A Naval History of World War I
Page 51
Tirpitz’s inconsistencies alienated the kaiser and probably played a major role in thwarting his efforts and those of his most ardent supporters to have him appointed supreme commander of German naval forces. His violent personal attacks against leading naval figures, not to mention Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg, added to his isolation. His policy on submarine warfare also was described as “difficult to follow as it is shifty and marred by the most odious personal character assassinations.”16 The tone and substance of these arguments can be followed in detail, because the postwar official history, Der Krieg zur See—which generally followed the Tirpitz line—as well as Tirpitz’s own memoirs and papers, plus the partial rebuttal by von Pohl’s widow, contains numerous documents.17 They reveal that the German naval leadership during the First World War was far from a Nelsonic band of brothers.
THE FIRST SUBMARINE CAMPAIGN
It is against this background of dissatisfaction with the situation within the German navy and the search for a viable naval strategy that the Germans seem almost to have stumbled into the submarine war against commerce. The Germans insist that they had made no preparations before the war for a submarine attack on British trade and that the number of serviceable submarines available at the beginning of the war corresponded to an estimate of the numbers necessary for their use as an auxiliary in purely military operations.18 Nevertheless, before the war a German naval officer, Kapitänleutnant Blum, had studied the question of cruiser warfare—that is according to prize rules—against British commerce and in the spring of 1914 estimated that 222 submarines would be necessary to conduct it.19 The German submarine commanders claimed that at least some of the inspiration came from the British author who had created Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who published an article titled “Danger! A Story of England’s Peril” in the Strand Magazine in the summer of 1914. The article told the story of how a small Continental power with a force of sixteen submarines was able to destroy British commerce and force Great Britain to conclude peace.20
On 8 October 1914 the Führer der Unterseeboote (commonly known as F.d.U.), Korvettenkapitan Hermann Bauer, submitted a recommendation to the commander of the High Sea Fleet that the Germans begin commerce raiding with submarines along the British coast. The measure would actually be in retaliation for the British announcement that on 2 October a minefield had been laid in the approaches to the English Channel east of the line Dover-Calais. Bauer claimed the latter was in violation of international law.21
The Germans in virtually all measures connected with the submarine war invariably claimed that it was actually the British and the French who had first violated international law with their far-reaching measures against German trade. The British had never formally ratified the 1909 Declaration of London and, indeed, systematically extended their definition of what constituted contraband, liable to seizure. The Germans argued that when this extended to foodstuffs, it constituted an illegal “hunger-blockade” against German women and children. The arguments involving absolute contraband, conditional contraband, free goods, and international law and precedents were frequently complex and legalistic22 There is no space to go into them here, but in general one can say that whereas British and French actions involved property and could be contested in prize courts, the German measures in the submarine war frequently involved loss of life. Neutral and other shipowners might on occasion win awards for damages or restoration of their property in prize courts, but a life, once lost, could never be restored. The British and French therefore had a noted advantage in the propaganda war for the sympathy of the richest and most powerful neutral of them all, the United States. The Germans—at least the naval authorities—however well grounded and legalistic their arguments, seemed never to fully comprehend this.
The first of what was to be a long line of British merchant victims of the submarine war was the small steamer Glitra (866 tons), which was carrying a cargo of coal, coke, iron plates, and oil to Stavanger. She was intercepted by U.17, under the command of Oberleutnant zur See Feldkirchner, on 20 October about 14 miles off Skudesnaes on the Norwegian coast. The crew were given ten minutes to abandon ship before the submarine sank her, but Feldkirchner towed the lifeboats in the direction of land for about fifteen minutes and then pointed them in the proper direction.23 Nevertheless, although the sinking had been carried out under the general conditions of cruiser warfare, that is the ship had not been sunk without warning and the crew had been given time to abandon ship (and in this case at least a little assistance in reaching land), the submarine had not been able to spare the men for a prize crew and the Glitra’s crew had been set adrift in small boats. Had the weather been bad, or the ship far out at sea, they would have been in considerable peril.
The submarine simply did not fit in with the traditional prize law or customs of cruiser warfare or guerre de course. The submarine usually could not spare men for a prize crew, there was no room to take crews of a sunken ship aboard the submarine, and, what would become most important of all, a submarine compromised its safety, which lay in invisibility by surfacing and carefully examining ships that were intercepted. The Germans had a striking demonstration of this when they attempted to disrupt British troop movements in the Channel. On 26 October U.24 torpedoed off Cape Gris-Nez what her commander thought was a troopship laden with troops. The steamer was in fact the Chargeurs Réunis liner Amiral Ganteaume (4,590 tons) carrying about 2,500 Belgian refugees. The steamer did not sink and was towed into Boulogne, but thirty to forty lives were lost. The British and French at first assumed she had hit a mine, but later evidence was found of a German torpedo, and the event was described as “the first atrocity of the German submarine war.”24 Giving the Germans the benefit of the doubt that this was an honest mistake, it demonstrates quite vividly that submarine warfare had a political and diplomatic component beyond its purely military effects. The German navy had to wrestle with this problem for much of the war.
There were no further attacks on British merchantmen for more than a month after the sinking of the Glitra, but on 23 November the Malachite (718 tons), and on the 26th the Primo (1,366 tons), were sunk off the Normandy coast by U.21. The submarine’s commander, Kapitänîeutnant Otto Hersing, appeared almost apologetic in his new role as commerce destroyer, explaining he could not accommodate the crews in the submarine, but that war was war.25
The sinking of the Malachite and Primo were not part of a concerted attack by submarines on commerce. The German navy had not yet decided on such a course, although Ingenohl had been in favor of giving Bauer’s proposal a trial. Von Pohl did not consider that British actions justified, at least for the moment, severe German violations of international law, and the chancellor and German Foreign Office were also opposed. However, pressure for a submarine campaign began to build within the fleet and outside the navy. Albert Ballin, the influential director of the Hamburg-Amerika line, was in favor of such a course, recommending the most brutal blockade. There were other German professors and financial experts who theorized the British had only six to eight weeks’ food supply. Tirpitz speculated on the possibility of a submarine campaign to an American correspondent in November, apparently as a trial balloon to ascertain the attitude of the United States. Publication of the interview created a sensation in Germany, and stimulated formation of a “U-Boat party,” which demanded unrestricted submarine warfare. Submarine warfare became as much a political as a purely military issue. Von Pohl’s attitude also changed after the 2 November proclamation by the British designating the entire North Sea a British military area (see chapter 2).
Bauer submitted a second memorandum at the end of December 1914, arguing that there were enough submarines on hand to justify a commencement of commerce raiding at the end of January. He now had powerful support within the fleet, for on 20 November and 7 December, Vice Admiral Scheer, commanding the Second Battle Squadron, also had submitted private memoranda recommending a commercial blockade by submarines. Scheer, however, tended to look on
the submarine blockade as a means of forcing the Royal Navy to give battle. The senior officers of the fleet approved both Bauer’s and Scheer’s proposals and passed them on to the Admiralstab. They went a step further, for they considered British action had justified using the full potential of the submarine as a weapon, which meant, in effect, sinking ships without warning. They were in fact calling for unrestricted submarine warfare. By January 1915 there was also considerable agitation in the German press for a submarine campaign, and in late January the Admiralstab finally agreed. At a conference at Pless on 1 February, attended by the chancellor, foreign secretary, and chief of the army general staff, the decision was reached to proclaim a submarine blockade on 4 February. Von Pohl—who had just assumed command of the High Sea Fleet—used the opportunity of the kaiser’s visit to Wilhelmshaven on 4 February to secure imperial consent. Müller, who claims to have doubted at the time the Germans had sufficient submarines, implies the kaiser was hustled into the agreement.26
The German proclamation of 4 February 1915 declared the waters around Great Britain and Ireland, including the whole of the English Channel, to be a war zone in which every merchant ship encountered would be destroyed, without it always being possible to assure the safety of passengers and crew. Because of the British misuse of neutral flags, it might not always be possible to prevent attacks meant for hostile ships from falling on neutrals. There would be no danger for shipping north of the Shetland Islands, in the eastern portion of the North Sea, and in a 30-mile-wide strip along the Dutch coast. The German submarine commanders were ordered to make the safety of their submarines their primary consideration and to avoid rising to the surface to examine a ship. There was no guarantee a steamer flying a neutral flag or carrying the distinguishing marks of a neutral actually was a neutral, and its destruction was therefore justified unless other attendant circumstances indicated its neutrality.27
The Germans had only 37 submarines when what is generally called the “first unrestricted submarine campaign” began on 28 February. This figure is deceptively high, for it includes boats used for training, completing trials, or undergoing lengthy repair. Captain Gayer claimed that during the first offensive from February to October the Germans never had more than 25 trained submarines available for blockade duties in the North Sea. Eight were elderly, with unreliable gasoline engines, and not all submarines had deck guns.28 Normally only about one-third of the available boats were in their operational areas at any given time. These were very slender resources with which to begin a campaign that Kapitänleutnant Blum’s prewar study had estimated needed more than 200 submarines and that, most important of all, was virtually guaranteed to embroil Germany in difficulties with neutrals.
The U-boat Inspectorate, established as a separate entity at the end of 1913 to control submarine training, maintenance, and development, had operated on the assumption that it would be a short war. At the beginning of the war, there were approximately 17 boats still in varying stages of construction. The German mobilization plan provided for the immediate award of contracts for 17 additional submarines on the outbreak of war. These contracts were placed between August and October of 1914 and allowed for a building time of 18 months for the first boat of the series, with the 17 submarines to be delivered between December 1915 and December 1916. Few thought the war would last that long, so not surprisingly the U-Boat Inspectorate gave priority to finishing those prewar contracts that could be made ready within three months. The German navy also appropriated a submarine under construction in German yards for Norway and in November took over five submarines under construction for the Austrians.
The conquest of Flanders and its proximity to the British coast led the Germans to order 17 (two were earmarked for the Austrians) UB.I-class coastal submarines and 15 UC.I-class minelayers in October and November. These small, relatively simple submarines were attractive to the Germans because they could be built quickly—four months was the contract time for the UB boats—shipped in sections by rail to Antwerp and Hoboken for final assembly, and then towed through the Scheldt and the Ghent-Bruges canal to their base at Bruges. The UC boats had the disadvantage of having their mine storage tubes under water, so that the crew could not change the depth settings while at sea. The Germans did develop a true oceangoing minelayer with dry storage for the mines, but in January 1915 ordered only four of these UE-class minelayers on the assumption the war would be over by autumn of 1915. In April the Imperial Naval Office also ordered 12 of the improved and larger UB.II coastal submarines. They deliberately limited the order to the number of submarines that could be finished before the end of the year, for they did not anticipate much use for the type in peacetime.29
The Germans did not find it easy to rapidly increase the number of submarines in service. By the end of February 1915, they had commissioned only twelve submarines since the beginning of the war. On the other hand, by that date they had only lost seven.30 However, losses to enemy action were not the real problem; except for a few periods, new construction always surpassed losses. The actual problem was to obtain a surplus sufficient to operate against the trade routes. The German yards encountered the same problems the other belligerents had with rapid wartime expansion. Many of the yards called to work on the new larger submarines were relatively inexperienced, subcontractors who provided engines ran into technical difficulties, and everyone felt the shortage of trained labor, especially as many experienced men had been mobilized. The result was that deliveries on time throughout the war proved to be the exception rather than the rule. Furthermore, the U-boat Inspectorate has been criticized for failure to do everything possible to accelerate construction. They prepared an extensive submarine construction program for no less than 154 newer and better boats, but the program was really designed for the postwar period, and deliveries would have been spread out until 1923–24.31
It is not surprising that there was fairly widespread criticism by German writers in the postwar period that the Germans embarked on this first submarine campaign prematurely and without the proper means. Tirpitz is a prime example. He asserted the decision had been made without consulting him, and that it would have been preferable to restrict the submarine blockade to the Thames rather than the grandiose proclamation concerning the entire North Sea.32
The sweeping nature of the first German unrestricted submarine campaign ran into stiff diplomatic opposition and was modified even before it began. The United States government delivered a stiff note that declared that if American ships or lives were lost, the German government would be held to “a strict accountability.” Bethmann Hollweg and the German Foreign Office tried to reassure the Americans by announcing that submarine commanders would be ordered not to harm neutral shipping provided it was recognized as such. This, however, infuriated the naval leaders, for it would have greatly diminished the effect of the submarine campaign. They had hoped to increase the impact of the small number of submarines available by terrorizing neutrals, who were responsible for about one-quarter of all traffic to the British Isles. Scheer considered the U-boat campaign “ruined,” and von Pohl protested that submarines could not determine the nationality of ships without exposing themselves to great danger. The new head of the Admiralstab, Vice Admiral Bachmann, was in fact ready to call off the campaign, but because the announcement had already been made, the Germans were prisoners of their own rhetoric. The result was something of a compromise. On 18 February submarine commanders were ordered to spare ships flying a neutral flag unless they were recognized as enemy by their structure, place of registration, course, and general behavior. Hospital ships also were to be spared unless they were obviously being used to transport troops from Britain to France. Ships belonging to the Belgian Relief Commission were to be spared as well. The submarine commanders were ordered to prosecute the submarine campaign with the utmost vigor, and were assured they would not be held responsible if, despite the exercise of great care, mistakes were made.33
The situation was ripe for di
plomatic incidents. Comparatively young German officers, naturally aggressive—and if an officer was not aggressive he had no business being a submarine commander—had to make quick judgments under what were frequently difficult conditions. His actions had a certain finality; there was apt to be no chance for second guessing. His British or French counterpart enforcing the blockade had the advantage that his actions could be second guessed by others, for he fulfilled his duty by capturing suspicious vessels and sending them into port. It was up to others, diplomats or admiralty lawyers, to argue over the fine points, and if he had erred, no lives were lost and it is likely the only damages were monetary.
In the first three months of the campaign, March to May 1915, the Germans had an average of six U-boats at sea each day. There were usually four actually in the operational areas and usually two to the west of the British Isles. They did well, and in the North Sea and around the British Isles they sank: in March, 29 ships representing approximately 89,500 gross tons; in April, 33 ships, 38,600 tons; and in May, 53 ships, 126,900 tons. The Germans lost only 5 submarines, establishing what Admiral Hezlet terms an “exchange ratio” of 20, that is 20 steamers sunk for every German submarine lost. The British antisubmarine measures were largely ineffective. The substantial numbers of small craft in the Auxiliary Patrol doggedly put to sea, often in appalling weather, but they were spread thin given the large area to protect. The British began to arm merchant ships, whose masters were ordered to turn toward a hostile submarine and force it to dive. Captain Fryatt, master of the Great Eastern Railway packet Brussels (1,380 tons), used this method to escape from U.33 off the Maas light vessel on 28 March, but in doing so made himself a marked man in German eyes.
Although now largely forgotten, the case of Captain Fryatt aroused considerable attention at the time. On the night of 22–23 June 1916, the Brussels was intercepted by German destroyers and taken into Zeebrugge. Fryatt was tried before a military court-martial as a franc-tireur, that is, an individual outside the regular armed services who had tried to injure German military forces. He was found guilty and promptly shot. The British regarded it as judicial murder aimed at terrorizing merchant seamen, and once again German harshness backfired on the diplomatic front. Their action was widely condemned in the neutral press; the New York Times, for example, termed it “a deliberate murder.” For the British, Captain Fryatt became yet another victim of German atrocities.34