Was the "starve them out" strategy ever really feasible?

BooNZ

Banned
The risk fleet made perfect sense. The UK war plans starting about 1907 or so were to attack the German Coast with amphibious operations. The Risk Fleet was a counter to this strategy that was 100% successful IOTL. The UK never serious threatened the German Coast and the Baltic Sea was a German Lake. It just happened that this fleet which was less than half the tonnage of the Royal Navy could not over come both the much larger surface fleet of the UK and its superior network of bases.

You have the causality backwards. It was not the Germans built a fleet and then the UK reacted. The UK practice invading the German coast, and the Germans then built a fleet. The fact the UK did the war games before the Germans had a navy capable of defending the German coast much less threatening the UK coast scientifically falsifies the position that the Risk Fleet cause UK hostility. The order of events is hugely important in determining causality.

My understanding is the purpose of the Risk Fleet and coastal defense were two dissimilar roles. Coast defense was the traditional role for navies of continental powers such as Germany, while the Risk Fleet concept was to build a fleet so powerful that Britain would risk losing its global naval dominance if it ever engaged the Risk Fleet in battle. The Risk Fleet concept was an 1890s answer to British threats to German maritime trade and Wilhelm's obsession with big ships. With the benefit of hindsight, it was the incorrect answer...
 

BlondieBC

Banned
With what? XD

IIRC it was said that the German response would be to "send the police to arrest them".



German First Naval Law was 1897, so it is difficult to see how this was prompted by British war plans in 1907. The British interest in the Frisian Islands only really started in 1903.;)

The BEF was a respectable 2 corp of quality troops, and the UK had additional units. The Germans have to defend the entire coast. I believe if you asked the Germans about the quality of the BEF on January 1, 1915, the Germans would not describe it as a police force.

The initial German Naval law was in response to Boer Wars and simply the lack of the navy. The first naval act in no way gave Germany a credible offensive navy against the any major navy, much less the Royal Navy. You can also see it in how the naval race had ended. By about the 1912-1913 window when the UK generally concluding invading Germany was impractical due to the German Navy size, the Germans stopped expanding their navy.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
My understanding is the purpose of the Risk Fleet and coastal defense were two dissimilar roles. Coast defense was the traditional role for navies of continental powers such as Germany, while the Risk Fleet concept was to build a fleet so powerful that Britain would risk losing its global naval dominance if it ever engaged the Risk Fleet in battle. The Risk Fleet concept was an 1890s answer to British threats to German maritime trade and Wilhelm's obsession with big ships. With the benefit of hindsight, it was the incorrect answer...

What you kind of say is true. Some is true, some is off a little, some is wrong. To give a different example, if you read Mahan and then read what the Japanese did as their "Mahan Doctrine", you can say the same things. I often say on this topic, we read history backwards. If we go back and read beginning to end, it makes more sense.

Go back to the 1890s when Germany basically had no fleet. Even then, it was clear that the French mishandling their fleet was quite fortunate for the Prussians in the Franco Prussian War. It was clear the Germans would struggle to keep the French off their coast in a future war. The Boer war help show the impotence of the Heer in some areas and helped secure votes for a bigger navy. You also begin to see joint German/Russian agreement that closing the Baltic to foreign powers is in both their interests. There is a lot of diplomacy going on here on all side that the UK will eventually lose. Mostly once the Danes realize that the Germans are serious and if the Danes don't agree to close the Baltic, the Germans will simply take Jutland and mine the entrance themselves. And we all know that if in some war the Germans won and took Jutland, how likely it would be the Germans would just keep it.

There are two big schools of thought that I am aware of. You have what would be called the Mahan school, but was a really a group of widely believed ideas about dominating the surface of the sea and major battles. Then you had the French position which was all the things often assigned to German ideas. At this time, it is unrestricted, sink without warning type merchant warfare. The Germans would choose something closer to the Mahan type school since basically everyone but the French chose this line of thought. Now there is a third school of thought, but no one actually adopted it. I have not seen it until around the 1905-1910 time frame where the UK advocated it for everyone else. They called it the "second class" navy. It is actually a good strategy, but beside people like Finland in the interwar years, no one actually used it.

So we have the first naval bill, and the Germans greatly improve their navy. The German navy is not particularly large, nor big except compared to not having a navy. Ship designs are not really that far from other nations besides the Germans build to fight in near waters so we get shorter range, less crew quarters, and the like. The navy is very much about being able to keep the French from landing on the German coast or raid the German coasts. The bases are built where the French can be fought, this happens to also to be where they can be used against the French. We can go into the a hypothetical world war with this fleet, but here wiki gives a good summary.

The First Naval Law, introduced to the Reichstag in late 1897, outlined the composition of the fleet by vessel class and the number of ships to be constructed by 1904 and also set a cost limit.[10] It authorized a fixed number of battleships that would not be altered by an annual parliamentary vote, proposing that 16 battleships be built in the following three years. The law passed the Reichstag on March 26, 1898 over the opposition of the Conservative Party and the Social Democratic Party, who were against spending vast amounts of money on naval warfare. Its ramifications were not immediately evident, as the seven battleships it called for would not be sufficient to fight either the British or French navies.[11]

Then we get to 1902, where there is an international incident the UK appologizes for, this causes the second naval bill.

Germany's real threat to the Royal Navy began with the Second Naval Law. During the Second Boer War (1899–1902), the Germans greatly sympathized with the Boers, whom they considered a racially and culturally akin people. In January 1900, British cruisers on patrol detained three German mail steamers off the coast of Africa to search them, suspecting them of carrying materielto the Boers. Although the British quickly apologized, the Germans were outraged, and Admiral von Tirpitz took advantage of the anger to introduce a new naval bill, which passed through the Reichstag with very little opposition on June 20 of that year. This law doubled the size of the fleet from 19 to 38 battleships; two flagships, four battle squadrons of eight battleships each, and four reserve battleships were to be constructed over seventeen years, from 1901 to 1917. This law made clear that not only was the German Navy to be a powerful battle fleet instead of a coastal defence force (in the process turning Germany into the second-strongest naval power in the world), but that the primary opponent of this enlarged fleet was to be the United Kingdom.[12]

Then we get to 1906. The British threaten in their papers to Copenhagen the Germans in British papers. Just in case the Germans did not get the message, the Royal Navy spent the summer practicing invading Danzig and other locations in the Baltic. A modern example would be useful here. Imagine if Bill Clinton had threaten a preventive war against China. The Bill Clinton took the bulk of the Atlantic Fleet plus the Pacific Fleet plus the marine amphib ships and practice invading China. In this ATL, would you expect China to have the smaller, same, or bigger naval budget? Again, back to wiki for a short summary, but we can go over the bills in detail.

The next 12 years saw the Reichstag pass three more Naval Laws, in 1906, 1908, and 1912; in each case, Tirpitz took advantage of a sense of crisis and alarm in Germany to ensure the success of the legislation. In June 1906, the Third Naval Law, mandating the construction of six large cruisers, became law following the German failure to break the Entente cordiale at the Algeciras Conference. The Fourth Naval Law of April 1908 pared down the age at which battleships were to be replaced from 25 to 20 years, and was sparked by a feeling that King Edward VII and Great Britain were trying to encircle Germany. The Fifth Naval Law, sparked by the German retreat in the Agadir Crisis of 1911, passed in June 1912 and added three more battleships to the building program.[13]

Breaking for length. Need to get background out there since not sure everyone has events in right order.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
@BooNZ

Ok, so we see the Germans are responding to UK actions. We see the Germans went with the most popular naval school. So to your point, Yes the Kaiser focused too much on big ships. And yes a different strategy would have been better like the one I used in my ATL. However the ratio of big to small ships is understandable. The Germans simply had a small overseas empire and never made a serious attempt to defend this empire like the UK or USA or Japan did, so they Germans did not see the need for near as many cruisers.

The risk fleet was really a political justification for the German spending, and internal justification. It was not actually the plan. First you have things like coastal guns, mines, small ships. You first have to defend the harbors. The next objective was to keep the enemy ships from doing a close blockade, so you need the big ships to go out of port and defeat the Royal Navy that is only 10s of miles from German ports but 100s of miles from UK ports. This is all really Mahan doctrine as Mahan wrote not as other such as the Japanese assign to him. Mahan goes a lot into secure ports in strategic locations with things like how much better the USA would be if Havana was a naval base. Or analysis on why Vladivostok cause the Japanese such major headaches by being "effectively two bases". Japan would need to keep two fleets, one at each entrance to control. This should sound familiar with the Kiel canal which recreates this "base doubling" effect on the fleet.

So we get to 1906 and later. Dreadnoughts are around. UK is threaten war. Various colonial humiliations. The Germans are making good progress towards the Danes closing the entrance to the Baltic and the Germans are strong enough to do it themselves if needed. i.e. lay the mines. The Germans have the Kiel Canal which means the Germans, but not the UK can choose if to fight in the Baltic or southern North Sea. The Germans have a nice base at Kiel where they can move faster to the UK Baltic or UK North Sea Fleet faster than these fleets can reinforce. No one in a war likes a fair fight, so the Germans want roughly 2/3 of the UK navy size. Since fighting only half of British fleet, this gives Germans a 66 to 50 ratio in the key battle. Plus all the attrition the smaller German torpedo boats and later U-boats can do.

That is the actual strategy, call it what you want. Now you need to describe to the German public to sell the bills. RiskFleet is how it was done, and it is both right and wrong. It is a reasonably close description of what is accomplished, dumbed down a bit for the masses, but it was not the actual war Plan. And the war plan was not the Germans trying to change UK foreign policy and it backfired. The plan was the Germans responding to UK pressure/aggression, in an evolutionary manner.

And it gets a lot of the blame, but wrongly so. The Germans lost the war because of USW and mistakes made by the Austrians in 1914.
 
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The initial German Naval law was in response to Boer Wars and simply the lack of the navy. .

The 1897 First Naval Law was in response to the 1899 Boer War? :hushedface:

Tirpitz was definitely a time traveller.

By about the 1912-1913 window when the UK generally concluding invading Germany was impractical due to the German Navy size, the Germans stopped expanding their navy.

Some evidence that the Royal Navy ever considered invading Germany practical? The limiting factor is of course the small size of the British Army, not the size of the German fleet.
 
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From Tirpitz's 'business case' for a Mahanian style battle fleet, his June 1897 Memo:

Memo Tirpitz to Kaiser.

Very Secret June 1897

General considerations on the construction of our fleet according to ship classes and designs:

1. In the distinction between one class and another, and in the choice among ship designs within the various classes, the most difficult situation in war into which our fleet can come must be used as a basis

2. For Germany the most dangerous enemy at the present time is England. She is also the enemy against whom we must have a certain measure of Fleet Power as a political power factor.

~. Commerce raiding and transatlantic war against England is so hopeless because of the shortage of fleet bases on our side and the excess on England’s that we must ignore this type of warfare against England...

~. Our fleet is to be so constructed that it can unfold its highest battle function between Heligoland and the Thames

~. The military situation against England demands battleships in as great a number as possible

The memorandum went on to establish the basic principles that even vessels for overseas service should be designed according to the specification for the home fleet. For:

16. Only the main theatre of war will be decisive. In this sense the selection of a ship design in peacetime is applied naval strategy.​

SEE PAUL KENNEDY; Tirpitz, England and the Second Navy Law of 1900;

The total force Tirpitz envisaged for his first programme was one fleet flagship, two squadrons of eight battleships and one material reserve each—making nineteen battleships in all—eight coast defence ships—already built—six large and eighteen small cruisers, and twelve divisions of torpedo boats for the home fleet; for over seas service and as material reserve for the home fleet, six large and twelve small cruisers. These ships were to be completed by 1905 at a cost of approximately 408 million marks or some 58 millions per year—no more than he predecessor Hollmann had asked for.

Tirpitz's document knitted grand strategy, construction policy and tactics as never before in one supremely economical design. Typical of its creator it achieved maximum force by complete disregard for all the distractions which had plagued his predecessor; gone were all ideas of trade warfare, protection of Germany’s overseas trade and colonies, or even coastal defence in its passive form; gone too any doubts about the ability of the battle ship itself to maintain supremacy in the face of changing technology, instead one concentrated power force operating at the decisive point of the world balance—as Tirpitz expressed it, ‘Der Hebel unserer Weltpolitik war die Nordsee. For here was England’s weak point. With her main battle strength in the Mediterranean, ‘Der Hebel unserer Weltpolitik war die Nordsee.' ‘The lever of our world policy was the North Sea.’ - Tirpitz
 
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The BEF was a respectable 2 corp of quality troops, and the UK had additional units. The Germans have to defend the entire coast. I believe if you asked the Germans about the quality of the BEF on January 1, 1915, the Germans would not describe it as a police force.
...

The BEF might be good but it's small, especially against a German army that also enjoys home territory advantage. The defending the whole coast point is true initially, but once the BEF lands it's well... landed. It then comes down to who can reinforce quicker, the British or the Germans. Again advantage in size and home territory, Germany wins this unless there's something really significant going on to effect this.

Its an odd reimaging of Sealion actually but with a reversal of issues.

In sealion if the German can get their entire army on to english soil and continue to supply them it's quite possibly a bad day for Britain. But there's no way Germany can do that (as discussed ad infinitum). Here it's the other way round in theory the RN might be able to land the small BEF and supply it, but even if it could the BEF is not able to do the job it's set to.
 
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BooNZ

Banned
What you kind of say is true. Some is true, some is off a little, some is wrong. To give a different example, if you read Mahan and then read what the Japanese did as their "Mahan Doctrine", you can say the same things. I often say on this topic, we read history backwards. If we go back and read beginning to end, it makes more sense.

Go back to the 1890s when Germany basically had no fleet. Even then, it was clear that the French mishandling their fleet was quite fortunate for the Prussians in the Franco Prussian War. It was clear the Germans would struggle to keep the French off their coast in a future war.

No. If it was clear the Prussians were fortunate the French mishandled thier fleet and it was clear the Germans would struggle to keep the French off thier coast in a future war, why did the Germans not start to take naval matters seriously until over 25 years after the Franco-Prussian war.

The reality was the Franco-Prussian war demonstrated a German navy was substantially irrelevant in respect of Franco-Prussian hostilities and it was not until the Germans set thier sights on the Royal Navy that the Germans took naval matters seriously.

The Boer war help show the impotence of the Heer in some areas and helped secure votes for a bigger navy. You also begin to see joint German/Russian agreement that closing the Baltic to foreign powers is in both their interests. There is a lot of diplomacy going on here on all side that the UK will eventually lose. Mostly once the Danes realize that the Germans are serious and if the Danes don't agree to close the Baltic, the Germans will simply take Jutland and mine the entrance themselves. And we all know that if in some war the Germans won and took Jutland, how likely it would be the Germans would just keep it.

In the words of Tirpitz "the outbreak of hatred, envy and rage which the Kruger Telegram [Jan-1896] let loose in England against Germany contributed more than anything else to open the eyes of large sections of the German people to our economic position and the necessity for a fleet".

Do you have any references as to the Imperial German intent to seize Denmark, or is this a reflection of your own ‘common sense’?

There are two big schools of thought that I am aware of. You have what would be called the Mahan school, but was a really a group of widely believed ideas about dominating the surface of the sea and major battles.

No, a draft memo from the German Imperial Naval Office dated February 1900 states

It is impossible for us to strike England’s vulnerable point, which lies in its maritime trade. Apart from the cruisers themselves, cruiser warfare requires fortified bases that serve as operational points for the vessels. The lead that England has in terms of both bases and the number of ships overseas [ . . . ] is so great that Germany could never catch up.


England’s second point of weakness is that it lacks an army to protect the mainland in the event that the home fleet is defeated. We will be secure from an English attack if it is possible for us to build a battle fleet that is capable of taking on England’s home fleet—raising the specter of a loss of this fleet and of an unprotected mainland.

The above highlights the fact German naval ambitions were directed specifically at Britain and the Germans had contemplated cruiser warfare doctrine [as some have advocated on this thread], but concluded British advantages in geography and logistics were simple too great to overcome.

Then you had the French position which was all the things often assigned to German ideas. At this time, it is unrestricted, sink without warning type merchant warfare. The Germans would choose something closer to the Mahan type school since basically everyone but the French chose this line of thought.
No. The Jeune École naval doctrine merely eshewed battlefleets in favour of developing smaller units (especially torpedo boats) and commerce raiders - nothing about sinking merchants without warning. It should be noted this doctrine emerged before submarines became effective offensively and elements of this doctrine share common ground with crusier warfare doctrine.

Now there is a third school of thought, but no one actually adopted it. I have not seen it until around the 1905-1910 time frame where the UK advocated it for everyone else. They called it the "second class" navy. It is actually a good strategy, but beside people like Finland in the interwar years, no one actually used it.
No. The term 'coast defense ships' was used to describe budget battleships for second class navies, which until 1900 was every navy except the Royal Navy. Significant numbers of coast defense ships were built by second tier navies through the 1890s including Netherlands, Norway and Germany.

So we have the first naval bill, and the Germans greatly improve their navy. The German navy is not particularly large, nor big except compared to not having a navy. Ship designs are not really that far from other nations besides the Germans build to fight in near waters so we get shorter range, less crew quarters, and the like. The navy is very much about being able to keep the French from landing on the German coast or raid the German coasts. The bases are built where the French can be fought, this happens to also to be where they can be used against the French. We can go into the a hypothetical world war with this fleet, but here wiki gives a good summary.
It is clear from Tirpitz statement and the extract from a German Naval memo (refer above) the first naval bill was inspired by the British - not the French.

It should be noted the Royal Navy continued to enjoy both a vast qualitative and quantitative edge over the German Navy at least until the Dreadnaught was launched. The German technical advances on naval matters were truely immense, but from a very low base.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
The 1897 First Naval Law was in response to the 1899 Boer War? :hushedface:

Tirpitz was definitely a time traveller.



Some evidence that the Royal Navy ever considered invading Germany practical? The limiting factor is of course the small size of the British Army, not the size of the German fleet.

The first Boer War was 1881. You are talking about the second Boer war.
 
My understanding is the purpose of the Risk Fleet and coastal defense were two dissimilar roles. Coast defense was the traditional role for navies of continental powers such as Germany, while the Risk Fleet concept was to build a fleet so powerful that Britain would risk losing its global naval dominance if it ever engaged the Risk Fleet in battle. The Risk Fleet concept was an 1890s answer to British threats to German maritime trade and Wilhelm's obsession with big ships. With the benefit of hindsight, it was the incorrect answer...

When the Risk Fleet theory came into being it was already the case that the Royal Navy was the alpha dog of maritime warfare. Seems highly questionable at best that the sons of Trafalgar could ever be deterred from even an even scrap, let alone a 3 vs. 2 fight. Tirpitz needed a big Russian or Italian, Japanese fleet to even the odds, but German political policy wasn't able to deliver a maritime ally.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
The BEF might be good but it's small, especially against a German army that also enjoys home territory advantage. The defending the whole coast point is true initially, but once the BEF lands it's well... landed. It then comes down to who can reinforce quicker, the British or the Germans. Again advantage in size and home territory, Germany wins this unless there's something really significant going on to effect this.

Its an odd reimaging of Sealion actually but with a reversal of issues.

In sealion if the German can get their entire army on to english soil and continue to supply them it's quite possibly a bad day for Britain. But there's no way Germany can do that (as discussed ad infinitum). Here it's the other way round in theory the RN might be able to land the small BEF and supply it, but even if it could the BEF is not able to do the job it's set to.


The UK is doing a raiding strategy here. Trying to tie down multiple armies with a couple of corps. The idea is basically to concentrate forces, shell the hell out of a town (say Danzig), run ships up the rivers for more shelling, send in troops to burn things, retreat.

The other idea is to have foreign armies help. So one plan near OTL war or during the war would be to have a British Division or two land at Danzig, another at the coast nearest Berlin. Then to transport in Russian armies who would do the actual heavy lifting.

I have been tempted to write an ATL where the British just execute one of these War Plans. The hang up relates to people just would not accept these were actual plans almost implemented. And the need to modify them so the UK doesn't lose the war in 6 weeks. Let me outline the plans below which is what they were discussing. This is basically Plan with W.3.1 (Plan to support war with French support) with elements of Plan B and C. And let me re-emphasis a key point. These are not idle back of the napkin plans but plans where actual type orders had been cut and sealed so they could just hand out the orders to the squadron commanders.

The plans call for both sending the BEF to France and using multiple corps in landings. Since the Royal Navy had less than a division to use at the start of the war, we are obviously using the same troops twice. We also seem to have these troops arriving day one. It is also unclear which order the attacks occur.

  • The bulk of the Grand Fleet sails to Heligoland and engages in a naval duel with the shore defenses. A battalion of marines is landed to take the island.
  • The 1st Infantry Division is landed at Borkum Island. Island under easy artillery range of German guns not taken.
  • The 2nd Infantry Division is landed at Sylt lsland. Island under easy artillery range of mainland unless option below is done.
  • Option 1. Use the 3rd Divisions to take the nearby coastline. These two divisions were going to tie up 12 German divisions per UK war plans. Don't ask me how. Also, I don't see how this much land can be held with less than 4 divisions. So we really should option 1A that uses BEF divisions 3-6.
  • These two Islands will be the supply bases for 40+ submarines (C class most common), 3 squadrons of Destroyers (1st, 2nd, 3rd) and two squadron cruisers (1st, 3rd). The destroyers and submarines form a line on the Frisian Islands near the German coast. The cruisers from a line from Tershelling (Dutch Island) to Horn's Reef (Western most point of Denmark). The Grand fleet stays about 150 miles out to sea awaiting the decisive battle.
Roughly speaking, you can think of that like the first phase of Gallipoli. The plans vary by years, and to be fair, when they start of the plans around the 1902-1906 window, the probably would work. As mines and torpedoes got better and more common, these things become suicidal. And when you look at these types of plans which would be partially know to the Germans, you see why you don't need long range ships. Heavy armor is great. Don't need crew sleeping quarters. And why you want heavy ships. The easiest place to win the battle at sea is to attack the Grand Fleet which will be anchored to Heligoland, low on armor piercing ammo, in German mine fields, with all German torpedo boats able to get to the battle.

On a side note, the plans were rejected by Admirals of the British Navy after the war started, and they logic they site is basically the Risk Fleet. And this is why we get to the next part. The UK assumes they win all equal force battles. The admirals determine they can't break into the Baltic if they can't be assured equal fleets in both. This is actually the logic behind having a canal and 60% of the BB of the British. Makes me wonder if funding was 25% higher for German navy, would Germany spend all these funds on non-BB.

Phase II. Assume HSF has not been destroyed in decisive battle.

  • Mass the River class ships. Run up the Kiel canal in mass and attack locks. Like the BB against the Ottomans IOTL, it was viewed as unlikely to work. You have to have most of the coastal batteries quite and Heligoland neutralized. Also issue of that the Germans have around 200 smaller ships that can get to this battle which is maybe 20 miles from main base (torpedo boats, subs, cruisers). The UK can only get about 50 DD here (River class) due to range.
Phase III.

  • When this does not work, corp size landing at Busun, which is north land entrance to canal. Assume 2 corp size, but I guess it could be division size. I am now up to Divisions 7-10 and BEF was 6 divisions, so we see issues here with planning. Much like missing 300K soldier in some many German War Plans or missing army or two needed for A-H.
Phase IV.

  • Denmark joins Entente due to diplomatic pressure.
  • Or if stubborn, I use the 8 division in German Jutland to take whole of Jutland. Clear minefield. Using Royal Marines as recon forces to land multiple Russian armies in Germany.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
No. If it was clear the Prussians were fortunate the French mishandled thier fleet and it was clear the Germans would struggle to keep the French off thier coast in a future war, why did the Germans not start to take naval matters seriously until over 25 years after the Franco-Prussian war.

The reality was the Franco-Prussian war demonstrated a German navy was substantially irrelevant in respect of Franco-Prussian hostilities and it was not until the Germans set thier sights on the Royal Navy that the Germans took naval matters seriously.

Why did Germany have the budget and population to afford 12 armies and still spend less than rival compared to GDP. Why was missing 300K troops in 1905 plans never raised? Why did all of Germany war plans take such huge chances? Or A-H? Answer same to your question as these. People are not optimized decision engines.

I would also like to point out that I have read a huge number of primary and secondary sources from the era (over 10K pages). Literally every book I could find that was free and in English. What I am telling you is correct, even if goes against what you have learned.

Now as to why did Germany finally find the money for its navy despite ignoring the need for at least a decade.

  • Big navies go with prestige and colonies.
  • Germany economy was rapidly expanding meaning more $$$ to spend.
  • Germany was secure based on its army size if one makes the assumptions the Germans made. i.e. that in addition to A-H that either Russia or Italy would come to war to defend Germany.
  • Outrages over the Boer treatment by UK.
  • And most importantly, UK constant poking of Germany coastline. Same reason that when USSR had navy that threatened Atlantic, US Navy went to 600 ship. When not true, US Navy struggles to find funding for 300 ships.

In the words of Tirpitz "the outbreak of hatred, envy and rage which the Kruger Telegram [Jan-1896] let loose in England against Germany contributed more than anything else to open the eyes of large sections of the German people to our economic position and the necessity for a fleet".

Do you have any references as to the Imperial German intent to seize Denmark, or is this a reflection of your own ‘common sense’?

You mean beside the Germans had war plans to take Jutland if needed? Beside that Germany had fought a war against Denmark within the preceding 50 years. Beside that when needed in the next war, Germany just rolled over Denmark like Denmark military did not exist. The Germans clearly would take Jutland if required.

Now you also seem to be missing my point. There was a long diplomatic game played by the UK on one side and by Russia and Germany on the other related to the Baltic Sea entrance. Norway, Sweden, and Denmark had to choose a side. They choose the non-UK side IOTL. The pressure relates to how the Danes perceived how the Germans would react in a war. And the UK. And the Russians.

Also, the Germans offered a better deal. The Germans asked for Danish neutrality and mining of coastal waters. The UK offer would mean the Danes joined the war.

Also, you words by Tirpitz support my position that the UK triggered the naval race. And he may be right that this one Telegram was the most important single factor in obtaining additional funding. Not sure how UK misstep to trigger bigger German naval budget impacts Germany moving into Jutland.
 
The UK is doing a raiding strategy here. Trying to tie down multiple armies with a couple of corps. The idea is basically to concentrate forces, shell the hell out of a town (say Danzig), run ships up the rivers for more shelling, send in troops to burn things, retreat.

The other idea is to have foreign armies help. So one plan near OTL war or during the war would be to have a British Division or two land at Danzig, another at the coast nearest Berlin. Then to transport in Russian armies who would do the actual heavy lifting.

I have been tempted to write an ATL where the British just execute one of these War Plans. The hang up relates to people just would not accept these were actual plans almost implemented. And the need to modify them so the UK doesn't lose the war in 6 weeks. Let me outline the plans below which is what they were discussing. This is basically Plan with W.3.1 (Plan to support war with French support) with elements of Plan B and C. And let me re-emphasis a key point. These are not idle back of the napkin plans but plans where actual type orders had been cut and sealed so they could just hand out the orders to the squadron commanders.

The plans call for both sending the BEF to France and using multiple corps in landings. Since the Royal Navy had less than a division to use at the start of the war, we are obviously using the same troops twice. We also seem to have these troops arriving day one. It is also unclear which order the attacks occur.

  • The bulk of the Grand Fleet sails to Heligoland and engages in a naval duel with the shore defenses. A battalion of marines is landed to take the island.
  • The 1st Infantry Division is landed at Borkum Island. Island under easy artillery range of German guns not taken.
  • The 2nd Infantry Division is landed at Sylt lsland. Island under easy artillery range of mainland unless option below is done.
  • Option 1. Use the 3rd Divisions to take the nearby coastline. These two divisions were going to tie up 12 German divisions per UK war plans. Don't ask me how. Also, I don't see how this much land can be held with less than 4 divisions. So we really should option 1A that uses BEF divisions 3-6.
  • These two Islands will be the supply bases for 40+ submarines (C class most common), 3 squadrons of Destroyers (1st, 2nd, 3rd) and two squadron cruisers (1st, 3rd). The destroyers and submarines form a line on the Frisian Islands near the German coast. The cruisers from a line from Tershelling (Dutch Island) to Horn's Reef (Western most point of Denmark). The Grand fleet stays about 150 miles out to sea awaiting the decisive battle.
Roughly speaking, you can think of that like the first phase of Gallipoli. The plans vary by years, and to be fair, when they start of the plans around the 1902-1906 window, the probably would work. As mines and torpedoes got better and more common, these things become suicidal. And when you look at these types of plans which would be partially know to the Germans, you see why you don't need long range ships. Heavy armor is great. Don't need crew sleeping quarters. And why you want heavy ships. The easiest place to win the battle at sea is to attack the Grand Fleet which will be anchored to Heligoland, low on armor piercing ammo, in German mine fields, with all German torpedo boats able to get to the battle.

On a side note, the plans were rejected by Admirals of the British Navy after the war started, and they logic they site is basically the Risk Fleet. And this is why we get to the next part. The UK assumes they win all equal force battles. The admirals determine they can't break into the Baltic if they can't be assured equal fleets in both. This is actually the logic behind having a canal and 60% of the BB of the British. Makes me wonder if funding was 25% higher for German navy, would Germany spend all these funds on non-BB.

Phase II. Assume HSF has not been destroyed in decisive battle.

  • Mass the River class ships. Run up the Kiel canal in mass and attack locks. Like the BB against the Ottomans IOTL, it was viewed as unlikely to work. You have to have most of the coastal batteries quite and Heligoland neutralized. Also issue of that the Germans have around 200 smaller ships that can get to this battle which is maybe 20 miles from main base (torpedo boats, subs, cruisers). The UK can only get about 50 DD here (River class) due to range.
Phase III.

  • When this does not work, corp size landing at Busun, which is north land entrance to canal. Assume 2 corp size, but I guess it could be division size. I am now up to Divisions 7-10 and BEF was 6 divisions, so we see issues here with planning. Much like missing 300K soldier in some many German War Plans or missing army or two needed for A-H.
Phase IV.

  • Denmark joins Entente due to diplomatic pressure.
  • Or if stubborn, I use the 8 division in German Jutland to take whole of Jutland. Clear minefield. Using Royal Marines as recon forces to land multiple Russian armies in Germany.


OK you are basically talking about large scale viking raids in the early C20th?!

It's cheeky and I like it :biggrin:!

But I don't think it would work for a couple of reasons

1). on the scale you are talking about nothing moves that fast, A corp is still a large number of men, machine and kit. You will risk getting caught.

2). If you get caught your going to lose a lot of men and kit making this high risk (the BEF is just too brittle in terms of taking casualties, and you are operating deep in enemy territory).

3). It going to be hard to sneak along the coast and up rivers to surprise raid, it's not C10th France a spotter seeing RN steaming up river will get word to any potential targets before the RN get there let alone disembarks

4). RN ships going up rivers very much risk getting cut off by the KM coming in after them or just blockadeing them in (this wll also strand any BEF division that might have or had)
 

BlondieBC

Banned
No, a draft memo from the German Imperial Naval Office dated February 1900 states

It is impossible for us to strike England’s vulnerable point, which lies in its maritime trade. Apart from the cruisers themselves, cruiser warfare requires fortified bases that serve as operational points for the vessels. The lead that England has in terms of both bases and the number of ships overseas [ . . . ] is so great that Germany could never catch up.


England’s second point of weakness is that it lacks an army to protect the mainland in the event that the home fleet is defeated. We will be secure from an English attack if it is possible for us to build a battle fleet that is capable of taking on England’s home fleet—raising the specter of a loss of this fleet and of an unprotected mainland.

The above highlights the fact German naval ambitions were directed specifically at Britain and the Germans had contemplated cruiser warfare doctrine [as some have advocated on this thread], but concluded British advantages in geography and logistics were simple too great to overcome.

Lots of stuff here. First, a draft memo just indicates that it was someone opinion in the German Navy. Does not mean it was the majority opinion. Does not mean it drove decisions. If we want to get into UK memo, there is an amazing diversity of beliefs among the Admirals.

You also seem to be misunderstanding how Naval planning works and how Mahan worked. Mahan was comfortable looking at capabilities of both friend and foe. Mahan did analysis of war with the UK, war with Japan, colonial type interventions in Latin America, and wars between nations that did not involve the USA. In the same way, the Germans planned for more than one scenario. So the same ships can be both useful in fighting a war versus Russia. And one versus France. Or one versus the UK. Or in colonial ambitions.

Now to the rest. Sure the UK had better ports, but the Germans did little to improve their overseas ports. Yes, the UK is vulnerable if the RN is sunk, but the German Navy was a threat to do this.

Now I think what you are doing here is arguing that the UK built up as a reaction to the German naval laws. As I have pointed out, it is easy to disprove to a scientific level. The UK events precede the German events, so the German events can't be the causes. The First Naval law did not give Germany a credible navy to do anything but defend the German coast, and it is debateable if the German Navy was strong enough to do that. By the time we get the Second/Third/Fourth naval law, the UK had conquered two white nations, the UK had switched its planning to fighting Germany, the UK had publically talked about preventive war with Germany, and the UK held naval exercises off the German coast.

I know it is hard to accept since there is so much post war CYA and misinformation. But here are the cold hard facts. Prussia had been the traditional ally of the UK. The UK provoked Germany (Greater Prussia) into being a rival for no real gain. This unwise action by the UK lead to the UK having to greatly increase its naval budget and drug the UK into a war (WW1/WW2) that lead to the loss of the loss of the British Empire.

If the British had kept to their old policies, the British Empire is likely still around and the British likely still dominate the Seas.

No. The Jeune École naval doctrine merely eshewed battlefleets in favour of developing smaller units (especially torpedo boats) and commerce raiders - nothing about sinking merchants without warning. It should be noted this doctrine emerged before submarines became effective offensively and elements of this doctrine share common ground with crusier warfare doctrine.
You reading of Ecole and related materials is clearly limited. If you start reading materials around French naval doctrine, it will not take long until you find the call for Unrestricted Merchant Warfare. And before you ask, I have posted many of these links in other threads and you can google them if you like. Or read the source material if you want (better option). It is one thing to provide a few links for a person who has missed a few facts. It is another thing to outline a series of books for someone who has clearly spent no more than a couple hours of their life reading naval doctrine from the day. Stop reading the summaries of this stuff, go actually read Mahan. Read Ecole and his disciples. Read some of their quotes. When you do this, there will emerge a very clear and simple pattern and flow. Each nation built their military in a rational way based on their beliefs at the time. Now all this is against a backdrop of the flawed process humans use to make decisions.
No. The term 'coast defense ships' was used to describe budget battleships for second class navies, which until 1900 was every navy except the Royal Navy. Significant numbers of coast defense ships were built by second tier navies through the 1890s including Netherlands, Norway and Germany.
Again, you are mistaken here because you appear to have spent limited time reading primary sources. The 'second class' navy concept is as I describe. It is a common theme done by British Admirals in books and articles of the time. But it was not adopted by anyone except nations with very small naval budgets. I don't know quite what to say to you when you can't distinguish between a type of ship and school of thought. Yes, coastal defense ships would more commonly be built by nations using a Second Class Navy strategy, but even the Royal Navy build some of them. If you look at some of the monitors built to defend the Dover minefields, they are quite clearly this type of ship. i.e. no speed, limited sea worthiness, big gun, and armored to a specific environment.
It is clear from Tirpitz statement and the extract from a German Naval memo (refer above) the first naval bill was inspired by the British - not the French.

It should be noted the Royal Navy continued to enjoy both a vast qualitative and quantitative edge over the German Navy at least until the Dreadnaught was launched. The German technical advances on naval matters were truely immense, but from a very low base.

Again, your sources and reading in limited. You are treating this like a public debate where one finds a few quotes to support one's position, and ignore the rest. Tirpitz was not even the head of the navy when German naval expansion started. In fact, he switched strategies to more of Mahan mindset when he took over. You also ignore Tirpitz limited power. He was not even in the body that funded the Navy. He did not control the most important PAC (German Naval League if memory serves me). He was the most important person in the naval command structure (Kaiser, and arguably Prince Henry). He was not always 100% consistent on position.

Then to reach your position from Tirpitz quotes, I have to ignore the wealth of information produce by British Admirals, actual war plans, French military thinking, Mahan's writing on the German Navy, the Heer plans, the Reichstag politics, and a hundred other sources.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
OK you are basically talking about large scale viking raids in the early C20th?!

It's cheeky and I like it :biggrin:!

But I don't think it would work for a couple of reasons

1). on the scale you are talking about nothing moves that fast, A corp is still a large number of men, machine and kit. You will risk getting caught.

2). If you get caught your going to lose a lot of men and kit making this high risk (the BEF is just too brittle in terms of taking casualties, and you are operating deep in enemy territory).

3). It going to be hard to sneak along the coast and up rivers to surprise raid, it's not C10th France a spotter seeing RN steaming up river will get word to any potential targets before the RN get there let alone disembarks

4). RN ships going up rivers very much risk getting cut off by the KM coming in after them or just blockadeing them in (this wll also strand any BEF division that might have or had)

Well, again, it is actual war plans. Look up W.3.1, W.2, and W.1.

As to how this happened, it has to do with the human brain and general preparing to fight the last war. All this stuff would work in the age of sail. If you look at it carefully, I think you will find it not too far from what the British Navy did in the Napoleonic Wars or the Crimean Wars. Once a person or an organization mentally anchors to a model, it is hard to move.

1) Yes, agreed. Part of reason that I have not written this ATL despite starting work several times. Option #1, I just ASB have these units arrive like the naval plans. i.e. from the D+2 to D+4 I land the entire BEF on the German coast. It might well work since the Germans probably don't have the reserve units to their location yet. But if I am realistic, it is late September or early October before the Landings happen. If the Royal Marines can't land in Belgium before August 16th, and the BEF has limited impact in the first 6 weeks of the war, it is probably week 6-12 before any landings are possible.

So I then get this ATL where I just do "no BEF" in France before the Battle of the Marne, then pointless landing by BEF in Dutch, German, or Danish territory.

2) Yes, many British Admirals agree with you.

3) Sneak is no the right word. Bust in by force. You will have BB and CA doing counter battery all along the shore while up to 50 CA, CL, or DD attack in mass up rivers.

4). You park Grand Fleet right outside of main German naval base. The whole idea is to get the naval battles decided in a day. Now yes, you probably lose a lot of ships but I think it will be to shore guns and mines. It does not take much of a ship to drop 10-20 mines in a river mouth behind the cruisers shelling Hamburg. These ships might well have to run 25-50 miles of minefields to get back to open water.

Note, note defending the plan, just explaining.
 
Well, again, it is actual war plans. Look up W.3.1, W.2, and W.1.

Oh I'm sure there were plans for it but famoully there are plans for everything, the mere existence of plans don't make the plan tenable

As to how this happened, it has to do with the human brain and general preparing to fight the last war. All this stuff would work in the age of sail. If you look at it carefully, I think you will find it not too far from what the British Navy did in the Napoleonic Wars or the Crimean Wars. Once a person or an organization mentally anchors to a model, it is hard to move.

maybe but if it stays anchored in the past and ignores changes it's not going to go well, either way I'm not sure the RN was looking to refight the napoleonic wars in 1914.

1) Yes, agreed. Part of reason that I have not written this ATL despite starting work several times. Option #1, I just ASB have these units arrive like the naval plans. i.e. from the D+2 to D+4 I land the entire BEF on the German coast. It might well work since the Germans probably don't have the reserve units to their location yet. But if I am realistic, it is late September or early October before the Landings happen. If the Royal Marines can't land in Belgium before August 16th, and the BEF has limited impact in the first 6 weeks of the war, it is probably week 6-12 before any landings are possible.

So I then get this ATL where I just do "no BEF" in France before the Battle of the Marne, then pointless landing by BEF in Dutch, German, or Danish territory.

2) Yes, many British Admirals agree with you.

3) Sneak is no the right word. Bust in by force. You will have BB and CA doing counter battery all along the shore while up to 50 CA, CL, or DD attack in mass up rivers.

4). You park Grand Fleet right outside of main German naval base. The whole idea is to get the naval battles decided in a day. Now yes, you probably lose a lot of ships but I think it will be to shore guns and mines. It does not take much of a ship to drop 10-20 mines in a river mouth behind the cruisers shelling Hamburg. These ships might well have to run 25-50 miles of minefields to get back to open water.

Note, note defending the plan, just explaining.

Fair enough I can see issues with the above but I'm guessing you can too
 

Coulsdon Eagle

Monthly Donor
The first Boer War was 1881. You are talking about the second Boer war.

So, the drive behind the 1897 Naval Law was a short colonial conflict (which the British lost leaving the Boer republics independent) 16 years earlier?

I suspect it is the Jameson Raid (1895?) that was a factor.
 
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Interesting about British plans to land in Germany, if looked at alongside wider events they don't look so ludicrous. The timing of these plans coincides with the French and Russian ententes; so that such landings would be part of a general war where finding divisions in reserve to back up the Landwehr guarding the cost isn't so easy or fast. Certainly by 1908 Germany assumed that the British would be likely on the Entente side in a future war.

In the 1911-13 period British plans changed, likely driven in a large part by the capabilites of the German navy. Just like how close blockade was no longer practical neither were these landing plans, which is likely a reason why from 1911 the British began planning solely to deploy the BEF on the flank of the French armies and in 1912 made a naval agreement with the French. By 1912 Germany assumed that the British would be a belligerent as such plans firmed up and Britain reduced her freedom of action (or/and had it reduced by others ).

In any case any strategy to starve Britain, either partially or totally, would have to be conducted from German home bases against shipping close to Britain.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
So, the drive behind the 1897 Naval Law was a short colonial conflict (which the British lost leaving the Boer republics independent) 16 years earlier?

I suspect it is the Jameson Raid (1895?) that was a factor.

Your missing the point. For some reason, you want single point of persuasion. So lets flip to a more modern war, and you can see why these style questions don't really make sense. Was the second American Invasion of Iraq caused by 9/11, Saddam's first invasion, the fact there is so much oil in the Persian Gulf, Israel lobby, Saddam not following UN resolutions, the attempted assassination of Bush I, Bush II wanting to finish his dad's work, the human tendency to revert to previous somewhat related plans, group think, defense contracts wanting larger budgets, etc, etc? This is exactly the style of question that you ask. It hides history, instead of helping us understand the pattern.

The Royal Navy always had a bad guy to justify naval spending. In the 1880s it was Russia was going to defeat the Royal Navy in a single day and land 200K troops in the midlands in a single day.

So until we get to the the German Naval Law 1906 AND these ships were built, the Germans coastline was not secure from the UK close in dominating much less Germany doing anything to the UK and the Royal Navy. So we have a process where the Germans respond to a lot of items and pass a Naval Law 1898. It was a very modest law driven by as much a need to defend the coast as anything else. Only in a some strange fantasy world was this navy a threat to the UK, no more than the BEF was a threat to conquer Germany in a 1-to-1 war.

Then we get the Second Boer War. Another Naval Bill 1900. Again, German navy was not a real threat, but RN used this bill to switch its PR for funding. RN also starts about decade long process of switching from France as main enemy in planning and deployment to Germany.

Then we have series of Colonial issues, series of bombastic statements by British leaders, and major military operations right off German Coasts. So we get even a bigger Naval bill in 1906.

Process repeats a couple more time, and was actually dying down as the Germans proved consistently willing to fund a BB fleet about 60% of size of UK, and UK was unwilling to keep raising funding to get level below this level.

Again, UK started this disagreement with its long-term ally for no good reason. And trying to have single factor analysis of cause cast more darkness than light.

I used to believe your position since it is what is taught in school and is popular in books. But once I read enough, I learned it was false. If you want to see the truth, here is the easy way. Go put all these events in a spreadsheet and track them by month, year. Put actual and proposed size of each navy, each month. Then look at the points you think

  • Germany can defend its coast against France
  • Germany can defend its coast against Russia
  • Germany might be able to defend coast against UK.
  • Germany would be able to defend coast against UK
  • Germany can actually threaten UK coast (Never)

Look at the data. Remember that while A preceding B does not prove causality, it does prove B did not cause A. It is provable to a scientific standard that the size of the German Navy did not cause the British hostility since the Germans navy never was big enough to threaten the UK. The data will strongly suggest that the UK hostility cause to a large extent the increase in funding for the German navy. And if you read widely, you will see there is primary data to support this in the histories.

And I get the high emotions on the issue. The British threw away their empire based on turning a long term ally into an enemy. And the ally that help them the most since it had what the UK was missing, the best army. If the UK need to end splendid isolationism, the logical alliance to join was whichever one the Germans were in. And if the UK can trust France to keep the Med Sea open in a war, then the UK can trust the Germans at sea. There is this easy to visualize ATL where the UK does not attack the Boers and the UK is neutral to supporting in German colonial ambitions, and the British Empire is still around.
 
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