Dreadnought, Britain, Germany and the Coming of the Great War

by Robert K. Massie

  In a parliamentary sense, the memorandum's radical feature was that the Reichstag would be asked to commit itself to building a fixed, number of warships over a number of years; this commitment would be binding and unalterable; for seven years neither these deputies nor future deputies would have the power to intervene and override. This was revolutionary: Admiral Hollmann had never objected to appearing annually, with that year's request, before the Reichstag. Indeed, Hollmann had considered this both a necessity and a virtue. "The Reichstag will never agree to be bound to a formal program for years in advance," he had argued. Besides, he continued, "the art of war is changeable on sea and no naval ministry can prophesy what we shall need ten years hence." Tirpitz, on arriving, had viewed the result of Hollmann's philosophy with contempt. "When I became State Secretary," he wrote, "the German Navy: was a collection of experiments in shipbuilding surpassed in exoticism only by the Russian Navy of Nicholas II." Even the British Navy suffered from this syndrome, "but there, money is of no importance; if they built a class of ships wrongly, they just threw the whole lot into the corner and built another. We could not permit ourselves that… I needed a Bill which would protect the continuity of construction of the fleet" and remove from the Reichstag "the temptation to interfere each year in technical details." The Reichstag, in other words, having voted a fixed number of ships, would have nothing further to say.

  William approved Tirpitz' memorandum and the Navy Secretary moved quickly to draft a new bill. Delegating all routine administrative matters to a deputy at 13 Leipzigerplatz, he retreated first to Ems, then to St. Blasien, in order to think and work freely. He brought to the Black Forest a team of comrades and specialists from all parts of the navy, modeling it on Nelson's "Band of Brothers." Discussions were open and freewheeling; Tirpitz threw out ideas and then sat back, primus inter pares, to listen. No idea was sacred: "Every word of the draft Bill was altered probably a dozen times in our discussions at St. Blasien," he said. Ultimately, "we almost always came to a mutual decision."

  The timetable was rigorous. Every document carried instructions: I "At once," "Very urgent," "Finish today." On June 19, Tirpitz asked his colleagues to revise within six days all budget figures for the fiscal year 1898 in light of the new plan. By July 2, he was given a preliminary draft of the Navy Bill itself. Repeatedly, Tirpitz stressed to his co-workers that the key to their deliberations was that England was the enemy. An effective stimulus was provided by the June 26 Diamond Jubilee Naval Review, when the Royal Navy displayed 165 warships in five lines stretching over thirty miles.

  By the end of July, reports of unusual activity in the Leipzigerplatz were spreading across Berlin. Tirpitz, to allay fears in the Navy High Command that its functions were being purloined, called on Admiral Knorr. The two agreed to establish a joint committee. Tirpitz saw to it that the committees received no information and had nothing to do. Six months later, when Knorr challenged Tirpitz directly, it was too late. The Navy Bill was before the Reichstag; Tirpitz went to the Kaiser and asked William to lay down, once and for all, the responsibility of the Navy Minister for ship types and shipbuilding. William obliged and Knorr was silenced. Tirpitz employed a similar tactic when the Treasury State Secretary expressed fears about the estimated costs of the new fleet. Tirpitz called on the State Secretary and deferentially promised formation of a joint committee. Meanwhile, he redoubled his efforts to win over the Kaiser and the Chancellor. In September, when the Treasury Secretary again raised objections, Tirpitz replied, "With all the good will in the world, I regret that I am unable to request the Reich Chancellor for any further decisions on a question which has already been decided on All-Highest level with the knowledge of the Reich Chancellor."

  At the end of August, with the draft bill almost complete, Tirpitz embarked on a round of visits to leading German figures to obtain endorsements. On August 24 he called on Bismarck, who had been visited by no minister of the Imperial Government since his dismissal seven years before. To prepare the way, Tirpitz had persuaded the Kaiser to name the next large warship to be launched, a ten-thousand-ton armored cruiser, Furst Bismarck (Prince Bismarck). William reluctantly had agreed and Tirpitz had written to Friedrichsruh requesting an audience. The letter had been returned with a message that the Prince did not open letters without the sender's name clearly written on the envelope. Tirpitz wrote a second letter, properly labeled, and was told to come.

  He arrived at noon on August 24 to find the family already at lunch. Bismarck, at the head of the table, rose slightly when the visitor entered and gestured him to a chair. The former Chancellor, tormented by neuralgia, ate with difficulty, holding a hot-water bottle to his cheek, picking carefully over a plate of chopped meat, and refilling his glass until he had drunk a bottle and a half of champagne. When lunch was finished, Bill Bismarck's wife lit her father-in-law's long pipe and the women withdrew. The atmosphere was heavy. Bismarck, eighty-two, had no interest in Weltmacht, sea power, or battleships. Tirpitz, forty-eight, did not hope for serious endorsement, only a muting of opposition. Suddenly, Bismarck began to speak: His support for a fleet could not be purchased by flattery, even by the compliment of naming a warship Furst Bismarck- Besides, he could not put on his uniform and come to Kiel to christen the new vessel; he did not wish to appear as a ruin in public. Tirpitz suggested that one of his daughters-in-law could perform the ceremony. That decision, said Bismarck, would be up to them. Tirpitz moved to his larger subjects: Germany, for political reasons, needed greater sea power, and modern sea power is embodied in battleships. The Prince replied that he preferred a swarm of small ships- attacking "like hornets." He wandered towards old grievances; Caprivi ("a wooden ramrod"), the failure to renew the Reinsurance Treaty with Russia ("a terrible disaster"). When Tirpitz argued that a fleet would make England more anxious for a German alliance, Bismarck responded that as individuals the English were worthy, but that the nation had "shopkeeper politics." England's military potential was contemptible; if they came to Germany, he said, 'we should slay them with the butt ends of our rifles."

  After two hours at the table, Bismarck invited Tirpitz to go for a drive in the forest. Two big bottles of beer were placed in the carriage, one on either side of the Chancellor. During the drive, he drank both. Speaking English in order to exclude the coachman, Bismarck reminisced over his career, lambasted William, talked of his dead wife, and said of the British Navy that "he liked the sailors but not the admirals." He had given up hunting, he said, because he could no longer bring himself "to put a hole in the shining coat of a beautiful animal." He ignored a rain shower, smoked his pipe, and apparently forgot about his neuralgia. At the end of the carriage ride, he invited Tirpitz to stay for supper. When Tirpitz left Friedrichsruh, he carried a letter in which Bismarck supported a modest increase in the navy. A few days later, the Bismarck press expressed a similar opinion.

  Tirpitz repeated this success in visits to the King of Saxony, the Prince Regent of Bavaria, the Grand Dukes of Baden and Oldenburg,;and the municipal councils of the Hanseatic towns. By September 15, the Navy Secretary was ready to meet the Chancellor and Urge that the Bill be placed before the Reichstag as soon as possible. Hohenlohe consented and on October 19, the final draft of the Bill was forwarded to the Reich Printing Office with instructions to handle it as a state secret.

  Preparing to convince the Reichstag, Tirpitz the naval strategist now transformed himself into Tirpitz the master politician. It was traditional in Imperial Germany for chancellors, ministers, and bureaucrats at all levels to scorn the members of the popularly elected body. Bismarck had shown an Olympian contempt for the parliament he had created; Hohenlohe's aloofness was shy and brittle; Bülow's attitude was to be supercilious, sardonic, and malicious. At times, the Reichstag's control of the national purse drove frustrated ministers to rage; Hollmann as Navy Minister was sometimes so irate at the repeated truncation of his budgets that he pounded the rostrum with his fists. Tirpitz approached the Reichstag differently. Possessed of
the facts, Tirpitz seemed to imply, the deputies naturally would reach the correct conclusions. He devoted himself to influencing them. He was patient, courteous, and good-humored, always willing to repeat for a deputy who had not heard or understood. He flattered and entertained both leaders and rank and file. Groups of deputies were invited to meet the Navy Minister confidentially in his heavily curtained office in the Leipzigerplatz. Sitting around a big table, they found the Admiral beaming with goodwill, eager to answer questions and share opinions. Escorted tours of naval shipyards and visits to anchored warships were offered. But behind his smiling urbanity and deferential charm, Tirpitz never retreated an iota from his program. His tactics reminded one observer of the Rostand play in which a lady is asked how she managed to pass the grim sentries guarding a military fortress. "I smiled at them," she said.

  On November 30, the Kaiser prepared the way for the Navy Bill by informing the Reichstag that "the development of our battle fleet has not kept up with the tasks which Germany is compelled" to assign to it, adding: "Our fleet is not strong enough to secure our home ports and waters in the event of hostilities." William denied any intent "to compete with sea powers of the first rank." Hohenlohe, speaking a week later at the first reading of the Navy Bill, seconded this promise: "We are not thinking of competing with the great sea powers… a policy of adventure is far from our minds… [Nevertheless] in maritime questions Germany must be able to speak a modest, but above all, a wholly German word." Tirpitz' maiden speech also stressed the limits of the program: "Our fleet has the function of a protective fleet," he said. Its object would be to give Germany "a chance against a superior enemy," forcing "even a sea power of the first rank to think twice before attacking our coasts." The Navy Minister produced the letter from Bismarck, in which the Prince had written, "I find the totals demanded reasonable for our needs, although I should have preferred more attention to cruisers. This view would not restrain me, if I were a Reichstag deputy, from voting for the Bill." Tirpitz, reading the letter aloud, omitted the reference to cruisers. He stressed the administrative and political advantages of a fixed law which established for years in advance the strength of the navy and its annual building program. There would be no further alarm in the Reichstag over limitless fleet plans' and an end would come to the disruptive parliamentary battles over types and number of ships to be built. Shipbuilding would be handled in a business-like, Teutonic manner, shipyards would know what orders to expect, costs would be controlled. Above all, a fleet would be built; Tirpitz reminded his audience that after the 1873 Reichstag had authorized a navy of fourteen armored ships, it had required twenty-one years to obtain the funds from successive Reichstags to construct them.

  The long-term, binding nature of the Bill and its proposed restriction of the Reichstag's right to control annual budgets worried the deputies. Most did not care whether the navy built battleships or cruisers; the sums proposed by Tirpitz seemed reasonable. But the prospect of making themselves irrelevant was alarming. The press stimulated their fears. "If the popular assembly allows itself to be bargained out of a part of its annual budget rights," warned the Berliner Tageblatt, "it will be sawing off the branch on which it sits." The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung pointed out, "The present Reichstag is actually expected to rob its successors of a part of their rights."

  The Center, heavily Catholic and South German, was inclined to support the Bill; opposition came from the conservative right, which preferred to spend money on the army, and from the Social Democratic left, which disliked spending money on armaments. Tirpitz reached out to all parties. A White Paper, "The Sea Interest of the German Empire," was distributed in the Reichstag. It contained statistics on population growth, emigration, trade, shipping, merchant-ship and harbor construction, development of colonies, and overseas investments, and a comparison of the battle fleets of Germany, England, France, Russia, Italy, Japan, and the United States. These figures proved that, in most measurements of national power, Germany had experienced spectacular growth since the formation of the Empire. But the record of the German Navy was woeful. Between 1883 and 1897, the Imperial Navy had declined from fourth in the world to fifth or sixth. In 1897, the White Paper declared, Britain possessed sixty-two armored ships of over five thousand tons, France had thirty-six, Russia eighteen, Germany twelve.

  To supplement and broaden the effect of his personal lobbying, Tirpitz created a press bureau within the Navy Ministry. "I considered it my duty," he explained, "to bring home to the broader masses of the people the interests that were here at stake." The bureau, staffed by enthusiastic young naval officers, sought out journalists and plied them with information and suggestions; unfavorable comparisons with the size of foreign fleets were particularly stressed. Every article or letter hostile to the Navy Bill was answered and politely but firmly refuted. For small papers lacking naval correspondents, helpful articles already written were supplied. Special attention was devoted to newspapers in South Germany. Tirpitz' officers visited universities seeking professors, especially economists, who would speak in favor of the Navy Bill, stressing the value of a fleet as a protector of German industry and foreign trade. Professors and their students were invited to visit Kiel and Wilhelmshaven, where they were received by eager naval officers and ships' bands and escorted through the dockyards. In June 1898, the German Navy League (Flottenverein) was formed in order to propagate the theme of world power, sea power, and a larger navy. Fritz Krupp, whose giant factory at Essen made naval cannon and armor plate, was a major contributor; other industrialists anxious for titles, decorations or imperial favor contributed generously. The League's message was that colonies and fleets were essential to national greatness and prosperity; the corollary was that Great Britain, jealous of German sea power, was the enemy and would do everything possible to block Germany's "place in the sun." League membership rose rapidly, from 78,000 in 1898, to 600,000 in 1901, to 1.1 million in 1914. The league published a newspaper, Die Flotte, magazines, journals, and books glorifying naval history and spreading Anglophobia. A handsomely illustrated Annual Naval Album devoted to these themes appeared every Christmas; the Kaiser regularly bought six hundred copies, which he distributed as prizes in German schools.

  When the Bill was referred by the full Reichstag to the Budget Committee, Tirpitz and his staff devoted special attention to Committee members. Interests and connections were analyzed to see where influence might be brought to bear. Fritz Krupp and Albert Ballin of the Hamburg-America Line spoke in favor of the Bill. The Association of German Industrialists and the presidents of seventy-eight chambers of commerce demanded a fleet. Unlikely statements came from surprising sources. "All peoples which have played a leading and creative role in the development of humanity have been mighty sea powers," an important banker was heard to say.

  The German nation, and with it the Reichstag, began to respond. When the Bill reached its final debate on March 23, 1898, everyone knew it would pass. Eugen Richter of the liberal Radical Union, who opposed the Bill, prophesied: "If it is true that… Neptune's trident belongs in our fist, then for the great Reich with its great big fist, a little fleet is not enough. We shall have to have more and more battleships…" August Bebel, patriarch of the Social Democrats, predicted the enemy against whom the fleet would be built: "There is, especially on the right side of this house, a large group of fanatical anglophobes made up of men who want to pick a fight with England… But to believe that with our fleet, yes, 'even if it is finished to the very last ship demanded in this law, we could take up the cudgels against England, is to approach the realm of insanity. Those who demand it belong, not in the Reichstag, but in the madhouse." The Reichstag laughed.

  [On March 26, 1898 the Navy Bill passed, 212-139. Tirpitz and Bülow informed William, and Bülow added to his message the words "Long Live the Kaiser!" From Hong Kong, where he was serving with the German East Asian Squadron, Prince Henry, William's brother, telegraphed: "german emperor, berlin. hurrah! henry." Philip Eulenburg was rha
psodic: "On this day of honor for Your Majesty, I recall all the struggles and suffering out of which, like a phoenix, today's success has emerged. I thank God with overflowing heart for having granted us this Kaiser." William, in his joy at what Tirpitz had wrought, insisted that the Navy Minister be elevated to sit in the Prussian Ministry of State. The navy, he argued in a letter to Hohenlohe, "is like the Army a fully equal partner… in our national defense… Moreover there is the Admiral himself. No sooner was he home from China, a man with a weakened constitution, than cheerfully and alone, he took up the awesome task of orientating an entire people, fifty million truculent, short-sighted, and foul-tempered Germans, and of bringing them around to an opposite view. He accomplished this seemingly impossible feat in eight months. Truly a powerful man! A man who so gloriously accomplishes such a gigantic work must be a full-fledged member of My administration!" Hohenlohe bowed and Rear Admiral! Tirpitz took his seat in the innermost circle of the Imperial government. He would remain, the most influential of the Kaiser's ministers, for nineteen years.

  The prominent feature of the First Navy Law-a fixed number of battleships not subject to alteration by annual vote of the Reichstag -had far-reaching implications, but the immediate military effect was not greatly significant. The seven battleships to be provided under the Law still would leave the German Navy weaker than the British or French fleet and still wholly unable to protect the extensive overseas trade which Tirpitz had cited as a reason for naval expansion. Neither in strength nor in organization would the German Fleet become a serious offensive weapon, although in a war with Russia, it could control the Baltic. Nevertheless, a year after his Reichstag victory, the Navy Secretary declared himself satisfied with the 1898 Navy Law. The Reichstag, he claimed, had provided a fleet which met the needs of the Empire. The Admiral may have hoped that, in 1904, when the First Navy Law had run its course, the Reichstag might again be persuaded to expand the fleet. Yet in February 1899, appearing before the Reichstag Budget Committee, he said, "I declare expressly that in no way has the intention to submit a new navy plan been manifested; that on the contrary in all quarters concerned the firmest intention exists to carry out the Navy Law and to observe the limits therein laid down."