Tirpitz and Technology

Three major advances in naval technology between 1897 and 1918 provide an opportunity to view the decision-making process in the Imperial German Navy from a neglected vantage point. The development of nickel-steel armor, the turbine engine, and the submarine exhibit the navy’s move toward modem technology and its ability to adapt to change.

Throughout this period the policies, ideology, and prejudices of Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz, chief of the Imperial Naval Office or Reichsmarineamt (RMA), determined not only the reception accorded some technological changes but also the direction taken by scientific and industrial research.

In 1894, Tirpitz set forth what would become his strategic doctrine in a memo on the navy’s fall fleet maneuvers. Service Memo IX proposed a direct challenge to Great Britain and a vast increase in German naval power via the battleship. Tirpitz suggested building a formidable naval force that would drastically increase the risk to anyone contemplating conflict with Germany on the high seas. This “risk theory” suddenly made naval war, even with Great Britain, game of chance that Germany might win. When Kaiser Wilhelm II appointed Tirpitz to the post of State Secretary of the RMA in 1897, this personal strategy became the blueprint for RMA policy and German naval expansion over the next 17 years.

Admiral Tirpitz’s strategic theories and his personal convictions shaped his policy toward technological change. If a particular innovation in maritime technology easily complemented his capital ship strategy, he became its champion. However, the admiral believed that the development of new technology should take place entirely in the private sector, with the RMA’s sole responsibility to keep abreast of current research. Therefore, he often refused to commit RMA resources to perfect what were to him essentially private ventures. Also, if he felt a particular development threatened his strategic writ or the financial foundation of his construction program, he ignored or applied all of his formidable powers to challenge it.

In light of these propensities, it is interesting to examine RMA reaction to the advent of nickel-steel armor, and Tirpitz’s conflict with the powerful armor monopoly dominated by two of Germany’s leading steel producers, Friedrich Krupp of Essen and the Dillinger Hüttenwerke, based in the Saar. The perfection of nickel-steel armor by Krupp in 1894 in no way threatened Tirpitz’s strategic precepts or the supremacy of the battleship. If anything, it gave the capital ships built by the RMA after 1897 greater lasting power in battle. However, the excessive price of this innovation threatened to curtail the pace of ship construction desired by the admiral, as well as posing a threat to the continued flow of funds from the Reichstag.

In 1900, Fritz Krupp used his influence with Kaiser Wilhelm II to frustrate Tirpitz’s initial efforts to force an armor price reduction. The RMA had attempted to drive prices down through an anti-Krupp press campaign combined with political pressure from the Reichstag—both of which Tirpitz orchestrated. Krupp upset the Kaiser with a melodramatic response to naval pressure and thus prompted Wilhelm to insist that Tirpitz calm the situation. Determined to fight another day, the admiral saw delay rather than defeat in this episode.

Oddly enough, the American sector of the international armor market eventually handed Tirpitz the advantage over the Krupp-Dillinger armor monopoly. Intensive competition between Carnegie, Bethlehem, and Midvale for American naval contracts lowered the price of their nickel-steel armor to 1650 marks (M) ($396) per ton in 1903. By 1906, Midvale’s determination to control a larger part of the American market intensified the competition and resulted in a record low price of 1450 M ($348) per ton. Both Tirpitz and his American counterpart. Secretary of the Navy Charles J. Bonaparte, took advantage of the golden opportunity presented by this new price. During the summer of 1906, Bonaparte forced Bethlehem and Carnegie to match Midvale’s price on the armor for both the USS Michigan (BB-27) and South Carolina (BB-26). In November, Tirpitz asked the Midvale Company to provide the RMA with samples of its armor for testing. That very same month, the RMA offered its support to Fritz Thyssen, the best of Germany’s smaller armor manufacturers, if he would consider competing in the domestic market against Krupp and Dillinger.

The circumstances created by American competition and the navy’s talks with Thyssen resulted in three price reductions by Krupp and Dillinger in 1907. Between May and June the price fell from 1750 M ($420) to 1630 M ($391) per ton. By August 1907, the monopoly asked only 1600 M ($384) and Krupp agreed not to object to any outside competition the navy might promote. When both Krupp and the Dillinger Hüttenwerke asserted that they could produce armor at least 5% cheaper than any competitor, the RMA knew it was finally making progress.

In 1909, the price dropped to 1550 M ($372) per ton when Reichstag representative Graf von Opporsdorf launched a political attack on the monopoly during the Reichstag budget committee hearings. In spite of their success, Tirpitz and his RMA colleagues felt uneasy about relying on an American company for their armor, and Thyssen had demanded too many expensive guarantees to ensure the profitability of his competition against the monopoly. At this point Tirpitz folded his hand, counted his winnings, and signed a contract with Krupp-Dillinger. Even Tirpitz’s opponents in the Reichstag duly noted his efforts and were momentarily encouraged by the results.

The extraordinary results of Tirpitz’s watchful doggedness and Krupp’s technical expertise served the fleet well at Jutland in 1916. German armor protection proved superior to the British at every turn. Even the battle cruiser SMS Seydlitz, perforated by 21 heavy and two medium shells as well as assorted torpedo hits, steamed back to Wilhelmshaven under her own power. Both this vessel and the heavily damaged SMS Moltke survived this battle and were again ready for action by the autumn of 1916. Thus, when the innovation in question supported his basic strategy, Tirpitz displayed all the qualities of an effective, flexible, and sagacious administrator.

The turbine engine neither posed a problem in price nor did the character of the innovation conflict with Tirpitz’s plans. Although he did not involve himself in the research and development of naval technology, he instructed the RMA to keep track of Charles Parsons’s 1884 invention and the subsequent testing of the machine in HMS Turbinia. As a result, an RMA commission witnessed the successful naval turbine trials in Great Britain and strongly recommended this new form of propulsion to the navy.

Certainly a danger lay in a British monopoly of this quantum leap forward in naval engine design, and many firms and inventors still openly challenged Parsons’s hold on the best in current turbine technology. Both the French System Rateau and the Swedish DeLaval model soon presented possible alternatives. In contrast to a number of unlucky German inventors like Adolf Muller who fell by the wayside when charged with violating the British inventor’s patents, the Swiss developed a successful turbine called the Zoelly and patented it in 1899. The Americans, however, became Parsons’s strongest rivals. The Curtis turbine, a product of the General Electric Company originally used to drive electrical generators, successfully competed with Parsons in Germany, Britain, and the United States.

The question of which machine to use was a perplexing one. In 1906, the Royal Navy naturally chose a Parsons power plant for HMS Dreadnought and did not consider an alternative for its ships until 1912 when HMS Tiger received a Brown-Curtis turbine. Both Germany and the United States tried a variety of models, apparently biding their time until private industry created a system employing the latest technology available from around the world. The Americans alternately used Parsons and Curtis turbines in their battleships from 1907 until 1917, when Westinghouse displaced Parsons. In Germany a large-scale duplication of effort took place involving Maschinenfabrik Augsburg-Numberg, Siemens-Schuckertwerke, Brown and Boveri, and seven other firms.

In this situation, Tirpitz might have used his authority and influence to better focus German industry’s efforts in this area. He advocated introducing the new propulsion system into German ships, and yet he refused to allow the RMA to become involved in the research and development process. Moreover, his “hands-off” policy remained unaltered, even when German efforts at duplicating and improving Parsons’s technology became diffuse and only minimally successful.

By 1911, no fewer than five different turbine systems propelled German battleships. A Vulcan-Curtis engine drove SMS Friedrich der Grosse. Other German ships used Weser, Schichau, and Bergmann engines, but the majority employed Parsons. In this phase of capital ship technology Germany never matched Britain or the United States, in large part because the very man whose talents were so well suited to the task of coordinating and channeling the industrial response to Parsons prevented RMA involvement.

In 1914 the war obliged the RMA to adopt a more effective turbine policy. Shortly thereafter, exclusively German firms began to receive contracts to power the few remaining capital ships still slated for construction as the navy shifted its emphasis to U-boat production. Schichau, Bergmann, and the AEG-Vulcan provided the RMA with reliable turbine engines for some ships of the Bayern class (1912-1914), as well as the never completed Ersatz Yorke and Mackensen classes (1916-1917).

The development of the submarine posed quite a different dilemma for Tirpitz. Unlike nickel-steel armor or the turbine engine, the submarine had no place in the admiral’s plans for the navy. Rather than bolstering his risk theory, the U-boat instead fit easily into the commerce raiding strategy popularized in the 1890s by Tirpitz’s strategic opposite, French Admiral Theophile Aube and his “Jeune Ecole” or “Young School.” Tirpitz felt threatened by this weapon, for it not only challenged the battleship, but also the admiral’s political and professional reputation, both of which rested solidly on the validity of the risk theory. Tirpitz ignored U-boat research until 1900 and his feeble efforts to integrate U-boats into the navy lacked conviction. Like the Americans, he saw the submarine as a more advanced form of the torpedo boat, useful for coastal defense but barely able, in its most advanced form, to operate in conjunction with the fleet. Only the growing attention paid by other naval powers to the submarine convinced Tirpitz that Germany must keep pace.

Of all the major naval powers involved with submarines only France cast the new underwater weapon in a major role. Influenced by the strategic writ of Aube’s Young School, France adjusted the composition of its fleet to give an important assignment to the submarine. As early as 1899, the French successfully experimented with submersible vessels like the Gustav Zede, and by 1900 the submarine was an integral part of their navy. Late in 1899, the French ordered 26 of the craft; by February 1900 12 were nearly completed. In 1906, French naval experts submitted the following projections of naval needs through 1919 to the Senate: 34 battleships and 36 cruisers; 109 torpedo boats for defense and 170 more for offensive operations; and 49 defensive and 82 offensive submarines.

Across the channel, two-man submarine prototypes initially occupied British attention. However, in 1903 the Royal Navy decided to purchase five Holland submarines built by the firm of Vickers, which was licensed by the patent holder, Isaac Rice’s Electric Boat Company.

The U. S. Navy ordered a half-dozen Holland submarines, which it began testing in 1902-1903. Like the Germans, the American attitude toward the submarine was cautious and skeptical. Unlike the French and British, the U. S. Navy kept its submarines under 800 tons displacement and restricted them to coastal defense before 1914. While the war forced a change of attitude in Germany, the Americans hesitated and modified their position only after witnessing Germany’s early success against Great Britain. Thus, when the United States entered the war in April 1917, its navy possessed only one dozen oceangoing boats capable of independent action.

The lively prewar naval debate on both sides of the Atlantic over the value of the new weapon did not convince Tirpitz. Unlike his flamboyant British counterpart, Admiral Sir John Fisher, he saw no merit in these small vessels, and devoted little time and even fewer RMA marks to submarine research. When liberal leader Eugen Richter confronted him in the Reichstag about the RMA’s lack of interest in U-boats in spite of French advances, Tirpitz replied that “the U-boat is of no great value in war at sea.” He made similar statements before a Reichstag budget committee session in March 1901. It is possible that Tirpitz, like his contemporary, President Theodore Roosevelt, feared that politicians would see in the submarine a cheaper alternative to the battleship. The U-boat thus endangered not only his plan to build a strong surface fleet but also the uninterrupted flow of money from the Reichstag. Clearly he had to meet the challenge posed by this vessel and her proponents.

In Tirpitz’s marginalia to an October 1901 report by the German naval attache in Paris he commented on every imperfection exhibited by the French submarines. He noted, for example, that the French had yet to perfect a practical periscope. How then could they attack submerged? This was more than a reluctance to explore fully the possibilities of the submarine. It was his strict policy of noninvolvement in technological development taken to the extreme. Tirpitz never suggested that German industry, with RMA guidance, might succeed where the French had not. He rarely allowed the RMA to act as a catalyst or coordinator among its firms and especially so in the case of the U-boat.

When Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated on 28 June 1914, the German Navy had only two shipyards building submarines, and 28 boats actually or nearly ready for service. Of these two yards Krupp’s Germania installation in Kiel manufactured nearly all of the navy’s boats, completely outstripping the RMA’s only alternative, the Imperial Shipyard at Danzig. Thus, on the eve of hostilities, Tirpitz’s policy toward the U-boats nearly left him with a Krupp monopoly in submersible construction.

Luckily for Germany, in 1914, the Weser Shipyard of Bremen entered the submarine market, spurred on by international interest in the U-boat and the success of Krupp, Vickers, and the Americans Lake and Electric Boat. Weser engineers and architects had begun working on their own U-boat designs more than two years before. When the Vulcan firm of Hamburg and Stettin followed suit, the threat of buying almost exclusively from Krupp lessened considerably. Consequently, Germany entered the war with four yards engaged in U-boat work primarily due, not to RMA prompting, but private initiative alone. In the final analysis, it is revealing that Tirpitz’s submarine building policy had very little to do with the number or success of his navy’s U-boats in the early months of World War I.

When the submarine became the prime German naval weapon in 1914 and 1915, its particular success in commerce raiding boldly exhibited the final passing of Tirpitz’s risk theory. The activity of the U-boat and the corresponding inactivity of Germany’s surface fleet severely damaged the State Secretary’s credibility. The admiral’s political and military clout firmly rested on his strategic dogma and its alluring promise of a genuine challenge to Great Britain. Therefore, the success of the U-boat contributed significantly to his professional demise in March 1916.

Before 1914, few experts in industry or the military could have predicted the impact of the U-boat on the course of the war. However, greater prewar RMA involvement in research and development might have prepared the German Navy for almost any wartime contingency. Closer cooperation between the navy and its suppliers in the development of both the U-boat and the turbine would have given the RMA more immediate control over the advent and application of these innovations, subject only later to strategic discussions regarding their usefulness.

The application of advanced technology to sea warfare certainly guaranteed a change in the nature of conflict on the world’s oceans. The case of the U-boat showed that firms such as Krupp, Weser, and Vulcan risked capital, labor, and physical plant on a venture that many naval professionals tried to ignore. The inflexible views of individuals and the accepted conventions of military institutions play as decisive a role in the effective evaluation of technology for military use as the willingness of industry to commit its resources.