>>>On a tangent. I just finished "To Rule The Waves" (a book about the history of the British Navy) and they touch on the "Pax Britannica" and "Pax Americana". The author claims that WW1 and WW2 were caused by the weaking of the British might and British Empire, ending the "Pax Britanica". German and Japan saw England was weaking and felt they could challenge them.
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>>Fits with the explanation we were taught. Germany was late in the game of creating a nation state and then building a colonial empire. Even relatively small countries, like Belgium, Netherlands and Portugal have had great success in that. So when it (and the K&K empire) felt like it's time they took their share, they found an excuse. For WWII, Italy joined the club - it felt like an industrial power, and what they had in Africa (Ethiopia, AFAIR) didn't look like sufficient.
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>I had just never connected it to the fall of British might.

It may have been a factor but only in picking the time - not as a cause. It looks like "we can do it now, the lion is weaker", not as "the lion has weakened, how can we use that?". The wish to recut the cake was already there.