German Navy

“ The fact remains that, in the long struggle between the German and British submarines in the North Sea, the work done by the latter was the most efficient [141] and destructive, and broke the nerve of the enemy submarine crews, whereas the moral of our men remained unshaken to the end. The men of the soulless German Navy were brave enough at first, with the bravery inspired by an ineffable conceit and arrogance. They had been taught that the German Navy was in every respect superior to the British—in ships, guns, personnel, and skilful leadership. ”

“ First, the British people increased their naval expenditure and more ships were built and more officers and men were entered; and then the German Navy Act of 1912 was passed.
It had been the practice of the naval Powers to keep about one-half only of their ships in full sea-going commission. The armed peace, before Germany began to give expression to her maritime ambitions, was a yoke which rested easily upon the [Pg 15] navies of the world. As a British naval officer has remarked:—
"Up to the end of the last century our Navy enjoyed a peace routine. ”

“ The fact was that thousands of their trained seamen were hopelessly cut off from Germany by the British Navy. Nearly every German merchant ship outside of the North Sea or the Baltic was either taken by the British or chased into some neutral port from which it never got out. The crews were mostly reservists in the German Navy. They were ready for the call to arms. But they could not answer it. So new men had to be trained. Meanwhile the one good chance slipped away; for by the time these recruits had been trained the Grand Fleet had grown much stronger than before. ”

“ If ships in "line ahead" all turn together to the right or left, or, to use the correct wording, alter course together eight points to starboard or port, only the leading and rear ship could use their broadsides, and only one of them at that. But a similar turn in "bow and quarter line" can be made without any loss of fire effect.
In the Great War we have not, at the time of writing, yet had a fleet action. The German Navy has shown itself most determined—to take no risks. ”

“ The Federated Governments entertain no thoughts of entering into competition with British sea-power by means of the construction of the German navy. According to the provisions of the Navy Law, the immovable purpose of German naval policy is founded upon the fact that we desire to create our naval armaments solely for the protection of our coasts and our trade. It is, moreover, an indisputable fact that the programme of our naval construction lies open in absolute publicity. ”

“ The German navy, as is well known, was founded as a branch of the army, and its early development proceeded on distinctly military lines. Until the present Emperor came to the Throne the head of the Admiralty was always an army officer, and it followed that, in so far as the different conditions permitted, the strategy and tactics of the fleet were brought into line with those of the land forces. Ships were regarded primarily as units for coast defence, in the most limited sense of the word. ”

“ RAEDER: Hitler said that a navy is built so that, if war becomes necessary, the navy can use its weapons to defend the country. A navy is established for no other purpose, and that was definitely one of the general reasons for the existence of a German Navy. There were many people who thought a navy was unnecessary. ”

“ As the British Navy in its influence on world policy inspired German ambitions, so German thoroughness in organization, when applied to the growing German Fleet, reacted upon the British Navy and gave it a new and vigorous life. ”

“ The ultimate scale of the new German Fleet, as contemplated by the latest Navy Law, will be 41 battleships, 20 battle or large armoured cruisers, and 40 small cruisers, besides a proper proportion—an ample proportion—of flotillas of torpedo-boat destroyers and submarines, by 1920. ”

“ Preparation for war was never thought of. Why should it be? The French Navy had no aggressive designs, and was much below our own, both in material strength and in personnel, while the Russian Navy was partly confined in the Black Sea, the other part being in the Baltic. And so we, both officers and men, set out to have a good time. Our ships were kept up to yacht-like perfection as regards their paintwork, while their bright work shone like gold, and the road to promotion lay not through professional efficiency, but the state of cleanliness and splendour of one's ship. ”

“ Our ships are better and faster than the German ships, our guns heavier and more accurate than theirs, our gunners more deadly than their gunners, because our Navy has the greater human soul. The Royal Navy is not a collection of lifeless ships and guns imposed upon men by some external power as the Kaiser sought to impose a fleet upon the Germans, a nation of landsmen. The Navy is only a matter of machines in so far as human beings can only achieve material ends by material means. I look upon the ships and guns as secreted by the men just as a tortoise secretes its shell. ”

“ Perhaps one contributing factor to the success of the German navy has been her staff of officers highly trained in strategy by Kriegspiel, that insures not only sound advice in general, but also insures that at any time, night or day, a body of competent officers shall be ready at the admiralty to decide what action should be taken, whenever any new situation is reported. ”

“ Our Navy has played the great game of war by sea for too many hundreds of years ever to under-rate its foes. It is even more true of the sea than of the land that the one thing sure to happen is that which is unexpected. Until they have measured by their own high standards the quality of an enemy, our officers and men rate him in valour, in sea skill, and in masterful ingenuity as fully the equal of themselves. Until August 1914 the Royal Navy had never fought the German, and had no standards of experience by which to assay him. ”

“ The marked distinction between the two services is that, whereas under the White Ensign special duties are assigned to special classes of officers—gunnery, torpedo, navigation, signalling and physical training—in the German Navy no hard-and-fast lines are drawn. It is held that the British system would entail a larger number of officers than are available on the other side of the North Sea. However this may be, the German authorities can certainly pride themselves upon a corps of executive officers which in many respects is not excelled in any country. ”

“ The fleet certainly stands to benefit by this comparatively long period of single command. It will feel the confidence born of experience in its distinguished leader, and he in turn, knowing exactly what his ships can do, need fear no check to his plans by unsuspected defects in personnel or material. Whatever the near future may bring, it is certain that the German navy will put forth its utmost effort to fulfil the hope placed in it by the nation, and those who anticipate a cheaply purchased naval victory for us are laying up a rude disappointment for themselves. ”

“ The German navy made one more appearance on the high seas—when, under the terms of the Armistice, 6 battle-cruisers, 10 battleships, 8 light cruisers, 50 destroyers, and all her submarines were surrendered, the bulk of them to the Grand Fleet at Rosyth under Sir David Beatty on 21st Nov. On the following day the captive ships were sent to Scapa Flow, where, exactly seven months later, their German crews, while the British battle-fleet was absent on gunnery practice, scuttled practically every vessel. ”

“ Being an inferior force, the German Navy has been driven to giving the utmost consideration to all the methods of fighting that can add to the defensive in battle. It was not slow to realize, as we have seen, the enormous advantage that the dirigible airship offered in scouting, and from the first it has devoted itself with special energy and care to the practice and development of the defensive tactics which the long-range torpedo made possible. ”

“ If the demand is made that the foreign service fleet shall be in a position (1) energetically to uphold German interests everywhere in time of peace, (2) to be adequate for warlike conflicts with oversea States without navies deserving of the name, an increase of at least five large and five small cruisers, as well as of one large and two small cruisers as material reserve, seems called for. The Navy Law foresees as ready for use three large and ten small cruisers, and as material reserve three large and four small cruisers. ”

“ German Sea Power: Its Rise, Progress and Economic Basis, by Archibald Hurd and Henry Castle (London: John Murray 1913) .
With the advent of this sailor-statesman to the Marineamt, the whole course of German naval policy changed, and in 1898 the first German Navy Act was passed authorising a navy on a standard which far exceeded anything hitherto attained. It provided for the following ships:
This dramatic departure in German naval policy aroused hardly a ripple of interest in England. ”

“ It was a glorious moment in world-history when British, French, and Americans at last stood side by side. The American Navy led the way, joining the hunt for German submarines with a keenness whetted by having been held back so long. The Army followed, bit by bit, until two million men had gone to Europe, thanks chiefly to the British ships that took them there. The Nation backed both Army and Navy with vast sums of money, which it could so easily afford, and with patriotic work of every splendid kind. ”

“ They shot down with their floats just brushing the surface of the water, till within a stone's throw of the "Deutschland," made a lightning turn, crashing by us, approached again and sprang literally over our heads, racing low down over the conning-tower, with cheers and waving of caps....
This was our reception from the latest weapon of the German Navy.
One should not make comparisons. But as we once more approached the German coast, surrounded and protected by the German Marine, I suddenly found myself comparing this with our arrival in America. ”

“ More remarkable, perhaps, than the actual terms of the Navy Act was the character of the explanatory Memorandum put forward by the Navy Department. [9] In this notable document occurs the following statement of the new naval policy of the German Empire:
"To protect Germany's sea trade and colonies, in the existing circumstances, there is only one means: Germany must have a battle fleet so strong that, even for the adversary with the greatest sea-power, a war against it would involve such dangers as to imperil his position in the world. ”

“ But even the best of men and ships will not make the best fleet unless trained and "tuned up" to act together; and here, in its combined manuoeuvres, lay the crowning glory of the vast Grand Fleet. One day a visitor was watching it fight a sham battle against an enemy firing big guns at long range, when up came a real enemy, in the form of a German submarine, much closer than the sham. Of course the visitor turned his glasses on the "sub" and on the destroyers racing after it, like greyhounds slipped from the leash. ”

“ The boy volunteers and the conscripts who re-engage constitute the class from which petty officers are drawn, and these men are the backbone of the naval organization ashore and afloat, and it is to their efforts that the high standard of efficiency which Germany's Navy has attained may in a large measure be traced. ”

“ The ruthlessness of the German rears itself like a sordid shadow against the background of Anglo-Saxon and Latin gallantry and heroism—a diminishing shadow, thank God, and thank, also, the navy of Great Britain and of the United States. ”

“ As the British Parliament is the mother of all popular representative institutions, so the British Navy is the mother of navies. If the records of most [Pg 83] of the great fleets of the world are searched, it will be found that in greater or less degree they owe their birth to the more or less direct assistance of British naval officers, oft times acting with the direct authority of the British Admiralty; while in almost every fleet in the world even to-day may be found ships designed by British brains and constructed of British material by the skilled craftsmen of these islands. ”

“ Similarly, small torpedo-boats have given way in the establishment of the Navy to torpedo-boat destroyers of large size, and step by step the naval strength of Germany has been increased by a process, the cleverness and ingenuity of which even the German people themselves have not realized.
Germany has immensely increased her resources of [Pg 141] ships and men, but she has done more than that: she has forced other Powers to organize and train their squadrons on a standard of efficiency never attempted in the past. ”

“ But although the General Naval Staff, and doubtless most of the senior officers of the German navy, realized from the outset that the High Sea Fleet would certainly be hopelessly outmatched in a gunnery battle and that their only chance of victory would have to come through a reduction of the strength of the Grand Fleet in capital ships by mine or torpedo, the greatest efforts were made to prevent any such comprehension of the situation finding its way to the lower decks. ”

“ There are brutes among them, no doubt, but such German naval officers as I have met compare very favourably with their swaggering colleagues of the land service. German sailors are under no misapprehension as to the might and efficiency of the British Navy. It is not they who spread the tale of the British Fleet hiding in ports while German ships proudly sail the North Sea. It is not they who ask plaintively, “Will the British Fleet never come out?” ”