A Naval History of World War I

by Paul G. Halpern

  Tirpitz’s program is highly controversial; indeed, the reason for the entire naval program has been a matter of controversy in German historiography. There is a popular view that much of the program was developed primarily for reasons of internal policy, an attempt to win over the working class and benefit the shipbuilding industry by eliminating cycles and guaranteeing regular orders. It also was intended that the fleet play an important role in social integration. In 1895 Tirpitz explained that the expansion of the navy was necessary, because “the great patriotic task and the economics to be derived from it will offer a strong palliative against educated and uneducated Social Democrats.”6

  Tirpitz’s naval law had distinct advantages from the bureaucratic point of view, for it lessened the interference of a potentially meddlesome parliament by not only fixing the number of ships but also providing for their automatic replacement after a certain number of years. In the 1898 naval law, battleships and cruisers would be replaced after twenty-five years of service. The elusive goal of Tirpitz was the so-called Marineaeternat, or “iron budget,” with the number of ships to be laid down each year a matter of law.

  Tirpitz, whatever his faults, was a skilled propagandist. His creation of a “news bureau” was a master stroke, designed to tap the potential support of the legislature and people. At a time when the Royal Navy prided itself on being the “silent service,” Tirpitz and his associates, in liaison with the Flottenverein—the naval league generously supported by the steel interests—conducted a masterful campaign that struck a responsive cord among the German middle classes. The membership of the Flottenverein—240,000 at the end of November 1899—was far beyond the paltry few thousand of the Navy League in England, let alone similar organizations in France and Italy.7

  Whatever the implications of the naval program for German internal politics, the creation of the powerful battle fleet was something the British could not ignore. Furthermore, they would have been most unwise to do so: despite bland assurances from Germany about the defensive nature of the fleet, it obviously was directed primarily against Great Britain. Tirpitz informed the kaiser in September 1899 that after the completion of the German fleet, the British “would have lost, for general political reasons and because she [England] will view the situation from the purely sober standpoint of a businessman, all inclination to attack us.” Instead, Tirpitz stated, the British would “concede to Your Majesty, such a measure of maritime influence which will make it possible for Your Majesty to conduct a great overseas policy.”8 The German navy would be a deterrent, but there inevitably would be a “danger zone” through which the Germans would have to pass before their fleet was strong enough to constitute a true “risk fleet,” and German diplomacy would have to take this into account. Remembering the history of the Napoleonic Wars, Tirpitz warned they would have to guard against the danger of being “Copenhagened”—a reference to the preemptive strikes by the British against the Danish fleet.

  Germany’s initial naval law was therefore deceptively mild, but the scope of the Tirpitz program was revealed in the Second German Naval Law of June 1900—passed, incidentally, while the British were preoccupied with the Boer War and a substantial portion of the world sympathized with the Boers. The law declared that the German navy would be increased to 38 battleships, 20 armored cruisers, and 38 light cruisers. There would be 2 fleet flagships, 4 squadrons of 8 battleships each, and 4 battleships in reserve. Tirpitz used supplementary naval bills in attempts to increase the total, and advancements in naval technology changed the authorized ship types to dreadnoughts and battle cruisers. Tirpitz’s goal was a 2:3 ratio with the Royal Navy, for naval experts held that a weaker fleet had to be at least two-thirds the size of its stronger opponent before it had any chance of victory. He aimed at the dreier tempo, that is, laying down three capital ships a year. If pursued consistently over a twenty-year period, the German fleet would number over sixty dreadnought-type battleships and battle cruisers, and the British would have to increase their fleet to ninety capital ships to match it. Tirpitz did not believe they could do this. Aside from financial considerations, they could not find the manpower. The Germans could stand the naval race better than the British, who, because of their navy’s larger size, could not increase their fleet at the same rate. The British also could not compete with the advantage conscription gave the Germans, for a portion of each year’s conscripts automatically went to the navy. The British had to rely on volunteers. Additionally, the British had to meet their imperial commitments beyond the North Sea, although it was in the North Sea that they were most vulnerable.

  Tirpitz at times went beyond questions of mere deterrence. He appears to have believed he could defeat the British. In September 1899 he informed the kaiser that thanks to Germany’s geographical position, system of military service, mobilization, torpedo boats, tactical training, systematic organizational structure, and—added no doubt for the benefit of the kaiser—uniform leadership by the monarch, “we shall no doubt have a good chance against England.” Tirpitz was realistic enough to realize, however, that they could not hope to keep the sea lanes to the Atlantic open without a victorious battle.9

  From a technical point of view, Tirpitz’s scheme might have been plausible. In a broader sense, though, it had momentous consequences, for more than any other factor it moved the British from their traditional policy of splendid isolation to a Continental commitment. The entire Tirpitz scheme had a fundamental flaw: it assumed the British would not do what they had to do to maintain the necessary margin for the security at sea that was so vital for them. The British met the challenge, and Tirpitz’s “danger zone” became an ever-lengthening one. Tirpitz’s dreier tempo proved impossible to maintain, and it was the German government itself that refused his request for a supplementary naval law in 1913. By then, however, immense diplomatic damage had been done. The British reached an agreement with the Japanese in the Far East in 1902, and in 1904 concluded an agreement with their historic rivals, the French. The Anglo-French Entente, or Entente Cordiale, was definitely not an alliance, but an “understanding,” a sweeping away of old grievances in some cases dating back to the eighteenth century. It also was a cordial understanding, and the Entente Cordiale came to have more inherent strength and value than the formal and presumably binding alliances of Germany’s Triple Alliance partners, Italy and Austria-Hungary.

  In 1907 the British reached a similar entente with their traditional Russian rivals. The Anglo-Russian Entente was never as cordial or comprehensive as its Anglo-French equivalent, but the Germans could now truly complain of “encirclement.” What is even more important, under the stimulus of Germany’s threatening behavior in the Moroccan crisis of 1905, the British and French began the unofficial and nonbinding staff talks that ended by creating an intangible but very real bond between them. The Anglo-French staff conversations contributed to the feeling that the British had at least a moral obligation toward the French and could not leave them in the lurch if war came.10

  Tirpitz’s confident assumptions of victory were based on the situation as it appeared in 1899. The Royal Navy of 1914 was, however, a very different service. Long years of peace may have bred a certain complacency, but all of this changed with the German challenge. Much of this change can be associated with Tirpitz’s equally controversial contemporary, Admiral of the Fleet Sir John Fisher, First Sea Lord from October 1904 to January 1910.11 Fisher is credited with revitalizing the navy and turning it into an organization better suited to the needs of modern war. He gave full support to the revolution in gunnery, particularly the work of Captain Percy Scott, which culminated in the introduction of director (centralized) control for firing by the outbreak of the war.12 Fisher scrapped large numbers of obsolete warships and began the process of concentrating the major portion of the fleet and the newest and best ships in home waters, as opposed to in the Mediterranean or other foreign stations. Fisher was not infallible; he could be ruthless and his methods questionable. The Royal Navy
was not always a happy place during his tenure, but he made his mark.

  Fisher is perhaps best known for the introduction in 1905 of HMS Dreadnought, the all-big-gun warship. He was roundly criticized for this, because the revolutionary warship rendered existing battleships obsolete and, in effect, canceled the Royal Navy’s large advantage by wiping the slate clean and giving the Germans the opportunity to catch up. His decision to build the battle cruiser HMS Invincible and two sister ships, completed in 1908, was even more controversial. The battle cruiser represented a new type of large, fast, armored cruiser with a dreadnought’s armament but scant protection.13

  There is evidence that the battle cruiser rather than the Dreadnought was actually at the heart of Fisher’s scheme. By the turn of the century, foreign building made it financially impossible to build warships in adequate numbers. Fisher therefore hoped to build ships that would be qualitatively superior to their foreign rivals and tried to combine battleships and first-class cruisers in a single type, the battle cruiser. He placed great emphasis on high speed, but it was possible to achieve this without exorbitant expense only by reducing the scale of armor protection. Fisher was confident the battle cruiser’s speed would enable it to impose battle and hit at long range, which would prevent the enemy from taking advantage of its relative lack of protection. The battle cruiser never replaced the battleship, largely because by the time the Dreadnought entered service, the diplomatic situation had altered, thereby reducing the need for combining battleship and armored cruiser in a single type. France was friendly, and the Russian navy had been crippled in the Russo-Japanese War (1904–5). Germany now represented the most likely potential adversary. Unlike the French and Russian fleets, the German fleet had relatively few armored cruisers or overseas bases and was proportionately much stronger in battleships. The British thus continued to build battle cruisers, but concentrated on battleships.14

  As for the argument that the radical new ship negated the British advantage at sea, Fisher was convinced that the superiority of the new design outweighed the disadvantages and was confident of Great Britain’s ability to outbuild its German rival and maintain the lead. This confidence was justified: at the outbreak of war the British had maintained their advantage. There were twenty-one dreadnoughts and four battle cruisers in the Grand Fleet (plus another five at other locations), compared with thirteen dreadnoughts and five battle cruisers (including the hybrid Blücher) in the High Sea Fleet. It is important to remember that the new warships evolved out of the necessity of finding an economical means to face the old rivalry with France and Russia, not out of the new rivalry with Germany.15

  The new types presupposed the ability of British gunnery to hit accurately at long ranges. Fisher was overconfident the British had solved the problem, underestimating the difficulties, particularly when the range between ships on converging courses was constantly changing. The Royal Navy might well have solved the problem had it adopted the system of fire control developed by Arthur Pollen. For a variety of reasons the British instead opted for an inferior system, and this may have cheated them of decisive results in the war’s actions.16

  Next to Fisher the best-known figure associated with the Royal Navy in the period immediately before the war is undoubtedly Winston Churchill, first lord of the Admiralty from October 1911 to May 1915. As civilian head of the navy, Churchill was regarded as a brash young man, fully as controversial as Fisher. He brought dynamism and eloquence to the navy’s cause, was the central figure in important strategic changes reflected in the navy’s redeployment of 1912, and was responsible for the decision to switch to oil fuel.17

  The strategic redeployment of 1912 continued Fisher’s policy of concentrating in home waters. By this time the Anglo-French Entente had been tested by the Moroccan crises of 1905 and 1911. The Mediterranean fleet, reduced from fourteen battleships in 1902 to eight in 1904 and six in 1906, was shifted from Malta to Gibraltar. It could, in theory, operate in either the Mediterranean or Atlantic, but the understanding was that it would be brought home in time of war. The battleship squadron stationed at Gibraltar would return to home waters. Initially Churchill intended to leave merely a cruiser force at Malta, which meant, in effect, the abandonment of the Mediterranean by British capital ships in time of war. The French in turn transferred the only battleship squadron they had left in the north from Brest to the Mediterranean. This seemed a startling demonstration of the Entente Cordiale at work, and the press was full of assured speculation that it had been the result of prior agreement, the British leaving the guarding of the Mediterranean to the French. In fact the decision had been reached independently by both navies, and both were responding to necessity brought on by technical factors. For the French the growth of the German navy meant that the remaining battleship squadron at Brest, composed of old predreadnoughts, would have had little chance of survival should the German fleet have arrived off the French coast and public opinion forced it to sortie. The French in reality had already made the decision to concentrate in the Mediterranean by sending their newer and best battleships there. The British were disturbed by the growth of the Italian and Austro-Hungarian navies, rivals themselves but also allies of Germany in the Triple Alliance. The decision of both Italy and Austria-Hungary to build modern and powerful dreadnoughts meant that the predreadnoughts the British had retained at Malta would be outclassed by potential adversaries. Furthermore, Churchill argued that the crews were needed to man newer vessels at home.

  The decision to “abandon” the Mediterranean was opposed strongly by the Foreign Office and the War Office, and in the end Churchill had to compromise. The Admiralty agreed to leave sufficient force in the Mediterranean so that, joined with the French, it would assure superiority over the combined Austrian and Italian fleets. For this purpose the Admiralty chose battle cruisers, which in theory were strong enough to fight and fast enough to run away when necessary. The Admiralty intended to provide a squadron of dreadnoughts for the Mediterranean in the future, but only when it was consistent with an appropriate margin of safety in home waters.18 In March of 1912 Churchill revealed in Parliament that Great Britain had quietly abandoned the old “two-power standard” and was building against one power and one power alone—Germany—and that the margin of superiority was 60 percent. There were periodic attempts to dampen or slow down the naval race; for example, Churchill’s proposal for a “naval holiday,” during which each country would forego laying down its planned number of capital ships for that fiscal year. The most striking attempt was the visit of Lord Haldane to Germany in February 1912 in an effort to get the Germans to table their planned Novelle, or supplementary naval law. The effort did not succeed, largely because the Germans wanted a political agreement assuring British neutrality in the event of a Continental war before any naval agreement, whereas for the British the naval agreement was paramount. Both sides were speaking past each other. There is no space for a detailed account of the diplomatic aspects of the prewar naval race here, but after 1912 both sides settled in for the long haul. The march of technology meant that by the outbreak of war, the navies were dealing with superdreadnoughts, with 15-inch instead of 12-inch guns and with similar improvements in speed and protection. The British were determined to, and did, maintain their lead.19

  British superiority is demonstrated by the number of dreadnoughts and battle cruisers in service or under construction at the beginning of the war:

  British

  German

  Dreadnoughts in servicea

  22

  15

  Dreadnoughts under constructionb

  13

  5

  Battle cruisers in servicec

  9

  5

  Battle cruisers under construction

  1

  3

  aIncludes two Turkish ships requisitioned by the Admiralty.

  bIncludes one ship under construction for Chile requisitioned by the Admiralty and one German dreadnought never completed. />
  cIncludes one in Australian service.

  The British advantage is even more marked in terms of predreadnoughts, cruisers, destroyers, and submarines, although here numerical tables are debatable, for it is not always clear what to include in terms of age and types. Given these qualifications, however, the following is a rough estimate of ships in service at the beginning of the war:

  British

  German

  Predreadnoughts

  40

  22

  Coast-defense ships

  NA

  8

  Armored cruisers

  34

  7

  Protected cruisers

  52

  17

  Scout cruisers

  15

  NA

  Light cruisersa

  20

  16

  Destroyers

  221

  90

  Torpedo boats

  109

  115

  Submarines

  73

  31

  aincludes three in Australian service.

  Mere lists of numbers tend to be meaningless without innumerable qualifications as to age and type of ship, which might offset some of the apparent German inferiority. The worldwide commitments of Great Britain inevitably caused British warships to be scattered throughout the world to a far greater degree, and the Germans had to detach forces to match the Russians in the Baltic. The author of the standard work on British destroyers (who credits them with only 207) points out that however impressive the number might look on paper, over half were fit solely for coastal duties, whereas the speed of many of the latest classes was only slightly more than that of the battle cruisers they would have to screen.20