[!--QuoteBegin-Onhell+Jul 13 2005, 01:49 AM--][div class=\'quotetop\']QUOTE(Onhell @ Jul 13 2005, 01:49 AM)[/div][div class=\'quotemain\'][!--QuoteEBegin--]I request you post your essay on the building of the German Navy, so when I take a WWII class I can use it as my own [!--emo&
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But seriously... post it.
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My essay focuses on the pre-WWI navy, Onhell. It won't be much use in your WWII class!
I've abridged it slightly, but it's pretty much the same. The explanatory footnotes did not copy/paste properly, but meh.
"Our Place in the Sun" Building the Kaiser's Navy
©2004 A.J. MacDonald, Acadia University
When Bernhard von Bülow exclaimed in 1897 that the primary purpose of the Imperial German Navy was not “to put anyone in the shade” but rather secure Germany’s own “place in the sun” , he summed up the aspirations of Kaiser Wilhelm II, Admiral von Tirpitz, and Germany’s burgeoning middle class that building a large fleet would somehow solve all of Germany’ problems foreign and domestic, economic and social. Looking enviously at Great Britain, Germans ignored naysayers both at home and abroad and became convinced that a navy was the key to raising their country from the status of a European to a world power. The result of the expansion of the Kaiser’s fleet was not respect for the German Reich, but rather an escalation of tensions throughout the world which would culminate in the disastrous (especially for Germany) First World War.
The German Empire, and its Prussian predecessor, had not traditionally been a sea power. German patriotic songs did not speak of “ruling the waves”, but rather of keeping a “watch on the Rhine”, guarding against a French invasion. The army had been Germany’s primary tool of warfare. Indeed, it was the Prussian army that was instrumental in uniting Germany in 1871 and keeping Bismarck in power thereafter. The role of the Navy in the Bismarck Era was so insignificant that the “fleet” was commanded not by an admiral, but by an army general. The Navy, then, was little more than a coast guard, primarily to be employed against Germany’s traditional land enemy, France. Kaiser Wilhelm I, Bismarck, and the Prussian military-aristocracy were content to remain primarily a continental power, seeing little justification for the large expense a proper fleet would require.
After only 99 days on the throne, Kaiser Friedrich III died, and was succeeded by his son Wilhelm II. Wilhelm II took a much more active role in governing Germany than his father or grandfather. Not wanting to be overshadowed by the “Founders’ Generation”, in 1890 Wilhelm dismissed Bismarck in favour of a chancellor more willing to follow his own lead. Although he was now free from Bismarck’s influence, Wilhelm took little interest in the actual governing of Germany, usually opting instead to set general policies and allow his ministers to see to the details. Unlike most of his duties, however, the Kaiser seems to have had a “warm and vital interest” in all things naval, a trait which some historians have traced to his close relationship with his grandmother, Queen Victoria of Britain.
While Wilhelm was infatuated with the concept of a German navy, it was Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz who proved to be the linchpin of Germany’s naval program. Upon being appointed head of the Reichsmarineamt (Imperial Naval Office) in 1897, Tirpitz immediately began to make himself indispensable to both the Navy in particular and to Germany’s defensive strategy in general. A master of political manipulation, Tirpitz quickly convinced many of Germany’s leaders that a large fleet would have countless benefits in the realms of both foreign and domestic affairs. Historian Gary Weir argues that Tirpitz’s skill at forming and maintaining political alliances, particularly with the Catholic Center Party, was his greatest contribution to the naval program. By virtue of being a naval officer and because of his skills at manipulation, Tirpitz quickly ingratiated himself to Wilhelm. When Tirpitz repeatedly advocated expanding the navy, then, his calls fell on the enthusiastic ears of the Kaiser, the politicians, and, as shall be explained below, the middle class.
Wilhelm and Tirpitz, like most of the world at the time, looked in awe at the wealth and power of Great Britain. Britain’s colonial empire stretched around the world, and was protected by a fleet which was by far the largest and most advanced the world had yet seen. A Navy became almost synonymous with a being a world power, a sentiment echoed by Wilhelm himself when he said “imperial power means naval power, and they are so mutually dependent that the one cannot exist without the other.” What Wilhelm overlooked, however, was that the raison d'être of the Royal Navy was the British Empire, not vice versa. Wilhelm and his contemporaries in Germany seem to have believed that the natural result of building a large fleet would be a powerful commercial empire and Germany’s long desired “place in the sun.”
That Germany, as mentioned above, had no naval tradition by which a substantial fleet could be justified did not perturb Wilhelm. The Kaiser simply distorted the collective memory of the ancient Hanseatic League to turn it into a military, rather than economic, alliance. During a speech given in Hamburg (a former Hanseatic city) in 1911 he told the crowd
I have only acted historically, for I said to myself upon my accession, that the tasks which the Hansa attempted to solve by itself…must unquestionably at once fall on the shoulders of the newly-arisen German Empire; and it was simply the obligations of old traditions that had to be resumed.
Indeed, within months of ascending to the throne, Wilhelm ordered a complete reorganization of the Navy’s command structure, making it remarkably similar to that of Britain’s Royal Navy. Although he held only nominal influence in day-to-day operations of Imperial Germany’s navy, Wilhelm’s role was essential to its dramatic growth. It was said of the Navy by one officer that “without [Wilhelm] it could hardly move forward, the Kaiser is thus really the creator of our fleet.”
Aside from satiating the Kaiser’s dreams of imperial glory, it was believed by many that there were economic benefits to building a German Navy. During the early 1890s Germany entered into trade agreements with her major economic partners which ensured low tariffs on numerous goods, pleasing both the agricultural sector and the Reich’s rapidly growing industrial sector. However, grain prices unexpectedly crashed a short time after the treaties were signed, and Germany’s grain market was therefore flooded with cheaper foreign imports. The conservative landowners, the backbone of the Prussian system, were distraught over what they viewed to be the demise of their way of life and demanded that Germany return to a closed market. The industrialists were reaping substantial profits from low tariffs and were quite justifiably opposed to such an act, which would severely limit their competitiveness in international markets. The quandary in which the German government found itself was difficult. To yield to the powerful landowners’ demands would seriously threaten the vitality of the industrial sector, which was becoming increasingly important to the Reich’s economy.
The compromise Bülow, who had since become Chancellor, devised was bold. He allowed the trade treaties to lapse, pleasing the agriculturists, and appeased the industrialists by accelerating the implementation of the Reich’s largest public works project – The Imperial German Navy. Tirpitz and his navy became quite popular with German industrialists, as, quite understandably, contracts for the materials and construction of the expanded fleet were awarded primarily to German firms. Between 1890 and 1900, German shipbuilding firms, for example, increased their workforces threefold. Not only did building the Navy appease the Kaiser, then, it also kept German industry well assured of brisk business.
Industrialists were not the only group of people in Germany to support the expansion of the Navy either. To the common citizen it was a unifying force. The Navy was something in which all Germans had a common interest; unlike most aspects of the German Empire, it was not simply a Prussian navy writ large. That Prussia had been primarily a land power and the new focus of a united Germany now seemed to be naval was likely agreeable to many. Tirpitz’s Reichsmarineamt even released publications explaining that the Navy was a way of “overcoming the discord between the parties in the united German Empire, and directing the minds of the disputants towards a higher goal: the greatness and glory of the Fatherland.”
Many Germans embraced Bülow’s vision of a “place in the sun” wholeheartedly, and saw the buildup of the Navy as the first step in securing a place for Germany on the world stage. They looked forward to the day when “no great decision [could] be made without the German Empire”, and were eager to use the Navy to gain respect throughout the world. The results, however, were less than stellar. Germany’s overseas possessions in Africa and the Pacific Ocean were meager in comparison to Britain’s or France’s, and far from being sources of income, were barely profitable. Far from gaining respect on the world stage, Germany merely antagonized established powers and escalated the tensions which culminated in August of 1914.
German military planners were enchanted by the idea of a navy, but for much different reasons. Rather than using the fleet to create and maintain a world-wide empire, some believed that an imminent threat was posed to German’s future by Great Britain. Whether real or imagined, the British threat apparently was foremost in Tirpitz’s mind when he called for a rapid expansion of the German fleet. He said as much in his first audience with Wilhelm:
For Germany the most dangerous enemy at the present time is England. It is also the enemy against which we most urgently require a certain measure of naval force as a political power factor…our fleet must be so constructed that it can unfold its greatest potential between Heligoland and the Thames…[with] battleships in as great a number as possible.
Indeed, Tirpitz’s overall plan for the German Navy, outlined in his infamous Dienstschrift No. IX (Service Memo IX), called for a large fleet concentrated in such a way that would enable Germany, in the event of hostilities, to strike an early and decisive blow to the British fleet, avoiding a protracted naval war in which even he acknowledged that it would be difficult for Germany to be victorious. The British threat, however, only materialized after Germany began to challenge Britain for naval mastery. Britain, before 1900, had viewed not Germany, but France as her European rival. Germany’s growing strength and unpredictable nature, though, forced Britain and France to resolve their differences around the world, culminating with the Entente in 1904. Britain was now very much a real threat to German plans for dominance. Hopes of Anglo-German relations faded quickly, and an unprecedented arms race between the two nations was sparked with the launching in 1906 of HMS Dreadnought.
Some prominent Germans, however, were wary of the Navy’s new role in domestic and foreign matters. It seemed to many that the traditional source of Prussian power, the army, had lost its senior status to the upstart Imperial Navy. As the Kaiser became increasingly entranced by naval matters, he abandoned the traditional Hohenzollern army uniform of his grandfather and donned naval garb. While this did make him the butt of more than a few jokes from the Prussian army-aristocrats, they dared not to speak seriously about rethinking the naval policies within earshot of Wilhelm. Not even the highest ranking army officers (Waldersee, Schlieffen, and the younger Moltke successively) voiced their opposition, as it would spell disaster for their careers. Bismarck’s successor, Caprivi, hoped that Germany could, at best, become a second rate naval power and should focus its primary defences on its continental rivals Russia and France. By 1908, even Bülow, who had proclaimed as foreign secretary in 1897 that a navy would ensure Germany its “place in the sun”, began to express reservations about the effort and expense being poured into the fleet. In a letter to Tirpitz, he contended that Britain had both the desire and the means to remain mistress of the seas. He further added that in the event of hostilities the German fleet “would be kept blockaded in our harbours by the overwhelming British naval forces” and wondered if “slowing down in the implementation of the current naval programme should not be seriously considered.” Indeed, the chancellor was proven correct during the First World War, when the German fleet was trapped for the duration in Heligoland by the British blockade, aside from the indecisive Battle of Jutland in 1916.
Wilhelm’s childlike enthusiasm for naval matters was supplemented by Tirpitz’s political cunning, the result being the unprecedented growth of a fleet which created more problems than it solved and proved ultimately useless against the foe it was created to fight. Britain held little interest in Germany’s continental ambitions, but the Reich’s challenge to her mastery of the oceans had to be met. The Imperial German Navy was not primarily a defensive force, but rather a tool used by various leaders to attempt to artificially create a sense of national unity – a solution to the omnipresent “German Problem”. Using the military in particular and foreign policy in general, as a solution to domestic problems proved ultimately disastrous for Germany in 1918, as it has for other nations since.
(btw - As per the university's policy, it's been submitted to online anti-plagarism databases, so nobody try to pass it off....professors use them more than you'd thnik)
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