A very different Great War

[Franknburger]

Getting back to the original question: The main cause for German-British tensions was not the German naval programme - the British quickly clarified during WW I whose Navy was stronger.

The key conflict lay with Germany closing the competitiveness gap against Britain in key industry sectors (steel, railways, machine-building, cars), but lacking world market access due to  prevailing protectionism, and few own colonies. German attempte to overcome these constraints, most notably the construction of the Istanbul-Bagdad railway, were, rightly or wrongly, understood as attempt to counteract British maritime supremacy, and as a threat to Suez canal control, which was vital for the British Empire.

Under these conditions, Germany's heavy industry had a lot to win (short-term: armament deals, long term: export market access, access to energy sources like Belgian coal and middle-east oil) and (at least so they thought) little to lose from war. I don't know how the British perspective was in this respect, but I suppose there were also a number of industrialists that saw war, or at least armament, as a good business opportunity, and a chance to get rid of these nasty German competitors.

For an Anglo-German alliance to emerge and work, incentives for war would have had to be substantially reduced, while the opportunity cost of war would have had to be increased. In practical terms: Britain would have needed to open its markets, especially the colonies, to German exports, while Germany would have needed to allow (probably even to promote) British takeovers of German "technology leaders". Why should Britain have done so at the height of its colonial power ? And which German "technology leader" - typically second-generation family enterprises -  would have been interested in and open to British investment ?

As to a possible US-German alliance, things look a bit different. There have been substantial German capital exports to the US, notably the US railway sector (e.g. Northern Pacific), brokered by Jewish German American companies such as Lehmann Brothers and Kuhn, Loeb & Co, as well as trans-atlantic family businesses (Steinway / Steinweg). As such, there was no interest or reason for Germany entering war against the US. On the other hand - why should the US have allied with any European power, instead of just staying neutral, and focusing on exploiting the huge domestic potentials for economic development and growth?