With Wilhelm III's restoration, the smell of gunpowder across the world grew ever stronger. From Europe to Asia, then to the Americas, tensions were mounting everywhere.
The Eastern European Alliance and the Western European Alliance stood locked in confrontation, and everyone feared that things would once again develop into the situation of the First World War.
Yet only those at the top knew that the current international situation was utterly different from that of World War I, even though Britain and Bulgaria had already become like fire and water in strategic terms.
But war was still a long way off. Bulgaria wanted to keep building up quietly and had no interest in military adventurism, while anti-war sentiment in Britain was running high.
After the two great alliances were formed, the arms race instead eased somewhat. After all, once the London Naval Treaty expired, Britain and Bulgaria had each launched more than a dozen capital ships, while large numbers of warships were still under construction on the slips.
The Bulgarian Navy's total tonnage had already expanded to 770,000 tons. Once the entire shipbuilding program was completed, its total tonnage would break through 1.5 million tons.
Beginning in 1934, they had gone all-out in naval construction. In just three short years, the fleet had doubled in size. Once this round of arms racing was over, only Britain and Bulgaria would remain in the game.
All the other countries had already fallen behind. In truth, even the British were starting to struggle. By 1940, Bulgaria's active naval tonnage would reach 1.5 million tons, while the Royal Navy could only reach 2 million tons.
The gap between the two sides was steadily shrinking. The two-power standard could no longer be maintained, unless John Bull learned from the Japanese and directly converted existing warships to