“The same as you, sir.” Reply of a sailor in a loyal Russian destroyer when asked by his commanding officer what he thought of the Revolution.
To sketch summarily the story of three modern naval mutinies, the Russian in 1917, the German in 1917 and 1918, and the British in 1931; to indicate some lessons that might be learned therefrom; to provoke some thought on the liability to breakdown of a naval organization, not under the stress of action but under the strain of the dulling boredom of a long naval war; such are the aims of this paper. First a summary of each mutiny will be made, then an analysis of each, and finally a general analysis of all three.
The Russian Naval Mutinies
The story of the Russian naval mutinies of 1917 is rather the story of the disintegration of a navy. The mutinies paralleled the revolution and were an integral part of it. There were two major mutinies, one at the naval station at Kronstadt, near Petrograd, and another a few days later among the vessels of the Baltic Fleet at the winter base in Helsingfors, Finland.
The mutiny at Kronstadt was coincident with the February revolution in Petrograd. During the first two days of this revolution Kronstadt remained quiet in a state of suspense. On February 27, the day that the guard regiments in Petrograd mutinied, the military forces at Kronstadt did the same and by midnight the naval mutiny had commenced.
By 5:30 a.m. sailors were going through the officers’ quarters gathering arms and ammunition. At this time Admiral Viren, the Commandant, was arrested by the mutineers. He was shot shortly afterwards while trying to address the men. The mutiny blazed a bloody trail throughout the day. The outsiders who incited it endeavored to keep it in hand but altogether 78 officers and petty officers were murdered. Most of the rest spent long months in prison only perhaps to face a firing squad. The Kronstadt soviet was formed and it immediately became a spearhead of the revolution.
The mutiny in the Baltic Fleet at Helsingfors broke out about 8:00 p.m. on March 2, the evening of the abdication of the Czar. But for a few radio messages and what information had passed by word of mouth, the Fleet was without knowledge of the momentous events that were taking place in Petrograd during the previous six days. The Commander in Chief, Admiral Nepenin, had been requested by the leaders of the Duma to agree to the abdication of the Czar. He did so. Later, because of the temper of the men of the Fleet, he sent a message to the Czar, begging his abdication in the hopes of preventing a mutiny. When the Czar did abdicate Nepenin did not announce it to the Fleet. Nevertheless, it became generally known.
Whether the abdication was a signal for a mutiny or whether it had been previously timed is not known but at 8:00 p.m. its commencement was indicated in most battleships by a red light at the masthead. In two of the older battleships and in a number of other ships it immediately took a bloody form in murderous reprisals against officers, warrant officers, and some petty officers. In the four dreadnoughts, however, there was no bloodshed. The crews only demanded that the officers surrender their arms. In the flagship of this division, Rear Admiral Bakhirev ordered the officers to deposit their pistols in his cabin but he refused to turn them over to the crew. The crew of the yacht Kretchet, in which Admiral Nepenin flew his flag, remained loyal. In the cruiser Diana the mutiny was quiet and took place only at the instigation of the crews of the battleships. No general mutiny took place in destroyers. The next day, under pressure of men from other ships, destroyer crews carried out nominal mutinies consisting of disarming their officers and confining them to the wardrooms. In the mine sweepers mutiny broke out coincident with that in the battleships but was of a less brutal nature. Several officers on shore at the time were killed. Altogether 38 officers met their death on that fateful night.
The following day was quieter. However, Admiral Nepenin met his death on the second day at the hands of a mutineer in the uniform of a petty officer. The command of the Fleet then passed into the hands of Admiral Maksimoff, a bombastic opportunist who professed to be in sympathy with the Revolution. By this time a soviet was formed in Helsingfors under the leadership of a sub-lieutenant named Garfield, a member of the Bolshevist party. Thereafter the mutiny was directed from shore.
At a general mass meeting that afternoon, attended by most of the crews and many of the officers, Rodicheff, a high official of the new provisional government, together with a deputy from the Duma and two members of the coming powerful Petrograd Soviet, spoke on the necessity of ceasing all tumult and keeping order and discipline. Somewhat calmed, the men returned to their ships and nominally resumed their duties.
At Revel, the winter base of the smaller craft of the Baltic Fleet, the February Revolution and the abdication of the Czar passed without affecting the internal organization of these units. The same was true of the few ships at Moonsound. But the steady pressure of the Revolution and propaganda from other parts of the Fleet gradually undermined the discipline in these vessels. Mutiny broke out in July during the recurrence of revolutionary fervor following the failure of the Kornilov coup. There were few killings, however. The mutiny was more a creature of an inevitable fate which even the men themselves would have been powerless to stop.
Then began the gradual disintegration of the Baltic Fleet. Ship soviets were formed. Their purpose at first was only the general welfare of the crews. Then they took over questions of policy and finally they were giving orders to all the officers including the captains. There was also formed a central soviet of the Baltic Fleet known as “Centrabalt.” This committee was quite revolutionary and contained many outsiders. It took over the administration of the Fleet and later abolished the office of commander in chief. Reforms were made by it which were both revolutionary and ruinous. Rating badges and shoulder marks were abolished, long service men and warrant officers were discharged, and the names of all of the ships were changed.
No outbreak of mutiny occurred in the Black Sea Fleet. There the men had sterner stuff to deal with. The Commander in Chief of the Black Sea Fleet was Admiral Kolchak, then the youngest and most promising officer of flag rank in the Russian Navy and afterwards a leader of the anti-Red forces in the civil war of 1919-20.
After the February Revolution and the abdication of the Czar, Kolchak informed the provisional government of his allegiance and called upon the officers and men of the Fleet, naval stations, and forts on the Black Sea to support it. All loyally agreed and at his instance the men of his Fleet chose 300 of their number to tour Russia in an effort to bolster the morale of the Army and the rest of the Navy.
This move was countered by Lenin who sent a delegation of Kronstadt sailors to Sebastopol. The latter were more successful and on June 8 the sailors of the Black Sea Fleet mutinied and ordered the officers to give up their arms. Such a request was too much for Kolchak. He refused to see the men’s deputies and called the crew of his flagship aft. He told them that the Japanese after the fall of Port Arthur respected the sword which had been given him for military courage and had allowed him to keep it. Now his own men wished to take it away from him. “Well, you shall not get it. I shall not give it to you either dead or alive,” and he threw the sword into the sea. This action sobered the men but Kolchak told them that he considered them unworthy of his command. He left for Petrograd where he endeavored without success to get the provisional government to bolster the prestige of the officers in both military services.
Kolchak prevented a repetition of the bloody reprisals of the Baltic but he could not and he knew he could not prevent the disintegration of his Fleet. After he left discipline broke down and though the Fleet carried on in a manner for about six months its fighting value gradually faded. The paradox is that while the Baltic Fleet was saved for Russia the vessels of the Black Sea Fleet fell into the hands of German or Turkish naval forces.
The German Naval Mutinies
There were two mutinies in the High Seas Fleet of the German Navy during the World War: the unsuccessful mutiny of 1917 and the mutiny a year later which resulted in the collapse of the German arms. Both grew out of a boredom with the monotonous duties the Fleet was called upon to perform.
The mutiny of 1917 was one of a series of small demonstrations of insubordination that happened to go farther and have more serious consequences than the rest. For months among the crews of certain battleships there had been an undercurrent of mutinous feeling which the officers were either ignorant of or chose to ignore. Such pitiful exhibitions of breakdown of discipline as wholesale “bulkheading.” boat falls being cut, firing mechanisms falling overboard, and hoses being “accidentally” turned on officers were occurring with painful regularity. Most of these disturbances found their cause in the quality of the food, which was bad throughout Germany during 1917 due to a poor harvest and the British blockade.
These disturbances over food resulted in a concession from the government permitting the formation of a committee in each ship chosen from the lower ratings which would represent the crew in matters regarding food. It was a dangerous concession. In the battleships Prinzregent Luitpold and Friederich der Grosse wily agitators and professed revolutionaries gained control of these committees.
The amount of revolutionary literature that found its way into the Fleet increased tremendously. Most of it was paid for with British intelligence money. Soon the idea of a sailors’ union developed and with it the possibility of a general strike. This was broached aboard various ships and with incredible speed the idea spread through the Fleet. Connections were made with the U.S.P.D., the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany which favored a revolution as a means of ending the war. The union became an established fact although still weak and formless. Centrals were formed in many ships and in the Friederich der Grosse there was a fleet central with an energetic stoker petty officer named Sachse at its head.
The wiser heads among the agitators wished to wait for the union to acquire strength and gain the confidence of the lower ratings of the Fleet and also to obtain funds from Berlin. The crew of the Prinzregent Luitpold could not wait. On the evening of July 31 the third firemen’s watch learned that they were to be deprived of an expected liberty and motion picture performance scheduled for the following day. During the night they boldly posted on the bulletin board an announcement that if they were deprived of their liberty they would go without leave. This fifty of them proceeded to do the next morning. When they returned to the ship, eleven were placed under arrest.
That evening a meeting was held in an empty freight car in the dockyard. The leaders of the various ship centrals were present. There under pressure from the representatives of the Prinzregent Luitpold it was decided to test the strength of the union. A sympathy strike for the eleven men would be declared in the Prinzregent and the other ships would support it.
The next morning the sailors of that ship proceeded to carry out their strike. Six hundred men left the ship and paraded through the streets of Wilhelmshaven advertising their purloined freedom. But as soon as they returned aboard, the Prinzregent got under way and anchored in Schillig Roads. On August 3 the centrals again had a meeting and at noon the next day the strike of the sailors’ union began throughout the Fleet. In twelve of the twenty-four battleships and in the cruiser Pillau duty was refused. Rioting reached such a state in the Friederich der Grosse that she was sent to join the Prinzregent Luitpold at Schillig Roads. In the Kaiserin no watches were stood, the executive officer was hooted, and the officer’s storeroom was raided. Similar scenes took place in the König, Markgraf, Kronprinz Wilhelm, Grosser Kurfürst, Westfalen, Rheinland, Helgoland, Ostfriesland, Posen, and Pillau. Of Squadron IV only the Kaiser remained quiet.
This outburst was indicative more of the general temper of the men than of the strength of their union. It was a demonstration of feeling which was without planning or co-ordination and which soon expended itself. The work of the mutineers came to nothing for the authorities were forewarned and were ready for the mutiny even before it commenced. The leaders were all arrested and to prevent the feeling from spreading ashore, where the consequences would have been more serious, the entire Fleet on the afternoon of August 5 got under way for Schillig Roads.
The mutiny was punished with a heavy hand. Leaders in most of the ships received sentences of from two to fifteen years. Of those in the Friederich der Grosse and Prinzregent Luitpold five were sentenced to death. Von Scheer confirmed the sentences of two who were connected with the Berlin revolutionaries, which parties he considered responsible for the whole affair. The sentences of the other three were commuted to fifteen years imprisonment.
The Admiralty and the Fleet command wanted more than just the breakup of the mutiny and the punishment of its leaders. They wanted the U.S.P.D. exposed. Had the government been strong this might have been done. But the case against this party was ill-prepared and the government only succeeded in aligning the liberal groups against itself.
More positive factors than punishment and suppression eradicated all mutinous tendencies in the High Seas Fleet for more than a year. These included a new admiral in Squadron IV, a good harvest, fleet activity in the Baltic, the Russian collapse, and submarines exceeding their allotted tonnage of Allied shipping destroyed.
The 1918 mutiny had its beginning in the High Sea Fleet but it was carried to its culmination in the shore station at Kiel. The first demonstrations of insubordination took place in Squadrons I and III when orders were issued for the Fleet to put to sea on October 28, 1918, to give battle with the British in the one final effort of the German arms. The men knew the war was already lost and they refused to go to what they considered would be suicide. The sortie had to be abandoned but with the aid of loyal destroyers and submarines the mutineers were arrested, 350 from the Thüringen, 150 from the Helgoland, and 180 from the Markgraf. Disturbances took place in other battleships at the same time.
The prisoners from the Thüringen and Helgoland were sent ashore at Wilhelmshaven where a naval guard released them. Those of the Markgraf were taken off at Kiel to which port Squadron III proceeded after the cancellation of the sortie. Their confinement offered a splendid excuse for agitation and soon agitators both ashore and afloat were haranguing the men to free their comrades of the Markgraf. The mutiny soon reached tremendous proportions. Admiral Souchon, the naval governor of Kiel, was unable to cope with the situation. This popular officer had commanded the Goeben and Breslau during their escape from the British in the Mediterranean in 1914. In 1917 he transformed mutinous Squadron IV into the most efficient battleship unit of the Fleet and he had but lately arrived at Kiel. Now he could not believe that his beloved navy was crumbling beneath his feet and he allowed the mutiny to get out of hand by refusing to realize what was taking place. It was Norske, a Social Democrat member of the Reichstag, who took over the situation and saved Kiel from a reign of terror.
The sailors of Kiel ignited the fires of revolution throughout all Germany. On Saturday, November 2, the first signs of mutiny appeared. By Monday 80,000 men had broken the bonds of discipline at that station. By Wednesday every battleship except the ever loyal Kaiser was flying the red flag. The radio station at Kiel spread the news of the mutiny throughout the world. Thousands of sailors immediately left the naval town for all over Germany; for fear of retaliation especially from the army, to see friends and families, or to be done with the war. The day after “Red Monday” at Kiel, Hamburg was aflame with revolution; by Friday the revolution had reached Munich; on Saturday the Kaiser abdicated. Two days previous an armistice had been asked of the Allies.
The political consequences of this mutiny were momentous. Germany might never have been forced to accept the ignominious terms of the Armistice had the Navy still existed as a loyal fighting unit. But it is heartening to know that in the tumult of their world crashing about their heads many sailormen of Germany kept their pride and their faith. The battle cruisers did not succumb to the Reds until after the Kaiser’s abdication. In the destroyers, submarines, and Zeppelins and in many of the cruisers the imperial flag was never lowered. The Derfflinger, on the day of the ignominious surrender, still flaunted a smart ship in the face of the Englishmen who had once felt the bitter lash of her guns. A naval battalion helped Norske save Germany from the Bolshevists during the crucial month of January, 1919. And not to be forgotten are the 200 officers and 1,600 men, the shell of a once proud navy, who remained at Scapa to carry out on June 21, 1919, the signal, “Paragraph 11—Acknowledge.”1
British Mutiny at Cromarty Firth,
Invergordon, Scotland2
September 14-16, 1931
The British naval mutiny at Invergordon was of a markedly different character from either the Russian or German catastrophes, not only in its nature but also in its purpose and results. There was no complete overthrow of authority, no outbreak against the officers, no bloodshed. Were it not for the fact that it took place in a military establishment it might have been better termed a strike which it essentially was. Its historical importance lies not only in the fact that it hastened Great Britain off the gold standard but also that such an incident could occur in peace time in the Navy of the British Empire.
1 The signal for the scuttling of the Fleet.
2 Author’s Note.—Little has been published about this affair. However, there was recently published a volume entitled The Mutiny at Invergordon by Lieut. Comdr. Kenneth Edwards, R.N. (Ret.), in which is treated the whole subject of British naval indiscipline since the close of the World War.
The direct cause of the mutiny was the pay cuts which attended the British efforts to balance the budget in September, 1931. These pay cuts were announced on Saturday, September 12. On that day the battleships and cruisers of the Atlantic Fleet were at Cromarty Firth waiting to begin on the following week the regular autumn tactical and gunnery exercises. The announcement of the cuts came as a surprise to the men. They did not understand them and it all seemed sudden and unfair. Rumors and stories started, “soreheads” growled, sea lawyers talked, and the agitators saw a wonderful chance. That afternoon there were a number of impromptu meetings on shore. Word went around the lower decks of the Fleet that the port watch of all ships would have a meeting in the canteen at Invergordon the next day to discuss the pay cuts. Six hundred men attended this meeting. The first proposals were for all hands not to go back to their respective ships. But with sailors whose ship is always a safe retreat from the uncertainties of shore this found little favor. So it was decided to return and ask the co-operation of the starboard watch in refusing to take the ships to sea until the government reviewed its action.
The next day, Monday, a similar meeting was held for the starboard watch. However, most of the leading spirits of the meeting on the previous day managed to get “exchanges of liberty” to attend this meeting. The opportunity thus given these men to complete their work of the first day had much to do with the later success of the mutiny. About 5,000 men attended. It was quite rowdy at times. It was held in the football park after a lieutenant on patrol prevented a meeting in the canteen. The decision not to take the ships to sea was agreed upon. The return of the starboard watch to the ships was the occasion for much cheering, shouting of slogans, and singing of such typical sailor songs as the “Frothblower’s Anthem.”
The next morning the crisis came. Rear Admiral Tomlinson, acting Commander in Chief, had ordered the Valiant and Rodney to proceed to sea to carry out routine exercises. The Valiant was to get under way first. Much difficulty was experienced in getting this ship ready for sea and when the order was given to heave short the anchor the men politely ignored it. A detail of lieutenants, sublieutenants, and midshipmen went forward to perform this task but they were informed by men sitting on the anchor chain that if they hoisted one anchor the other would be let go. Distressed but loath to use coercive measures, the commanding officer of the Valiant reported to the Commander in Chief that his ship was unable to get under way.
Here was the spark that set off the conflagration. When the men of the Fleet saw that their comrades in the Valiant had carried out their promise they all hastened to do their part. In the Nelson, Rodney, Valiant, Warspite, Hood, Dorsetshire, Norfolk, Exeter, and Adventure duty was refused. The battle cruiser Repulse was never seriously affected. In the York the enthusiasm for mutiny was dampened by the courageous action of the executive officer in rescuing from drowning a man who fell overboard from a returning liberty boat on Monday night. In the Malaya, mutiny was prevented by the timely and intelligent action of the ship’s officers and the fact that this ship’s company did not attend the meeting on Monday.
The mutiny was sponsored and primarily carried out by the able seamen. The action of the petty officers, leading seamen, and marines varied in different ships. In a few ships such as the Nelson and Valiant they actively joined in the mutiny. In most ships, however, they were impassive, obeying orders and carrying out the routine but taking no steps to use their influence in deterring the lower ratings.
It might be interesting to review the record of the Malaya in this incident. Whether any members of that ship’s company attended the meeting on Sunday evening is not known but an officer was sent ashore to ascertain that no Malaya men were involved in the noisy demonstrations that were taking place at the landing. The next morning this ship proceeded to sea for exercises and anchored out that night. Therefore there was no attendance at the fateful Monday meeting nor was the crew forced to witness the noisy demonstrations of Monday night or the refusals of duty on Tuesday morning. That forenoon the ship was ordered to return to Invergordon. Before entering the harbor the captain addressed the crew, explaining the pay cut, informing them of the unrest in the ships at Invergordon, and appealing to them to refrain from joining the movement. This was followed by similar action on the part of various division officers who discussed the whole situation frankly with the men. During anchoring, attempts of mutinous ships to incite the Malaya were nullified by keeping the crew at quarters below decks as the ship entered port. This was followed by employing the men at work below during the rest of that day and the next. These wise measures and the constant vigilance by the officers in keeping the would-be agitators from organizing maintained the loyalty of this ship in the center of a mutiny that was gradually going from bad to worse.
Meanwhile London, the British Empire, and the whole world were aghast at the news. It made front headlines in every leading daily in the world. But much was kept hidden and in this the Admiralty was aided by the voluntary censorship that the British press often imposes on itself in such crises. The official communique of the Admiralty was:
The Senior Officer, Atlantic Fleet, has reported that the promulgation of the reduced rates of naval pay has led to unrest among a portion of the lower ratings. In consequence of this he has decided it is desirable to suspend the program of exercises of the Fleet and to recall ships to harbor while investigations are being made into representations of hardships occasioned by certain of the cuts in order that these may be reported to the Board of Admiralty.
This official statement was issued on Tuesday. On Wednesday there was issued an order to the Fleet to the effect that: (1) The Board of Admiralty was alive to the fact that reductions would cause hardships to certain ratings; (2) ships would proceed to home ports to enable investigations to be made with a view to making necessary alterations; (3) any further refusal of duty would be dealt with under the Naval Discipline Act.
The hours between the receipt of this order and the actual getting under way of the Fleet were the tensest of the whole affair. Assurances had to be given the crews in every case that home ports were to be the actual destinations and that there was no possibility of being ordered to distant stations after putting to sea. “Officers were obliged to employ intensive persuasion.” The ship’s company of the Nelson, normally the flagship of the Commander in Chief, was the last to obey the order. But in a few hours all ships were under way. By 11:00 p.m. the Nelson passed out of Cromarty Firth and the mutiny was over.
Subsequent investigations at the naval ports of Devonport, Sheerness, and the Nore disclosed that the men felt the cuts were forerunners of hardships in their families. In some ships as many as 50 per cent of the crew submitted grievances. For more than a week the investigations continued but sittings were ended when a straight cut of 10 per cent in salary was ordered for all government servants.
Discussion of the Three Mutinies
Russian.—The mutinies in the Russian Navy were an integral part of the revolution and as such were inevitable. Yet there was a marked difference between the mutiny at the naval station at Kronstadt and the one in the battleships at Helsingfors four days later. The former, bloody as it was, was distinctly revolutionary in character and was coincident with the February uprising in Petrograd. It also played an important part in the revolutionary history of Russia. At Helsingfors the revolution was but an excuse for an outburst of intense feeling against the officers and a desire to be done with the Navy and the war. Like most mutinies in ships it subsided quickly. The mutinies in the smaller ships of the Baltic Fleet and in the Black Sea Fleet were the consequences of the progress of the revolution. Mutiny was not new to the Russian Navy. Mutiny and defeat were almost traditional and both factors more than overbalanced the steps taken before the war to build up morale and effective fighting units.
The Russians are not a seafaring race nor is their nation homogeneous. The Russian conscript who became a Russian sailor for a period of five years had neither a basic patriotism nor an understanding of the purpose of his Navy. Few of them ever felt at home at sea. By 1917 men who were called between 1909 and 1912 were still in the service. The war brought back into the Navy many reservists. These men, familiar with former days of loose discipline, were unprepared to submit to the new and sterner order of 1914. Between these men and the officers there existed no strong bond as is formed in most navies by the petty officer and warrant officer grades. The number of men who re-engaged after the first term was small and they were usually not the best element. These long service men were considered only as specialists in their respective branches. They had little influence with the lower ratings and received from them little respect.
It is easy to understand why conditions coincident with a life at sea irritated the sailors. Conditions of living in Russian ships were no worse than in those of other navies and they were certainly better than in the German ships. There were silly and stultifying regulations on sailors both on board and on shore but that was general in the military and naval services of Continental Europe at the time. It was not the strict discipline but rather the manner in which it was administered that was objectionable. The Russian Navy had improved materially in the matter of discipline in the years before the war. However, the regulations were still antiquated. The spirit of reform was not universal and its manifestations less so. The result was that the variations in standards of discipline in different units tended to undermine the general discipline of the Navy.
The Russian naval officers were victims of their own class consciousness and the seclusion maintained thereby. They labored hard to improve the discipline and efficiency of their Navy but they did not understand the forces with which they were contending. Their noble birth placed a gap between them and their men which could not be bridged. While they perhaps stood closer to their people than did the aristocrats and intelligentsia of Russia to the general population, they never understood the reactions of their men toward the Navy, while these men placed their faith elsewhere. They made two mistakes. The first was in not realizing the defeatist traditions of their Navy and the men’s distaste for it. Thus they endeavored to build up a discipline without a foundation of trust and loyalty. The second was that in maintaining themselves within the shell of their profession they failed to study the great political forces which were evolving in Russia during the early years of the twentieth century. So they did not realize, despite frequent mutinies, how these forces were affecting their own service.
The Russian Navy had long been a field for revolutionary propaganda. The leaders of the revolutionary movement were early convinced that the success of a revolution would depend upon the attitude of the armed forces. The first attempts were made in the Navy in 1903 and it was soon evident that this branch was the more susceptible. For the most part the naval bases were near large industrial centers wherein the revolutionary movement flourished. Many of the recruits, especially those in the engineer and artificer ratings, came from families of workers and already had a revolutionary background. Such men found eager listeners among shipmates already dissatisfied with their unnatural environment.
Counter revolutionary measures were employed but these were in general placed in the hands of secret agents acting independently of commanding officers and employing methods found successful on shore. Thus officers were not only kept ignorant of what was occurring within their ships but their authority and prestige was compromised. What was intended as a cure for revolutionary activities reacted as a poison on the internal organization of the Navy.
The work of the revolutionaries in the Navy was richly rewarded. The celerity with which ship committees and soviets were formed and competent leaders appointed showed much preparation. Their greatest reward came in the work of the Kronstadt sailors in the spread of Bolshevism. Unlike the Army and the rest of the Navy whose revolutionary fervor was Menshevist, Kronstadt had always been a hotbed of Bolshevism. Here Bolshevism maintained its spark of life during the early days of the revolution, from here was cast the cloud that continually overshadowed the provisional government, here was the spearhead that opened the way for the October revolution and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics of today.
German.—The German mutinies were but the final steps in the collapse of a navy whose reasons for existence were not built upon a sound premise. The Navy was not a bulwark of protection to the life of the nation but was rather an expression of Germany’s will to become a power of the first magnitude. In the Navy were produced all the class distinctions of the Prussian system. The German officers were brave men, highly trained in the technique of their profession, but they were evidently not realists. Their Navy had no long unwritten history to guide them and a definite naval policy commensurate with the national life had not been ingrained either in them or in the people. The result was that having been warned by the mutiny of 1917 and after “playing second fiddle” to the Army during the entire war, they wrecked their Navy in the desire for the glory of the crazy “death ride” when that navy by its very existence might have obtained a more honorable peace for their country.
In the minds of the men of the German Navy, the purpose of their Navy was not clear. In the battleships, doomed to idleness, with crews made up of conscripts, reservists, and the dregs of the old navy, this was especially true. These men had no opportunity of seeing their officers act in any but routine matters and hence were not called upon to place any special trust in them. Action which would have cleared their doubts and steeled their minds, as it did in the light forces, was denied them. With their limited insight they only saw themselves confined within steel hulls that never went farther than Schillig Roads.
For men with such little faith the useless sorties and monotonous patrol duties meant diminishing vigilance, slackening discipline, duties performed in a perfunctory manner. High naval officers of Germany since the war have blamed insidious propaganda for the mutiny. But men with high morale do not listen to propaganda and good officers demanding splendid discipline do not allow such conditions to exist. So while the revolt may be charged directly to traitors and agitators, the demoralizing effect of long inaction, poor and scanty rations, living in ships where living conditions were the last considerations, curtailed leave, endless drill, sheer boredom—these were the real causes.
By October, 1918, peace was in the minds of most of the men and of some of the officers. An engagement would have altered this state of mind and crystallized the Navy again into an effective fighting unit as did the action with the Russians in 1917 after the unsuccessful August mutinies. But the British were well informed through their excellent naval intelligence and so avoided action and allowed the German Navy to disintegrate.
In comparing the German mutinies with the Russian it is of interest to note that whereas competent leaders arose quickly among the mutinous Russian sailors, the German mutineers were unable to handle the situations which they had created. Accustomed to being led, they found themselves helpless after the first outburst. On board ship the mutineers usually surrendered; at Kiel they forced leadership on the civilian, Norske. This tends to prove that the German mutinies were less revolutionary than charged. Actually they were spontaneous outbursts from a long smoldering flame. On the other hand long training in revolutionary thought had prepared the Russian sailors, and their leaders were already among them when they struck.
British.—The mutiny of 1931 in the British Navy appeared to be spontaneous. The incredibly short time in which it sprang up and likewise subsided seems to testify to this spontaneity. But nevertheless there were rumblings that all was not well with British naval discipline. Th eRoyal Oak, Sandhurst, and Lucia incidents all came to unfavorable public notice. Affairs like Invergordon do not spring up overnight. Despite appearances there must have been some underlying causes. Some inroads had been made into the loyalty of British seamen, some slackening of discipline had been allowed, there was a letdown in morale somewhere.
The direct cause of the unrest was the pay cuts which attended the British efforts to balance the budget in September, 1931. The reductions were in themselves not great but the manner in which they were assigned and the lack of any explanation of them to the naval personnel left much to be desired on the part of the Admiralty. The British sailor has always tended to be a family man. Marriage allowances are afforded him and he has a permanent home port to which he knows he will always return. Thus he takes on many responsibilities outside of his ship. Now because of what he considered a breach of contract which might often be repeated in the future, he felt something which frightened him, a sense of insecurity.
But men in a military organization do not mutiny because of grievances alone. Only do they take the law into their own hands when they become desperate or when they believe that such action has some chance of succeeding and affording them redress. The latter seemed to be the case here. Attachments on shore give sailormen a sympathy with shore methods of doing things and when discipline becomes slack and the danger of punishment lessens such methods appear in a favorable light. It may have been the easy manner in which the government dealt with the offenders of the Lucia, coupled with the unsettled conditions of the times, that upset the balance of naval discipline in the Atlantic Fleet.
However, it would appear that the onus of the mutiny at Invergordon must lie where it does in all mutinies—with the officers. First, they failed to realize that a mutiny was possible and they did not inform the government that unrest existed over the pay cuts. Second, they allowed mutiny to blossom under their noses. Had there been an effective patrol at the first meeting, had liberty been stopped on the second day, had the ships been taken to sea in time, the mutiny might never have occurred and this black stigma on the record of the modern British Navy might have been prevented.
General Discussion
Perhaps the most striking impression that one receives from a study of these three mutinies is the similarity in many respects that existed between them. This similarity is not limited to the general causes but is also evident in the general reactions of the participants. Mutiny like many other human reactions tends to run in a standard groove with certain fundamental factors shaping its course.
All three of these naval mutinies found their origin in battleships. Battleships are large and are able to function normally with little direct contact of an intimate nature between officers and men. The major portion of the officers’ duties appear to be routine and the men do not feel the relation that exists between these duties and their own safety and welfare. The union between the efforts of individuals and the general mission of the ship is not marked. Unless guarded against, this mission in the minds of the men may become obscured by the magnified importance of their individual duties. This is all enhanced by the fact that battleships are seldom in action. Diametrically opposed are conditions in destroyers and submarines. In the war these types saw plenty of action and both officers and men had a chance to prove their worth, and unfits were soon weeded out. The crews of these craft were too busy thinking about engaging the enemy to worry about themselves.
The introduction of a large number of new men in time of war has an undermining effect upon the discipline of a man-of-war. Naval discipline is foreign to these men and their background does not make them amenable to it. Admiral Mahan says, “The yoke of military service sits hard upon those who do not always bear it.” The Navy offers no inducements to these men, the ship is not their life and their interest in both is only superficial. In a highly geared organization like that of a large ship it does not take many of these men to upset not only the material upkeep but also the whole mental outlook of the ship. Their effect is felt when the glamour of war and the emotions of patriotism have been worn off by the drudgerous duties crews of large vessels are called upon to perform in war.
Discipline is easier to maintain in smaller ships. It is simpler for the reason that it is more obvious. Naval discipline is a complicated structure and an entirely different breed from military discipline. The operation of a ship or a unit of ships is a complicated technique in itself, totally aside from the art of strategy and tactics. To accomplish this it is necessary to lead men in a mental rather than physical sense. There must be an understanding between the men’s duties and the general mission. With the military this understanding is fairly obvious, or was until recently. The man’s duty is to rout the enemy, and his officers are there to show him how, when, and where to do it. It requires discipline of a much superior nature to get a man to lock himself in a compartment during battle in order that the fighting efficiency and the life of the ship may not be compromised. In a large ship it is difficult to infiltrate, down through the whole ship to the many little worlds formed within, the mission of the ship and to make everyone feel his responsibility in accomplishing it. In small ships this is not hard as the mission is fairly obvious and almost everyone is directly concerned in it.
The vast difference that exists between naval and military discipline is nowhere more clearly expressed than in a comparison of the success of revolutionary armies with the utter failure of revolutionary navies. Since Scharnhorst conceived the idea of compulsory military service armies have been composed essentially of civilians whereas navies have always used professionals and have been autocratic in tone. The sea demands both. The French and Russian revolutionary armies wrote brilliant pages in the histories of their respective countries but the navies of both were destroyed by the very concept which seemed to breed unconquerable land forces. The French Revolution ended a century of achievement for the French Navy and in its stead brought fifteen years of ignominy that found its culmination in Trafalgar. The Russian Navy took no part in the civil wars of 1919-20. It has hardly yet recovered from its prostrate state. Even in China and Mexico revolutionary armies have been vital forces in the lives of their respective countries whereas the antics of their navies have been laughable. Events of the Spanish civil war have lately verified these conclusions.
Sailors rarely mutiny at sea. Mutinies have been clipped in the bud by getting ships to sea in time. All hands are busy at sea and all realize their dependency on one another. In port on board ship mutinies have occurred but as a rule they are not successful. There is less chance of a mutiny starting in a ship anchored out than in one secured to a dock. The orderly tempo of a ship’s life is disrupted by contact with the beach. The closer this contact and the more outside influences are allowed to enter, the more the highly keyed organization of the ship suffers. Large bodies of sailors on shore are potential menaces. Sailors belong at sea working and when they are kept ashore they are out of their element, they have no obvious purpose, they are idle and they get themselves in trouble.
In most large mutinies there is usually present throughout the units affected a general feeling which gives tone to the mutiny and makes otherwise loyal men tolerate mutineers and allow the mutiny to grow. The grievances are usually the product of agitators or malcontents but these have less force than the underlying currents which affect all men. In Great Britain in 1797 it was a sense of deprivation of the rights of free Englishmen, in Russia it was class distinction, in Germany a tiredness of war, in Great Britain in 1931 a feeling of lack of fair play and a sense of insecurity. These exciting forces should be understood, watched for, and guarded against because by them are navies wrecked. Finally, the only way to handle a mutiny is to prevent it from getting started. Good officers do not allow their men to reach the mutinous stage.
The purpose of a navy has a large effect upon the morale of its members and the amount of strain they can stand in its service under the stress of war. The British Navy, despite its vicissitudes both internal and external, has always maintained its strength because every British sailor knows that England cannot be without a navy. On the other hand the French and German navies failed while their armies were successful because these navies were not closely woven into the national lives of the people.
Morale fatigue is almost as dangerous as the enemy in time of war. A strong resistance to it must be built up in the regular services in time of peace. War in a machine age has lost most of its fun and whatever glamour it ever had. It is a hard, monotonous, wearing-down process where strength is measured not so much in force as in a constant pressure and a resistance to it. This was demonstrated fully in the World War. The morale of the French Army broke down under the blind attack of Neville. The British labored hard to maintain a high fighting spirit in their semi-idle fleet. The morale of our own men left much to be desired after the cessation of hostilities. The next war, at least at sea, will be a long drawn-out affair. But morale of fighting men can be kept on a high plane throughout a dreary campaign. The fleet of Nelson that brought the greatest glory to British naval arms had been at sea almost constantly for more than two years before Trafalgar. Perhaps the most glorious but still unrecognized period in our own naval history is that of the War between the States when our service grew, became strong, and settled the destinies of our nation in four years of arduous and tiring blockade duty.
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An army is a crowd—a homogeneous crowd, it is true, but retaining, despite its organization, some of the general characteristics of crowds; intense emotionality, suggestibility, obedience to leaders, etc. These factors must be handled by the commanders. A body of soldiers, as I cannot too often repeat, is worth only what its leaders are worth. The latter must constantly consider the soldier’s needs, and keep his mind absorbed by drills and exercises, interrupted by amusements so that he is not unduly isolated and confronted by depressing thoughts. The Queen of Belgium gave proof of a sound knowledge of psychology when she established on the Belgian front four great theaters in which 10,000 soldiers daily could see plays, hear music, or enjoy a cinema show.—Le Bon, World in Revolt.