Operational Plan Three - Legacy

Legacy

Germany's aggressive foreign policy was an important factor contributing to the outbreak of World War I. The various invasion plans ordered by Kaiser Wilhelm demonstrate the aggressiveness with which he and other German political and military leaders were willing to pursue their vision of Germany as a global power.

Germany's Die Zeit newspaper first announced the discovery of the invasion plans on 8 May 2002. The plans had been found at the German military archives in Freiburg. Reporter Henning Seitz of Die Zeit wrote that the discovery "proves a continuity between the Kaiserreich and the Third Reich because the Nazis also wanted to risk a final fight for world domination with the United States forty years later." The editorial staff of the American Heritage history magazine wrote a summary of the probable outcome of a notional Imperial German invasion of the US: they felt that the US under Roosevelt would not have accepted defeat or negotiated from a position of weakness. They compared the Kaiser's proposed invasion to the actual War of 1812 when serious political differences among Americans were set aside following the British burning of Washington in August 1814—the event which finally united the "United" States.