Castles of Steel

by Robert K. Massie

  The German admirals also knew that, under the rules by which they had been forced to operate, the submarine campaign had failed in its essential purpose. Despite losses, neutral traders had not been intimidated. Nor had economic pressure on Great Britain reached anything like the intensity necessary to coerce the British government into lifting the North Sea blockade. Throughout 1915, monthly imports of foodstuffs and raw materials into Great Britain had exceeded in volume the imports during the corresponding months of peace in 1913. Thanks to the great number of German and Austro-Hungarian merchant ships captured, seized, or detained in the early months of the war, the total tonnage available to Britain and her allies was actually greater in the autumn of 1915 than it had been at the outbreak of war a year before. But, for Britain, there were ominous signs: new merchant-ship tonnage launched, amounting to 416,000 tons for the last quarter of 1914, fell in the first quarter of 1915 to 267,000 tons and in the last two quarters of that year to 148,000 tons and 146,000 tons respectively. The latter figure was only one-third of the tonnage sunk during that quarter. The reason was that shipyards, labor, and materials had all been diverted to other work. Skilled men from the yards had been recruited for Kitchener’s New Army, while yard space and materials had been assigned to Fisher’s new warship-building program. As a result, in 1915, only 650,000 tons of new merchant ships was delivered. Meanwhile, hundreds of oceangoing vessels, amounting to 20 percent of British tonnage, had been requisitioned for military purposes, transporting food, munitions, stores, and supplies. This reduction in shipping available for general trade was substantially greater than the losses inflicted by the U-boats.

  Nevertheless, for Britain, the primary achievement of the war at sea in 1915 was that British diplomacy and the Royal Navy had combined to bring all import trade bound for northern Europe under British surveillance and control. During the first submarine campaign, 743 neutral ships carrying supplies to Germany had been stopped by British patrols and their cargoes either seized outright or retained with compensation; this number was three times the number of British ships sunk during the same period by U-boat attack. By December 1914, Holland, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden were importing only the supplies necessary for home consumption; thus Germany was deprived of even her usual imports of foods and raw materials from her neutral neighbors. With each successive month, the British grip on German economic life tightened; by January 1916, the German people were showing signs of hardship. Textile factories were cut off from raw materials, so collars, cuffs, napkins, and handkerchiefs were made of paper. Sheets were made of wood pulp, which could not be washed. Germans cooked without fats. Shortages stirred discontent. Scarcities were not believed to be genuine. Suspicion abounded that rich people continued to dine sumptuously: townspeople generally accused farmers of hoarding food. Looking into the future, the prospects were bleaker. Germany depended not so much on imported foods as on imported fertilizers and fodder for animals; without fertilizers, the sandy soil of northern Germany would not yield normal harvests; without fodder, the herds would diminish.

  Meanwhile, even as it imposed the blockade, Britain maintained a better relationship with America than Germany was able to do. While Germany had obtained grudging American tolerance of its submarine war against shipping so long as passenger ships were not attacked and American citizens not killed, Britain had established wide American acceptance for the blockade. This stemmed, in part, from the degree to which American prosperity depended upon trade with the Allies. It was true that American shipping, industrial, and farm interests regularly protested about the blockade to Washington and that on November 5, 1915, Secretary of State Lansing had told the British government that the doctrine of continuous voyage was “ineffective, illegal and indefensible.” Nevertheless, the blockade continued and no serious rupture in diplomatic relations occurred. The principal reason for this differing treatment of the two belligerents was overwhelmingly simple: the British blockade threatened American property rights, while the German submarine campaign threatened American lives. The point was made in a New York Tribune editorial:

  There is no parallel between our differences with Germany . . . and . . . with Great Britain. . . . No question of life divides Great Britain from us and Sir Edward Grey has neither asserted the right of murder nor has he been asked by us to give assurance against murder. Our cases against Great Britain are purely civil.

  In January 1916, after seventeen months of war, the German army occupied 90 percent of Belgium and thousands of square miles of French and Russian territory, but victory remained beyond reach. Meanwhile, the German colonies had been stripped away, the German merchant marine, second largest in the world, had been driven from the seas, the surface fleet of the Imperial Navy was tethered to its moorings, and overseas imports of foodstuffs and raw materials had been cut off. Confronting stalemate on land and sea, General von Falkenhayn, Chief of the General Staff, invited a number of generals and admirals to the Ministry of War in Berlin on December 30, 1915, where he offered two solutions. The first, he declared, would be a massive offensive on the Western Front. In February, the German army, equipped with a great superiority in artillery, would be hurled at the French fortress complex around Verdun. To hold this vital ground, he calculated, the French would pour in many divisions. Falkenhayn’s objective was not so much to capture the city of Verdun or to defeat the French army outright; rather, he hoped to turn Verdun into an abattoir where he meant to bleed the French army to death under German shellfire. This attrition, Falkenhayn was convinced, would force France out of the war by the end of 1916. Then, the general asked the admirals for help. He had previously supported moderation in U-boat warfare so as not to antagonize the neutrals; now he reversed himself and asked the naval leaders to prosecute a vigorous, unrestricted submarine campaign to complement his Verdun offensive. The object was to discourage Britain so that once France was defeated, she, too, would make peace.

  The confidence of the German naval command in its U-boats during the winter of 1916 was extraordinarily high. The submarine force had grown in numbers and the submariners were enthusiastic. Holtzendorff, the new Chief of the Naval Staff, who three months before had doubted the value of the U-boat campaign, had changed his mind. German shipping experts had told him that, with seventy U-boats available instead of the thirty-five in service in 1915, the German navy could destroy 160,000 tons of merchant shipping per month, meaning an annual loss of almost 2 million tons. Against this loss, British shipyards could only build 650,000 tons a year. Accordingly, Holtzendorff calculated, “if all restrictions were removed . . . English resistance would be broken in at most six months.” Tirpitz agreed: if submarine warfare was restarted soon and executed ruthlessly, England’s difficulties would become insurmountable. With France and Britain on their knees, Germany need not fear America’s entry into war; long before the United States could provide significant assistance, the Allies would have surrendered.

  To document his case, Holtzendorff composed a state paper recommending to the chancellor that submarine warfare be recommenced on the Western Approaches to the British Isles; that all enemy ships, armed or not, be destroyed without warning; that surfacing to examine neutral papers be avoided as much as possible; that torpedoes become the preferred method of attack; that all passenger vessels should be left alone; and that U-boat commanders who made honest mistakes should be protected. Holtzendorff’s proposal, laid before the chancellor, brought back all the familiar arguments. No one doubted that a reintensified submarine campaign, overthrowing the Lusitania and Arabic settlements of the previous autumn, would bring another confrontation with the United States. The naval authorities declared that this did not matter; the war would be over before America could react. And even if America came in and the war continued, the United States lacked the military power to harm Germany. Opponents argued with equal vigor that, even applying unrestricted warfare, the U-boats could not sink as much tonnage as the admirals claimed and thus could not cripple Britain, much les
s win the war. Further, they would inflame the neutrals, the United States would enter the war, the war would lengthen, and ultimately, Germany would be defeated.

  A week after this paper was circulated, the chancellor convened another conference at Pless. Here, Bethmann-Hollweg flatly opposed restarting the submarine campaign. For one thing, he believed that Germany could emerge triumphant from the military stalemate simply by holding on to captured territories and using them as bargaining chips in a negotiated peace settlement. As for Holtzendorff’s prediction that Britain could be forced out of the war in six months by an intensified submarine campaign, the chancellor declared that nothing certain could be predicted about submarine warfare except that it would produce a struggle of unprecedented bitterness. Whether or not it worked would be decided by British endurance, a factor that could not be calculated by simple arithmetic. Britain, he said, would redouble her efforts and spend her last farthing and last drop of blood before allowing naval supremacy to be wrested from her. He added that the campaign now contemplated by the naval leaders would be directed not just at Britain but also at America and would certainly bring the United States into the war. It was foolish to disregard this danger; it would be inviting ruin to increase Germany’s enemies by so mighty an adversary. If this happened, he concluded, the result would be Finis Germaniae.

  While Bethmann-Hollweg remained steadfast, other moderates, including the kaiser, began to waver. On January 15, 1916, Müller wrote in his diary, “His Majesty took the humane standpoint that the drowning of innocent passengers was an idea that appalled him. He also bore a responsibility before God for the manner of waging war. On the other hand . . . [he had to] ask himself: could he go against the counsel of his military advisers, and from humane considerations prolong the war at the cost of so many brave men who were defending the Fatherland?” Increasingly, Müller himself was caught in this cross fire of opinion. Bethmann-Hollweg persuaded him that if Germany embarked on unrestricted submarine warfare, the neutrals and the whole civilized world would band together and deal with her as with a “mad dog.” On the other hand, Holtzendorff convinced him that the new, improved U-boats really were technologically capable of dispatching Great Britain; as the condition of Germany and its allies grew worse, it seemed criminal to abstain from using the one weapon that might mean rescue. And yet, reversing the argument again, America’s entry would seal defeat. “A desperate situation!” Müller wrote in his diary on February 10, 1916.

  William II, unable to rule either for or against the chancellor or the admirals, came up with another compromise. Again, he accepted the chancellor’s lead and decided that as head of state he could not approve a method of war that would provoke an American declaration of war against Germany. On the other hand, William was now persuaded that U-boat warfare could be decisive within six months; he therefore endorsed Holtzendorff’s proposal that the submarines be sent back to sea—with limitations. As proposed, the new campaign would observe the following rules: enemy merchant vessels in the war zone were to be destroyed without warning; enemy vessels outside the war zone were to be attacked without warning only if they were armed; enemy passenger steamers were never to be attacked, inside or outside the war zone, armed or not. Nothing was said about neutrals. Most German naval officers predicted that the new campaign would not succeed under these restrictions; either U-boat commanders would be carried away by zeal and excitement when a vessel came into their sights and would fail to inspect the target in detail, or, overanxious to stay within the rules, they would allow the enemy to escape. Timing became an issue; the kaiser wished to unleash the U-boats only after Verdun had fallen, but, as the days passed, this triumph seemed ever more distant. Ultimately, the decision was made during a series of conferences at Charleville in the first week of March. Tensions were high: during one meeting, Müller reported, Bethmann-Hollweg nervously “smoked cigarette after cigarette and kept moving from one chair to another.” The kaiser’s mood was scarcely better: “His Majesty’s nerves are strained to the breaking point. Today for the first time . . . he said, ‘One must never utter it nor shall I admit it . . . but this war will not end with a great victory.’” William gave way: on March 13, the second campaign against merchant shipping began. Tirpitz was so disgusted by the limitations that he again announced his resignation: “The grave anxiety at seeing the life work of Your Majesty and the national future of Germany on the path to ruin makes me realize that my services can be of no further use to Your Majesty.” This time, Bethmann-Hollweg seized the opportunity and recommended that the kaiser accept the resignation. William agreed and on March 15, 1916, after eighteen years in office, the founder of the German navy retired. William II never saw Alfred von Tirpitz again. Tirpitz’s fury, reported Princess Blücher, was “indescribable. They gave out as reason for his retirement that he had broken down and needed rest. So he walked with his wife up and down the Wilhelmstrasse for two hours to prove to the crowd that it was not true and that he was in the best of health. Next day, he took off his uniform and appeared in tall hat and frock coat to show he had been ‘deprived of his uniform’ and talked to his wife in a loud voice so that the crowd would be able to hear.”

  Meanwhile, another personal circumstance had altered the command structure of the navy. In January, Admiral von Pohl, suffering from liver cancer, had declared that he could not continue as Commander-in-Chief of the High Seas Fleet. Vice Admiral Reinhard Scheer, then commander of a dreadnought battle squadron, succeeded him. Scheer’s views on naval warfare were stark and emphatic. He did not view the submarine war against commerce as a substitute for some other plan, or as a compromise between conflicting plans, or as an adjunct to the campaign on land. Scheer considered the U-boat campaign against commerce as valid an act of modern warfare as an artillery bombardment or an infantry assault in the field, and he believed that it could win the war. Tirpitz’s departure, therefore, had simply replaced one passionate U-boat advocate with another.

  By March 1916, Germany possessed fifty-two modern, operational U-boats. During March and April, they accounted for fifty-seven merchant vessels grossing 157,009 tons. During these same two months, the German navy lost four U-boats, but with thirty-eight new submarines due to be commissioned within the next five months, the Naval Staff confidently expected to sink 160,000 tons of British shipping a month, perhaps more. Then, long before the validity of Holtzendorff’s calculation that the U-boats could bring Britain to her knees within six months could be thoroughly tested, an incident at sea ignited another diplomatic crisis with the United States. On March 24, the passenger liner Sussex, with Americans on board, was torpedoed in the Channel. Ironically, this episode had no relation to the orders agreed to by the kaiser and issued by Holtzendorff regarding the conduct of the second submarine campaign. Rather, it stemmed from an earlier, subsidiary order, which had remained in force without cancellation for four months. In November 1915, the Flanders U-boat Flotilla had been ordered to attack troop transports sailing between English and French Channel ports. For three months, German submarine captains had believed that passenger vessels carrying civilian travelers used only the Folkestone-Boulogne route and that all other vessels in the Channel could be sunk without warning without fear of breaking the promises made to the United States. Accordingly, on the afternoon of March 24, when the captain of UB-29 saw through his periscope a vessel about to enter Dieppe whose foredeck was crowded with figures whom the captain believed to be soldiers, he gave no warning and torpedoed the ship. The vessel was, in fact, the French cross-Channel passenger steamer Sussex carrying 325 passengers, including twenty-five Americans. The explosion severed the entire forward section of the ship. The after part remained afloat and was towed into port, but eighty people had been killed or wounded and four of the dead were Americans. The victims also included the world-famous Spanish composer and pianist Enrique Granados and his wife, who were returning to Spain after a recital tour in the United States. Thus, for the third time, the one principle on which Pre
sident Wilson and his government had insisted—the inviolability of passenger ships—had been breached.

  The news reached Washington the following day. Again, President Wilson chose to wait for details. On April 11, the German government announced that the damage to the Sussex was not caused by the attack of a German submarine. Unfortunately for German credibility, the president already had on his desk the carefully documented reports of British, French, and American experts who had scrupulously inspected the damaged hull and concluded that the Sussex had been torpedoed. The act appeared to be a flagrant violation of the German promise not to attack passenger vessels of any nation. The American press vociferously accused Germany of deceit and Wilson concluded that the United States was being treated with contempt. Again, he withdrew from his advisers, retreated into his study, and sat down at his typewriter. On April 19, Wilson appeared before a special session of Congress. Calling the use of submarines against commerce “utterly incompatible with the principles of humanity and incontrovertible rights of neutrals and the sacred immunities of non-combatants,” he read the ultimatum he already had sent to the German government: