The public image—and now the legend—of Tirpitz depicts a gruff curmudgeon, grimly resolved to have his way. But there was another side. He could be smiling, urbane, and conciliatory. In Berlin drawing rooms, with a glass of fine wine or a good cigar in his hand, Tirpitz played the polished, accomplished man of the world. Every year, he and his wife gave a party for all the officers and civilians in the Navy Ministry. During the evening, Tirpitz wandered from table to table, sitting and chatting amiably with each of his guests about whatever came into their heads. Hidden from the world, there was an even deeper layer. Tirpitz was highly emotional; his secretary reported that when he returned to his office from a difficult day at the Reichstag, he would sit at his desk and weep. He suffered from profound extremes of elation and depression. He was both a hypochondriac and an insomniac. His strength lay in his family, to which he was intensely devoted. To relax, he bought a house at St. Blasien in the Black Forest, far from Prussia, far from the sea. Here, sitting on his porch overlooking a pine-forested gorge, he could breathe the crisp mountain air and clear his mind of the tensions wrought in Berlin. At one point, even St. Blasien was too close and he bought a small house in Sardinia where, his daughter wrote, “one is so far from the world8 and civilization, in such primitive, ‘bandit-like’ conditions, that it is easy to imagine one is enchanted.”
Alfred Tirpitz was born ten years before Kaiser William II, on March 19, 1849, into a professional, middle-class Prussian family. His father was a lawyer who became a judge; his mother was the daughter of a physician. (The ennobling “von” would be added when Tirpitz was fifty-one as a mark of the Kaiser’s favor.) Tirpitz’ entry into the navy was not the result of boyhood enthusiasm. Rather, he admitted later, “I was very mediocre”9 in school. When a friend “expressed his intention of entering the Navy... it occurred to me that it might mean a certain relief for my parents if I too were to take up the idea.” His father agreed, and in the spring of 1856, Tirpitz, at sixteen, became a cadet in Prince Adalbert’s navy. Within a year, Prussia was at war with Austria and Tirpitz found himself aboard a sailing ship in the English Channel preparing for battle against an enemy steam corvette. Tirpitz’ duty was to load cannonballs into the mouth of a gun and be ready with his nearby pike to repel boarders. Before shots were fired, the approaching “Austrian” vessel turned out to be Norwegian. Four years later, as a sublieutenant aboard the flagship König Wilhelm, Tirpitz shared in the Prussian Navy’s humiliation as his ship spent the Franco-Prussian War lying at anchor.
Tirpitz, like William II, respected England and, also like William, admired the Royal Navy. During his cadet years, British naval officers treated the fledgling Prussian Navy as a diminutive offspring, deserving of nurture. “Between 1864 and 187010 our real supply base was Plymouth, where Nelson’s three-deckers and the great wooden ships of the line of the Crimean War lay in long rows up the river,” Tirpitz wrote. “Here we felt ourselves almost more at home than in the peaceful and idyllic Kiel, which only grumbled at Prussia.... In the Navy Hotel at Plymouth we were treated like British midshipmen.... Our tiny naval officers’ corps looked up to the British Navy with admiration.... We grew up on the British Navy like a creeping plant. We preferred to get our supplies from England. If an engine ran smoothly... if a rope or a chain did not break, than it was certain not to be a home-made article, but a product of English workshops—a rope with the famous red strand of the British Navy.... in those days we could not imagine that German guns could be equal to English.”
Tirpitz’s esteem for the British Navy extended to esteem for English education and the English language. He spoke fluent English, read English newspapers and English novels, made a hobby of English philology, and enrolled his two daughters at Cheltenham Ladies’ College. He bristled, however, at the patronizing attitude some Britons displayed towards Germany and the German Navy. As a young officer on the Friedrich Karl, he overheard an Englishwoman at Gibraltar say of his ship’s crew, “Don’t they look just like sailors?”11 When Lieutenant Tirpitz asked how they should look, she replied, “But you are not a sea-going nation.” Tirpitz, in time, found himself sharing Bismarck’s view: “I have had all through my life sympathy for England and its inhabitants.... But these people do not want to let themselves be liked by us.”
Tirpitz’s years as a gunnery officer aboard the König Wilhelm and Friedrich Karl were spent cruising the Mediterranean, the Caribbean, and the Pacific, showing the flag in ports which had never seen a German warship. In 1877, Tirpitz was assigned to visit the Whitehead Torpedo Centre at Fiume. When he returned to Germany, he was placed in charge of torpedo development for the German Navy. He started with the torpedoes themselves, working “like a mechanic12 with my own hands.” In 1879, Emperor William I and Crown Prince Frederick visited the station, and Tirpitz arranged a demonstration of his torpedoes. “It was a tossup13 whether they would reach the target or ricochet wildly,” he confessed afterwards.
From designing and testing weapons, Tirpitz proceeded to developing the boats that would launch the torpedoes and the tactics the boats would employ. This put him in contact with Navy State Secretary Caprivi, who happened to be a distant relation. “We do not know14 how we should fight,” Tirpitz admitted to the State Secretary, and Caprivi instructed the young lieutenant to work out tactics. Although Caprivi envisaged the navy’s role as defensive, Tirpitz persuaded him that when war began—France was assumed to be the navy’s primary enemy—Tirpitz should lead his torpedo squadron in a dash into Cherbourg harbor, where his boats would torpedo every French warship in sight. Whatever armored ships Germany possessed would follow behind to bombard what remained of the French Northern Fleet. Tirpitz later referred to his duty with the “Black Host” of the torpedo flotilla as “the eleven best years15 of my life.” In 1887, he met twenty-eight-year-old Prince William when his torpedo boats escorted the Prince across the North Sea to attend Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee.
In 1888, when Monts succeeded Caprivi as Navy Minister, torpedo boats fell into disfavor and Tirpitz asked to be transferred. He was given command successively of the cruisers Preussen and Württemberg. In 1890, he was appointed Chief of Staff of the Baltic Squadron. He was sitting after dinner one evening in Kiel Castle with the Kaiser, General von Moltke, and a number of generals and admirals, when William asked for proposals on development of the navy. Tirpitz, a junior captain, remained silent while different theories were aired. Finally, the Kaiser said, “Here I have been listening to you16 arguing for hours that we must put an end to all this mess, and yet not one of you has made a really positive suggestion.” Senden nudged Tirpitz, and Tirpitz declared that Germany must have battleships. Nine months later, he was summoned to Berlin as Chief of Staff to the High Command and commissioned personally by the Kaiser to develop a strategy for a High Seas Fleet.
In Berlin, Tirpitz, surrounding himself with former “Black Host” comrades, set to work. He changed the navy’s annual training cycle, terminating the army-based system of commissioning warships only for summer maneuvers, decommissioning them in autumn and sending their crews ashore. In wartime, Tirpitz said, this system would result in Germany possessing “a crowd of ships17 with men on board, but no fleet.” He drew up tactical exercises for operating a battle fleet in the open sea. At that moment, ship design was ahead of naval tactics; large armored ships were becoming available, but no one knew how to use them in battle; some naval officers assumed they would—as in Nelson’s day—steer towards the enemy and attempt to ram and board. Tirpitz, unwilling to wait until Monts’ new battleships actually appeared, collected whatever ships he could find—even training vessels and minesweepers—and used them to simulate larger ships. In this manner, he determined that a line of eight ships was the most effective tactical unit; if more ships were available, a second line of eight could be formed, to work in unison with or independently of the first eight.
Tirpitz’ presentation to the Kaiser on December 1, 1892, of his book of tactical exercises led to his first
serious confrontation with Navy State Secretary Hollmann. Admiral von Hollmann, Tirpitz wrote in his Memoirs, was “a high-minded man18 who was never quite clear as to the direction to be followed.” His decisions were “absolutely devoid of principle and adapted only to the needs of the moment.... It was the tendency during this period to bring forward demands in the Reichstag which were based not so much upon requirements as upon the probability of their being granted.” This produced “aimlessness,” “chronic crisis,” and “a confusion of opinions” which “displayed itself in a heterogeneous collection19 of vessels from which one could not confidently expect any mutual cooperation in the event of war.” Tirpitz’s exercises assumed the eventual availability of a fleet of relatively homogeneous ships which, possessing the same characteristics and fighting power, could operate together. Hollmann, whose office was responsible for the design of ships as well as obtaining money to build them from the Reichstag, considered Tirpitz’ theories a threat and demanded from the Kaiser the right to overrule or amend the tactical exercise book. Tirpitz fought back.
The battleground was the issue of battleships versus cruisers. William was caught in between. At one point, a number of Reichstag deputies were invited to a conference on naval matters at the New Palace. Tirpitz, seeing the Kaiser the day before, discovered that William intended to speak exclusively in favor of cruisers. Tirpitz objected, raising again the advantages of a battle fleet. William, disturbed, asked, “Why was Nelson20 then always calling for frigates?” “Because he had a battle fleet,” Tirpitz replied. William subsequently blurred his address to the deputies the following day, calling for both cruisers and battleships, and sounding, to one observer, “like a gramophone record21 with two melodies playing at once.”
Tirpitz, frustrated, asked in the autumn of 1895 to be relieved of duty with the High Command. William, not wanting to lose the services of this forceful, clear-thinking officer, parried by asking Tirpitz to comment on a recently received High Command recommendation on future naval construction. Tirpitz (who was largely responsible for writing the Oberkommando paper) obliged. On January 3, 1896, he handed the Kaiser a memorandum calling for two squadrons of eight battleships each, plus a fleet flagship. These seventeen battleships, he said, would constitute “a considerable force22 even against a fleet of the first rank.” “Even the greatest sea state in Europe would be more conciliatory towards us if we were able to throw two or three highly trained squadrons into the political scales,” he said. “We shall never achieve that using overseas cruisers.”
Tirpitz’s memorandum reached the Kaiser three days after news of the Jameson Raid into the Transvaal.fn1 William passionately desired to intervene in this South African affair six thousand miles from Europe but was prevented by Germany’s impotence at sea; caught up in his emotions, William thrust aside Tirpitz’ memorandum. “My intentions... [are] altered23 by the Transvaal,” he wrote to Hohenlohe. “We need... the purchase of armored cruisers and cruisers wherever we can find them as soon as possible.... At the same time, cruisers must be laid down in the homeland in numbers corresponding to the capacities of our dockyards.” Tirpitz was dismayed by William’s decision. “Tirpitz was here,”24 Admiral Senden noted in his diary on January 12. “He was very dissatisfied that cruisers are now being demanded again and believes that, as a result, the whole program will break up.” To Hohenlohe, all of the Kaiser’s navy demands now seemed excessive. Consulting the leaders of the Reichstag, he found “not a trace of enthusiasm25 for enlarging the Navy.” Senden grimly confirmed this news to the Kaiser: “These are the facts:26 the... [Kaiser] has no majority in the Government... nor in the Reichstag.... I advise a change of personnel.... We must rule with one party only.... An energetic man with a broad view as State Secretary must bring about a change, perhaps Tirpitz.” Near the end of January, Hollmann told Hohenlohe that “the Kaiser hopes to find27 a Chancellor who will introduce big naval demands, then dissolve the Reichstag and eventually carry out a coup d’état. That’s all right with me... [but] I cannot see whom he will find to try out this experiment.” Senden began pressing for Hollmann’s replacement by Tirpitz. At the end of January 1896, when Tirpitz visited the Kaiser to discuss his battlefleet memorandum of January 3, William impulsively announced that he intended to replace Hollmann and that Tirpitz would be the new State Secretary.
Hollmann, meanwhile, was pushing a shipbuilding program through the Reichstag. It included neither the numbers of battleships that Tirpitz had urged nor the swarm of cruisers for South Africa desired by the Kaiser, and it was obtained only by promising the deputies that, if the bill were approved, no additional request for funds would be made that year. In this budget, the Reichstag approved the building of one new battleship, Kaiser Friedrich der Grosse, and three large armored cruisers. William seemed pleased. He departed on a cruise, busying himself with sketches of a nine-thousand-ton battleship which, said Kiderlen, “was lovely28 only it could not float.”
Hollmann’s success eliminated Tirpitz’ chance of succeeding the State Secretary that year. While the program was passing through the Reichstag, Senden wrote to Tirpitz: “Only the present State Secretary29 [Hollmann] has any hope of getting the Navy bill through peacefully. His Majesty shares the view... that a new State Secretary in the present parliamentary situation would arouse suspicion.... His Majesty has therefore decided to refrain from a change at present but wants you to be told that ‘postponed’ does not mean forever.” Within a month of this decision, Tirpitz, promoted to Rear Admiral, departed Berlin to take command of the German cruiser squadron in the Far East.
The following year, William renewed his demand on Hollmann for more ships. Hollmann, unable to promise that he could persuade the Reichstag to grant this demand, found himself in growing disfavor. “He [William] seems to be toying30 with the idea of letting Hollmann go at the end of the year, because he is not the right man to carry the huge fleet plans through the Reichstag,” the Chancellor wrote to Eulenburg. “I can tell you this here and now, that the monster fleet plan is a practical impossibility for the forseeable future.... I consider the whole idea still-born no matter which Navy Secretary or Reich Chancellor assumes the role of Godfather.” In March, William told Hohenlohe that, if the Reichstag did not appropriate the money, he would build the fleet “and send the bill to the Reichstag31 later.” When the Chancellor pointed out that, under the Empire’s 1871 constitution, this was illegal, William grumbled, “The Kaiser has no rights.”32
On March 12, 1896, the Budget Committee of the Reichstag cut 12 million marks from Hollmann’s 70-million-mark budget. Hollmann submitted his resignation; Hohenlohe, to the Kaiser’s chagrin, refused to accept it. On March 30, William placed Hollmann on extended leave of absence. On April 3, Holstein wrote to Bülow, “Our doom33 embodied in Admiral Tirpitz is closing in upon us.”
Tirpitz’ primary assignment in the Far East had been “to seek out a place34 on the Chinese coast where Germany could construct a military and economic base.” Upon arrival, he found the German cruiser squadron based at the British colony of Hong Kong, where drydock arrangements for German warships had to be made nine months in advance. Tirpitz and his ships cruised along the Chinese coast inspecting harbors, finally selecting Tsingtaofn2 on the Yellow Sea. By the time the harbor was seized by German marines and “leased” from China in the autumn of 1897, Tirpitz had returned to Berlin.
In March, the Kaiser had summoned Tirpitz home to become Navy Minister. “I relinquished my command35 with a heavy heart,” he said in his Memoirs. “Universal experience showed that to get... [shipbuilding legislation] through the Reichstag, a ‘gift of gab’ was needed which I did not possess.” He went anyway, returning to Europe slowly, traveling across the Pacific, America, and the Atlantic. In Salt Lake City, he held a brief press conference; when asked about unfavorable comments in the German press concerning his appointment, he only smiled.
On June 6, 1897, Tirpitz arrived in Berlin. Great things were expected of him, but neither the Kaiser,
the Chancellor, the Reichstag, nor the navy was prepared for the rapid succession of events that followed. On his desk, Tirpitz found a proposed Navy Bill drafted by Hollmann demanding more ships for the foreign-service cruiser fleet. He discarded it. On June 15, only nine days after taking office, Tirpitz visited the Kaiser in Potsdam and presented a 2,500-word “Very Secret” memorandum36 entitled “General Considerations on the Constitution of Our Fleet According to Ship Classes and Designs.” Behind this technical language lay a document which would alter German and European history. Clearly, logically, relentlessly, like blows of a hammer, Tirpitz’ sentences rolled out:
“For Germany, the most dangerous naval enemy at the present time is England.”
“Our fleet must be constructed so that it can unfold its greatest military potential between Heligoland and the Thames.”
“The military situation against England demands battleships in as great a number as possible.”
“Only the main theatre of war will be decisive.”
“Commerce raiding [i.e., cruiser warfare]... against England is so hopeless because of the shortage of bases on our side and the great number on England’s side, that we must ignore this type of war against England in our plans for the constitution of our fleet.”
“A German Fleet... built against England [requires]: 1 fleet flagship, 2 squadrons of eight battleships each, 2 reserve battleships for a total of 19 battleships.”
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