The Allies

by Winston Groom

  In 1911, Prime Minister Asquith named Churchill the first lord of the Admiralty, which he later described as “the four most memorable years of my life.” The British fleet was the pride of the nation and the envy of the world. For more than a century it had stood between England and the threat of invasion. It was the principal instrument of England’s imperial conquests, and by the early twentieth century it was the most powerful naval force in the world, enforcing British rule over an empire upon which the sun never set.

  The most important development in the fleet’s history was the ongoing construction of the Dreadnought-class battleship, the first of which was commissioned in 1906. Unlike previous ships of the line, the Dreadnoughts carried all big guns—12-inchers at first, which got larger in successive models. They were fast, starting with a speed of about 21 knots—23 mph—and carried foot-thick belts of steel at the waterline and main decks. When the first Dreadnought slid down the ways into the waters of Portsmouth Harbor all previous battleships worldwide became obsolete.

  When Churchill took office, he found himself dead in the middle of a major arms race with Germany; its kaiser was determined to match the size and strength of the British fleet. Upon Churchill’s arrival at the Admiralty, the Germans had pulled to within one ship of equaling the number of British Dreadnoughts at ten apiece. At the same time, Germany’s ally Austria-Hungary had acquired four Dreadnoughts of its own that surpassed British naval supremacy in the Mediterranean. British naval policy called for a 2:1 ratio, and Parliament—struggling for funds to pay for social programs—plunged ahead anyway with a new eight-ship program to outstrip the German menace.

  As the Germans continued to build their powerful battleships, Churchill increased his warnings to the Asquith government that the kaiser was planning a war. But the prime minister was skeptical. Europe was enjoying a second “era of good feelings”—some called it the Gilded Age, or in France the belle epoque. The industrial revolution was in its most mature aspect. It was a period of luxury ocean liners, electric lights, telephones, automobiles, and empires—except, of course, at the bottom, where the coal miners and mill workers, dissatisfied with their lowly lot, dwelled. Nevertheless, it was an age where it seemed almost everyone was in their place and either had money, or was making it, or at least had the opportunity to do so.

  Churchill summed up the great advances in technology this way: “Every morning when the world woke up, some new machinery had started running. Every night while the world had supper, it was running still. It ran on while all men slept.”

  These technological advances were not limited to creature comforts. It was also a time that saw breathtaking improvements in military weapons: the development of high-explosive gunpowder, rapid-fire rifles, and of course machine guns. Certainly the most important were the advances in long-range artillery with enormous destructive power that now could be sited miles from a battlefield. The dawn of the century also foretold the advent of the airplane and submarine as potent military weapons.7

  * * *

  THE FIRST INKLING THAT A WAR was brewing came around the turn of the century, when others noticed that Germany was building up a tremendous military force. But the matter reached much further back than that, to the year 1888, when an alarming turn in international politics developed as the new kaiser, Wilhelm II, ascended the German throne.

  In fact, the stage had been set several decades earlier, when the new kaiser’s father, under the tutelage of that master of statecraft Prince Otto von Bismarck, began to assert the power of his native Prussia to unite the twenty-five loosely governed Germanic kingdoms and principalities into a Greater Germany, which created the largest and most powerful state in Europe. This new Germany soon began subduing her neighbors—Denmark (1864), Austria (1866), and France (1871). The Prussian conquest of France had caused the most trouble, because Germany demanded and seized two longtime French provinces, Alsace and Lorraine, which changed the Franco-German border and incited a horrific outrage from what was left of the French aristocracy down to the last peasant and goatherd.

  One of the most remarkable aspects of diplomacy leading to World War I was the intimate relationship between the rulers of the belligerents. It began in 1837 when Victoria of England, granddaughter of George III (who had been king of England during the American Revolution), assumed the throne. She and her husband, Prince Albert, a German, had nine children. Upon her death in 1901, her son Prince Albert Edward became England’s King Edward VII. His son—Victoria’s grandson—became King George V when Edward died just before World War I.

  Victoria’s granddaughter married Czar Nicholas II of Russia, and another of her sons was wed to the czar’s aunt. Her eldest daughter married the German kaiser Frederick, and their son became Kaiser Wilhelm upon his father’s death. Thus, when war broke out England’s George V, Russia’s Nicholas II, and Germany’s Wilhelm II were all cousins, directly or through marriage, each of them descended from England’s Queen Victoria.

  When the new kaiser Wilhelm took over Germany, one of his first acts was to fire Bismarck. Seized by various fits of pique and jealousy, he commenced to harass his neighbors by creating a series of international “incidents.” In particular the kaiser resented the nations England, Holland, France, and Spain, which early on had colonized nearly all of the desirable areas of the earth for their imperial coffers. England, for example, had taken India while also occupying Egypt and the best parts of southern Africa; France held much of the north of the so-called Dark Continent. All that was left by the time the Germans got there were parts of equatorial Africa: a steaming, unhealthy, and fetid place, prone to native uprisings and not very prosperous for raw materials or anything else. The Germans seized them anyway, to their ultimate regret, and then tried to muscle in on the profitable French possessions in North Africa.

  Wilhelm appointed himself an admiral, as well as a field marshal, and ordered that the military uniform would henceforth be the official dress at court. Though he could be cranky, the kaiser was not stupid, and when he was shown a Gatling gun—a forerunner of the machine gun—he insisted that it be incorporated into the German army’s infantry battalions. In the meantime, the British army was still talking about the advantages of the cavalry charge, while the French spoke of the “spirit of the bayonet.”

  As the years went on, the kaiser continued to bully and threaten his neighbors. The building of his Dreadnoughts and the huge increase in the German army alarmed the capitals of Europe. Churchill spoke out against Germany’s armaments buildup but was told by the prime minister to tone it down for diplomacy’s sake.

  Meanwhile, for security purposes the French created what had been Bismarck’s greatest nightmare: a dual French-Russian alliance under which each would come to the other’s aid in the event they were attacked by Germany. This, among other things, meant that if hostilities broke out, the Germans would have to fight a two-front war, a huge and ominous development. The alliance nevertheless allowed Germany to trundle out its old complaint of being “encircled” by enemies, a claim it had first employed under Frederick the Great at the beginning of the Seven Years’ War.

  The kaiser was not only highly vexed at the French for this startling diplomatic coup, but his behavior toward England became rooted in one of the world’s worst motives for troublemaking: jealousy. Britain, with its great empire and matchless fleet, remained exalted in the eyes of nations. Germany, according to the historian Martin Gilbert, “united only in 1870, had come too late, it seemed, in the race for power and influence, for empire and respect.” The kaiser was determined to rectify this situation by building the most powerful military machine on earth. Germany, he declared, must have its “place in the sun.”

  The international incidents created by Germany throughout the first decade of the new century and into the second continued to disturb diplomats and caused the French to rearm themselves. The kaiser was apparently spoiling for a war and, as Churchill put it, “
all the alarm bells throughout Europe began to quiver.”8

  In 1905 Germany’s chief military strategist, Count Alfred von Schlieffen, drew up a war plan predicated on the notion of France’s alliance with Russia. It assumed the Russians would be slow in mobilizing their army, so upon the outbreak of war the Germans should move swiftly to attack and defeat the French with a lightning strike through Belgium, violating its neutrality. They would then turn east to meet the Russian threat. In Schlieffen’s mind it was to be another Cannae.

  Meantime, in southern Europe, that most turbulent of regions, war broke out around the end of the first decade between the Ottoman Turks and the Balkan states in a squabble for territory, hegemony, and nationality. By the eve of World War I the fighting had settled down but tensions ran extremely high. The Austrians considered the Balkans part of their empire, but the Russians also considered them within their sphere of influence because the Balkan peoples were fellow Slavs with common linguistic and cultural traits—or so the Russians said.

  Thus, if war broke out between Russia and Austria—which was a German ally—both France and Germany would be dragged into the fray by treaties. The Schlieffen plan would then be set into motion, violating Belgium’s neutrality, which England, bound by a decades-old treaty to protect the commercial seaports on the east coast of the English Channel, had guaranteed to uphold. All the major powers were aligned against one another.

  The tinderbox sparked on June 28, 1914, when a deranged nineteen-year-old Bosnian-Serb anarchist shot and killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the Austrian heir to the Hapsburg throne, and his wife who, against all good sense and advice, were parading through the streets of Sarajevo, Serbia, in an open motorcar.

  The furious Austrians (whom Churchill described as Germany’s “idiot ally”) quickly concluded that this was a case of “state-sponsored terrorism” by the Serbs. In due time, they delivered a twelve-point ultimatum to the Serbian government, for which they had sought and received the blessings of the German kaiser. He fully understood that this could bring down the wrath of Russia, France, and England upon his spiked helmet. But he was convinced that a German victory would at last solve the problem of his country’s “encirclement” by enemies.

  The Serbs acceded to every Austrian demand but the last, which was a virtual takeover of their country (and even that they suggested be put to international arbitration). The implacable Austrians nevertheless declared war and began bombarding the city of Belgrade from gunboats on the Danube.

  At this startling development, the kaiser’s cousin Czar Nicolas II of Russia (they traded telegrams headed “Dear Willy” and “Dear Nicky”) ordered a partial mobilization of his army, hoping the Austrians would reconsider their actions when confronted with the prospect of having to face the giant Russian bear on the field of battle. The Austrians did no such thing, however, but like a typical bully when confronted they ran back into the protective arms of the kaiser, who was beginning to see that things were getting out of hand. German military leaders, however, advised their kaiser to tell cousin Nicky that if he did not cease mobilizing the Germans would have no choice but to do likewise, and war would inevitably follow.

  The Russians for some reason believed this to be a bluff and refused. In the face of continued Russian mobilization, both Germany and Austria-Hungary also mobilized their armies. On August 1, 1914, Germany declared war against Russia, and two days later, citing the Franco-Russian alliance, against France as well. The Schlieffen scheme was immediately set into motion, and the German army began invading Belgium.

  On August 3, Britain issued its own ultimatum demanding that Germany respect Belgium’s neutrality. The Germans responded that the British treaty was “just a scrap of paper” and the ultimatum expired at eleven the next night, prompting British foreign secretary Sir Edward Grey to make his melancholy pronouncement: “The lamps are going out all over Europe. We shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.”

  * * *

  CHURCHILL HAD BEEN PLAYING bridge with friends at his residence in Admiralty House on a Saturday night when he was handed a telegram saying that Germany had declared war on Russia. He immediately gave his cards to a friend and walked over to Number 10 Downing Street, residence of Prime Minister Herbert Asquith.

  He informed the PM it was his intention to mobilize the British fleet, which would entail calling up more than forty thousand naval reservists and putting all ships on a war footing. He had been expressly forbidden to do this that same morning by a cabinet vote—but now, with a German declaration of war against France imminent, he was given tacit approval to go ahead.

  Churchill had established a naval division of infantry consisting of some fourteen thousand officers and enlisted men, complete with a silver-instrumented marching band. A flier himself for nearly two years, Churchill sent the fledgling Royal Naval Flying Corps, which he had nurtured into a valuable arm of the service, out looking for German submarines.

  He seemed to be having the time of his life—but this did not always sit well with the seasoned navy officers at the Admiralty. By tradition the first lord, though nominally in charge, was a political appointee who in practice was a kind of financial liaison between the Admiralty and Parliament. He was supposed to leave the military aspects to the professional sea lords, of whom there were seven. Churchill was having none of that. He did his best to get along with the admirals, and constantly sought their advice. But in the end Churchill—a cavalryman who had never risen above the rank of captain—assumed vicelike control of the British navy and the tactics it would employ to meet the present danger.

  Churchill knew that the new German battle cruiser Goeben was operating in an area where the French were bringing infantry troops across the Mediterranean from their colonies in North Africa, and that the French troopships would be virtual sitting ducks for the powerful German squadron. He ordered the British admiral commanding in the Mediterranean to immediately take steps to shadow Goeben with his own powerful squadron and—should the cruiser attempt to attack the French—to intervene and sink her. It was a bold and in fact illegal move for Churchill to make without knowing for sure that Germany had declared war on France. But as was his practice, Churchill acted decisively, incisively, even impulsively, on the strength of his own egotistical convictions. Mercifully when the British Mediterranean warships hove into view, the Goeben fled toward Turkey, saving Churchill from responsibility for having started a major war. But he would not always be so lucky.

  Once war was declared, Churchill stewed over what the German fleet was planning to do. He boasted in a speech in Liverpool that “if they do not come out and fight…they will be dug out like rats in a hole.” The next day, unfortunately, a German submarine found three British battle cruisers off the coast of Holland and sank them within an hour, one after the other, taking the lives of 1,459 British sailors. Churchill had already ordered these ships to be withdrawn for fear of submarines but it was too late. Not only that, but in the days following the Liverpool speech the Germans had indeed come out—only they were submerged. Four British capital ships, including two Dreadnoughts, were torpedoed and sunk in Scapa Flow, the main British naval base in the Orkney Islands far to the north in Scotland.9

  Next, a part of the German High Seas Fleet steamed across the North Sea and along the east coast of England, bombarding British ports without so much as a shell being lobbed against them. Five hundred civilians, including many women and children, were killed. Another German force under Admiral Maximilian von Spee cruised the Atlantic and Pacific north and south, sinking dozens of British commercial ships. A British squadron under Admiral Sir Christopher Cradock (using older, slower, and weaker ships) engaged von Spee off the coast of Chile. Cradock’s force was wiped out, including the admiral himself, by the German raider force, which continued its depredations.

  Parliament now began questioning Churchill’s competence and calling out “What’s the navy doing?” Lord Kitchene
r, now running the War Office, predicted that if the Germans decided to invade England the navy would be unable to stop them. Clearly in the minds of most in the House of Commons, it was time for someone’s head to roll. The head selected, however, was not Churchill’s but that of the first sea lord, Admiral Prince Louis of Battenberg. A German who had married a daughter of Queen Victoria, he had become a naturalized British citizen and been an upstanding British naval officer for forty-five years. He had just learned that his son, a British infantry officer, had been killed in France when the ax fell on him most unfairly because of his German name, upbringing, and accent. Churchill, an old friend, had the onerous duty of informing Prince Louis of the decision of the liberal cabinet—news that he received “with great dignity.” Later in the war, because of increased anti-German feeling, the king suggested that Louis relinquish his German titles and change his name to something more Anglo-Saxon sounding. He became Sir Louis Mountbatten, a surname since written starkly across the annals of British history. For its part, the British royal family changed its name as well, from the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha to the House of Windsor, which it is known as to this day.

  It was a shameful episode for England that such a loyal subject and military servant as Prince Louis was embarrassed and relieved from his duty by a witch hunt of trumped-up rumors of disloyalty—mostly contained in anonymous letters to the editor—but in any case the war had to go on. A replacement for the first sea lord needed to be decided upon, and the name that kept recurring was the former occupant of that position: the mercurial, contentious, and now retired Admiral John Arbuthnot “Jacky” Fisher, the naval genius who from 1904 to 1910 promoted and oversaw completion of the great Dreadnought fleet now protecting England.

  Ever since Churchill took the post of first lord, he had cultivated Fisher’s friendship and was high on the idea of his nomination. Others, however, weren’t so sure. Both men were unpredictable, impulsive, and volatile, and some foresaw a clash. For his part, the forty-year-old Churchill was keen to have the seventy-four-year-old Fisher aboard, with all of his vast naval experience. As one of Churchill’s friends explained it later, “There was a magnetic mutual attraction between these two and they could not keep away from each other for long.” Churchill later wrote that he was “never in the least afraid of working with him, and I thought that I knew him so well…that we could come through any difficulty together.” Nevertheless, the friend warned Churchill, “You are no doubt prepared for the squalls ahead.”10