It would also be easy to show that the two German cruisers of 10,000 tons of the 1935 programme will render obsolete all French cruisers, except Algeria, and that this will obviously require a response from France. In addition, the German submarine fleet will account for 45% of the power of British submarines and (if the federal government wishes) 100%. The result will certainly be a strong reinforcement of the French bitterness of the destroyers. France never signed the third part of the Treaty of London on cruisers and destroyers. The French Admiralty is therefore not hampered by legal obstacles; it is not bound by any international agreement. Perhaps someone will point out that France already has a fleet of 80,000 tonnes of submarines. But since 1931, we have only built two new submarines. German submarines, smaller but with great technical perfection, can reach a total of 57,000 tons and the number of these small but efficient units can be as large as ours. The Anglo-German naval agreement was signed on 18 June 1935 by Germany and Great Britain.
It was a bilateral agreement between Britain and Germany that governed the size of the German navy or navy. The agreement limited the navy to 35% of the size of the British Royal Navy on the basis of tonnage. The Anglo-German naval agreement was registered on 12 July 1935 in the League of Treaties of Nations and lasted until 28 April 1939, when Adolf Hitler renounced it. He neglected, as did other German politicians, that Britain must react not only to the danger of a purely marine rival, but also to the supremacy of Europe by any aggressive military power, especially when that power is able to threaten the Dutch and the canal ports. British debt could never be acquired by trading one factor against the other, and every country that tried to do so would necessarily cause disappointment and disillusionment, as Germany did. [59] The requirement for the Navy to divide its tonnage by 35% by class of warships led the Germans to build a symmetrical shipbuilding program of the “balanced fleet”, reflecting the priorities of the United Kingdom. [25] Given that Royal Navy leaders believed that the “balanced fleet” would be the easiest German fleet to defeat and that a German guerrilla fleet was the most dangerous, the agreement brought considerable strategic benefits to the United Kingdom. [49] Especially since the Royal Navy did not build “pocket boatmen,” Chatfield appreciated the end of the armoured ship building. [49] These are the technical objections raised by the Anglo-German naval agreement.