Imperial German plans for the invasion of the United Kingdom

After becoming German Emperor in 1888, Wilhelm II abandoned Imperial Chancellor Otto von Bismarck's restraint in international affairs and adopted an aggressive foreign policy in an attempt to claim for Germany a leading position on the world stage.

The Foreign Secretary, Adolf Marschall von Bieberstein, persuaded Wilhelm not to become militarily involved and convinced him instead to send a telegram congratulating Transvaal President Paul Kruger on repelling the British raid.

[2] Wilhelm authorised further study, and the results of a project titled Memorandum: an Operation against Antwerp undertaken by the naval staff were presented to von Knorr in November.

Troops were to be landed from seven steamers assembled under cover of darkness at the mouth of the river, while the VII and VIII Army Corps were to cross the Dutch and Belgian borders and strike west in three columns to capture Breda and link up with the seaborne force at Antwerp.

[3] The six months it took for Alfred von Schlieffen, Chief of the German General Staff, to respond to the navy's request for comments indicates the army's lack of interest in the project.

He stressed that an invasion must quickly force the British to sue for peace, or the Royal Navy would cut off the invading army from re-supply and reinforcement, thus compelling it to surrender.

[7] Invasion plans were strongly opposed by Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz, who had been appointed State Secretary of the German Imperial Naval Office in June 1897.

Even if such a large force could be spared in a war against France and Russia, it could not be assembled in secret and it would be years before the German harbour facilities and merchant marine would be capable of embarking and transporting it.

Lieutenant-General Colmar Freiherr von der Goltz, commander of the Engineer Corps of the Prussian Army, saw in this an opportunity to gain temporary naval superiority and launch an invasion.

German naval staff did not regard his idea as credible and did not pursue it further, although it was later echoed by Erskine Childers in his invasion novel, The Riddle of the Sands, published in the United Kingdom in 1903.

In the same year, a German staff officer produced a paper detailing how an expeditionary force of one cavalry and four infantry divisions might live off the land, destroy the British home army and capture London.

Further thought on the concept was limited to a formal evaluation by army and navy staffs, on the orders of Wilhelm, of William Le Queux's novel The Invasion of 1910 when it was serialised in the Daily Mail in 1906.

[14][15] At the beginning of the First World War, German intelligence over-rated the strength of British coastal defences, leading to the conclusion that even a large raid would involve too much risk for little reward.