutrality Acts, from 1935, to keep itself out of Europe's quarrels.¹⁴

Hitler came to power in 1933. In 1935 he announced that Germany had an air force again and would bring back conscription, both banned by the treaty that ended the First World War.

And Germany wasn't acting alone. Japan had seized Manchuria in 1931, and in 1937 it went to war with China. Italy invaded Abyssinia, now Ethiopia, in 1935. In 1936 Germany and Japan signed a pact against communism, and Italy joined it a year later.¹⁵ Three separate wars, in Asia, Africa and Europe, were on their way to becoming one.

Britain began to rearm, but slowly. Defence took about 2.8 per cent of national income in 1934. By 1938 to 1939 it was 7.7 per cent.¹⁶¹⁷ Estimates differ on the basis: another puts the rise at 2.2 to 6.9 per cent from 1933 to 1938.¹⁸ In 1936 the government began building "shadow factories", run by car makers, to turn out aircraft and engines if war came.¹⁹ The RAF grew from about 800 aircraft in 1934 to 3,700 by 1939, and engineers were building a chain of radar stations along the coast.²⁰

In 1938 the test came over Czechoslovakia. Hitler demanded the Sudetenland, its German-speaking border regions. Britain's prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, told the country in a radio broadcast it was "a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing". At Munich, Britain and France agreed that Germany could take the Sudetenland.²¹

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Chamberlain flew home and said it meant peace. Six months later, in March 1939, Hitler took the rest of Czechoslovakia.²¹

Historians still argue over whether the Munich agreement bought Britain time or simply encouraged Hitler. What is clear is what happened next. In 1939 Britain built 7,940 aircraft, almost as many as Germany's 8,295. In 1940 it built far more: 15,049 to Germany's 10,826.²² When the Battle of Britain came, the radar stations and the fighters were there.

But rearmament didn't prevent the war. Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, and Britain declared war two days later.²³ Deterrence only works on someone who can be deterred. Hitler wanted war.

Four years after the Second World War ended, Western Europe and North America formed NATO, an alliance in which an attack on one would be treated as an attack on all.²⁴ This time, America was in from the start. Months later, in August 1949, the Soviet Union tested its first atomic bomb.²⁵

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What followed was the biggest arms race in history. In 1953, during the Korean War, Britain was spending 9.9 per cent of its national income on defence.²⁶ That's about four times what it spent in 2025.²⁷

And there were moments it nearly went wrong. In October 1962, the Soviet Union put nuclear missiles in Cuba, and for thirteen days the world waited.²⁸ In 1983, a Soviet officer, Stanislav Petrov, decided that an alert showing American missiles on their way was a false alarm, and he was right.²⁹

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The alliance had its own crises. In 1966 France's president, Charles de Gaulle, took his country out of NATO's military command and asked American forces to leave French soil. France stayed in the alliance, and NATO held. In 2009 France rejoined NATO's military command.³⁰

For more than 40 years, America and the Soviet Union never fought each other directly. The Cold War ended in 1991, when the Soviet Union broke up.³¹

Why was this time different? Three reasons stand out.

First, nuclear weapons. Any war between the superpowers risked destroying both, so neither could hope to win one.

Second, clear lines. In 1914, nobody knew for sure who would fight for whom. In the Cold War, everyone knew where NATO's border was, and that crossing it meant war with all of it, America included.

Third, they kept talking. After Cuba, the two sides set up a direct hotline in 1963.³² Over the next 25 years they signed treaties that banned nuclear tests in the atmosphere, slowed the spread of nuclear weapons, and then, with the INF Treaty of 1987, cut a whole class of them.³³³⁴

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It wasn't peace. Millions died in wars the superpowers fought through others, from Korea to Vietnam to Afghanistan. And the communist bloc that looked so solid in 1950 split apart within a decade, when the Soviet Union and China fell out.³⁵ But the war everyone feared never came.

So which of the three looks most like today? Start with what looks familiar, and there's more of it than you might think.

Russia is rearming fast. It spent about $190 billion, 7.5 per cent of its national income, on its military in 2025, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.³⁶³⁷ It invaded Ukraine in February 2022, and the war is still going on. Our history of Russia and Ukraine covers how it began.

Like the empires of 1914, Russia's leader talks in terms of lost territory and history. In 2021 Vladimir Putin wrote that Russians and Ukrainians are "one people".³⁸ Moscow says NATO's expansion eastwards threatens it. NATO's members reply that the 16 countries that have joined since 1999 chose to.³⁹

And, as in the 1930s, Russia isn't acting alone. North Korea has sent it soldiers and shells, and Iran has supplied drones. China buys Russia's oil and, Western governments say, sells it parts for its weapons. Since February 2026 the United States has been at war with Iran, and in October that war reached Saudi Arabia, as we reported in Edition 005. In 2023 the head of the CIA, William Burns, said China's leader had told his army to be ready to take Taiwan by 2027, though he stressed that didn't mean a decision to do it.⁴⁰

There's a debate about how far this goes. Some analysts call Russia, China, Iran and North Korea an axis: one study counts more than 600 instances of cooperation between them from 2019 to 2025, though it says that cooperation shouldn't be overstated.⁴¹ Others say it's a partnership of convenience, full of mistrust, with no promise to fight for one another.⁴² Russia and North Korea are the exception: they signed a mutual defence treaty in June 2024.⁴³

Then there's Ukraine. European governments argue that if Russia is stopped there, the danger to the rest of Europe recedes, and if Ukraine falls, Russia's army would be on the borders of a Europe that isn't ready.

That's where 1938 comes in. Their argument is that letting Russia take Ukraine, as Hitler was allowed to take the Sudetenland, would not mean peace. The Munich agreement didn't. Six months later Hitler took the rest of Czechoslovakia, and within a year he had invaded Poland.

What has changed is who's paying. In 2025, America's new military aid to Ukraine almost stopped, while Europe's rose to about 29 billion euros, according to the Kiel Institute. Much of what Europe sends is still bought from American factories and stocks.⁴⁴⁴⁵

And, like the 1930s, Europe's democracies are under strain at home. In October 2026 France saw its worst riots in years. In Germany and France, parties of the populist right lead the polls. In Britain, Reform UK led them for much of the past year, though Labour has moved back ahead since Andy Burnham became prime minister.⁴⁶⁴⁷

Their views on defence differ, and each deserves to be stated in its own terms. Germany's AfD has called for American troops to leave the country.⁴⁸ France's National Rally once planned to leave NATO's military command, but its leader, Jordan Bardella, now says it wouldn't while the war in Ukraine goes on.⁴⁹⁵⁰ Reform UK says it would keep Britain's role in NATO. Nigel Farage has said he'd vote against sending British troops to Ukraine now, though he could back UN peacekeepers after a ceasefire.⁵¹

In America, the doubts go to the top. In March 2026, Donald Trump said leaving NATO was "certainly something we should think about".⁵² Since 2023, American law has required the Senate's approval for that, though lawyers disagree about whether a president could get round it.⁵³ And in May, the Pentagon ordered about 5,000 American troops out of Germany.⁵⁴

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Like the 1920s, Britain spent decades cutting its forces after the last threat faded: from nearly 10 per cent of national income in the 1950s to 2.3 per cent in 2025.²⁶²⁷ And like 1914, both sides are counting the years. Streeting's 1,000 days is a deadline: the time Britain thinks it has before Russia could be ready. France chooses its next president in 2027. Germany and Britain vote by 2029.

But the three things that kept the Cold War cold are still here.

Nuclear weapons. Britain, France and the United States all have them, and NATO's members are committed to defending one another.

The balance of power. Unlike Germany in 1914 or 1939, Russia faces a much bigger alliance. NATO's European members alone spent about $559 billion on defence in 2025, about three times as much as Russia. Counting the United States, NATO spent $1,581 billion, eight times as much.³⁶

The lines are clear. NATO's border is written down, and Russia hasn't attacked a NATO member. Its pressure on the alliance has stayed below that line: cyber attacks, sabotage and disinformation. In May 2026 the director of GCHQ, Britain's intelligence and cyber security agency, Anne Keast-Butler, said "Russia is scaling up its daily hybrid activity against the UK and Europe, stretching from the seabed to cyberspace".⁵⁵

And alliances have survived strain before. De Gaulle walked out of NATO's command, America threatened to cut its troops in Europe more than once, and the alliance held.

Not exactly. 1914 was an arms race with deadlines, and alliances that turned a crisis into a world war. 1939 was divided democracies, an America looking away, and aggressors acting together, against a deterrent that came too late. The Cold War was a deterrent strong enough that neither side ever tested it, because America stood behind it and the alliance held together.

Today has pieces of all three. Which one it turns out to be depends on three things. Whether Russia is stopped in Ukraine. Whether Europe's democracies hold together long enough to rearm. And whether America stays.

The lesson of the 1930s is about starting late, and standing divided. Back then, Britain rearmed only once the danger was plain, its democracies were split at home, and America stayed out. Today, Europe is rearming while its politics are under strain, and America's place in the alliance is less certain.

The lesson of the Cold War is that deterrence works when it's strong enough, and the alliance behind it holds together. Back then, nuclear weapons, clear lines and an America in from the start meant neither side risked a direct war. Today, the weapons and the lines are still there, and NATO far outspends Russia. What matters is whether the alliance holds.

And the lesson of 1914 is about deadlines. Back then, Germany's generals believed every year they waited made the odds worse. Today, Britain has given itself a little over 1,000 days to be ready. Both sides are now counting the days.