We tend to think of our strategic problems as being unique. In scale, they most certainly are; in essence, they have been seen before. Many of the problems and fears of our era were met by the British in the decade before World War I—the problems of democratic military establishment versus totalitarian military machine; deterrence; surprise attack; technological obsolescence.
We even think the compression of time a unique feature of our age. However, the world slid from comparatively unruffled peace to total war in just 13 days in 1914.
In examining history for analogies as a basis for generalization or projections, however, one must be careful not to read into the thoughts of persons of past periods viewpoints and concepts which are based upon the current phenomena one is investigating, and about which persons of the past could not have known. The idea of deterrence, for example, existed before World War I, but it has today acquired a quite new intellectual and emotional content and form which obviously varies from the concept as understood by the men who controlled the destinies of the British Empire 50 years ago.
Of the supreme importance of the Royal Navy, the British never had any doubt. Their ability to command the seas near Britain and beyond had been a cardinal point of faith for generations. Their strategic evaluations always assumed the prime need of that sea supremacy. From Trafalgar to the turn of the century, however, the problem seemed almost an academic one. There were simply no serious naval challenges. It was around 1901— 1902 that the Admiralty first became seriously concerned about the German Navy. The rapid growth of that concern, immeasurably inspired by unbelievable German moves, was whipped up by the press and popular writers on both sides. Above all, there was the strangely determined anti-British spirit evinced by the Germans and especially by the officers of the new German Navy.
Consequently, the Royal Navy seemed to become acutely self-conscious at this time. Certainly this was long overdue. The Royal Navy in 1900 was in a century-old rut. The fortunate arrival on the scene of the flamboyant Admiral Sir John Fisher as First Sea Lord provided a much needed impetus. He made the Royal Navy realize that the object of its existence was fighting, and not fighting pirate junks in distant Oriental waters but a first class European battle fleet close to home.
He made the Royal Navy think. There had been little or no tactical or especially strategic thinking for many years before his arrival. The commanders of the Royal Navy were primarily sailors and not strategists. There was little understanding of the broader strategy of a naval power, and what there was was derived mostly from the works of the American naval officer, Rear Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan.
The German decision to be at least the second naval power as well as the first military power was the message that the German Navy Bill of 1900 seemed to signal to the world. To the Navy Bill of 1900, the Germans added the amending measure of 1906 and then the increases of 1908. The Kaiser began his series of fantastic off-the-cuff comments, typical of which was one at Reval in 1904 when he styled himself “Emperor of the Atlantic.” The British soon realized that it was useless to try to turn Germany aside from its purpose by abstaining from countermeasures. Reluctance to do so would obviously be taken only as weakness.
From the story of the next decade two interesting points can be drawn. The total effect of the German Navy on the British was immense. Yet, the German Navy was a relatively cheap force when viewed as a fraction of the total German military budget.
In 1909 occurred the famous “Navy Scare,” when for months a furious public debate raged in Britain as to respective British and German dreadnought building rates. Admiralty estimates indicated that, by 1920, the Germans would have a far stronger battle fleet than anything the British had, up to then, possessed. This estimate was accompanied by the assumption that such a force would be used against Britain and was indeed designed primarily for use against Britain.
In other words, the British before World War I were confronted by what might be called a dreadnought gap. The British presumed that the Germans would produce at their maximum, while the Royal Navy would continue to grow at the then scheduled rates. This assumption showed the fallacy of basing policy upon a problem solution examined in vacuo, of examining military-scientific capability without reference to possible intention or objective. At any rate, the British suddenly became very conscious of their critical military force, as a hostile battle line grew only 400 miles away across the North Sea.
A critical military force may be defined as one upon which the defeat or survival of a nation depends, although it may necessarily represent a means to victory. A critical military force may have either defensive or offensive aspects. The force may be critical in that it alone can defend the nation, but it may also be incapable of defeating an enemy nation. The Royal Navy, was primarily a defensive force, no matter how offensively minded it was in terms of the specific mission of pursuing and destroying enemy fleets and ships. Its main role was to control the seas in order to protect the United Kingdom from invasion by larger continental forces or to prevent such powers from reaching out to seize British overseas territories and British merchant ships.
The Royal Navy was viewed by the British as a threat to no other nation. Proof of this belief was found in the absence of any large standing army that could be used to invade a Continental power or to conduct major land operations. The British position was once summarized by Sir Edward Grey to King Edward VII in these words, “If the German Fleet ever becomes superior to ours, the German Army can conquer this country. There is no corresponding risk of this kind to Germany; for however superior our Fleet was, no naval victory would bring us any nearer to Berlin.” Under these circumstances, the German fleet was seen as only for aggressive purposes, since there was no defensive role for it. That it was primarily a powerful and necessary adjunct to German foreign policy was, with much reason, doubted by the British at that time.
In 1913, Winston Churchill, First Lord of the Admiralty, pointed out some basic truths in a Cabinet paper:
Our naval standards and the programmes which give effect to them must also be examined in relation not only to Germany but to the rest of the world. We must begin by recognizing how different the part played by our Navy is from that of the Navies of every other country. Alone among the great modern States we can neither defend the soil upon which we live nor subsist upon its produce. Our whole regular Army is liable to be ordered abroad for the defense of India. . . .
All the world is building ships of the greatest power. . . . None of these powers need, like us, Navies to defend their actual safety or independence. They build them so as to play a part in the world’s affairs. It is sport to them. It is death to us.
One can, of course, question whether or not the British belief was based upon realities. In a case of Britain against Germany alone, the results of a naval defeat could well have been invasion. However, even then such a war seemed most unlikely. The two alliance structures ensured that other countries would be drawn in and that Britain would have Continental Armies on its side. The German Army would not, therefore, be available for an invasion, except in some small portion even if the British battle fleet had been smashed. This line of reasoning only goes to prove the significance of “appearances” in foreign and strategic policy matters.
Because of this keen awareness of the critical nature of the Royal Navy, the British became increasingly sensitive to its preservation as the years moved on toward 1914. It would seem, then, that the more critical a critical military force is, the more the nation is dependent upon it, the greater will be the sensitivity of the nation to the preservation of that force. This is especially so when the critical military force is of such a character that it could conceivably be in large part destroyed quickly and in a single action.
Consequently, in times of serious crisis the very existence of a critical force tends to increase tension through fear of surprise attack by one’s antagonist. In turn, the precautionary steps taken to alert the critical force act to alarm the antagonist, and so fears are magnified on both sides. The British faced this problem when it came to concentrating their battle squadrons at a time of crisis. An utterly indispensable naval strategic readiness move was also an extremely provocative political gesture.
While recognizing the problem of provocation, Fisher, early in the period under review, began concentrating the fleet in home waters in place of the three separate fleets which then had existed. His justification for this action was: “Germany keeps her whole fleet always concentrated within a few hours of the United Kingdom. We must therefore keep a fleet twice as powerful concentrated within a few hours of Germany.”
German reaction to any warlike deployment of the British fleet was inevitable. When, in the very last hours of peace in 1914, it became known that the Grand Fleet had been quietly concentrated in the North Sea, the German ambassador vigorously complained to the Foreign Office. The Foreign Secretary, Sir Edward Grey, tried to prevent the deployment from heightening tension by claiming the move was free from all offensive character and would not take the fleet near German waters. The British never fully solved the problem of “desensitizing” their critical military force—of making it simultaneously alert, responsive, secure, and yet non-provocative.
Another characteristic of a critical military force is the limited number of roles it can play. In fact, it would appear such a force can by its very nature have but one role. The mission of the British Grand Fleet was to find and destroy the enemy battle line. Beyond that, the war was to show it had no role but to lie and wait. It was thereby unable to exert its influence directly into military and naval operations anywhere else in the world. Its sole “beat” was the North Sea, its sole objective the German High Seas Fleet.
Once German cruisers and shipping had been swept from the seas, the Grand Fleet had little role in the other main mission of British sea power, that of blockade. After the rise of mass continental armies in the 19th century British sea power ceased to be able to fight continental powers directly. The small British military expeditions which in other years had been able to exert an influence out of all proportion to their size would now be swallowed by the armed millions on the Continent.
In the century after Waterloo, the British had not further developed their sea power as a means of influencing the land battle by amphibious operations. Big ships were meant to fight big ships, and basically all ships were meant to fight other ships. The failure of the British to develop more versatile theories of sea power before 1914 was to cost them dearly. The tragic story of Gallipoli was directly attributable to this failure, and the one truly great strategic alternative of that war was thrown away by the inability of the world’s greatest naval power to exploit it, leaving only the endless attrition of the Western Front.
There was the matter of cost, too. Concentration on any one branch of the military forces can be accomplished only at the expense of another. The vast expense of the one- purpose Grand Fleet reduced British capabilities in other naval and amphibious fields.
Once a nation that is aware of its dependence upon a critical military force recognizes a threat, its concern over the safety of that force naturally becomes almost obsessive. The British began to react by 1905 or 1906 to the rapidly growing German fleet.
In terms of the peacetime existence of a critical force, there are three main categories of problems concerning its preservation. These derive from fears of surprise attack, the security of the critical force’s bases, and the possibility of unexpected destabilizing influences such as new technological developments. The British experienced all three.
Churchill spoke for the British when he wrote that of all the dangers that menaced the British Empire in this period, none was comparable to a surprise of the Fleet. If the Fleet or any vital part of it were caught unaware or unready and British naval predominance destroyed, Britain had already lost the war. On the Continent rapid decision—surprise—was not possible. Warning was inevitable. The automatic safeguard against surprise was the need for mobilization, and it took a fortnight to raise Continental armies to a major segment of their total strength.
There existed no such assurance for the Royal Navy. No naval mobilization was needed on either side to enable the best and most powerful ships to attack each other. Admiral Sir John Fisher, who was violently hostile to Germany and regarded war as inevitable, believed that “suddenness is now the characteristic feature of sea fighting.” In late 1906, Fisher told the King, “The German Empire is the one power in political organization and in fighting efficiency where one man (the Kaiser) can press the button and be confident of hurling the whole force of the empire instantly, irresistibly, and without warning on its enemy.”
Fisher was convinced that the Germans would bide their time until they could catch the Fleet unprepared, since they could not hope to match its numbers. At the selected moment and without warning, they would attack. He believed the “selected moment” would be a weekend, probably one with a bank holiday. War with Germany did, in fact, come on a weekend with a bank holiday.
Preparation against a surprise attack without a formal declaration of war was the foundation of defensive strategy at the Admiralty in the pre-war decade. The Directorate of Naval Intelligence prophesied with uncanny insight in 1905 that “if history is any guide, a sudden and dramatic outbreak would be distinctive of future wars, especially the war at sea. The advantages . . . are so enormous as to quite outweigh any lingering scruples of international comity.”
The Committee of Imperial Defence formally stated in 1908 that the possibility of a surprise attack during normal diplomatic negotiations was not sufficiently remote to be ignored. They felt that if the German government believed that the adoption of such a method made the crucial difference between failure and success in a general war, it was conceivable that they might resort to it. This statement became policy. In short, the option was open to the Germans of mounting a “disarming,” or to use another contemporary term, “counterforce” strike.
British fears are illustrated by an episode of the Agadir Crisis of 1911. After Lloyd George’s blunt and unequivocal warning to Germany on 21 July that Britain would fight if Germany pushed too far, the Germans kept their silence for four days. It seemed extremely ominous. On 25 July, Churchill recalls, he and Lloyd George were out walking when they were urgently summoned to the Foreign Secretary. Grey told them, “I have just received a communication from the German Ambassador so stiff that the Fleet might be attacked at any moment. I have sent for McKenna [then First Lord of the Admiralty] to warn him.”
Captain Maurice Hankey, the influential Assistant Secretary of the Committee of Imperial Defence, speculated shortly thereafter on the possibilities of that weekend of 21 July 1911, in a way most illustrative of what sort of thing the British feared:
What a chance for our friends across the water! Supposing the High Sea Fleet (German), instead of going to Norway as announced, had gone straight for Portland, preceded by a division of destroyers, and after a surprise night torpedo attack had brought the main fleet into action at dawn against our ships without steam, without coal, and without crews. Simultaneously, another division of destroyers might have gone for the Atlantic Fleet at Cromarty, leaving only the Berehaven Division and the scattered segments of the 3rd and 4th Divisions to deal with.
Churchill expresses his thoughts on that same weekend in a notable passage of his great work, The World Crisis. Noting the cool, cautious, correct but deadly tones of the diplomatic communications, he says:
With less warning cannons had opened fire and nations been struck down by this same Germany. So now the Admiralty wireless whispers through the ether to the tall masts of ships, and captains pace their decks absorbed in thought. It is nothing. It is less than nothing. It is too foolish, too fantastic to be thought of in the 20th Century. Or is it fire and murder leaping out of the darkness at our throats, torpedoes ripping the bellies of half awakened ships, a sunrise on a vanished naval supremacy, and an island well guarded hitherto, at last defenseless. . . . Common sense has rendered such nightmares impossible. Are you quite sure? It would be a pity to be wrong. Such a mistake could only be made once—once for all.
Of course, if Germany had no will to war, all the fears and speculations were so many bad dreams. If Germany had the will and intention, it was clear that there would be no difficulty in finding a pretext to create a situation in which war was inevitable and to create it at the most opportune moment.
Torpedo attack was the menace most feared by the British. So far as gunfire was concerned, the principal danger was for the Fleet to be caught divided and to have a vital wing of it destroyed without inflicting proportionate damage on the enemy. This danger was greatly reduced by the introduction of wireless, permitting fleet concentrations and avoidance of action at will. Besides, it was hard to imagine that the main strength of the fleets would even be allowed to come within range of each other without taking proper precautions. The torpedo, on the other hand, was essentially a weapon of surprise or even treachery, and all that was true of a torpedo in a surface ship applied manyfold to a torpedo in a submarine.
There were obviously limits beyond which it was impossible to protect the Fleet. It was recognized that absolute security against the worst conceivable treachery was physically impossible. The British thus realistically recognized that the “worst possible case,” could not be a genuine basis for planning, but could serve only to indicate the number and type of circumstances possible in the event of attack. Churchill, who was highly alert to the possibilities, nevertheless said that, “On the other hand, even treachery, involving and requiring co-ordination of large numbers of people in different stations and the setting in motion of an immense and complicated apparatus was not easy to bring about.” Thus the British aimed at a reasonable and constant level of security.
An additional factor in this concern over surprise attack was related to the matter of a possible German invasion of the British Isles. It was considered not at all infeasible for the Germans to rush a force of picked troops across the North Sea and land them before being intercepted. In early 1912, the Navy assured the Committee of Imperial Defence’s invasion committee that, once the Fleet were concentrated, nothing over 70,000 Germans could get ashore. However, they could not guarantee keeping out forces of 20,000- 30,000. Since the whole regular army was to be rushed to France by D + 13, even small German forces could be troublesome. Those who believed invasion not only possible but probable always began with the premise of a successful German surprise attack on the Fleet in order to clear the way for the invasion. The debate on the true seriousness of the threat raged on for many years, and concern was felt right up through the opening days of the war. The matter became, in fact, one of the major strategic issues debated in Britain in the period under review, with the Army and Foreign Office representing the “bolt from the blue” school who considered invasion a major danger, and the Navy who insisted that major invasion was impossible.
The result was an interesting and familiar inter-service wrangle. The Army’s position called for a larger army and different dispositions for the Navy. The Navy, in the person of Fisher, maintained that, “The whole of this question rests upon naval surprise. . . . We keep reiterating and reiterating that you cannot have this naval surprise; it is inconceivable.” It is interesting to note that Fisher, who fully expected the Germans to begin their war with a surprise attack and was making strenuous efforts to avoid just such an event, would deny the relevance of the issue when it came to the inter-service wrangle.
Churchill, as First Lord of the Admiralty, adopted some innovations to increase the alert status and readiness of the Fleet as soon as he took office in October 1911. He immediately had the protection of all the vital naval magazines assigned to Admiralty control and guarded them heavily. Previously, these had been under the watch of a few constables! He arranged for continuous residence of naval officers, plus resident clerks, at the Admiralty at all times to give alarms. One of the Sea Lords was always to be on duty in or near the Admiralty building to act with authority. Churchill himself kept a large map of the North Sea behind his desk, indicating the disposition of the German Fleet, at which he carefully looked once a day, less to keep informed than to inculcate in himself and his subordinates a sense of ever-present danger.
The Grand Fleet did not annually cruise to Warm waters near Spain until it was known that the German High Seas Fleet was having its winter refits. When grand maneuvers were held, schedules for coaling and leave were arranged so as to secure the power of meeting any blow that could possibly reach the British fleet in a given time.
Herbert Asquith, then Prime Minister, recalled that in July 1912, Churchill told the Committee of Imperial Defence of the two “safety signals” which the Royal Navy Watched most carefully. In the winter the German fleet was largely immobilized, owing to the fact that large numbers of new recruits had to be absorbed. Thus, the strain of watching was relaxed and the British fleet could be sent away on training cruises or could undertake repairs of the best ships.
Another indicator of safety was when the British noted some of the German great ships of the newer types on the Baltic side of the Kiel Canal. If surprise had been afoot against the British fleet, valuable naval units would not likely be in the Baltic where a long voyage was needed before they could reach the theater of action.
However, both these intelligence indicators, Churchill revealed, would soon be extinguished. The deepening of the Kiel Canal would permit rapid passage of the largest ships between the Baltic and the North Seas. Also, the new German Navy Law would allow them to keep four-fifths of their fleet permanently in full operation. German potential for achieving surprise was thereby measurably increased.
Fear of surprise attack remained right up until the actual outbreak of war. The concentration of the Grand Fleet at Scapa Flow was ordered by Churchill on 28 July 1914, when the crisis was rapidly approaching the critical point. The Fleet was ordered to go from Portland to Scapa Flow on a schedule which took it through the Straits of Dover during darkness. The 18-mile long column of ships moved out on the 29th, and Churchill, wishing to avoid the appearance of a provocative move detrimental to the few remaining slim chances for peace, told only the Prime Minister what he had ordered. Even with these precautions, there was considerable concern that the Germans might have learned of the move and would lay a mine or submarine trap across the route of the Grand Fleet.
The Fleet was safely into the North Sea by the morning of the 30th, however, and the danger of a surprise torpedo attack before or simultaneous with the outbreak of war was now past. Nevertheless, the British remained uneasy over some sudden unexpected German blow right up to the last minutes of peace.
Lloyd George recalled a curious incident on 4 August. The British ultimatum to Germany had been sent and was due to expire at 2300 hours London time. At 2105 hours, a message from the German Foreign Office to the German Embassy in London was intercepted. It informed the German ambassador that the British ambassador in Berlin had asked for his passports at 1900 hours and had announced the British declaration of war. This was four hours ahead of the expiration of the ultimatum.
London had not heard from the British ambassador, and was at a loss to know the meaning of all this. Immediately it was suspected that this was a move on the part of the Germans to anticipate the hour of the declaration of war in order to effect some coup against the British Fleet or British coasts. It raised the issue as to whether the British should accept the intercept as evidence of the commencement of hostilities or wait until the ultimatum actually expired.
The interesting point in this episode is that, despite the fact that their critical military force was concentrated and presumably safe from surprise attack, the British, far from being confident, were still haunted by nameless fears of the unknown.
One of the greatest problems facing a critical military force lies in the area of new technological developments. Obviously, new offensive devices coming into the hands of an enemy, especially those which enhance surprise attack, will be viewed with the greatest alarm. The same can be said of certain defensive weapons.
There is another interesting and indeed ironic way in which a critical military force can be agitated and an international military equilibrium thrown out of kilter. This is through the introduction of a new and radically better weapon to one’s own force. The effect can well be to make obsolescent all the existing critical military force.
The appearance of HMS Dreadnought in 1906 tended to do just that. She unstabilized the whole situation as far as her creators were concerned. The new ship raised the standard for a battleship from four big guns and many smaller caliber ones to ten or twelve big guns and a minimum of smaller weapons. She was Fisher’s brainchild, and as such she was attacked from the day she was launched. Beyond that, however, she was attacked on the very genuine grounds that she swept away British superiority (at that time more than three to one over Germany in capital ships) in pre-Dreadnought vessels. The Germans were given the priceless opportunity to start almost equal in the competition.
Many saw the move as effectively wiping out the beneficial effects of Fisher’s many reforms. One furious critic put it, “The whole British Fleet was morally scrapped and labeled obsolete at the moment when it was at the zenith of its efficiency.” The view was widely expressed that the Dreadnought was Fisher’s greatest mistake and that her real effect had been to bring about a period of enhanced strain in the arms race.
Here was a curious situation and yet one with many historical parallels. Once any nation achieves a predominance in any branch of military strength, it will inevitably wish to freeze technology and technique at that point so as to perpetuate its advantage. By various forms of self-delusion, it can convince itself that any technological innovation is no good, immoral, or that an enemy is incapable of producing it.
Undeniably, the effects were as the critics said. The British had wiped out their lead; the naval race with Germany was intensified as the Germans saw a heaven-sent chance to catch up. The British critical force automatically became smaller, and the margin of superiority henceforth was to be measured by a handful of dreadnoughts. All the British fears regarding their critical force were only increased. The smaller their critical force, the easier it would be for the Germans to surprise and destroy the greater part of it. Furthermore, the loss of a few ships or even a single ship became a matter of much greater concern. The fewer the ships that counted, the easier it would be to wrest supremacy away by their destruction. The British seemed to be putting a much reduced number of eggs into one basket.
However, Fisher was really only anticipating the inevitable. The trend toward increased tonnage had been going on for 20 years. As a result of the Russo-Japanese War, the all-big-gun ship was being considered by several powers—the Germans, Russians, and Japanese. As early as 1904, the U. S. Navy was planning to build two dreadnought-type ships and in early 1905 the two, Michigan and South Carolina, were authorized by Congress, although not completed until 1909. HMS Dreadnought was laid down in October 1905 and was completed, in very fast time, in December 1906. Thus, there were fully sound military and technological reasons for her development, fortified by the lessons of the Russo-Japanese War and by the knowledge that other powers were contemplating development of the type.
One of the main arguments used against the dreadnought was that a larger number of small battleships was preferable to a fleet of dreadnoughts. The British were said to be forcing the game against themselves. The larger the battleships, the fewer could be built, and the fewer there were to patrol the wide reaches of the Empire.
There was sense to these points, especially that pertaining to the fewer ships to cover the Empire. On the other hand, the Royal Navy under Fisher had already begun to pull back its battleships and, as we have seen, to concentrate in the North Sea. The dreadnought was not designed for the old patrol function. It was designed to meet a new type of threat, a powerful battle fleet near Britain. Thus strategic reasons and not merely technological fertility wrought the change. The weapon was designed for a specific need, and there was a high price to be paid. Whether that price tag was too high could not have been foretold at that time. That it was inevitable seems certain. The only question was whether the British should have built the first dreadnought and thus wiped out their own overwhelming supremacy or waited until another power did so first. This might have brought them several more years of the old supremacy, but the price tag would have been in the material and moral advantages that would have gone to another naval power.
These, then, were the concerns and fears of the British in preserving their critical military force. But what of its employment? We have earlier discussed its prime role in peacetime—- as the great balancing element which Britain had to wield in dealing with the Continental land powers. The primarily defensive role of the Grand Fleet has been pointed out. Having thus amassed this great aggregation of power at Scapa Flow, how could the British profitably employ it? How many options were open to them?
The watchwords of the Grand Fleet were, “Guard against surprise! Guard against division ! Increase the strength of forces available for the supreme sea battle!” No stage was felt to be so difficult or dangerous as this initial one. If the Fleet could successfully pass through this period and fulfill its preparatory requirements, it would be in a position to control events.
But what events? Suppose the German High Seas Fleet did not choose to fight a great sea battle and the war went on for years? There were two obvious ways the situation could go. The preferred, from the British viewpoint, was for the Germans to seek a pitched battle. The second was a war of harassments in which both fleets looked about for some means of waiting on the other without undue risk until a decisive opportunity presented itself.
Schools of thought on this problem were curiously ambiguous among the British. On the one hand, the whole spirit and tradition of the Royal Navy was geared to offensive action, of achieving their objectives in the quickest and surest manner by destroying the enemy’s naval forces. This spirit fitted the “tactical” frame of mind into which the Navy had fallen during the long peace since Waterloo, from which not even Fisher’s best efforts were enough to rouse them fully by 1914.
However, the realities of the European strategic situation showed the grave inadequacies of this point of view. Even Jellicoe, whose view was no broader than most of his naval colleagues, at least sensed it:
But history has always shown that it is a very difficult matter to impose our will upon a weaker naval adversary, and that instead of giving us the opportunity of destroying his armed naval force, he usually keeps the main body of those forces—his Battle Fleet—in positions of safety in fortified harbors, where they are a constant threat. . . .
In short, there was a general expectation in spite of the lessons of history, of a great fleet action early in the war. Most people found it hard to believe that the German High Seas Fleet, built at such effort and expense, would adopt from the outset a purely passive role. The Germans, however, feared a general fleet action, since, among other things, a perilous weakening of the High Seas Fleet might lead to loss of control of the Baltic to the Russians. Also, they realized that a defensive policy created by far the most difficult situation for the British. While the High Seas Fleet remained in being, the British could not afford to undertake operations elsewhere that tended to weaken the Grand Fleet, especially in the earlier part of the war when the margin of superiority, at whatever moment the Germans might choose for an all-out fight, was not great.
The British thus found themselves on the outbreak of the greatest war in their history with a superb and massive engine of war with only one purpose, and that purpose could only be fulfilled with the willing co-operation of the enemy. At the same time, there were many other purposes to be fulfilled in a global war and the means for these were painfully slim. The critical military force was displaying another of its cost tags.
Of course, the process of concentration of effort in the battle fleet had begun a decade before 1914 when Fisher began his policy of scrapping large numbers of small ships around the world. It was a case of “covering the heart and leaving the arteries to care for themselves on the outbreak of war.” Certainly the submarine as a serious menace to British shipping was unforeseen until the very eve of the war, and no convoy planning was done until well along in the war. Then, the vital small ships needed for convoy work were missing.
Even Fisher was concerned during the prewar decade over the criticism that, by weeding out the small ships of no great power, the whole policy concentrated too much attention on the Grand Fleet as an engine of fighting at sea and ignored the possibility of influencing operations on shore. Fisher himself did not see how ships could influence land operations except by forbidding the enemy free transit of men and supplies. Under no conditions were naval vessels to be used to attack forts or towns. The war was to prove Fisher wrong, and he did his best to develop and accelerate a program of auxiliary construction that cut down dreadnought building.
Naval attitudes and strategic outlooks had already appeared in conflict with the accepted strategy of the British Government during a 1911 review of Army and Navy plans. The Navy was utterly opposed to sending the entire expeditionary force out of the United Kingdom to France, since this threw added burden on them. Transporting of the expedition plus the increased burden of defending the Isles against a possible German invasion tended to interfere with the Navy’s plans for its preferred type of war in which the enemy fleet would come out and be smashed, thus allowing a close blockade by the total British naval resources.
However, national strategy made new demands on the Navy and the first six weeks of the war saw a larger British Army than had ever before been on the Continent grappling with the Germans. The struggle to save Belgium and the effort to hold the coasts threw unexpected tasks on the Navy. Through all these novel and titanic events the Grand Fleet sat in Northern Scotland or cruised the North Sea, removed from the furor to the south.
Whether or not the British fears of a surprise attack on their critical military force were justified is probably something that can never be proven. Churchill himself, writing in 1923, did not believe that either the Kaiser or the German Government ever contemplated such a course of action. The Germans may not have considered a surprise attack on the British battle fleet for the simple reason that Germany did not really believe the British would ever enter a Continental war against them. Certainly they were aware of British fears but may have considered them only so much anti-German propaganda. Yet, fear is an infectious disease, and the very thing the British feared began very early to be feared by the Germans too.
This may in part have been the result of guilty conscience. A large and influential section of German public opinion looked on a preventive war as a legitimate means of defense, a grave act of policy that might be forced on a nation. Such a preventive war might prove to be a political blunder, but it was not necessarily a crime or an offense against civilization.
Grand Admiral Tirpitz believed that the British attitude in 1904-1905 was inclined toward a preventive strike, although the question had arisen in German minds at the time of the first Navy Bill as to whether or not the British might not want to nip the new German fleet in the bud. He was convinced that this danger was not far off in that two year period when the seriousness of the German naval effort was fully recognized by the British, but while German strength was still low. Tirpitz felt it was only the unpreparedness of France to stand up to a land war with Germany and of the British Army to assist France which prevented the British from striking.
Certainly some British actions gave a suspicious people cause for alarm. The concentration of British forces in the North Sea area, for example, was seen as threatening. There were other elements too, more flamboyant ones which received much greater attention in Germany. In February 1905, the Civil Lord of the Admiralty, Arthur Lee, made a tactless public declaration that, were war to be declared against Germany, the Royal Navy “would get its blow in first, before the other side had time even to read in the papers that war had been declared.” Lee’s comment led to a war scare in Germany, as a suspicious combination of factors seemed to lead the Germans to believe a British attack was in the wind.
The personality of Fisher was another source of German fear. His zeal and the ferocity with which he pursued his goals were matched by the violence of his words, many of which reached German ears. For example, during the 1904 fleet redistribution debate, Fisher let loose a blast which, in its essence, was a very apt description of the theory of deterrence:
My sole objective is Peace in doing all this! Because if you rub it in both at home and abroad that you are ready for instant war with every unit of your strength in the first line and intend to be “first in” and hit your enemy in the belly and kick him when he’s down and boil your prisoners in oil (if you take any!) and torture his women and children, then people will keep clear of you.
Fisher believed it was the job of the Navy to hit first, hit hard, and keep on hitting, so that by one huge initial effort the enemy would be destroyed and Britain spared a long drawn-out series of contests. His belligerence was supposedly proven by his “plans” for a preventive war. Undeniably, in private conversations with intimates, he had put forth the belief that it would be a good thing to attack the German fleet before it became too strong. On at least two occasions he claimed to have raised the subject with King Edward. On the first occasion in late 1904, Fisher delightedly recalled, the King replied, “My God, Fisher, you must be mad!” In early 1908, Fisher again made the suggestion and this time reported that the King was more receptive.
In May or June 1905, Fisher was reported to have said to the First Lord of the Admiralty, “Sir, if you want to smash up the German Fleet, I am ready to do so now. If you wait five or six years, it will be a much more difficult job.” The First Lord was supposed to have taken the proposition to the Prime Minister who asked that Fisher be told “we don’t want to smash up the Germany Navy—but to keep in readiness.” Fisher replied, “Very well, remember I have warned you.”
Nevertheless, despite Fisher’s convictions, and he was certainly not alone in these beliefs, there is no proof that the idea was ever really formally proposed by him. He simply realized that such an action was impossible for a British Government. His “suggestions” were apparently never considered by the Board of the Admiralty and certainly no such plan was ever part of British naval policy in this period.
However, the legend had much greater weight than the fact. Many responsible Germans, apparently including both the Kaiser and Tirpitz, really believed Fisher planned to attack. Occasional press outbursts in England or appearance of the preventive war theme in speeches only fanned German alarm. The Kaiser in 1905 told the British naval attaché that many German naval officers believed that Fisher’s great aim was to fight Germany. In early 1907, a rumor that “Fisher was coming” spread out of proportion and actually caused a panic at the main German base town of Kiel. Alarmed parents even kept their children out of school for two days and the panic also affected the Berlin stock exchange. In 1910, Tirpitz told the British ambassador that Fisher was an arch rascal who wanted to commemorate his leaving the Navy with a “Trafalgar” against Germany.
A truly serious basis for alarm, as far as the Germans were concerned, was their fear around 1906-1907 that Britain was finding the economic strain of the naval race too much to bear and might be tempted to end the strain by striking. German naval strategy at this time was a deterrent one, the so-called “risk theory,” which was predicated upon the assumption that the British would not risk a naval war with the Germans, since the losses incurred by them in destroying the German fleet would excessively weaken British strength vis-a-vis the rest of the world. If the British had chosen to begin a naval war against the Germans in the 1907-1910 period, however, the risk theory would not have acted as a deterrent. The British superiority was too overwhelming then, since the head start in dreadnoughts was added to the huge advantage in older battleships. The Germans thus looked upon these years as a “danger zone,” an often repeated expression. Once the danger zone had been passed and the dreadnought ship was available in numbers, the coming of the all-big-gun ship would clearly have been to the advantage of the Germans. The reduced size of battle lines, as older battleships grew obsolescent, made the risk very effective.
Thus, these years saw two naval powers facing each other, one initially vastly stronger than the other. The weaker naval power commenced and continued to build its fleet apparently in full awareness of its provocative and threatening appearance to the stronger power. Because it was weaker, the weaker power feared a preventive surprise attack by the stronger before the growing strength of the weaker power made such a coup no longer feasible.
The stronger power lived in fear of a surprise attack from the weaker one, since surprise attack was the only means by which the weaker power could actually defeat the stronger. The weaker power followed a deterrent strategy, building a fleet which it must surely have known could never overtake in strength and destroy in combat the fleet of the stronger power, if both maintained full building rates. Having provoked British hostility by starting their new fleet in the first place, the Germans thereafter used this very hostility to justify the fleet and to call it a deterrent against British attack.