The Royal Navy, Seapower and Strategy Between the Wars

This is the first study to show how the Royal Navys ideas about the meaning and application of seapower shaped its policies in the interwar period. Drawing on a wide range of unpublished sources, the author challenges the accepted view that the intellectual shortcomings of Britains naval leaders resulted in poor strategic planning and an inability to meet the challenges of the Second World War.This book provides the first comprehensive survey of the navys strategies for dealing with possible wars with Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Imperial Japan, and even the United States. It argues that the Singapore Strategy has been widely misunderstood, that there was in fact more than one strategy developed for war with Japan, that the navys war plans placed greater emphasis on maritime economic pressure than decisive sea battles, and that the influence of Alfred Thayer Mahan on the interwar navy has been greatly exaggerated.The author also