Jutland_The Unfinished Battle

by Nicholas Jellicoe

  The outcome of the battle of Jutland was not one with which the British were in any way happy. The German fleet had got away. It had been badly mauled, but inflicted higher losses of life and tonnage on the British than the British on its enemy, and Germany had successfully spun to the world the story of its victory at sea. Britain’s sailors came home and were jeered at, spat on and booed by the public. Rightly, they felt that they had given their best, but in the minds of a nation bathing in the glory of naval supremacy and having awaited a second Trafalgar, they had seriously let their compatriots down.

  The aftermath of the battle became a race to regain the public’s confidence in the Royal Navy and correct what had been seen to be at fault, as well as a public hunt for a scapegoat. That scapegoat was found in John Jellicoe, not in Jellicoe’s second-in-command, David Beatty. The truth lay somewhere in between, but Beatty’s charisma easily won the public’s hearts and support.

  The irony of Jutland is that its seemingly indecisive outcome – neither side definitively annihilated the other’s naval presence – is key to its real meaning. Admiral Reinhard Scheer, Jellicoe’s German opposite number, realised that Germany should now never build its hopes on defeating the Royal Navy in a pitched fleet encounter. Jutland was proof for Scheer that only unrestricted submarine warfare against Britain would bring Germany’s adversary to its knees, and when launched in February 1917 such warfare was deadly. Germany hoped to destroy Britain’s lifeline: its trade. Within months, millions of tons of shipping had gone to the bottom of the sea; in April 1917 alone more than 800,000 tons of Allied shipping were lost. Sounding more defeatist than realist in war council, Jellicoe warned that unless solutions could be found, Britain would have to sue for peace with Germany.

  In this sense Jutland was very much a decisive battle. It was the moment at which Germany questioned its naval strategy, and which led, ultimately, to the declaration of unrestricted submarine war, a decision which in the end brought the US entry in to the war. It is important not to focus too closely only at the tactical level of the battle itself; as a contemporary account put it: ‘It is absolutely necessary to look at the war as a whole; to avoid keeping our eyes only on the German fleet. What we have to do is to starve and cripple Germany, to destroy Germany. The destruction of the German fleet is a means to an end and not an end in itself.’1

  The British had lost overall supremacy of the seas. It was a dramatic moment, but it was not the case that Jellicoe was ‘dead against’ the convoy system, a system by which unarmed merchant ships were taken across hostile waters under the watchful eye of a protective screen of destroyers.2 He just did not come out overwhelmingly in favour of it before two conditions were met: he felt that it could work, but he did not then believe that the British could find the destroyers to meet the challenges of convoy. He came to the conclusion after 120 days at the Admiralty that wide scale convoy protection should be undertaken as a defensive measure. It was his failure to see the offensive potential of convoy destroyer screens that might be more accurately criticised.

  Here he was let down by the bureaucratic mentality within the Admiralty (to which he had gone only in December 1916) and erroneous assumptions about how many destroyers would be needed. It is also not true that it was a visit to the Admiralty by Lloyd George on 30 April 1917 that pushed it into line, as he always maintained, though it certainly helped – as one of Jellicoe’s biographers, John Winton, stated – to focus minds.

  Jellicoe had already given Beatty the go-ahead for a test of the system in Scandinavian waters before a larger, more formal one was carried out in May 1917, with a convoy leaving Gibraltar. In other words, practically within one ‘quarter, Jellicoe and Rear Admiral Alexander Ludovic Duff had reviewed what was working and what was not; by October 1917, with additional destroyers having come from America in July, as well as from British shipyards, not only were the losses stemmed but, equally important, U-boats were being sunk at a significantly increased rate.

  Jellicoe was not an impassioned innovator by nature, but he was far from inflexible. ‘He was a man of great ability and strength of character, but he was a developer not an innovator.’3 In the same way that he changed his mind on numerous strategic and tactical issues in the two years of wartime command of the Grand Fleet up until the end of 1916, he was adamant about keeping his mind open about solutions to the submarine threat in the first five months of 1917.

  When it came to managing his image he was his own worst enemy. Beatty was far more adroit in recognising the benefits of good press relations. Many of his contemporaries, even supporters, spoke of Jellicoe as having been a weak delegator, and he was a mediocre presenter of his ideas in Cabinet. He overworked himself and got involved in the minutiae of detail. When you read Beatty’s Grand Fleet Battle Instructions (GFBIs) after Jellicoe’s rather turgid orders, the contrast between the latter and Beatty’s simplicity could not be starker. But Jellicoe saw that a move from fleet operations to an antisubmarine offensive was needed. Not surprisingly, once in command of the fleet and bearing the same responsibilities, Beatty became, in practice, as conservative as Jellicoe had been on the preservation of the Britain’s overwhelming dreadnought ratio.

  Jellicoe’s command of the Grand Fleet spanned the vital months of wartime retraining before the day of the battle. It was the same for his subsequent twelve months at the Admiralty during a period of decisive strategic change that took the war under the seas and away from a surface fleet action. Beatty’s command, by contrast, came after the shift from a fleet-to-fleet encounter, while his eight-year role as First Lord came with peace. His great reforms of the Navy were born when timely reflection during peacetime was possible. In the first months of 1917 circumstances were turbulent.

  What made the outcome of Jutland so important? And if it was that important, what actually happened? What – alongside ‘who won?’ – are the other important questions to ask? I hope this book will help enlarge on an already well-trodden path.

  THE CONTEXT

  1

  The Emergence of German Economic and Naval Power

  On 31 May 1916 the early twentieth century’s two great rival naval powers, Germany and Great Britain, met in combat in the North Sea. The Battle of Jutland, or, as the Germans still call it, the Skagerrakschlacht, was fought through the night and into the morning of 1 June. The conflict had been building broadly for nearly five decades, but had really taken its grip on the two nations in the late 1890s.

  In 1856, at the end of the Crimean War, the last shot fired in action by the British battle fleet opened up the next half-century of unchallenged dominance. At the naval review of 26 June 1897 more than 165 ships steamed past Queen Victoria’s stand, in five columns that each stretched over five miles. Moreover, ‘not a single post abroad had been weakened to make the strong show at Spit-head. Only the modern units in home waters were used.’1 Such was the visual impact of this show of naked power that the British freely used it to impress their message on other nations invited to attend as guests.*

  Yet Trafalgar’s outcome in many ways sowed the seeds of the Royal Navy’s later demise. Much British innovation was simply blocked by a growing feeling of invulnerability. Too much pomp emerged from military inaction. The marine-engineering innovator, Charles Parsons, whose turbines were later to power many British and German battleships at Jutland, was able to demonstrate the innovation of his new engine only by an audacious publicity stunt, running the small 34.5-knot Turbinia steam yacht between the lines on that June day and getting away without being caught by the smaller, slower picket boats on duty. The Turbinia was by far the fastest boat afloat on that occasion. The powers-that-were did not want Parsons there. He rocked the boat in which too many were getting fat off easy profits.

  In Germany, the half-century leading up to 1900 had seen bewilderingly profound changes. In forty short years its population had exploded, growing by twenty-four million to total, in 1910, around sixty-five million. This new, united Germany was now the large
st nation in Europe. In the same period production had soared: coal output went up seven times, and iron and steel even more. By 1893 its steel production surpassed Britain’s.2 Paralleling industrial production, food consumption also climbed, supported largely by imports.3

  With economic growth came demands for better education, housing, living conditions and benefits, creating political pressure on hard choices between ‘guns or butter’. Colonial resources were sought to feed these needs: these became Germany’s ‘place in the sun. In 1884 Otto von Bismarck added Togo-land, the Cameroons, the Marshall Islands, German Southwest Africa and German East Africa to the colonial portfolio.

  A new force in Germany

  Against a backdrop of tremendous industrial and social change, Germany’s naval strength in 1897 ranked her in only fifth or sixth position.4 This is not surprising: the navy had been in existence for just over two decades. It was founded in 1871, the year of the unification of Germany.

  When Wilhelm became Kaiser in June 1888, following the death of his father after a reign that lasted only ninety-nine days, the die was cast for a radical change in army–navy policy. Wilhelm had been greatly impressed by his reading of Alfred Thayer Mahan’s The Influence of Seapower upon History and the overt show of British naval power visible every time that he visited Cowes. Wilhelm’s desire to match the British grew from an inferiority complex that was fired up every time he was in the presence of his British family:

  I had a peculiar passion for the navy. It sprang to no small extent from my English blood. When I was a little boy … I admired the proud British ships. There awoke in me the will to build ships of my own like these some day and, when I was grown up, to possess a navy as fine as the English.5

  Determined not be outshone, he would greet the British Ambassador in the full regalia of a British Admiral of the Fleet. ‘Fancy wearing the same uniform as St Vincent and Nelson. It is enough to make one giddy,’ the Kaiser once exclaimed. Wilhelm had a fetish for uniforms and he made ‘37 changes to their design between 1888 and 1904’.6 He himself rarely dressed in anything but military attire. This obsession with the navy even went so far as his signing all the promotions right down to the rank of lieutenant and planning winter manoeuvres. Challenged on whether this was correct for his position, he reacted petulantly:

  I am tired of these discussions. I simply command and that is that. I am always supposed to ask Tom, Dick and Harry, and only sign what the Republic Navy decides is good. I am finally tired of this. To hell with it! I am the Supreme War Lord. I do not decide. I command.7

  In fact, he was not only a Grand Admiral of the German Imperial Fleet but an Admiral of the Imperial Russian Fleet, as well as the fleets of Norway, Sweden and Denmark – and even of the Royal Greek Navy. His fascination for all things naval was such that he would even submit his own designs to the Imperial German Naval Office. One such design was along the lines of the eventual British battle-cruiser.

  The Kaiser’s early ideas on the composition of his navy reflected his desire that Germany should be seen around the world: a German naval presence would be used to send a signal. In Michael Epkenhans’ opinion, ‘he was convinced of the relationship between naval power and world power, which was the prerequisite of national prestige, economic wealth and social stability’.8

  Tirpitz’s ideas

  The early focus on cruiser construction came from Wilhelm’s desire to underline Germany’s growing importance. Conveniently, this was also cheaper. In the opinion of Alfred Tirpitz, however, the cruiser solution was wholly impracticable (see the following chapter for a full account of Tirpitz’s part in the story of the German navy). Germany did not possess the required coaling stations and its real need – to confront and defeat British sea power – could only be attained by constructing a fleet that could take the challenge directly to the British: a battleship fleet. Without a strong navy, Tirpitz was convinced that Germany would never be the world power that it strived to be. It was not merely a case of defensive naval power or naval deterrence in protecting German interests. Tirpitz was an instinctive aggressor: ‘Those who consistently advocate the defensive often base their argument on the premise that the offensive enemy will present himself to do the decisive battle whenever that might suit us’.

  It is not always clear what Tirpitz’s strategy was primarily aimed at. According to Patrick Kelly, ‘His post-war writings give the strong impression that he expected war against Britain from the beginning; his pre-war actions indicate, however, that he wanted much more to deter the British than to fight them’.9 Tirpitz’s ideas were built around the so-called ‘risk theory’ that suggested that Britain would – at a certain point – face a huge risk in trying to defeat Germany: every ship lost in that confrontation would weaken it against the ‘two-power standard’ – the British policy of maintaining a navy larger than the next two largest combined, at this time the French and Russian navies. But to reach the necessary size, Germany would have to pass through a period in which it would find itself in a kind of ‘no man’s land’, when its navy was not large enough to deter, but might actually even encourage, a pre-emptive strike by the British – what Admiral Lord Fisher essentially, privately, referred to as a ‘Copenhagen strategy’.*

  From the start, the chief of the Admiralstab, the Kaiser’s Imperial German Admiralty, ran the navy militarily (subject to the Kaiser) and politically (subject to the Reichstag and the Chancellor). Wilhelm wanted more control, even if he hated taking decisions. This need led to the creation of a very complex system of command. His naval ‘direct reports’ numbered eight, already a dangerously high number. Von Müller, head of the Marine Kabinett, was the most influential. Being responsible for personnel appointments and promotions put him in a powerful position and it was understandable that, having the Kaiser’s ear, this proximity to power became very much part of his character. It eventually turned him into the worst kind of courtier. But it was Tirpitz’s position as head of the Reichsmarine Amt (RMA) that was the all-powerful position in the German peacetime navy as it was from his office that all the budgeting, design, construction, supplying and manning of the Kaiser’s ships emanated. However, operational authority, especially in times of war, was split between the Inspector-General of the navy and the regional commands (the Baltic and North Sea station chiefs, the commanders of the High Seas Fleet and the East Asia Squadron) as well as the head of the Admiralstab, the replacement organisation to the old Naval High Command under Hugo von Pohl. Added to this complexity was the Kaiser’s brother, Prince Heinrich of Prussia, a serving naval commander, who kept control where he wanted to. He would often, for example, be responsible for special units like the Flandern Marine Korps (even if direct command was exercised by Ludwig von Schröder).

  In a little under twenty years Germany had succeeded in building a fleet that the British naval establishment took as a very serious threat. From the day when Wilhelm brought the forty-eight-year-old Rear Admiral Tirpitz to the helm of the German Imperial Naval Office, Germany was steered towards a day of reckoning with Britain.10 The German fleet might have been smaller than Britain’s but, ship for ship, it demonstrated high quality and great professionalism. It was a fleet built for one purpose: ending Britain’s stranglehold on the North Sea.

  * James Goldrick commented on the strained overseas resources of the Royal Navy before the outbreak of hostilities in August 1914. The Royal Navy ‘now mustered some twenty dreadnought battleships and eight battle-cruisers … Yet, apart from the three battle-cruisers in the Mediterranean, the Australian navy’s Australia in the Pacific, and single pre-dreadnoughts in the East Indies and China, there were no capital ships outside British waters’ (Goldrick, Before Jutland, p21).

  * Fisher’s private comments were taken up publicly by the then Lord Commissioner of the Admiralty, Arthur Lee. A ‘Copenhagen strategy’ was so named after James Gambier’s 1807 pre-emptive attack on the Danish fleet. In a speech on 3 February 1905, Lee rather unwisely talked about getting the British Navy’s
“blow in first, before the other side had time even to read in the newspapers that war had been declared’ (Hough, First Lord, p248).

  2

  The Fleet Builders: Fisher and Tirpitz

  John ‘Jacky’ Fisher and Alfred Tirpitz: the two names are resonant of a bygone age, a naval arms race that characterised Anglo-German relations in the early years of the twentieth century, an inevitable descent into the open conflict in a manner of Christopher Clark’s The Sleepwalkers. Both were cunning politicians and careful cultivators of future naval leadership. Their legacies shaped their countries’ navies for decades: Fisher dragged an out-of-date Royal Navy into the new century against fierce opposition; Tirpitz created Kaiser Wilhelm’s High Seas Fleet.

  Not everything about them was comparable and much in each was not particularly likeable. Tirpitz was a shrewdly manipulative man, recognising his sovereign’s obsession with what he saw as Germany’s rightful place in the world order. Reinhard Scheer, later Commander-in-Chief of the High Seas Fleet at Jutland, commented that he ‘had no doubt of the overwhelming stature of statesmanlike greatness’ in Tirpitz. Meanwhile, Robert Massie praised Tirpitz for being, after Bismarck, ‘the most able, most durable, most influential and most effective minister of imperial Germany’. Of Fisher, Jameson said ‘that he was a great man is indisputable – a figure of almost Churchillian proportions with the same gift for expressing himself in vivid language, the same prophetic vision and the same dominating personality’.1