10: The Approach of War

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In which we discuss how the British and Germans approached the war, arms limitation treaties, and the growing budget crises of 1913.

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Transcript

Hello everyone and welcome to History of the Great War Revisited Episode 10 - The Anglo-German Naval Arms Race Part 10 - The Approach of War. This episode will be focused on the events of the last few years before the start of the war in 1914. I think the important thing to remember with this episode is that nobody knew that a war would start in August 1914, and this meant that they were making plans in 1914 for 1915 and beyond. This puts the naval estimates on both sides in an interesting light because it provides some information about what was being planned, but which would never happen. The final pre-war estimates for the British were for the 1914/1915 fiscal year and even though they would be quickly derailed, they would still have important ramifications on the Royal Navy when the war started. This episode will also contain a discussion of a variety of different topics, something of a cleanup for other topics that have not yet been covered, this includes the British position and planning for the Mediterranean, the agreements that were made between the British and French for how they would combine their strength in times of war, the discussions around a possible Capital ship building holiday which had supporters on both sides of the North Sea, and then finally German planning for the war. They had spent a decade pouring an enormous amount of money into the German navy to prepare them for a war with the Royal Navy, and now that the war was going to start we need to look at what all of that money had bought them both from a ship perspective and in their strategic position, and then what they planned to do with their shiny ships.

We will start today by discussing a topic that has been on the fringes of all of these Naval Arms Race episodes but that we have not really focused on, the Mediterranean. The problem of what to do about the Mediterranean would vex the British government in the years leading up to both world wars. There was no denying that the sea was a critical link in the British Imperial chain, providing a highway between Europe, Egypt, India, and the Pacific, but with the increasing size of rival navies it was becoming more and more challenging to project enough strength into the theatre to secure it. There simply were not enough ships to go around, and the continued rise in German naval power made things worse year after year. In 1913 it was learned that the Italians were building 4 new capital ships, and this would mean that by the end of 1915 there would be 14 dreadnoughts between the Italian and Austro-Hungarian navies. Both Italy and Austria-Hungary were allied with Germany and therefore the only assumption that could be made was that if Britain found itself at war with Germany it would also be at war with Italy and Austria-Hungary. The new construction just made a deteriorating situation worse, because even before they learned about this new construction the Royal navy already felt that it was stretched quite thin. In May 1912 Churchill would write to Lord Haldane and say “We cannot possibly hold the Mediterranean or guarantee any of our interests there until we have obtained a decision in the North Sea.… It would be very foolish to lose England in safeguarding Egypt. If we win the big battle in the decisive theatre, we can put everything else straight afterwards. If we lose it, there will not be any afterwards.” This was precisely the problem that Tirpitz had been counting on when he first started building the German fleet, the British had obligations all over the world including in the Mediterranean, but they were not compelled to keep a large homefleet to guard against German aggression. With Germany projecting to have around 25 dreadnoughts in 1913 the Royal Navy felt obliged to keep almost all of its own, 41, in Home waters to provide the Home Fleet with a comfortable numeric superiority. Given these needs the Admiralty would tell the government that in the event of war with Germany and either Italy or Austria-Hungary the Navy may not be able to guarantee the safety of British ships in the Mediterranean. It proposed three options, work more closely with the French, begin an even larger naval construction program, or do nothing and hope things worked out.

This problem, and the anxiety over finding a solution would lead to a meeting between Asquith, Churchill, Kitchener and various advisers at Malta, which was the base of the Royal Navy in the Mediterranean. Their goal was to determine what the Navy’s plan should be in the theater and how it could be balanced against concerns both at home and around the world. After several days of discussions they came to an agreement that there would only need to be a few battlecruisers permanently stationed in the Mediterranean. This would provide enough strength to make it clear that the British were serious, and to respond to any immediately threat, but the battlecruisers would have to be reinforced if there was a conflict with the other nations. However, no permanent decision was made until the Committee of Imperial Defense evaluated the subject. The conclusion of the committee was “There must always be provided a reasonable margin of superior strength ready and available in Home waters. This is the first requirement. Subject to this we ought to maintain, available for Mediterranean purposes and based on a Malta port, a battle fleet equal to a one-power Mediterranean standard, excluding France.” This meant that the Navy would have to maintain a set of battleships in the Mediterranean. The idea of keeping just a fleet large enough to meet Italian or Austro-Hungarian navies, but not both navies combined, was based on the fact that the relations with both countries were quite good, and the two countries were far more antagonistic toward each other than toward Britain, even if they were technically allies.

More importantly than decisions made in London were the conversations that would occur between France and Britain in the years after the signing of the Entente Cordiale. The French had six pre-dreadnought ships that they kept at Brest as part of the French Atlantic Fleet. These would theoretically guard the French Atlantic and Channel coasts, but they were completely outclassed by the ships of the German High Seas Fleet. This resulted in the French announcing, in September 1912, that those ships would be moved to the Mediterranean. This opened up the French coasts in the north to an attack but it was seen as unavoidable. The French thinking ran like this: they did not have a large enough navy to be strong everywhere, they simply did not have that much money to spend on a navy given the more important risk from the German Army. Because of this it would be better to be strong somewhere, and strong where their ships could do the most good which they felt was in the Mediterranean. This was because of the importance placed on the links between Metropolitan France and the French imperial possessions in Africa, from which the French military planned to pull manpower in case of a war with Germany. By moving the ships to the Mediterranean, they were trusting the British that they would be able and willing to protect them from the German fleet. This was still a bit of a gamble because the British government was quite adamant that a formal agreement had not and would not be made with the French. This refusal to admit that any discussions with France represented “an engagement that commits either Government to action in a contingency that has not arisen and may never arise” would continue throughout the prewar years. During this same period the British and French Naval officials would meet and discuss joint strategy in the case of a conflict in which both were involved. This included strategic discussions about the positioning of the ships and also very detailed discussions like the creation of a joint signals book. Both navies saw these talks as very productive, with the Royal Navy hoping that it would make it easier to intervene in a continental conflict both quickly and efficiently. The French Navy was happy to do anything that would tie the Royal Navy closer to France. These meetings and the resulting discussions created a kind of charade where the British government continued to insist that there was no actual agreement with France, when in fact very strong informal links and agreements had been created that would play an important role in the decisions of the British leaders in 1914.

1913 would be an important year for the overall course of the Naval Arms Race, because it would be the year when there were serious discussions about a joint agreement between the British and German governments that would limit the construction of capital ships in the years that followed. On the British side there had been the hope that the construction tempo that had been displayed in the years between 1906 and 1912 would make the Germans more open to some kind of limitation. When Churchill because First Lord of the Admiralty he would propose that the the British government publicly declare that they would build enough ships to maintain a specific superiority over the Germans. He believed that the Royal Navy should aim for a 60% superiority in numbers, and that the British should publicly declare they would build 2 capital ships for every additional ship that Germany built over their currently announced plans. According to Churchill “Nothing, in my opinion, would more surely dishearten Germany, then the certain proof that as a result of all her present and prospective efforts she will only be more hopelessly behindhand.” This plan would be put in place when the concept was introduced in a speech to the British House of Commons. This type of plan had an obvious upside, as it very clearly stated to Tirpitz and the German leaders that no matter how many ships they built they would always be at a disadvantage. The downside was that the Germans could test the resolve of the British, adding a large number of new construction to see if the British were serious. Churchill’s idea would not become public policy, at least until after there were discussions with the Germans, which would be done by then Foreign Secretary Viscount Haldane.

The discussions between the two governments revolved around two different ideas, an officially accepted ratio or even a more radical building holiday. Both of these were a challenge because the German leaders did not feel they would get a fair deal when the British were negotiating from their position of strength. The idea of a building holiday is an interesting one, and it was actually put forward by Churchill, and the details were simple: both nations would simply agree to not begin construction on any new ships, beyond what was already under construction, for a set number of years. It is probably important to say that Churchill does not seem to have believed that this type of agreement was a real possibility, and instead was trying to gain some domestic political points. Such a drastic reduction in naval spending was always going to find supporters among some groups in British politics as there were always those that believed too much was being spent on armaments. The Germans, when presented with the idea, did not immediately reject it and instead simply made their agreement conditional on the agreements of France and Russia. Both of those nations would never agree to such a plan, for the French this was due to the fear that it would simply give the Germans more money to spend on their army. For the Russians, well they were still trying to rebuild their navy after the absolute disaster of the Russo-Japanese War. With a building holiday unworkable, the only real possibility was some kind of an agreement about force ratios. As with every negotiation that involved some kind of accepted force ratio, it was difficult to find a number that was agreeable to both side, with the British wanting a higher ratio and the Germans, of course, wanting a lower one. The number that received the most discussion was a 16-10 number, which was one that was put forth by Tirpitz and the Germans under the belief that such a disadvantage was acceptable and still allowed Tirpitz’s Risk Theory to be executed on. Tirpitz and the German Navy settled on the 16-10 capital ship ratio. This was more than the British wanted, but it was the least that the Germans were willing to accept. This ratio was publicly announced in February 1913 in statements made by Tirpitz before the Reichstag, which was an important step since before this point the acceptance of any inferior ratio for the fleet was not public policy. The Kaiser began advocating for a new novelle, but Tirpitz was strongly opposed, partially due to the views of the political leaders, with both Bethmann-Hollweg and the Reichstag in general firmly against increased naval spending. The Kaiser wanted to add a third dreadnought to the building pgoram for the next year, and a few light cruisers, but even these modest increases did not have Tirpitz’s support. There was a firm recognition that any German increases would just give the British an excuse to increase their building program. This was a huge capitulation on the German part, a firm recognition that their attempts to push the British further than they could go in terms of naval spending had failed. The announcement of the 16-10 ratio, while counter to British wishes, did not illicit too much anger from the British, for example Foreign Minister Grey would say ‘what Tirpitz said does not amount to much, and the reason for his saying it is not the love of our beautiful eyes, but the extra fifty millions required for increasing the German Army.’ The eventual 1913 estimates for the Royal Navy were released about a month later and involved 5 dreadnoughts, 8 cruisers, and 16 destroyers with a total cost of 48 million, 1.2 million more than the previous year.

After the 1913 estimates passed through parliament resistance to further increases began to grow. This was mostly due to the growing information about the possible plans for the 1914 estimates which began to trickle out in the closing months of the year. By the end of November, as the estimates were being formulated, a growing number of more radical MPs were pushing for a drastic reduction in what they considered wasteful naval spending. It should be clear that there was never widespread support for such a drastic reduction in naval spending during this period, and so this the eventual campaign within the commons was to put pressure on the Navy to keep spending roughly the same as the previous year with few increases. This resulted in some suggesting that 2 dreadnoughts would be a better number to build in 1914, instead of the 6 or 7 that were at the top end of the suggestions. This range of building programs, and the associated range in the cost of the two programs, would prompt many discussions between the Admiralty and the Treasury during the period in which the 1914 estimates were being formulated. These discussions would end up souring the relationship between Churchill and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lloyd George. Which Churchill presented the estimates to the cabinet on December 15 they were 3 million more than the previous year and breached 50 million for the first time. This also meant that the estimates had grown 8 million since Churchill had arrived at the Admiralty, a position he was given to keep costs under control. Churchill, of course, had elaborately detailed information about each piece of the estimate, which would result in lengthy discussions in the Cabinet after the estimates had been presented.

With the growing resistance to further increases in naval spending coming from the Commons there was much more time spent on discussions of the estimates than in the previous years. For three days these discussions would continue in the cabinet, with Churchill attempting to justify his requested increases. He did this by pointing out that due to the ever increasing German Navy, and also the greater number of ships that the Germans were keeping in full commission the British had to do the same. This meant more sailors at full pay and more ships ready to go at any moment. There was also a technological piece of the increase, which meant that not only were new ships more expensive, but money was also being spent on new technologies like aircraft and wireless systems. None of these arguments were convincing enough for the cabinet to allow the estimates to pass through. The final outcome of the meetings in December was to request that Churchill find a way to reduce them. After the holiday break the real focus of renewed discussions became the costs of the new construction that was contained within the estimates. The plan was for 4 additional dreadnoughts to be built, and these were much discussed since they represented an area that could be cut, and quite easily, which would have both the most drastic effect on total estimates and the least effect on naval readiness in the short term. The arguments eventually came down to Churchill on one side and Lloyd George on the other, but Churchill was greatly assisted in his arguments by two facts. The first was that he was very prepared, with very detailed information about exactly what money was being used for and why, which allowed for easy retreated into hard numbers during arguments. The second, and perhaps more important, was that the Navy still had widespread support among the people, and if push came to shove and Churchill threatened to resign things would be very problematic because he could claim that he resigned on the principle of making sure the navy could defend the country. After the discussions in January the tables actually turned and it was Lloyd Georges turn to threaten a resignation. This stand off would continue for all of January and it would not be until Feburary that an agreement would finally be reached. The eventual final figure for the 1914 estimates was just a bit under 52 million. Lloyd George was able to extract three concessions from Churchill and the Navy. The First was that three light cruisers and 12 torpedo boats would be cut from the construction list in the coming year. The second was a pledge from Churchill that there would be a reduction in the following year’s estimates, which would not end up happening due to the war. The final concession was that the Summer Maneuvers, which were very costly, were replaced with a test mobilization of the reserves which was a bit cheaper. This test mobilization would be very important to the status of the Navy when the war began. On February 11th the estimates were agreed to by the cabinet. This would be the last prewar estimates, with later planning being done in wartime and under a very different set of constraints.

We turn now one more time to the German navy. When the German naval building plan had really kicked into high gear they were building based on some assumptions about what the Royal Navy would do in a conflict. For example in 1906 the German navy believed that when a war started the British fleet would immediately move into German waters to try and force a battle. This caused decisions to be made about the ships that were built and their capabilities, here is future Admiral Scheer discussing these decisions: “the assumption that the English Fleet, which had kept ahead of ours in its construction at every stage, would seek battle in the German Bight in the North Sea, or would force its way to wherever it hoped to find the German Fleet. On that account we had attached particular importance to the greatest defensive and offensive powers, and considered we might regard speed and radius of action as secondary matters.” The Germans had to hope that the Royal navy executed this attack due to the completely unfavorable strategic position which they occupied. They were outnumbered, and due to their position they had little way of gaining good information about where the British battlefleet was, or where it was moving. In contrast the British would always known precisely where the German fleet was at the start of any operation because the coastline of the German north sea was very small and only had a few routes capable of supporting the large German ships. This limited the flexibility of the German navy and made it easy for the British to know the likely area of operation of the German fleet if it were to move out into the North sea. Technologically this would later make it easier for the British to put in place accurate range and direction finding equipment. The one hope for the German Navy was that the odds against it could be whittled away at by tactics like the usage of submarines, or just the attrition inflicted on the Royal Navy. Unfortunately the British would do everything in their power to prevent such attrition. The Germans also hoped before they war that they could work away at the British lead in ships and arrive at such a point where they could achieve at least a rough parity in the North Sea. It was then the intention of the Navy to launch an aggressive, all or nothing, fleet battle in the hopes that they could end victorious, and at the very least end in something close to mutual destruction. Unfortunately, even years before the war the British plans seemed to be trending towards a more distant blockade, with the Germans believing that after 1907 that was likely to be the British plan. This blockade would put the German fleet at a disadvantage, particularly if it was coupled with a more defensive and passive strategy from the British fleet, because it would force the Germans to be the offensive fleet. In 1910 and 1911 multiple wargames were run in which the German fleet tried to take an offensive approach against the Royal Navy with the goal of approaching the British coast and defeating pieces of the Royal Navy in detail. Unfortunately none of these were successful for the German side because in each case the British were able to concentrate their battle fleet before the Germans arrived.

These strategic limitations would prove very problematic for the Navy during the war, but it would also cause the German Navy to move into some political positions that were a challenge for the German political leaders. During the war there were many discussions about what the German War aims were, these were particularly important whenever possible peace talks were suggested by either side or by the Americans. The frustration of the German Navy at its situation during the war caused the navy to have some very large demands such as the retention of the Belgian coastal ports, the acquisition of the Danish Faroe Islands in the North Sea, the addition of various strategically placed African colonies, and several other demands. The reasoning for all of these demands from Tirpitz and the Head of the Naval Staff Holtzendorff was that they hoped to better their strategic position in the understanding that a future war against the Royal Navy was inevitable. The problem with those war aims is that they also made it clear that many of the German assumptions from from the earliest days of the naval arms race were completely incorrect. They believed that the British would make mistakes out of rashness, but instead the British chose the cautious approach of distant blockade. They believed that they would be able to force an engagement on roughly equal terms, but the inability of the German Navy to determine the position and strength of the enemy fleet always made the German admiral cautious. They believed that the worldwide commitments of the royal Navy would make it difficult for the Royal Navy to concentrate enough strength in the north sea, but the decision by Italy to avoid its obligations to Germany and instead to join in the war against them negated most of the demands of the Royal navy around the world. In many ways the plan for the German Navy was based on the hope that the British would commit several massive mistakes, which is something they simply would not do.

As war approached in the summer of 1914, in retrospect, the decision made in the cabinet earlier in the year to do a test mobilization of the Royal Navy would prove to be fortuitous. In October 1913 Churchill had suggested that a test mobilization might be done in the summer of 1914 instead of the usual summer maneuvers, both as a test of the mobilization process and also as a way to save some money. This would eventually be used in the negotiations with Lloyd George. After the estimates were signed most of the country forgot about the Anglo-German rivalry, and instead the British press had more important stories to cover with the Irish crisis reaching its pre-war height. Then in the middle of July the test mobilization began, with orders sent out on the 10th and mobilization to begin on the 15th. 8 Days later, the Third Fleet, fully mobilized got orders to begin to disperse, but it would only be several days later that the ships would begin leaving, and even then only the smaller ships would leave. Then on the 26th, with news of Serbia’s rejection of the Austrian ultimatum, Battenberg, then First Sea Lord, stopped the demobilization and on the 28th the Navy was placed on a ‘prepatory and precautionary basis.’ Admiral Jellicoe would describe the importance of the Navy’s quick reaction, and the effects of the test mobilization: “We were very fortunate in having the Fleet concentrated at the outbreak of war. People had often pictured war with Germany coming as a bolt from the blue, and even naval officers feared that when the occasion did arise, it would be found, as had previously been the case, the fear of precipitating a conflict might lead the Government to delay concentration with the result that our squadrons would be separated when war was actually declared. Fortunately, the Admiralty in the last days of July 1914, placed us at once in a strong strategic position.” It is almost humorous that after the mountains of money spent by the Royal Navy in the years before the war in preparation for conflict with Germany, it was a measure designed to save money that would put it in the best possible situation when the war finally began.

The history of the two fleet during the war is a subject beyond the scope of these podcast episodes, but it is worth taking a moment to discuss the ultimate fates of two of the primary characters in our story: Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz and Admiral of the Fleet Baron Jackie Fisher. Even though they were two of the leaders most responsible for the navies of their two nations at the start of the war, their participation in the war and their contribution would be limited. Tirpitz’s role at the German Naval Ministry was purely administrative, giving him incredible power during peace time when it came to shaping the German fleet but giving him almost no power during war time to direct or influence the course of the war at sea. Tirpitz would be a vocal advocate for the use of unrestricted submarine warfare during the conflict, even though his lack of support for U-boat construction before the war would hamper the efforts of the German submarines throughout the conflict. Eventually, after he had threatened multiple times to resign in protest of various decisions, his resignation was accepted in March 1916. He would then devote his time to politics, founding a short lived German conservative political party before sitting in the Reichstag for the National People’s Party during the 1920s. He would die in March 1930 after years of political irrelevance. Fisher would be called back to the Admiralty by Churchill at the start of the war, to retake his position as First Sea Lord. Churchill and Fisher had gotten along so well when Churchill had first come to the Admiralty, and when Fisher was still retired, when Fisher returned their relationship was rocky at best. After the failure of the Gallipoli campaign, which the two disagreed on from the start, Fisher would resign on May 15, 1915. In his resignation letter to Churchill he would write ‘I have come to the regretted conclusion I am unable to remain any longer as your colleague … As you truly said yesterday, I am in the position of continually vetoing your proposals. This is not fair to you besides being extremely distasteful to me. I am off to Scotland at once, so as to avoid all questionings.’ Fisher would later be placed as the Chairman on the Board of Inventions and Research, where a lot of research for what would eventually be called ASDIC and then Sonar would take place, but the position never filled his schedule. After the war ended he would best be known for writing letters to The Times in London criticizing the policies of the Royal Navy, with a particular focus on the amount of ships being maintained that he believed were now obsolete and should be replaced immediately by newer faster vessels. In October 1919 he would release the first volume of his autobiography which I will say is decent if not exceptional reading, and then on July 10, 1920 he would die after a lengthy battle with prostate cancer.

The Anglo-German Naval Arms race is one of those interesting historical events that had a tremendous impact, but not the one that the participants expected. For the Germans their quest for a world class navy amplified the antagonism between their nation and the British Empire, when they hoped that it would intimidate the leaders in London. Tirpitz and those around him believed that in building their navy Germany would be able to assert itself on the world stage, and take its place among the great world spanning empires, but it was merely a precursor to the destruction of the German empire. On the British side they saw the race as a political and economic challenge, the likes of which the Royal Navy had not experienced for generations. But in the end no matter how many ships the Royal Navy had, those ships could not defeat Germany by themselves, and it was only when France and Flanders were littered with the dead that Germany could be defeated. Looking back on it now, while the First World War would have been different had the Naval Arms Race not occurred, in many ways it would have been the same. If the Germans had not decided to build their capital ship fleet, the British would have been able to maintain their distant blockade, just like they did during the war. The Germans still would have been able to wage their U-boat commerce raiding campaign. It is very possible that the only real difference is that the Royal Navy would have spent the war with very little to do. But of course it did happen, and without it events like the Battle of Jutland never would have happened. Its legacy would continue past the war years as well. It was the memories of the naval arms race with Germany, and the way that it had pushed British naval spending beyond any previous value, that would be in the minds of British politicians when they attended the Washington Naval Conference. The Treaty that was signed, which put in place the building ratios for all of the world’s naval powers, and even mandated a building holiday for all capital ships, was a echo of the attempts of 1913 to put a halt to the ruinous spending on both sides of the North Sea. But while the Washington Naval Treaty, and the London treaty a decade later, could pause a naval arms race, it could not remove the desire of nations around the world to control the seas. Alfred Mahan’s The Influence of Sea Power Upon history had been one of the contributing factors to the Anglo-German Naval Arms race, and during the interwar years its influence would continue. When the naval treaties expired in 1937, the race would begin anew. However, instead of just two nations separated by the cold waters of the North Sea the second Naval Arms Race would become global, and it would once again end in war. The Germans would fail in their second attempt at building a world class navy, just as they had in their first attempt. The British would once again rise to the challenge, and begin a building spree in the last years of the 1930s to rival that of the heights of the arms race 30 years before. The ships were different, the threats to the Empire largely the same.

The results of that Second Naval Arms race would push naval spending to unheard of heights, and the fighting at sea would be much more deadly. Another chapter in the long history of men and nations attempting to gain dominance of the sea.