6: Escalation

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After the introduction of the Dreadnought, the Naval Arms race would truly begin. 10 Years of Podcasting Update: https://www.patreon.com/posts/10-years-of-107050529

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Hello everyone and welcome to History of the Great War Revisited Episode 6 - The Anglo-German Naval Arms Race - Escalation. On a bit of a programming note: last week was the 10th anniversary of the start of History of the Great War. Over the last 10 years I have released over 500 episodes and I just wanted to thank everybody who is listening, or has listened to one of those episodes. I would also like to send out special thanks to everyone who has ever been a member, left a review of the podcast online, or told anybody in their life about the podcast you all are the reason that so many new people are listening all the time. Of course 10 years is just a number, and there are still many more years ahead. You can head to the link in the show notes to find out more about the podcast in the next year, and the triumphant return of member only episodes over on the Patreon page for the podcast. These will be monthly episodes covering a wide range of topics outside of the narrative of the show. Currently there are two new member episodes, a deep dive into the development of the Panzer 3 tank and an entire episode where I reconsider some of my views on the French and German war plans of 1914 a decade after I first discussed them on History of the Great War. Again that link is in the show notes or you can find it over at patreon.com/historyofthegreatwar. Last episode discussed the design and creation of a new generation of naval capital ships. This new generation was headlined by the Dreadnought, a new British design that combined an all big gun armament with other technical innovations to create the most powerful warship afloat. Today we are going to look at the effects that the ship had on the construction programs of Germany and Britain. Such a change in naval technology would force a German response, and when combined with other German goals would result in an increased building tempo, then the British government felt forced to match this increase with an even bigger increase. A naval arms race was born. One of the major criticisms that would be levied against Fisher when he introduced the Dreadnought was that it presented a new problem for the British. They had plenty of pre-dreadnoughts, more than any nation could hope of building, but they were now all but obsolete, and so if the a foreign power started focusing on building dreadnoughts they could pose a challenge to the Royal Navy. Germany would do exactly this, and the period from 1906 to 1912 would see the naval arms race reach its height. During these frantic years of building there would be moments where it appeared that the Germans were almost within touching distance of the power of the Royal Navy, only for the British to race ahead through ever greater construction efforts. Today we are going to look at the two most important German novelles, or amendments to the Naval Laws, which were ratified in 1906 and 1908. Both of which greatly increased the pace at which the Germans were building ships, both cruisers and battleships. After we discuss these novelles we will then discuss the response in London, as the British came to realization that the threat to their naval supremacy from Germany was very real and the Germans were not just going to stop building. Over in Germany, they had always been working from a disadvantage when it came to capital ships, in 1903 the German fleet had a total of 39 battleships and armored cruisers, the British had 110. This was a daunting number to attempt to assail, but German naval leaders firmly believed that the British would be unable to continue that level of advantage due to manpower problems. Britain did not have conscription, and so manpower for the armed services was more limited than it was in Germany, and the belief was that they would at some point eventually run out of men. This would not happen, but it is a great example of what would drive both British and German decision making in the years after 1906. To put it simply: both sides believed that the other was reaching the end of its economic and industrial capabilities, and so if they themselves could just afford one more expansion plan it would not be something that the other nation could match. This would eventually happen, but only when naval construction in both nations had ballooned to be far in excess of what either could have imagined in 1906.

Before 1906, even before the precise specifications of the Dreadnought reached Berlin, there were already problems with the existing German building program. To put it simply, the ships were costing much more than what had been anticipated in the previous estimates in 1904. These cost overruns were occurring even though there was a serious effort by Tirpitz to keep costs under control. These efforts were often at odds with pressure from the Kaiser and the naval designers to create bigger, faster, and more heavily armed ships. This pressure built up year over year due the continued growth in size and capabilities of the British capital ships, along with other foreign designs. These larger designs seemed to point to the future and there were those within the German navy and politics that feared that German shipbuilding might fall behind after so much work had been done over the previous decade to build up German capabilities to be truly world class. In this arguments against the ever growing size of naval ships, Tirpitz would always justify his smaller and cheaper designs under the theory that the number of ships was more important than the strength of each individual ship. I don’t know that he ever used the term, but he was basing this view on the theory that smaller guns, if there were more of the, could fire enough shells to make up for their smaller size and would be more disruptive to an enemy’s attempts to answer. This debate, about gun calibre versus other considerations like fire rate would continue throughout the decades. Larger gun would become the priority in capital ship construction but in other ship classes the debate would continue until large guns stopped appearing on ships. For example it would be a key feature of the arguments around interwar cruiser design. Tirpitz’s entire building program was based on raw numbers, and so he often focused on the number of battleships even if the individual ships were forced to sacrifice size, armor, speed, and caliber of the guns. These decisions were made in a pre-dreadnought world though, and so this type of thinking was not totally unorthodox. At this point the battleships of all navies had fewer big guns, and a larger number of secondary and tertiary guns which were designed under the theory that a bunch of smaller guns were just as powerful as a smaller number of larger guns. It also made the exact math on size versus number versus rate of fire a bit more tricky. For example if another nation was building pre-dreadnoughts with 12 inch, 6 inch and 4 inch guns, how did that balance up to a design with 10 inch, 8 inch and 4 inch? The largest guns were smaller, but the second largest guns were bigger.

The continued resistance from Tirpitz around capital ship design and cost meant that the 1906 Novelle, relative to the one that came before and the one that would follow, was quite small. The only new ships that would be added to the construction list were six additional cruisers which were justified by the increased need for Germany to reach her colonies. These were large armored cruisers and they would be the last of the pre-battlecruisers built by Germany. There would also be an adjustment to the cost of capital ships, because even if Tirpitz would not allow the navy to chase the largest designs ships were still getting more expensive as designs were enhanced and improved, the 1906 novelle increased the estimated cost of all ships to try and keep up with new designs. This would add another 900 million marks to the total estimate of the building plan that had been initially created in 1900. There was always concern among Tirpitz and other naval leaders that when they asked for more money, and 900 million marks was a lot of money, that the Reichstag would reject them, but in the case of the 1906 Novelle the German Navy would be greatly assisted by a string of world events. The Moroccan Crisis of 1906 gave additional impetus for the German navy to expand, and when the Novelle came up for a vote in May it would pass with a large majority with very little debate. However, even before the vote occurred in the Reichstag, Tirpitz was already looking forward, to the next Novelle.

The driving force behind the initial planning for the next Novelle, which did not have a specific timeframe in mind, was the desire to shorten the lifespan of the previously built ships. This would change the expected lifespan from 25 years to 20 years, which was seen as important due to the speed at which naval technology was advancing. However, a shorter lifespan did not change the desired size of the fleet, and so if ships were going to age out faster, construction plans would have to change immediately. In the original naval law of 1900 plan was to change from a 3 tempo, that is 3 ships capital ships being laid down each year, to a two tempo starting after 1906. In the original plan this would have allowed the German Navy to reach its maximum size before ships started aging out and needed to be replaced. However, the three tempo that was in place in 1906 would have to be extended if the Navy wanted to reach the number of ships before it had to start replacing them after a 20 year lifespan. There were also discussions of increasing to a four tempo at least for a few years. The new novelle would also, as always, adjust the individual ship cost upwards, because even before the 1906 Novelle was signed it was clear that the numbers within it were once again simply too small. With planning for the next changes, the question once again became when to introduce it into the Reichstag. Tirpitz felt that early 1907 was too soon, but early 1908 was probably going to be the end of the Reichstag term, which made for political volatility. This meant that Tirpitz was targeting either 1909 or 1910 for the next set of changes. This novelle would go through an almost total rewrite after exact information was received about the Dreadnought and the Invincible. Information about the new class of British ships forced a slight redesign of the next set of German capital ships, but there were still some constraints placed on German ship design that were largely outside of Tirpitz’s immediate control. The most important of these was the size of the Kiel Canal and the locks at Wihelmshaven for the canal. This restricted the maximum size of German ships to 16,000 tons and a beam, or width, of 23.2 meters. These numbers could be increased, but only by making large investments into widening the canal and associated facilities. Tirpitz was hesitant to make this kind of demand because he did not want the massive costs of such an infrastructure project held against the navy. The ability to move through the Kiel Canal was so important because the German Navy felt it had to maintain strength in both the Baltic and North Seas, and the canal allowed German ships to move between the two at will. If they were too large for the canal they would then have to sail around Denmark, adding not just travel time, but in wartime these narrow waterways could be blocked by the enemy. The problem of the Kiel canal would eventually be solved by the Kaiser and the German government in 1905 when they decided to widen and deepen the canal, but they did not use naval ship design as their justification. Instead, they would cover the outlay of funds with the justification that it would increase the volume of commercial shipping. This was true, they were not lying to cover for Tirpitz and the navy, but it did have the side effect of allowing capital ship designs to jump to 18,000 tons, although it would take some time before ships of that size entered the fleet and the canal work was completed.

In regards to the 1906 Novelle, due to its construction plan focused on cruisers, the information that arrived about the Invincible was the most important. At the time of its creation the Invincible was the first in the line of what would come to be known as battlecruisers, but it was just treated like a cruiser at the time. It was therefore also compared to German cruisers that were built at the same time, and in this comparison the German ships did not perform very well. The most obvious difference was the guns, with the Invincible mounting 8 12 inch or 30.5cm, guns. In comparison the Blucher, built at roughly the same time has 12 guns, but they were only 8in or 21cm. This was a drastic difference, and that is before you consider the fact that the Invincible was also larger and faster than the Blucher. If the German Navy only had cruisers like Blucher then they would be at a serious disadvantage, but to match the new British ships meant a very, very, large increase in cost. Tirpitz had already accepted plans for a German Dreadnought with 10in, 28cm guns, and the plan was to up this to 30.5cm in 1908 but to do so the cost had to drastically increase. Increasing the size of the guns meant increasing other dimensions as well, with the total result being a ship with a displacement that was 20% larger. It would also cost 25% more, going from 33 million to 44 million marks. To mount similar guns on a cruiser, even allowing for less armor, would cost a similar amount. This was a difficult pill to swallow for the German navy that was already constantly running up against cost overruns, and with a budget that had just months before passed through the Reichstag. A similar problem was happening in the Royal navy as well, battlecruisers were not proving to be any cheaper than the dreadnoughts that they would work alongside, and that would cause problems that we will discuss shortly.

Even though some of the changes made in reaction to the Dreadnought had made it into ships before 1908, it would only be in that year that the real alterations to German Navy Strategy would be made. It was also in 1908 that the true naval arms race, and not just Germany trying to catch up, began. It would start with the new desins for ships. For the purposes of this podcast these ships are important because it would be the ships that came out of the 1908 designs that would form the core of the German fleet during WW1, and many of the ships built during this time would be familiar to anyone who listened to the Jutland episodes. If Tirpitz, Capelle, and the Kaiser wanted to match the British in terms of ship design, it was going to cost a lot of money. The British were already beginning to transition to 13.5 inch, 34.3cm guns while the Germans were still using 28cm guns. The designs submitted by the Navy’s designers contained larger guns, and larger costs. There were some concessions that had to be made on the 1908 ships due to costs, specifically by leaving turbine engines out of the 1908 battleships, which helped a little in terms of cost, but not much. Each battleship would cost 11.5 million more than its predecessor, up to that 44 million mark number. Cruiser costs increased 16.5 million per ship. These cost increases were simply unavoidable if the German Navy wanted to try and match the Royal Navy. Tirpitz accepted this, and had new designs and detailed costs prepared for the Reichstag for another increase in the naval budget. The key to the whole plan, at least from the beginning of planning for the 1908 Novelle, was that the next set of changes would not contain any changes to the tempo or total number of ships to be built. This was considered important due to the concerns about both international and internal outcry if it was seen that the Germans were being more aggressive with their building. It was a bit easier to explain away just increasing the cost of the ships. However, during the planning stages for the 1908 Novelle, the discussions about increasing to a four tempo, both in the Navy and the government began to increase. In between 1906 and 1908 there had been some important changes in German national politics, to the benefit of the Navy, with the Social Democrats losing a large number of seats in the election. This then impacted the Catholic Centre party, which had been working with the Social Democrats. As a bid to build up more support the Centre would double down on the fact that they were already known for their support for the Navy, they basically were the naval party, and proposed a larger budget or even larger ships for 1908, raising the displacement up to 20,000 tons and an additional 40 million reichsmarks for construction.

Tirpitz’s initial rejection of an increased tempo, especially when it was first suggested in 1906, was due to his ever present fear of a preventative strike by the Royal navy. This was sort of a bogey man that oftne seemed to influence Tirpitz’s actions although there was no evidence that such an actions was ever planned by the Royal Navy. At some point in late 1907 this changed though, and he would begin to advocate for its inclusion in the 1908 Naval Novelle. The primary reason for the tempo acceleration in the 1908 Novelle was to accelerate the rapid replacement of some of the aging ships of the German fleet. In the original draft this was done over just two years, with an extra 2 ships laid down in 1908 and then an unheard of 6 extra ships laid down in 1909. This burst of building, on top of the other ships that were already planned, would have represented a major escalation of the naval arms race. This would instead to changed so that the building of additional ships was spread out over multiple years, with a four tempo for four years. This four tempo, that is 3 battleships and one battlecruiser per year for four years, was justified as a way to keep up with the British and to prevent any preventative strike by the Royal Navy. Tirpitz would also justify it with the idea that the German Navy could match the Royal Navy in these new types of ships, and if they fell behind than they would almost certainly never catch back up. He would say “it would have been irresponsible if the naval administration did not seize upon these favorable circumstances and offer to introduce a proposal which, without departing from our old goals, would realize them faster.” The one thing that Tirpitz did not properly predict, was the British response. Intrinsic to the idea that increasing to a four tempo would allow the Germans to catch up and then keep up with the Royal navy was the accompanying idea that the British could not match or exceed that tempo. In this Tirpitz greatly underestimated both the financial resources, and the political resolve, of the British government. When the four tempo was introduced to the German public it was received very positively. The majority of the political leaders approved it, although of course some rejected it, and others wanted more. The only remaining task was to send the Novelle, with the massive ship cost increases and the four tempo, through the Reichstag, which was mostly a formality given its popularity.

Even before the law was put in place, Tirpitz was already putting the 4 tempo into action. Orders were placed with the ship builders six months before they usually were. Krupp began making additional orders of nickel, a critical component in the creation of armor plate. News of these actions were destined to reach London, and in fact the British would learn of it from a German newspaper, which reported the new orders on October 1908. 1908 would obviously not be the end, and very soon after the passage of the 1908 Novelle, as always, discussions began about the next one. This one would target the drop in tempo from 4 o 2 ships that was planned for 1911. During all of this time it is important ot note that there were very few questions placed upon Tirpitz by the political leaders of the country. There was kind of this general belief that he was the naval expert, and he knew what he was doing. The fact that he was continuing to ask for more and more money, and larger and larger fleets, without the previous ships solving any of the problems that he was claiming that they solved, did not really come up. It would only be later that politics and economics would begin to really push back against Tirpitz’s building plans. But that would only be after several more years of frantic building while trying to keep up with the pace set by the British. In London the concerns about the growing German fleet were growing. They learned about the increased tempo from that same German newspaper article and discussions began in London about what to do. For the first time in several generations there was a serious threat to the Royal Navy’s supremacy of the seas, and when it was clear that the Germans were not just going to stop their construction the question became, what should the response be?

In 1905 the Royal navy was operating on a two power standard, that meant that they maintained more ships than the next two more powerful navies in the world combined. During the previous decades this had been the Russian and French fleets. There was also some margin, of about 10%, built in above these two, due to concerns that a war with both of the navies might leave the Royal Navy too weakened to defend the empire. During the pre-dreadnought period this policy was expensive, but for the most part manageable due to the long service life of the ships and the large numerical advantage that the British had built up during the Victorian period. However, even before the introduction of the Dreadnought there were concerns about the amount of money being spent on the navy, and those concerns were being voiced more publicly every year. To combat these concerns, beyond just the simple argument that the Empire needed a large navy to ensure its military survival, advocates for a large navy pointed to other benefits. For example, the shipbuilders who actually created the ships, and the entire supply chain system for those shipbuilders, created a lot of jobs. Thousands of workers were employed in the industry. The shipbuilding companies were also not really seen as ripping off the government, as there was always a tremendous amount of pressure to cut construction costs, especially as the overall cost of the ships increased. There were also efforts to find additional sources of revenue for the Royal Navy, one of these being from the dominions. The idea was that since the Royal navy was built in part to protect the Empire and and the dominions, it seemed only reasonable to have the dominions foot some of the bill. There would be an increase in 1902 in terms of money sent from these areas to help fun the Royal Navy, and they more than doubled their contributions to 328,000 pounds. However, after this date the desire to get financial help from overseas clashed with the plans for the Royal Navy that saw more of its power focused in home waters.

All of these conversations and concerns were occurring in the pre-dreadnought period, after the Dreadnoughts introduction the budget of the Royal Navy would explode, and between 1907 and 1914 it would increase by 70%. This was even with efforts by some political leaders to keep costs under control. The Dreadnought made the entire situation a bit more confusing for the British planners. To understand why it is important to remember that while ships were being started at a certain rate each each, the three and four tempo I keep talking about, each ship took several years to complete. This meant that a ship that began construction in 1905 may not have been completed until 1907 or 1908. During the first two years after the Dreadnought, that is after it was finished but before the German 1908 Novelle, the Royal Navy was in a strong position, but due to construction times also one that was politically delicate. The Navy, and some political leaders, wanted to keep a four temp of construction going for several more years, but it was slightly difficult to justify this pace due to the lack of competition. There was a general recognition that the dreadnought was superior to anything else afloat, but the Royal navy was the only navy in the world building them. In 1906 there was one dreadnought completed, three more starting construction and three battle cruisers that were approaching halfway done. During 1906 no other navy had even started the construction of a similar dreadnought. This meant that the Royal navy would only be allowed to lay down two ships in the 1907 construction period. There were many people in Britain who saw this reduction in capacity as a dangerous precedent, and they were concerned that if the pace of construction slowed, it would not be increased in the future. This hesitancy to build more ships would have to be reconsidered when the news of the German building program specified under the 1908 Novelle, and the four tempo planned for the 1908-1911 period became known in London. This just confirmed information that had already been present in London about the expansion of German Naval Construction capacity. This came from reports that Krupp had expanded its capacity to build heavy gun mountings, with six very large circular planes under construction. This was important because the mountings for the guns, and the related equipment was the most difficult to manufacture area of a dreadnought, and in many cases the rate of capital ship construction was limited by the ability of a nation to construct the gun mountings required. Krupp would now have the capacity, when combined with the pre-existing infrastructure in Germany, to arm up to 6 dreadnoughts every year. There was also some information which was reported by the British armament firm Vickers that Krupp was increasing its orders for nickel, a critical component in the manufacture of armor plate, which also increased their construction capacity in the future.

While there was a lot of concern in British politics when the new of the German building program, a similar level of panic was not felt in the Admiralty. Fisher favored a very cautious approach to meet the German threat. He knew that the Royal Navy already had a numerical advantage, or would once ships that were under construction were completed, in fact there would be four Dreadnought battleships and three battlecruisers in service in the Royal Navy before even the first one from Germany was launched. It would take years of the Germans outbuilding the British to close the gap. Fisher instead wanted to wait, to see what the Germans were designing and building before launching into a larger building program. As part of this he wanted to make sure that whatever the British spent their money on would one up whatever the Germans were building. He therefore suggested another 2 tempo year in 1908, he might have even went to just one battlecruisers, but there were concerns that any fewer than 2 ships would cause difficulties for British manufacturers. This suggestion from Fisher, with the implication that in 1910 the British would have 7 dreadnoughts and four battlecruisers and the Germans 3 and one respectively, was accepted by the Sea Lords. The construction program would also have six unarmored cruisers, 16 destroyers, and money for submarines and all told it would only increase the naval budget by about a million pounds, which they felt was quite reasonable. By the time that this suggestion can under discussion on the political side there was growing concern among many groups that it simply would not be enough. Some suggested a 4 tempo, others 6, there was even growing support behind an 8 tempo for 1909. Most of what was happening here is that critics of the slower tempo were taking the German 4 tempo and extending it out almost indefinitely, which was not the German plan. Under the four tempo they would have about 20 dreadnoughts by the summer of 1915. Even if the British matched the German building plans after 1909 they would still only have about a third more, which was seen as simply insufficient. This is how the number for discussion became 8, a straight up 2 keels to 1 ratio for dreadnoughts. This suggestion, and the mathematical simplicity of it, gained a lot of support among groups around the country. They even used the idea that if it was publicly announced, an anything-you-can-do-we-can-do-twice sort of policy would actually cause the Germans to back down. They wanted to invest now in a statement that made it seem hopeless for the Germans to even try.

This debate about what to do for naval construction in 1909 caused a political crisis in London. Asquith and the liberal party refused to allow for the outright construction of 8 ships in a single year. It went against their policies of trying to spend less on armaments and more on problems at home. However, the conservatives in parliament were adamant that anything less than an 8 tempo left the Royal Navy at risk. Asquith attempted to compromise, 4 ships in 1909, and then if necessary 4 more would be started by April 1, 1910. Asquith would try and provide assurance that if they were necessary the 4 would be constructed: “Without in any way forecasting what the British shipbuilding programme for next year may be, I will say without the slightest hesitation that if we find at the time that there is a reasonable probability of the German programme being carried out in the way that the paper figures suggest, we should deem it our duty to provide not only for a sufficient number of ships, but for such a date of laying down of such ships that at the end of 1911 the superiority of Germany which the Rt Honourable gentleman foreshadows would not be an actual fact.” Even this compromise, with the right number of ships but some of them still contingent on events, was not enough for the naval advocates. The confrontation even led to Lord Balfour, of the conservative party, moving a vote of censure forward in Parliament, which was defeated by only barely. As it happened, as it feels like it so often did during this period, these domestic disagreements were overtaken by international events. Austria and Italy, which were both at this point allied with Germany, announced plans to build 4 dreadnoughts each. Another 8 dreadnoughts in play, and in the Mediterranean an area so important to the British Empire, caused Asquith to agree to guarantee the start of those four additional ships by April 1, 1910. The Naval Arms race was well and truly started.