Richard Werner

And so it was quite natural to gain access to the Gulf area and oil, which was beginning to be clearly an important resource.

And so they started building that railway, the Berlin-Baghdad-Basra railway.

That's when the British colonial and empire planners decided this really has to be stopped.

Because had that been built in time and completed, then it would have rendered essentially the British naval dominance irrelevant.

Because you can transport...

energy, resources, raw materials.

You can sell your high value added output to actually the British Empire, Middle East or India, to the rest of the world.

You can ship through your own railway network without British interference.

So the British planners decided this cannot be allowed.

This has to be stopped by all means, including war.

And it was a key factor in the run up to the First World War.

Of course, there were other factors.

The German government became increasingly internationally critical of British warfare across the globe.

For example, you know, in South Africa, Britain made war on the farmers, the German and low country Dutch farmers that had settled centuries earlier in South Africa.

Created the world's first concentration camps.

Indeed, indeed.

That was a British invention.

There were three farmer wars.

Farmer, bauer in German, in Dutch, bauer, bauer.

The three bauer wars, the farmer wars.