Spruance obediently allowed his wife to lead him away, but he kept glancing back unbelievingly over his shoulder at the bearded customs official.
“Do you have any idea who that is back there, Margaret, that German customs agent?” he asked.
“No, dear, who is he? An old friend of yours from school?” she said, making a wild guess.
“No, no, of course not,” he answered irritably. “That’s Admiral...” he hesitated, then finished, “...that is, he looks exactly like... but no, that’s impossible. It couldn’t be him.”
Back at the customs shed, the two men had completed the task of passing the American tourists through into Martinique, and were now securing the shed for the day, locking away the pens, customs forms, ink pads and rubber stamps.
“Hurry it up, Jagow,” urged the former Naval Minister to Kaiser Wilhelm II, Grand Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz, “the heat is killing me.” Then he added, as he did every day, “I wonder if I should have chosen the firing squad?”
(Wilhelmshaven) Fort de France, Martinique
Afterword
Gray Tide in the East came in for criticism from a number of readers who insisted that Woodrow Wilson, who had arbitrated the peace treaty between Germany and France in that alternate history, would never have allowed Germany to acquire Martinique, as this would have been a clear violation of the Monroe Doctrine. This view is based on a misunderstanding of the meaning of the Monroe Doctrine, and is discussed in Chapter Three.
Monroe first set forth the doctrine that would later bear his name in his State of the Union address of 1823. In the pertinent part, he said:
…the American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers… We owe it, therefore, to candor and to the amicable relations existing between the United States and those powers to declare that we should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety. With the existing colonies or dependencies of any European power we have not interfered and shall not interfere (italics added). But with the Governments who have declared their independence and maintained it, and whose independence we have, on great consideration and on just principles, acknowledged, we could not view any interposition for the purpose of oppressing them, or controlling in any other manner their destiny, by any European power in any other light than as the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States
(The Monroe Doctrine (1823). Basic Readings in U.S. Democracy. United States Department of State. Archived from the original on January 8, 2012).
From the above text, it is clear that Monroe intended his policy to apply to the nations of the Western Hemisphere that had already won their independence, but not to colonies being transferred from one European Power to another, as in the case of Martinique in the story. Of course, the fact that the Monroe Doctrine did not apply to the Martinique situation did not mean that the building of a new naval base and the stationing of a powerful German squadron in the town of La Trinitie would not have constituted a profound threat to the security of the United States; it merely made President Lowden's position more difficult, as he was not easily able to justify intervention in the Caribbean on the basis of the Doctrine.
The Monroe Doctrine also plays a part in the conclusion of the story, when Great Britain snatches victory away from the Kaiser. The Monroe Doctrine was originated jointly by the United States and Great Britain, both of whom saw European intervention in the Western Hemisphere as a danger to their very different interests. Indeed, in the early years, enforcement of the Doctrine was entirely in the hands of the Royal Navy, as the young American Republic lacked the naval power that was a necessity for the task. British interest in enforcement of the Monroe Doctrine was primarily motivated by free trade principles, and this continued to be true at least until World War II, when the United States stepped into the world power role formerly held by Great Britain. For a detailed analysis of the origins of the Monroe Doctrine, see “The Relation of British Policy to the Declaration of the Monroe Doctrine” by Leonard Axel Lawson, in Studies in History Economics and Public Law, vol. 103, (New York, 1922).
The political situation in the United States at the opening of this book has Progressive Republican Frank Lowden in the White House after the election of 1920, instead of Warren G. Harding. It is a fact that the First World War brought the Progressive Era of politics to an untimely end, something that probably would not have occurred in the world of Gray Tide.
One of the most important, if indirect consequences of the First World War was the collapse of the Romanov Dynasty in Russia, and its replacement with the Bolsheviks, the world’s first Communist government. This only happened with the connivance of the Germans, who sent Lenin into Russia in 1917 with the hope that he would disrupt the government and help to knock Russia out of the war. He succeeded all too well.
But in Gray Tide in the East, this never happens. Germany wins the war against Russia quickly, and has no need to sponsor any wild-eyed revolutionaries. Thus, the Bolshevik revolution never takes place.
This is significant for American political history. Before America’s entry into the war, the dominant political strain in the two major parties was towards increasing government regulation of big business, and the protection of the ordinary citizen from the depredations of the wealthy and powerful. The Progressive policies included: a National Health service, universal social insurance, an eight-hour workday, workman’s compensation insurance, strict limits on and disclosure of campaign contributions, among many others (The above list is taken from the Progressive Party platform of 1912). This was largely due to the increasing popularity of the Socialist Party, which tallied nearly 1 million votes in the election of 1912 and thereby frightened the established parties badly enough to make them adopt many of the Socialist policies.
However, the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, the subsequent attempts at Communist revolutions in Europe and the supposedly Bolshevik-inspired wave of labor violence in America after the war, brought about a reaction to Socialism which culminated in the Great Red Scare of 1919-1920. A. Mitchell Palmer, Woodrow Wilson's Attorney General took advantage of this climate of fear to illegally arrest thousands of people for no better reason, in many cases, than their membership in left-wing political parties. In this poisonous atmosphere, the Socialist Party and the policies it supported came to be associated with the acts of bomb-throwing Anarchists and Bolsheviks (most of whom, it must be said, existed only in the imagination of A. Mitchell Palmer) in the eyes of many average Americans, and the policies it promoted, discredited. In this way, the First World War could be said to have indirectly rung the curtain down on the Progressive era before its time.
The pacifist political mood of the United States of 1923 as portrayed here is reasonable in view of American attitudes towards the historical First World War prior to the sinking of the Lusitania in May, 1915. Even as late as the fall of 1916, Americans overwhelming favored neutrality, as is shown by the success of Wilson's campaign with its slogan “He kept us out of war!”
In Gray Tide in the East, the G.E.W. (Great European War, a more appropriate name for the conflict described in that book than is World War One), ends in 1915, there is no submarine warfare, and no Lusitania sunk with 1198 civilians drowned, including 123 Americans. It is not unnatural to assume that, under these circumstances, America would have continued to live in a pacifist slumber, its people profoundly uninterested in anything that happened beyond the borders of their own country. Those readers who believe they detect a parallel between the Martinique Crisis depicted in this story and the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 are not mistaken. The diplomatic/military confrontation in the story is a version of the Kennedy-Khrushchev showdown transferred to an era of isolationism.
The famous cable from William Randolph Hearst to Frederick Remington, “You provide the pic
tures, I’ll provide the war” (quoted by the Secretary of State in Chapter 5), turns out, upon inspection, to be a fabrication. It was apparently the invention of a Canadian journalist named James Creelman, and originated in his 1901 book On the Great Highway: The Wanderings and Adventures of a Special Correspondent. This bogus quote (in a slightly altered form) achieved immortality in the film Citizen Kane, and has now become inextricably linked with Hearst as an exemplar of his “yellow journalism”, in spite of the fact that he almost certainly never said it. See Yellow Journalism: Puncturing the Myths, Defining the Legacies by Joseph W. Campbell, (Westport, Ct., 2012). See also:
http://www.ucpress.edu/content/chapters/11067.ch01.pdf
(For readers who wonder why I allowed General Wood to use the fake Hearst quote in the story, I thought it unlikely that he would be aware that the famous quote was a fabrication.)
For the details on the firing procedure on the battleship in Chapter 14, I relied upon a chapter on Fire Control from Elementary Naval Ordnance and Gunnery, by Lieutenant H. C. Ramsey USN (Boston, 1918), which was kindly extracted from the book and made available on the Internet by Byron Angel at http://www.gwpda.org/naval/usnfirec.htm
For details on warships, The Dreadnought Project (http://www.dreadnoughtproject.org) on which I relied heavily in the original Gray Tide in the East, once again proved indispensable.
Following are capsule biographies of the main historical characters who appear in the story, in order of appearance:
William Sowden Sims - Image from The Life of Admiral Hahan, Charles Carlisle Taylor, 1920, London
William Sims (1858-1936), was a Rear Admiral at the time of the United States’ entry into the First World War. He was placed in command of all U.S. naval forces in Europe, and promoted to Vice Admiral by the war’s end. He served two tours as President of the Naval War College, and won a Pulitzer Prize for his history of the U.S. Navy during World War I.
Leiutenant Commander Raymond Spruance
Raymond Spruance (1886-1969), became one of the great fighting Admirals of the Second World War, and one of the greatest in American history. He commanded U.S. aircraft carriers at the Battle of Midway in 1942, the Battle of the Philippine Sea in 1944 and numerous other engagements, winning a reputation for intelligence and calm in even in moments of crisis, along with the nickname “electric brain”. He was awarded the Navy Cross and the Distinguished Service Medal three times. For details of the early career of Raymond Spruance, see The Quiet Warrior by Thomas B. Buell, (Annapolis, 1987).
Sumner Welles by Underwood & Underwood –
the United States Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs division
Sumner Welles (1892-1962) was an American government official and career diplomat in the Foreign Service. He was a major foreign policy adviser to President Franklin D. Roosevelt and served as Secretary of State from 1937 to 1943. He is credited with being the man most responsible for the design of the United Nations.
Frank Orren Lowden – source unknown
Frank Lowden (1861-1943) is virtually forgotten today, but in 1920, along with Leonard Wood, he was the leading Republican candidate for President. Lowden was the Governor of Illinois and a Progressive. Coming into the Republican Convention that year, Lowden boasted more delegates than any other candidate: 211, to be precise. By the sixth ballot, his delegate total had risen to 311.5 of the 501 needed to win the nomination. On the same ballot, General Wood received an identical total of 311.5. (Evidently, one delegate could not decide between the two.) Had the two men reached the kind of agreement suggested in the story, Lowden would have taken the nomination on the next ballot. But they did not, and an exhausted convention finally chose the dark horse Warren G. Harding on the tenth ballot.
Joseph Medill McCormick 1912 by Moffett, Chicago
- the US Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division
Joseph M. McCormick (1877-1925) Lowden’s personal secretary in the book (he would have been called the White House Chief of Staff, had that job title existed in 1920), was in history a Representative and later, junior Senator from Illinois. He was the older brother of “Colonel” Robert McCormick, publisher of the Chicago Tribune, who was famously opposed to American entry into World War II, and one of the leading opponents of the second Roosevelt in the press.
General Leonard Wood Rol BNF Gallica
by Agence Rol - Bibliothèque nationale de France.
Leonard Wood (1860-1927) was a physician who joined the U.S. Army in 1885, and eventually rose the rank of Lieutenant General and the position of Army Chief of Staff, the only medical officer ever to do so. He was the personal physician of two Presidents (Cleveland and McKinley), and the personal friend and political heir of a third, Theodore Roosevelt. Wood entered politics in 1920 at the urging of the former President’s family after Roosevelt’s death, running for the Republican nomination for President.
Gottlieb von Jagow circa 1915 by Bain - Library of Congress.
Gottlieb von Jagow (1863-1935) was a career diplomat who served as the German Foreign Minister from 1913-1916. He is thought to be the principal author of a German plan to ally Mexico with Japan and involve them in a war with the United States, in order to keep the U.S. out of the European war. This plan, made public through an intercepted telegram (the notorious Zimmerman Telegram), was the immediate cause of the U.S. entry into World War I in 1917.
Alfred von Tirpitz – the German Federal Archive (Deutsches Bundesarchiv)
Alfred von Tirpitz (1849-1930) was the principal architect of the Imperial German Navy, raising Germany from the status of a minor naval power in the 1890s to the one of the great naval powers in the world by 1912. He attained the highest rank available in the Imperial Navy, Grand Admiral, and was the Naval Minister from 1898 to 1916.
Rupprecht von Bayern by Bain News Service,
the United States Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs division.
Rupprecht Maria Luitpold Ferdinand, Crown Prince of Bavaria (1869-1955) was a professional soldier, as well as the heir to the Bavarian crown. He attained the rank of Lieutenant General by 1912, and commanded the Sixth Army in 1914. He was promoted to the rank of Field Marshal in 1916, in recognition of his military talents. He was one of the earliest advocates for peace in the German military hierarchy, deciding by the end of 1917 that the war was unwinnable after the American entry on the Allied side. He was disliked by Hitler, a feeling he reciprocated, and was forced into exile in 1939 to escape arrest. His wife, Princess Antoinette of Luxembourg, and his children were arrested in 1944, but they survived captivity in the Sachsenhausen and Dachau concentration camps until they were liberated in 1945.
Kaiser Wilhelm II from the collections of the Imperial War Museums.
Kaiser Wilhelm II (1859-1941) was the last Emperor of Germany, ruling from 1888 to 1918. His intelligence was offset by an erratic temperament that led him to make impulsive decisions, especially in the area of foreign policy. Although he was not truly a warmonger, he gained that reputation through his careless actions and intemperate language, which gave rise to several international crises. He was obsessed with assuring Germany’s “place in the sun,” and had a life-long fixed belief that Great Britain was plotting to keep him and the his Empire in the shade. He was forced to abdicate in 1918, when it became apparent that the war was lost.
Georg Michaelis - the German Federal Archive (Deutsches Bundesarchiv)
Georg Michaelis (1857-1936), served as Chancellor of Germany and Minister President of Prussia for a short time in 1917, following the dismissal of his predecessor, Theobold von Bethmann-Hollweg. He has the distinction of being the only commoner to serve as the chief minister in the 400 year history of the Hohenzollern dynasty.
Edward Grey 1914 by Bassano – W Harris & Ewing Collection, Library of Congress.
Sir Edward Grey (1862-1933) was a Liberal politician and the Foreign Secretary of Great Britain from 1905 to 1916, the longest continuous tenure of any man in that office. From the time
he took office, Grey’s goal was to support the balance of power in Europe by committing the British Empire to an alliance with France and Russia (the so-called entente cordiale), and thus restrain the Central Powers, led by Germany. He was unable to bring Great Britain into a military alliance with these powers by 1914, and it was the German invasion of Belgium that constituted the casus belli for Britain’s entry into World War I. He left office in 1916, when the Asquith government fell from power, and served for a short time as the ambassador to the United States. He was elevated to a peerage in 1916, as Viscount Grey of Fallodon.
Admiral Scheer by Bain News Service -
the United States Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs division
Reinhard Scheer (1863-1928) was a German Admiral who commanded the High Seas Fleet (the main battle fleet) at the Battle of Jutland in 1916. He was subsequently promoted to Chief of Naval Staff, in which post he served until the end of the war. He received numerous military honors for his service in the Imperial Navy, including the Iron Cross, 1st and 2nd Class, Pour le Merit, and the Knight’s Cross of the Royal Order of Hohenzollern, among many others.
Claude Bloch (1878-1967) served in the United States Navy from 1899 to 1945, retiring with the rank of Full Admiral. He was the Commander-in Chief of the Navy from 1938 to 1940. He was awarded the Navy Cross for his service as the commander of the transport U.S.S. Plattsburg during World War I. Bloch was the highest ranking Jewish officer in the armed forces until well after the end of the Second World War.
Tidal Effects (Gray Tide In The East Book 2) Page 10
