PREDICTIONS
Ever since 1918 when the German High Seas Fleet surrendered in Scapa Flow, funeral orations have been pronounced on the alleged demise of sea power. It was asserted that surface fleets had lost their strategic importance and had been shorn of their tactical strength. A full chorus of military publicists, including some naval writers, "commentators," and other amateurs, united to recite their post-mortems on sea power. The public was led to believe that only the selfishness and stupidity of the 'brass-hats" and the vested interests of naval constructors were responsible for the 'intolerable" fact that good and much money was invested in useless warships, money which could have bought more offensive power if invested instead in "revolutionary new weapons."
It would seem superfluous to confront the prophets with the facts which proved them wrong. Yet not only is the public still very much in the dark about the true lessons of the present war, but the prophets have not yet become less vociferous, nor even less influential. Undaunted by their own record of error and immune to the conclusive refutation of reality, they continue in a fight which Should strike the public as quixotic, but impresses them as a crusade for military progress. Should one think it possible that after fifty months of war a well-known military writer could actually advocate a voluntary Scapa Flow for the same United States Navy Which is one of the causes of Allied victories In Africa, Europe, Australia, and Asia? Very few people yet realize that the Axis powers have lost the war precisely because they, underrated the importance of sea power and Proved incapable of using effectively that sea power which they possessed.
Let us briefly recapitulate the arguments by which the doom of surface sea power was 'scientifically" anticipated.
Tactical predictions.—It was asserted that surface ships would be driven from narrow 'seas. A fleet would be insecure in port. It would be immobilized by air power, submarines, and small naval weapons. Air power could not be integrated with sea power, because carriers are extremely vulnerable and because carrier-based aviation was said to be by necessity always and everywhere inferior to land-based planes. Under modern circumstances, a fleet supposedly can operate only for a limited period of time and at comparatively short range. It can no longer defend island bases and offers no reliable protection for long coast lines. Naval battles would not be decided by guns, but by planes; but it was unlikely that there would ever be again a surface engagement in the classical style. Nor could warships be of any help to troops operating on land. There. were even some people who flatly predicted that no navy could maintain itself afloat.
Strategic predictions.— (a) Strategic defensive: It is the defensive function of a navy to safeguard the territory of its home country against invasion and to protect naval communications and sea-borne commerce. It was asserted that neither function could nowadays be accomplished by surface power. In particular, surface power would offer no protection against invasion, nor against the aerial attack of base and commerce. (b) Strategic offensive: A navy is used offensively to deny the enemy the use of the sea, to penetrate into the enemy's sea and coastal areas and establish there mastery of the seas; to land troops on the enemy’s shores and enable the Army to fight land battles in the enemy’s territory. The Navy was not believed capable of successfully carrying out its offensive missions. Furthermore, naval economic blockade, another offensive naval task, was pronounced ineffective under modern conditions.
In other words, a surface navy does not provide protection; it fails to menace the enemy; at best, it will manage to stay afloat and by doing so will divert enormous resources from better use. Its survival or destruction, it was believed, would not substantially alter the course of a modern war.
According to more cautious interpretations, the great days of sea power were over. Although a surface fleet had not become superfluous, it had grown to be the least important of the three main branches of military power. It was admitted that insular countries, dependent upon maritime imports, still need naval protection of their sea transportation. Yet it was pronounced to be no longer true that the insular master of the sea was invincible (unless deprived of his sea mastery), nor that control of the seas could become key to the victory on land. Supposedly, the situation had been reversed: while in previous wars the possession of a navy was a decisive advantage, the necessity of building ships now deprived the naval powers of the possibility of strengthening their land and air power to the maximum.
Land powers, free from the servitude of strenuously keeping open their sea lanes, can concentrate on true military power. The outcome of ground fighting was said to be no longer more or less dependent upon the results of the war at sea—that in modern war the fate of the Navy depends on the outcome of land and air operations. German writers, such as Haushofer, pondered a new strategy by which land power could defeat sea power through seizure of its fleet’s bases. The thesis of the old blue-water school according to which sea power can be defeated only by battle on the high seas was ridiculed. As late as at the end of 1944 a writer asserted that a navy is a “de luxe affair” and so “irrevelant” that in a future war sea power will simply be ignored.
What were the reasons for these various predictions? The emergence of air power and the alleged vulnerability of warships against air attack was the chief argument. Undoubtedly, the air power school would have had a very good case, if the premise of this doctrine, viz., that warships are helpless against air attack, had proved correct.
The increased effectiveness of small naval weapons served as the basis for still another argument against big ships, hitherto the undisputed repository of sea power. It would indeed be useless to build battleships and carriers if they could, as a matter of routine, be sunk by submarines, PT boats, or manned torpedoes, or if obstructions could actually block the approaches to the enemy’s vital sea zones. It would admittedly be extravagant to insist on big warships, if smaller ships, obstructions, and coastal artillery could be entrusted with coastal defense, if submarines and planes alone could carry out an effective guerre de course, and if destroyers would provide sufficient protection for convoys, while air power could bottle up or destroy the enemy’s large units.
These arguments suffer from defects which should have been obvious even without the test of war, and which were pointed out early enough by so sober a naval expert as Bernard Brodie. It was naively assumed that of all the weapons only capital ships could not profit from technical progress and that therefore, for instance, future battleships would remain as vulnerable to air attack as those battleships which were built before the time of aviation. Contrary to the testimony of history, it was believed that a new kind of fire power would supplant older forms of fire power. Some people succumbed to the fallacy that vulnerability implies uselessness of a weapon, although the members of the air power school should be especially aware of the fact that even a highly vulnerable weapon can be extremely useful.
In retrospect, it can be said that during the last twenty years sea power underwent one of the periodic crises of its history. True, this crisis was particularly severe. It lasted an overly long time, because various treaties on “naval limitations” delayed the necessary adaptation to the realities of modern war. Nor shall it be denied that traditionalism, too, prolonged the crisis. Yet the course of the Second World War has shown conclusively that the importance of sea power did not decline. The influence of sea power on the present war is as great as on any previous war in modern history. Not only can a modern navy stay afloat until it is sunk by another navy, but the naval campaigns in the present war turned out to be the greatest naval campaigns of all times. Never before were naval offensives carried out over so great distances; never were fleets of a similar size and fire power used. Never could major fleets operate offensively for so long periods of time within a range so close to the enemy’s shores. Never before have naval operations formed such an integral part of the war in general. And never before was the ultimate outcome of a war so much dependent on the decisions reached in the war at sea.
THE TEST OF TACTICS
Outstanding among the causes for the rejuvenation of sea power is, of course, the tactical ability of big warships to withstand air attack. We need not describe how this ability was gained. Yet the point must be made that after modernization even very old ships, for instance the U.S.S. Arkansas or the British Warspite, served again as effective weapons of modern war. Modern ships frequently came out unscathed from very heavy air attack after having destroyed a large percentage of the attacking planes. This does not mean that henceforth planes cannot sink battleships. They can do so, and will continue to do so under circumstances favorable to air attack. There is a continuous race between means of offense and defense. Hence there may again come a period in which the plane regains ascendancy over the warship. Yet such races are never definitely won by one arm. Should the offensive power of aviation be strengthened, a proportionate increase in the defensive power of warships would again inevitably follow.
Neither in any previous, nor in the present war were battleships ever invulnerable. While formerly they were mostly destroyed by gunfire, they can henceforth be sunk by surface, subsurface, and air attack, i.e., by shells, bombs, torpedoes and mines, or by a combination of these means. Yet the emergence of new weapons neither drove a modern fleet from its ports, nor from narrow seas. Admiral Sims predicted that a fleet can operate only if it controls the skies above its theater of operations. Air supremacy has become one of the conditions for gaining mastery of the seas. Although land-based planes contribute to air control over the ocean, air supremacy over the high seas can be secured only by naval aviation, which has become an integral part of sea power. Far from transforming surface into submarine navies, as General Mitchell prophesied, the addition of aviation to sea power actually increased range and offensive striking power of a fleet.
The prediction that carrier-based aviation would always be defeated by land-based planes did not come true. Although the carrier-based version of a certain model is inferior in performance to the land-based version of the same model, the performance of a carrier-based air force can be superior to the enemy’s land-based air force. The carrier- based force can also be numerically greater than the enemy’s land air force. This is why American naval aviation repeatedly defeated the Japanese Army and Navy Air Forces.
Small naval weapons did not prove superior to big warships. During the invasion of Normandy, the small naval weapons of the German Navy inflicted only insignificant damage on the numerous Allied warships, land craft, and transports present. Their existence compels an attacking fleet to take a number of precautions. But by and large small naval weapons fail to impair the movement of warships even in closest proximity to the enemy shores.
A modern navy no longer labors under the difficulties of logistics which in the later nineteenth and early twentieth century restricted the liberty of fleet movements. Still the first World War was fought by coal-burning fleets which were unable to hold the sea for a very long period of time. Oil-burning ships can be fuelled at sea and can therefore operate against the enemy almost on a permanent basis. Of course, the sea-holding abilities of sailing vessels are still unsurpassed, but, on the whole, a modern navy can remain in action as long as it is desirable. The almost permanent American offensive which took place in the Pacific during 1944 and 1945 should prove this point beyond doubt.
NAVAL BATTLE IN MODERN WAR
The course of the war has shown the basic soundness of the big warship concept. What would have happened if the Germans alone had possessed big warships and if the British had believed in certain modern ideas and scrapped their battleships? In 1941 the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau operated in the Atlantic against British shipping, sinking a rather considerable tonnage. If they had not been threatened by superior British surface power, they would have wrought indescribable havoc with British shipping. Later in the same year the Bismarck sallied forth to cut British naval communications. It was stopped only because the British intercepted it with major units, supported by naval air power. A similar attempt by the Scharnhorst at the end of 1943 was defeated by the Duke of York. Thus, it was demonstrated that the ultimate protection of shipping against battleship attack is the battleship.
Yet this demonstration would have been made much clearer had not the Germans followed a timid, defeatist, and inexplicable strategy. It is hard to understand why the Germans did not use their four battleships in one supreme effort to knock out the backbone of British sea power. It just so happens that at the very moment when Germany could have employed four battleships simultaneously—in spring 1941—British battleship strength was at its lowest ebb. It can be argued that, all factors considered, particularly the number of secondary British warships, such a German sortie would have stood little chance. The fact remains, however, that the Germans had a better chance to win by concentrating instead of dispersing their strength. Besides, dispersion did not save their ships. Is it possible that the Germans did not know what power they had in their hands? And is it possible that they failed to see that only a victorious naval battle could have reversed the balance at sea?
Current opinion about the probability of surface engagements is often put into the form that the Battle of Jutland will never be repeated. The impression is usually given that a large naval battle always has been the chief, if not the only, objective of the naval strategist. The truth is that battles were never fought as l’art pour l’art. It depends on the strategic situation whether a naval battle is desirable or possible. Rare are the occasions when both sides wish at the same time to fight a naval battle, and it is equally rare that the side which desires the battle can force the issue against an opponent reluctant to accept the challenge. The fleet exercising command of the sea does not need the battle, except to deprive the enemy of the advantages derived from a fleet-in-being strategy. Corbett defined British naval strategy—the strategy of a superior sea power—in the following classical sentences: “If we are strong, we press the issue of battle when we can. If we are weak, we do not accept the issue unless we must.” The strategy of the inferior sea power is geared either to maintain as much naval strength as possible and therefore to avoid battle, or to seek battle, if there is a chance that it might win. If the commanding sea power is very superior in strength and commits no strategic errors, such as dispersing its forces, its position will not be challenged.
These old experiences were not disproved during this war. During those periods when the British or American navies had been weakened to a rather alarming extent, they did not seek battle. When they were strong, their opponents were weak and avoided the battle. As in previous history, battle, occurred usually at the occasion of an important overseas expedition, such as our attacks on Saipan, Leyte, and Okinawa, or to intercept a large convoy.
If in size none of the recent surface engagements approached Jutland, the reason is that, in numbers of capital ships, modern fleets are much smaller than the navies of the World War I. Nevertheless, the tonnage destroyed in the battles of the World War II was very large. Brodie pointed out that in the battles off Guadalcanal alone, a greater tonnage was sunk than on both sides at Jutland. The strategic results of such battles as Guadalcanal and the Battle of Leyte Gulf were at any rate more conclusive than those of Jutland. While Jutland was simply a confirmation of a status quo, these two battles, among others, led to changes in the command of the sea.
Although it is true that a gunnery surface action is no longer the sole means of deciding a naval battle, more surface engagements have been fought in this than in any previous war. It is characteristic of naval warfare that the weaker side can refuse battle. While formerly it was very difficult to bring a reluctant opponent to battle, aviation and small naval weapons make it possible to slow down the speed of the retreating enemy, and thus to bring him in front of the pursuing fleet’s heavy guns. Moreover, the new weapons permit the total destruction of seriously damaged ships which in former times would have made port and lived to see another battle. Naval engagements have assumed a greater diversity than they formerly had.
NAVAL SUPPORT OF LAND FIGHTING
There are numerous examples of naval power giving direct support to troops operating on land. The battles in Normandy, for instance, would hardly have been won without the intervention of naval gunfire. The landing operation against Ormoc Harbor on Leyte offers the classical and unique example of a land breakthrough launched from the sea. The naval campaign in the Mediterranean which was one of the chief reasons for the victory of El Alamein, the turning point of the war, is remarkable for the fact that it was fought under most difficult circumstances and with inadequate naval forces. It would have hardly gone in our favor but for the battle of Taranto—won by that allegedly useless weapon, the carrier-based plane.
The mission of the British Navy in the Mediterranean was twofold: Italian sea power had to be contained in the Central Mediterranean and prevented from joining up either with the German or the Japanese fleet; and secondly the Italian Navy was to be prevented from reinforcing the Axis forces in North Africa to such an extent that they could defeat the Eighth Army, cut across the Suez Canal, reach the oil fields of the Near East, and possibly gain a back-door entry to the Caucasus or a land route to India. (During World War I, General von Seeckl stated that the position of the Central Powers would be impregnable once their armies should safely hold Basra and control the Persian Gulf.)
The problems of the British Navy appeared almost insoluble. While the Italians kept their forces concentrated, the British had to split their forces into two branches. The Axis supply line was extremely short and within protection of land-based aircraft. The British supply line through the Mediterranean was most precarious, while the line around Africa was of extreme length. The Italian Vice Admiral Giuseppe Fioravanzo expressed the situation clearly when he wrote:
The British arc compelled to use the route around Cape of Good Hope as their only supply line. This means that with the same number of ships they can make only three trips per year, while we arc able to make four to five trips per month. The secret of Mediterranean strategy and the possibility for Europe [i.e., the Axis powers] to maintain their positions in Africa, are based upon this relationship of distances, which cannot be argued away.
As it turned out, British sea power argued this “relationship of distances” away, in spite of the fact that at times the British Mediterranean Fleet had become so weak that no further losses could be accepted, and that for a long time the Axis power reigned supreme in the air. On balance, the British enjoyed only two advantages: they controlled both entries into the Mediterranean and they could draw their oil from near-by resources, thus considerably reducing their transport servitudes.
It is estimated that in 1942 Rommel got approximately one-half of the supplies which were dispatched to him from Italian ports. Most of his lost supply was sunk by submarines. The Axis armies in North Africa thus were prevented from concentrating striking power superior in strength to the British. The carrying power of the British Merchant Marine (reinforced by American shipping), the fire power of the Royal Navy, and Italian inability to use sea power preserved pivotal Egypt for the United Nations.
STRATEGIC NAVAL DEFENSE
We now turn to the ability of a modern navy to carry out strategic defense. There is no need to dwell on its demonstrated ability to protect commerce against submarine and air attack. Be it only recorded that the German submarine was not defeated by strategic bombing, as it was predicted, but by the combined application of surface power and carrier and land-based aviation. As other elements of sea power, the submarine could be defeated only at sea and not at port, let alone in dispersed factories. The doom of the submarine was ultimately due to the unchallenged command of the surface by the Allies. Had the German Navy or Air Force been able to sweep our anti-submarine ships and escort carriers from the seas, or substantially to reduce their number, the submarine could have never been curbed. Our anti-submarine craft would have been eliminated but for the indirect and distant protection of our capital ships and cruisers. The battle of the Atlantic has disproved the thesis that whoever controls the subsurface and/or air ipso facto controls the surface of the seas. On the contrary, to control the subsurface and the air above the high seas, one must first control the surface.
One of the most important defensive accomplishments of sea power in the present war is rarely mentioned. It certainly never made headlines, because it was an invisible accomplishment: the protection of Great Britain (and also of the United States and the entire Western Hemisphere) against invasion. It need not be shown that their inability to invade Britain cost the Germans the victory they believed they had already won. It is interesting to recall that Napoleon when he realized that he could not control the Channel even for six hours and that Britain remained therefore beyond his reach, threw his troops to the east, against Austria. Likewise Hitler, when the impossibility of invading Britain became obvious to him, decided to use his offensive power against his strongest continental enemy—Russia. The German General von Seydlitz, at present prisoner of war in Russia, revealed that Hitler’s decision to attack Russia was taken as early as October 22, 1940.
The credit for the saving of Britain is usually given to the Royal Air Force. As a matter of fact, British air power certainly was one of the factors which persuaded the Germans to desist. The strength of the Fighter Command was such that the Germans could not possibly expect to bomb the British Navy away from the zone of their landing operations. Yet the Royal Air Force is not alone responsible for the change in the German plan.
First of all, it is exaggerated to say that the R. A.F. retained mastery in the skies over Britain add the Channel. They only succeeded in making bombing operations very costly to the Germans. But throughout 1940 the Luftwaffe remained strong enough to gain temporary air mastery over southern Britain whenever and wherever it chose. Moreover the bombing power of the R.A.F. was much smaller than that of the Luftwaffe: the R.A.F. dropped during the last six months of 1940 a little more than 5,000 tons of bombs, while the Luftwaffe, during the same period, dropped on Britain approximately 36,000 tons. British bombing power would have been insufficient to break up any serious invasion attempt, least of all against the far corner of Ireland. In other words, of the three main services, the Germans in 1940 were vastly superior on land; in the air they were, to put it mildly, at least able to hold their own. They were, however, vastly inferior at sea.
Whether the Germans miscalculated or not, cannot be answered. The German General Staff apparently did not doubt that the Royal Navy would have been capable of breaking up any large-scale landing attempt and destroying a great number of transports, thus inflicting prohibitive losses on the German expeditionary force. “The absolute helplessness of a crowded transport at sea is frequently forgotten by persons ready to attribute to others an aptitude for criminal folly which they would warmly repudiate for themselves” (Sir George Sydenham Clarke). Whatever the potentialities of modern weapons and of bombing in particular, to defeat an insular country one needs today— and will continue to need in the future— command of the sea, special landing craft, and numerous transports in addition to land and air power.
The history of the abortive German invasion attempt falls in exactly with the pattern of innumerable previous attempts at invading England. Corbett wrote:
An invasion of Great Britain must always be an attempt over an uncommandcd sea. ... If we have gained complete command, no invasion can take place, nor will it be attempted. . . . Continental strategists from Parma to Napoleon have clung obstinately to the belief that there is a solution short of a complete fleet decision. . . . The truth is that all attempts to invade England without command of the sea have moved in a vicious circle.
Britain was saved from invasion because her Navy never ceased to exericse command of the sea.
STRATEGIC NAVAL OFFENSIVE
Command of the sea prevents the enemy from launching overseas invasions. By the same token, it enables the master of the sea to invade the enemy’s territory from the sea. By carrying out landing operations on German-held and Japanese-held coasts, sea power exerted the most important single influence on the outcome of the present war.
This again is a classical case to test the validity of anti-sea power doctrines. The classical writers on naval problems were unanimous in the opinion that overseas expeditions must be considered as the most difficult among military operations. Opposed landings were considered as extremely hazardous and it was doubted that against a determined enemy it would ever be possible to build up landing expeditions to invasion strength. Amphibious invasions were believed in most cases to be beyond the “legitimate risk of war”—especially as long as the enemy retained a modicum of naval strength. The assault of land positions with ships’ guns, an unavoidable part of amphibious warfare, was considered as absolutely impractical. Famous is Nelson’s statement,
that the quantity of powder and shot which would be fired away on such an attack could be much better directed from a battery on shore.
The British Field Marshal Sir L. Simmons stated in 1870:
What is the chance of a shot fired from an unstable platform, like the deck of a ship, striking a battery at 1,600 or 1,800 yards, so near the crest as to do any injury to it? I believe myself it would be absolutely throwing away ammunition to attempt it.
In 1904, the Japanese bombarded the forts of Port Arthur not less than five times. On one occasion they fired one hundred and forty-five 12-inch shells and on another one hundred and fifty 12-inch shells. The heaviest guns which the Russians opposed to them were ten 11-inch howitzers and five 10-inch guns. Yet the Japanese were driven away during each attack. The effect of their naval fire upon the defense of the fort was exactly nil. In this connection, it is superfluous to recall the Dardanelles. The situation was well summarized by Sir George Sydenham Clarke who wrote:
Warships are not built to attack defenses on shore, and can rarely be spared for the purpose, while the progress of military science has turned the balance heavily against them.
The opponents of sea power believed, of course, that modern technological development had made amphibious operations even more difficult than they were in the past. Yet contrary to the expectation that sea power would lose faculties which it possessed in former wars, technological progress provided it with faculties which heretofore it had never possessed, to wit, the ability to defeat coastal guns with ships’ guns, to break strong coastal fortifications, to make possible opposed landings, and to carry out overseas invasions on the largest scale. The landings in Italy, France, the Marshalls, Saipan, and the Philippines are the greatest triumphs sea power ever achieved in its long history.
Isolation of the beachhead area through bombing is indispensable in landing operations. Yet if the invasion is carried out from distant bases, even strategic bombing power must be carrier-based, or intermediary island bases must be secured by amphibious attack. Unless the air bases are situated very close to the beachhead, tactical air support is provided by carrier planes. Moreover, experience has shown that naval gunfire is necessary to complete the isolation of the beachhead and to disperse counter attacks during the build-up phase of amphibious operations.
Nor has sea power proved ineffective in its other offensive mission—economic naval blockade. According to some people, the blockade, during World War I perhaps the most important single cause of Germany’s collapse, exerted little influence on the present war. Allegedly it had been a futile effort to cut off Germany from supplies which she did not need. Germany had prepared herself assiduously to counteract the expected loss of her transoceanic supplies. She had set up a large production of substitutes, a strict system of rationing, and a scientific allocation of raw materials which permitted of no loopholes. In addition, the Axis powers won control of the industrial and raw material resources of the European continent, thus becoming seemingly blockade-proof—at least on the basis of their peace-time needs.
Yet even if Germany really satisfied her needs in raw materials and industrial goods, the blockade would still have been the cause for her inability to bring onto the battlefield as much equipment as her opponents. Naval blockade prevented Germany from attaining material superiority sufficient to win the decisive battles.
However, the argument about the effectiveness or failure of naval blockade completely misses the point: granted that the European continent provided Germany with considerable supplies, it remains nonetheless true that the far-flung campaigns to make herself blockade-proof cost Germany a considerable part of her man power and material. The fundamental fact is that Germany was compelled to attack Russia in order to overcome the effects of Allied naval blockade. This at least is the testimony of the foremost German naval writer Vice Admiral Kurt Assmann, who wrote:
We must secure our rear before we shall be able to throw all our forces against the Anglo-Saxon Powers. It is part of this securing operation that we acquire in the east those raw materials and foodstuffs which, as a result of the cutting of our maritime supply lines, the territory of Central Europe does not produce in sufficient quantity, Hence the Russo-German War is a part of the present global economic war.
In other words, the blockade, as in Napoleon’s time, presented the naval powers with their most powerful ally on land, although it should not be denied that Germany’s attack on the Soviet Union was also due to other causes. The blockade furthermore led to a dispersion of Germany’s military power between the Pyrenees, Cape North, and the Caucasus. The German Army which opposed the Allied offensives in Europe was much weaker than it would have been but for the blockade. If blockade really is such an ineffective weapon, the Germans certainly would be surprised to hear it.
AXIS NAVAL STRATEGY
What would have been the outcome of World War II if the Axis Powers had based their strategy on a correct appreciation of sea power and not, as it was, on its underestimation? After having been appointed Commander in Chief of the German Navy in January, 1943, Grand Admiral Doenitz voiced his belief that the present war is fundamentally a naval war and could therefore be won only at sea. On another occasion he pointed out that the Anglo-Saxon Powers as naval powers could not be broken on land, but must be defeated on water. Yet neither before, nor after Doenitz’ appointment was German strategy based on a similar recognition of sea power. If Germany had intended to win this war by defeating British (and later American) sea power, the German Wehrmacht would have prepared for an entirely different war. Yet the Nazis, who were fanatical believers in the air power gospel, had convinced themselves that the Luftwaffe would neutralize the Royal Navy. (As an incidental side light it is interesting to note that they accepted this creed even in its most dubious aspects and failed therefore to set up satisfactory naval aviation or even to develop effective naval-air co-operation. On the other hand, their efforts at strategic bombing were largely improvised and badly planned.)
The Anglo-German Naval Agreement of 1935 entitled Germany to build a fleet 35 per cent as strong as the Royal Navy. Although Germany persistently violated all other agreements on armament limitations, she scrupulously not only stayed within the stipulations of this pact, but failed to build up to the naval strength permitted to her. Germany was entitled to at least six Scharnhorsts or almost five Bismarcks. However, Germany entered the war with only a little over one-third of her permitted battleship strength and less than one-third of her permitted cruiser strength. Even after the commissioning of the two Bismarcks, German battleship strength was one-fourth short of that stipulated by the agreement. If in the spring of 1941 Germany had possessed the number of battleships envisaged by the naval pact with England, and if, instead of the Scharnhorsts, which the Germans considered as a transitory class (Uebergangstype) chiefly designed against the French Strasbourg, they had possessed exclusively battleships of the Bismarck class, they would have stood a good chance of holding their own against the British.
The second chance for Germany to acquire sea power came after the fall of France. This is not the place to discuss the various methods available to the Germans for getting hold of the French fleet and for overcoming British naval vigilance and American political pressure. The fact is that the Germans made no serious attempt at seizing the Vichy fleet. Thus it must be inferred that they did not want the French warships. At the time of the Franco-German Armistice and before Mers-El-Kebir, the Germans could have taken over the two Strasbourgs and two older battleships. They or the Italians might conceivably also have got control over the Richelieu and the Jean Bart. True, it would have been very difficult to man these ships, unless the Germans found trustworthy French crews. Yet if the Germans really had wanted the ships they could have overcome all difficulties. By taking over the Vichy fleet, they would have increased their naval strength by about 80 per cent, and possibly by more than 100 per cent.
By combining Italian and Vichy battleship strength, the Axis would have gained command of the Mediterranean. The British would then have been confronted by the alternative of either doubling their battleship strength in the Mediterranean and thereby permitting the German battleships to break loose, or of concentrating their naval strength in Britain and abandoning Gibraltar. Then a “Southern Axis Fleet” would have gained access to the Atlantic. It might have effected a junction with the “Northern Axis Fleet.” Both fleets might have operated in such a way as to catch the Royal Navy in a huge pincer. Nobody can tell whether the British by superior strategy and tactics would have won the battle thus shaping up, and in a naval edition of the battle of Rivoli could have defeated both Axis fleets. The danger would have been mortal, even if the Axis fleets would not have aimed at battle, but merely at a tight blockade of the British Isles. If the submarine campaign had been supported by surface power, it would have proved permanently and not only temporarily effective.
The consequences of a breakthrough of strong Axis surface forces into the Atlantic would have strongly affected American security. The U. S. Navy would have been compelled to divert even more than half of its battleships into the Atlantic. There might not have been any replacements available for the Pacific after Pearl Harbor. The Japanese would have enjoyed command over a very large part of that ocean and their advance would surely not have been stopped in the Coral Sea.
It has been said about the Germany of 1914 that it did not understand the sea. Two citations from German naval leaders will show that indeed they had not grasped the first principle of naval strategy. On September 16, 1914, Admiral Tirpitz stated that “the German Navy must postpone to give battle until the main decision has been reached on the Western land front.” After the war, on January 15,1920, Admiral Scheer proved that the German Admiralty had not understood even then the true lesson of the war when he declared: “As long as we had been unable to create a favorable position for us on any front, I was of the opinion that we should not risk the annihilation of our fleet.” He did not know that Admiral Jeliicoe was the only man on both sides who could lose the war in one afternoon, and by the same token he himself was the only mail on either side who could win the war in as short a time. It did not occur to the German Admiral that only by crippling British sea power, the war on land might have developed favorably for Germany. Little, obviously, has changed in German naval thinking. To the minds of the Nazi strategists, sea power was of minor importance. Yet whenever the German Army reached the coast of the sea, its march toward the conquest of the world came to a full stop. The Germans believed so much in the impotence of sea power that, for a long time, they held their coasts to be safe from amphibious attack. They did not understand that only adequate sea power would have permanently secured their ill-gotten conquests.
The Italians, too, did not know how to derive advantage from their sea power. Their Navy was overimpressed by Admiral Oscar di Giamberardino’s doctrine that Italy is unable to wage war successfully against a superior sea power that controls the two exits of the Mediterranean. It was, however, the chief raison d’etre of the Italian Navy that it should “break open the dungeon of the Mediterranean or at least keep full control over that inland sea.” Yet it never attempted to carry out its strategic mission, let alone to seek battle with the British Navy. The Italian Navy even abstained from interfering with our landing operations in North Africa and Sicily.
SHALL WE SCRAP OUR SEA POWER?
The quickest way to evaporate the arguments of the opponents to sea power is to ask them what would have happened if Britain and America had scrapped their battle fleets, while the Axis Powers gained command of the seas. Since our undisputed control of the seas enabled us to land in Africa, Europe, and the Philippines, it can hardly be doubted that in that case the Axis would have been able to land in Great Britain, Africa, Asia, and America. To be sure, we might have defeated them in land battle. But even if all the decisions had gone in our favor, the war would have taken place in this country and American industry would then have been located within the range of the Axis bombers. The minimum result of an Axis command of the seas would have been the complete severance of supply communications between Russia, Britain, Australia, and India and the “arsenal of democracy.” If under these circumstances we had tried to land on the European coast, perhaps escorted by very powerful air forces, the Axis navy—in a dark and stormy night when planes cannot bomb and possibly not even fly—would have steamed among our thousands of helpless transports, and carried out their assigned mission to break up the Allied invasion. In comparison, the fate of the Spanish Armada would look pale today.
The course of the Second World War was not a little influenced by the fact that Goering was born in Germany, Douhet in Italy, and Mahan in the United States, and that Britain, the homeland of Drake, Barham, Nelson, and Jellicoe, instinctively clung to sea power which never in history failed to guard Britain’s shores and to carry British offensive power forward to the enemy. Future American security will depend upon the people’s comprehension of this fact: sea power is the guarantee that this country will never become a battlefield and that American might can always be asserted against the aggressor overseas.