In the last years of the 19th century, the German Navy embarked on a vast shipbuilding program. Until that time, Germany had been a land-based power. The “blood and iron” of the Prussian Army had formed the Second Reich. Naval strength had not figured into German traditions.
Then again, the Germany of the 1890s was very different from the Germany of the immediate past. Although unified only in 1871, Germany was in the process of becoming a modern industrial nation. This had a direct relationship with naval expansion.1 Three factors were in play: First was the desire of prominent groups and individuals for a modern navy. Second was that the economy was capable of providing the needed resources. The final factor was the presence of competent political and bureaucratic leadership. It was only when Rear Admiral Alfred Tirpitz became the naval minister that the political barriers to naval expansion fell away.
Any discussion of the desires that spurred the development of the German Navy should begin at the top—in this case, Kaiser Wilhelm II. Since his early youth, the Kaiser had been fascinated by the sea. Wilhelm’s desire for a German fleet stemmed, in part, from his envy of Britain’s Royal Navy. His parents regularly took vacations in England, often visiting his maternal grandmother, Queen Victoria. During these visits, Wilhelm had the opportunity to observe up close the greatest navy in the world.2
These visits to the shipyards and wharves of England made a lasting impact on him. The Empress Friedrich expressed her opinion of her son’s obsession in a letter to her mother: “William’s one idea is to have a Navy which shall be larger and stronger than the British Navy, but this is really pure madness and folly, and he will see how impossible and needless it is.”3
An Erratic Visionary
The consistency in the Kaiser’s desire for a strong navy was remarkable when one considers his overall impetuous, inconsistent personality. Throughout his reign, Wilhelm encouraged naval expansion, but he could not help being himself. His ideas bounced back and forth between building a fleet of small ships such as torpedo boats and destroyers and a Mahanian one of big battleships and cruisers.4 Until the full development of German industry, however, a Mahanian fleet was more an aspiration than an achievable goal, and the Emperor’s support of small ships made strategic and economic sense.
Despite his militaristic tendencies, the Kaiser did not cite national glory as a reason for naval expansion. Like the influential American navalist Alfred Thayer Mahan, he stressed one reason: commerce. He publicly stated that if Germany were to continue to develop its industry and trade, its future would be tied to seaborne trade.5
The industrialists constituted another force pushing for naval expansion. Alfred Krupp, head of the large munitions firm based in Essen, spent the early 1880s writing letters to influential political leaders encouraging naval expansion. After his death, Alfred’s son, Friedrich, took over the firm. Young Krupp continued to advocate for a bigger navy, publishing a booklet titled What Has the Reichstag Done for the Navy in 1893-4? It was full of blank pages.
Wilhelm enlisted Friedrich’s aid in pushing for a bigger navy at the opening of the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal in 1895.6 The push had little effect, however. Industrialists were no more able to accomplish naval expansion than their sovereign.
An important factor in building a bigger navy was Germany’s ability to support larger military expenditures. Not only was it imperative that the German economy be strong enough to support this unproductive outlay, but it also had to have developed certain key industries required to physically build a navy. Industrial growth in what would become a unified Germany began in stages. The first one took place between 1840 and 1870, when the leading industrial sectors were iron, coal, and railroads. This phase ended with the creation of the Second Reich in 1871, and new industries replaced the old ones as the leading indicators of growth. The increasing spread, application and complexity of technology and the growing strength of the economy in the form of investments were indicators of this next phase. In 1870, at the start of Germany’s drive to maturity, investment was 9.5 percent. In the two years following the passage of the Navy Laws, 1899 and 1901, the percentage was 14.1 and 10.4, respectively.7
The naval expansion program was expected to cost 1 million marks a year. The entire price tag for the 16-year program was expected to be 1.6 billion marks.8 Tirpitz sugarcoated the large sum, arguing that the capital would be raised by the increase in tax revenue caused by the growth of the German economy. If this failed to meet expenditure needs, then loans would be taken out. In fact, a clause in the law prevented revenue from being raised by “adding to indirect Imperial taxes on articles consumed by the masses.” This system of funding did not work for long. The government was forced to raise 420 million marks through taxation between 1906 and 1909.9
In the end, though, these figures did not matter. Despite the rapid increase in German spending, Great Britain always managed to spend more.10
Timely Innovations
Another element of this period that worked in Germany’s favor was the timely introduction of new technologies. The new industries that developed were interlocked with the industries that had unfolded during the nation’s first phase of industrial development. Steel was the most important. Yearly production grew from 478 thousand metric tons a year in 1879 to 1,425 metric tons in 1889, then to 4,353 in 1898. From 1879 to 1914, the rate of increase was 10.2 percent.11
The diffusion of steel as a technological development helped revolutionize naval architecture. Steel battleships became capable of delivering and withstanding heavier firepower than the suddenly obsolete old ironclads. This new application of technology had political and military ramifications. It was the great equalizer. Established navies had to rebuild or become obsolete. Smaller navies could take advantage of this opportunity and start their own building programs, staying even with traditional naval powers.
While the navies of the world rushed to build steel battleships, Friedrich Krupp kept an eye on the German Navy. His company was about to make its own contribution to German naval expansion. Krupp observed iron armor at the waterline expanding from a thickness of 4½ inches to 2 feet. He found this thickness absurd and set out to make a better armor out of a steel alloy. His contribution was nickel steel. His engineers found that, by heating the metal at 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit for two weeks as coal gas passed over it, then treating it to a water- and heat-hardening process, they could make an armor that was hard on the outside and flexible on the inside.12
The German Navy was committed to closing the gap between itself and the established navies, and this was done by finding applications for new technologies. The Unterseeboot, better known as the U-boat, was created when the gyroscopic compass and new electrical technologies were mastered.13 When Krupp engineers combined the compass with the diesel engine and the new electrical technology, the U-boat was born.
‘Explosive Growth’
Krupp maintained a monopoly on U-boat production and built a fleet of 148 by 1917. Tirpitz was slow to support the use of U-boats. He was unwilling to include submarines in the navy when they could cruise only in waters near Germany. He later became a submarine advocate, but only when they could travel in the open seas.14
Two of the new industries that became dominant during this stage were shipbuilding and shipping. These industries, along with steel production, took the place of iron and railroads as the leading sectors during Germany’s drive to maturity. They also had some obvious tie-ins with naval expansion. Albrecht von Stosch, the first head of the Imperial German Navy, had recognized the Navy’s dependence on industry back in 1873, when he required all new naval ships to be built in Germany: “Without German shipbuilding we cannot get an efficient German fleet.”15
Fortunately, the tonnage records of both the merchant fleet and the production of the shipyards are available. Unfortunately, the yearly measurements are not synchronized. In 1871, the merchant marine consisted of 81,994 tons, in 1880 it consisted of 215,758 tons, and in 1891 it had grown to 723,652 tons. By 1901, it stood at 1,349,557 tons. In 30 years’ time, the merchant marine had grown a mind-boggling 1,546 percent.
Ship production also saw explosive growth. In 1880, Germany produced 23,986 register tons; in 1890, it had grown more than fourfold to 100,597 register tons, and in 1900, the amount had more than doubled to 235,171 register tons. In that 20 years, growth was 880 percent.
Another way to measure the shipbuilding industry is to look at its capacity to build. In 1912, journalists Archibald Hurd and Henry Castle studied the 36 largest German shipyards, including the three Imperial yards. They reported the existence of 196 slips, 27 dry docks, 47 floating docks, and a workforce of 89,470 men.16 German shipbuilding business was formidable.
Germany had both the desire and ability to build a new navy—but the Reichstag’s refusal to authorize expansion kept these two forces from interacting. Tirpitz removed this political barrier and pushed a Mahanian vision. He already had expressed his views about a fleet in Service Memorandum IX, in which he stated:
A state that has sea interests or—what is equivalent—world interests must be able to represent them and to make its power felt beyond territorial waters. National world trade, world industry, and to a certain extent high-seas fisheries, world transportation, and colonies are impossible without a fleet capable of taking the offensive.17
At the time, Mahan was all the rage in fashionable strategic thinking, but this view failed to consider Germany’s geostrategic position. Britian blocked Germany’s access to the global commons. Any strategy that contained an element of hostility toward the United Kingdom had to overcome a lot more than ship numbers. Germany would have been far better served either by becoming a free rider and enjoying the access to free trade in world markets or by building a fleet aimed at commerce raiding.18
The Tirpitz Effect
Despite the efforts of the industrialists and the Kaiser, it was not until the rise of Tirpitz that the passage of the Navy Laws became possible. In June 1897, Tirpitz, a man of great political skill, was appointed head of the Navy. He immediately began planning for expansion. The military need for a navy was a direct result of the plans made by the German General Staff. The Army developed a strategy on the expectation that Germany would face a two-front war, most likely with France and Russia. Admiral Tirpitz argued the Navy should be strong enough to prevent the French and Russian fleets from cutting off German trade and launching a naval invasion. This defensive mission was the accepted military reason for the Navy Law of 1898.19
This strategy was supplanted by the passage of the Navy Law of 1900 and its grandiose building plans. Tirpitz needed a new rationale for continuing to expand the fleet once his original goals were met. He turned to Mahan. His solution was a new strategy, called the risk theory, which he clearly enunciated in the new law: Germany must have a battle fleet so strong that, even for the adversary with the greatest sea power, a war against it would involve such dangers as to imperil that adversary’s position in the world. For these purposes it was not absolutely necessary that the German Battle Fleet should be as strong as that of the greatest naval power; it just needed to pose a threat and thus force the other power—the United Kingdom—to face more risk than it desired.20
Tirpitz also argued a navy was needed to protect Germany’s trade. Unlike the Kaiser, the admiral did not stress the future but the present when he talked of trade. Germany conducted 70 percent of its trade on the water. In 1900, Germany had a total mercantile tonnage of 1,942,000 tons, which made it second only to the United Kingdom.21 Germany also imported industrial material worth 1,476 million marks in 1901–2. This too was second only to the amount England imported. Tirpitz straightforwardly expressed his beliefs about this in the Navy Law of 1900: “FOR THE PROTECTION OF SEA TRADE AND COLONIES THERE IS ONLY ONE MEANS—A STRONG BATTLE FLEET.”22
To build the best possible navy, Germany required long-range planning and industrial management. The navy needed to get the most it could for the least expense. To do this, Tirpitz believed Germany “had to try to build AS NEARLY AS POSSIBLE AN EQUAL NUMBER OF SHIPS each year.”23
This extract from his memoirs, however, shows the resentment and bitterness he felt from the previous treatment the Navy had endured:
I needed an Act which would protect the continuity of the construction of the fleet on different flanks. The circumstances that was [sic] most in the Bill’s favor was that it intended to make the Reichstag abandon the temptation to interfere each year afresh in technical details, as they had hitherto done when every ship had become an “exercise in debate;” and the Admiralty had not demanded what was most important in reality, but that which they could get passed in the interplay of changing majorities.24
As Tirpitz planned the passage of the Navy Law, he made two critical decisions, one of strategy and one of tactics. Strategically, he went about building a popular base of support for the Navy “to have the fleet recognized as belonging to the German people.”25 This base of support had the effect of putting pressure on the Reichstag to pass the bill into law. Tactically, he decided to present expansion in terms of naval squadrons, rather than individual ships. By presenting the bill in this manner, Tirpitz tied the hands of the legislators. “The Reichstag could cancel squadrons but not ships, because in the latter case it would have exceeded its authority and have interfered in matters of military organization,” he explained.26 The bill would either pass or fail—there would be no compromise.
The legislature passed the Navy Law of 1898 by a margin of 212 to 139. Tirpitz had been in office for only nine months. The Navy Law of 1898 was not all that extravagant. The German Navy had 13 battleships before passage; the law raised the number to 16 battleships on active duty, two in reserve, with a fleet flagship.27
The Kaiser and Tirpitz were quick to point out, though, that the numbers did not measure the quality. The fleet was old, deteriorating, and outdated. Compared to their neighbors, the Germans spent little on their navy. In 1898, Germany was spending 78 million marks on naval expenditures, which was smaller than the budgets that Great Britain, France, and Russia devoted to their sea services.28
Tirpitz had done what the Kaiser and most industrialists could only dream of regarding naval expansion, but the admiral’s mission was far from over. “It was,” Tirpitz stated, “always quite clear to me, and I also expressed myself to this effect in the Reichstag, that the first Navy Bill would not create the fleet in its final form.”29 Tirpitz planned to introduce the second part of his program in 1904 on completion of the first program. In January 1899 he felt safe in assuring the Reichstag that no bills would be introduced before the end of the first program. The situation, however, changed only a year later.
In 1900, the British were fighting the Boers. Germany remained neutral in this war. In January, the Royal Navy seized two German steamers off the coast of Africa conducting trade with the Boers. This British action, a flagrant violation of international law, intensified anti-British sentiment in Germany. Tirpitz recognized the opportunity and introduced the Navy Law of 1900 that month. Tirpitz suggested the Kaiser give the British captain a medal.30
The new law called for the building of 32 active-duty battleships, four reserve battleships, and two fleet flagships. This program was the start of a naval buildup that made Germany the second-strongest naval power in the world. In recognition of the then-vice admiral’s success, the Kaiser awarded him the hereditary title of “von” on 12 June 1900.31
Economic Growth, Naval Growth
The expansion of the German Navy was made possible by the interaction of supply and demand. The building of the German Navy was not caused by a military-industrial complex, nor had Tirpitz allowed industry to manipulate the program or the Navy for its own needs. The Navy League’s lobbying efforts, although helpful, were simply not required to ensure the Navy Law’s passage.
It was only in the late 1890s that the German economy had the strength to support building a navy. Shipbuilding and steel, leading sectors at this stage, had matured, making the construction of a larger number of ships possible. Other important elements, such as new armor and navigation gear, had been refined, and there was also the need to have an economy capable of providing the tax revenue. The relationship between the state and industrial development was one of allowance. Economic growth allowed naval growth to occur—if the Germans so desired. Although those wanting a larger navy had tried to get the needed political approval, they had failed.
Tirpitz was the person who proved capable of overcoming these political barriers. His decisions to have the Navy close ranks on the method of expansion while also seeking public support, plus his timing and manner in which he presented the bills to the Reichstag, were key in getting the bills passed. With that said, had he arrived in office a few years earlier, he would not have gotten these results, because the German economy and key industries were not up to the task. In this instance, timing was everything.
1. See Richard Owen, “Military-Industrial Relations: Krupp and the Imperial Navy Office,” in Richard J. Evans, ed., Society and Politics in Wilhemine Germany (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1978), 71–89; Michael Epkenhans, “Krupp and the Imperial German Navy, 1898–1914: A Reassessment,” The Journal of Military History 64, no. 2 (April 2000): 335–369; and Gary E. Weir, “The Imperial Naval Office and the Problem of Armor Prices in Germany 1897–1914,” Military Affairs 48, no. 2 (April 1984): 62–65.
2. Christian Gauss, The German Emperor, As Shown in His Public Utterances (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1915), 52; Grand Admiral Erich Raeder, My Life, trans. Henry W. Drexer (Annapolis, MD: U.S. Naval Institute, 1960), 12.
3. Princess Victoria, Empress Consort of Kaiser Friedreich III, Letters of the Empress Frederick, Sir Frederick Ponsonby, ed. (London: Macmillian, 1929), 447.
4. Barbara Tuchman, The Guns of August (New York: Dell, 1962), 20; Lawrence Sondhaus, Preparing for Weltpolitik: German Sea Power Before the Tirpitz Era (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1997), 176.
5. Gauss, German Emperor, 182.
6. Eckart Kehr, Economic Interest, Militarism and Foreign Policy, Gordon Craig, trans. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977), 80; William Manchester, The Arms of Krupp (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1968), 184, 223.
7. W. W. Rostow, The Stages of Economic Growth, 2nd ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1971), 4–16; W. W. Rostow, The World Economy (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1978), 407.
8. Rostow, Stages, 59. Price corrected GNP for 1913 = 100. Tables 248–49 in Walther G. Hoffmann, Das Wachstum Der Deutsched Wirtschaft Seit Der Mitte Des 19. Jahrhunderts (Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 1965), 825–28. Vice Admiral Alfred Tirpitz, “Memorandum Appended to German Navy Law of 1900,” printed in Appendix II in Archibald Hurd and Henry Castle, German Sea-Power (London: John Murry, 1913), 356.
9. Tirpitz, “Memorandum” 357; Navy Law Section VI, Clause 6 in Appendix I in Hurd and Castle, Sea-Power, 333, 253; and Board of Trade, Statistical Abstract, 7.
10. Appendix VII in Hurd and Castle, Sea-Power, 376–77; Board of Trade, Statistical Abstract, 7.
11. Table 4 in Simon S. Kuznets, Secular Movements in Production and Prices: Their Nature and Their Bearing Upon Cyclical Fluctuations (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1930), 275.
12. Manchester, Krupp, 206–7.
13. Table 1/6, Project Mulhall Historical Economic Statistical Database, Department of Economics, University of Texas at Austin.
14. Manchester, Krupp, 217, 287; Grand Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz, My Memoirs (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1919), 138.
15. Quoted in J. Ellis Barker, Modern Germany: Her Political and Economic Problems, Her Foreign and Domestic Policy, Her Ambitions and the Causes of Her Successes and of Her Failures, 5th ed. (London: Smith Elder and Co., 1915), 605.
16. Appendix IV, Hurd and Castle, Sea-Power, 372–73.
17. Dirk Bönker, “Global Politics and Germany’s Destiny ‘from an East Asian Perspective’: Alfred von Tirpitz and the Making of Wilhelmine Navalism,” Central European History 46, no. 1 (March 2013): 73
18. Ronald B. St. John, “European Naval Expansion and Mahan, 1889–1906,” Naval War College Review 23, no. 7 (March 1971): 74–83; Holger H. Herwig, “The Failure of German Sea Power, 1914–1945: Mahan, Tirpitz, and Raeder Reconsidered,” The International History Review 10, no. 1 (February 1988): 68–105.
19. Ronald H. Spector, At War at Sea: Sailors and Naval Combat in the Twentieth Century (New York: Viking, 2001), 1–21; Constantine Pleshakov, The Tsar’s Last Armada: The Epic Voyage to the Battle of Tsushima (New York: Basic Books, 2002).
20. Tirpitz, “Memorandum,” Appendix II, Hurd and Castle, Sea-Power, 348.
21. Hurd and Castle, Sea-Power, 293; J. H. Clapham, The Economic Development of France and Germany, 1815–1914, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1923), 356.
22. Rate of exchange from pounds to marks is 1 to 12. British Board of Trade, Statistical Abstract for the Principal and Other Foreign Countries, 1893 to 1902–1903, vol. 31 (London: Wyman and Sons, 1905), 7; Clapham, Economic Development, 362; and Tirpitz, “Memorandum,” 348.
23. Tirpitz, Memoirs, 119.
24. Tirpitz, Memoirs, 98.
25. Tirpitz, Memoirs, 113.
26. Tirpitz, Memoirs, 119.
27. Woodward, German Navy, 449; “German Navy Law of 1898” in Appendix I, Hurd and Castle, Sea-Power, 328.
28. William L. Langer, The Diplomacy of Imperialism, 1890–1902 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1960), 425; Board of Trade, Statistical Abstract, 7.
29. Tirpitz, Memoirs, 117.
30. Wilhelm, Memoirs, 228.
31. Hurd and Castle, Sea-Power, 332. Robert K. Massie, Dreadnought: Britain, Germany, and the Coming of the Great War (New York: Random House, 1991), 182.
