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About time! Finally a TGW AAR that really cares about historic backgrounds!
Will you try to play it as historically as you write your introduction?
Will you try to play it as historically as you write your introduction?
Meltdown1986 said:
I shall certainly try and give as much depth as possible.
Vincent Julien said:
Quite so!
StephenT said:
Either they wanted you to produce a history of Germany since 1862 before your AAR, or they wanted less pickelhaube wearing German soldiers getting drunk in Casablanca nightclubs
Part III - Dreadnoughts
There was a fundamental difference between the threats posed to the British Empire in the late 19th and early 20th century by France, Russia, Germany, Japan and the United States. The ambitions of France and Russia were essentially imperial and could be satiated in the way that they were in 1904 and 1907 – this was especially true of the first as it was a democracy. The conceivable threat posed by the rise of the American and Japanese navies was essentially confined to outposts of Britain’s Empire – these demands could also be satisfied by diplomacy. With regards to America, Britain respected the Monroe Doctrine and had long withdrawn garrisons from Canada while admitting the territory was indefensible. Cultivating good relations with Presidents McKinley and Roosevelt had ensured that an Anglo-American war was unthinkable. Similarly, Britain played on Japan’s fear of Russia in order to secure an alliance in the Far East. Additionally, the American and Japanese navies were not designed for combating the Royal Navy – they were aimed at each other, and thus, cancelled each other out.
The threat posed by Germany was all the more different. Firstly, it was direct – a naval challenge was only ever going to provoke British concerns with regards to the security of the Empire. Secondly, and more importantly, it was near. Explaining to the King, Fisher explained that “Germany keeps her whole fleet always concentrated within a few hours of England”. This is what differentiated the German Navy from those of the United States and Japan – it was always at the other end of the North Sea, and should it win control of the sea, then the most powerful army in the world could realistically be transported with relative ease to England’s shores to destroy the Empire. The publicly stated aim of the German Navy was for the protection of her merchant shipping, which hitherto had relied upon British protection. Yet this does not run consistently with the Navy Minister Tirpitz who commented that “for Germany, the most dangerous naval enemy at the present time is England…our fleet must unfold its greatest military potential between Heligoland and the Thames”. Ultimately, Wilhelm II and Tirpitz either never appreciated, or never wanted to appreciate the fact that Britain was never going to accept the presence of a large fleet in close proximity to the British Isles, backed up by the largest army in the world, deployed by a government which had a continually restless and aggressive foreign policy.
The man given the task of countering the German naval challenge was Admiral Sir John Fisher. ‘Jacky’, as he was known, was thought to be the greatest admiral since Nelson, and had a long distinguished career stretching back from 1854, including his time as captain of the HMS Inflexible, then the most powerful ship in the world, and the leading participant in the bombardment of Alexandria in 1882. He threw himself into the role of First Sea Lord in 1904 with amazing energy and enthusiasm, scrapping ninety obsolete vessels, describing them as "too weak to fight and too slow to run away" while upsetting the Admiralty ‘fossils’, as he called its older members, in the process. Determined that the German challenge should have an adequate response, he endeavoured to concentrate the Royal Navy in home waters by calling home various ships from their overseas stations, leaving the Channel and Atlantic fleets much enhanced in the process.
Fisher’s greatest contribution to the pre-war Royal Navy, and to naval warfare as a whole, came in 1906. The idea of an all big gun battleship had been touted for some time, primarily by the Italian naval analyst, Vittorio Cuniberti. The battle of Tsushima had confirmed the potency of the big naval gun in a fleet action, with much of the damage being inflicted on the ravaged Russian ships, not by those guns of medium calibre, but by larger guns of twelve inches or so. Through 1905, Fisher began work on an all big gun battleship, deciding to give it ten twelve-inch guns mounted in turrets to make it twice as powerful as any existing ship, endowed it with steam turbine engines to allow it to outrun any existing ship, and gave it triple-expansion engines to allow it to outlast any existing ship. Faster, stronger and more reliable, she made all existing battleships obsolete and she slid down the ramp at Portsmouth in February 1906 to be commissioned as HMS Dreadnought.
Designed to comprehensively flatten the German naval threat, and destroy her resolve, Dreadnought did more to encourage Tirpitz in his desire to contest Britain’s control of the sea. With all capital ships in the world suddenly given the ignominious title ‘pre-Dreadnought’ including Britain’s own, Tirpitz sensed that an opportunity had been created by Fisher’s leap in ship design and technology. Looking to revitalise the German ship building programme, Tirpitz announced two ships for the 1906/7 programme, two for the 1907/8 programme and three for the 1908/9 programme. An out and out naval arms race had begun, with Fisher, the Navalists, the Conservatives and the popular press demanding massive increases in Dreadnought building now that the German challenge had regained its strength. Reluctant to divert finances from its social reform designs, the Liberal government grudgingly recognised the need for the Royal Navy to maintain a numerical superiority over the German fleet. When it seemed that British shipbuilding was not quite vigorous enough, a national campaign was launched by the Navy League for the building of an immense eight ships in one year, coining the phrase “we want eight and we won’t wait”. In the ensuing cabinet struggle between First Lord of the Admiralty, Reginald McKenna, who demanded six ships, and the ‘economist’ David Lloyd George who wanted just four ships, a compromise of eight was reached, in which four would be built in one year, and the rest the next year if the navy needed them – which they inevitably did.
With British and German shipyards deciding the futures of their nations, relations between the two were never going to improve unless one power desisted. Yet by now, feeling was running high in both countries, and in Britain, fears of imminent invasion heightened amidst the tense naval race. The Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers, and written in 1903, elaborated on a story of the discovery of invasion tugboats and river barges at the mouth of the Elbe, by two youthful English tourists. In 1906 the more potent book Invasion of 1910 by William Le Queux began to be serialised in the Daily Mail and later sold more than a million copies, with a foreword being written by Field Marshal Roberts. The story of Invasion of 1910 was essentially a brutal one: Germany invades Britain, with British soldiers and civilians fighting with desperate bravery and futility, with German soldiers bayoneting children and massacring entire towns at the order of a bloodthirsty Kaiser. The story ends with the repulse of the invasion, and the destruction of British economic and trading power. Such sensationalist stories roused anti-German sentiment in Britain, with fears of fifth columnists, spies and German army reservists trained as waiters/clerks and/or living in the outskirts of London. Caches of rifles in suspicious locations aroused panic in some parts, whilst others reported the sighting of German airships reconnoitring the country. In 1909, a play, An Englishman’s Home opened at the Wyndham Theatre, in which pickelhaube wearing troops from an unspecified foreign country invade Britain and treat an English gentleman with appalling rudeness. Eventually, two soldiers are killed and the English homeowner is executed, dying a brave martyr in patriotically defending his home. Such scare stories provided the National Service League, whose president was Lord Roberts, with a valuable motive for pressing its cause of conscription. Pointing to the dangers of over reliance on the navy, Roberts argued that only a large standing army could provide Britain with certainty from invasion by Germany, and continued his campaign throughout the invasion frights and scare stories. However, the Liberal government resisted Roberts’ populist drum banging, and to a certain extent stole his thunder when the Territorial Army was set up with Haldane’s reorganisation of the army. Yet if Germany had no plans to invade the British Isles in a ‘bolt from the blue’, her language certainly did not endear her to Britain. In October 1908, Kaiser Wilhelm II gave an interview to the Daily Telegraph, in which he described the English as “mad, mad, mad as March hares”, declared that the German people, in general, did not care for the British, that the French and the Russians had approached Germany and tried to persuade her to enter into the Boer War against the British and that the German naval building programme was aimed more at Japan than the British. Having upset four countries in one article, the Kaiser was severely embarrassed, although much of the blame can be attributed to Chancellor von Bülow, who failed to see that the interview was edited and moderated.
Crisis over Bosnia in 1908 passed without war, although Germany and Austria-Hungary had been quite prepared to gamble that Russia would not intervene when Vienna annexed the Turkish province. While constitutional difficulties over the House of Lords flared up in Britain, the Kaiser was quite prepared to match his posturing rhetoric with action in world affairs. France intervened in Morocco militarily in 1911 and in response, Germany despatched the gunboat Panther to Agadir in order to demonstrate German strength, and force the French into granting concessions in Africa. An ensuing war scare saw the concentration of the British Atlantic Fleet at Portland, whilst the railway bridges of the South East Railway were patrolled, and ammunition stores put under guard by Royal Marines. Determined to uphold France in the case of war, the British and French army staffs met and made preparations for the sending of a British Expeditionary Force to France if war with Germany broke out. In the meantime, the most dovish British cabinet member, David Lloyd George spoke at Mansion House and threatened Germany that war would break out if it pressed the French too much, much to the surprise of the German government. The crisis died down and an agreement was reached in which Germany obtained obscure territories in Central Africa, but had to recognise French authority in Morocco. In the meantime, France and Britain had been driven closer together by Germany’s bombast, whilst in Britain, rivalry between the army and navy had led to a fundamental disagreement over Britain’s contingency plan for war in 1911. The army advocated the sending of the Expeditionary Force to France, the 150,000 man force that had been created by Haldane after the calamity of the Boer War. On the other hand, the navy believed the army to be, in Fisher’s words “a projectile to be fired by the navy” and believed that the Expeditionary Force would be wasted in France. Eventually, Asquith agreed with the army, and when the First Lord of the Admiralty, McKenna resisted in agreeing to the army’s proposals, he was cornered into swapping jobs with the Home Secretary, Winston Churchill. Churchill’s appointment as First Lord of the Admiralty invigorated the navy, which prepared to overwhelm the German bid with a huge programme of shipbuilding. Meanwhile, preparations were also being made by the government to make one last attempt at relieving tension with Germany.
There was a fundamental difference between the threats posed to the British Empire in the late 19th and early 20th century by France, Russia, Germany, Japan and the United States. The ambitions of France and Russia were essentially imperial and could be satiated in the way that they were in 1904 and 1907 – this was especially true of the first as it was a democracy. The conceivable threat posed by the rise of the American and Japanese navies was essentially confined to outposts of Britain’s Empire – these demands could also be satisfied by diplomacy. With regards to America, Britain respected the Monroe Doctrine and had long withdrawn garrisons from Canada while admitting the territory was indefensible. Cultivating good relations with Presidents McKinley and Roosevelt had ensured that an Anglo-American war was unthinkable. Similarly, Britain played on Japan’s fear of Russia in order to secure an alliance in the Far East. Additionally, the American and Japanese navies were not designed for combating the Royal Navy – they were aimed at each other, and thus, cancelled each other out.
The threat posed by Germany was all the more different. Firstly, it was direct – a naval challenge was only ever going to provoke British concerns with regards to the security of the Empire. Secondly, and more importantly, it was near. Explaining to the King, Fisher explained that “Germany keeps her whole fleet always concentrated within a few hours of England”. This is what differentiated the German Navy from those of the United States and Japan – it was always at the other end of the North Sea, and should it win control of the sea, then the most powerful army in the world could realistically be transported with relative ease to England’s shores to destroy the Empire. The publicly stated aim of the German Navy was for the protection of her merchant shipping, which hitherto had relied upon British protection. Yet this does not run consistently with the Navy Minister Tirpitz who commented that “for Germany, the most dangerous naval enemy at the present time is England…our fleet must unfold its greatest military potential between Heligoland and the Thames”. Ultimately, Wilhelm II and Tirpitz either never appreciated, or never wanted to appreciate the fact that Britain was never going to accept the presence of a large fleet in close proximity to the British Isles, backed up by the largest army in the world, deployed by a government which had a continually restless and aggressive foreign policy.
The man given the task of countering the German naval challenge was Admiral Sir John Fisher. ‘Jacky’, as he was known, was thought to be the greatest admiral since Nelson, and had a long distinguished career stretching back from 1854, including his time as captain of the HMS Inflexible, then the most powerful ship in the world, and the leading participant in the bombardment of Alexandria in 1882. He threw himself into the role of First Sea Lord in 1904 with amazing energy and enthusiasm, scrapping ninety obsolete vessels, describing them as "too weak to fight and too slow to run away" while upsetting the Admiralty ‘fossils’, as he called its older members, in the process. Determined that the German challenge should have an adequate response, he endeavoured to concentrate the Royal Navy in home waters by calling home various ships from their overseas stations, leaving the Channel and Atlantic fleets much enhanced in the process.
Fisher (left) and von Tirpitz (right): North Sea adversaries
Fisher’s greatest contribution to the pre-war Royal Navy, and to naval warfare as a whole, came in 1906. The idea of an all big gun battleship had been touted for some time, primarily by the Italian naval analyst, Vittorio Cuniberti. The battle of Tsushima had confirmed the potency of the big naval gun in a fleet action, with much of the damage being inflicted on the ravaged Russian ships, not by those guns of medium calibre, but by larger guns of twelve inches or so. Through 1905, Fisher began work on an all big gun battleship, deciding to give it ten twelve-inch guns mounted in turrets to make it twice as powerful as any existing ship, endowed it with steam turbine engines to allow it to outrun any existing ship, and gave it triple-expansion engines to allow it to outlast any existing ship. Faster, stronger and more reliable, she made all existing battleships obsolete and she slid down the ramp at Portsmouth in February 1906 to be commissioned as HMS Dreadnought.
Designed to comprehensively flatten the German naval threat, and destroy her resolve, Dreadnought did more to encourage Tirpitz in his desire to contest Britain’s control of the sea. With all capital ships in the world suddenly given the ignominious title ‘pre-Dreadnought’ including Britain’s own, Tirpitz sensed that an opportunity had been created by Fisher’s leap in ship design and technology. Looking to revitalise the German ship building programme, Tirpitz announced two ships for the 1906/7 programme, two for the 1907/8 programme and three for the 1908/9 programme. An out and out naval arms race had begun, with Fisher, the Navalists, the Conservatives and the popular press demanding massive increases in Dreadnought building now that the German challenge had regained its strength. Reluctant to divert finances from its social reform designs, the Liberal government grudgingly recognised the need for the Royal Navy to maintain a numerical superiority over the German fleet. When it seemed that British shipbuilding was not quite vigorous enough, a national campaign was launched by the Navy League for the building of an immense eight ships in one year, coining the phrase “we want eight and we won’t wait”. In the ensuing cabinet struggle between First Lord of the Admiralty, Reginald McKenna, who demanded six ships, and the ‘economist’ David Lloyd George who wanted just four ships, a compromise of eight was reached, in which four would be built in one year, and the rest the next year if the navy needed them – which they inevitably did.
HMS Dreadnought
With British and German shipyards deciding the futures of their nations, relations between the two were never going to improve unless one power desisted. Yet by now, feeling was running high in both countries, and in Britain, fears of imminent invasion heightened amidst the tense naval race. The Riddle of the Sands by Erskine Childers, and written in 1903, elaborated on a story of the discovery of invasion tugboats and river barges at the mouth of the Elbe, by two youthful English tourists. In 1906 the more potent book Invasion of 1910 by William Le Queux began to be serialised in the Daily Mail and later sold more than a million copies, with a foreword being written by Field Marshal Roberts. The story of Invasion of 1910 was essentially a brutal one: Germany invades Britain, with British soldiers and civilians fighting with desperate bravery and futility, with German soldiers bayoneting children and massacring entire towns at the order of a bloodthirsty Kaiser. The story ends with the repulse of the invasion, and the destruction of British economic and trading power. Such sensationalist stories roused anti-German sentiment in Britain, with fears of fifth columnists, spies and German army reservists trained as waiters/clerks and/or living in the outskirts of London. Caches of rifles in suspicious locations aroused panic in some parts, whilst others reported the sighting of German airships reconnoitring the country. In 1909, a play, An Englishman’s Home opened at the Wyndham Theatre, in which pickelhaube wearing troops from an unspecified foreign country invade Britain and treat an English gentleman with appalling rudeness. Eventually, two soldiers are killed and the English homeowner is executed, dying a brave martyr in patriotically defending his home. Such scare stories provided the National Service League, whose president was Lord Roberts, with a valuable motive for pressing its cause of conscription. Pointing to the dangers of over reliance on the navy, Roberts argued that only a large standing army could provide Britain with certainty from invasion by Germany, and continued his campaign throughout the invasion frights and scare stories. However, the Liberal government resisted Roberts’ populist drum banging, and to a certain extent stole his thunder when the Territorial Army was set up with Haldane’s reorganisation of the army. Yet if Germany had no plans to invade the British Isles in a ‘bolt from the blue’, her language certainly did not endear her to Britain. In October 1908, Kaiser Wilhelm II gave an interview to the Daily Telegraph, in which he described the English as “mad, mad, mad as March hares”, declared that the German people, in general, did not care for the British, that the French and the Russians had approached Germany and tried to persuade her to enter into the Boer War against the British and that the German naval building programme was aimed more at Japan than the British. Having upset four countries in one article, the Kaiser was severely embarrassed, although much of the blame can be attributed to Chancellor von Bülow, who failed to see that the interview was edited and moderated.
William Le Queux: enthusiastic rabble rouser
Field Marshal Lord Roberts of Kandahar: Hero of Afghanistan and South Africa and campaigner for conscription
Crisis over Bosnia in 1908 passed without war, although Germany and Austria-Hungary had been quite prepared to gamble that Russia would not intervene when Vienna annexed the Turkish province. While constitutional difficulties over the House of Lords flared up in Britain, the Kaiser was quite prepared to match his posturing rhetoric with action in world affairs. France intervened in Morocco militarily in 1911 and in response, Germany despatched the gunboat Panther to Agadir in order to demonstrate German strength, and force the French into granting concessions in Africa. An ensuing war scare saw the concentration of the British Atlantic Fleet at Portland, whilst the railway bridges of the South East Railway were patrolled, and ammunition stores put under guard by Royal Marines. Determined to uphold France in the case of war, the British and French army staffs met and made preparations for the sending of a British Expeditionary Force to France if war with Germany broke out. In the meantime, the most dovish British cabinet member, David Lloyd George spoke at Mansion House and threatened Germany that war would break out if it pressed the French too much, much to the surprise of the German government. The crisis died down and an agreement was reached in which Germany obtained obscure territories in Central Africa, but had to recognise French authority in Morocco. In the meantime, France and Britain had been driven closer together by Germany’s bombast, whilst in Britain, rivalry between the army and navy had led to a fundamental disagreement over Britain’s contingency plan for war in 1911. The army advocated the sending of the Expeditionary Force to France, the 150,000 man force that had been created by Haldane after the calamity of the Boer War. On the other hand, the navy believed the army to be, in Fisher’s words “a projectile to be fired by the navy” and believed that the Expeditionary Force would be wasted in France. Eventually, Asquith agreed with the army, and when the First Lord of the Admiralty, McKenna resisted in agreeing to the army’s proposals, he was cornered into swapping jobs with the Home Secretary, Winston Churchill. Churchill’s appointment as First Lord of the Admiralty invigorated the navy, which prepared to overwhelm the German bid with a huge programme of shipbuilding. Meanwhile, preparations were also being made by the government to make one last attempt at relieving tension with Germany.
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WAR!!!!! Get to the war... the violence... the destruction... WE WANT WAR!!!!
Okay... got that out of my system. Very informative AAR, Allenby. Keep posting and I will keep reading, as long as there is going to be militaristic agression coming soon...o
Okay... got that out of my system. Very informative AAR, Allenby. Keep posting and I will keep reading, as long as there is going to be militaristic agression coming soon...
o
Is it me, or is Jackie Fisher gazing with horror and trepidation at Tirpitz' mighty beard?
Or maybe it's just the weight of all those medals, dragging him down...
Or maybe it's just the weight of all those medals, dragging him down...
StephenT said:
I think it would be very uncomfortable to wear all of those medals or to have that big of beard...
Somehow, I think that Fisher should fit in better as an japanese admiral, I do not know why, possibly he looks a little 'asian'(no offense).
But this AAR is great, will you continue this intro into the middle of June or what?
But this AAR is great, will you continue this intro into the middle of June or what?
Zuckergußgebäck said:
He was born in Ceylon and it was rumoured that he had a Sinhalese mother. Some inside the Royal Navy nicknamed him 'the Malay' because of his slightly yellowish skin colour.
So on that basis, well observed.
Allenby said:He was born in Ceylon and it was rumoured that he had a Sinhalese mother. Some inside the Royal Navy nicknamed him 'the Malay' because of his slightly yellowish skin colour.
So on that basis, well observed.
When I first saw the pic, %I thought that it was some japanese war-hero, like the guy who won Tsuchima(speeling poor, I know) or some famed WWII-admiral.
Part IV - Failed Negotiations
For Germany, the naval race had seemingly brought little practical return. Having spent vast sums of money on battleships since the commissioning of the Dreadnought, Britain still maintained a healthy lead and seemed to be pulling ahead in the race. As of mid 1910, the British had twenty two battleships and battlecruisers built and building, with the Germans just thirteen, and Admiral von Tirpirz conceded that the race was all but lost. Meanwhile, Churchill had come to the Admiralty determined to push on with reforms, and often sought the advice of the now retired Admiral Fisher. Perhaps Churchill’s most important contribution was his insistence on the design and building of the Queen Elizabeth class of Superdreadnoughts. Seeing oil powered ships as the future, the five new ships discarded with coal burning facilities, which ensured that they did not belch prominent black smoke when at sea. Combing an almost perfect balance of weaponry, armour and speed, they served as the Royal Navy’s first ‘fast battleships’ and were accredited with being nearly as swift as a battlecruiser, except with vastly superior armour. With a generous contribution from Malaya, who funded a ship of the same name, there were five of these floating giants in construction: Queen Elizabeth, Malaya, Warspite, Barham and Valiant. Churchill also matched his enthusiasm for his work for the navy with his damning verdict on the nature of the German fleet. Although not wishing to upset German sentiment on purpose, he pointed out that whereas the British fleet was “to us, a necessity”, the German fleet was a “luxury fleet”. Although German opinion was outraged, Churchill was essentially correct when distinguishing between the two navies: Germany could punch her weight in the world due to her army and strong economic and industrial power, without the need for a navy, whereas the question of maritime supremacy was one upon which the future of the British Empire depended. Meanwhile, the Liberal cabinet, especially the Chancellor of the Exchequer, David Lloyd George, was coming round to the opinion that Britain should seek to negotiate a ‘naval holiday’ with Germany, in which shipbuilding would cease for an entire year. On this basis, Britain and Germany could reach a naval agreement in which Germany recognised Britain’s supremacy of the seas on roughly the basis that Churchill had laid down: that for every sixteen British ships, there should be just ten German ships. With naval estimates beginning to retard Lloyd George’s reformist budgets, there was a strong incentive to attempt to reach an agreement with Germany.
Talks between the British banker Sir Ernest Cassel and German shipbuilding tycoon Albert Ballin led to the despatch of Britain’s former War Secretary, Lord Haldane, a German speaker and an avid reader of German philosophy to Berlin. However, by the time the ‘Haldane Mission’ had reached the German capital, the Chancellor, Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg, had taken a tough negotiating line. In the knowledge that Churchill’s ‘luxury fleet’ speech had upset German Navalist opinion, he was not willing to appear subservient to the demands of a British delegation. Haldane offered to Germany his assurance that Britain would remain neutral in the event of an unprovoked attack on Germany by France and Russia, in return for an agreement regarding naval arms. Rejecting the offer, Bethmann-Hollweg tied any potential agreement on the naval balance of power to Britain’s neutrality in any event of a war. Effectively, Germany was asking Britain to recognise German sovereignty over Alsace-Lorraine and its right to wage an aggressive war in Europe and was effectively doing so by using its fleet as a carrot and stick – the very same rationale behind Tirpitz’s original fleet building strategy. With nothing having seemingly changed in Germany’s nature, the talks broke down and soon after, Tirpitz announced another supplement to the navy laws that allowed for a further expansion of the German fleet. Having worked on a basis of building two ships every year, the German fleet building programme would now rise to 3-2-3-2-3-2. In response, Churchill hiked the British building programme from 4-3-4-3-4-3 to an overwhelming 5-4-5-4-5-4, and would soon announce the construction of five more Superdreadnoughts, in a display of shipbuilding that would attempt to bludgeon the German challenge into the ground.
Also in 1912, the Reichstag agreed to a massive increase in the Army Bill. Having failed to club the British into acquiescence on the world stage with a fleet building programme, the Germans now sought to achieve dominance of Europe as a prerequisite. General von Bernhardi published his book Germany and the Next War, which became very popular in Germany, advocating the demolition of France and the subjugation of Europe under a German dominated federation. Later that year, the War Council convened in which the Kaiser demonstrated an eagerness for a general war, and ordered the initiation of a press campaign in order to mobilise public opinion for the upcoming war. Additionally, Walther Rathenau, Bethmann-Hollweg and the Kaiser discussed German war aims and agreed upon achieving dominance in Europe in order to obtain an agreement from Britain, whilst endeavouring to carve out a larger African empire at the expense of the French – Mittelafrika. British and French cooperation reached a new level when the two came to a Naval Agreement. Recognising the fundamental futility of having fleets based in opposition to each other, the British and French governments agreed to a redeployment of naval resources. Britain would agree to make France’s northern coast secure if, in return, France protected Britain’s interests in the Mediterranean. Consistent with the Admiralty’s programme of fleet concentration, the agreement with France allowed for British naval units to be stationed at home so as to provide an even more potent deterrent to the German fleet. On the flipside, French forces in the English Channel could be redesignated to the Mediterranean, where the navy would be strong enough to counter the possibility of war with Italy and Austria-Hungary. The significance of the agreement was not in the movement of the ships themselves, but the potential obligation in time of war that came with it. If Germany did attack the French northern coast, then Britain would be morally obliged to provide protection – war between Britain and Germany would then be inevitable. Britain had still not signed an alliance with France, yet it was clear that the two countries’ fortunes were now closely interwoven.
Italy defeated Turkey in 1912 and a first Balkans War had quickly led to a second one in 1913. Both France and Germany passed expansive Army Bills, and relations between Austria-Hungary and Serbia worsened, with many in the Austrian command concluding that war with the Serbs was an inevitability, and that the sooner it happened, the better. This outlook was shared by German Chief of Staff, Helmuth von Moltke, who commented that “when starting a world war, one has to think very carefully” doubtlessly surveying the European situation and convincing himself, and others, that the clock was ticking against Germany. In Britain, immediate concerns were for Ulster, where the debate surrounding the Third Home Rule Bill had resulted in the appearance of two armed camps – Unionist and Nationalist – in the north of Ireland. As January 1914 came, there was confidence in the government that despite the negligible majority that the Liberal Party held in the House of Commons, that the administration had the ability to steer it through troubled waters.
For Germany, the naval race had seemingly brought little practical return. Having spent vast sums of money on battleships since the commissioning of the Dreadnought, Britain still maintained a healthy lead and seemed to be pulling ahead in the race. As of mid 1910, the British had twenty two battleships and battlecruisers built and building, with the Germans just thirteen, and Admiral von Tirpirz conceded that the race was all but lost. Meanwhile, Churchill had come to the Admiralty determined to push on with reforms, and often sought the advice of the now retired Admiral Fisher. Perhaps Churchill’s most important contribution was his insistence on the design and building of the Queen Elizabeth class of Superdreadnoughts. Seeing oil powered ships as the future, the five new ships discarded with coal burning facilities, which ensured that they did not belch prominent black smoke when at sea. Combing an almost perfect balance of weaponry, armour and speed, they served as the Royal Navy’s first ‘fast battleships’ and were accredited with being nearly as swift as a battlecruiser, except with vastly superior armour. With a generous contribution from Malaya, who funded a ship of the same name, there were five of these floating giants in construction: Queen Elizabeth, Malaya, Warspite, Barham and Valiant. Churchill also matched his enthusiasm for his work for the navy with his damning verdict on the nature of the German fleet. Although not wishing to upset German sentiment on purpose, he pointed out that whereas the British fleet was “to us, a necessity”, the German fleet was a “luxury fleet”. Although German opinion was outraged, Churchill was essentially correct when distinguishing between the two navies: Germany could punch her weight in the world due to her army and strong economic and industrial power, without the need for a navy, whereas the question of maritime supremacy was one upon which the future of the British Empire depended. Meanwhile, the Liberal cabinet, especially the Chancellor of the Exchequer, David Lloyd George, was coming round to the opinion that Britain should seek to negotiate a ‘naval holiday’ with Germany, in which shipbuilding would cease for an entire year. On this basis, Britain and Germany could reach a naval agreement in which Germany recognised Britain’s supremacy of the seas on roughly the basis that Churchill had laid down: that for every sixteen British ships, there should be just ten German ships. With naval estimates beginning to retard Lloyd George’s reformist budgets, there was a strong incentive to attempt to reach an agreement with Germany.
Churchill: “Rum, Sodomy and the Lash”
Talks between the British banker Sir Ernest Cassel and German shipbuilding tycoon Albert Ballin led to the despatch of Britain’s former War Secretary, Lord Haldane, a German speaker and an avid reader of German philosophy to Berlin. However, by the time the ‘Haldane Mission’ had reached the German capital, the Chancellor, Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg, had taken a tough negotiating line. In the knowledge that Churchill’s ‘luxury fleet’ speech had upset German Navalist opinion, he was not willing to appear subservient to the demands of a British delegation. Haldane offered to Germany his assurance that Britain would remain neutral in the event of an unprovoked attack on Germany by France and Russia, in return for an agreement regarding naval arms. Rejecting the offer, Bethmann-Hollweg tied any potential agreement on the naval balance of power to Britain’s neutrality in any event of a war. Effectively, Germany was asking Britain to recognise German sovereignty over Alsace-Lorraine and its right to wage an aggressive war in Europe and was effectively doing so by using its fleet as a carrot and stick – the very same rationale behind Tirpitz’s original fleet building strategy. With nothing having seemingly changed in Germany’s nature, the talks broke down and soon after, Tirpitz announced another supplement to the navy laws that allowed for a further expansion of the German fleet. Having worked on a basis of building two ships every year, the German fleet building programme would now rise to 3-2-3-2-3-2. In response, Churchill hiked the British building programme from 4-3-4-3-4-3 to an overwhelming 5-4-5-4-5-4, and would soon announce the construction of five more Superdreadnoughts, in a display of shipbuilding that would attempt to bludgeon the German challenge into the ground.
Also in 1912, the Reichstag agreed to a massive increase in the Army Bill. Having failed to club the British into acquiescence on the world stage with a fleet building programme, the Germans now sought to achieve dominance of Europe as a prerequisite. General von Bernhardi published his book Germany and the Next War, which became very popular in Germany, advocating the demolition of France and the subjugation of Europe under a German dominated federation. Later that year, the War Council convened in which the Kaiser demonstrated an eagerness for a general war, and ordered the initiation of a press campaign in order to mobilise public opinion for the upcoming war. Additionally, Walther Rathenau, Bethmann-Hollweg and the Kaiser discussed German war aims and agreed upon achieving dominance in Europe in order to obtain an agreement from Britain, whilst endeavouring to carve out a larger African empire at the expense of the French – Mittelafrika. British and French cooperation reached a new level when the two came to a Naval Agreement. Recognising the fundamental futility of having fleets based in opposition to each other, the British and French governments agreed to a redeployment of naval resources. Britain would agree to make France’s northern coast secure if, in return, France protected Britain’s interests in the Mediterranean. Consistent with the Admiralty’s programme of fleet concentration, the agreement with France allowed for British naval units to be stationed at home so as to provide an even more potent deterrent to the German fleet. On the flipside, French forces in the English Channel could be redesignated to the Mediterranean, where the navy would be strong enough to counter the possibility of war with Italy and Austria-Hungary. The significance of the agreement was not in the movement of the ships themselves, but the potential obligation in time of war that came with it. If Germany did attack the French northern coast, then Britain would be morally obliged to provide protection – war between Britain and Germany would then be inevitable. Britain had still not signed an alliance with France, yet it was clear that the two countries’ fortunes were now closely interwoven.
Haldane: unsuccessful mission to Germany in 1912
Italy defeated Turkey in 1912 and a first Balkans War had quickly led to a second one in 1913. Both France and Germany passed expansive Army Bills, and relations between Austria-Hungary and Serbia worsened, with many in the Austrian command concluding that war with the Serbs was an inevitability, and that the sooner it happened, the better. This outlook was shared by German Chief of Staff, Helmuth von Moltke, who commented that “when starting a world war, one has to think very carefully” doubtlessly surveying the European situation and convincing himself, and others, that the clock was ticking against Germany. In Britain, immediate concerns were for Ulster, where the debate surrounding the Third Home Rule Bill had resulted in the appearance of two armed camps – Unionist and Nationalist – in the north of Ireland. As January 1914 came, there was confidence in the government that despite the negligible majority that the Liberal Party held in the House of Commons, that the administration had the ability to steer it through troubled waters.
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The storm is brewing... can you smell the electricity?
Oh well, as Lt. Falota says in "The last days of humanity" (by Karl Kraus)
"Hussars´ blood is better than the Autumn Field Exercises."
Keep it coming, this is great stuff!
Oh well, as Lt. Falota says in "The last days of humanity" (by Karl Kraus)
"Hussars´ blood is better than the Autumn Field Exercises."
Keep it coming, this is great stuff!
Great intro! As I have recently downloaded TGW, I'm wondering when 1.05b will be out. I hope the actual game is as good as this intro.
Corruption said:
Allenby has stated that 1.05b will be out beginning-middle of June, hold out until then...
