7: Fisher's Last Years

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After the building race started to heat up, it was time for Fisher to be replaced.

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Hello everyone and welcome to History of the Great War Revisited Episode 7 - The Anglo-German Naval Arms Race - Fisher’s Last Years. While the tensions between Britain and Germany had been on the rise in the year after the creation of the Dreadnought and the 1906 German Naval Novelle. After the implementation of the 1908 Naval Law in Germany the Naval Arms race hit another new level of intensity. These were the two leading economies in Europe, engaging in a straight up head to head building contest of battleships and battlecruisers. In this episode we will review the planned building tempo in Britain, and Germany’s reaction to it before discussing the removal of Fisher from the Admiralty. Fisher had just made too many enemies during his time as First Sea Lord, and he was already well past the normal age of retirement, this made his exit almost inevitable it was just a question of when. He would be succeeded by a series of First Sea Lords which would have to navigate the Royal Navy through several political crises in the last years before the First World War. We will close out this episode by discussing the growing international support for some kind of arms limitation treaty, which would be sort of a precursor to the Naval treaties that would be negotiated during the interwar period.

Just as a reminder of what was happening in London. While the Royal Navy had generally solid support there were growing concerns about the continued expansion of the naval budget in the years before Fisher became First Sea Lord. Then in 1906 Fisher was able, through his reforms, to reduce the naval estimate which was seen as a major victory by the government. While this was a momentary victory it did not resolve the conflict that would grow in the years that followed between those who wanted further cuts to the naval estimates and naval building and those who believed that it was essential to the survival of the British Empire for those same estimates and building programs to increase. Fisher would be caught between these groups, he really did want to turn the Royal navy into a lean and mean fighting machine, but there were limits to what could be done to make it lean while also retaining the naval power required to meet what many thought to be the Royal Navy’s essential mission.

There were two important areas in which Fisher would begin to feel serious pressure in the years after 1907: from inside the Navy itself and from those outside the government. When Fisher moved into the position of First Sea Lord and began to implement some of his reforms, there were always those who disagreed with his actions. The introduction of the Dreadnought was one of these reforms, that in hindsight is very easy to claim was necessary, but for many at the time it seemed like a needless action that squandered a Royal Navy advantage that had been built up over decades of pre-dreadnought construction. But the root of Fisher’s downfall would not be the Dreadnought, and it would instead by an inquiry into the admiralty prompted by none other than the Lord Beresford. Lord Beresford had been the Commander in Chief of the Home Fleet, and thought he was going to replace Fisher when he retired. But when this did not happen, and given the incredible rockiness of the relationship, Beresford made it clear that he was unhappy. Beresford was a well connected man, and as the civilian leaders were growing frustrated with Fisher’s resistance to further naval cuts he would let it be known that if he was the First Sea Lord the estimates would be reduced further. This was just one of many ways that Beresford would go outside the navy to air his grievances, which would become a larger and larger problem throughout 1908. In April 1908 a new First Lord of the Admiralty would be named, Reginald McKenna, and after taking up his new office Fisher made it clear that Beresford was a problem but nothing had yet been done due to concerns about the fallout of such actions. Besides, in the summer of 1908 there were other things to worry about, like the continued debates about the future building programs. During 1908 the Naval leaders would propose 4 dreadnoughts to be laid down in 1908 with an early proposal for 6 dreadnoughts in 1909. This was far above what the government had hoped. In fact, McKenna had been put in his position due to his earlier expressed views that the Navy should cut its budget. But he had given his full approval to this new expanded plan. This is just one instance of something that would happen several times in the decade before the First World War. Essentially throughout all of these years, the closer that a politician got to the Royal Navy, regardless of their previously held convictions, the stronger they would support further spending by the Navy. Along with the impact more knowledge had on individuals, there would be multiple times where the Navy would make its case for its budget in detail to the Cabinet and the Prime Minister and very often they would come away from those conversations with approval. The core of this phenomenon was a shared understanding of why the Royal Navy was needed, and what it needed to do to achieve its mission which was to protect the entire British Empire and its interests from foreign navies.

But before Fisher left his position in 1910, between the years 1908 and 1910 he would be in almost constant conflict with the government due to the tension between those who wanted naval spending cuts and those who wanted naval spending increases. In early 1909, when news of the German plans to build 4 dreadnoughts in the next fiscal year became known, there were many who wanted to drastically increase the British building commitment. Instead of four, or six, the number started to be 8. This cause for this massive escalation in building tempo was due at least partially to an overreaction due to concerns from earlier years that the British were already not building a sufficient number of ships to meet the German challenge. And so when their tempo went to four it was felt that it was the moment for the Royal Navy to catch back up. This mindset, and the Navy Scare that caused it, was problematic because of the core election promises that the Liberal party had made was to reduce spending on armaments, not to double it. There was widespread support for these reductions, at least when the Liberal government came into power in 1908. The compromise that was put forward by Asquith was that four would be constructed in 1909, and then very early in 1910 four more would be added, if they were deemed necessary. These soon became necessary, and McKenna would go before the Commons and state that: ‘After very anxious and careful examination of the conditions of shipbuilding in foreign countries, the Government have come to the conclusion that it is desirable to take all the necessary steps to ensure that the second four ships referred to in this year’s programme should be completed by March, 1912.’ But the reason for this had nothing to do with Germany. Instead it was the announcements in Italy and Austria that they planned to build 4 dreadnoughts each. 8 more dreadnoughts added to possibly enemy fleets in the Mediterranean was truly problematic for the Royal Navy. There were still many naval leaders in the Admiralty who believed that the Mediterranean was the most important area of operation for the Royal navy, and now there would be drastically more modern and powerful naval vessels to contend with. This removed any idea of not building the extra 4 ships, and so in 1909 the construction of 8 dreadnoughts would begin.

The German plan for building four ships for several years starting in 1909 was based on the idea that the British could not or would not match that number in the long term. The announcement of an 8 tempo for the year made it clear that they were determined to make a clear statement that the supremacy of the Royal navy, in capital ships, was a fact, regardless of what other countries decided to build. Tirpitz still believed that the British could not maintain a two power standard over the long term, and so he was betting on them slowing down. The problem for Tirpitz was that Germany’s own construction was scheduled to reduce down to a 2 tempo in 1911, which would be easy for the British to match and exceed. This would also be the period when Tirpitz and others in Germany began to seriously consider a possible future where an arms limitation treaty, or at least a self imposed construction limitation was put in place. At this point these discussions generally revolved around the German Navy accepting a 2-> 3 or a 3->4 ratio of British supremacy. The reasoning that this was seen as sufficient was that the British had so many other commitments, like the Mediterranean they would be spread all over the world. When discussing the plans of the Germans to maybe work out a ratio of ships to build, or the British reacting to German building programs it is important to keep in mind that there was constant paranoia on both sides that the other country was building or preparing to build more than they were claiming publicly. It was very difficult to hide a ship that was building built, but the very noticeable and obvious part of the ship, the hull, was also not the part that took the longest. Instead the parts that took the longest were the guns, gun mountings, and some of the machinery all of which were far easier to hide. That meant that either side could be planning on an unannounced increase in building tempo, and they could have a stockpile of the most difficult pieces to manufacture to make it happen. This led to a bit of uncertainty when trying to predict what the other side was going to do one year to the next.

Very soon after Beresford exited the navy in 1909 his attacks on Fisher and his Naval policies would increase in ferocity. The redistribution of the forces by Fisher, which concentrated more power in home water, left the Empire vulnerable. Fisher was focusing too much on the big ships, and not enough on support ships like light cruisers and the destroyers. He also claimed that the Admiralty was simply not ready to go to war to protect the empire. In 1910 things would begin to be serious, on April 2nd, he wrote a detailed letter to the Prime Minister, stating that he would take his case public if the government did not do something to address his concerns. Given this pressure, and concerns about a public argument reducing the prestige of the Navy, a new Sub-committee within the Committee of Imperial Defense was created to investigate the accusations. The committee would meet 15 times between April and July. During the very first meeting, Beresford would appear for questioning. According to many of the accounts of his discussions with the committee it quickly became clear that he could not really back up any of his accusations. It was also soon revealed that Beresford was receiving information, which should not have been shared with him, from sources in the Admiralty. During these meetings Fisher was not directly involved, and he only spoke to the committee when direct questions were asked of him. The final report would be released in August 1910. After all of the meetings the result was a statement by the committee that they did not feel that the arrangements made by the Admiralty had ever placed the Empire in any form of danger. The decisions made by the Admiralty were all very defensible, even if some people may not have agreed with them. The largest problem that was noted was that any situation where the Board of the Admiralty and the First Sea Lord, did not have a good relationship with the Commander-in-Chief of the Channel Fleet, which Beresford was, was not an agreement that was good for the Royal Navy. In one paragraph they would state “The Board of Admiralty do not appear to have taken Lord Charles Beresford sufficiently into their confidence as to the reasons for dispositions to which he took exception; and Lord Charles Beresford, on the other hand, appears to have failed to appreciate and carry out the spirit of the instructions of the Board, and to recognize their paramount authority.” This bit of the report is where Fisher drew issue, even though the entire report was without any further indictment of his actions. The report was generally considered a complete vindication of all of Fisher’s actions, but he still resented the fact that there was even the slightest shadow of doubt and that it was not a full throated support for everything he had done. This would be one of the causes for Fisher to discuss his resignation with Prime Minister Asquith and First Lord of the Admiralty McKenna. Arrangements were made and finalized on October 20th. The agreement was that Fisher would resign in November, and then he would be made a Baron. Fisher was hoping to be made into a Viscount, but he was not able to swing it, apparently after it was realized that not a single First Sea Lord in history had been given anything higher than a Barony. He would take the moto “Fear God and dread nought” on his coat of arms, which was and still is just fantastic. Fisher would depart after just 5 years as the First Sea Lord, and after having kicked off the most drastic changes in Naval construction since the end of the age of sail. He had also put in place important reforms that allowed the Royal Navy to make a shift into the next century. It was also maybe the right time for him to leave, Fisher had always been an abrasive individual, and over time that abrasiveness continued to build and build, this resulted in more resentment to Fisher within the leadership of the Royal Navy, even if most of it did not bubble out into the public like with Beresford. Fisher would not be gone very long, and he would be back at the Admiralty when the war started.

Fisher would be replaced by Sir Aurthur Wilson. Wilson was very close to the age of retirement for Admirals, but he was still brought in to replace Fisher by promoting him to Admiral of the Fleet which had a five year later retirement age. Wilson, well, he was not great at being First Sea Lord. To his credit even he knew that he had some deficiencies where it mattered. During his time with the fleet he had actively avoided politicians, journalists, and all of the arguments that happened at the Admiralty, which made him almost unique acceptable to all parties. The problem was that even Wilson saw himself as a person who was far better as a commander afloat instead of working through the administrative tasks at the Admiralty. One of the largest problems in this regard was a failure to delegate, which when managing a fleet at sea could be functional, but in a position like the First Sea Lord where the work and decisions were endless, delegation was mandatory. Wilson would oversee the 1910 estimates, which were originally set at the number of four capital ships. This decision was made in November 1909, but just a month later the number would be increased to 6. One again the catalyst for this change was news from the Mediterranean where Austria had started 2 dreadnoughts. The move to six was accepted by the Liberals, but only with great reluctance as there was already the growing opinion that six would once again be required in 1911. This reluctance manifested in calls to begin some form of negotiations with Germany, something that would prevent the constant increases in naval construction. In July 1910 these negotiations would begin and they would continue, off and one, for almost two years and accomplish very little. The reason for this failure to come to an agreement mostly revolved around the refusal of the Germans to proactively reduce construction and the refusal of the British to enter into an agreement that traded their freedom of movement in a European conflict in exchange for naval security. The negotiations were not assisted by the period of increased tensions which was kicked off by the Agadir Crisis in 1911.

The Agadir Crisis began with a revolt by the Sultan of Morocco against the French who controlled the region. This revolt would be partially precipitated by French actions over the previous years as they had tried to extend their power beyond the agreed upon limits in the treaty that had ended the First Moroccan Crisis in 1906. The French would then dispatch a military force to Fez in the hopes of putting down the revolt. This action was in itself a violation of the previously signed treaty, but probably would have have caused a huge problem with the other powers in Europe. In fact, this entire incident likely would have barely been worth of a footnote in history books except for the fact that a German ship appeared in Agadir. This ship was the German gunboat the SMS Panther, which had previously been on station in Southwest Africa and was on its way back to Germany. The decision had been made before it started its journey, and before the revolt in Morocco became serious, that the Panther would stop in a Moroccan port on the way home, and in this case that port would be Agadir. The arrival of the ship did not please the French, and it caused great concern in London. The British had been, and always were, fearful of Germany establishing a large naval base outside of Germany or their far flung colonies. Any German Naval base anywhere in the world was an area that they could use to base commerce raiders out of, which in fact happened during the First World War. Agadir, if it became a German base, with its positioning on the Atlantic would have been perfect for this purpose. There was never any serious plans by the Germans to actually construct a permanent Naval Base in Agadir, but that did not really matter. Just the idea of such a threat caused great concern in London, which caused them, in retrospect to really overreact. In Berlin Tirpitz used this reaction to bolster support for another naval Novelle. The incident would eventually blow over entirely, with an agreement reached in October 1911 which did not make any serious changes to the situation either in North Africa or Europe.

The most important outcome of the Agadir Crisis, from the British perspective was that the nation did not appear to be as ready for war as previously thought. During the Agadir crisis there was real concern among many British leaders that war with Germany was eminent. Wilson saw no possibility of such a war occurring, and in fact at the height of the Crisis he had went off on a planned hunting trip to Scotland. When the British Cabinet enquired into the plan for the Royal Navy if a war were to start, they received the equivalent of a shrug. This caused great concern, and on August 23, Asquith called a secret meeting with the Committee of Imperial Defense. Representatives from the Army and Navy were also invited, with Sir William Nicholson, Chief of the Imperial General Staff, Sir Henry Wilson, Director of Military Operations, and Sir Arthur Wilson, First Sea Lord all asked to present their plans in case of war with Germany. Sir Henry Wilson went first, presenting the Army’s plan of close cooperation with the French and for an Expeditionary Force to be sent to assist them. At this point these plans were very close to what would eventually happen in 1914. When the Navy’s plan was presented, it was a bit less impressive and coherent. Whereas Henry Wilson had presented details and very specific plans, the Navy had nothing but a vague outline. They knew that they wanted to start up a close blockade of Germany, believed that this would provoke the Germans into a large sea battle, which of course the British would win. When this was complete, and the German Fleet removed from the seas, the Navy then believed that the British Expeditionary Force, instead of going to France would instead be directed towards Heligoland. The Navy’s viewpoint was that the British Expeditionary Force was too small to get involved with the main fighting on the continent, and if it joined the French forces it would just get swallowed up by the German Army. Therefore it should be used in cooperation with the Navy to strike at places that only the Royal Navy could reach, perhaps the Baltic to threaten Berlin. These would all be huge operations, but the presentation made by Arthur Wilson at the meeting was very light on how the Royal Navy planned to actually make it happen. It also very quickly became clear that the Army plans and the plans of the Royal Navy were totally divergent, and if nothing else something had to be done to bring them to a unified strategy. Both sides did not want to give into the other’s plans. Specifically the Royal Navy believed that the German Fleet had to be dealt with before the BEF was sent anywhere. This was a critical piece for discussion because the plans as designed by the Army had the BEF in France to meet the first German attack. Even if the heads of the Army and Royal Navy could not come to an agreement on even this first issue, the politicians present were more than willing to tip the scales. Arthur Wilson’s problem in this regard was that Henry Wilson had given a far better presentation of the Army’s Plan. Not only was their plan more detailed to begin with, Henry Wilson was just simply the better presenter. This meant that when the meeting ended, even though no official decision had been made between the two sets of military leaders, many of the members of the Committee were in favor of the Army’s plan. After the meeting was over the Secretary of State for War Haldane began to push for serious changes in the Admiralty.

The topic of the war plans of the Royal Navy during this period would be an interesting one. The British Army and its General Staff spent a tremendous amount of time building, maintaining, and evaluating war plans. In peace time it was a major part of the reason that the General Staff existed in the first place. There wasn’t an equivalent planning body for the Navy, and in fact Fisher had been actively hostile so such a planning body. He would instead say that he, as First Sea Lord, had the war plans in his head and he did not need to detail them out to anybody else. This was frustrating for the Army and the government as it made it more difficult to plan for what the Navy was going to do, just like was displayed in that meeting after the Agadir Crisis. Fisher had been claiming for years, basically since he became First Sea Lord that he had been planning, and yet when the time came the Navy’s plans were found lacking. This trend would continue even after Fisher left the Admiralty and the creation of detailed war plans would require a cultural change within the Royal Navy. Just months before Fisher’s dismissal there would be a renewed attempt to convince Fisher that the creation of some kind of General Staff, even if by another name, would at the very least be seen as a positive step by others within the government. These changes would not be enacted and instead the Fisher and then his successor Wilson held complete control over the Royal Navy, with very little forced devolution of powers. In both cases they wanted to keep that control themselves, it just so happened that while Fisher was the type of person that could make that arrangement work, Wilson was not. This meant that after the Agadir Crisis, Asquith was convinced by Haldane to force the Admiralty to create a War Staff, and both the First Sea Lord and the First Lord of the Admiralty would be replaced. This would be the point where Winston Churchill would get involved with the Admiralty, which is a story best left for next episode.

While the speed at which the German and British Navy’s were building capital ships had been increasing after 1905. Some leaders from around the world were beginning to push for some kind of international arms limitation agreement. These efforts were not wholely or even primarily focused on Naval armaments, but they were worth discussing now due to the groundwork that they would lay for later discussions that would be focused strictly on naval limitation. In April 1906, at the proposal of Russia, the Hague Peace Conference was reconvened. Initially there was an announcement made that there would not be any discussions of arms limitation at this conference. This announcement was made to secure support from all countries to attend, some of which probably would chosen to stay home if arms limitations were on the agenda. The British government, seeing an opportunity, joined the Italian and American leaders in calling for arms limitation to be added to the conference. Germany, Austria, France, and Russia all refused to discuss it, but this was still seen as a win by the British politicians, because they could claim that they had tried. Also in 1906 the American President Theodore Roosevelt began to openly discuss a battleship limitation plan. This plan was never taken seriously by the only powers that really mattered in this regard, Germany and Britain, but it is interesting to note because this proposal had all of the hallmarks of the interwar treaties, like tonnage limitations and armament size restrictions. Another Hague Conference was held in 1907, with the British still attempting to push for arms limitation, but the other powers studiously avoiding it. These discussions would be held before the 1908 Novelle, the point at which the naval arms race would escalate, and in fact it was the failure of the 1907 Hague Conference that caused the Germans to feel free to increase their building program, which the British would meet and exceed, kicking off all of the events that we have discussed over the last two episodes.