Cheezy the Wiz
Socialist In A Hurry
The Mistake of German Naval Policy, 1888-1918
By Cheezy the Wiz
By Cheezy the Wiz
German nationalism has often been expressed in history by a sort of inferiority complex. It is endemic to the German nation to prove itself to its adversaries, most often through war. On the battlefield, the German Armies have many times proved themselves the masters of war in Europe. German weakness, however, lies on the high seas. As the new German nation of the late nineteenth century strove to prove itself to its new adversaries, it increasingly sought to do this not with its vaunted armies, but with its fledgling navy. The goal of German supremacy on the sea that would be equal to that on land was an unattainable one. The construction of the Kaiserliche Marine was a costly mistake which ultimately proved to Germany’s detriment by funneling funds that could have been used elsewhere, and by antagonizing Britain into an arms race Germany could not hope to win, and driving Britain closer to Germany’s rival powers.
The rise of German Naval Policy coincides with that of its last monarch, Kaiser Wilhelm II. Wilhelm took the throne in 1888, when his father, Frederick III, died after only 99 days of rule. The new Kaiser was a romantic, with fantastic dreams of becoming a great warrior. He had, after all, come from a family with a rich history of performance in war; both his father and grandfather were famous generals. The new Kaiser was thus determined to make a name for himself.
What has been termed the “Wilhelmine New Course” began in 1890, when a series of events signaled the end of a German political era. During a dispute with the Kaiser, the long-serving architect of the German State, Otto von Bismarck, abandoned the Prime Minister’s office. Much of the Foreign Service departed with him. To replace Bismarck, the Kaiser appointed Leo von Caprivi, a professional soldier with no sense of political intuition or skill, something anyone replacing a man like Bismarck would absolutely require. Caprivi had also served a Chief of the Admiralty from 1882-86, so he had experience in naval matters.
Of the Bismarckian Era’s Foreign Service, the only figure that remained was the aging Friedrich von Holstein. Caprivi, at a loss about what precisely to do in his new office, consulted extensively with Holstein in the early Prime Ministerial years. Caprivi’s first test in the new office came almost immediately, as the German treaty with Russia was about to expire. Holstein, believing the treaty to be detrimental to German interests, advised Caprivi to allow the treaty to expire. This was the first step in a long chain of events that would eventually pit the majority of Europe, and all of Germany’s rivals, against her, united; for the very next year, Russia had found a new friend to replace Germany: France. When a French naval squadron called to port at the Russian city of Kronstadt in 1891, it signaled the first step in rapprochement between the two nations. It was Holstein’s hope that the growing bond between France and Russia would be persuasive enough to push Great Britain politically towards the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy, in the spirit of “balancing power” that had so dominated European politics since the Congress of Vienna in 1815. However, the following year, William Gladstone’s Liberal Party again took the Prime Minister’s office in Britain, and did so with a firm policy of isolationism, which effectively stifled any hopes by Germany of fostering friendship between the two nations for the next two years.
Nonetheless, Holstein and the German Ambassador to Great Britain, Count Paul von Hatzfeldt, continued to try and bring the British around to their way of thinking. Holstein and Hatzfeldt maintained that the “logic of events would break Britain of isolation,” but the British did nothing in response to the displays of Franco-Russian power and friendship. Even combined, their two navies were no match for the might of the Royal Navy, and so, Britain was content to soldier on alone.
Holstein was fighting an uphill battle, though, in his attempts to win the British over. He was horrible at dealing with Britons, and was constantly frustrated by their distrust of logic. At one point, he even went so far as to consider abandoning the German-British alliance idea entirely, as well as the Triple Alliance, and to seek a new pact with Russia and Austria. This was, of course, quite impractical, since by the end of 1893, Russia had concluded and formalized a defensive alliance with France.
With her entire hand played out, Germany was relegated to playing the waiting game. Occupying such a position made Germany seem unproductive internationally, and it made the Germans anxious. Paul Keyser, the head of the Colonial Section of the Foreign Ministry, proposed that Germany adopt a new policy of meddling in colonial affairs overseas. This plan, while sure to create opportunities for Germany, had two fundamental problems. First, Germany could not afford to wait for problems to brew overseas, and second, such ventures had the increased risk of antagonizing Britain, her being the most active colonial power. Nonetheless, the Kaiser approved. His justification rested in the idea that, by stirring up such trouble with Britain as was sure to occur, the value of having Germany as a friend rather than a foe would be demonstrated, and hopefully drive Britain closer to an alliance, or at least more receptive terms, with Germany. By the time Caprivi’s office was occupied by Chlodwig Carl Viktor, Fürst zu Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst in 1894, the political gap with the United Kingdom had widened significantly.
At the Congress of Berlin in 1886, Germany came into possession of vast tracts of African land. This was the first time Germany had ever owned colonies, and apart, from the acquisition of Tsingtao in 1897, the only time it ever would. Having never owned any overseas possessions, Germany had never seen the need for a navy with any blue-water capability. With the acquisition of these lands, she now had reason to do so. The construction of a navy had, of course, begun in 1871, but this force was limited to a few cruisers and patrol craft. What Germany did possess, however, was a large merchant fleet. These traders and new lands, it was argued, must be protected if Germany were to prosper. It was also hoped by the more conservative factions that such benefits might weigh against the growing power of the Social Democratic movement.
Perhaps the greatest champion of the German High Seas Fleet was Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz. Tirpitz was a career sailor, having served in the Prussian Navy before unification, and thus the German Navy after. During his experience in the Franco-Prussian War, he became aware of the great inequity between the German and French navies, as well as to understand the value of naval power, the German Navy playing almost no part in the war. However, it must be remembered that during these early years, Tirpitz, like Caprivi, with whom he worked during the 1880s, only supported a defensive navy, capable of defending Germany’s shores, not one with international clout. As such, they emphasized defensive weapons, such as torpedoes, and small craft to deliver them, rather than compete in the realm of armored cruisers and steam frigates.
In 1887, Tirpitz came to know then-Prince Wilhelm, at the celebration of Queen Victoria of Great Britain’s Golden Jubilee. Tirpitz commanded the Torpedo Boat Fleet in attendance of the ceremony, and Wilhelm was thoroughly impressed by their performance. Wilhelm never forgot Tirpitz, and assigned him the job of Chief of Staff to the Executive Command in 1892. In this capacity, he was to construct tactics and training regimen for the High Seas Fleet. After successfully reorganizing the system there, he was reassigned to Chief of the Asiatic Cruiser Division, Germany’s East Asia squadron, in 1896. Assigned to find the squadron a permanent base of operations with economic opportunity, Tirpitz saw to the acquisition of the Chinese city of Tsingtao in 1897.
That same year, Tirpitz replaced Friedrich von Hollman as Secretary of State of the Reichsmarineamt, or Imperial Naval Office. Both the Reichstag and the Kaiser had grown increasingly weary of Hollman’s piecemeal approach to naval construction costs, requesting funds for each ship before it was built. Wilhelm desired swiftness of action, and Tirpitz was the man who would deliver that. While in the East surveying potential home ports for his Asiatic Squadron the previous year, he had come to two realizations that would change his mind about German Naval Policy and the workings of the political world. First, he came to see that Great Britain was Germany’s chief enemy in the world; while she was powerful and unchallenged, she would ever stand in the way of German greatness. Second, the only way for Germany to challenge Britain effectively was with the battleship. He thoroughly believed that Great Britain did not want Germany to become a world Power, and also that it was Germany’s ultimate destiny to do so. As Bernhard von Bülow put it in 1899: “in the coming century the German people will be either a hammer or an anvil.” So Germany must ensure “her place in the sun.”
The first step in this process was to construct a powerful navy, for all the respected nations of the world had notable navies. To accomplish this, Tirpitz set out to stir up public opinion on the subject. He effectively turned the Naval Office into a huge propaganda center. The two goals of this were to make Germans proud of their fleet, and anxious to strengthen it. The German Navy had the broadest appeal of any of the Services, for it was the only one that was truly German; the Army was still identified with the Prussians, and thus their aristocracy, of whom you almost certainly must be a member of to hold a commission. No such tradition existed in the Navy, which was seen as a bastion of middle class values and working class opportunity.
The backbone of support for the Navy lay in the conservatives and the liberals. The conservatives supported the Navy as an expression of German patriotism and nationalism, a way to expand German power, and, by its supposed capability to safeguard the overseas Empire, to provide an economic counterweight to the platform of the Social Democratic Party by improving the lives of Germans. The bastion of liberal support lay in the middle class, to whom the Navy was historically tied. The Navy was born in liberalism, with the first pan-German Navy being formed at the Paulskirche in the Revolution of 1848. Many also identified a strong navy with Great Britain. Britain was strong, free, and enormously prosperous; thus a strong navy came to be associated with these things, and they saw the Navy as a way to bring these things to Germany. The liberal-voting working classes were also drawn to the Navy, as the new ships of iron and coal were seen as monuments to the technical excellence of German workmen. Overall, the German Navy embodied the German spirit of kultur, a word that literally translates as “culture,” but with idiomatic meanings more akin to the American expression: “way of life.” The Navy was pan-German.
The opposition to the Navy was, by comparison, small. The most vocal critics were the Social Democrats, who refused to support the navy for a variety of reasons. They saw the navy as a tool to oppress the working classes, who primarily manned the ships of war. Because the Navy had officially begun with unification in 1870-71, the Navy was mentally associated with the Empire. One of the primary justifications for having the Navy in the first place was to defend overseas properties, which the SDP also fought against, imperialism defying all tenets of socialism. In contrast the more moderate liberals who supported the Navy, the more radical ones increasingly saw it as a legal and fiscal irresponsibility, expressing keen foresight into Germany’s future. The other great bastion of opposition was the Catholic Center Party. Curiously, the Catholics had supported the Navy early on as a bargaining tool to get some of the anti-Jesuit laws repealed, but as time wore on, the CCP found the Navy’s alliance with the liberal, democratic, anti-clerical traditions increasingly unpalatable. With the Catholic Center commanding the balance of power in the Reichstag, support for the Navy was very tough to manage; that Tirpitz was able to repeatedly win them over speaks volumes about his oratory capacity.
In March of the following year, Tirpitz approached the Reichstag with the first Naval Bill, which procured the enormous sum of 408 Million Reich Marks (RM) for new naval construction. With these funds, Tirpitz was authorized to construct 19 battleships, 8 coastal armored ships, 12 large and 30 small cruisers, and additional support craft, including coal tenders and torpedo boats. However, these numbers quickly changed in the aftermath of the Spanish-American War later that year, and Tirpitz was awarded a supplemental bill that doubled the number of battleships to 38. Hohenlohe promised this new navy was not for challenging other powers, declaring its purpose that it “must be able to overcome the worst military situation possible;” it was thus less-than-subtly aimed at Britain, the greatest adversary of such a navy.
To this end, Tirpitz composed the following policy: the German Navy must be so strong as to be capable of dealing a crippling blow to the Royal Navy’s Home Fleet. Such a threat would necessitate the recalling of other fleets to deal with this new menace, which would leave those areas vulnerable militarily. It was hoped that the British would foresee this problem beforehand, and thus see the wisdom of avoiding conflict with Germany. Tirpitz initially believed that a ratio of 3:2 of capital ships would be needed to create such a scenario. He also assigned the size minimum of the German Navy as being at least 30% larger than either the French or Russian navies.
Britain’s response, however, was quite the opposite. In 1898, the year of the Naval Bill, seven new battleships’ keels were laid, nearly as many as were laid in the previous decade. By 1906, the race had entered a new level of competition. Great Britain, keen to firmly eliminate the growing German challenge, commissioned a new and revolutionary battleship who, upon completion, so far outclassed all competition that the subsequent era of naval design spawned by her creation took her name: Dreadnought.
The purpose of HMS Dreadnought was two-fold. First, it would put into practice several new innovations that had until then only been casually experimented with. Second, it would singularly become the most powerful warship afloat, and put Great Britain unquestionably ahead of any would-be usurpers of that title. It accomplished both of these feats spectacularly. Among Dreadnought’s innovations were oil-firing engines, which were a safer and more efficient fuel than coal, steam turbines, which were far more efficient and faster than reciprocating engines, and the first use of an all-big-gun armament. The purpose of the big gun design was to make Dreadnought the equal of several battleships, now termed “pre-Dreadnoughts.” When she was commissioned in 1906, the most large guns, defined as twelve-inch caliber or larger, that a single ship could bring to bear was four; Dreadnought was capable of firing ten at once. Further, these big guns had a much longer range and packed a more powerful punch than the multiple smaller-caliber guns other ships possessed, meaning Dreadnought could fully engage at maximum range, which excluded the threat of the majority of most ships’ armament, and also included torpedoes, the most potent threat to any ship of the time. Because of her steam turbines, Dreadnought was capable of a maximum cruising speed of 22 knots, which, in addition to being the most heavily-armed ship in the world, also made her the fastest battleship. Her armor, 800 more tons than the preceding Lord Nelson-Class, also meant she had thicker armor than almost any ship afloat, and her hull was compartmentalized, meaning she was still harder to sink. She was unquestionably a power to be reckoned with.
To compliment this new breed of warship, the British also created the battlecruiser, a new class of warship designed with similar respect to the Dreadnoughts, but trading armor for greater speed. The purpose of these was to remedy the threat posed by German armored cruisers, which far outnumbered their capital ships. The basic principle of the battlecruiser was that it “could destroy any vessel fast enough to catch it.” Using its superior speed and firepower, a single battlecruiser could theoretically mop up an entire cruiser squadron. However, this speed was gained at expense of having lighter armor, meaning that they could not engage battleships; when they did, disastrous consequences resulted. The first of these, HMS Invincible, was capable of reaching 25 knots, but her armor was so thin that at the Battle of Jutland in 1916, many German shells passed through her without exploding, though ultimately, Invincible and two other battlecruisers suffered direct hits on their magazines, and summarily exploded in dramatic fashion, killing thousands of sailors in seconds. However, when used correctly, as at the Battle of Falkland Islands two years previously, battlecruisers could destroy whole cruiser fleets at stand-off range. They also found use as heavily-armed commerce raiders, chasing down merchant fleets and vessels.
The German reply to these innovations was slow, and cost her valuable time. Though the first German dreadnought, SMS Nassau, was laid the same year as Dreadnought’s debut, work on it was almost immediately halted, and did not resume for a full year while the Naval Office struggled to figure out Dreadnought’s specs. When work resumed a years’ work was lost, and Germany found herself far behind Great Britain. To solve this problem, Tirpitz did several things. First, since the battlecruiser classification was questionable, and many navies classified simply as “very large cruisers,” he substituted several planned cruisers for battlecruisers. That same year, 1907, four new dreadnoughts were begun. By March 1909, the gap had closed significantly, with Germany possessing ten dreadnoughts and Great Britain twelve.
With Germany again closing the gap, Great Britain took ever greater strides to ensure her naval dominance. A new policy of maintaining a 60% greater number of capital ships was set, and in 1910, Britain laid down ten new battleships. Here was Germany’s, greatest blunder; Tirpitz gambled that Britain would grow weary of the naval buildup, and only authorized three new ships in 1910. In 1911 and 1912, he only received authorization for one new capital ship each year. Naval spending likewise declined, with naval spending taking 35% of the defense budget in 1911, and only 25% in 1912. During those two years, Great Britain built five new ships. At the outbreak of war in August 1914, the Royal Navy possessed 33 battleships and 9 battlecruisers, for a total of 42 ships total, including those under construction. In contrast, the High Seas Fleet had 20 battleships and 7 battlecruisers, for a total of 27, though only 18 were in commission. The advantage was clearly in the Royal Navy’s favor, and the United Kingdom would continue to outpace German naval construction at a 2:1 pace for the duration of the war. To add to this great deficit in power, the first German dreadnoughts truly equal to the HMS Dreadnought were the König-Class, in 1914. Germany at the outbreak of war was hopelessly outgunned, and politically isolated in the North Sea.
Despite that the time had come to put years’ worth of investment to use, the High Seas Fleet sat in port most of the war. Only on three occasions did it engage the Royal Navy, at Coronel in November 1914, at Dogger Bank in January 1915, and at Jutland in May-June 1916. The Germans triumphed at Coronel, off the coast of Chile, but the engagement was relatively small, and the squadron’s fortunes were reversed several days later in the Battle of the Falkland Islands. At Dogger Bank in 1915, the Germans were taken by surprise, but, through British communications error, managed to escape with the loss of a single ship. At Jutland in 1916, which is by some measures the largest naval battle in history, both sides inflicted substantial casualties on the other, yet the Neslonian victory eluded both sides. With the High Seas Fleet confined to port for the remainder of the war, Jutland was more akin to the Glorious First of June; tactically inconclusive, but a strategic victory for the British in that they still commanded the North Sea and the blockade remained. With the end of the war, the Allies confiscated the High Seas Fleet and escorted it to Scapa Flow, where it would forever remain, by terms of the Versailles Treaty.
The German High Seas Fleet was a mistake from its inception. The Navy was an expensive venture, one which Germany neither required nor could afford. At the height of expense, the Navy accounted for 35% of the total defense budget. During the implication of the Schlieffen Plan in fall 1914, the chief criticism for its failure was the lack of power on the right flank; what might have come to pass that August, had the German Heer’s budget been 3/2 larger? Such speculation is subjective, but was can be certain is that the massive expenditure assigned to the creation of a fleet proved not only fruitless, but actively to Germany’s detriment, for both the described financial reasons, as well as political.
Neither did it aid Germany politically, for the companion she sought most to attract was ultimately driven into the arms of Germany’s greatest rivals: France and Russia. While it is perhaps unlikely that Great Britain would have seen fit to join the Central Powers had the High Seas Fleet not so actively antagonized her, it can never be surely stated that an event could never have happened had circumstances unfolded differently. What is certain, however, is that the Navy’s presence made ensured the political realities present in August 1914, and the Empire, so long associated with the Navy, found its fate inexorably bound to it; destroyed by treaty, and subjected to the mercy of its enemies.
Works Cited
Bülow, Bernhard von. “Dynamic Foreign Policy” speech before German Reichstag, Berlin, Germany, 1899.
Craig, Gordon A. Germany 1866-1945. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978.
Fabri, Friedrich. Does Germany Need Colonies? A Political-Economic Reflection. 3rd ed. Gotha, 1883.
Hurd, Archibald, Sir. German Sea Power; Its Rise, Progress, Economic Basis. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1971.
Massie, Robert K. Castles of Steel: Britain, Germany, and the Winning of the Great War at Sea. New York: Random House, 2003.
Massie, Robert K. Dreadnought: Britain, Germany, and the Coming of the Great War. New York: Random House, 1991.
Sondhaus, Lawrence. Navies of Europe, 1815-2002. London: Longman Publishing, 2002.
Steingberg, Jonathan. Yesterday’s Deterrent: Tirpitz and the Birth of the German Battle Fleet. New York: MacMillan Company, 1965.
Got a bunch of essays due I take it? You should probably have mentioned the rather serious problem of having pretty much no overseas ports and shipyards to use as well.
