A cadet candidate until he was eighteen, Hipper joined the navy on 12 April 1881, and like Scheer and Tirpitz before him started on the Niobe. He had passed his exams with thirty-four others, most of whom had not needed to sit them as they had finished their education in higher schools. With him in class was the future Admiral Souchon. He would become Commander-in-Chief of the Mediterranean Squadron, and lead the dramatic episode of Goeben and Breslau at the start of hostilities.* The future Admiral Schultz was also a classmate – he would lead the 4th Squadron of the High Seas Fleet in the Baltic. For a man ‘born neither to influence nor to wealth’1, Hipper was moving in an increasingly select circle. In September he went back to the naval cadet school.
In March 1882 Hipper graduated and was sent to attend gunnery school on the training ship Mars, before joining Friedrich Karl and then the frigate Leipzig. The latter would take him on a two-year world cruise. At the end of his time on the Mars, he became Midshipman Hipper, someone who could command the lower deck. The newly recommissioned Leipzig was to ‘proceed to Yokohama, when the work of commissioning the ship is complete, and to take up station in Japanese waters for the protection of German interests’.2 As soon as she was at sea, she ran into trouble when her gun ports badly leaked in a heavy sea. Eventually she ran into harbour at Yarmouth, where she received extensive repairs in the local yard, the cadets using the time to be shown around the town. Hipper was back in Kiel in October 1884 and spent the winter at the naval officer school, after which he became responsible for recruit training in the 1st Naval Battalion.
Scheer was commissioned into the navy, taking up the first of two postings to the East Africa Squadron from 1884 to 1886. He served on the corvette Bismarck as a newly appointed Leutnant. On Bismarck, the squadron flagship of Eduard von Knorr, he made a connection that would stand him in good stead through his career: this was with Leutnant Henning von Holtzendorff, later to become commander of the High Seas Fleet. Holtzendorff would bring along Scheer, by then a captain, as his chief of staff. During his time on Bismarck Scheer took part in an armed landing against a pro-British chieftain in Cameroon.
In December 1885, Scheer was promoted to Oberleutnant. Scheer and Holtzendorff would again serve together, Holtzendorff as his superior officer on the cruiser Prinzeß Wilhelm. A cruise had been organised for a group of officers to observe the Sino-Japanese War of 1895/6.
In April 1885 Hipper was assigned as division officer to drilling recruits of the 1st Naval Battalion in Kiel and on 19 December he received his promotion to Unterleutnant and took some well-deserved leave. The leave was short, however, and in January 1886 Hipper was assigned as division officer to the 2nd Seaman’s Artillery Division, where he remained until early March. At this point he made an immediate switch to Friedrich Karl as watch officer, a key promotion as it only came through direct recommendation from the commanding officer. The appointment soon paid off, and his service record noted that he was a ‘very fine ship handler and navigator’. Other assignments, on Prinz Adalbert, Stein and Stosch followed in quick succession.
Scheer returned home in 1886 and from January to May 1888 undertook a six-month training course in torpedo tactics on Blücher. He put his newly acquired skills to immediate use as torpedo officer on the corvette Sophie in the East Africa Squadron.
That summer, Hipper was promoted to Leutnant. As winter approached he joined the small dispatch boat Wacht. It turned out to be quite an important move in that he came under the eye of Commander von Baudissin, who would captain SMS Hohenzollern (the royal yacht) and be Chief of Naval Staff and Commander-in-Chief of the North Sea Station. Always on the move, however, Hipper left Wacht in 1889 and on Christmas Eve joined the battleship Friedrich der Große. After this short interlude, for his foreign service was at an end, he arrived back in Wilhelmshaven the following spring.
In 1890 Scheer was establishing himself as a torpedo specialist and was appointed as an instructor at the Kiel torpedo school in June. Scheers career path took a dramatic turn when in Kiel he met Alfred Tirpitz, who was later to bring him to the RMA to continue his work on torpedoes.
While Scheer was honing these skills, Hipper was pulled in two apparently unhelpful directions. The first was as watch officer on the coastal battleship Siegfried. The second posting was to the armoured gunboat Mücke, which was essentially a floating gun platform, armed with a single 30.5cm gun as well as two bow-mounted torpedo tubes. Mücke was ‘a kind of movable coast fort which in war could be stranded at the ebb on the sand banks of the North Sea estuaries, where they [the coast forts] settled down like a clucking hen and refloated at the flood’.3
Yet being on Mücke facilitated an important move for Hipper: he was transferred to another ship of the 2nd Reserve Division, Blücher, which was stationed alternately at Kiel and Flensburg. On this ship Hipper became immersed in torpedo tactics and technique. All the individual torpedoes in the training ship had nicknames based on how they would perform, such as ‘Twisting Franz’ or ‘Diving Emil’.
In October 1891 Hipper rejoined Friedrich der Große as torpedo officer. He was ‘responsible for the efficiency of torpedoes, torpedo armament and all that pertains to it: torpedo charges, explosive equipment, including charges and mine-clearing gear, and for the administration and maintenance of torpedo stores’.4 After Friedrich der Große came another torpedo position, this time as torpedo officer on SMS Beowulf. In April 1892 he was made company commander of the 2nd Torpedo Unit based in Wilhelmshaven. From then until September 1894 Hipper made frequent position changes and commanded a total of nine torpedo boats.
Excellence in torpedo tactics did not at this time necessarily help Hipper. Alexander von Monts, who succeeded Caprivi as head of the Admiralstab in 1888, ‘had an undisguised dislike of torpedo boats, which indeed was shared by almost all the older officers at the time’5, yet it was a service within the service, with an incredible esprit de corps.
While serving on the battleship Worth, commanded by Prince Heinrich, Hipper was promoted in 1895 to lieutenant commander. The design of Worth was noteworthy. She was heavily gunned, with six 28cm guns down the centreline. He had come aboard as a watch officer but also served in gunnery and navigation roles. It was these all-round abilities that made him interesting to the prince, who was by now quietly promoting him.
His next torpedo assignment was as commanding officer of a torpedo reserve unit, the 2nd, in September. His chief biographer, Hugo von Waldeyer-Hartz, stated that this was ‘the decisive step which led to Hipper’s brilliant career’.6 Among his men – around four hundred in the company – there was great camaraderie. Hipper was immensely popular and well-respected. A leutnant on S.73 commented: ‘He was extraordinarily attractive, a slim, wiry officer who knew exactly what he wanted, and was a splendid leader’. Hipper regularly used to appear with his men, all dressed in similar straw hats with black ribbons on which, emblazoned in red, was ‘Stander-Z’, the German naval signal for attack.
With Tirpitz’s shaping of the future German navy, and his appointment to the torpedo section in the RMA in 1897, Scheer’s outlook took a dramatic change for the better in a career which was in many ways shaped by his association with Tirpitz; in Gary Weir’s estimation, it was at this time that he ‘absorbed the Tirpitz doctrine’7.
In 1898 Hipper temporarily took up another position in the torpedo divisions, as navigating officer under Admiral Thomsen on SMS Kurfürst Friedrich Wilhelm, a sister ship of Worth. In September the following year Hipper joined the royal yacht Hohenzollern as navigator. The post would last three years, which, as Waldeyer-Hartz pointed out, was a solid endorsement of the esteem in which Hipper was now held. At this time she was captained by the Kaiser’s naval AdC, Commander Count von Baudissin.
For a vessel transporting such an important passenger, Hohenzollern was badly equipped and quite unseaworthy (according to Erich Raeder she was a ‘monstrosity’) yet Hipper was in good company, able to rub shoulders with anyone who was anyone in naval circles.
Scheer went back to sea in 1900, this time as the commander of a destroyer flotilla. It was an excellent opportunity for the man to form his ideas about these craft, which would later play such an important part at Jutland. That same year, his daughter Marianne was born.*
Hipper and Beatty shared a common experience of service on a royal yacht (Beatty had served on Britannia), but the duty afforded Hipper closer contact with his sovereign than was the case with Beatty. Hipper made some long and sometimes quite dangerous trips together with the Kaiser on Hohenzollern.
At the start of 1901, along with HM Yachts Victoria and Albert and Osborne, Hohenzollern went to the Isle of Wight off the south coast of England as part of the funeral cortege of Queen Victoria following her death. The start of 1902 saw another significant trip for Hohenzollern. Against Baudissins advice, the Kaiser wanted her to travel to America to see, among other things, the imperial yacht Meteor race. Sailing via St Thomas, she arrived in New York harbour, covered in ice, on Lincoln’s birthday. Social activities brought the Kaiser and Hipper close together. The Kaiser was not a drinker – he normally had orange juice in a silver goblet – and he was keen on physical exercise. There is even a photo of the Kaiser, Hipper and Baudissin all doing callisthenics on the deck of Hohenzollern.
After a direct endorsement of Hipper’s qualities by the Kaiser’s brother, who arrived to join them in New York on the Norddeutscher Lloyd liner Kronprinz Wilhelm, Hipper was given the command of the 2nd Torpedo Unit in October, with Niobe as flotilla leader. He was based in Wilhelmshaven, nicknamed ‘mud town, ‘the roughest of all North Sea bases’, but his friendship with the Kaiser meant that the latter would often visit him informally on the ship.8
Training was vigorous. Admiral Zeye, inspector of destroyers, had a favourite test for young destroyer captains. They had to grab a bottle of champagne hanging off the stern boom of the flagship at high speed. It captures the wonderful spirit of a young renegade group within the more conservative naval ranks. Hipper himself would time his own boat’s performance as she sped through narrow and difficult passages, each time trying to shave off precious seconds. After eight months bringing Niobe up to seaworthiness, Hipper transferred his flag to a torpedo boat, D.8. He also tried out G.110, G.112, S.102 and D.9.
In 1903 Scheer was brought back off sea duty by Tirpitz, this time as chief of the central division of the RMA. With his promotion to Korvettenkapitän in 1904, he took command of the light cruiser SMS Gazelle. Gazelle, which had been launched at the end of 1898, was on a goodwill visit to New Orleans.
Scheer’s next promotion came in March 1905 when he was given the rank of Kapitän zur See. The past few years had witnessed a prolonged period of promotion: lieutenant commander in 1900, commander in 1904, captain in 1905. Hipper had commanded the 2nd Torpedo Unit for more than thirty-five months during which, on 5 April 1905, he was promoted to commander. He now took up a new position on the staff of the commandant of the North Sea Station, attending two gunnery courses on Prinz Adalbert and SMS Schwaben.
In April 1906 Hipper took up the command of the cruiser Leipzig, which was larger than Niobe and had served as escort to Hohenzollern. When Leipzig departed for the Far East, Hipper returned to Friedrich Karl in September as her commander. Once again he found himself under the watchful eye of Prince Heinrich. His performance was notable: the ship gained the Kaiser’s gunnery prize. Moreover, Hipper was mentioned in 1907’s manoeuvre reports and Friedrich Karl classed as outstanding. This second encounter with Prince Heinrich led to Hipper’s becoming flag officer of torpedo boats when the position became available, ‘recommended for battleship command and for higher independent commands’.
In April, Hipper was promoted to Kapitän, received high awards and was present at the meeting between the Kaiser and the Tsar. But as always he was averse to the paperwork and administration that went with senior posts. He had, in Waldeyer-Hartz’s words, a ‘distaste for pen and paper’.
For Scheer, battleship command finally came. He was given command of Elsass and spent the next two years on her. His evaluation report was complimentary: ‘Filled the position well, very accomplished in gunnery. Should be well-suited for a high staff position.’
Hipper took command of the newly commissioned SMS Gneisenau in March 1908, preparing her for the East Asia Squadron and in October got what Prince Heinrich had had in mind for him: command of the 1st Torpedo Boat Division in Kiel. The Kaiser read his report and underlined one phrase: ‘große Dienstfreundigkeif – ‘tremendous enthusiasm for the service’. Hipper was being recognised in very high places. So it was with the British, whose naval attache in Berlin commented on the German torpedo-boat forces: ‘there is no reason to suppose that personnel or materiel are anything but first class’.9
On 1 December 1909 Scheer was promoted to Admiral von Holtzendorff’s chief of staff. Within six months, aged forty-seven, he was a Konteradmiral. He went back to the RMA as Chief of the General Naval Staff in 1911, while Hipper, now a commodore, was made commander of the 10,200-ton armoured cruiser SMS Yorck and then appointed chief of staff to the deputy flag officer of the reconnaissance forces, or Aufklärungsgruppe, the service branch in which he would really make his name and the command of which would bring him face to face with Beatty five years later.
In January 1912 his senior, the deputy flag officer, Rear Admiral Gustav von Bachmann, was made flag officer. Hipper moved up. On the 27th, the day after taking up this new position – it was the Kaiser’s birthday, too – the forty-nine-year-old became Rear Admiral Franz Hipper, rising star of the Kaiser’s navy, responsible for all the torpedo boats of the scouting forces and the cruisers of the 2nd Scouting Group. It was a huge achievement: ‘A man who had never been inside a ministry, never attended the naval academy, never held an Admiralty appointment. A fighting officer pure and simple.’10 He would be praised by his immediate superior officer, Bachmann, and the overall fleet commander-in-chief, Holtzendorff.
Hipper attained a higher profile in 1912, perhaps higher than he bargained for. The Kaiser had proposed a new staffing policy for the High Seas Fleet, in which the entire crew – officers and men – of a battleship would be changed every three years. Since this followed the organisational precedent set in the torpedo forces, Hipper was asked to look at the issue. He did so, and courageously voted against the Kaiser’s proposal. Bachmann and Admiral Friedrich von Ingenohl supported him but that might have been scant comfort for Hipper, who was out on a limb. ‘I believe that an experiment with this [three-year] system in the fleet would be of extremely dubious value. The low battle readiness of the particular ship which is in its first year would decrease the battle readiness of the whole fleet.’11
Despite this, the new system was pushed through. One of the first ships to be affected was the newly commissioned battleship Prinzregent Luitpold. She soon got a bad reputation and, almost to prove the point, was the ship on which the first mutinies later broke out in August 1917.
As 1913 was closing, Scheer was promoted on 9 December to the rank of Vizeadmiral. In January he took the command of the six battleships of the 2nd Battle Squadron. Later that month he was given the 3rd Battle Squadron, the prize squadron of the German navy with the latest and fastest ships, the powerful Kaiser- and König-class dreadnoughts.
When Bachmann took up command of the Baltic forces, his recommendation that Hipper take his position was acted upon and on 1 October 1913 Hipper took overall command of the scouting forces. Erich Raeder, who would later become Hitler’s supreme naval commander, is worth quoting: ‘Our new commander was an energetic and impulsive individual, with quick perception and a keen “seaman’s eye” but unlike his predecessor he had risen exclusively through performance in the fleet’.12
Hipper’s ideas for the battle-cruisers came from what Bachmann had started, namely the battle-cruiser charge. It was a manoeuvre that Bachmann had developed in 1912 to cover the possible emergency extraction of the main battle fleet. Hipper also developed an idea of a battle-cruiser breakt
hrough in which the battle-cruiser’s role would be as a hammer blow to do exactly that: break through the cruiser and destroyer screens that the British would have. In some ways it was a precursor of the ‘Schwerpunkt’ thinking at which German armoured forces became so adept in the Second World War: to identify the enemy’s weak point, then push everything against that point until it broke. The breakthrough and charge tactics were known to be dangerous, and would result in substantial battle-cruiser damage, but they would also protect the battle squadrons.
Scheer was bitterly disappointed with his commander, Friedrich von Ingenohl, when in 1915, after raids on Hartlepool, Whitby and Scarborough had successfully lured out the Grand Fleet, the vice admiral failed to close the trap. Tirpitz at the time wrote that Ingenohl could have dealt the British a heavy blow. ‘On 16th December, Ingenohl had the fate of Germany in the palm of his hand. I boil with emotion whenever I think of it.’13 Even the British could not believe how close they had come to a possible defeat. At the time, a British naval staff monograph stressed:
Here at last were the conditions for which the Germans had been striving since the beginning of the war. A few miles away on the port bow of the German High Seas Fleet, isolated and several hours steaming from home, was the most powerful homogeneous battle squadron of the Grand Fleet, the destruction of which would at one blow have completed the process of attrition and placed the British and German fleets on a precisely even footing as regards numerical strength.14
James Goldrick echoed the sentiment: ‘Never again would such an opportunity to redress the balance present itself to the Imperial Navy’.15
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