The history of the German navy begins with the creation of
the Deutsche Bundesflotte in 1848–1849 by the National Assembly in Frankfurt.
The Bundesflotte fought only one battle, off Helgoland on 4 June 1849, before
being dismantled after the collapse of the Frankfurt government. The navy
became a symbol of national unity and was strongly supported by the liberal
movement and the growing middle class. The enthusiasm for a navy in this period
presaged several themes that would play an important part in future naval
developments: the desire for a fleet to match that of Great Britain;
recognition that building a navy would have to be done in steps; and the
national role of the navy in the creation of German unity.
Increasing conflict between the German Confederation and
Denmark in the 1860s and a revived national unity movement led to a renewed
public interest in the establishment of a German fleet. During this second wave
of “navalism” the Prussian navy greatly expanded its overseas activities in
promotion and protection of trade and economic interests. Establishment of the
North German Confederation and the Norddeutsche Bundesmarine in 1867
represented the most significant expression of Reich-centeredness since 1848
and resulted in approval for a new building program and the development of an
overseas policy, with China as the most important location for new naval bases.
The navy, however, had only a minor role in the final stage
of Prussia’s national unification of Germany in the victory over France in
1871, a fact that dampened the support and enthusiasm for a navy. Chancellor
Otto von Bismarck, who wanted only a small navy so as to avoid any conflict
with Britain, appointed an army general, Albrecht von Stosch, as chief of the
Admiralty on 1 January 1872. In an attempt to regain the popularity of the navy
with the liberal nationalists, Stosch renamed it the Kaiserliche Marine
(Imperial Navy) and implemented a construction program that would give Germany
the third largest armored fleet in the world, albeit briefly.
The navy’s desire to justify its existence in light of its
passivity and ineffectiveness in the Franco-Prussian War led it to emphasize an
offensive spirit. Operational planning remained largely theoretical, however,
with little contact with the fleet commanders or the army. Although Chancellor
Bismarck was not a “fleet enthusiast,” his concept of a balance of power on the
seas and the idea of having a navy of the second rank as an “alliance factor”
(Bundnisfahigkeit) later played a role in Germany’s naval-political strategy.
Stosch’s rivalry with Bismarck and the sinking of the Grosser Kurfurst in 1878
led to increased criticism and a public loss of confidence in the navy.
Stosch’s mix of ship types and rapid changes in technology
and the confusion caused by the French Jeune École made it difficult for
Stosch’s successor, another army general, Leo von Caprivi (1883–1888), to
develop any coherent expansion program or strategy. Caprivi supported the
construction of torpedo boats in the face of what he considered to be an
imminent threat of war, as well as overseas cruisers to support Bismarck’s
colonial policies.
New Kaiser Wilhelm II (1888–1918) was an enthusiastic
advocate of an expanded navy, but he wavered, as did his officers, between a
battleship and cruiser navy. However, his support helped restore the prestige
of the navy and heightened its appeal as a symbol of nationalism, along with
German aspirations for world power.
In 1897 Kaiser Wilhelm II appointed Admiral Alfred Tirpitz
head of the Imperial Navy Office (Reichsmarineamt). This proved a turning
point, not only for the German Navy but for Germany itself. Tirpitz swiftly
developed a plan that skillfully combined political, military, ideological, and
economic justifications for a navy. Tirpitz sought to defend the navy against
all critics. He perpetuated the fragmentation of command created by the Kaiser
to maintain his bureaucratic control, and he vigorously defended his
departmental interests.
Under Tirpitz, a unique “German school” of naval thought
emerged. This merged the Prussian-Clausewitzian influence and the navalism of
Alfred Thayer Mahan into a military and political ideology of sea power.
Tirpitz’s “risk theory” that a German battle fleet would serve as a deterrent
against England, was a cover for his aspiration to challenge Britain for world
naval dominance.
The primacy of the battle fleet and Tirpitz’s dogma of
seeking the decisive battle from its North Sea base contributed to the
contradictions and illusions in German naval strategy and tactics, as well as
its construction program. To get through the danger zone in which the German
fleet would be vulnerable to a British attack, Tirpitz planned to build his
fleet in stages.
The advent of HMS Dreadnought in 1906 and the spiraling cost
of battleship construction intensified a naval race that Germany could not win
and a coalition of foes it could not defeat. By the outbreak of war in August
1914, the High Seas Fleet, although the world’s second largest, was clearly
outclassed by the Royal Navy. Germany had in service 15 dreadnought battleships
and 5 battle cruisers to Britain’s 22 dreadnoughts and 9 battle cruisers. The
difference was even more pronounced in terms of other warships. Germany had 22
predreadnought battleships to Britain’s 40, 40 cruisers of all types to
Britain’s 87, 90 destroyers to Britain’s 221, 115 torpedo boats to Britain’s
109, and 32 submarines to Britain’s 73.
The inactivity of the High Seas Fleet save for the 1916
Battle of Jutland demonstrated the fallacies in Tirpitz’s planning and strategy
and led directly to the implementation of unrestricted submarine warfare in
February 1917, which brought the United States into the war. The naval mutinies
in 1917 and 1918 that precipitated revolution in Germany, the scuttling of the
interned High Seas Fleet in Scapa Flow in 1919, and the draconian naval terms
of the Treaty of Versailles left the Weimar Republic’s Reichsmarine with little
popular support and a handful of obsolete ships. The Weimar Republic’s naval
leaders, however, continued to believe in the political claims of Tirpitz’s sea
power ideology that only a navy of the “first magnitude” would serve as an
instrument of power politics and a symbol of Germany’s world power.
Following Admiral Adolf von Trotha’s ill-advised support for
an aborted right-wing coup attempt in March 1920 (the Kapp Putsch), the navy’s
already tenuous relationship with the supporters of the republic threatened its
very existence. The navy’s secret rearmament attempts and blatant violations of
the treaty as revealed by the Lohmann scandal of 1927 and controversy over the
building of the navy’s new 10,000-ton “pocket battleship” (Panzerschiff)
further increased its isolation. The navy became a force existing for its own
purposes and sense of destiny, disengaged intellectually and professionally
from the legal state and its institutions. In 1928 the new navy chief, Admiral
Erich Raeder (1928–1943), whose Ressorteifer (departmental self-interest)
matched that of his mentor Tirpitz, established an authoritarian, centralized
command over “his” navy. In spite of his disavowal of party politics, Raeder
sought to build support for expanding the fleet beyond its modest role in
Germany’s national defense. With Hitler’s appointment as chancellor in 1933, the
Führer’s “national” and “social” program found a close affinity with the
long-term goals of the naval leadership, and the navy followed a leader who it
believed had both the desire and power to fulfill its aspirations.
Raeder believed that he had educated the Führer as to the
necessity of a fleet as a power and alliance factor. Hitler’s short-term plans
included an accommodation with Britain in return for its acquiescence in
Germany’s continental expansion. The June 1935 Anglo-German Naval Treaty limited
the size of the Kriegsmarine to 35 percent the tonnage of the Royal Navy,
although it gave Germany parity in submarines.
Raeder regarded the treaty as temporary. Germany was now
free to build U-boats again and to develop a balanced fleet that would be ready
by 1944 to support Hitler’s next stage of military expansion. Raeder and his
officers believed war with Britain and later even the United States and Japan
was inevitable. The 1939 “Z” Plan, the culmination of the turn against England
that had begun in 1937, would provide a deterrent while serving as the basis of
an even larger blue-water fleet (as seen in proposed 1940 and 1941 construction
programs).
The continuity between the navies of the Kaiserreich, the
Weimar Republic, and the Third Reich demonstrated that the navy’s war aims were
not tied to questions of national security or living space but were an
expression of the navy’s attempts to expand its power and influence. This could
only be accomplished through Germany’s being a world power with a world
fleet—and this was the final goal for both the navy and the Führer.
As Raeder began to worry that war with England would come
sooner rather than later, Hitler refused to allow any change in the building of
battleships over U-boats or cruisers. When World War II began in September
1939, Raeder lamented that all his small navy could do was “die gallantly.” The
German surface fleet consisted of 2 battleships, 3 pocket battleships, 1 heavy
cruiser, 6 light cruisers, and 33 destroyers and torpedo boats. Fewer than half
of the 57 U-boats available were suitable for Atlantic operations.
Raeder persistently argued that only all-out economic
warfare could have any effect on Britain, and he planned a full-scale offensive
of cruiser warfare on a global basis to force London to divide its forces.
Restrictions—particularly on U-boats early in the war—and a temporary halt in
the U-boat construction program frustrated Raeder’s attempts to seize the
initiative and achieve early success, as well as avoid comparisons of the
Kriegsmarine with the High Seas Fleet in 1914–1918. The navy regarded the
successful surprise invasion of Norway and Denmark (Operation weser) in April
1940 as its major feat of arms in this stage of the war, but they lost 3
cruisers and 10 destroyers in the operation. The loss of the Bismarck in May
1941, however, led directly to Raeder’s final break with Hitler in December
1942. Nonetheless, the Channel Dash in February 1942—the escape of the
Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, and Prinz Eugen to Norway—was a strategic defeat for
the navy.
In the aftermath of the defeat of France in 1940, Raeder
tried unsuccessfully to redirect Hitler to the Mediterranean as a viable
alternative to the invasion of the Soviet Union and as an indirect means of
attacking England. With the fleet tied to Norway, the U-boat arm under its
commander, Karl Dönitz, continued its role as the navy’s primary weapon. The
navy, however, never resolved the issue of whether the U-boat war was a
“tonnage war” or a commerce war in which U-boats attacked targets that had the
greatest potential for a decisive impact. The defeat of the U-boats in May 1943
both technologically and through Allied successes in code breaking reflected
the shortcomings in the naval leadership and military structure of the Third
Reich.
The final act of the German navy in World War II was a
considerable undertaking: the massive evacuation of civilians and soldiers from
the Eastern Front in the Baltic. As a reward for the loyalty and steadfastness
of the navy, at the end of the war Hitler appointed Dönitz as his successor, in
sharp contrast to the navy’s ignominious end in 1918.
The developing Cold War between the West and the Soviet
Union provided the opportunity and framework for naval rearmament in the newly
created Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic. The
Bundesmarine and the Volksmarine developed within the framework of the opposing
NATO and Warsaw Pact military alliances. In 1990, after the collapse of the
German Democratic Republic, the Volksmarine was integrated into the new
Deutsche Marine. This new German navy is a blue-water navy with a balanced
fleet specializing in narrow-seas warfare. In 2001 the German Navy numbered 2
destroyers, 12 frigates with an additional 3 building, 14 patrol submarines
with 4 more under construction, 30 guided missile patrol boats, 17 mine
hunters, and 2 naval air squadrons. Naval personnel number some 27,000, almost
twice that of the navy of the Weimar Republic.
Operating under NATO’s strategic framework, the Defense
Capabilities Initiative of 1999, the Deutsche Marine deploys its forces beyond
the borders of the alliance in order to respond to crises such as Somalia or
Yugoslavia. The navy also participates in combined joint task forces in the
Atlantic and Mediterranean, including two NATO mine countermeasures task forces
in Northern Europe and the Mediterranean.
References
Bird, Keith. German Naval History: A Guide to the
Literature. New York: Garland Press, 1985.
Herwig, Holger H. “Luxury” Fleet: The Imperial German Navy,
1888–1918. Rev. ed. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Ashfield Press, 1987.
Sondhaus, Lawrence. Preparing for Weltpolitik: German Sea
Power before the Tirpitz Era. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1997.
Thomas, Charles S. The German Navy in the Nazi Era.
Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1990.
Von der Porten, Edward P. The German Navy in World War II.
New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1969
No comments:
Post a Comment