The book looks at such famous characters as Winston Chruchil, Kaiser II, and Bismark. The author details the rise of Germany, its unification and wars against its neighboors and its quest for world supremacy through colonies and military power.
The insights into naval technology, and prewar politics is interesting. The focus on England and Germany as the main rivals and also the important focus on Bismark as leader of the German states is of great interest to someone who knows little about the extraordinary birth of modern germany.
German and British players brilliantly counterpoise. Here is Emperor William II, grandson to Victoria, a man who walked with "the stiff stride of a Prussian officer; if he laughs, he will laugh with absolute abandonment...small, handsome, with clear blue eyes...a brushy upturned mustache... and withered left arm". Here is Edward VII, the Kaiser's Uncle Bertie, "tum tum" in his circle (but never to his face), the son of Victoria and the sainted Albert. It was the wonderfully bizarre Jacky Fisher, father of the Dreadnought, "greatest Admiral since Nelson" who had the King's ear. Massie implicitly raises questions of whether French entente would have happened if Bertie had not so insisted on his regular visits to Paris and Biarritz or if the Dreadnoughts, had they not Edward's exuberant approval, would have impelled the deadly race.
The "lesser" characters in this drama serve their turns well. The "Blood and Iron" Chancellor Bismarck, a massive but dwindling figure, is deposed by the Kaiser, who disastrously takes the reins of the foreign ministry ("I am the foreign policy of Germany...May your government never forget that..." to Edward). The slippery Chancellor von Bulow who with the fork-bearded von Tirpitz, authors the Weltmacht (world power) policy. Lord Salisbury, three times Prime Minister, 6 feet 4, with his "huge head and slitted eyes," the author of the discarded dream of "Splendid Isolation", telling the German ambassador in 1888, "Nous sommes des poissons" (we are fish). After the crest of victory in the brutal Boer War, the ancient Queen finally dead, "so little - and so light" is gently lifted by the new King and the Kaiser into her coffin. Fisher does his job as First Sea Lord, surprisingly, under successive Liberal governments, including that of the brilliant, adulterous Asquith and the indispensable Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty: "for consider these ships (the superdreadnoughts)...so easily lost to sight on the surface of the waters....On them, as we conceived, floated the might, majesty, dominion and power of the British Empire." Each character and his role in the drama is brilliantly realized by Massie's incise mini-biographies.
The final elegaic and compelling chapters dwell on the pathos between Berlin and London: of a Kaiser gone slightly mad in Berlin, while thousands cheer in London; Asquith bound to France "by honor if not obligation", the tragic Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey to Commons: "Today it is clear that the peace of Europe cannot be preserved." The unpoetic Grey, looking down at dusk at the lamps being lit in St. James's Park, uttered the lines that define what was to come: "The lamps are going out all over Europe. We shall not see them lit again in our lifetime." This is almost as fine a biography qua history as we have. Read it with Tuchman's Guns of August and your pick of Great War histories.
A warning: this book is extremely anglo-centric. Those who are looking for a balanced handling of these matters should keep this in mind. The only way to get a balanced accounting of the genesis of WW1 in English is to read widely including the revisionist texts that are heavily discounted by most British and American scholars. This is quite a large task.
Massie tells the story of the run up to the war largely through the device of using narrative accounts of the major political and diplomatic events in Britain and Germany, mostly presented through biographical sketches of their politicians, diplomats and admirals. This makes for fun reading. The book reads like a novel and you get a good idea of the characters of the main players. It's Massie's unabashed admiration of King Edward VII that skews the book however. Edward was not as wise and insightful as the author makes him and Wilhelm was not as flightly and spiteful or motivated by feelings of inferiority.
Dreadnought almost completely ignores economic and social history. There is nothing at all about the working class movements in either country. This is a major weakness. I suppose his desire to tell the tale strictly in a narrative fashion limits the usefulness of statistical data and scholarly exposition. A book I mentioned above, The Arming of Europe and the Making of the First World War can be of great service in filling in some of these gaps.
Part two describes British politics and foreign policy up to 1905. I found this the most interesting section of the book - but I'm a political junkie. Again Massie uses sketches of politicians such as Salisbury, Balfour, Joseph Chamberlain and Landsdowne, accompanied by accounts of the "Khaki election" and the dispute over Imperial preference which split the Unionist government. Massie highlights the diplomatic ruptures with Germany - over the Jameson raid and the Krueger telegram, Samoa, and the Boer war. All of this culminates in the breakdown of Chamberlain's tentative Anglo-German alliance negotiations, and leads to the creation of the Anglo-French entente (despite the dispute over Fashoda), and its first test during the Morocco crisis.
Navalists and battleship buffs who might be attracted to this book by its title, will find part three much to their interest. Unfortunately they have to wade through a whole lot of biography to get there. Again this part of the book suffers from its anglo-centric point of view. Very little information about the German fleet is provided (for example, while the problems with inadequate armour on the British battle cruisers are mentioned, the far superior ability of German ships to withstand damage is not). The primary focus is still biographical, with Fisher and, to a lesser extent, his rival Lord Beresford claiming most of the stage.
Parts four and five continue the story up to the outbreak of war. Massie goes into much detail telling the story of the rise of the Liberals, and the Reform Bill and the emasculating of the House of Lords by use of crude threats by Asquith. Churchill and more importantly, Sir Edward Grey come into their own in this section of the book. I thought Massie's handling of Grey's failure to keep the British cabinet informed of European developments, even though he was monitoring continental communiques, was well done. Even so, in Massie's hands it is still hard to see Grey for what he really is - a villain no less than Austrian foreign minister Count Berchtold and France's man in Saint Petersburg, Ambassador Paleologue.
The book ends with Grey's famous coda on his age, 'The lamps are going out all over Europe. We shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.' This is only fitting because Sir Edward had much to do with the extinguishing of those lamps. All in all a fine but flawed book and I enjoyed it very much with certain reservations.