Strange Intelligence: Memoirs of Naval Secret Service

by Hector C. Bywater

  Although they suffered losses from this cause in 1917, it was not until the spring of 1918 that the Germans began to experience the full effects of our vigorous mining policy. Then casualties came thick and fast. Minesweeping flotillas were shattered; patrol craft detailed to escort outgoing and returning submarines were blown up wholesale, while many of their charges met a like fate. During the first six months of 1918 more than a hundred German vessels were destroyed in and about the Bight – that is, at the rate of four a week. No squadron or flotilla could move from its anchorage without the almost certain risk of losing units.

  A vivid picture of what the Germans suffered at this period was drawn by the late Admiral Scheer in his war diary, from which the following notes are extracted:

  The number of mines laid in the North Sea during 1917–18 grew steadily greater. Almost daily we suffered losses among the minesweeping craft, while among the ships used to escort the U-boats in their passage through the minefields there had been so many losses that in March 1917 the fleet had only four such vessels left. On 29 March the outpost boat Bismarck ran on a mine and sank; only three of the crew could be saved.

  11 May – Minesweeping according to plan. New mines are observed, and the leading boat of the 5th half-flotilla strikes one and sinks. Four men missing, including the commanding officer of the half-flotilla.

  14 May – Orion, one of the third minesweeping flotilla, reports that submarine U-59, which was being convoyed out to sea, and the minesweeper Fulda, have struck mines and sunk.

  15 May – While trying to get into communication with U-59 by tapping, the outpost boat Heinrich Rathjen strikes a mine and sinks.

  16 May – The auxiliary minesweeping flotilla is to mark the spot of U-59’s accident and try to get into communication with the submarine by tapping. In the course of these operations minesweeper No. 14 hits a mine, and in attempting to reach her the torpedo boat No. 78 does likewise. Both boats sink. Attempts to communicate with U-59 must consequently be given up.

  The same night torpedo boat S-27, of the outpost flotilla, hits a mine and sinks while convoying U-86. And so it went on from day to day.

  There is ample evidence to prove that these unceasing losses from British mines shook the nerves of the German personnel. The supply of volunteers for the minesweeping service (Himmelfahrts-Dienst, or ‘ascension service’, as the German sailors named it in grim jest) soon failed, and men had to be drafted to the vessels. After the war an officer of the German Navy made the following significant admission:

  Next to the blockade, the intensive British minelaying was the chief cause of our collapse at sea. For the first two years of the war we laughed at your mines, which often failed to explode, and, when they did explode, only shook us up a bit. But after that we ceased to laugh. Mines began to sprout by the thousand, and every time one exploded it blew a ship to pieces. From 1917 onward our Bight minesweeping formations were known as the ‘Suicide Club.’

  We lost ships almost daily, sometimes two or three a day. It often happened that one of our swept channels, reported absolutely safe and clear at dusk, would be found at dawn heavily mined, the first intimation being the blowing-up of some unlucky destroyer or sweeper, or perhaps two or three simultaneously.

  A third, and perhaps the most direct, cause of German naval disintegration was the inconsiderate treatment of the bluejackets by their officers. Since the war an intense propaganda campaign has been conducted in Germany by naval officers of the old regime. This movement, which is more or less openly supported by the naval section of the Ministry of Defence, has two objects: the revival of national enthusiasm for a strong fleet, and the restoration of the prestige of the naval officers’ corps. Thanks to this mass indoctrination, it is almost universally believed in Germany today that the great fleet mutiny of 1918 was the outcome, not of enemy pressure, but of treason on the part of the ‘politicians’. In other words, the ‘stab-in-the-back’ legend is coming to be accepted as historical truth.

  But our intelligence reports from the beginning of 1917 told a different story. Pieced together, they would form a chronological and remarkably accurate record of the growth of the movement in the High Seas Fleet, which culminated in open mutiny. For obvious reasons these cannot be quoted here, but the tale they told has since been repeated in more detail by a German authority, Herr Emil Alboldt, who served for more than twenty years in the Imperial Navy, latterly as warrant officer. His revelations will be new to the British public.

  His profound knowledge of conditions in the fleet, before and during the war, made him one of the principal witnesses heard before the Reichstag Committee, which, in 1925, inquired into the causes of the naval débâcle. Writing in no sense as an anti-nationalist, but rather as a passionate lover of his old service, he has drawn up a scathing indictment of those whom he holds responsible for its humiliating end.

  According to his account, which is well documented throughout, the German naval personnel began the war in a spirit of confidence, though tempered with a wholesome respect for the British Navy. But as month after month went by without disturbing the somnolence of the High Seas Fleet, which lay idle in its barricaded ports, the fighting spirit of the men gradually waned. Two severe defeats (Heligoland Bight and the Dogger Bank), sustained by German cruiser squadrons through lack of battle-fleet support, caused the sailors to question the capacity of their leaders.

  Even the partial success gained at Jutland against the British battlecruisers failed to reassure the men, offset as it was by the heavy punishment inflicted on the battleships by the Grand Fleet’s gunfire. Herr Alboldt roundly declares that, but for the misty weather prevailing at Jutland, ‘nothing could have prevented the British from shooting our whole fleet to pieces, ship by ship, thanks to their superiority in gun range and speed’. Professional ignorance on the part of the senior officers of the old navy was responsible, he asserts, for the inferior armament and speed of its ships.

  But his most sensational disclosures relate to the behaviour of German naval officers in the war – a point constantly emphasised in our intelligence reports of the period. To this factor, more than any other, he attributes the ultimate catastrophe. He paints a vivid picture of the hardships and abuses suffered by the lower-deck personnel. At a time when the men’s rations had been reduced to the lowest point, and when such food as was served out was often unfit for human consumption, the officers, he asserts, continued to live on the fat of the land. The usual wine allowance to sick and wounded seamen in hospital had long since been cut off, yet officers’ wine parties were of almost daily occurrence.

  Sometimes the spectacle of their officers feasting and drinking choice vintages proved too much for the half-starved bluejackets, and ominous incidents occurred. For example, in July 1917 the officers of the battleship Thüringen were at luncheon when suddenly a torrent of water from a hosepipe on deck poured down through the wardroom skylight, drenching them all to the skin. ‘The culprit was never discovered.’ In the same month the officers of the fleet were, at their own request, supplied with automatic pistols for personal protection – a fact, it is interesting to note, mentioned in an ID report at the time.

  Discontent on the lower deck was fostered by an extreme severity of discipline, which often assumed the pettiest forms; by high-handed, and even brutal, behaviour on the part of the officers, and by the arbitrary curtailment of leave. In the summer of 1917 – only a year after the ‘victory’ of Jutland – serious mutinies broke out in several vessels, including the fleet flagship, Friedrich der Grosse. On one occasion, at the ceremony of hoisting the colours in this ship, a scrubbing brush was hoisted on the flagstaff in place of the naval ensign, rigging and boat tackle were cut through, and the mutineers threatened to throw the gun sights overboard.

  Innumerable instances of arrogant and selfish conduct on the part of officers are cited, based for the most part on official evidence. Herr Alboldt draws a striking contrast between this state of affairs and conditions in the British Nav
y. From the beginning of the war, he states, the British officers practised self-denial, and so retained the respect and affection of their men.

  While the half-starved German sailors were rarely granted leave, were confined to their ships or barracks under iron discipline, and given no opportunities for recreation, the British bluejackets received abundant rations, which differed neither in quantity nor quality from those of the officers; they were encouraged to indulge in all forms of sport, and were treated generally by their superiors as honoured comrades, not as despised underlings. Consequently, the morale and discipline of the British personnel remained at the highest level all through the war.

  Of special interest are Herr Alboldt’s comments on the proposed sortie of the High Seas Fleet just before the Armistice. Many of the officers, it appears, had been boasting that rather than see the fleet surrendered to the British they would blow it up, or at least cause it to be sunk in battle. The German seamen, however, were in no mind to be led to the slaughter merely to save the prestige of officers whom they despised. They seem to have discussed among themselves the chances that the fleet would have in a pitched battle with the Grand Fleet, and to have come unanimously to the conclusion that crushing defeat was inevitable.

  Herr Alboldt gives a long list of cogent reasons for this lack of confidence. In 1918, he states, the British had adopted a highly efficient type of armour-piercing shell, which would have wrought havoc in the strongest German ships, and in view of the British superiority in range, the Germans could not have hoped to escape. Moreover, the new and ‘secret’ minefields on which the German fleet was to rely for the protection of its flanks had already been discovered by the British. (That is perfectly true. Thanks in part to the close watch kept on German minelayers by our patrol craft, particularly submarines, and in part to our intelligence reports from the enemy bases, the position of every new minefield became known to us almost immediately after it had been laid.)

  Reverting to the ‘stab-in-the-back’ legend now being circulated by former naval officers, Herr Alboldt declares that if such an assassin’s blow were really struck, it can only have come from the navy itself. In this connection he cites Professor Birk, one of the leading citizens of Kiel, who has written:

  I have a feeling of unexampled indignation at the conduct of the navy, which in the fatherland’s supreme hour of need stabbed the army in the back, and thus brought about the peace terms under which we now live. Never in the world has there been a greater act of treason than that committed by the German Navy in November 1918. The magnitude of this crime and its terrible consequences have wiped out from the memory of the German people all former services rendered by the navy.

  It should be added that Herr Alboldt’s credentials as a well-informed and conscientious witness are vouched for by Professor Walther Schücking, who was chairman of the Reichstag Committee that investigated the antecedents of the German collapse, and who has written an introduction to Alboldt’s remarkable book.

  Apart from our intelligence reports from Germany, the first intimation we had that the German naval command was planning some important move came in a curiously negative fashion. In the spring of 1918 we found that German minelaying operations in the Dover Patrol area, and also in the Channel, were becoming much less extensive; in fact, they all but ceased in the Dover Patrol zone. Most of this work had been done by the small UC submarine minelayers based on Bruges. Originally there had been seventy-nine of these venomous little craft, and, as our intelligence records showed, nearly forty of them were still in existence at the beginning of 1918. Yet, as time went on, it became more and more difficult to discover their whereabouts. Beyond the fact that they had obviously left Bruges we had no information about them – for a time.

  But the mystery was very soon cleared up by the ID. It was found that all the UC boats had been sent back to Wilhelmshaven and Cuxhaven, whence they were making periodical trips across the North Sea, loaded to capacity with mines. What, then, was their mission? It was nothing less than the sowing of a great belt of mines off the Firth of Tay, some 45 miles east of the Bell Rock. As soon as a UC boat had dropped its deadly cargo in the appointed place, closing up another gap in the ever-extending arc, it returned to one or other of the German North Sea bases for a fresh load. Throughout the summer they came and went with timetable regularity, the minefield steadily grew in length and width, and the German naval command firmly believed the whole operation to be going on in profound secrecy.

  They were wrong. As early as June 1918 we knew all about it. Once the UC flotilla had been re-located, it was comparatively easy to keep its units under observation, and the fact that they were building up a gigantic mine barrier in a certain area left no doubt as to the purpose in view. This was to ambush the Grand Fleet as it sailed out of its bases. Clearly, then, a dash to the south by the British battle fleet in full force was anticipated by the Germans, and what else than a grand sortie by the High Seas Fleet could occasion such a move? We knew, then, on the strongest circumstantial evidence, that the enemy was meditating a great naval offensive, and, armed with this knowledge, it was a simple matter to take the requisite precautions.

  We had no difficulty in locating the ‘secret’ mine barrage. Large sections of it were removed by our minesweepers, but certain patches – after being meticulously noted on our confidential charts – were left in place, to serve as an added protection to the approaches to our own fleet bases and, perhaps, as a menace to enemy raiders or U-boats. To the very end of the war the Germans remained ignorant of the discovery of their ‘secret’, and assumed the immense minefield laid by their UC boats to be unsuspected and intact.

  As the summer wore on, evidence of the impending sortie accumulated in ever-increasing volume, mostly supplied by our intelligence agents. Battleships, battlecruisers, and light cruisers of the High Seas Fleet were going into dockyard in rotation, where they were overhauled and furbished up in readiness for action. Gunnery and torpedo practice was held almost continuously, for the most part in the Baltic, where there was less danger of interruption from British submarines. Shipwrights and artificers were released from the army to swell the dockyard staffs at Kiel and Wilhelmshaven, both to hasten the preparation of the fleet and to be in readiness to execute repairs on such ships as returned to port after the great battle in the North Sea. A grim but conclusive piece of evidence was supplied by the enlargement of hospital accommodation at the principal bases.

  Incredible as it may seem, the British Admiralty knew far more about the proposed sortie than did the German Navy itself. This was due to the strict secrecy in which the plan was shrouded by the German naval command, which realised that even a whisper of what was toward would jeopardise the whole scheme. Admiral von Trotha, the then chief of staff, has since explained why the elaborate precautions to prevent any leakage were necessary. In his evidence before the Reichstag Committee of inquiry into the German collapse, held in 1925–26, he said that owing to the comparative proximity of the Dutch frontier and the crowds of people who came into Wilhelmshaven every day from the surrounding country, there was an ever-present danger that news of any unusual movement by the fleet would be known across the border in a few hours. (He might have added, with truth, that such news did almost invariably leak through to Holland, and thence to London, while it was still fresh.)

  Consequently, on this occasion, the naval staff endeavoured to confine the secret to the narrowest circle possible. Of the twenty officers comprising the staff itself, only one-third were made acquainted with the plans. No documents relating to the scheme were sent to imperial GHQ at Spa, nor was it proposed to send any until the fleet was actually at sea. Moreover, said Admiral von Trotha, ‘we had to use extraordinary care when making wireless signals, because the wireless directional stations of the British had become so skilful that, by reasoning from the coded orders sent out by the German wireless stations, they knew whenever a ship came into the roadstead at Wilhelmshaven’.

  Questioned as to wh
y the crews of the High Seas Fleet were given no warning of what was intended, the admiral again took refuge behind the plea of secrecy; but other witnesses admitted that there were grave doubts as to the men’s reception of the news: in other words, the discipline and fighting spirit of the personnel were no longer considered to be above reproach.

  When the evidence tendered to the Reichstag Committee seven years later is examined closely, there emerges a story that would be quite unbelievable were it not so fully documented. It is, in effect, the story of a conspiracy by the high naval command to torpedo the negotiations for an armistice that were already in train, to defy Kaiser and Cabinet, and to stake the future of the fatherland on a desperate gamble. If the projected naval offensive had proved victorious, the results, however brilliant, could not possibly have turned the tide of war in Germany’s favour. Even if the Grand Fleet had lost half its ships, the combined naval resources of the Allies would still have been far greater than those of Germany. Thus, the re-establishment of the blockade would have been only a matter of time, and the flow of American troops across the Atlantic would not have been seriously interrupted. Had Germany won a naval victory in October 1918 she would merely have prolonged her own agony.