8: At The Peak

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While changes occur at the British Admiralty, in Berlin the German building efforts reach a breaking point.

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Transcript

Hello everyone and welcome to History of the Great War Revisited Episode 8 - The Anglo-German Naval Arms Race Part 8 - At Its Peak. After the very mediocre display that the Royal Navy had presented to the British Cabinet during the Agadir Crisis, and specifically the failure of the Navy to provide the Cabinet with a workable and detailed war plan, it was clear to many that it was time for a change at the Admiralty. The First Sea Lord at the time, Admiral Wilson, had mostly just been keeping with tradition when it came to how the Royal Navy approached war planning. However, in the British Army there had been a much greater emphasis on formal planning. This meant that when a crisis occurred they made a much better showing to the political leaders if only because it seemed like they knew what they were doing. Wilson was instead only able to give some vague outlines. With such a poor showing at what was seen as a crucial moment, it was only a matter of time before there were changes in the leadership of the Royal Navy. The first change would come in the form of a swap of the First Lord of the Admiralty McKenna and the Home Secretary, a person you may have heard of by the name of Winston Churchill. At the time that this change was made it was not particularly popular, McKenna was well liked in the Navy, but the Cabinet wanted a more forceful political personality involved in Naval affairs to hopefully provide great influence over the actions in the Admiralty. Of course, if you want a forceful personality, Churchill is exactly the person that you want. Along with this personality, it was also considered important that in the years before his appointment as First Lord in 1911 Churchill had been an outspoken critic of naval spending, this was just one part of his general push for better control of government spending. As soon as he took the job Churchill became involved in even the most minute details of running the Navy. This is just how Churchill worked, when given the opportunity he would give his opinion on anything, and during his time at the Admiralty this meant weighing in on strategic and technical matters that were often not within the purview of the First Lord. In his defense he also was very interested in becoming better acquainted with all of the details, and he would spend time at sea during his first two years at the Admiralty. This, when combined with a series of First Sea Lords which were not particularly forceful characters, created a situation where Churchill would have an abnormally impactful reign as First Lord.

After his poor showing during the Agadir Crisis another change was certain, and that was the replacement of Wilson as First Sea Lord. This was also seen as necessary due to Wilson’s resistance to the idea of forming a Naval War Staff. This resistance was a feeling that Wilson shared with Fisher, his predecessor, but in the years after Fisher’s retirement the pressure for the formation of a Naval War Staff and for a much greater emphasis on formal planning and administration had only increased. There was not an obvious choice to replace him, but Churchill settled on Sir Francis Bridgeman. Bridgeman had been a supporter of Fisher during his period of reforms, and had been Fisher’s pick to succeed him at the Admiralty. He may have been successful in the position of First Sea Lord, but he did not get along with Churchill, at all, to the point where it greatly hindered their working relationship. The key problem was that Bridgeman firmly believed that the First Lord of the Admiralty was a position that provided oversight, but it should not be one that actively participated in the decision making process at the Admiralty. Essentially Bridgeman believed that the First Lord should really only be there to check in occasionally, make sure things were in line with what the government wanted, but to then leave the real decisions about the navy to the First Sea Lord. Churchill was not great at not being involved, giving his opinions, and making decisions. In fact he seems to have been fundamentally incapable of not being involved. To give an example of how this manifested in the Navy, and why it was seen as problematic and created resentment, lets talk about an incident that occurred in November 1913, which happened after Bridgeman was replaced by Admiral Battenberg, but is illustrative enough to still consider. On the ship HMS Hermes, the first seaplane tender in the Royal Navy, there was a disagreement between the Captain of the ship and one of his young lieutenants. In the disagreement things got a bit heated, and according to the Captain, the Lieutenant told him that he would write to the First Lord who would sort things out. This was reported up the chain of command, and reached Admiral Sir Richard Poore, who then complained quite strongly to Second Sea Lord Jellicoe. When Churchill found out, he threatened to sack Admiral Poore. This caused Jellicoe to threaten to resign in protest of the First Lord’s meddling in the business of the Navy. He also convinced the Third and Fourth Sea Lords to join him in this threat. The First Sea Lord also almost joined, but was talked out of it by Churchill. Instead First Sea Lord Battenberg was able to bring the situation in hand, and gave the Lieutenant a good lecture, and the Lieutenant was made to apologize to the Captain and the First Lord. Eventually nobody resigned, but you can see the type of problems that Churchill’s very hands-on approach could cause in the Navy when the wrong situation presented itself. Even the small comment from the junior officer, of taking naval matters outside of the navy, had resulted in a tremendous amount of stress and contentious discussions. After that incident relations between Churchill and the Admirals generally improved, and by the start of the First World War he would be in a much better position than in early 1913.

One of the key reasons that Churchill had been put in place, and Wilson replaced by Bridgeman, was so that a Naval War Staff could be created. This had the strong support of just about everybody within the political leadership. The plan was to setup something like the Army General Staff which had been modernized in 1904, and in early 1912 Churchill converted the Navy War Council into an Admiralty War Staff. This was just one of several changes made by Churchill during his time as First Lord. You can criticize Churchill for many things during these days, but his desire for change was not one of them, and in these changes he was often advised by none other than Lord Fisher. They began a correspondence almost immediately after Churchill found out about his move to the Admiralty, and on October 25th Churchill would write “My dear Lord Fisher, I want to see you very much. When am I to have that pleasure? You have but to indicate your convenience and I will await you at the Admiralty. Yours vy sincerely, WINSTON S. CHURCHILL” Fisher was more than willing to get back into the game, and they would meet and that would begin a relationship where Fisher was the advisor for Churchill, and it was noticeable in many of Churchill’s decisions. During these early years they got along very well, with Fisher the aging agitator and Churchill the ambitious enabler. One of the decisions where Fisher’s had was at play was around some Lower Deck Reforms that Churchill would advocate for. He wanted to raise the pay, reform disciplinary measures while at sea, provide more leave, and try and fix some of the promotion problems that plagued the Navy. One unofficial Navy Magazine would print “No First Lord in the history of the Navy has shown himself more practically sympathetic with the conditions of the Lower Deck than Winston Churchill,” Such reforms were important steps taken by Churchill which helped to solve some of the problems that the Navy was having, but also helped Churchill to build his popularity among the sailors.

While the Admiralty War Staff up and running, and some reforms in the process of implementation, Churchill moved onto his next task, cutting costs. There was a general idea in the cabinet, and especially in the Liberal party which Churchill was a member of, that the Navy was wasting some of the money being given to it, and that budget could be reduced. The wasting of money was common complaint with both the administrative abilities of the navy called into question while also criticizing their belief that more and more ships were needed to fulfill the Navy’s obligations. Churchill was well known for his push for reducing government costs, which is part of why he got the job. However, when he arrived in the Admiralty he did not follow through with any drastic cuts, instead he began advocating for increases, large increases. In this way he would be the next in a long series of British political leaders who criticized the Navy’s spending from afar, but then when they were brought in closer, given more information, and began to fully understand the situation switched from wanting to reduce the Naval budget to wanting to expand it. One example of an area where Churchill did not reduce costs was around the construction cost of new capital ships. It would be under Churchill’s leadership that the 1912 Battleships would be designed, these would be the Queen Elizabeth class. This would contain some of the most famous British battleships probably ever, and many of them would see service in both world wars. They would mount 15 inch guns and were designed to make 25k nots which would allow them to keep up with the Battlecruisers, and would make them significantly faster than any other British battleships and any German ship that they would be facing. To achieve the necessary power to make this speed they would have to shift from coal fired burns to oil fired which allowed for significant savings in machinery weight, as well as a better power to weight ratio. The switch away from coal also removed all of the backbreaking coal shoveling that could occupy over 100 men. Churchill would support this change, which was also something that Fisher had been pushing for during his days in the Navy. Fisher would say “The use of oil fuel increases the strength of the British Navy 33 per cent., because it can re-fuel at sea off the enemy’s harbours. The Internal Combustion Engine with one ton of oil does what it takes four tons of coal to do!” The shift to oil on the most powerful set of ships that the Royal Navy possessed had important geopolitical ramifications, which were partially realized at the time. It was not just a matter of pulling up to a different fuel station, and instead had deep impacts in terms of how the Royal Navy could be supplied and how the fundamental need of fuel could be fulfilled. Britain had stocks of some of the best coal in the world, it had essentially no endemic oil reserves. This meant that the Royal Navy now had to be concerned about stockpiling oil, and ensuring that there was always a supply somewhere in the world that it could access. To try and help coordinate the logistical problems of such a large shift Fisher was brought back in and was asked to preside over a Royal Commission on Oil supply.

While Churchill was being brought into the Admiralty to try and reduce costs, in Germany a similar reduction in costs was on the horizon. This was due to the planned drop in construction temp from 4 to 2 in 1912. The shift from 4 capital ships per year to 2 had been planned since the most recent changes to the Naval Law in 1908 and so were not a surprise. At the time advocates for a bigger German Navy just assumed that when the time came they could get the number brought back up to 4 with the introduction of a new Novelle. However, this reduction in building speed was seen by many, and even some of the stronger supporters of the Germany Navy in the Reichstag as a welcome reprieve. During the previous year, with the 4 temp active the Naval budget was approaching 50% of the Army’s, which was a lot. As the amount given to the Navy increased, resistance to those increases became more troublesome. The discussions about the naval estimates for 1911 were very heated, with the added problem of an election occurring while they were ongoing, an election in which the Social Democrats, the strongest opposition to greater naval spending, did very well. This initially convinced Tirpitz to change his plans, he had initially planned to introduce a new novelle in 1912 which would address the reduction in tempo, but the growing political resistance to further increases convinced him not to do so. However, this more cautious approach would then be changed due to events around the world. The Agadir Crisis and then the continued building pace out of London caused Tirpitz to once again begin considering changes in 1912. The seeming political failure of Germany during the Agadir Crisis had the effect of increasing support for further naval expansion. For many the crisis seemed to show that even with its naval strength at its current levels Germany could be pushed aside by the other powers when events occurred outside of mainland Europe and Tirpitz was prepared to take advance of these concerns. Capelle suggested that the Novelle should simply continue the 4 temp forward through several more years, but Tirpitz was slightly more cautious and instead wanted a three tempo. This would give the German fleet a theoretical maximum strength of 41 battleships, which would be 2/3s as strong as the Royal Navy. It would also increase the spending on smaller ships, U-Boats, and Zeppelins. As always, there was also a built in large increase in the estimates for each individual ship to make up for the fact that that construction was getting more expensive all the time. When Tirpitz presented this new Novelle to the Kaiser, for the first time he was hesitant to support it. The Kaiser suggested that the overall scope of the novelle be reduced, out of concern that in the original form it would fail to succeed in making it through the Reichstag. However, even when these reductions were made, it was still resisted by Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg. The Chancellor was first concerned that a clear 2:3 ratio with the Royal navy would be too provocative, and might prompt the British to increase their building tempo, which would put more pressure on the Germans to once again do the same. This was an idea that Tirpitz and Capelle generally pushed back on. They understood that Germany was reaching the edge of its abilities to sustain more ship building, due to budgetary size and public opinion shifts, but they also believed that similar effects were impacting the decisions being made in London. Capelle believed that if they pushed the British to a five temp in ships which would be required if the Germans continued building 4 then the British would be at a position of financial ruin. One of the reasons for this analysis was that there was a belief among the German Naval leadership that manpower would be the Royal Navy’s greatest weakness. The German ships were manned by conscripts, but the British were paying twice as much for long service volunteers, and as the navies grew bigger the amount the British were spending just on manpower continued to be double. Bethmann-Hollweg also did not believe that even the reduced Novelle would pass through the Reichstag, and insisted on further changes. The eventual compromise was a shift from a constant 3 tempo to one that alternated between 2 and three. This would be the bill that would be presented to the Reichstag on April 15, 1912. There was opposition, but the passage of the novelle was once more not in serious jeopardy. Although he did not know it at the time, this would be the last novelle passed before the start of the war, and the last major political victory of Tirpitz’s career. There would be several more proposed Novelle’s before and during the war which would have take a similar form to the previous changes, more ships, bigger ships, better ships. However, with the cost of the ships and crews increasing, Tirpitz did not judge 1913 or early 1914 to be a good time to try and make those changes, and then the war started and there were more important things to spend money on. When the new German building tempo became known in London the first idea was simply to build two more capital ships than the Germans each year. Churchill would propose to the cabinet a tempo that would see 5 or 4 capital ships laid down on the years that German was laying down 3 and 2. This would allow for a continued 60 percent superiority in dreadnoughts in the years that followed. This was brought down just a little bit and when the estimates were announced to the Commons in July 1912 the tempo was instead 5 for that year and then a steady rate of 4 in the years that followed. This meant that the Royal Navy would, by 1920 have a fleet with at least 79 capital ships, 62 of them being fully modern dreadnoughts.

What was clear in the last few years before the war was that the German desire to continue to increase the size of their fleet was waning mostly due to simple economic realities combined with the determination of the Royal Navy to always maintain their more dominant position. However, the German Navy was also assisted by actions around the world, as Tirpitz would say “Every warship constructed anywhere in the world except in England was ultimately an advantage for us because it helped to adjust the balance of power at sea.” The most important actions by other countries were to build dreadnoughts, and in this they were specifically assisted by the Italian and Austro-Hungarian navy. By the start of the war the Italians had 3 dreadnoughts in service, 3 more nearing completion, and 4 more on order. The Austro-Hungarians would contribute several more to the Mediterranean. All of these had to be accounted for by the Royal Navy because the two countries were allied with Germany, and so a war with Germany seemed likely to lead to a war with Italy and Austria-Hungary as well. The plans for the three countries was to combine their fleets, with the Italian Navy taking the lead in the Mediterranean. This of course did not end up happening, as Italy would join the Entente in the war, but before the war the Royal navy had to plan to meet the Italian and Austro-Hungarian threat. Due to the importance of the Mediterranean to the overall health and defense of the British Empire the increase in strength in these navies was a major concern for the Royal Navy. Before the construction of these dreadnoughts the British could at least be comforted by the fact that while their newest and strongest ships were needed in the North Sea against Germany, they had plenty of older ships that were more than a match for the Austrians and Italians. That would no longer be the case by 1913, and this would force more British capital ships into the Mediterranean, eroding the Royal Navy’s advantage against Germany.

While both Germany and Britain had been escalating their building tempo in the years after 1908, there had been growing efforts to come to some kind of agreement that would end the runaway costs of the naval construction programs. In February 1912 one of the last real attempts was made by the British to initiate some kind of arms limitation treaty with the Germans. At this time the British Minister of War Lord Haldane travelled to Germany to discuss the idea directly with the Emperor and Tirpitz. There was support for such discussions on both sides, especially in the political leadership on both sides of the North sea. For example Bethmann-Hollweg supported these talks, as well as many politicians in London. The core to each country’s proposal was that the British wanted the Germans to agree to a 2:1 capital ship ratio, but the Germans were adamant that they would not go below 3:2. While these numbers seem relatively close together by themselves, for the German navy the different between a 2:1 advantage and a 3:2 advantage for the British was the difference between their naval plans failing and succeeding. If they agreed to giving the British a 2 to 1 advantage in capital ships they would still be by far the second most powerful navy in Europe, and in the world, but they would be unable to put real pressure on the Royal Navy. For the British, if they agreed to giving the Germans a 3:2 ratio they would still probably be able to defeat the German fleet when required, but to do so might have disastrous consequences on their ability to project naval power in the years that followed. One simplistic way to look at it is that a 2:1 ratio was seen by Tirpitz and German naval leaders as an existential threat to the Imperial German Navy, while a 3:2 ratio was seen by Churchill and the Royal Navy leaders as an existential threat to the British Empire. The Germans also wanted the British to make a neutrality declaration, basically that they would stay out of any European War between Germany, Russia, and France. This was something that the British did not feel that they could do, if only because at this stage their connections to France and Russia were too strong and there were many very vocal supporters of strong Anglo-French relations. At the meeting between Haldane and Tirpitz the details of the 1912 Naval Law were discussed, with Haldane being given a copy of its exact contents, but these discussions did not really lead anywhere. When Haldane returned to London he was quite positive about the whole experience and hoped that it was just the beginning of future discussions. When the experts at the Admiralty read through the contents of the upcoming Novelle, they were quite concerned, not so much about the new ships that were being built but about the increased state of readiness which the High Seas Fleet would be in due to more funding being put into personnel readiness. On March 18th the 1912 Novelle would be put to the Reichstag, where it would pass. On that same day, when Churchill announced the 1912-13 Naval estimates to Parliament he made it publicly clear that the primary threat to the Royal Navy was Germany, and that it was Germany that was targeted by the construction of new ships. The Naval Arms Race had entered its final stage, with both sides acknowledging their biggest enemy, publicly, and beginning to gear up for war. Next episode we will take a bit of a step back to discuss the technical side of what was being built for the Royal Navy at this point as well as what both sides thought these ships would actually be doing in wartime.