War, Economy and the Military Mind by Geoffrey Best & Andrew Wheatcroft

Author:Geoffrey Best & Andrew Wheatcroft [Best, Geoffrey & Wheatcroft, Andrew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780367616434
Google: ucShzQEACAAJ
Goodreads: 54418494
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2020-12-23T00:00:00+00:00

As has been mentioned above, the Reich Navy Office chose to ignore these perceptive considerations. In 1908 the building tempo was stepped up to four capital ships per annum. Although the Liberals were not ‘thrown out of office’, the pressure of public opinion to respond to the new German challenge grew so irresistible that the Cabinet decided to table a large Navy budget. Appreciating the difficulties in which this would involve him, Tirpitz now tried to influence the size of the British increases. He knew that the Liberals were not very keen on armaments because the high costs put their domestic reform programme in jeopardy. From the German point of view, the most promising method of reinforcing Liberal inhibitions was therefore to launch a diplomatic ‘peace’ offensive.

An analysis of the relevant German files shows that embracing the opponent was precisely the strategy which Tirpitz tried to pursue between 1907 and 1911.48 He was at first supported in this strategy by the Reich Chancellor who may have been a bit slow in recognising the implications of the ‘gap’ of 1912-17. At any rate, by making friendly noises towards Britain, the Reich government was not only hoping to avoid a ‘Copenhagen’, but also to convince the Liberal Cabinet that very large naval increases were really unnecessary. Yet it is more than doubtful that the Kaiser and his advisers were guided by a genuine desire for an Anglo-German understanding. The documents rather seem to support the conclusion that they merely wanted to take some of the heat out of the arms race and to prevent a further deterioration of Anglo-German relations. A limitation of naval armaments which was so widely talked about between 1908 and 1910 was certainly never seriously contemplated by Tirpitz. His calculations as well as Billow’s emerge from a letter which the Reich Chancellor sent to the Kaiser in August 1908.49 Bülow started by assuring the monarch that he continued to regard the protection of the naval armaments programme against internal and external vicissitudes as one of his main tasks. According to the German Ambassador in London, he went on, Britain did not intend to wage a preventive war against Germany, but was seeking an Anglo-German understanding on naval questions. Although the Reich government could not adopt such ideas as official policy, Bülow thought it unwise to destroy all British hopes of an agreement.50 if the Germans took a hard line even in private conversations, he concluded, there would be an increased danger of war or – what was no less disastrous – of ‘a colossal [British] programme’. Although he did not fear war as such, he was also concerned, he said, that the Kaiser’s life work, the expansion of the navy, could be safely completed. For this reason ‘getting through the next few years’ was of primary importance.

Bülow repeated this objective four months later in a marginal comment on a letter by Tirpitz.51 Summarising his policy since 1897, the Navy Secretary stated that he had pursued the idea of building a risk fleet against Britain for a full decade now.

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