1: Tirpitz Comes to Power

Description

This is Part 1 of the new Great War Revisited project. This episode is an expanded, rewritten, and rerecorded version of the Member Episode released in 2019. Great War Revisited will be a continuing series of brand new content for History of the Great War in which I go back to the First World War and pick out events and themes to revisit. This is the start of a 10 part series on the naval build up before First World War.

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Transcript

Hello everyone and welcome to History of the Great War Revisited Episode 1 - The Anglo-German Naval Arms Race Part 1 - Tirpitz Comes to Power. This is the first episode in what I am calling the Revisited series. I started History of the Great War in June 2014, and over the following 6 years I released a lot of episodes. I then moved on to History of the Second World War, but I have always had a pull to go back to the events of the Great War. This episode is the start of those efforts. Over the next 10 episodes, released monthly in 2024, you will be getting a series of episodes on the Anglo-German Naval Arms Race which occurred in the decade before the First World War. These episodes were originally released as Member Episodes in 2019, but have been greatly expanded and rewritten with thousands of pages of additional research. You might ask why the Anglo-German Naval Arms race? My answer to that would be simple, and selfish, this is one of favorite historical topics, easily in my top 3. I just think it is a really interesting story of the confluence of technological changes, political maneuverings, and how individuals can impact the course of history. These are not the only Revisited episodes that will be released in the future, I won’t be remaking the entirety of History of the Great War, but I will be picking topics that I think deserve another pass and doing more research and writing about them. You can expect more information on that later this year. With all of that said, I hope you enjoy this, the first episode of History of the Great War Revisited.

The 15 years before the beginning of the First World War saw two of the most powerful nations in the world engage each other in a naval arms race. During those years the British and German Empires would invest colossal sums into expanding and improving their navies, with both sides pushing the other to build more and more until eventually the German government could no longer support additional spending. This arms race would inevitably lead to antagonism between the two countries, with both navies claiming that they needed to expand due to the actions of the other. During this time Germany’s naval budget would double, and the Royal Navy’s would increase by 40%. For the British these events were unexpected and unwelcome. For a century, since the defeat of Napoleon, the Royal Navy had been the undisputed ruler of the seas around the world. No single country, or even multiple countries together, could match the Royal Navy during almost the entirety of the 19th century. However, this would change in the early years of the 20th century as first the Germans, and then later the Japanese and Americans, began to drastically expand their navies which would force the British to first attempt to match that expansion and then later to surrender their undisputed rule of the waves. To add additional intrigue to this period of naval construction, the early 20th century was also a period of tremendous change when it came to naval technology. The capital ships of all navies, primarily battleships, would become larger, faster, and mount larger guns on almost a yearly basis. At times there were also massive leaps in that technology, and no single event would better exemplify such a leap than the introduction of the Dreadnought in 1906. The Dreadnought project was led by First Lord of the Admiralty Admiral Fisher who had his own very specific views of the future of the war at sea. The Dreadnought’s combination of speed, armor, and a focus on only the largest of guns would completely change the course of warship construction. It would cause all previous battleships to become obsolete almost overnight, and it would set the priorities for naval ship construction for the next 40 years, priorities that would only change during the Second World War due to the introduction and then ascendency of aircraft carriers. During these episodes we will trace two different, but largely parallel evolutions. The first will be the transformation of the German Navy from a small collection of minor warships into the second most powerful navy in Europe, and one capable of challenging the Royal Navy in the waters of the North Sea during the First World War. The second evolution would be the evolution of the Royal Navy from the middle of the 19th century, a period that one historian called “the long calm lee of Trafalgar” all the way to the start of the war in 1914. These decades would see a navy that had grown complacent in its dominance, only to be shaken awake by the German challenge. It would see an Empire struggling, even with its vast resources, to continue the pace of naval construction as shipbuilding grew ever more expensive, and it would see the Royal Navy reach the peak of its strength.

While the Royal Navy will be well discussed in this series of episodes, this specific episode will instead focus on the challenger, the underdog, the German Imperial Fleet. Instead of moving from a position of strength, and then having to evolve that strength before the First World War the German Navy would have to first create itself. In this creation it would be aided by a supportive Kaiser, who wanted more than anything to have a navy to rival the Royal Navy. Between 1897 and 1914 the Kaiser would be one of the most outspoken supporters of German naval expansion. There were many reasons behind this strong support from the Kaiser, for one thing he greatly enjoyed nautical activities, being a major supporter of the annual Kiel regatta where for many years his Imperial yacht was sure to make an appearance. Another reason for the Kaiser’s support was the simple fact that in the late 1800s and into the 1900s a key measure of the strength of a great power was its ability to project power over the oceans. This was of critical importance to the colonial powers of Europe, which Germany included itself in with its colonies in Africa and the Pacific. Sometimes the Kaiser was in fact too outspoken if you would have asked some of his naval officers who were trying to actually make it happen. These officers were led by Admiral Tirpitz. No person deserves more of the credit for building the navy, nor more of the blame for some of its shortcoming than Tirpitz. During the 17 years before the beginning of the War Tirpitz would control and shape the German Navy into what he believed was the best possible fighting force, given the limitations that he was working under. The limitations were imposed upon him from both an economics, politics, and geography. The economic and political limitations really came down to money, there was only so much that the German nation could spend on its navy and there was only so much that it was willing to. In retrospect, but perhaps not at the time, these efforts seem doomed to always be too small when faced with British naval superiority. The German Navy would never be able to match the ship building speed of the Royal Navy, even if it had the will to try the physical capacity of its shipyards would not allow it. The geographic challenge was also an area where Tirpitz had little direct control, Germany had a relatively small coastline with the North Sea, with exits from that sea fully controlled by the Royal Navy, and the most likely enemies of the German Nay, France and Russia, having a far larger stretch of coastline to work with. The situation became much worse in the early 1900s when British relations with France and Russia began to improve, allowing the British to focus more of its naval strength against a possible German challenge. Add to this the technological lead that was held by the Royal Navy, exemplified by the Dreadnought, the Invincible, and the Queen Elizabeth class battleships that would launch just before the war, and the situation looked quite unfavorable for the Germans. They would be forever destined to play catchup, always reacting to British changes in construction and technology, never taking the lead themselves. The end result would be a navy that would simply be a smaller version of the Royal Navy and in the waters of the North Sea this would result in a war of inconclusive battles that always saw the German Fleet fleeing back to port after confronting larger British forces. Obviously that is not what the architects of the German Fleet wanted their policy to be, but before we get to discussions of the war we have to take the story back much closer to the start, with the state of the German navy before the Franco-Prussian War.

The German Navy, or as it was at the time the Prussian Navy was almost non-existent in 1850. The first permanent officer training school for naval officers would not be created until 1853 and then during the next two decades the navy would slowly expand. The first problem was acquiring ships, with most of the largest ships, mostly ironclads, used by the German Navy not actually built by German ports but instead acquired from the British. This was a common scenario during this period of history, with many nations not possessing the ship building capability that they needed, and the British government and British shipyards more than willing to build ships for export. The second problem faced by the Prussian Navy was finding enough men to man the ships that the Germans did have. A recurring problem for the German Navy throughout the last 50 years of the 1800s was simply finding enough men and officers that were willing to serve in the Navy. The Navy would always, even at its height, play second fiddle to the Army, and so keeping a solid pipeline of officers and men would be a continual challenge. The challenges faced by the navy in attracting enough officers would only increase after the Franco-Prussian War. It would be in that war that the Prussian Army would march through Northern France, decisively defeating the French Army. At the same time that the Army was having these successes the Navy was…blockaded in port, unable to do anything against the French Navy which in all fairness was the second largest navy in the world at the time. After the war the Navy would try to find a way to rehabilitate its image. While this would involve increased emphasis on shipbuilding efforts, the navy would not really be tested until the First World War. This meant that for the 40 years between the conflicts the most important leaders that molded German Naval policy had little real world experience. This would also include a string of leaders that were really Army men but who had been placed at the head of the German Navy for various reasons. For the 25 years after the Franco-Prussian war German naval theorists would also have to work within the very specific and limited goals of the German Navy. These goals were always defensive in nature, protecting Germany from invasion, from close blockades, or from coastal bombardment. However, in the late 1800s there would be a shift as many German leaders, influenced by foreign thought leaders like Mahan and others, started to believe that the German Navy should be used for imperialistic, and offensive, purposes. The German Naval leaders were as susceptible to influence by these imperialistic theories as any other naval leader all over the world, and it would eventually result in a change both in the goals for the German Navy as well as its role in German society.

Alfred Mahan would be a United States Naval Officer and historian and he was also one of the most influential people in maybe the history of naval warfare. His book The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, originally published in 1890 would be at least part of the justification for every naval building program over the next 50 years. British, German, American, Japanese, Italian, and French leaders, just to name a few, would all refer back to Mahan either directly or indirectly as they tried to gain support for naval expansion and the importance of a strong navy for all world powers. A thorough discussion of Mahan, and the problems with his theories, is beyond the scope of these episodes, however, given their influence on German and British naval leaders it its worth discussing them just briefly. At its core, Mahan’s work used examples from throughout history, up to and including the Napoleonic Wars, to prove that the only way for nations to protect economic expansion and their position in the world, was to have a strong navy. This strong navy, Mahan believed had to come in very specific forms, namely it had to be made up of the largest ships available at the time, and at the time of its writing that meant battleships. One of the most important pieces of Naval Warfare, according to Mahan, was the great decisive battle. In this battle both sides would concentrate all of their strongest ships and they would meet at sea in a battle that would decide the fate of the conflict. He used examples that had occurred throughout history, culminating, of course, with the Battle of Trafalgar. However, by looking to the past Mahan did not properly account for the changes in technology that had occurred since the age of sail had passed. Never before had ships as well armored and well armed, or as expensive to create. Also, in the age of sail it was not always possible for a weaken enemy to run away from a stronger one, this was not a problem in the age of steam power. This would prove to be a decisive change in the structure of war at sea, and it made landing that decisive blow on the weaker navy almost impossible, if a fleet was at a disadvantage it would simply retreat as displayed during the First World War several times. It could still happen, but it depended on one side making critical mistakes, as the Russian navy would do multiple times during the Russo-Japanese war. The shortcomings of Mahan’s theories were not immediately apparent, and instead both the British and German fleets would prepare for what they believed would be a decisive battle, a confrontation that would never occur, although it would come close several times. In the defense of all of the British and German naval theorists in the years before the First World War, they would not the be the last generation of naval theorists to make this mistake, and in some ways the mistakes during the interwar years would be even more egregious.

The overall importance of the Navy in Germany would not begin to truly rise until the end of the 1800s, but from an intellectual perspective it would begin in 1875 with the creation of the Marine-Akademie which was created for the purpose of fostering advanced naval studies. This would bring together new generations of naval officers, who would go on to form the basis for German naval theory in the following decades. One of the benefits of the Navy being considered a far less important part of German society when compared to the Army is that the officers who would come through the academy were from a huge mix of backgrounds. This would also prevent some of the challenges faced by other militaries around Europe which would be hampered in their attempts to adapt to new technology by the weight of tradition. This is something that the British and the Royal Navy would really have to contend with in the early years of the 20th century in both big and small areas. For example debates around how officers should follow orders, either to the letter or to use their own judgement would be a major topic of conversation within the Royal Navy. There were traditions that cut both ways dating back to the days of Nelson and Trafalgar, and the competing legacies and traditions would cause problems. These challenges were amplified by the introduction of new technology, but they were not really present in the Imperial German Navy because there was no tradition, no legacy, no history.

In 1882 a new head of the German Navy would arrive on the scene, General Caprivi. Caprivi came from an army background, and had basically no experience in naval affairs, and did not really show a huge amount of inclination to learn. For the next 6 years he would be the head of the Navy and during this time he would form some opinions that were not in line with some other German leaders. One of this beliefs was that Germany’s best path forward, given its relative newness to the naval game was to focus not on the large heavily armored and heavily armed ships that were seen as prestige items at the time. Instead he believed that it would be better to focus on smaller craft that utilized torpedoes as their primary weapon. This aligned nicely with Tirpitz’s views and experience at the time, and it would be at this time that Tirpitz would begin to place himself into a position of thought leadership within the growing German Navy. Starting in 1887 Tirpitz would be put in charge of the Torpedo Section at the German Admiralty. During his time in the position he would be mostly focused on the tactical uses of the torpedo, but he would also play a role in the advancement of German torpedo technology and in the design of ships that would be built to deliver them. One fun little story that I think is interesting is that in 1888 Caprivi assigned some naval officers to answer 12 tactical questions about what they thought would happen in a fleet engagement of 12 German ships and an equal number of enemy ships. Tirpitz, never one to answer a question too briefly, would write 200 pages on the 12 questions before providing his answers back to Caprivi.

While Caprivi and Tirpitz were at this time firmly of the belief that smaller and cheaper ships were the best path forward this came into conflict with what the new Kaiser wanted out of his navy. Kaiser Wilhelm II would come to power in June 1888 and he would bring with him some very specific ideas about what he wanted from his navy. Wilhelm wanted a navy to rival any other naval power, he wanted one that would be the showcase of German strength, and he wanted one that would allow Germany to be transformed into a global power that would be able to project power anywhere around the globe. These desires would come, and even he would admit this, from a desire to emulate what the British Empire had in the Royal Navy. This made him averse to Caprivi’s and Tirpitz’s ideas about smaller ships because while it might be the best option from the perspective of making a navy that could defend itself, those small ships could not do what the Kaiser wanted his navy to be able to do. Oddly enough he would also provide some resistance to Tirpitz’s later ideas on creating a large battleship heavy battle fleet after 1900. Instead the Kaiser often wanted to focus most of Germany’s construction capacity on cruisers, which were at the time essential to controlling a world empire due to the challenges posed by coal. Coal, and the difficulties of coaling at sea, made range incredibly important when it came to cruising around the world. Cruisers, designed specifically for their large cruising radius, were the perfect ships for the task. While his views would change several times over the 26 years before the First World War Wilhelm would constantly come back to wanting cruisers, a desire that would at times greatly annoy Tirpitz and the other naval leaders. In general their frustrations were mostly targeted at the fact that the Kaiser believed that he knew quite a bit about naval affairs, more than enough to believe that is own opinions were correct. This would be a problem for the naval leaders from time to time, but the German Navy, as it was constructed by Tirpitz and the admirals could not have happened without the support of the Kaiser, and while they at times disagreed on the exact types of expansion, Wilhelm would almost always support the expansion of his forces at sea.

That would be the situation when Tirpitz became the State Secretary of the Imperial Naval Office. It was a fancy title that meant that he was in charge of the German Navy, or at least he would be after a bit of political maneuvering. To take up the position he was recalled from his position as a member of the German Far East Squadron based in China. He would take up his position in June 1897 and with his arrival everything about the German and European naval landscape was about to change. Almost as soon as he took the position Tirpitz began to push for changes not just in the details but also in the very reason for the Imperial German Navy’s existence. However, he was also very cautious about making some changes, and ensuring that a poor choice did not send the German Navy down a lengthy period of mistakes, later writing “There is nothing I have been so careful to avoid in organizing as taking a fundamentally false step. For, once a wrong course is taken, it is difficult to discover the original mistake; only the symptoms are evident, and precedent and interests are soon established on the mistake.” Before Tirpitz took control of the German Navy it had been primarily intended as a defensive force to ward off the possible aggression of Russia and France. Tirpitz wanted to transform it into an offensive force, even if that meant adding the Royal Navy to the list of possible enemies. Tirpitz was always quite careful, at least until the years immediately before the war, to claim that the Royal Navy was not the primary target of the German Navy. He felt this was essential because the concept of challenging the Royal Navy would have been met with ridicule during the last years of the 1800s, as he would later describe “The plan of a German battle fleet was evolved without any idea of a war with England. It would have seemed perfectly crazy both politically and strategically to have waived the possibility of a later attack upon England. Before 1896—that is, under Caprivi —the popular idea was, as I said, to regard England as the naval complement of the Triple Alliance against France and Russia.”

Tirpitz’s general views on what he believed the mission of the German Navy should be were well known at the time, and Tirpitz did not surprise anybody when he announced them. For over a decade Tirpitz had been advocating for a German Navy that was greatly increased in size and one that was focused on one thing, mounting a strategic offensive. He would advocate for this not just as a way to win a war, if it should come, but also because he believed that it was essential if Germany wanted to achieve its economic and political goals even in times of peace. He would later write in his memoirs of his views on the expansion of the German Navy that “Two lines of thought were emerging at that time: the tactical necessity for a battle fleet, if we were striving for sea-power and wanted to build ships to some purpose; and the political necessity of establishing a protecting navy for Germany’s maritime interests which were growing at such an irresistible pace. The navy never seemed to me to be an end in itself, but always a function of these maritime interests.” A large portion of these maritime interests would be economic and colonial, again a direct quote from Tirpitz “If we intend to go out into the world and strengthen ourselves commercially by means of the sea, then if we do not provide ourselves simultaneously with a certain measure of sea power, we shall be erecting a perfectly hollow structure. When we go out into the world we shall run against interests everywhere that are either already established or to be developed in the future. How then does the most skillful policy think to attain anything without a real world power which corresponds to the many-sidedness of world policy.” One of the fears that Tirpitz would give voice to at this time, and it was one that was shared by some leading Germans, was the fear that Germany was already too late to the colonial game, and they would be forever trapped as a continental power, writing in his memoirs that “The question was whether we were not too late for the partition of the world, which was then almost complete; whether indeed that expansion to which we owed our place among the Great Powers was not artificially and permanently untenable; whether this swift rise would not be followed by a terrible downfall.” Along with this desire to create sea power came a desire for a very specific type of fleet, not one for defensive purposes were torpedoes and smaller vessels may have been best, nor one focused on the colonies where cruisers were the best ships for the job. Instead Tirpitz wanted to build a battle fleet, made up of the strongest possible ships, battleships. It was only these types of ships that would be able to take the fight to Germany’s enemies. There was just one problem, there was a navy that already had battleships, a lot of battleships, and they were just across the North Sea. The dominance of the Royal Navy ini all things related to maritive power meant that Tirpitz had to have an explanation for how the Imperial German Navy related to the Royal Navy and he would come up with one that he called the Risk Theory.

To understand Tirpitz’s justification and reasoning for building up the German navy we have to talk about Risk Theory. The reality of the situation in the early 20th century was that no power could possible challenge the Royal Navy, at least in the short term, nobody could build ships fast enough. at the same time no nation could be totally secure in the maintenance of an overseas empire without at least reasonably good relations with the British, they simply controlled the seas and could close off any nation in the world in they wanted to. Tirpitz knew this, and he accepted it. He did believe that the Imperial Fleet had one major advantage over the Royal Navy. They were stretched out all over the world and for this reason Tirpitz believed that if the German fleet was built up it could defeat the British forces in the North Sea, and even if this was impossible, then it could be made strong enough to greatly damage the Royal Navy in a colossal battle that everybody planned on fighting in a war. This damage would be too great of a risk for the Royal Navy, a Navy with an entire world’s worth of commitments and responsibilities. Therefore, this risk, of a pyrrhic victory over the German fleet would mean that the British could not properly challenge the German Fleet. This would allow the Germans to in some way nudge British policy, and it would also make Germany a far more likely ally of the British Empire against continental powers since the British would want its naval power on their side instead of against them. Tirpitz would provide this explanation for his Risk Theory “In order to protect under the existing circumstances Germany’s world trade and colonies, there is only one means: Germany must possess a fleet so strong that a war, even for the strongest seapower, would contain so much danger that through such a war its own existence would be put into question. For this purpose it is not unconditionally necessary that the German battlefleet be as strong as that of the greatest seapower. Such a great seapower will in general not be in a position to concentrate its whole striking power against us. But even if it should succeed in meeting us with great superiority, the defeat of a strong German fleet would still so greatly weaken the opponent that in spite of the victory it achieved, then its own power position would no longer be succored by a sufficient fleet.”

One of the problems with the theory, or at least one of its known short comings was that it was unlikely that the construction of a German fleet would not cause a reaction from the British. This reaction could come in many forms, but the most disastrous for the Germans would be a pre-emptive strike by the Royal Navy. This could come in the form of a military strike with the goal of sinking the German ships or just a blockade of German ports to discourage further construction. Either case would likely end in disaster, and so Tirpitz believed that good relations with the British was essential during the period that he called the Danger Zone. Tirpitz would write of this subject that “I viewed with anxiety the rash provocations in which German public opinion was indulging against England at that time.” The Danger Zone would be a period of years, lasting 5 or more, where the nascent construction program would not present a real challenge to the British militarily but the very fact that it existed would be a political challenge. It would also be at a point where the German Navy did not have enough ships to really protect itself from British aggression. There was really no good way around this problem, German shipyards could only build ships so quickly, and the British had a massive superiority at the start. What should have been foreseen, but was not properly accounted for, was that instead of launching military actions, the British simply increased their shipbuilding tempo. This caused the endpoint of the Danger Zone to continue to wander into the future, eventually disappearing entirely.

This is just one example of how the Risk Theory was very dependent on the diplomatic situation between the British Empire and German Empire. It was also dependent on the British diplomatic relations with other nations. At the turn of the century three of the largest navies in the world were the British, French, and Russians. At the time relations between the British and the other countries was not very cordial. The French were still seen as the traditional enemies of the Empire and the Russians were constantly at odds with the British in Asia. Because of this it seemed unlikely, from the German point of view, that the relations between these nations would change in the short term. This fact was built into the assumption about the Risk Theory because, due to Britain’s widespread empire, it had to maintain large naval forces all over the world to protect them. Gibraltar, Malta, the Indian Ocean, and the Western Pacific all required strong naval forces, and there were many smaller ones in between. This was necessary due to the risk of war with France, Russia, and other nations, or their colonies. This spread out the strength of the Royal Navy and reduced the number of ships that the Germans needed to have to challenge what was left in the North Sea. Another major feature of the Risk Theory which would not turn out to be a factor in the First World War was the idea that the Royal Navy would still need to be strong enough to face the possibility of another third power that might take advantage of a naval war between Britain and Germany. If this third power existed it would force the Royal Navy to spread its strength out to meet them. This of course would not work if Britain was allied with most of the other naval powers of the world at the time of the war, like say France, Italy, and Japan, and then be on very good relations with the United States. That would be the exact scenario that would be encountered during the First World War.

As I have already alluded to there were some problems with the Risk Theory, some of which were only fully obvious in hindsight. The first problem was that it relied heavily on the diplomatic situation which forced the Royal Navy to spread their strength out all over the globe. If the diplomatic situation changed and relations between France and Britain improved or if alliances were made between the British and some other countries like the Japanese or if a new leader of the Royal Navy simply put more focus on maintaining a large home fleet many of the calculations of Risk Theory would go out the window. As it would happen, all three of the previous problems would actually occur, two out of the three of them in direct response to the German building program. That was really the core problem of the Risk Theory as it applied to the Naval situation in the North Sea in the early 20th century, it only worked under the assumption that the British either could not or would not appropriately respond. As would be made incredibly clear in the years that followed the British both could, and were very willing to, rise to the challenge presented by the German Navy construction program, kicking off a Naval Arms Race. Next episode we will dig into the specifics about the German expansion programs that were put in place in the late years of the 19th century and the early years of the 20th.