Decisive German Victory at Jutland

The opposite of the Decisive British Victory thread.

As the 100th anniversary of the battle approaches, what would the short and long term consequences have been if the High Seas Fleet had sunk enough of the Grand Fleet at Jutland to give Germany naval superiority in the North Sea.
  1. Short term means its influence on the course of World War One.
  2. Long term means from the end of World War One to 1939.
As threads like this often break down into discussions of how the event proposed in the OP could not happen, rather than the consequences of said event, this is what can and cannot be changed:
  1. The British can do something stupid;
  2. The Germans can have more warships, e.g. accelerating the completion of Bayern, Baden and Hindenburg, and/or build Blucher as a battle cruiser and the Deutschland class as Nassau class dreadnoughts.
 
Count down until someone tells you this has been discussed before. Not that I give a flying fig for that sort of person, so carry on, I love a good Jutland chat.
 
Thanks for your moral support. As it happens a flotilla of British TV documentary programmes are doing battle on the subject. Channel 4 fired the first salvo at last weekend with a programme that had Norman Friedman in it.
 
It depends on how decisive a victory. A decisive victory is very difficult, and would likely be called "Miracle at the Skaggerak" or something like that.

If Beaty's battlecruisers are effectively destroyed, but everything else returns to port, the Germans are still seriously outgunned, and the British still have battlecruisers and the fast battleships. (If the Fast Battleships are also sunk, then it's dicier--though Queen Elizabeth, along with the battlecruisers directly attached to Grand Fleet, could fill in.

If Grand Fleet is wrecked as a fighting force, and the High Seas Fleet is still functioning, the blockade is still in place--but Britain is in a panic. There's a good chance, IMVHO, that Britain would seek out some sort of peace. (The government might not want to, but panic is a bad thing...)

Britain does have so many predreadnoughts, plus a few dreadnoughts that weren't there or are under construction, that there's still a big fleet that can't be ignored...

Let me know how decisive a victory, and I'll have more thoughts.

(If Germany developed the telemobilescope, perhaps there's a possibility of catching Grand Fleet in cruising formation...)
 
I believe it was Winston Churchill who said that Admiral Jellicoe was the only man who could "Lose the war in a afternoon." Short term, the British panic, calling in every warship from every station to defend the homeland. Meanwhile, the High Seas Fleet rampages across the British supply lines. So, how long before Britain asks for terms?
 
It depends on how decisive a victory. A decisive victory is very difficult, and would likely be called "Miracle at the Skaggerak" or something like that.
The OP says,"to give Germany naval superiority in the North Sea," which to me means Germany has to have more dreadnoughts than Great Britain on 2nd June 1916.
 
If Grand Fleet is wrecked as a fighting force, and the High Seas Fleet is still functioning, the blockade is still in place--but Britain is in a panic. There's a good chance, IMVHO, that Britain would seek out some sort of peace. (The government might not want to, but panic is a bad thing...)

Britain does have so many predreadnoughts, plus a few dreadnoughts that weren't there or are under construction, that there's still a big fleet that can't be ignored...
That's along the lines of what I was thinking. I also think that the Somme offensive might be called off because troops were sent back to England to show that the Government was taking the threat of invasion seriously. However, as the German Army was heavily committed elsewhere I'm not sure that they would be able to take advantage of the opportunity.
 
I believe it was Winston Churchill who said that Admiral Jellicoe was the only man who could "Lose the war in a afternoon." Short term, the British panic, calling in every warship from every station to defend the homeland. Meanwhile, the High Seas Fleet rampages across the British supply lines. So, how long before Britain asks for terms?
I'm not sure that the German battleships had the range to cruise in the North Atlantic, but if they could, yes. Though I'm not sure if that the High Seas Fleet even had the range to reach the GIUK Gap and destroy the 10th Cruiser Squadron, which was enforcing the British blockade, but if it has then Germany has broken the blockade.

Something I'm sure the HSF did have the range to do was bombard the east coast and with the Grand Fleet destroyed they could do that with impunity.
 
This is trickier because of the German tactics of turning away rather than engage in a slugging match they thought that they couldn't win. So, let's invert my other answer and have dawn see the HSF to the SW of the GF at very close range. Neither side can disengage quickly; the British shells break up or explode outside the German armour, while the German shells work as advertised. Still, they need to win the dreadnought battle 12-0 to just gain parity... :eek: Let's say that both sides' commanders are disabled quickly and everyone else just stands and fights, call it 20-5 in losses.

The immediate result is a lot of ships under repair. The the HSF needs to sortie to control the Channel and to break communications with France. It will probably take a couple of months before this is viable, given that the German dreadnoughts will have been pretty beaten up. What was the rate of British construction at this point?

Britain panics. All resources go to new construction and Army elements are withdrawn to guard against raids, weakening the ground war. Tactically, the GF got sucker-punched by poor communications and night skills, combined with shitty shells and volatile propellant. The blockade can be maintained by light forces and geography dictates that the HSF can only lift it by sailing, but the links to France are wide open and only submarines and mines can help them. How soon can the Dover Straights be fully closed by mines?
 
The OP says,"to give Germany naval superiority in the North Sea," which to me means Germany has to have more dreadnoughts than Great Britain on 2nd June 1916.

Just having more dreadnoughts may not be enough to provide naval superiority--to obtain true naval superiority, Germany would need to seriously outnumber the Royal Navy
 
For the Germans to win at Jutland you need to improve the odds by taking out some RN heavies beforehand. This means using the Germans >300 u-boats then in service to kill the British battleships in their bases through torpedo and mine strikes.

Mines work well against HM battleships, such as killing the super dreadnought HMS Audacious (shown sinking below), and PD battleships HMS Irresistible, HMS Ocean, HMS KE7 and HMS Russell. Torpedoes work nicely too, killing PD battleships HMS Goliath, HMS Formidable, HMS Triumph, HMS Majestic, HMS Cornwallis, HMS Britannia. Not to mention U-boat successes in the Second World War, killing super dreadnoughts HMS Royal Oak, HMS Barham.

640px-HMS_Audacious_crew_take_to_lifeboats.jpg


Also, the Germans need to trim down the RN advantage where they can, for example, at Dogger Bank, turn and fight. The RN battlecruisers can't take the hits. See discussion here https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/raid-on-scarborough-german-victory-1914-dec.347732/

And for starters, we need a German victory at the Falklands, thus reducing the RN battlecruiser force by a substantial sum. Von Spee sees the tripods, knows he's doomed if he runs, and orders his ships to run the port to torpedo and shell the battlecruisers. See discussion here https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/maximilian-von-spee-successful.345133/

Do the above, act with much higher aggression, and by the time Jutland comes, the Germans odds may be improved.

And get some more German battleships built. Have the four Tegetthoff-class dreadnoughts transfer from the Med to Bremerhaven before August 1914 as part of German support for A-H. Maybe the lack of KuK dreadnoughts in the Med allow the French to join the Grand Fleet - that alone would be to the Kaiser's benefit.
 
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