by David Wragg
Reich – The state.
Reichsmarine – official name for the German Navy after the abdication of the Kaiser and the creation of a republic or ‘Reich’.
U-boat – strictly, in German, U-boot, or Untersee Boot, a submarine.
Wolf Pack – a group of submarines deployed against a convoy.
CHAPTER ONE
Germany Inherits Prussia’s Ambitions
Germany has loomed as such a major presence politically, economically, industrially and, at times, militarily for so much of the twentieth century that it takes a moment’s thought to recall that, like Italy, the country ranks amongst the younger European states. The country was originally a collection of independent kingdoms, with the strongest, Prussia, dating from 1618. Unification of Germany first came in 1806, when the Emperor Napoleon unified the country as the Confederation of the Rhine, but Prussia remained independent of this, situated to the east of the Confederation on the Baltic coast. This was part of the so-called Continental System, a type of enforced trading area and protection enforced by Napoleon and intended to exclude Great Britain from European trade. The Continental System was used as a form of economic warfare. Nevertheless, the reforms introduced by Napoleon were largely adopted in Prussia.
Prussia, or more correctly Brandenburg-Prussia, had begun its rise as the dominant military power during the seventeenth century, and under Frederick II, who reigned from 1740 to 1786, it reached an early peak. In 1740, Frederick attacked Austria and started the War of the Austrian Succession, one of the fruits of which was that his territory expanded to include Silesia under the peace agreed in 1745. Hostilities resumed with the Seven Years’ War, which broke out in 1756 and lasted until 1763. In 1772, West Prussia was acquired and Poland partitioned for the first time. By the time he died, Frederick had established Prussia as the strongest German state militarily. Despite the seeming inability of his state to live in peace with its neighbours, Frederick’s rule was no harsh dictatorship, and he was generally credited with being not only a just and enlightened ruler, but was also a patron of the arts, encouraged education and reformed the legal system, established religious tolerance and did much to encourage agriculture and industry.
BISMARCK – THE IRON CHANCELLOR
The collapse of the Continental System in 1813 and the end of French dominance in Western Europe created a vacuum, and in 1848, many German states were swept by revolutions aimed at establishing democracy and unifying the country. The revolutions were poorly coordinated and unsuccessful, with that in Prussia suppressed by Prince Otto von Bismarck, marking the start of his rise to increasing power. A step towards unity came with the establishment of the North German Confederation in 1867, in which the dominant state was Prussia. War with France followed in 1870–1871, which meant that France had to cede its provinces of Alsace and Lorraine to Prussia and then to Germany, which finally established itself as a single unified nation in 1871, under the leadership of the austere and authoritarian first Chancellor, Bismarck, with Wilhelm I of Prussia becoming the first German Emperor or Kaiser.
Born just two years after the collapse of the Continental System, Otto Bismarck pursued an aggressive and expansionist foreign policy. He went to war against Denmark in 1863–64, gaining the disputed state of Schleswig-Holstein and giving Germany a North Sea coast and ports for the first time, then with Austria in 1866, excluding the country from a future Germany, and in 1870–71 with France. It was the last conflict that led to the unification of Germany, while to the south, Austria and Hungary combined to form the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a political entity founded on weakness as Austria had lost the war with Prussia and ceded Venetia to Italy. Despite the fighting with Austria, in 1881 Bismarck attempted to embrace Austro-Hungary and Italy in a Triple Alliance, but failed. In 1890, he was forced to resign by Kaiser Wilhelm II.
Bismarck had ruled as a virtual dictator, not for nothing was he known as the ‘Iron Chancellor’. His schemes for German unification and expansion were popular, but it took a strong and more liberal-minded Kaiser to keep him in check. His lack of tolerance brought him into conflict with the Roman Catholic Church and with the increasingly powerful socialists. Nevertheless, he was clear-headed and far-sighted, and amongst the first modern statesmen to appreciate the value of strategic alliances. He ensured that the new unified Germany was from the start a strong country able to withstand the pressures from neighbouring France and Poland, and the not so far distant but mighty Russia. It was not for nothing that a British cartoonist described his departure as ‘Dropping the Pilot’.
MORE THAN A CONTINENTAL POWER
With Prussia as the foremost continental military power, a country able to challenge France even before unification, Germany inherited an enviable position in 1871. The new state was strong and viable from the start. It looked as if nothing could stop Germany from achieving whatever ambitions it might entertain. France had not only fallen from its powerful position during Napoleon’s rule, it had been humbled during the Franco-Prussian War. Italy, united ten years earlier than Germany (although it had also been united by Napoleon, only for unity to end along with his rule), did not pose a serious military challenge. With characteristic energy and dedication, the Germans began to establish themselves as a major industrial power, and also sought colonial expansion. Even in the final three decades of the nineteenth century, possession of a colonial empire was held to be a good thing and an important status symbol for the European nations. Germany’s plans were, of course, hampered by the fact that the British and French had taken the most appealing territories first, and the Dutch had also done well for themselves in the Far East, while even tiny Belgium had the Congo, rich in timber and mineral resources.
Prussia, and therefore Germany, differed from countries such as her future foe, Great Britain, for a number of reasons. Secure in her island isolation, Britain became a trading nation, and the merchant class effectively drove her constitutional development from the Tudor period onwards. Merchants needed freedom in order to function effectively, with minimal state interference, but they also valued the legality and enforcement of contract, and favoured the separation of power between the state and the judiciary. There was no need for a large standing army, which required conscription to meet its manpower needs, but there was a need for a strong navy to protect the trade routes and enforce colonial rule, although locally-raised troops provided much of the manpower ashore.
Prussia had developed without natural frontiers and saw herself as surrounded by enemies. Russia, for example, was ever expansive, and had the goal of a warm water port, and ideally not one that could have its access to the open seas blocked. The only guarantee of security for the Prussian state was force, maintaining a strong standing army in which conscripts predominated. The conscripts provided the basis of strong reserve forces, ready for mobilisation when war threatened. Wars were fought according to a strict timetable, starting after the harvest when manpower could be released from the farms and the storehouses were full. Force, or the threat of force, deception of the state’s enemies and useful, if sometimes temporary, alliances, were all part of the mechanism for survival. Without natural frontiers, the state took all control to itself so that it could satisfy the needs of the soldiers and concentrate force wherever it was needed, to face threats that were either external or, on occasion, internal. Freedom and the interests of the individual were subservient to those of the state.
When Germany was created, as in most continental countries, the Army was the senior service, and indeed, for many years effectively the only service, which was almost the exact reverse of the situation on the other side of the North Sea. The German Navy in 1871 and for almost three decades afterwards, was little more than a coastal defence force, what would be described today as a ‘brown water’ navy. This is not to say that the Germans did not engage in international trade, for they had a merchant marine, and it was still the case that being an officer in the merchant service lacked the social cache of service in the navy.
All of this began to change when Wilhelm II ascended to the German throne in 1888 at the age of twenty-nine after his father, the liberal Frederick III, died after just three months on the throne. Frederick had often opposed Bismarck and it was no surprise that his son, Wilhelm II, sacked Bismarck in 1890, but Wilhelm was no liberal. His father and grandfather had placed great emphasis on the arts and industry, but Wilhelm was more interested in foreign affairs and defence. His mother, named after her mother, Queen Victoria of Great Britain, may have given him an interest in naval affairs, but whether she did or not, there was no doubt that the new Kaiser was jealous of Britain’s naval supremacy. He wanted Germany to become a maritime power as well as a continental power, and for the German Navy, or Kaiserliche Marine, to rival the Royal Navy.
DEMONISING ENGLAND
The early years of the united Germany had been marked by a continuation of the earlier mutual admiration with England. Some German historians maintained that both countries showed a common ‘Aryan’ root in India, accounting for many of the similarities in the languages. Protestant England was admired as a role model by many Germans, as was the country’s constitution and individual freedom. ‘Admiration is the first feeling which the study of English history calls forth in everyone,’ declared the historian Heinrich von Treitschke in the 1850s. His views were to change. In 1874, he became professor of history at the University of Berlin, just three years after unification, with admiration replaced by jealousy and resentment. In this influential post, he began to demonise England, lecturing that England had been using Germany to implement her imperialist policies in Europe. As the years advanced his views became more extreme and not simply even more anti-British, but also anti-Semitic.
With the still young nation anxious to establish itself and possibly still unsure of itself, its Prussian military might notwithstanding, Treitschke’s message found a willing audience amongst the senior civil servants, politicians and senior military officers in the capital. His rhetoric appealed to their Prussian upbringing and justified their recent wars.
‘Unceasingly history builds and destroys; it never tires of salvaging the divine goods of mankind from the ruins of old worlds into a new one,’ Treitschke lectured. ‘Who believes in this infinite growth, in the eternal youth of our race, must acknowledge the unalterable necessity of war …’1
If this was strong stuff, worse was to follow.
‘Amongst the thousands who march into battle and humbly obey the will of the whole, each one knows how beggarly little his life counts beside the glory of the State, he feels himself surrounded by the workings of inscrutable powers … Men kill each other who have great respect for each other as chivalrous foes. They sacrifice to duty not only their life, they sacrifice what matters more, their natural feelings, their instinctive love of mankind, their horror of blood. Their little ego with all its noble and evil impulses must disappear in the will of the whole …’2
When he died in 1896, the words of Treitschke and the ambitions of the young Kaiser had melded into what became popularly known in Germany as Weltpolitik, world policy. All of this coincided with the rise to power of a young German admiral, Rear Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz (1849–1930), who became State Secretary of the Naval Office in 1897. Tirpitz shared the Kaiser’s naval ambitions.
The concept of Weltpolitik varied depending on one’s viewpoint. It could mean creating a large fleet so that Germany became a maritime power as well as a continental power, and what is more the leading maritime power as well as being the leading continental power. It could mean adding colonies, or giving a boost to the overseas business of German manufacturers and merchants. It could also mean turning the minds of the German people away from Europe, and especially from the new country’s own internal divisions, and towards a greater future, looking outwards rather than inwards. Such measures were attractive to the German leadership, struggling to absorb new states and create a single German identity, especially amongst those living in territories that had been forcibly absorbed into the Reich, such as Schleswig-Holstein, for example. There were also other problems, with the more liberal-minded middle classes needing to be swayed towards Prussian idealism, and the increased prosperity brought by trade and the acquisition of colonies being needed to sway the urban working class away from the Marxist ideals being propounded by the increasingly powerful and strident Social Democratic Party.
DIPLOMACY VERSUS A NAVAL RACE
Both Tirpitz and his counterpart as Foreign Minister, Bernhard von Bulow, were disciples of Treitschke. This team was handpicked to enable Germany to prepare a course that would lead at least to increasing confrontation with her European neighbours and the British Empire, and most probably to war. Bulow’s role was to practise diplomacy to buy time for Tirpitz to create a fleet that could rival the Royal Navy, or, in his own words, in a letter to the Chancellor, Richthofen, ‘in view of our naval inferiority, we must operate so carefully, like the caterpillar before it has grown into a butterfly’. This was the start of a naval race that neither side could afford to lose.
What the Germans feared most was a pre-emptive strike by the Royal Navy, and while this thought would have horrified the British Royal Family and the leading parliamentarians of the day, it would not be long before one British admiral, ‘Jacky’ Fisher, would advocate ‘Copenhagening’ the German fleet, a referral to the action taken by Nelson in 1801 when he discovered that the Danish fleet would not come out and fight, so he sent frigates into the harbour at Copenhagen. On paper, Germany was a democracy, with the structure if not the attitudes of a constitutional monarchy. The voting system in the Parliament favoured the upper house or Bundestag rather than the elected lower house or Reichstag. The Kaiser wielded far more real power than his British counterpart, Queen Victoria, even though this was a period when monarchs still did have real power and their influence over those around them, including democratically-elected politicians, was considerable. Tirpitz had to steer the budget needed for this vast naval expansion through the Reichstag, or lower house, but first popular opinion had to be convinced that a great German Navy was needed, or even why colonies were needed. After all, many would question why Germany needed Weltpolitik.
Despite the ambitions of the ruling elite, the vast majority of Germans were not looking to seaward. Indeed, before unification, many of them lived in landlocked states. The notion of seafaring did not come naturally to them. A propaganda campaign had to be initiated to encourage the German people to support the new policies, even to adopt them as their natural right. It was from this time that the notions of racial purity and Germanic superiority began, and even the schools, perhaps particularly the schools, ensured that the Prussian Hohenzollern monarchy was exalted. They preached the need for patriotism and obedience. No longer were the universities and their professors above and beyond politics, for they too followed in the steps of Treitschke. The campaign even extended to the churches, with the Protestant Lutherian Church in particular joining the campaign; the Lutherians preached obedience and regard for the State and its authority, combined with a distrust of socialism and the individual’s acceptance of his place in the social order. The campaign spawned pressure groups such as a German Navy League and a Defence League, a Colonial Society and a Pan-German League.
The campaign worked, and could even be said to have worked too well. Soon, many of the pressure groups and their members became something of an embarrassment for the regime, going further and faster than the ruling elite found comfortable. Such a public campaign also alerted many elsewhere to German ambitions, making the danger of a pre-emptive strike even more likely. Events began to assume a momentum of their own. Germany’s neighbours became nervous. After all, it was less than thirty years since the Franco-Prussian War. Russia in particular, faced with growing social unrest and a country that was, away from the major cities in the west of the country, backward compared with the countries of central and Western Europe, could not afford a massive defence budget. Relationships were n
ot eased when the German Naval Law, or Flottenesetz, of 1898 authorised the building of no less than nineteen battleships, as well as cruisers, destroyers and other small warships. This was a clear signal that German policy was to rival Britain on the high seas. That same year, pressure to ensure that a strong German Navy was created extended to the formation of the Deutscher Flottenverein, German Navy League.
THE FIRST PEACE CONFERENCE
The result of this unease was a first in international affairs, an international peace conference with its venue at The Hague. This was an early attempt at arms limitation, an abortive attempt to curtail the arms race, and especially the naval arms race, that was getting underway amongst the major powers. The Hague Peace Conference was met by widespread cynicism. As always, no one dared oppose it for fear of appearing to be a warmonger. In these days of nuclear weapons and the policy of MAD, Mutual Assured Destruction, it is instructive to note that then British Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, believed that there was a danger that there would be a ‘terrible effort of mutual destruction which will be fatal for Christian civilisation.’
Given that it was the first conference of its kind, and that many of the participants had been fighting each other within living memory, while they will still engaged in colonial rivalries, the aims of the conference were overly optimistic. Initially, the aim was for an international treaty outlawing war. If this would be unrealistic today, it was doubly so at the time. Fortunately, realism ensured that the objectives were watered down so that the agenda called for the banning of certain types of weapon, combined with a standstill in armaments procurement for a fixed period.
