1910 Germany puts efforts into U Boats instead of dreadnoughts

If it did happen then it is likely that a naval race between the UK and Germany would not invoke the fear and dread that OTL one did in Britain. Subs were seen as primarily coastal defence ships. Germany building a significant fleet of them to defend itself may not engender anti-German feelings. What effect on the Entente and particularly on thinking within the Empire?

I think the Anglo-German Naval Race is just a symptom of a general distrust of Germany since its foundation. The cultural and economic rivalry between Britain and Germany are just manifest within another field. The Naval Race is a continuation of the same French and Russian 'naval scares' of the 19th century that the Admiralty manufactured in order to continue receiving a portion of the national budget.

One of the drives of Fisher's overall overhaul of the Royal Navy was to be the flotilla defense scheme, which centralized on the destroyer and the submarine.
 
I think the Anglo-German Naval Race is just a symptom of a general distrust of Germany since its foundation. The cultural and economic rivalry between Britain and Germany are just manifest within another field. The Naval Race is a continuation of the same French and Russian 'naval scares' of the 19th century that the Admiralty manufactured in order to continue receiving a portion of the national budget.

One of the drives of Fisher's overall overhaul of the Royal Navy was to be the flotilla defense scheme, which centralized on the destroyer and the submarine.

Yes but naval scares and war scares are not just excuses for the military establishment to get funding. They are genuine public hysteria whipped up by the press and reflecting xenophobia in the general population. Witness the innumerable war scares in Australia. Everyone from the Russians, Americans, French and even the Chinese.
 
MarkA said:
Very good point. Massive investment in an unproven weapon system while not investing in capital ships that all the 19th and early 20th century geopolitical theories insisted made a Great Power a world power would be almost ASB.

It depends on what you mean by MASSIVE. After the Moroccan crises, Germany faced a choice of navy or army and increasingly chose army, retarding Tirpitz's planned build up

The cost of a u-boat compared to the cost of a super-dreadnought is such that I don't know how many of the former could be built for the same financial outlay, but I would imagine it was a large number.

Also, its possible for Germany not to CANCEL its building programme, just to rationalise it. Obviously it would help to have a few modern battleships at all times, so maybe a couple a time is OK. The rest of the money then goes on submarine development.

Britain sees the battleship slow-down, where half of OTL could be 1/4 of Tirpitz's plans, and the subs are seen as a defensive measure intended to make up for the lost battleships' role.

As to subs being UNPROVEN, well Ropp shows that since the 1890s France has been investing significant money and confidence in the submarine, Russia has continuously bought and built ever better such vessels, and the proof will be in the next conflict - one cannot look for it in the past when the sub is the weapon of the future, etc

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 
The reason why they attacked thru Belgium was in order to defeat the French. Until 1914 rolls around there are very few people in Germany that have any idea of what von Moltke and the General Staff are planning. Von Schlieffen's original draft had the German Army also occupying the Netherlands. Moltke adjusted this portion so that Germany could have some access to supplies via a neutral nation.
I'm well aware of the strategic advantages the Germans gained against France by attacking through Belgium, but that really wasn't what my post was about.

Beyond the simple military considerations, one of many factors behind the use of the Schlieffen/Moltke plan was that by the time war broke out Germany was already resigned to British hostility, and thus the diplomatic consequences of attacking Belgium were not seen as being particularly severe. If Germany is on better terms with Britain as a result of there being no naval race or a reduced one then generating British hostility by attacking Belgium becomes a much bigger issue.
 
How much of a lag would there be between Germany increasing the production of submarines and Britain then increasing the production of destroyers? What would be involved in gearing down production of capital ships and then increasing production of subs and destroyers?

Hmm, how do you compare numbers of destroyers or subs to a battleship? By cost, steel used, or crew sizes? If you take a battleship's cost or steel used, and then make an equivalent number of submarines, is the total crew the same? Or keeping the crew the same, would you be using less cash or steel by building the subs?

If there are less British and German battleships being built, does the US building plan change?
 
It depends on what you mean by MASSIVE. After the Moroccan crises, Germany faced a choice of navy or army and increasingly chose army, retarding Tirpitz's planned build up

The cost of a u-boat compared to the cost of a super-dreadnought is such that I don't know how many of the former could be built for the same financial outlay, but I would imagine it was a large number.

Also, its possible for Germany not to CANCEL its building programme, just to rationalise it. Obviously it would help to have a few modern battleships at all times, so maybe a couple a time is OK. The rest of the money then goes on submarine development.

Britain sees the battleship slow-down, where half of OTL could be 1/4 of Tirpitz's plans, and the subs are seen as a defensive measure intended to make up for the lost battleships' role.

As to subs being UNPROVEN, well Ropp shows that since the 1890s France has been investing significant money and confidence in the submarine, Russia has continuously bought and built ever better such vessels, and the proof will be in the next conflict - one cannot look for it in the past when the sub is the weapon of the future, etc

Best Regards
Grey Wolf

Unproven as an offensive weapon. France and Russia were building them as coastal defence boats.

As I posted it would be likely that British public opinion would not be too alarmed over a submarine building program in Germany as it was over the latter's battleship building program. Thus the whole polical dynamic may very well be different with Germany gaining a strategic victory by weakening the resolve of the UK to enter the Entente or at least delay its complete commitment.
 

The Sandman

Banned
What might make sense is that the Germans build fewer battleships, but focus on making them extremely rugged and very long range so as to allow them to protect their scattered colonies against superior opposition.

Indeed, to have the German Naval Command realize that it is simply impossible for them to match the Royal Navy's numbers (much less the RN, the French, the Russians, and potentially the Americans) in anything resembling a decent length of time.

They therefore assume that ultimately they will lose a naval war of attrition; furthermore, they assume that Britain will probably be able to establish and maintain at least a partial blockade if the Germans wait for a major fleet action.

Thus, the German strategy changes to finding ways to counter this.

Method 1 is by having ships that can outrun and outrange the British, and outfight anything they can't outrun; think the battlecruiser concept but designed as a fast battleship a la Bismarck or New Jersey. Use these ships to pick off any isolated British vessels on the blockade line, forcing them to concentrate and thus potentially opening lanes for blockade runners to get through. If possible, they would include some way of launching aircraft for scouting purposes as a standard feature (pre-radar, an airplane with a radio is probably the longest-range method of detecting an enemy fleet under radio silence). Possibly an early seaplane carrier?

Method 2 is simply swarming the large, expensive, relatively slow British capital ships with large numbers of small, cheap and expendable boats. For this, figure a German version of the PT boat, with ships up to about the size of a destroyer included in this. The idea is to run in, launch torpedoes, and then run back out. I think the maneuver would be described as a caracolle, with ships that have run dry on torpedoes turning to leave and rearm even as fresh ships move in. Destroyers and light cruisers would be used as flagships and to provide some gun support against British escort vessels.

Method 3 is by going under the British blockade. Since IIRC submarine detection early in the war was pathetic to nonexistant, a group of submarines has a decent chance of being able to evade the British blockade and get astride the commerce lanes. At that point, USW comes into play. The only modification might be an announcement that liners will not be sunk without warning so long as 1) they aren't being used as troopships and 2) aren't carrying any war material. If any liner is stopped and found to be in violation of this, the restriction against sinking liners without warning vanishes. Since the British will almost certainly still pull the OTL dirty tricks in that regard, the Germans make the British look bad and remove one of the reasons for the US to enter the war.

If possible, you'd go for a combination of all three of these methods; the extended range fast battleships to pick off isolated warships and force the British to concentrate enough vessels to sink them at any vital location, the PT squadrons to tear apart such concentrations, especially in the North Sea and Channel, and the U-boats to simply avoid the blockade altogether on their way to institute a retaliatory blockade on Britain.

The major issues with this idea that I see are threefold. First, of course, it requires some major changes in German strategic thinking, starting around 1905-06 if you want enough time to design and test the first generation of ships for this strategy and then start working on second generation ships before the war. Second, it requires that the Germans actually be able to build and man the ships, and I have no idea if they could do either even if they have enough time to start expanding the shipyards and naval recruitment. Third, it probably requires that oil be the German fuel of choice for their new Navy, and they'll have to get the oil from somewhere. This will make the Ottoman Empire and Romania more important to their military strategy; it also means that they probably start looking for oil in their colonies, or alternatively looking for potential colonies that have oil.
 
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