Architects of Continental Seapower: Comparing Tirpitz and Gorshkov 0367531275, 9780367531270

Table of contents :
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Preface
Note
Chapter 1: Introduction
Notes
Part I: Careers
Chapter 2: Alfred von Tirpitz
Notes
Chapter 3: Sergei Gorshkov
Notes
Part II: Writings
Chapter 4: Tirpitz – his writings
Notes
Chapter 5: Gorshkov – his writings
Notes
Part III: Fleets
Chapter 6: The Imperial German Navy
Postscript – the ship Tirpitz
Chapter 7: The Soviet Navy
Strength of the Soviet Navy, 1970
Strength of the US Navy, 1970
Strength of the Soviet Navy, 1986
Possible Soviet Navy versus actual Russian Navy, 1995
Postscript – the ship Gorshkov
Part IV: Consequences
Chapter 8: Consequences and assessment – Tirpitz
Notes
Chapter 9: Consequences and assessment – Gorshkov
Notes
Part V: Conclusions
Chapter 10: The continental experience with seapower
Notes
Appendices
Appendix (i): Dienstschrift IX
I Preface
II The natural purpose of a fleet is the strategic offensive
III General observations about offensive naval warfare
Appendix (ii): Navies in war and peace
Times distant, yet important for understanding the role of navies
Bibliography
(i) Tirpitz
(ii) Gorshkov
(iii) General
Index

Citation preview

Architects of Continental Seapower

This book describes and analyses two iconic figures in twentieth­-​­century naval history: the German Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz and the Russian Admiral Sergei Gorshkov. It examines the men, what they thought and wrote about seapower, the fleets they created and the strategic consequences of what they did. More broadly, it draws on the respective histories of the post­-​­1897 Imperial German Navy and the post­-​­1956 Soviet Navy to examine the continental bid for large­-​­scale seapower. The work argues that both individuals built navies that did not, and could not, fulfil the objectives for which they were created. Drawing on the legacies of both men, the book also develops some wider ideas about the creation of large navies by continental states, with cautionary lessons for today’s emerging powers, India and China. Both admirals have received book­-​­length biographies, but this is the first attempt at a comparative study and the first to draw broader strategic lessons from their respective attempts as continental navalists to challenge maritime states. This book will be of much interest to students of naval history, strategic studies and International Relations. Captain Jeremy Stocker is an Associate Fellow of the Royal United Services Institute in London, and an independent defence analyst and naval historian. This is his second book.

Corbett Centre for Maritime Policy Studies Series Series Editors: Greg Kennedy, Tim Benbow and Jon Robb­-Webb ​­ Defence Studies Department, Joint Services Command and Staff College, UK

The Corbett Centre for Maritime Policy Studies Series is the publishing platform of the Corbett Centre. Drawing on the expertise and wider networks of the Defence Studies Department of King’s College London, and based at the Joint Services Command and Staff College in the UK Defence Academy, the Corbett Centre is already a leading centre for academic expertise and education in maritime and naval studies. It enjoys close links with several other institutions, both academic and governmental, that have an interest in maritime matters, including the Developments, Concepts and Doctrine Centre (DCDC), the Naval Staff of the Ministry of Defence and the Naval Historical Branch. The centre and its publishing output aims to promote the understanding and analysis of maritime history and policy and to provide a forum for the interaction of academics, policy­-makers ​­ and practitioners. Books published under the aegis of the Corbett Centre series reflect these aims and provide an opportunity to stimulate research and debate into a broad range of maritime­-​­related themes. The core subject matter for the series is maritime strategy and policy, conceived broadly to include theory, history and practice, military and civil, historical and contemporary, British and international aspects. As a result, this series offers a unique opportunity to examine key issues such as maritime security, the future of naval power and the commercial uses of the sea, from an exceptionally broad chronological, geographical and thematic range. Truly interdisciplinary in its approach, the series welcomes books from across the humanities, social sciences and professional worlds, providing an unrivalled opportunity for authors and readers to enhance the national and international visibility of maritime affairs, and provide a forum for policy debate and analysis. Architects of Continental Seapower Comparing Tirpitz and Gorshkov Captain Jeremy Stocker Naval Diplomacy in the 21st Century A Model for the Post­-​­Cold War Global Order Kevin Rowlands Europe, Small Navies and Maritime Security Balancing Traditional Roles and Emergent Threats in the 21st Century Edited by Robert McCabe, Deborah Sanders and Ian Speller For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/Corbett­-​­Centre­-​ ­for­-​­Maritime­-​­Policy­-​­Studies­-​­Series/book­-​­series/CCMPSS

Architects of Continental Seapower Comparing Tirpitz and Gorshkov

Captain Jeremy Stocker

First published 2021 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 Captain Jeremy Stocker The right of Captain Jeremy Stocker to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing­-​­in­-​­Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging­-​­in­-​­Publication Data A catalog record has been requested for this book ISBN: 978­-​­0­-​­367­-​­53127­-​­0 (hbk) ISBN: 978­-​­1­-​­003­-​­08055­-​­8 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Wearset Ltd, Boldon, Tyne and Wear

Dedicated to the memory of Rear Admiral Richard Hill, like Admiral Gorshkov a late­-​­twentieth­-​­century theorist of sea power with enduring relevance.

Contents

Acknowledgementsix Prefacex   1 Introduction PART I

1

Careers

7

  2 Alfred von Tirpitz

9

  3 Sergei Gorshkov

29

PART II

Writings

49

  4 Tirpitz­ – his writings

51

  5 Gorshkov­ – his writings

74

PART III

Fleets

105

  6 The Imperial German Navy

107

  7 The Soviet Navy

122

PART IV

Consequences

141

  8 Consequences and assessment­ – Tirpitz

143

  9 Consequences and assessment­ – Gorshkov

164

viii   Contents PART V

Conclusions

179

10 The continental experience with seapower

181



Appendices

196



Bibliography

215



Index

223

(i) Dienstschrift IX (ii) Navies in war and peace   (i) Tirpitz (ii) Gorshkov (iii) General

196 205 215 218 221

Acknowledgements

My thanks are due to my friend and colleague Captain Kevin Rowlands of the Royal Navy, himself an expert on Gorshkov. He kindly reviewed each chapter as it was written and provided invaluable suggestions for improvement as well as much needed encouragement. I am also grateful to the two anonymous reviewers whose comments further improved the text. The Corbett series editors, especially Dr Tim Benbow, provided additional suggestions and help to speed the draft through the process. At Routledge, Andrew Humphrys and Bethany Lund­-​­Yates were generous with their time and expertise in guiding the original manuscript through to publication. Permission to reproduce extracts from Sergei Gorshkov’s works published by the US Naval Institute Press was speedily obtained, thanks to Liese Doherty. Dr Tobias Ebker, a medical colleague of my wife’s, helped me to make sense of the nineteenth­-​­century German prose in Dienstschrift IX. My final, and greatest, thanks are to my wife Judith, for everything.

Preface

The idea that there are useful comparisons to be drawn between Admirals Tirpitz and Gorshkov is not a new one. But, so far as the author is aware and certainly in the English language, this is the first substantial work to undertake a comparative study of the two men, their writings, the fleets they created and the strategic consequences of what they did. It makes no claims to original, primary­-​ ­source research, not least because the author’s command of German extends little beyond ordering a beer and his Russian not even that far. Instead, it tries to build on the research and analysis of others that, other than some passing comments on their similarities, deals with either Tirpitz or Gorshkov. The book concludes with an assessment of the two men and their navies, and what their legacies may have to tell us about the continental experience in generating large­-​ ­scale seapower. The fleets they built resulted in classic arms races with their maritime opponents. How the two arms races conducted within cold wars have been treated by historians are, despite the strong parallels that this book seeks to highlight, very different. This is only partially explicable by the different passages of time since the events in question­ – a century since Tirpitz, a third of that time since Gorshkov. The German archives covering the Imperial German Navy have been open for many years and much of the key material has been translated into English. Such is the importance of the lead­-​­up to war in 1914, including its naval aspects, that the period has spawned a huge literature. Beginning with Jonathan Steinberg’s Yesterday’s Deterrent in 1965, scholars of both German history and of twentieth­-​­century naval history have conducted a vigorous debate about the origins of and explanations for the extraordinary phenomenon that was the “Tirpitz Plan”. Writers have put different emphases on domestic and international motivations, on the influence of contemporary political and social assumptions, the role of competing imperialisms and economic jealousies, “navalist” enthusiasms and objective analysis of genuine security needs. This work does not reopen this debate, but does draw on it to make the appropriate comparisons with the later Russian experience. On Tirpitz himself, Patrick Kelly’s 2011 biography is perhaps the best. For the most important original source documents, on both the German and British sides, a recent volume from the Navy Records Society in the UK, The Naval Route to the Abyss, is

Preface  xi invaluable. It also contains a good historiographical review of the literature and the terms of the debate. When it comes to Admiral Gorshkov and the Cold War Soviet Navy, it is a rather different story. We do have English translations of his most important writings, especially Red Star Rising at Sea (a compendium, with Western commentary, of 11 articles previously published in journals in both the Soviet Union and the United States) and a later book, The Sea Power of the State. There is also plenty of source material, some of it originally intelligence­-​ ­derived, on the Soviet Fleet, though most of it contemporaneous when the subject was of current, and urgent, interest. Plenty was written at the time about Soviet naval strategy and capabilities and this literature remains relevant, despite lacking the benefit of perspective that comes with the passage of time. We do have a recent biographical work on Sergei Gorshkov by Norman Polmar and others, but it is as much about the history of the Soviet Navy as it is the man himself. Though the salient facts about his life and career can be pieced together, we simply do not know as much about him as we do Tirpitz. This book tries to say as much about Gorshkov as can sensibly be established and deduced. We are similarly denied much original source material from Russian archives, though there is some secondary literature in English by Russian authors drawing upon it. Perhaps most surprising, the Soviet Navy, despite the attention paid to it by NATO at the time, hardly features in general histories of the Cold War. This may be, in part, because the arms race at sea was less central to the wider confrontation than the nuclear balance or the Inner German Border. It may also be because much of what went on at sea was, and remains, highly classified and little understood beyond those who played a part in it. Historical study is worthwhile for its own sake. It has added relevance when it has something to say about contemporary issues. Two decades into the twenty­-​­first century, India and China, two continental­-​­scale states with long coastlines, are building large navies and becoming more assertive at sea. The rise of China in particular indicates that American dominance at sea, at least in the Asia­-​­Pacific region, may not go on unchallenged. A recent work by Chinese writer Colonel Xu Qiyu suggests­  – if only by implication­  – that history has something to teach his country today. The author of this work agrees. Tirpitz and Gorshkov both had large ships named after them, but not until after their deaths. These later ships, to a considerable extent, represented the kinds of navies the two admirals wanted to build. Neither realised the hopes vested in them, just as neither fleet had done. A few words on terminology may be useful. “Sea Power”, “Seapower”, “Naval Power”, “Maritime Power”, “Continental Power” and “Insular” all appear throughout the literature on the history and strategy of these interrelated topics and are used extensively in this book. While not wishing to engage in an extended doctrinal debate concerning precise but overlapping meanings, we should understand broadly what we are talking about. In this work, “continental power” or “continental state” is taken to mean a country with extensive land frontiers and strategically significant neighbours. Its access to the open seas is

xii  Preface likely to be constrained, both by geography and by other states and its security will likely rest on its army. “Insular” means a state that is either literally an island (like Britain or Japan) or whose neighbours on land are not of significant strategic concern to it (like the United States) and consequently is, in strategic terms, an island albeit one of continental scale. A “maritime power” is one whose principal strategic interests lie at sea and whose navy is likely to be the basis of its security. “Naval power” is the strength of a country’s navy and a “naval power” is a state with a significant navy. “Seapower” is a little broader than naval power, encompassing wider measures of strength at sea than just a navy and a “sea power” is one that can exercise seapower. Colin Gray, drawing on an earlier and fuller description by Herbert Richmond, puts it this way: “Sea power is the ability to use the seas and oceans for military or commercial purposes and to preclude an enemy from the same.”1 The respective meanings of all these terms can blur somewhat, though they can generally be deduced from the context in which they are used. In order to clarify matters, in this volume the emphasis is on the distinction between Maritime and Continental states, noting that some countries do not neatly fit either categorisation. Seapower refers to the ability to act at, and from, the sea. Other than in relation to what others have said on the subject, reference to states as “sea powers” has been deliberately avoided in order to escape confusion.

Note 1 Colin S. Gray The Leverage of Sea Power: The Strategic Advantage of Navies in War New York: The Free Press, 1992 p. 4.

1 Introduction

During the twentieth century, two quintessentially “continental” states embarked upon ambitious naval building programmes that, within a few years, produced the second­-​­largest navies of their times. In each case, the creation of the new fleet was largely conceived and directed by a single man: Grand Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz in pre­-​­First World War Germany and Admiral of the Fleet of the Soviet Union Sergei Gorshkov in post­-​­Second World War USSR. Neither Tirpitz nor Gorshkov achieved much as seagoing admirals. Tirpitz never saw combat and Gorshkov’s distinguished wartime career was conducted largely from ashore in what is today Ukraine. In this they reflected the recent histories of their respective Services. The Prussian Navy played no role in the wars of German unification and, Gorshkov’s conduct of amphibious and riverine operations aside, the Soviet Navy was almost entirely ineffective during the Second World War. “In short, the [Prussian or Soviet] Navy had little to be proud of.”1 Instead of sea command, both men became two of the leading naval figures of the twentieth century as a result of their political and administrative skills, creating in each case large navies in countries with little or no naval tradition and for which, arguably, naval forces were peripheral to their real security needs. Tirpitz and Gorshkov were both prolific writers, the latter especially so. The former’s main contribution to naval strategic thought was his famous “Risk Theory”, a concept of deterrence whereby an inferior power might successfully deter a stronger one and thus obtain some strategic freedom of manoeuvre. The Risk Theory itself has become thoroughly discredited, in part because it was meant to deter a “threat” it was itself responsible for creating and in part because Germany lost the ensuing war having failed to actually deter its opponent. But the principle, on which the Risk Theory rested, that you can deter a stronger opponent, remains valid. It lies at the heart, for example, of British nuclear deterrence policy. Gorshkov’s strategic thought is a good deal more sophisticated and has left a much more positive legacy. His comprehensive exposition of seapower encompasses all aspects of the marine environment for political, diplomatic, economic and military purposes. In particular, he provides an understanding of what it is to look out to sea from an essentially continentalist perspective, in contrast to the more insular or sea­-​­based views of many Western seapower thinkers.

2   Introduction The Imperial German Navy and the Soviet Navy became the second most powerful fleets of their respective eras. In doing so, they took rather different paths. Tirpitz tried to imitate his larger rival, building a smaller and, despite some specific technical advantages, qualitatively inferior fleet. Gorshkov rightly and inevitably (for he had little alternative) created a navy that was that perennial naval objective, a “balanced” fleet, but one that looked very different to its opponent. Each fleet was created in the midst of a technical­-​­military revolution; in the German case the “Dreadnought” all­-​­big gun revolution accompanied by the appearance of the submarine and in the Soviet case the naval revolution brought about by nuclear propulsion, nuclear weapons, computers and guided missiles. Both men’s life’s works ended in failure and both navies rusted away, the Imperial German Navy at the bottom of Scapa Flow in Scotland, the Soviet Navy in its own ports. Tirpitz lived to see the unravelling of his plans, though Gorshkov did not. Imperial Germany and Soviet Russia were, and their successor states today remain, largely but not entirely land­-​­locked countries. Germany sits in the heart of Europe with extensive land frontiers on all sides and just two small coastlines in the north, facing the Baltic and North Seas either side of the Danish peninsula. Russia forms the largest part of the Eurasian landmass with the longest land frontiers of any country in the world. In the north, a huge coastline is normally ice­-​­bound and beyond it lies the permanently frozen polar region. It cannot really be considered a coast in a strategic sense. Russia’s more “normal” coasts in the Barents Sea, the Baltic, the Far East and the Black Sea are small and widely separated and all but the last are ice­-​­bound for part of the year anyway. This geography dictates that the security of both Germany and Russia has always been determined on land and that their respective armies have been the basis of their national power and independence. Indeed, their attempts to acquire large­-​­scale seapower during the periods under consideration have been described as “ahistorical” and their navies a “luxury” or an “expensive toy”.2 Tirpitz and Gorshkov would both react angrily at such suggestions, betraying a sensitivity that indicated they had their own internal battles to fight to secure the naval building programmes they wanted. Gorshkov, for example, said “…  hostile propaganda continually promulgated the idea that Russia is not a maritime country, but rather a continental one and therefore does not need a navy”.3 The case for a navy capable of deploying away from the homeland was strengthened when Imperial Germany and Soviet Russia were both embarrassed by their inability to act in events far away, such as the Boer War in the former case and the Cuban Missile Crisis in the latter.4 Tirpitz and Gorshkov both claimed that their respective navies were “defensive”. The German High Seas Fleet was, if Tirpitz’s public statements were to be believed, meant to defend German interests from a British pre­-​ ­emptive attack, prompted in part by economic jealousy. It would also allow Germany to claim its rightful “place in the sun”. Gorshkov insisted that the Soviet fleet would defend the Motherland from aggressive capitalist imperialism,

Introduction   3 as well as project Socialist influence out into the “World Ocean”. In each case, great power status required a large navy. Whatever the truth of these claims, the respective naval expansion programmes appeared threatening to their established maritime rivals and they reacted accordingly. The results were classic arms races conducted within the context of broader “cold wars”. The fleets created by Tirpitz and Gorshkov therefore had profound effects at the time: diplomatic, political, economic and strategic. Each posed a substantial challenge to the dominant maritime power of their day, respectively Great Britain and later the United States. Under Tirpitz and Gorshkov, the German and Soviet fleets went from modest, essentially coastal defence forces (though the Soviets already had a huge force of small submarines) to the navies of “world powers”. By the late 1970s, “The Russian bear ha[d] grown webbed feet.”5 The same had been true of the German imperial eagle by the early 1910s. But there was an important difference. Tirpitz’s fleet stayed in the Baltic and the North Sea. Gorshkov’s ships were to be found all over the world. Imperial Germany and Soviet Russia were not the first continental states to acquire large navies. Russia under the Tsars, beginning with Peter the Great at the start of the eighteenth century, made intermittent efforts to become a significant sea­-​­ as well as landpower. Spain, the Netherlands and France, all with land and sea borders and overseas empires, became naval powers of note and all fought England or Britain at sea between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. The significant exception in Europe is Germany, which had only been unified in 1871 and its predecessor state, Prussia, had never shown much interest in naval forces. British­-​­American strategic analyst Colin Gray observes: “The strategic value of naval power cannot be derived from the isolated study of ships, navies or sea power. Naval power, on whatever scale of provision, is valuable only if a country needs it.”6 This book examines the question, among others, of whether Germany or Russia “needed” the seapower they got, and whether each state’s security interests were furthered as a consequence. Winston Churchill said of the Imperial German Navy: “The determination of the greatest military Power on the [European] Continent to become at the same time at least the second naval Power was an event of first magnitude in world affairs.”7 The same could be said of the Soviet Navy later in the same century. Both countries, in a relatively short space of time, became “a highly competitive and competent sea power.”8 In the process, both countries were presented with opportunities, and opportunity costs, in terms of the decisions they made­ – and those they did not. The result in both cases was an arms race, in which the continental challengers (Germany and Russia) were decisively beaten by their established and dominant maritime rivals (Britain and the United States). Historical views of Tirpitz and the Imperial German Navy tend to be overshadowed by what we now know followed the Anglo­-​­German naval arms race: the First World War. Such an outcome was not, of course, inevitable and in fact the arms race had already peaked and, arguably, stabilised before war came.

4   Introduction Tirpitz’s influence was certainly already on the wane. The Anglo­-​­German “cold war” was followed by a “hot war” and then the collapse of Imperial Germany. Gorshkov’s Soviet Union was later engaged in another cold war, this time with the United States and its allies, including Britain. That cold war, too, featured a naval arms race between the protagonists. Gorshkov’s influence, too, peaked before the Cold War was over, though the latter ended, not in a “hot” war, but in the peaceful collapse of the Soviet Union. From these two important case studies it is possible to make some general observations about the experience, and future prospects, of large continental states when they seek to generate large­-scale ​­ seapower. Chapter 10 seeks to do this. Before examining in detail the work of each man and its consequences, it is important to note that neither operated in an intellectual or historical vacuum and that there were precedents for what they thought and did. Conflict between predominantly continental (or land) and predominantly maritime (or sea) powers is not new. That between Sparta and Athens during the Peloponnesian War is often cited as an early example, though in that case it was the maritime power (Athens) that was rising and seeming to challenge land­-​­oriented Sparta whereas in the two instances examined in this book the maritime powers were the established ones facing continental challengers. Ideas about the “inevitable” conflict between rising and established powers go as far back as Thucydides’ history of the Peloponnesian War.9 Though the war was between the maritime Athenian Empire and the continental Spartan Empire little was said, however, about this aspect of the conflict perhaps because then, and for many centuries thereafter, war at sea was regarded as largely an extension of warfare on land. The eighteenth­-century ​­ conflicts between Britain and France might be another example of maritime/continental conflict, though it will be argued later that France is a poor example of a “continental” state due to its extensive sea as well as land frontiers and its easy access to the high seas. But the French rivalry with Britain certainly produced some later theorising along continental/land and maritime/sea power lines. It was not until the late­-​­nineteenth century that writers such as Alfred Mahan and Philip Colomb provided a substantial body of historically­-​­based writings about the exercise of seapower.10 France’s inability to successfully challenge Britain at sea, despite a larger population base, prompted distinct thinking along what today we would call “asymmetric” lines. France’s dilemma was that, with militarily significant neighbours on land, it could never devote sufficient defence resources to its navy to make a success of war at sea against Britain in the conventional (i.e. battlefleet) manner. This was to be Germany’s problem as well early in the next century. Starting with Baron Grivel’s De La Guerre Maritime in 1869 and developed later by Admiral Theophile Aube (Minister of Marine from 1886), the French developed what came to be known as Guerre de Course (war on commerce). The Jeune École (“young school”) argued that attacks against Britain’s seaborne

Introduction   5 commerce was always a more promising strategy than engaging its battlefleet with a (weaker) French one. In addition, the dominance of the British battlefleet itself could be challenged by asymmetric means enabled by new technologies such as mines, torpedoes and, eventually, submarines. By such methods Britain would be prevented from once again blockading French ports.11 Exactly this prospect would later cause the Royal Navy to change from “close” to “distant” blockade of Germany. As we will see in later chapters, this combination of coastal defence and overseas commerce­-​­raiding was essentially the approach adopted by Germany and Russia, before first Tirpitz and then Gorshkov became more ambitious for their respective countries at sea. They cannot have been unaware of this “continentalist” approach and indeed Tirpitz explicitly rejected it. But it was the strategy of a weaker power at sea and neither man was prepared to concede an inferior status.

Notes   1 George E. Hudson “Soviet Naval Doctrine under Lenin and Stalin” Soviet Studies 28:1 (January 1976) p. 60.   2 Holger H. Herwig “Luxury Fleet”: The Imperial German Navy 1888–1918 London: George Allen  & Unwin, 1980  & Sergei Chernyavskii “The Era of Gorshkov: Triumph and Contradictions” The Journal of Strategic Studies (JSS) 28:2 (April 2005) pp. 281–308. It was Winston Churchill who originally applied the term “luxury fleet” to the German Navy, in 1912.   3 S. G. Gorshkov “Russia’s Road to the Sea” the second article in a series of 11 later republished in Herbert Preston (ed.) Red Star Rising at Sea Annapolis MD: Naval Institute Press, 1974 p. 12. Henceforth cited as RSRS.   4 See Chapters Two and Four, respectively.   5 Norman Polmar (ed.) The Modern Soviet Navy London: Arms and Armour Press, 1979 p. 11.   6 Colin S. Gray The Navy in the Post­-​­Cold War World University Park PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994 p. 161.   7 Winston Churchill The World Crisis 1911–1914 cited in John H. Maurer “Averting the Great War?: Churchill’s Naval Holiday” Naval War College Review (NWCR) 67:3 (Summer 2014) p. 27.   8 Evan Park “The Nationalist Fleet: Radical Nationalism and the Imperial German Navy from Unification to 1914” Journal of Military and Strategic Studies (JMSS) 16:2 (2015) p. 125.   9 Thucydides History of the Peloponnesian War Translated by Rex Warner London: Penguin Books, 1954. 10 Alfred Mahan The Influence of Seapower upon History 1660–1783 Boston MA: Little, Brown & Co, 1890 & Philip Colomb Naval Warfare London: Allen, 1899. 11 For a fuller discussion of the Jeune École and Guerre de Course, see Geoffrey Till, Seapower: A Guide for the Twenty­ -First ​­ Century London: Frank Cass, 2004 pp. 59–62.

Part I

Careers

2 Alfred von Tirpitz

The first of our continental navalists was born Alfred Tirpitz (the aristocratic “von” came later) on 19 March 1849,1 in the Prussian town of Küstrin an der Oder (now part of modern Poland). He was the third of four children born to a typical middle­-​­class couple. His father Rudolf was a successful lawyer, later a judge, while his mother Malwine was the daughter of a Professor of Medicine. The year after Alfred’s birth the family moved to Frankfurt. The young Tirpitz was not a particularly successful pupil at school and looked set to disappoint his father’s hope that he would secure a place at university. In early 1865, however, he followed the example of a school friend and decided he wanted to join the Prussian Navy, in part to escape school life. To general surprise he finished the entrance exam fifth out of 24 successful applicants. The Navy did not, as did the Army, require its officers to come from aristocratic or landowning families.2 But cadets’ families did have to meet many of their sons’ expenses, which still limited the social backgrounds of entrants to the officer corps. Tirpitz’s background was typical. On 24 April 1865, Tirpitz arrived in Kiel on the Baltic coast. The start of his naval career coincided with the beginning of the process of German unification under Prussian leadership. Newly captured from Denmark, Kiel had become the principal base for the Prussian Baltic fleet only the previous month.3 In September, the 1865 cadet class embarked in the sailing frigate Niobe and visited the huge British naval base at Plymouth, which Tirpitz later described as Prussia’s real supply base, on which the fleet depended for much of its support.4 After leaving Plymouth, Niobe combined seamanship and gunnery training at sea with a series of visits to Portuguese and Spanish ports. While in Lisbon, news arrived of impending war with Austria. Standing little chance against a more modern Austrian warship believed to be in the area, Tirpitz’s ship made for the safety of Plymouth and then on to Kiel. While on passage home, Tirpitz and the other cadets took their final exams, Tirpitz receiving a royal commendation. Two days after the outbreak of war, Tirpitz joined the screw corvette Gazelle. Like the rest of the Navy, he saw no action during the brief conflict, to his great frustration. Tirpitz almost perished, however, as a result of nearly drowning in a boat accident.5 Soon after, he was appointed to the brig Mosquito.

10   Careers Mosquito spent several months flag­-​­showing in the Mediterranean. After returning to Kiel in May 1867, the 18­-​­year­-​­old Cadet Tirpitz was transferred to sailing frigates, first the Gefion and then the Thetis, to continue his training. After passing further exams in August 1868, he joined the Marineschule (Naval School) in Kiel, graduating well within the top 25 per cent and being promoted to Sub­-​­Lieutenant in September 1869. By now, the Prussian Navy had morphed into the North German Federal Navy, an arm of the newly established North German Confederation under Prussian leadership. In May 1870, Sub­-​­Lieutenant Tirpitz returned to sea as a watchkeeping officer in the Konig Wilhelm, a British­-​­built ironclad and then one of the most powerful warships in the world.6 As war with France loomed­  – the third of Bismarck’s wars of unification­  – Tirpitz’s ship was in Plymouth, but it soon hurried home (as in 1866), this time to the new base at Wilhelmshaven on the North Sea coast of the Confederation. Again, as in 1866, the Navy played an insignificant role in Prussia’s victory, to the frustration of Tirpitz and his colleagues. It wasn’t just that it was greatly outnumbered by the French Navy but that, as four years earlier, a Navy based on the northern coasts of Germany was essentially irrelevant in short wars against enemies on land in central and western Europe. This strategic reality was to recur in the next century. After the momentous events of 1870–1871 and the creation of the new German Empire under the Prussian monarchy, Tirpitz’s first appointment in the Imperial German Navy was as second­-​­in­-​­command of the small gunboat Blitz. Employed on what today we would call coastguard duties in the North Sea, it gave him time to think more deeply about naval matters. A letter to his father set out some of his early thinking, to which we shall return in Chapter Four. In September 1872, newly­-​­promoted Lieutenant Tirpitz transferred to the armoured frigate Friedrich Karl, another of Germany’s few first­-​­rate ships, this one French­-​­built. Friedrich Karl deployed to the West Indies and a year later the ship was involved in the protection of German nationals caught up in a civil war in Spain known as the Second Carlist War. Tirpitz himself commanded part of a German landing party in Malaga. The following year, Tirpitz returned to the training ship Mosquito, this time as the Navigating Officer, and then transferred to the steam corvette Nymphe. This appointment was short­-​­lived as in October 1874 he started two years at the postgraduate­-​­level Marineakademie (Naval Academy) in Kiel. Here he established something of a reputation for being outspoken, though apparently without adverse effect on his career. The Naval Academy was followed by promotion to Lieutenant Commander (“Kapitanleutnant”) and a return to sea as the Gunnery Officer of the armoured frigate Kronprinz. In the early summer of 1876, the Kronprinz was sent to Salonika (then part of the Ottoman Empire) in response to another local crisis. Soon after Tirpitz, who up to this point in his career rarely stayed long in one place, returned to Germany. On 1 January 1877, a new, more settled phase in his life began when he joined the Torpedo Experimental Commission in Berlin.

Alfred von Tirpitz   11 The Commission had been established in 1873 by the recently appointed Chief of the Admiralty, Lieutenant General Albrecht Stosch. Though an Army officer, Stosch was interested in naval matters and was to be a formative influence on Tirpitz’s career. Stosch had a particular, though sceptical, interest in torpedoes, then a novel and largely experimental weapon. After a visit to the Whitehead Company in Fiume (in Austria­-Hungary), ​­ Tirpitz compiled a thoughtful report on the future of torpedoes, which impressed Stosch and marked him out as more than just another sea­-​­going officer. Tirpitz was to remain with torpedoes for more than a decade, without apparently suffering the career limitations that are often the lot of the deep specialist. Tirpitz’s association with torpedoes was timely. During the Russo­-​­Turkish War of 1877–1878, a Turkish ship was sunk by a Whitehead torpedo, which prompted a flurry of activity in all the major European navies.7 In May 1878, Tirpitz combined the post of Director of Torpedo Development with command of the Zieten, a torpedo trials vessel. This gave him the twin advantages of considerable autonomy and the supportive interest of Stosch. In July 1880, Tirpitz and the Zieten conducted a successful and very public attack on an old decommissioned hulk firing a single torpedo from an underwater tube, which sank the target and further enhanced his reputation with Stosch. A month later, Zieten was replaced by the much larger Blucher, still with Tirpitz in command. The following year, another successful torpedo demonstration led to immediate promotion to Commander. In 1883, another Army officer and a future Chancellor, Leo von Caprivi, replaced Stosch as head of the Navy. By now, Germany had the world’s third­-​ ­largest fleet (though still a small fraction of the size of the Royal Navy), reflecting its new national unity and growing industrial strength. Caprivi, however, was more concerned about the prospects of imminent war with both France and Russia than the need for maritime expansion and during his tenure the German Navy slipped back in the international rankings. He was an enthusiast for small torpedo craft at the expense of larger armoured warships. Tirpitz himself never saw these as mutually exclusive, but clearly benefitted from Caprivi’s advocacy of that part of the Navy for which he was responsible. During these years Tirpitz gathered around him a group of energetic and capable young officers who subsequently became known as the “Torpedo Gang” and whom he continued to trust and rely on as he ascended to higher office. He also, when in Berlin, attended lectures by nationalist historian Heinrich von Treitschke, who was another important influence on his own developing ideas. Under Caprivi’s direction, Tirpitz evolved the types of torpedo boats, tactical organization and operational employment necessary to make the best use of the new vessels including new, larger, flotilla leaders. So impressed by Tirpitz was Caprivi that he described him as “the only indispensible [sic.] man in the navy  …”.8 In Germany, as elsewhere, it was evident that tactical thinking had not kept up with the rapid pace of technological innovation. So, in 1888, Caprivi set the Navy “Twelve Tactical Questions”.9 Most officers’ answers were brief,

12   Careers but Tirpitz produced a 200­-​­page memorandum, which demonstrated the rigour, persistence and methodical work he was to employ later on.10 It wasn’t only the head of the Navy that Tirpitz impressed. In 1887, Prince Wilhelm, the future Kaiser, visited his grandmother, Queen Victoria, escorted by a torpedo flotilla commanded by Tirpitz. Their conversations laid the foundations of their future relationship and shared enthusiasm for a big German Navy. This was timely, as Tirpitz’s existing sponsor Caprivi resigned after Wilhelm ascended the imperial throne the following year. The new Kaiser divided the senior functions of the Navy so that each reported directly to him. This meant the fragmentation of Tirpitz’s torpedo empire, despite his own promotion to Captain, and the new Chief of the Admiralty, Rear Admiral Monts, was not a torpedo enthusiast.11 Tirpitz asked for a new command and, in April 1889, he was appointed to the armoured ship Preussen followed a year later by the cruiser Wurttemburg. Though the sudden marginalisation of a decade’s work on torpedo boats seemed a blow to Tirpitz, it may actually have been a blessing. It was a narrow base on which to establish his further career and, still only 40 years old, it was time to move on. He remained in touch with Caprivi, which was to prove fortuitous when the latter became Reich Chancellor in 1890. A few months after Caprivi’s appointment, Tirpitz became Chief of Staff of the Baltic Station, a logical next move in his career. This post gave Tirpitz much wider­-​­ranging responsibilities than hitherto and the opportunity to write three important memoranda (see Chapter 4), which brought his thinking to a much wider audience, including the Kaiser. His time in the Baltic Station was otherwise unremarkable, but his memoranda paved the way for his next job, as Chief of Staff of the Oberkommando (“OK”), the Naval High Command in Berlin. Tirpitz took up his new role at the start of 1892, bringing with him a number of the old “Torpedo Gang”. He had particular responsibility for tactical development and now, for the first time, was in a position to further his own ideas for the future of the Imperial Navy.12 At the end of the year, a personal presentation to the Kaiser on tactical exercises reinforced his influence with the monarch while souring relations with the Navy State Secretary, Admiral von Hollmann. Most famous and influential of all his work was Dienstschrift (Service Memorandum) IX written in 1894.13 In this seminal document, Tirpitz combined astute tactical observation with rash strategic conclusions, a recurring characteristic.14 His time at the OK was also his first experience of bureaucratic politics at a senior level and it was this latter aspect of his work in which he became supreme. Under the Kaiser’s fragmented command structure for the Navy, the OK was responsible for operational matters. The Reichsmarineamt (Imperial Navy Office­  – RMA) was a government department with administrative responsibilities and the Marinekabinett (Navy Cabinet­  – MK) dealt with personnel matters. The OK and MK were answerable only to the Kaiser (the “Supreme Warlord”), but the RMA was accountable to both the Kaiser and, as head of the government, the Chancellor. The Kaiser was intellectually and

Alfred von Tirpitz   13 emotionally incapable of the consistent leadership and direction this arrangement required. “The result was constant bureaucratic warfare …”.15 The problem of divided counsels was exacerbated by uncertainty as to what the Navy was for and the kinds of ships it should have. The RMA under Hollmann, influenced by the French Jeune École school of thought,16 favoured cruisers while the more Mahan­-​­oriented OK proposed a battlefleet. Tirpitz was at the heart of these debates, which were complicated by the Kaiser’s personal interventions and the need to obtain Reichstag approval for each year’s budget. The result was no clear, long­-​­term plan. The Kaiser himself, though a keen student of Mahan, tended to favour an un­-​­Mahanian fleet of cruisers for imperial (overseas) defence. Tirpitz became frustrated by the lack of systematic progress and uneasy relations both with a new boss (Admiral Knorr) and with the RMA. He left the OK in September 1895. The acquisition of new ships was an RMA responsibility, which it undertook often without consulting the operational authority, the OK. The latter, frustrated by the direction the fleet was taking, in November 1895 and just after Tirpitz’s departure, submitted a memorandum17 outlining a comprehensive fleet plan that was sharply at odds with the RMA’s year­-​­to­-​­year programme. Its contents reflected Tirpitz’s approach in Dienstschrift IX of the previous year. The Kaiser, at the height of his “naval passion”,18 directed that Tirpitz should see and comment on it. Though Tirpitz had not written the memorandum himself, he was effectively being asked to assess his own work. He consulted his old mentor Stosch, who sagely advised him that he couldn’t fight the RMA and the State Secretary (Hollmann) and should instead seek to replace him. For Tirpitz this was a turning point, as hitherto he had vigorously fought the OK’s corner against the RMA. Tirpitz’s own report was delivered to the Kaiser in January. We shall return to its contents in Chapter 4, but its significance in Tirpitz’s career is that it amounted to a job application for the post of State Secretary.19 At a subsequent meeting with the Kaiser, the discussion focused on what would be necessary to pass Tirpitz’s proposals through the Reichstag and expand the role of the RMA (to be headed by Tirpitz himself) at the expense of the OK. But, with Tirpitz on the verge of being appointed as State Secretary, Hollmann deftly persuaded the Reichstag to adopt a coherent plan largely based on replacing obsolete ships and eschewing the large fleet expansion that Reichstag members (correctly) believed was the Kaiser’s real objective. Tirpitz, despite being prepared to abandon his old loyalty to the OK in favour of the RMA, had been out­-​ ­manoeuvred. As to his bureaucratic volte­-​­face, Knorr later wrote “It was never hard for him to change his objective viewpoint when it furthered his personal interest”.20 In April 1896, he was appointed instead in command of the Far East Cruiser Division, in the rank of Rear Admiral. He left Germany in May, travelling via New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Hawaii and Tokyo, arriving in Shanghai six weeks later. His orders included an instruction to identify a suitable site for a naval base in China. After visiting several possibilities further south, he

14   Careers recommended Tsingtao, which Germany then acquired the following year as part of the Kiaochow Concession. Administered by the Navy Office rather than the Colonial Office, it became Germany’s only overseas naval base. Apart from starting the process of Tsingtao’s acquisition, Tirpitz’s squadron was tasked with furthering German interests in China, which looked set to disintegrate, and protecting German citizens. It was a typical colonial mission of the time and for which cruisers were ideally suited­  – but not the sort of ships Tirpitz wanted for the Imperial Navy. Back in Berlin, Hollmann’s triumph proved to be short­-​­lived. The RMA and OK continued their bitter disputes and Hollmann himself managed to alienate both the Kaiser and the Reichstag. The Kaiser saw Tirpitz as the man to realise his navalist dream and, in March 1897, Tirpitz was summoned home to become State Secretary and head of the RMA. Perhaps wisely, he took his time returning. Berlin was in the grip of a multi­-faceted ​­ political crisis in which the Kaiser’s insistence on getting an expanded fleet approved by the Reichstag was but one element. Tirpitz finally arrived home in June “with a clean slate”,21 untainted by recent political jockeying. This milestone in Tirpitz’s career once again coincided with a turning point in German history. Personnel changes in the highest ranks of the government, of which Tirpitz’s appointment was but one, marked the beginning of Kaiser Wilhelm’s “personal rule” and the pursuit of “Weltpolitik” (World Politics).22 The other significant appointment was that of Bernhard von Bulow as Foreign Secretary, soon to become Chancellor. Bulow shared the Kaiser’s and Tirpitz’s social­-​­Darwinist political beliefs and Mahanian views on the role of naval strength in national greatness. The relationship between these three personalities was to be pivotal in the development of the German Navy and, more crucially, international relations in the years before 1914. This was part of a broader, circular pattern, in which an increasingly assertive foreign policy required the material support of a powerful navy, which in turn required the building of a navalist domestic consensus, especially in the Reichstag. Such a consensus needed a “turn to the right”23 in domestic politics, which was itself furthered by a nationalistic external policy. Tirpitz’s “clean slate” was a career one rather than an intellectual fresh start. His views were largely developed and his time in the Far East had given him further opportunities to refine his thinking, which was influenced mainly by Stosch, Mahan and Treitschke.24 Dienstschrift IX became the “bible” of the German Navy.25 In Tirpitz’s absence, the RMA and OK, under pressure from the Kaiser, had managed to develop a somewhat coherent plan for a much more ambitious fleet, measured against its two most likely opponents, France and Russia. “It seemed that all Tirpitz had to do was to sign on and carry out a plan that others had developed.”26 It was not quite that simple, however. Tirpitz needed to adapt the draft plan to fit his vision for the future and get it financed by the Reichstag. He also needed to persuade the Kaiser, who knew he wanted a powerful navy but was less clear, and less consistent, about what kind of navy he wanted. Within nine days of

Alfred von Tirpitz   15 taking office, Tirpitz called on the Kaiser and presented a memorandum27 setting out his policy. The fleet should be battleship, not cruiser,28 oriented and a clear policy would be presented to the Reichstag, which would allay previous fears about “limitless” fleet plans. Perhaps the biggest change was in effect a circular argument. The new fleet was to be built with reference to Britain rather than France and Russia. Relations had become strained since Germany’s reaction to the Jameson Raid in South Africa two years before and were soon to worsen further during the Boer War. But it was also the case that a battleship­-​­centred fleet of the size Tirpitz and now Wilhelm wanted required a more compelling rationale than the mainly landward threat posed by the Dual Alliance powers. A battleship navy only made sense as a political tool in relations with Britain. So, Britain had to be the focus, not the continental enemies France and Russia: “The military situation against England [which then did not exist] demands battleships in as great a number as possible.”29 “Within a few days, Tirpitz had given direction, logic, consistency and economy.… The Kaiser had found his man and he knew it.… Nothing like Tirpitz’s first months in office had ever happened to the Navy  …”.30 With the Kaiser convinced by Tirpitz’s powers of persuasion, the latter now turned to implementing his plan. In doing so, he consciously emulated Nelson’s “band of brothers” style, delegating day­-​­to­-​­day affairs to his deputy and making full use of his staff, many of them from the old “Torpedo Gang”. Tirpitz himself focused on the task of getting a new Navy Law through the Reichstag. Tirpitz quickly proved himself to be a master of bureaucratic politics. As a State Secretary, he was part of the Executive branch of government, deriving his authority from the Kaiser. But he soon became adept at managing the Reichstag, where legislative and budgetary power lay, and in manipulating public opinion, especially among the professional, industrial and academic elites. Everything Tirpitz did in office was devoted to the task of building support for an ambitious naval expansion programme. Despite the essentially autocratic, and certainly not democratic, system of government within which he worked, Tirpitz was a consensus politician (by this stage of his career, it is accurate to describe him as a politician, his status as a serving naval officer notwithstanding). One of his first acts was to establish within the RMA a “Bureau for Information and General Parliamentary Affairs”, known as the Nachrichtenbureau (Information Bureau).31 Headed by Commander von Heeringen, it became the sole focus for external relations so that a single, unified message was propagated. Tirpitz did not tolerate expression of opinions contrary to his own.32 The Bureau assiduously cultivated relations with the press and academics in order to build support for the growing Navy, as well as engaging directly with parliamentarians. It was a political campaign more typical of the early twenty­-​­first century than the late nineteenth. Tirpitz was aided, but later also hindered, by other naval enthusiasts outside the Navy itself. Soon after he took office, industrial interests, especially the giant Krupp armaments firm, founded the Deutscher Flottenverein (German Navy

16   Careers League) to lobby for naval expansion. From the outset, Tirpitz was worried that, despite a membership that grew to over a million, its industrial connections could prejudice some of his delicate parliamentary relationships. It was also outside his direct control. The Information Bureau supplied the Flottenverein with material and officers were encouraged to join, but relations were always uneasy. In later years, Tirpitz unhelpfully found himself under pressure for not being ambitious enough just when he needed a more nuanced approach in his relations with the Reichstag.33 Another early, though unsuccessful, Tirpitz initiative was an attempt to establish a single government department (which he would head) with responsibility for all maritime and overseas matters to include trade, fisheries, the merchant fleet and even colonies and the German diaspora. This proved to be a step too far and, without the support of the Kaiser or the Chancellor, Tirpitz soon dropped the idea.34 By contrast, Tirpitz was keen to maintain the existing fragmented management of the Navy itself. Still just a Rear Admiral, he was relatively junior. But he used the autonomy of his office and his direct access to the Kaiser and the Chancellor to establish his own primacy against more senior officers in the fleet and his old home the OK. Tirpitz’s relationship with Kaiser Wilhelm II was critical to his success. Each needed the other, and recognised it. Until Tirpitz was appointed as State Secretary, Wilhelm’s naval ambitions had gone largely unrealised in the face of a sceptical Reichstag and subject to Hollmann’s short­-​­term and disjointed initiatives. Tirpitz changed all that. At the same time, he knew that without his imperial sponsor he lacked an adequate powerbase to pursue his own naval agenda. But it was never a close personal relationship. Wilhelm could be inconsistent and unpredictable and Tirpitz frequently used threats of resignation to bring his imperial master to heel right up to the time, in 1916, when relations had soured to such an extent that his resignation was accepted. Having secured the support of the Kaiser (and later the new Chancellor, Bulow), Tirpitz’s task was to persuade the Reichstag to authorise and finance his new fleet. To do so he employed personal contact between officers of the RMA, himself especially, and Deputies. He targeted conservative deputies representing traditional landed interests, those with industrial and trade connections and the liberal Centre Party. Only the Socialists remained resolutely unconvinced. Informal meetings were reinforced by impressive presentations of facts and figures in the Reichstag itself. “Possessed of the facts, Tirpitz seemed to imply, the deputies naturally would reach the correct conclusions.”35 His starting­-​­point was to put the naval programme on a coherent, sustained but apparently modest, footing. In order to overcome the Reichstag’s aversion to piecemeal and potentially open­-​­ended commitments, he argued the need for a steady but multi­-​ ­year plan costing no more than Hollmann’s previous efforts. In effect, he offered a deal. If the Reichstag deputies would authorise a fixed multi­-​­year programme, he would keep that programme within authorised limits. It removed the need for annual appropriations and committed the Reichstag to a long­-term ​­ plan but also,

Alfred von Tirpitz   17 in theory at least, constrained Tirpitz himself. He summed up his approach to the RMA staff in 1907: We are therefore required to keep our expansion within certain limits if our initiative is to be considered reasonable and not extreme. The RMA has won the confidence of the Reichstag and of the larger and better­-informed ​­ part of the German people that our initiatives in fleet development are suited to the needs and circumstances of the Reich, and we have been consistent. This confidence has brought us to the position that naval proposals meet hardly any resistance. It is all the more important to retain this reputation.…36 He also employed downright dishonesty. Though from the beginning Tirpitz wanted his new fleet to provide “… a certain measure of naval power as a political power factor” against Britain,37 he took pains to conceal this rationale not just from the Reichstag but also from most of the Navy itself. So absurd would have seemed the idea of the German Fleet taking on the might of the fabled Royal Navy that such a suggestion would have killed off Tirpitz’s plans at the outset. He also concealed his longer­-​­term and more ambitious force goals, presenting each new request as a response to changed circumstances rather than a premeditated increase. The first iteration of what came to be known as the “Tirpitz Plan” was the 1898 Navy Bill, sometimes later referred to as the First Navy Law.38 This was not entirely Tirpitz’s work, though it has become inextricably linked to his name. By the time he became State Secretary in June 1897, the war between the OK and RMA as to what type of fleet Germany should have had been won by the former (drawing in large measure on Tirpitz’s earlier work there), though it was now the RMA’s task to implement the new plan. Tirpitz’s impact was two­-​ ­fold. First, he (secretly) introduced the anti­-​­British rationale for a modest battlefleet hitherto intended as a counter­-​­weight to French and Russian seapower. Second, it was his parliamentary skill, aided by Eduard von Capelle, the administrative head of the RMA, which steered the Bill through the Bundesrat (which represented the separate German states of the Reich) and the Reichstag itself. The Bill proposed a two­-​­squadron battlefleet comprising 17 modern battleships plus cruisers and smaller vessels. Tirpitz’s particular triumph was to make the first iteration of a very ambitious programme appear moderate to the parliamentarians.39 It required a budget that was not much different to those requested by Hollmann and it gave certainty to the future size of the Navy instead of potentially limitless fleet plans, which the Kaiser was suspected of harbouring. The Reichstag passed the Bill on 26 March 1898, less than a year since Tirpitz had returned from the Far East. Tirpitz had got the Kaiser the navy he wanted, he had successfully mollified the Reichstag and had firmly planted the idea in German society that a powerful navy was intrinsic to the growth of Germany’s overseas interests. The focus of German military efforts shifted from the Army to the Navy, an emphasis that endured until 1912 (though the Army’s

18   Careers budget remained the larger). “Tirpitz had hoodwinked the Reichstag, both as to his domestic objectives and as to his international aims.”40 It was “… the first stage of the most brilliant political operation of the Wilhelmine era.”41 There was a dissenting voice, however, which was to prove prophetic. The leader of the Socialists in the Reichstag, August Bebel, denounced the Bill and exposed its hidden anti­-​­British motivation. He was largely ignored. The British themselves generally paid little attention to the First Navy Law, assuming that a serious German naval challenge to Britain’s maritime supremacy was unthinkable and the British government remained more concerned about French and Russian colonial challenges.42 The 1898 Law had a six­-​­year term and would expire in 1904. Its initial building tempo of three capital ships per year would drop to one or two per year after 1900 and that implied a reduction in the naval budget. Though Tirpitz publicly proclaimed his determination to stick to the Navy Law, his thoughts soon turned to what would happen after it expired. He also considered whether further measures would be required before then to maintain what he regarded as the “natural” building tempo (for industrial reasons as much as anything else)43 of three major ships per year. As early as November 1898, he raised with the Kaiser the question of whether a new or amended Law (a “Novelle”) would be required. A series of international events played into Tirpitz’s (and the Kaiser’s) hands. The Fashoda incident in the Sudan between Britain and France, the outbreak of the Spanish­-​­American War, a dispute over Samoa in the western Pacific and the British seizure of the German steamer Bundesrath in the early days of the South African Boer War all highlighted the impotence of inferior naval powers, especially Germany, in the face of overwhelming British superiority. It also soon became apparent that the financial limits of the 1898 Law were inadequate, even for the already authorised fleet, as the size and cost of battleships were increasing. Tirpitz, ever anxious not to alarm the Reichstag, favoured a Novelle in 1901 or 1902, before the existing Law ran out but not so soon as to call into question his rectitude in arguing for the limited 1898 Law. He was pre­-​­empted by the impetuous Kaiser who, in a speech delivered in October 1899, announced, “We bitterly need a strong German fleet.”44 This forced Tirpitz’s hand and prompted a flurry of activity to draft a new Navy Law for 1900. Two additional squadrons of battleships would be procured (some as replacements for existing coast­-​ ­defence ships) plus some additional vessels for overseas service. A more than doubling of the fleet less than two years after the First Naval Law required some explanation. A fleet of 38 battleships would make Germany the world’s second naval power and such a force could not be justified without reference, at least obliquely, to the first naval power­ – Britain. Growing hostility towards Britain as a result of the Boer War provided the opportunity to do so. The Bundesrath incident produced a convenient popular uproar and the new Bill passed through both houses of Parliament, becoming law in June 1900.45 It was significant not just because of the huge increase in the size of the fleet, but

Alfred von Tirpitz   19 because it rationalised it with relation to the “greatest Sea Power” and contained the first public declaration of what came to be known as the Risk Theory.46 Passage of the Bill was the culminating moment in Tirpitz’s career and it soon led to his promotion to Vice Admiral and elevation to the peerage (adding “von” to his surname). That the greatest moment in his nearly 19 years as State Secretary passed after just three years in the post may be seen, in retrospect, as significant. It was from this point that the British “threat” at the heart of the Risk Theory became a self­-​­fulfilling prophecy. After the 1900 Bill became law, Tirpitz’s career entered what Patrick Kelly calls the “quiet” years.47 Now aged 51, he was at the height of his authority and influence. During a visit to the United States, he met his namesake, Alfred Mahan, though what must have been a fascinating conversation went unrecorded.48 An ambitious fleet plan was now enshrined in law. Though it required the RMA to go back to the Reichstag each year to present the annual estimates, Tirpitz was at pains to keep the budget within the limits of the 1900 Law. This served to constrain him as much as it did the Reichstag, especially as construction costs continued to increase. The new fleet started to take shape. Things were not entirely quiet. A combination of aggressive German diplomacy and the Second Navy Law (which Britain could not afford to ignore) led to a further worsening of Anglo­-​­German relations.49 Domestically, a developing financial crisis (in part caused by the increased naval estimates) added to growing pressures on Tirpitz. His response to both was to urge caution and restraint so as to preserve good relations with Reichstag Deputies and avoid provoking Britain into a (wholly unrealistic) Copenhagen­-​­style pre­-emptive ​­ attack.50 The 1900 Law maintained the three­-​­ship tempo until 1906. If the building rate were to be extended beyond that point a further Law would be required, so Tirpitz and his staff debated the timing and nature of a new Novelle. Tirpitz’s ambitions for a large navy were undimmed and he was spurred on by the Kaiser and the Flottenverein. But he remained determined to keep to what today we would call the “art of the possible”. He rejected several more ambitious proposals and settled on a modest increase based on six large cruisers, which had been dropped from the 1900 Law. Several events intervened to upset his carefully laid plans. The Anglo­-​­French Entente of 1904 (largely a response to growing Anglo­-​ ­German tensions) greatly worsened Germany’s diplomatic position. The concentration of much of the British fleet in home waters (in response to the 1900 Navy Law) worsened the naval position. And then news arrived in Berlin of British plans to build an all­-​­big gun battleship (the future HMS Dreadnought). This outclassed all other warships in the world, including every large ship in Tirpitz’s building programme. Already wrestling with rising costs and a fixed budget, this innovation presented Tirpitz with a dilemma. If he tried to keep numbers up and costs down, as required by the 1900 Law, he could not respond to the Dreadnought challenge and future German battleships would be obsolete even as they entered service. If he responded by building German

20   Careers Dreadnoughts, he would either have to reduce planned numbers considerably or seek a much bigger budget. Either course of action meant discarding the limitations of the 1900 Law. It would also entail yet further cost as the Kiel Canal would need to be expensively widened to accommodate the larger ships. Tirpitz was reluctant to follow the British lead, and had already announced the modest scope of the proposed 1906 Novelle. But the logic in favour of building Dreadnoughts was inescapable once the British did so, as the fleet was being built with reference to Britain. The cost tables supporting the Novelle went up accordingly, though Tirpitz did manage to get the canal widening paid for outside the naval budget. The Novelle went to the Reichstag in November 1905. Because of the increased cost of large ships, the budget went up more than the building programme, though the six large cruisers extended the three­-ship ​­ tempo once again, this time to 1911. Flottenverein agitation made Tirpitz appear moderate by comparison and most Deputies were more interested in taxation arrangements to pay for the Novelle than in naval developments themselves.51 The real significance of the Dreadnought revolution was largely overlooked and the 1905–1906 Moroccan crisis helped the Bill to be passed in May 1906. The Novelle showed Tirpitz at his most politically astute, even if his underlying strategic rationale remained as shaky as ever. He actively resisted pressure from the Kaiser and the Flottenverein for a bigger, six­-​­squadron battlefleet, demonstrating a greater awareness of financial and domestic political realities than even the Chancellor, Bulow. He was also mindful of the effect of a bigger programme on the British, though he misunderstood how that would develop. Tirpitz maintained a fear of being “Copenhagened” before the fleet was ready if he provoked Britain too far, but failed to realise what a provocation he had already provided (but for an arms race, not a pre­-emptive ​­ attack). Germany’s first four Dreadnoughts, the Nassau­-​­class, were laid down in 1907. They were already out­-​­gunned by Dreadnought and her successors.52 Worse, news arrived of the Invincible­-​­class large armoured cruisers (later called battlecruisers), which drove existing German large cruisers into obsolescence as convincingly as Dreadnought had done German battleships. Addressing both these issues was going to have yet further cost implications, so another Novelle would be required within a few years. Germany was now in a fully­-​­fledged naval arms race with Britain. Tirpitz’s thoughts initially concentrated on maintaining an indefinite three­-​ ­ship tempo and establishing a 20­-​­year ship life making for an eventual and sustained fleet of 60 major units (battleships and large cruisers). The extra money he needed was for the ever­-escalating ​­ cost of ships that could match the Royal Navy’s. But pressure from others, a favourable outcome from the 1907 Reichstag elections and an unexpected budget surplus prompted him to opt for a four­-​­ship tempo to accelerate achievement of the 60­-​­ship, 20­-​­year fleet. It passed through the Reichstag with little difficulty and little awareness of the effect it would have in Britain. Tirpitz himself ignored warnings from the German ambassador in London and, not for the first time, used a circular logic. The new

Alfred von Tirpitz   21 shipbuilding tempo would not increase tensions with Britain, he argued, but if it did, that showed why it was necessary in the first place. Whether Tirpitz actually believed this is unclear. Paul Kennedy suggests that he never fully revealed his intentions, even to his closest colleagues, and was aiming eventually to match British strength.53 The 1908 Novelle was Tirpitz’s last major triumph. From then on, his ambitious plans and his personal position gradually unravelled. The challenge the Novelle posed to Britain may not have been well understood in the Reichstag, but it was understood in the British Parliament. The Liberal government could respond in one of two ways. It could increase its own naval building programme or it could seek a diplomatic agreement to limit naval armaments. To complicate matters, tensions were heightened by an inflammatory interview given to the Daily Telegraph by the typically intemperate Kaiser (“You English are mad, mad as March hares”).54 Tirpitz, unsurprisingly, opposed any sort of agreement with Britain, which would undo the recent Novelle and entrench German naval inferiority. He stuck to his by now familiar refrain that it was commercial jealousy that drove British animosity, not his growing fleet.55 But even his political ally Bulow was becoming aware of the financial and diplomatic consequences of the four­-​­ship tempo and favoured some sort of naval limitation. He resigned in June 1909, depriving Tirpitz of a hitherto key ally. The British for their part, accustomed to annual appropriations, failed to fully understand the domestic political implications of Germany’s multi­-​­year Naval Laws. Threats to increase the British building programme if Germany did not reduce its own tempo therefore did not have the desired effect.56 Mutual recriminations and misunderstandings meant that hopes for naval limitation never came close to securing an agreement. The result was an unequivocal British response, Parliament authorising eight new ships in a single year, plus a further two from the Dominions. Tirpitz’s domestic position also worsened, as new Chancellor Bethmann­-​­Hollweg was neither a navalist nor an enthusiast for Weltpolitik. The new Treasury Secretary, Wermuth, was positively averse to spending huge sums on the Navy, as he struggled to get public finances under control to avert the political crisis that ever­-​­increasing taxation threatened. Support for Tirpitz’s policies also began to falter in the Reichstag as the diplomatic row with Britain and rising taxes forced many Deputies to think more clearly about the implications of the successive Navy Laws. Under the 1908 Novelle, the four­-​­ship tempo was due to drop to two ships in 1912 before returning to three in 1917. Yet another Novelle would therefore be required to keep the tempo at three throughout those years. By contrast, there were increasing calls from the fleet (the “Front”) for money instead to be spent on better training and readiness as the Navy struggled to keep up with the flow of new ships.57 Tensions with Britain were given added impetus when, in February 1912, the British First Lord of the Admiralty (Navy Secretary), Winston Churchill, referred to the German Navy as a “luxury”,58 an observation that incensed both

22   Careers Tirpitz and Wilhelm. A few weeks later he told Parliament that Britain was only building against Germany, was resolved to maintain a substantial superiority but offered a “naval holiday” whereby each country would refrain from building any large ships for a year. This was, of course, quite incompatible with Germany’s Navy Laws. Tirpitz, who in 1911 had been made Grand Admiral, was increasingly isolated and frustrated by the talk of naval limitations and a political climate that was turning against his navalism.59 But he was still able to get one more, small Novelle past the Kaiser and through the Reichstag. It established a three­-ship ​­ tempo for certain years after 1912 together with several measures designed to increase readiness (a partial victory for the “Front”). For the first time, the request included airships and a substantial U­-​­Boat force, though Tirpitz was still uncertain as to the future role of the submarine. By 1918, Germany would have over 60 large warships with a sustained building tempo to ensure their timely replacement. The 1912 Novelle was his final, though modest, achievement. “This time … his triumph was rather fragile.”60 It was already clear that Britain was determined to out­-​­build Germany in terms of numbers and was able to do so. By the middle of 1912, Britain had 18 Dreadnought­-type ​­ battleships and battlecruisers in commission and another 14 under construction. Germany had ten and 13, respectively. Britain was ahead in firepower as well. Early British ships carried 12­-​­inch guns, German ships 11­-​­inch. By the time Germany moved to 12­-​­inch, Britain was building ships with 13.5­-​­inch guns. Then, almost as soon as the 1912 Novelle was passed, news arrived that Britain had started construction of a new class of “super­-dreadnought” ​­ armed with 15­-​­inch guns. It was capable of 25 knots, significantly faster than any previous battleship and almost as fast as the early battlecruisers.61 The effect of HMS Queen Elizabeth was a repeat of the original Dreadnought in again making Germany’s existing building programme obsolescent almost overnight. The Grand Admiral felt under pressure from all sides. The Kaiser blamed him for a fleet that was quite obviously second­-class ​­ compared to the Royal Navy and resented being repeatedly manipulated by his State Secretary. The Chancellor, the Treasury and, increasingly, the Reichstag were hostile to ever­-​ ­escalating costs and budgets. The “Front” was critical of Tirpitz for prioritising shipbuilding over infrastructure, training and readiness. He was also aware that the effect of his fleet on the British was not what he had planned or expected.62 And he correctly understood that, for the Kaiser, the fleet was little more than a “mechanical toy” in which he was starting to lose interest.63 At a now infamous (but often misunderstood) “war council” in December 1912, Tirpitz had to admit to the Kaiser and the Army that his fleet was still not ready for war, despite all that had been spent on it since 1898. Beginning the same year, the Army started to receive the lion’s share of additional defence expenditure as successive international crises brought the prospect of a general European war closer. Though tensions with Britain actually eased somewhat in the final two years of peace, Tirpitz became increasingly pessimistic. In May 1914, he wrote, “The situation collapses over the navy.… We cannot build the ships anymore which

Alfred von Tirpitz   23 we have planned.” Strategic and financial reality had caught up with him, and things were about to get worse. The outbreak of war in early August 1914 shifted the Navy’s attention from construction to operations.65 That meant the Admiralty Staff and the Fleet Command rather than the RMA. It had always been Tirpitz’s intention that in wartime the fragmented leadership of the Navy, each part directly accountable to the Kaiser, should become unified under one man­  – himself.66 Having by now lost the confidence of his erratic Kaiser and earned the distrust of many of his naval contemporaries he was rebuffed. “In reality both his personal position and his policies were bankrupt.”67 Tirpitz secured an advisory role only and a place at the Kaiser’s headquarters in Belgium­  – far from Berlin and Wilhelmshaven but close to where the early battles were already being fought­ – on land, on the Western Front. The naval leadership of Admirals Ingenohl (Fleet Commander), Pohl (Chief of the Admiralstab) and Muller (MK) were all former members of the “Torpedo Gang”. But, by now, they had they own ideas and they, not Tirpitz, had responsibility for the conduct of naval operations. Tirpitz urged on them offensive action, “Grosskreig”, if only to secure the Navy’s reputation and its position in the post­-​­war Reich­ – what Muller dismissed as “prestige tactics”.68 Instead the Navy pursued “Kleinkreig”, a war of attrition using mines, U­-​­Boats and limited surface engagements to whittle away British superiority until a major fleet action was more feasible. In the meantime, the battlefleet would be preserved as a factor in future peace negotiations. For Tirpitz this was all too reminiscent of the fleet’s inaction in 1866 and 1870–1871. But he had no better ideas as to how to resolve Germany’s naval dilemmas. By the end of 1914, it was clear that Britain was not going to present Germany with an opportunity to use the High Seas Fleet under favourable circumstances. Tirpitz noted that even “… partial successes do not appear to be very probable in the future.”69 He could see that an alternative approach was needed and he became a belated convert to commerce war conducted by U­-​­Boats. In time, he committed a complete volte­-face ​­ and advocated unrestricted submarine warfare. This dramatic change of opinion reinforced his reputation as an opportunist and increased his personal isolation.70 Tirpitz was now as disillusioned with the Kaiser as the monarch was with his State Secretary, laying the foundations for his later turn to extreme nationalist politics. He continued to “advise” how best to employ the fleet he had created in ways that demonstrated how out of touch with modern sea warfare he had become, in stark contrast to his tactical acumen of the early 1890s. One eccentric suggestion for luring the British Grand Fleet into a trap prompts Patrick Kelly to observe “… there could be no better proof … that Tirpitz was unfit to be Fleet Chief, let alone Supreme Commander of the navy. There is something pathetic as well as arrogant about the old lion coming up with this absurd idea.”71 In June 1915, unrestricted submarine warfare was halted in response to an international outcry over the sinking of the liner Lusitania the previous month. 64

24   Careers Tirpitz threatened to resign in protest but for the moment kept his job. In August, however, he lost his “advisory” role and his place at the General Headquarters.72 He was now utterly marginalised. He submitted his resignation once again in March 1916 and this time it was accepted. The Kaiser annotated his letter “He is leaving the sinking ship”,73 suggesting Wilhelm’s disillusionment with both Tirpitz and his fleet. Out of office, Tirpitz continued to lobby for more aggressive use of the U­-​­Boats and the High Seas Fleet. The Battle of Jutland on 31 May appeared, in Germany at least, to vindicate Tirpitz’s policies and he even received a congratulatory telegram from the Kaiser. His fall from grace was anyway known only within the Government and High Command­  – to most Germans Tirpitz remained a towering figure of national life. Tirpitz continued to scheme, trying to attach himself to the rising stars in the Army, Hindenburg and Ludendorff, and corresponding with nationalist politician Wolfgang Kapp. Privately, he advocated replacing the Kaiser, perhaps temporarily, with a Regent. His monarchism and his nationalism were starting to diverge. In early 1917, unrestricted submarine warfare was resumed as a response to stalemate on land and the effectiveness of the British blockade. Long a public and vocal advocate of such a course, this served to enhance Tirpitz’s reputation at the expense of his long­-​­time opponent, Chancellor Bethmann. The increasingly powerful duopoly of Hindenburg and Ludendorff tried to persuade Wilhelm to replace him with, incredibly, the now ageing Tirpitz. The Kaiser refused. By August that year, Tirpitz had given up hope of a recall to the government and accepted an invitation from Rapp to head a new German Fatherland Party, a movement rather than a conventional political party and one enjoying the tacit support of the Army High Command. He campaigned vigorously against a negotiated peace, which would “squander” the hard­-won ​­ gains of the war (in Belgium and the East) and continued to argue that the U­-​­Boat campaign would bring about eventual victory. But, by the summer of 1918, it was clear that Ludendorff’s spring offensive had failed and that Germany was not going to win the war. Tirpitz retreated to his family home to start writing his self­-​­justifying memoirs, even before the guns fell silent. Under the terms of the Armistice in November 1918, the bulk of the High Seas Fleet sailed for the last time, to internment at the British Grand Fleet’s base at Scapa Flow. The German ships were dramatically scuttled by their own crews in June the following year. Tirpitz remained busy with his memoirs, which were published in October. Kelly sums them up thus: “… everything he did was right. Others would have to bear the responsibility for losing the war and for the collapse of the monarchy.”74 This was not his only contribution. Tirpitz was closely consulted by the authors of the official history, Der Krieg zur See, which took a pro­-​­Tirpitz line and sought to lay the foundations for a future re­-​­birth of the Navy. Despite his continuing belief in authoritarian, nationalist and anti­-​­democratic politics, Tirpitz initially eschewed any further political involvement. This was

Alfred von Tirpitz   25 fortunate as he avoided being implicated in early, abortive coup attempts in the new German Republic. But, with time, his interest was rekindled, though he always regarded Hitler with suspicion and he was not notably anti­-​­Semitic. In 1924, he was approached by the German National People’s Party (DNVP) and was elected for a Bavarian seat, the party becoming the second largest in the Reichstag. Post­-​­election negotiations to form a new government led to the DNVP putting his name forward, once again, for Chancellor. In the event a coalition was formed without the DNVP and Tirpitz’s candidacy came to nothing. A later attempt to become Reich President fared no better and his old collaborator, Hindenburg, was elected instead in 1925. Tirpitz opposed Germany’s entry into the League of Nations but was unable to persuade Hindenburg. This was his last political intervention and, by now aged 79, he decided not to contest the 1928 Reichstag elections. He died two years later after a heart attack and was buried in Munich after a state funeral. “Tirpitz was clearly the right man in the right place at the right time.”75 He was a key figure in the history of Imperial Germany, and of international relations in the years before the First World War. He was not an “evil genius”76 and he certainly wasn’t a strategic genius either,77 but he was an outstanding “bureaucratic politician”.78 By choosing his fights carefully and limiting his ambitions to what he believed was achievable, Tirpitz, during almost 20 years in office, never suffered a serious defeat in his programme.79 This was despite, or perhaps because of, repeated attempts to resign as a means of coercing his imperial master. He used his considerable administrative abilities and sure political instincts to persuade the Kaiser, the Reichstag and the German people of the country’s need for a battlefleet. He then saw the programme through to a substantial degree of completion by the time war came in 1914. “It was a remarkable, if tainted, achievement.”80 But his achievement was not his alone. He relied on the admittedly inconstant support of his imperial sponsor and the enthusiastic cooperation of Chancellor Bulow. When Bulow went and the Kaiser became increasingly alienated, Tirpitz’s difficulties began to mount. The autocratic, bureaucratic and only semi­-​ ­parliamentary system of government of Wilhelmine Germany was the ideal environment for a man of Tirpitz’s skills. Perhaps more important, he worked in a political and social climate that was “Social Darwinist”, stridently nationalist and somewhat fatalistic. Weltpolitik assumed that states had to compete and expand or wither and die. The Navy was an essential tool and expression of Weltpolitik. Some historians, including Jonathan Steinberg and Volker Berghahn, have suggested that Tirpitz pursued his ambitious plans for a fleet to satisfy a domestic political agenda. Ruddock Mackay believes “The regime saw the Navy as a means of social unification. It was linked with foreign and economic policies promoting the consolidation of conservative elements in German society.”81 The nationalistic fleet programme would boost German industry, win over the emergent urban working class to the imperial regime and marginalise progressive elements in the Reichstag. If this interpretation is correct, it would

26   Careers not be the only example of a foreign policy (Weltpolitik in this case) being pursued for domestic objectives. More recently, Patrick Kelly has disputed this idea, suggesting that Tirpitz saw more limited objectives behind his fleet plan, though he certainly supported Weltpolitik and believed in the Navy as a unifying national institution in a still fragmented (and somewhat chaotic) Reich. But, whether by design or not, the “Tirpitz Plan” did boost industry82 and provided a nationalistic rallying­-​­cause. It was also, of course, the Kaiser’s pet project. In one important respect, “Tirpitz remains an enigma.”83 What was his final objective? Should his Risk Theory of deterrence, for all its obvious contradictions, be taken at face value, or was it a public rationale for something actually more ambitious? The fleet he wanted to build only made sense if it was directed against Britain, but which came first­ – the British “threat” or the fleet? Was Britain the reason for the fleet, or simply the justification for it? Tirpitz kept his own counsel, even among his closest colleagues. But he was a “navalist” who believed in naval power for its own sake. And he did give hints as to what his real aim might have been. There are occasional references in his private correspondence to “a fleet as strong as the English one”.84 The fleet that Tirpitz created and the wider political, diplomatic and strategic consequences that flowed from it will be examined in later chapters.

Notes   1 The most comprehensive biography of Tirpitz to date is Patrick J. Kelly Tirpitz and the Imperial German Navy Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press, 2001.   2 Gordon A. Craig Germany 1866–1945 Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981 p. 303.   3 “Fleet” perhaps overstates the case. The Prussian Navy of the 1860s consisted of a small miscellany of vessels, many of them obsolete.   4 Alfred von Tirpitz My Memoirs Vol I London: Hurst & Blackett, 1919 p. 10.   5 Kelly Tirpitz p. 28.   6 For details of the ships Tirpitz served in during his career, see Roger Chesnau  & Eugene Kolesnik (eds) Conway’s All the World’s Fighting Ships 1860–1905 London: Conway Maritime Press, 1979.   7 Kelly Tirpitz p. 50.   8 Kelly Tirpitz p. 62.   9 Michael Epkenhans Tirpitz: Architect of the German High Seas Fleet Washington, DC: Potomac Book, 2008 p. 16. 10 Patrick Kelly “Strategy, Tactics and Turf Wars: Tirpitz and the Oberkommando der Marine, 1892–1895” The Journal of Military History (JMH) 66:4 (October 2002) p. 1040. 11 Epkenhans p. 17. 12 Jonathan Steinberg Yesterday’s Deterrent: Tirpitz and the Birth of the German Battle Fleet London: Macdonald, 1965 p. 69. 13 See Appendix (i). 14 Kelly JMH 66:4 p. 1034. 15 Robert K. Massie Dreadnought: Britain, Germany and the Coming of the Great War New York: Random House, 1991 p. 164. 16 Ian Speller Understanding Naval Warfare Abingdon: Routledge, 2014 pp. 58–61. 17 Admiral Knorr “High Command of the Navy, Report to the Emperor” 28 November in Matthew Seligmann et al. (eds) The Naval Route to the Abyss: The Anglo­-German ​­

Alfred von Tirpitz   27 18 19 20 21 22 23

24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55

Naval Race 1895–1914 Farnham: Ashgate for the Navy Records Society, 2015. (Henceforth referred to as NRS Abyss) pp. 15–30. Epkenhans Tirpitz p. 32. Kelly Tirpitz p. 112. Kelly JMH 66:4 p. 1058. Steinberg p. 124. Paul Kennedy The Rise of the Anglo­-​­German Antagonism, 1860–1914 London: George Allen & Unwin, 1982 p. 223. Robert J. Art “The Influence of Foreign Policy on Seapower: New Weapons and Weltpolitik in Wilhelminian Germany” Robert J. Art & Kenneth N. Waltz (eds) The Use of Force: International Politics and Foreign Policy (2nd edition) Lanham MD: University Press of America, 1983 p. 182. Peter Padfield The Great Naval Race: Anglo­-​­German Naval Rivalry 1900–1914 St Albans: Granada Publishing, 1974 p. 41. Gary E. Weir Building the Kaiser’s Navy: The Imperial Naval Office and German Industry in the von Tirpitz Era, 1890–1919 Annapolis MD: Naval Institute Press, 1992 p. 21. Kelly Tirpitz p. 128. See Chapter 4. Up to this point the Kaiser tended to favour cruisers. Rear Admiral Tirpitz “Memorandum by the State Secretary of the Imperial Navy Office” June 1897, NRS Abyss pp. 42–52. Steinberg pp. 129 & 133. Dirk Bonker Militarism in a Global Age: Naval Ambitions in Germany and the United States Before World War I Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press, 2012 p. 202. Weir p. 84. Kelly Tirpitz p. 167. Bonker pp. 184–185. Massie p. 197. Cited in Kelly Tirpitz p. 282. Tirpitz memorandum June 1897 p. 42. The full text of the 1898 Act, the “Law Concerning the German Fleet”, is in NRS Abyss pp. 49–52. Kelly Tirpitz p. 138. Hew Strachan The First World War Volume I: To Arms Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001 p. 12. Steinberg p. 148. NRS Abyss p. 111. What today would be called a “drumbeat”. Kelly Tirpitz p. 179. Amendment to the Act Concerning the German Navy of 10 April 1898, 14 June 1900 NRS Abyss pp. 59–80. See Chapter 4. Kelly Tirpitz Chapter 11. Kelly Tirpitz p. 236. The wider consequences of the growth of the German Navy are examined in Chapter 8. In 1807, the British had attacked the neutral Danish fleet to prevent it falling into the hands of the French. Kelly Tirpitz p. 259. Padfield p. 136. Kennedy Anglo­-​­German Antagonism p. 422. Massie p. 685. Padfield p. 223.

28   Careers 56 For fuller accounts of the 1909 Naval “Scare”, see Kelly Tirpitz pp.  299–306  & Massie pp. 609–625. 57 Kelly Tirpitz p. 329. 58 Hence the title of Holger Herwig’s “Luxury” Fleet. 59 Weir p. 105. 60 NRS Abyss p. 397. 61 For details of British and German Dreadnought designs, see Randal Gray (ed.) Conway’s All the World’s Fighting Ships 1906–1921 London: Conway Maritime Press, 1985 pp. 21–35 & 145–154. 62 Chapter 8. 63 NRS Abyss p. 400. 64 Epkenhans p. 54. 65 Kelly Tirpitz p. 371. 66 Tirpitz Memoirs Vol. II p. 119. 67 Strachan p. 412. 68 Herwig p. 159. 69 Paul G. Halpern A Naval History of World War I Annapolis MD: Naval Institute Press, 1994 p. 290. 70 Weir p. 143. 71 Kelly Tirpitz p. 397. 72 Herwig pp. 164–165. 73 Kelly Tirpitz p. 408. 74 Kelly Tirpitz p. 427. 75 Art p. 183. 76 Craig p. 310. 77 Paul Kennedy Strategy and Diplomacy 1870–1945 London: Fontana, 1983 p. 152. 78 Kelly Tirpitz p. 195. 79 Steinberg p. 55 80 Kelly Tirpitz p. 3. 81 Ruddock F. Mackay “Historical Reinterpretations of the Angle­-​­German Naval Rivalry, 1897–1914” in Gerald Jordan (ed.) Naval Warfare in the Twentieth Century 1900–1945 London: Croom Helm, 1977 p. 42. 82 Michael Epkenhans “Technology, Shipbuilding and Future Combat in Germany, 1880–1914” in Phillips Payson O’Brien (ed.) Technology and Naval Combat in the Twentieth Century and Beyond London: Frank Cass, 2001 pp. 53–68. 83 Padfield p. 209. 84 Kennedy Strategy and Diplomacy p. 160.

3 Sergei Gorshkov

The second great twentieth­-​­century continental navalist, Sergei Gorshkov, was born on 26 February 1910 in Kamianets­-​­Podilskyi, then part of the Tsarist Russian Empire. Tirpitz was then at the height of his career. We shall see that there are many parallels between the lives of Tirpitz and Gorshkov, some entirely coincidental, others less so. The first coincidence is that Gorshkov’s birthplace, like Tirpitz’s, is now part of a different country­ – in this case the Ukraine. Though the local population was mainly Polish and Ukrainian in origin, Gorshkov’s parents were Russian. His father Georgiy and mother Elena were both teachers and the family moved to Kolumna, near Moscow, when he was still young. In later life, Gorshkov would have had little, if any, personal recollection of pre­-revolutionary ​­ Russia, being just seven years old when the Bolsheviks came to power. Gorshkov was in his first year at university when he decided instead to enrol in the Navy, influenced, like Tirpitz, by a friend who had already done so. Despite his parents’ initial reservations, he spent four years at the Frunze Naval Academy in Leningrad (today St Petersburg) and graduated in 1931, aged 21. Tirpitz was not long dead. Gorshkov’s first appointment at sea was as the Navigating Officer of the destroyer Frunze (previously the Tsarist Navy Bystry) in the Black Sea. A year later, he was posted to the Pacific Fleet (then called the Far East Naval Forces) where he served for seven years, latterly under Admiral Kuznetsov, who he was later to succeed as Commander­-​­in­-​­Chief of the Soviet Navy. In 1934, after just three years’ sea service, he became Commanding Officer of a small patrol vessel, the Burun.1 The Pacific was a good place to be serving in the 1930s. It was the time of Stalin’s paranoid and bloody purges of senior officers. An estimated 3,500 naval personnel were executed, sent to labour camps or dismissed.2 “Gorshkov may have survived through the virtues of obscurity and distance,”3 being both too junior and too far away from Moscow to be noticed. The depletion of the Soviet Navy’s senior officers can only have improved Gorshkov’s later career prospects.4 Gorshkov himself was not notably “political”­  – he never joined the Communist Party youth wing, the Komsomol, and didn’t join the Party itself until 1942, by which time his rapid career progression made it almost an automatic step. In 1935, he married a recent divorcee, Zinaida, who he’d met in Vladivostock two years before.

30   Careers After the Burun, Gorshkov attended a locally­-​­run Destroyer Commanding Officers’ course in 1937–1938 and then, aged 28 and already a Captain 2nd Rank (Commander equivalent), took command of a squadron (“brigade”) of four newly­-​­completed Gnevnyi­-​­class destroyers. We know little of these early years beyond these bare facts, but for Gorshkov to have been given command so early in his career we can deduce that he was already singled­-​­out as an exceptionally capable young officer and that the expanding Soviet Navy was short of experienced officers. We do know that his ships supported Soviet troops engaged in a low­-​­level border war with Japanese forces. It was also the period when he started to develop his own ideas about seapower and the kind of navy the Soviet Union needed,5 much as did Tirpitz at a similar stage in his life. Like many a rising star in armed forces everywhere, Gorshkov’s progression survived an adverse incident that might have halted the career of lesser men. The new destroyer Reshitelny, part of Gorshkov’s command, was being towed from her building yard at Komsomolsk to a fitting­-​­out berth in Vladivostok in November 1938. The ship was forced onto rocks in bad weather and was a total loss. Stalin first heard of Gorshkov as a result, but Kuznetsov ensured that no punitive action was taken against him.6 In 1939, Gorshkov was sent back to the Black Sea Fleet to command another destroyer squadron, before attending an advanced course for senior officers at the Voroshilov Naval Academy in early 1941. When the “Great Patriotic War” with Germany broke out in June, Gorshkov was back in the Black Sea as a 31­-​­year­-​­old Captain 1st Rank in command of a cruiser squadron. His new command was a disparate collection of six cruisers (three of them of pre­-​­Soviet origin) and three smaller destroyer leaders.7 This was over half the Soviet Navy’s total strength of these types of ship. The biggest contrast between the careers of Tirpitz and Gorshkov is that the latter did see very extensive combat service. Gorshkov had what could be called a “good war” that further cemented his reputation. Overall, the Soviet Navy was not much more significant to the outcome of the Second World War than was the Prussian Navy in the three wars of German unification. But it was significant for the future development of Gorshkov’s career and his thinking. The initial task of the Black Sea Fleet was to assist the defence of Odessa on the coast of the Ukraine (then part of the Soviet Union). The city was soon surrounded on land and cut off from the main Soviet armies, the besieging forces being mainly Romanian allies of the Germans. Soviet control of the Black Sea in the face of weak Romanian opposition allowed the Fleet to reinforce the Odessa garrison, most notably in late September. Gorshkov himself commanded a 1,700­-​­strong naval landing force, which embarked in Sevastopol in two cruisers and two destroyers and were put ashore near Odessa. Together with other reinforcements brought in by sea, these extra troops enabled the garrison to hold out until mid­-​­October. By then, Sevastopol in the Crimea was under threat, which made Odessa’s position untenable. The Soviet High Command ordered its evacuation and the Black Sea Fleet took off over a third of a million soldiers and civilians, mainly back to Sevastopol.

Sergei Gorshkov   31 Gorshkov was promoted to Rear Admiral later that month (after just ten years in the Navy) and placed in command of the Azov Flotilla, comprising ships operating to the east of the Crimean peninsula. It was Sevastopol, under siege from German troops, that now needed relieving. In December, the Azov Flotilla provided the naval element of the largest Soviet land­-sea ​­ operation of the entire war, when 40,000 troops were landed at Kerch on the eastern extremity of the peninsula.8 However, German counter­-​­attacks and air superiority eliminated the Kerch bridgehead by May the following year and Sevastopol itself fell in July. Gorshkov’s task was now to evacuate rather than land Soviet troops and his ships were under heavy air attack throughout the period. Several were lost either to enemy aircraft or to mines. By August, Soviet land forces were in retreat towards the Caucasus, and the Sea of Azov to the east of the Crimea was under German control. The Azov Flotilla itself had in the main taken refuge in Novorossiysk further south. Gorshkov was appointed a member of the Military Council responsible for the defence of the city. He was also made Deputy Commander for Naval Matters in an integrated command charged with preventing a German occupation of the Baku oilfields (in modern­-​­day Azerbaijan).9 The commander of the local army formation, the 47th Army, was General Grechko (later Defence Minister when Gorshkov was commanding the Navy). Gorshkov himself briefly became the acting commander of 47th Army (a combined army and naval infantry formation) when Grechko was reassigned to 16th Army.10 Offered the permanent command of 47th Army (and transfer to the Army as a Lieutenant General), Gorshkov declined. He also met the future Soviet leaders Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev, who were both senior political commissars with the armies in the south, as well as General Malinovsky, who commanded the Southern Front and was later a Defence Minister. Novorossiysk fell in September and Gorshkov’s remaining ships were forced further south along the eastern coast of the Black Sea, though German forces in the city remained under Soviet artillery bombardment and Novorossiysk marked the furthest point of their advance along the coast. In February 1943, Soviet forces under Gorshkov’s command began amphibious counter­-​­attacks, though initially with little success. The situation was altered, however, by the huge battle at Kursk far to the north in July and August, which obliged the Germans to consolidate their positions in the south. Gorshkov’s forces finally re­-​­took Novorossiysk in September, a year after it had fallen to the enemy. The tide had now turned in the East. For the rest of the year and into 1944 Gorshkov, again in command of the reactivated Azov Flotilla, supervised a series of tactical landings around the Sea of Azov as German troops were pushed back. Soviet forces landed once again at Kerch to begin the re­-​­conquest of the Crimea, Sevastopol fell on 9 May and the last German and Romanian troops were evacuated by sea. The focus of operations in the south was now on land as the German armies retreated away from the Black Sea. Most of the Soviets’ larger surface ships

32   Careers were by now non­-​­operational due to action damage and the lack of repair facilities. One remarkable feature of the Black Sea fighting was that it [had] involved almost no ship­-​­vs.­-​­ship or fleet­-​­vs.­-​­fleet battles. In the few such actions that occurred the Axis forces almost invariably won or at least held their own despite unfavourable odds.11 In April 1944, Gorshkov’s Azov Flotilla became the Danube Flotilla, which: … was in essence a riverine squadron whose mission was to penetrate inland, seizing ports and transporting men and materiel as they went, all the while clearing mines and providing gunfire support to the troops onshore. It was an essential component within that favourite obsession of Soviet commanders­ – operational art.12 Twenty years later, Gorshkov himself provided an account of the Danube Flotilla’s actions in 1944–1945.13 The article should not be taken at face value; Gorshkov, as with all his writings, was seeking to make use of history to prove a current point, but it is one of the more detailed accounts of an aspect of Second­-​ ­World­-​­War history not well known outside Russia. The Danube Flotilla of over 600 gunboats, landing craft and other small vessels was initially tasked to support the 46th Army (of which Gorshkov was appointed a Deputy Commander) in forcing the Dniester Estuary, capturing ports and river crossings. Commencing on 21 August, the operation was a complex all­-​­arms affair conducted in the face of fierce resistance, which included three infantry divisions in strong defensive positions and supported by plenty of artillery. Gorshkov’s earlier experience in planning and conducting tactical amphibious landings was put to good use, with many of the assaults being spearheaded by his naval infantry. Within three days, Soviet forces were operating in the Danube delta itself, linking up with enveloping armies to the north. Several small ports were captured in succession and in some cases their Romanian garrisons changed sides to join the Soviets. Romania itself quickly deserted the Axis side and joined the Allies. Unsurprisingly, Gorshkov does not acknowledge the pivotal role played by King Michael, ascribing the switch to “democratic forces … under [the] leadership of the Communist Party”.14 During the next two weeks, the Danube Flotilla ferried over 170,000 troops with armour, vehicles and artillery across the river. Soviet forces, including the Flotilla, now advanced up the Danube towards the Bulgarian frontier and thence on towards the Yugoslav capital, Belgrade, which was captured in October. Gorshkov’s forces sank or captured dozens of enemy river craft, cleared hundreds of mines, captured 14,200 prisoners and continued to ferry men, weapons and supplies up the river, which Gorshkov called “a road of life”.15 After Belgrade, the Danube Flotilla, enlarged by

Sergei Gorshkov   33 captured enemy vessels, went on to do much the same to assist the capture, successively, of Budapest, Bratislava and Vienna, arriving in Linz at the end of the war. They had travelled over 2,000 kilometres from the Black Sea into the heart of central Europe. “His [Gorshkov’s] wartime career was thus a complete demonstration of the Soviet Navy’s ancillary role of support for the Army which he was later to transcend.”16 He was one of the few Soviet naval officers to distinguish himself during the War and in doing so he impressed both Khrushchev and Brezhnev,17 earning a reputation as an innovative officer capable of dealing with complex inter­-​­personal and inter­-​­service issues. “Gorshkov stood out as the only really competent flag officer in the Red Navy during the war.”18 The last year of the war contained mixed fortunes for Gorshkov himself. In September 1944, aged just 34, he was promoted to Vice Admiral. But, in December, following a disagreement with army Front Commander Marshal Tolbukhin, he was removed from command of the Danube Flotilla.19 It was another temporary setback from which his career soon recovered. After the War, Gorshkov remained with the Black Sea Fleet for another ten years. Initially he went back to squadron command, but the position must have amounted to more than his previous such post, as he was now more senior. In 1948, he became Chief of Staff of the Black Sea Fleet (Tirpitz had held a similar post in the Baltic) and in August 1951 went on to be the Black Sea Fleet Commander. It is of note that Gorshkov never served in either the Baltic or Northern Fleets, the two fleets that confronted NATO forces most directly during the Cold War. The later views of many politicians, officials and serving officers are often influenced by their personal experiences earlier in life. In Gorshkov’s case, he transcended the army auxiliary role of his wartime command to advocate and create a fleet with independent roles of its own. During the late 1940s, the Soviet Navy had an ambitious building programme but, until the early 1950s, the only new ships to join the Black Sea Fleet were pre­-​­war designs, the completion of which had been delayed by the War. Thereafter Gorshkov’s command grew rapidly as additional ships joined the Fleet. Though new construction, most were still updated pre­-​­war designs such as six Sverdlov­-​­class cruisers and 18 Skory­-​­class destroyers. The Black Sea Fleet also received over 30 new Project 613 submarines (known in the West as the Whiskey­-​­class), a design heavily influenced by late­-War ​­ German U­-​­Boats. We know little more about Gorshkov’s life during these ten years than we do his pre­-war ​­ days in the Pacific Fleet. We can surmise that he maintained the political contacts he had made during the War and kept a high professional profile, especially with Admiral Kuznetsov.20 His time as Chief of Staff and then Commander of the Black Sea Fleet seems otherwise unremarkable, but he managed not to alienate Stalin or any other senior leader­  – which perhaps is what mattered most. We do know that he was active, at least formally, in the Communist Party. After 1952, he was “elected” to every Communist Party Congress and, from 1954, Gorshkov was a Deputy in the Supreme Soviet.21

34   Careers Kuznetsov called him to Moscow in July 1955 to become First Deputy Commander­-​­in­-​­Chief of the Navy. Almost immediately Gorshkov had to serve as acting Commander­-in­ ​­ -​­Chief for a few months when Kuznetsov became ill.22 Kuznetsov, who had been in and out of favour before with Stalin, was once again in a precarious position. The new Soviet leader, Khrushchev, was opposed to the big­-ship ​­ policy that Kuznetsov had persuaded Stalin to adopt. There were also personal differences between them and it is likely that Khrushchev would have replaced him sooner or later.23 In October 1955, events gave him a pretext for doing so. The battleship Novorossiysk, the former Italian ship Giulio Cesare taken as reparations in 1948,24 blew up in Sevastopol harbour, killing 600 of her crew. Gorshkov was a member of the government commission that investigated the loss, which concluded that the ship had probably detonated a mine left from the War. It was, of course, Gorshkov’s Black Sea Fleet that had failed to locate and remove the mine during the previous decade. But Khrushchev used the incident to dismiss Kuznetsov in disgrace in February the following year, which meant Gorshkov avoided having to take responsibility. In June, less than a year after becoming Kuznetsov’s deputy, Gorshkov was appointed to replace him. Gorshkov’s wartime record of effective cooperation with the Army must have played a part in Malinovsky’s recommending the appointment.25 Gorshkov, like Tirpitz before him, inherited a substantial building programme but continuing uncertainty as to what sort of fleet the country should acquire. From the founding of the Soviet Navy after the Revolution almost up to the Great Patriotic War (Second World War), a bitter conflict was waged between proponents of the “Old School” and the “New School”. The former favoured a traditional big ship navy to contest command of the sea, while the latter argued for submarines and aircraft and believed that the very concept of command of the sea was now obsolete.26 There are loose parallels between this debate and the battleships versus cruisers question in the pre­-​­Tirpitz German Navy. The argument was not just about naval strategy. Bureaucratic politics in the fevered (and dangerous) atmosphere of the pre­-Second­ ​­ -​­World­-​­War Soviet Union played a role, especially the question of whether the fleet should undertake independent roles or merely act as the “faithful helper” of the Army on its maritime flanks. In the late 1930s, at the same time as Stalin’s purges of the senior officer corps,27 the dispute was resolved in the form of a new “Soviet School”, which specified a balanced fleet of big ships and submarines and aircraft that would contest command of the sea, albeit in new ways. In November 1938, the Navy Commissar echoed the Kaiser’s “We bitterly need a strong German fleet” when he wrote in Pravda “We need a still more powerful navy, a more modern sea and ocean navy. So decided the Party. So decided the government. The whole Soviet people so decided.”28 The new fleet was to include battleships and perhaps even aircraft carriers and was to be built mainly against Britain (still the leading naval power). The principal architect of the Soviet School, Professor (also Rear Admiral) Vladimir Belli of the Naval War School,29 argued that the

Sergei Gorshkov   35 Soviet Fleet should defeat its stronger opponent piecemeal until it achieved force equalisation so that a general engagement on favourable terms might be possible.30 One can only speculate as to whether he had read his Tirpitz. Donald Mitchell in his 1974 history of Russian seapower says “The new naval policy which emerged from the purges had as its goal the ‘most powerful navy in the world’ ”,31 though there is insufficient evidence to conclude that this was ever regarded as realistic. Stalin’s plans for a large big­-​­ship navy, influenced by Belli’s advocacy, were forestalled by the outbreak of war in 1941. Most of the ships on which construction had started were either destroyed or captured. Other than Gorshkov’s Danube Flotilla, what Navy the Soviet Union did possess32 played an insignificant part in the War, its performance even poorer than in previous conflicts.33 After the War, Stalin’s ambitious fleet plans were resumed, though aircraft carriers seem to have replaced battleships and three incomplete hulls of the latter were broken up on the slipways. By the time of Stalin’s death in 1953, little had been done about carriers but a total of 33 large cruisers were in service or building, plus over 70 destroyers and a staggering 236 Whiskey­-​ ­class submarines, soon to be followed by over 70 boats of the Romeo, Zulu and Quebec classes.34 Soviet writers (either serving officers or defence academics) continued to debate, in carefully guarded terms, the lessons of the recent war, the correct naval strategy for the Soviet Union and the type of fleet it should create. Robert Herrick describes this as the maturing of the Soviet School approach and adoption of “active defence” to contest local command of the sea.35 By the time Gorshkov was confirmed as Commander­-​­in­-​­Chief of the Navy in June 1956, Nikita Khrushchev had consolidated his hold on power, ending the brief post­-​­Stalin inter regnum. Khrushchev explicitly rejected Stalin’s big­-​­ship ambitions, favouring submarines, missiles and shore­-based ​­ aircraft with surface ships relegated to secondary, largely coastal roles.36 It was, in essence, an updated New School approach, which saw the Navy primarily in sea­-​­denial, defensive terms within a strategy that ascribed primacy to the Army and the country’s growing nuclear forces. Khrushchev was also, by the standards of the 1950s Soviet Union, a moderniser who was anxious to secure economies in defence spending. Some of the recently rebuilt shipyards were reassigned from warship construction to building merchant ships.37 Gorshkov’s own views were much more in tune with his predecessor’s, as his subsequent career and extensive writings were to demonstrate.38 But, in Khrushchev’s eyes, he had proved his worth in the Black Sea and the Danube, including his ability to conduct land­-​­oriented, combined­-​­arms operations. He shared Khrushchev’s enthusiasm for missiles and we can surmise from his early writings that he was at pains not to assert his big­-​­ship aspirations for the Navy to the point that it would have ruled him out as Kuznetsov’s replacement: “Had Gorshkov been saying in 1956 what he was writing and publishing in 1974 [when Red Star Rising at Sea appeared in the West], he would not have been

36   Careers acceptable to Khrushchev.”39 One is reminded of Tirpitz’s reticence about his long­-​­term ambitions. Though rapidly expanding in numbers, the Navy Gorshkov inherited was the poor relation among the Soviet Armed Forces and, while few would say so openly, the War had left it with a miserable reputation. It would take a politically astute and administratively able leader with a powerful vision for the future to change that. Tirpitz had been one such individual and Gorshkov was to prove another. Without wanting to stretch the analogy too far, one can see echoes of Kaiser Wilhelm’s “personal rule” and the rise of Bulow and Tirpitz, in Khrushchev’s assumption of power and the rise to prominence of Grechko, Malinovsky, Brezhnev and Gorshkov, all with their shared experience and personal contacts from the Great Patriotic War. Gorshkov had to “… compromise with political reality,” another Tirpitz trait. Khrushchev made his attitude to surface ships and therefore to a “balanced fleet” clear in a visit to the United States in 1959, when he declared that “Combatant ships are good only for making state visits … they have outlived their usefulness.… Now they are only good targets for missiles.”40 Writing in 1990, Gorshkov’s successor as Commander­-​­in­-​­Chief, Admiral Chernavin, confirmed that Gorshkov “persistently sought a balance of forces” but had to “act with circumspection” in the face of views that questioned the likelihood of war at sea in the nuclear age and therefore the need for a substantial navy at all.41 His published writings in the early years in office dutifully stressed the Navy’s role in support of the Army and the defence of the country’s maritime borders.42 His first task was to save what he could of the existing cruiser programme in the face of Khrushchev’s determination to scrap the lot. In addition to several earlier ships of the Kirov and Chapayev classes, the centrepiece of the Stalin/ Kuznetsov plan was a total of 24 Sverdlov­-​­class cruisers of which, by 1956, 20 had been laid down and 17 of those launched.43 Gorshkov, through bureaucratic stalling (“artful obstructionism”)44 and gentle persuasion, was able to retain the 14 ships already completed while sacrificing the incomplete units. Most of these already obsolescent ships survived into the late Cold War 1980s, somewhat reminiscent of the presence at Jutland of six equally obsolescent German pre­-​ ­dreadnoughts. Neither navy liked to throw away existing ships if they were seaworthy and could be manned. When Gorshkov became Commander­-​­in­-Chief, ​­ the Soviet Navy already had an enormous submarine building programme, including the early nuclear­-​ ­powered boats. Large numbers of shore­-​­based, long­-​­range aircraft45 and hundreds of small fast attack craft were entering service. First­-​­generation missiles, both for nuclear strike and anti­-​­shipping, were under development. These were the essential elements of the neo­-​­New School fleet favoured by Khrushchev. Having saved some of the gun­-​­armed cruisers, Gorshkov’s next task was therefore to find a way to introduce more modern surface combatants. Missiles, Khrushchev’s particular enthusiasm, provided the means to do so. Gorshkov initiated a large programme of missile­-​­armed surface ships. At first these were conversions of newly commissioned conventional gun­-​­armed

Sergei Gorshkov   37 destroyers and fast patrol boats. They were then followed by purpose­-​­designed missile ships, including more patrol boats, destroyers and small cruisers. The new ships extended the Soviet Union’s defensive perimeter ever further out to sea and gave it a growing capability to counter Western, especially US, aircraft carriers. The doctrinal underpinnings of this new fleet will be examined in Chapter 5. The Soviet Navy therefore entered the missile age on the basis of a compromise­  – Khrushchev’s aversion to large surface ships was assuaged by using them as platforms for guided missiles. But even without his influence, it is unlikely that Gorshkov would have pursued a radically different or more ambitious programme, as a Western­-​­style carrier­-​­based navy was then beyond the Soviet Union’s economic means or technical prowess. On his 50th birthday in 1960, Gorshkov received the Order of Lenin,46 evidence that he retained his political master’s confidence. A year later, he became a Full Member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party and, in 1962, he was promoted to Fleet Admiral and appointed as a Deputy Defence Minister. Taken together, these marks of favour placed Gorshkov at the heart of the still Army­-​­dominated formulation of defence policy and gave him an official position beyond the command of his own service. It wasn’t quite the same as Tirpitz becoming a State Secretary but it was indicative that both Gorshkov and the Navy were increasing in importance and recognition. By this time, the first missile cruiser Groznyy was in service together with a dozen guided missile destroyers. A total of over 300 submarines included 20 that were nuclear­-​­powered and over 40 of them, both nuclear­-​­and conventional­-​ ­powered, carried missiles. Most spectacular of all was a pair of new, large aviation ships, the Moskva­-​­class helicopter carriers authorised during the later Khrushchev years, but which did not enter service until later in the decade. In numerical terms, the Fleet was still dominated by submarines and small coastal craft, but Gorshkov’s advocacy of missile­-​­armed surface ships was starting to bear fruit. Khrushchev publicly acknowledged the utility of the new ships on a visit to a Leningrad shipyard when he said: Naval vessels are very good. In the past we frequently criticised our naval comrades for shortcomings in the development of the Navy [a reference to earlier disagreements about the future shape of the Fleet] and demanded that it be improved. This criticism has not been wasted. What I saw were ships that fully conform to contemporary naval development [i.e. guided missiles].47 These remarks showed how successful Gorshkov had been in persuading Khrushchev to authorise a new generation of at least medium­-​­sized surface ships. In July 1961, an editorial in the Ministry of Defence’s official newspaper Red Star observed that “… all types of forces for the Navy must be developed in the necessary proportions”,48 an unequivocal endorsement of a “balanced fleet”, though of course leaving open the question of what constituted the “necessary proportions”. Its significance should not be over­-​­stated for the emphasis was

38   Careers clearly still on submarines­ – it was just that some large surface ships were necessary to support them. This was as far as Gorshkov felt able to argue, and he was conscious of Kuznetsov’s fate when he pushed the naval case too hard.49 As soon as it was evident that submarines could take ballistic missiles to sea, Gorshkov pressed for a naval share in the nuclear deterrence role allocated to the new Strategic Rocket Forces, established as a separate branch of the Armed Forces in 1959.50 By 1962, the Navy had nearly 30 ballistic missile submarines, some of them nuclear­-​­powered. But their role remained secondary, limited to targets like enemy naval bases. Gorshkov’s growing influence did not extend to getting a share in the most prestigious of all military tasks, the strategic nuclear balance with the United States, though he continued to argue for it. Throughout these years, Gorshkov was a prolific writer, contributing a steady stream of articles to Navy, Ministry of Defence, government and Party journals and newspapers. Doctrinal debate in the Soviet Union was surprisingly open, provided it was conducted with due obeisance to Marxist­-​ ­Leninist ideology (just as Tirpitz dutifully paid homage to the monarch’s authority and wisdom). Gorshkov, again like Tirpitz before him, ensured that whatever was written by senior naval officers was consistent with his own strategic messaging,51 to the extent that the profusion of articles by other serving officers must be seen as extensions of Gorshkov’s own work. Western analysts at the time, and subsequently, debated whether Gorshkov was using public fora to advance his cause or publicly expressing what was already agreed behind closed doors.52 It was probably both, and he was careful to “nudge” the official debate forward only so far as his political instincts told him was safe. Chapter 5 traces the evolution of his published work, the changing tone and ambition of which probably reflects the increasingly benign political and bureaucratic environment more than it does substantive changes in his own thinking. Events in the Caribbean in 1962 showed the limitations of what had been achieved so far. One of the Soviet Union’s geo­-​­strategic disadvantages was that the United States had several allies adjacent to the USSR, but until Fidel Castro took power in Cuba the reverse was not true. This mattered when most nuclear­-​ ­armed ballistic missiles were of modest range and ICBMs53 were in their infancy. Communist rule on the island allowed Khrushchev to place medium­-​ ­range missiles within reach of the continental US, much as US missiles in Western Europe and Turkey could reach the Soviet Union. The US naval blockade during the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis had two immediate consequences. One was the withdrawal of Soviet missiles from the island (with some compensating US concessions). The other was a demonstration of Soviet impotence in the face of overwhelming US naval superiority (not unlike the German experience in the Bundesrath affair). This has widely been seen as a stimulus to a more ambitious naval policy and it certainly did not harm Gorshkov’s case.54 However, there was already a growing Soviet interest in the rapidly de­-​­colonising “Third World”, a Russian version of Weltpolitik.

Sergei Gorshkov   39 Five months before the Cuban Missile Crisis, Khrushchev himself said in a speech that: The Americans often send squadrons of their ships to other countries.… It wouldn’t be a bad thing if we too had a fleet like that… It’s time for us to “wear long trousers” [i.e. grow up].… There is now an even balance between our military strength and that of our opponent. But soon that balance will be changed in our favour … at that time a leading role will be played by our fleet.55 This did not alter the secondary role that was still seen for naval forces in the event of war. The 1963 Second Edition of Marshal Sokolovsky’s authoritative Military Strategy acknowledged a greater role for the Navy than in the Great Patriotic War but it “… will hardly be decisive for the outcome of the war”.56 Gorshkov still had to moderate the claims he could make for the Navy’s importance in a conflict with the United States, but could point to its growing significance in advancing the Soviet Union’s worldwide interests in peacetime. The Cuban Missile Crisis had a further, delayed impact on the Navy. The “Brezhnev Coup”57 of October 1964 removed Khrushchev from power and replaced him with Leonid Brezhnev, another Gorshkov acquaintance from the War. Failed agricultural policies and the growing rift with China were also to blame for Khrushchev’s fall, but the outcome of the Cuban crisis was seen as a humiliation for the Soviets and contributed to dissatisfaction with Khrushchev’s somewhat erratic leadership. Gorshkov survived the transfer of power, as Brezhnev had no reason to dismiss Gorshkov as he had never been a close ally of Khrushchev and was already well known to him as a safe pair of hands.58 Brezhnev soon abandoned many of his predecessor’s attempts at reform, in the name of “stability” and the interests of the Communist Party. He was closely identified with military­-​­industrial interests, which have been described as a “state within a state”59 and made little attempt to limit or even direct defence spending. This provided Gorshkov with the opportunity to press the Navy’s case more assertively, especially as Brezhnev, though a skilled and ruthless political operator in the closed Soviet system, was neither energetic nor particularly clever. A future Soviet Chief of the Naval Staff later wrote “… Gorshkov constantly succeeded in resolving very important issues with him. Of course, it was simple to convince him to do something. Due to his incompetence, he would easily approve the proposal being presented.”60 Gorshkov now had his “imperial sponsor” and, in the words of a former US Naval Attaché in Moscow, “… got the green light for his ambitions”.61 The result was a greatly increased programme of surface ship construction based on rolling ten­-year ​­ plans.62 Under Khrushchev, just four small missile cruisers had been authorised. By 1970, another 12, larger, ships had been laid down with more to come in the following decade. The number of missile­-​­armed destroyers tripled in the same period. The first hybrid missile ship/aircraft

40   Careers carrier was laid down in 1970, representing the triumph of Gorshkov’s sustained advocacy of large ships and a balanced fleet. Second­-​­generation nuclear­-​ ­powered submarines armed with torpedoes, cruise missiles or ballistic missiles appeared in increasing numbers so that, by the end of the decade, the Soviet Navy operated over 80 nuclear­-powered ​­ boats, almost exactly the same number as the United States Navy.63 Many of the much more advanced ships, submarines and aircraft that were to enter service in the later 1970s and 1980s were designed and authorised during these years. Gorshkov’s growing Navy was starting to pose a substantial and credible threat to US naval dominance. Until 1964, Soviet surface ships rarely ventured far from home waters, reflecting their limited numbers and capabilities and their subordinate role. A few modest exercises in the northeast corner of the North Atlantic were about the limit of their deployments. In 1963, Gorshkov “ordered his men to sea”64 and the following year a small squadron spent part of the year in the Mediterranean and other surface ships visited Cuba. By the end of the decade, the Mediterranean presence had become permanent and Soviet ships were operating as far away as the Indian Ocean. This was the practical expression of the “support of Soviet interests” that Gorshkov had long been advocating. To begin with, these progressively more ambitious deployments were conducted without overseas base support or a dedicated “fleet train” of naval auxiliaries. They relied on somewhat improvised support from merchant ships, the Soviet Union’s fleet of which was expanding as rapidly as its Navy. In 1966, Gorshkov accompanied Prime Minister Alexei Kosygin on a visit to Egypt, apparently to secure basing rights in the country.65 The Soviet Union subsequently secured bases in several other countries as well, notably Syria, Yemen and Ethiopia. Nonetheless, a 1974 official US Navy report assessed that the Soviet fleet was “severely overstretched”.66 The year 1967 (the fiftieth anniversary of the Revolution) saw two significant milestones for Gorshkov. One was his promotion to the newly created rank of Admiral of the Fleet of the Soviet Union, which gave him parity with the heads of the Army and the Strategic Rocket Forces. The other was the replacement of Malinovsky by Marshal Grechko as Minister of Defence. Grechko was yet another former Second­-​­World­-​­War colleague from the southern front and, more importantly, was sympathetic to a balanced fleet and even aircraft carriers.67 Grechko also supported Gorshkov’s wish to establish a permanent squadron in the Mediterranean.68 In 1970, Gorshkov provided the first demonstration of the Soviet Navy’s newfound strength and reach. Exercise OKEAN 70 (there was another, similar exercise five years later) comprised around 200 ships and submarines conducting separate, but simultaneous and coordinated, operations in the North Atlantic, the Mediterranean, the western Pacific and the Indian Ocean. It was centrally run from Moscow and made use of what the West called the SOSS­ – the satellite­-​­based Soviet Ocean Surveillance System.69 Gorshkov was able to receive intelligence reports from around the globe and issue orders to individual units “within minutes”.70

Sergei Gorshkov   41 It was significant that, as Gorshkov himself acknowledged, the OKEAN exercise was actually Grechko’s initiative rather than his own.71 It meant that Gorshkov’s global naval ambitions were no longer just his. Nothing on this scale, with its obvious messages for the West and others, could have been contemplated without government and Party endorsement. “The Kremlin had discovered Sea Power!”72 OKEAN was also important because it was neither a homeland defence exercise nor an exercise to support Soviet peacetime interests, though it did have the latter effect. It was, above all, a demonstration of the ability of the Soviet Union to challenge the United States well beyond its immediate maritime frontiers. Tirpitz’s North Sea­-​­focused fleet could never have contemplated challenging the Royal Navy’s dominance outside European waters.73 By 1972, Gorshkov felt able to make much more ambitious claims for the Navy than hitherto. Over the course of 13 months, beginning in February that year, he published 11 articles in a series entitled Navies in War and Peace. They appeared in Morskoi Sbornik (Naval Digest), a Defence Ministry official journal, and were Gorshkov’s first comprehensive statement of the utility of seapower, in peacetime as well as in war. He argued forcefully that the Soviet Union was a sea power as well as a land power, an argument that was as controversial in Russia as in the West. To what extent the articles were a statement of agreed policy or a polemical argument to influence policy is still unclear. They were obviously meant to inform, but whether their target audience was policy­-​­makers in the Party, government and Defence Ministry or lower­-​­level officers and officials is uncertain. It was probably both, and the series represented Gorshkov’s most extensive effort to nudge policy and understanding forwards. His first aim seemed to be an agreed doctrine, which could then be used to support his desired policy.74 The articles appeared in the period between Party congresses when a degree of open debate was permitted, which suggests they were not purely announcements of officially approved doctrine.75 It may also be significant that they were published in a naval journal rather than a government or Party one. Soon after the publication of Navies in War and Peace, events in the Mediterranean showed how far Soviet naval ambitions and capabilities had progressed since the humiliation of the Cuban Missile Crisis a decade before. During the Arab­-​­Israeli war of Yom Kippur in October 1973, the Soviet Mediterranean squadron (Eskadra), which drew ships from both the Northern and Black Sea Fleets, grew to 23 submarines and 40 surface ships including cruisers and amphibious vessels.76 They directly confronted the American 6th Fleet with a series of aggressive and harassing exercises that demonstrated a will and ability to contest local sea control.77 That the outcome of the crisis was generally seen as a setback for the Soviets, not least because of Egypt’s subsequent rapprochement with the United States, does not reduce the significance of the Soviet Navy’s newfound assertiveness. Two years later, the Soviet Navy conducted another worldwide OKEAN exercise, this one even more ambitious than that of 1970. Each year the number of ship­-​­days spent “out of area” (i.e. deployed some distance from home waters)

42   Careers increased. When Gorshkov became Commander­-​­in­-​­Chief, Soviet out of area annual ship­-​­days totalled just 800. By the time Brezhnev replaced Khrushchev in 1964, it was 9,100, as the fleet started to obey Gorshkov’s instruction to “go to sea”. Ten years later, the total was 53,500,78 an average of nearly 150 ships deployed worldwide at any one time. Gorshkov’s second major piece of published work appeared in 1976, this time a book entitled The Sea Power of the State. An English translation, with a new Forward by Gorshkov aimed at a Western readership, was published in the United States in 1979.79 His treatment of the historical background follows a similar pattern to his earlier articles, including a gross over­-​­statement of the Soviet Navy’s performance in the Second World War. Where it differs is a much more comprehensive analysis and advocacy of the contemporary role of naval forces, which he manages to outline with a good deal fewer dutiful references to Marxist­-​­Leninist dogma. It makes for a much more satisfactory read. Perhaps the most dramatic development in the 1970s was the appearance of the Soviets’ first aircraft carrier, Kiev, commissioned in 1975 and built to a design approved in 1968. The ship was therefore a product of the post­-​ ­Khrushchev boost to Gorshkov’s fleet plans. The new ship was not remotely comparable to US carriers but was an important second step (after the earlier pair of large helicopter carriers). Gorshkov wanted something more, and in the early 1970s plans were advanced for a nuclear­-​­powered carrier almost as large as US ships. But, when Grechko died in 1976, Dmitri Ustinov replaced him as Defence Minister. Ustinov was more cautious in his support for carriers, though he was an enthusiast for VTOL80 aircraft at sea. Without Grechko’s support, Gorshkov was unable to prevail and the Navy continued to build Kiev­-​­class carriers (four in total) and to acquire the relatively primitive, subsonic Yak­-​­38 VTOL fighter aircraft.81 In 1983, a leading western analyst of the Soviet Navy, Norman Polmar, wrote: The Soviet Navy is today in a period of change from a sea­-​­denial navy to one that will­ – in several key respects­ – look much like the U.S. Navy. The most dramatic indication of this is the construction of large­-​­deck aircraft carriers, probably nuclear propelled [when built they did not in fact have nuclear propulsion]. However, those ships are probably not intended to fight the U.S. fleet on the high seas, but to provide control of the air and sea in support of Soviet direct or indirect intervention in the Third World.82 In reality, the Soviet fleet looked like the US Navy only in terms of size; they were the navies of the two superpowers, each with global reach. But for all Gorshkov’s advocacy of large surface ships, including carriers, his Navy’s real strength still lay in its submarine arm consisting of around 350 boats of which about half were nuclear powered. There was, as we shall see, a compelling strategic logic behind this dominance similar to the one that Tirpitz belatedly discovered in late 1914. The other strengths of Gorshkov’s fleet were

Sergei Gorshkov   43 its long­-​­range, land­-​­based aircraft and huge numbers of relatively small coastal surface combatants. Most of its landing ships were also small and short­-range, ​­ designed to operate on the flanks of the Army. The big ships the Soviets did have­  – half a dozen large aviation ships and around 100 cruisers and destroyers­ – were impressive but overall represented an ocean­-​­going adjunct to what, numerically at least, still looked like a neo­-​­New School fleet. It was also lacking in substantial overseas bases and Gorshkov (like Tirpitz before him) has also been criticised for not creating an adequate supporting infrastructure at home.83 In 1982, work started on the first third­-​­generation carrier, to be called Riga or Tbilisi.84 The ship was finally commissioned in 1990 after Gorshkov was dead and the Soviet Union itself about to disappear. A further ship, plus an improved version, never came into service. This ambitious project was the swansong of Gorshkov’s fleet. Gorshkov himself, after nearly 30 years in office­  – much longer than Tirpitz, was by now in his seventies. The increasingly enfeebled Brezhnev had died in November 1982 and, after a couple of equally ailing successors, the Soviet leadership finally passed to a new generation in March 1985, when the 54­-year­ ​­ -​­old Mikhail Gorbachev came to power. Gorbachev was a genuine reformer who was eventually instrumental in ending the Cold War and, indirectly, the Soviet Union itself. He perceived the need to radically reform the Soviet economy and to end the antagonistic relationship with the United States. Both objectives spelled the end of ever more ambitious naval shipbuilding plans. Gorshkov was suddenly out of place in the new political environment and was in poor health (he had long suffered from hypertension).85 In November 1985, Gorbachev replaced him with Admiral Vladimir Chernavin, a former submariner and Commander of the Northern Fleet. Chernavin’s background was therefore the opposite of Gorshkov’s. The latter’s retirement was low­-​­key, though he did remain on the Central Committee of the Communist Party. In 1988, just before his death following a stroke, his final published work (as editor) appeared. The Navy, Its Role, Prospects for Development and Employment seemed like a last desperate attempt to save the fleet he had built.86 His death just three years after retiring meant that, unlike Tirpitz, he was spared seeing his life’s work fall apart. His country was defeated, though in a Cold, not “hot” war, and his fleet was left to rust rather than surrendered to the enemy and then scuttled. But the outcome was essentially the same. Gorshkov was arguably the most important serving officer in the intermittent history of the Russian and Soviet Navy since its founding by Peter the Great at the start of the eighteenth century. His wartime record matches that of any Russian naval commander in history and his subsequent creation of the Cold War Soviet Fleet was unparalleled since Tsar Peter’s time. His combination of wartime service and peacetime leadership was therefore unique. In 2005, a Russian naval historian asserted “Whichever energetic and erudite Soviet admiral had found himself in Sergei G. Gorshkov’s place … the results would have been approximately the same.”87 This somewhat misses the point. Though

44   Careers he relied on political sponsorship and was responding to the strategic circumstances of his time, Gorshkov was that “energetic and erudite” individual and there is little evidence that any other individual was available to perform in the same way. Gorshkov’s personal impact was highlighted by a Time magazine cover story in February 1968. Gorshkov had “totally reshaped the Soviet Union’s once conservative naval strategy and transformed the fleet into the most effective and flexible arm of Soviet foreign policy”.88 This judgement may have been a little premature­  – the Brezhnev era fleet was only starting to appear­ – but not by much. By 1974, it was certainly fair to judge that “He is the architect of the modern Soviet Navy and is, by this accomplishment alone, the most distinguished naval officer that Russia, the great landpower, has yet produced.”89 Gorshkov’s writings are examined in Chapter 5; he was by any standards one of the more influential analysts and proponents of seapower in the twentieth century­  – much more so than Tirpitz­  – and some have compared him to Mahan.90 But, for all his theorising, Gorshkov was a pragmatist who selectively used historical experience to advance his policy aims. Like Tirpitz, he was a very skilful operator within his political and bureaucratic environment91 and an extremely able administrator. Both enjoyed a long tenure in office, which allowed them to pursue a long­-​­term vision and to plan accordingly, something denied to political and professional leaders in most countries. Both used times of international tension to develop navies designed to exercise influence in peacetime and to fight a maritime opponent in war. Writing two years after Gorshkov’s death, Fleet Admiral Sergeyev credited him with the “colossal service” of taking the Soviet Navy out into the “World Ocean” and putting an end to the “absolute command of the sea” of the western allies.92 In 1956, the Soviet Navy was a growing but still coastal force. It had no modern ocean­-​­going ships and, as important, its strategic vision was confined to restricted waters close to the homeland in whose defence it had but a marginal role. Thirty years later, it was an ocean­-​­going navy routinely deployed across the globe able to exercise worldwide influence in peacetime, to defend the country at some distance and dispute the command of the sea of its maritime opponent. It was another remarkable, if tainted, achievement.

Notes   1 For details of the ships the young Gorshkov served in, see Conway’s 1906–1921 p. 309 & Roger Chesneau (ed.) Conway’s All the World’s Fighting Ships 1922–1946 London: Conway Maritime Press, 1980 p. 339.   2 Norman Polmar, Thomas A. Brooks  & George E. Fedoroff Admiral Gorshkov: The Man Who Challenged the U.S. Navy Annapolis MD: US Naval Institute Press, 2019 p. 32.   3 Frank Uhlig Forward to Robert W. Herrick Soviet Naval Doctrine and Policy 1956–1986 (3 vols) Lewiston NY: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2003 p. xvii.   4 Geoffrey Till (ed.) Maritime Strategy and the Nuclear Age (2nd ed.) London: Macmillan Press, 1984 p. 68.

Sergei Gorshkov   45   5 Ronald J. Kurth “Gorshkov’s Gambit” The Journal of Strategic Studies 28:2 (April 2005) p. 264.   6 John G. Hibbits “Admiral Gorshkov: Architect of the Soviet Navy” in RSRS p. 143.   7 Conway’s 1922–1946 pp. 323 & 326–329.   8 Till p. 68.   9 Hibbits p. 144. 10 Polmar et al. Gorshkov pp. 61–62. 11 Donald W. Mitchell A History of Russian and Soviet Sea Power London: Andre Deutsch, 1974 p. 419. 12 Kevin Rowlands (ed.) 21st Century Gorshkov: The Challenge of Sea Power in the Modern Era Annapolis MD: Naval Institute Press, 2017 p. 14. 13 Sergei Gorshkov “Soviet Seamen in the Battles to Liberate the Danube States” Morskoi Sbornik August 1964, reproduced in Rowlands pp. 16–31. 14 Rowlands p. 23. 15 Rowlands p. 27. 16 Brian Ranft  & Geoffrey Till The Sea in Soviet Strategy London  & Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1983 p. 72. 17 Mitchell p. 518. 18 Peter Tsouras “Soviet Naval Tradition” in Bruce W. Watson & Susan M. Watson (eds) The Soviet Navy: Strengths and Liabilities Boulder CO: Westview Press, 1986 p. 19. 19 Polmar et al. Gorshkov pp. 72–73. 20 Commander­-​­in­-​­Chief of the Navy from 1946–1947 and again in 1955. He was Minister of the Navy between 1951 and 1955. 21 Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt “Conclusion” in RSRS p.  146. Admiral Zumwalt was a former USN Chief of Naval Operations. 22 Kurth p. 265. 23 Hibbits p. 144. 24 Conway’s 1906–1921 p. 259. 25 Kurth p. 266. Malinovsky was by now First Deputy Minister of Defence. 26 Robert Herrick Soviet Naval Theory and Policy: Gorshkov’s Inheritance Annapolis MD: Naval Institute Press, 1989. 27 Three out of four Fleet Commanders were executed. 28 Mitchell p. 374. 29 Gorshkov was among Belli’s students before the War. 30 Herrick Gorshkov’s Inheritance pp. 258–259. 31 Mitchell p. 374. 32 Including over 250 submarines­  – a legacy of Young School dominance in the early 1930s. 33 Mitchell p. 468. 34 Class names are NATO designations. For details, see Robert Gardiner (ed.) Conway’s All the World’s Fighting Ships 1947–1995 London: Conway Maritime Press, 1995 pp. 396–398. 35 Herrick Gorshkov’s Inheritance Chapter VI. 36 Zumwalt in RSRS p. 139. 37 Norman Polmar Guide to the Soviet Navy (3rd ed.) Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1983 p. 68. 38 Chapter 5. 39 Kurth p. 262. 40 Herrick Doctrine and Policy Book One p. 113. 41 Ibid. p. 110. A similar debate went on in the West, for example in Britain in the late 1950s. 42 Chapter 5. 43 Conway’s 1947–1995 p. 379. 44 Herrick Book One p. 115.

46   Careers 45 TU­-​­16 Badger, TU­-​­95 Bear & TU­-​­22 Blinder. 46 The highest civilian honour in the Soviet Union, it was frequently awarded to military personnel. 47 Robert W Herrick Soviet Naval Strategy: Fifty Years of Theory and Practice Annapolis MD: US Naval Institute, 1968 p. 73. The ships he saw under construction were probably Kynda­-​­class cruisers and Kashin­-​­class destroyers (NATO names). 48 Herrick Book One p. 97. 49 Evan Mawdsley “The Russian Navy in the Gorshkov Era” in O’Brien (ed.) p. 174. 50 Herrick Book One p. 229. 51 Herrick Book Two p. 563. 52 Michael MccGwire “Advocacy of Seapower in an Internal Debate” in Robert G. Weinland et al. Admiral Gorshkov on “Navies in War and Peace” Center for Naval Analyses, Arlington VA: 1974 p. 38. 53 Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) were the only ones with the range to reach the United States from the Soviet Union, and vice versa. 54 Ranft & Till p. 73. 55 Mawdsley p. 171. 56 David Fairhall Russia Looks to the Sea: A study of the expansion of Soviet Maritime Power London: Andre Deutsch, 1971 p. 187. 57 Norman Friedman The Fifty Year War: Conflict and Strategy in the Cold War London: Chatham Publishing, 2000 Chapter 27. 58 Mawdsley p. 174. 59 Sergei Chernyavskii p. 302. 60 Admiral Sergeyev quoted in Herrick Doctrine and Policy Book One p. 352. 61 Kurth p. 268. 62 Mawdsley p. 167. 63 Conway’s 1947–1995. The Fleet is examined in more detail in Chapter 7. 64 Norman Polmar Soviet Naval Developments (3rd ed.) Annapolis MD: The Nautical & Aviation Publishing Company of America, 1983 p. 6. 65 Weinland et al. p. 34. 66 Ibid. p. 35. 67 Herrick Book One p. 98. 68 Mawdsley p. 174. 69 Polmar Soviet Naval Developments p. 25. 70 Ibid. p. 46. 71 Mawdsley p. 175. 72 Polmar Soviet Naval Developments p. 6. 73 German dreadnoughts deployed outside European waters just once, in 1913–1914 when two battleships undertook a flag­-​­showing cruise to West Africa and South America. 74 James M. McConnell “Gorshkov’s Doctrine of Coercive Naval Diplomacy in Both Peace and War” in Weinland et al. pp. 71 & 80. 75 MccGwire “Advocacy of Seapower” p.  25. Trying to understand the meaning of every nuance of Soviet statements became a feature of “Kremlinology” in the West, sometimes inferring a significance that was entirely circumstantial. 76 Ranft & Till p. 200. 77 For a Russian view of events in 1973, see Lyle J. Goldstein & Yuri M. Zhukov “A Tale of Two Fleets: A Russian Perspective on the 1973 Standoff in the Mediterranean” Naval War College Review LVII:2 (Spring 2004) pp. 27–63. 78 Mawdsley p. 171. 79 S. G. Gorshkov The Sea Power of the State Annapolis MD: Naval Institute Press, 1979 (henceforth cited as SPOS). 80 Vertical Take­-​­Off and Landing. The new ships and aircraft are described in more detail in Chapter 7. See also Conway’s 1947–1995 pp. 374–376.

Sergei Gorshkov   47 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92

Mawdsley p. 177. Polmar Guide to the Soviet Navy p. xi. Chernyavskii p. 304. Now the Russian Navy’s only carrier, Admiral Kuznetsov. Kurth p. 262. Robert C. Whitten “Soviet Sea Power in Retrospect: Admiral of the Fleet of the Soviet Union Sergei G. Gorshkov and the Rise and Fall of the Soviet Navy” The Journal of Slavic Military Studies 11:2 (June 1998) p. 77. Chernyavskii p. 281. Quoted in Kurth p. 268. Commander Clyde A. Smith “The Meaning and Significance of the Gorshkov Articles” Naval War College Review XXVII:2 (March/April 1974) p. 18. Zumwalt in RSRS p. 138. Rowlands p. 4. Herrick Book One pp. 328–329.

Part II

Writings

4 Tirpitz­ – his writings

Tirpitz was just 22 years old when he first committed to paper his early thoughts about his chosen profession. In response to a pamphlet about the Navy sent to him by his father, he wrote back addressing some of the questions raised by the paper. As to whether the new German Reich should have a Navy Tirpitz, unsurprisingly, answered “Yes”.1 The protection of Germany’s coasts (he thought the French had blundered in not bombarding German coastal towns) and its maritime trade (which had suffered in the recent war) both required a battlefleet with which to destroy an enemy’s attacking ships. Thereafter the war could be carried to the enemy’s coast and trade routes.2 Tirpitz recognised that German shipyards were not then capable of building modern warships, so the ships would have to be purchased from abroad.3 He prophetically advocated the acquisition of Helgoland from Britain4 and the construction of a canal between the North Sea and the Baltic.5 These views were in themselves not especially radical­ – most German naval officers would have agreed. But few junior officers would have thought to write about matters of high policy, if only to their parents. Six years later, Tirpitz was working in the Torpedo Commission. His influential memorandum to Stosch6 was an insightful analysis of the technical and tactical potential of the new weapon. More significant for his future and that of the Navy were his more general observations. Patrick Kelly believes “This memorandum marked Tirpitz’s public debut as a thinking man  …”.7 He anticipated Mahan’s published work by over a decade with these words: It is characteristic of battle on the open sea that its sole goal is the annihilation of the enemy. Land battle offers other tactical possibilities, such as taking terrain, which do not exist at sea. Only annihilation can be accounted a success at sea. He didn’t use the phrase, but this is a succinct, though simplistic, exposition of command of the sea. Perhaps tellingly, he didn’t say what advantages command of the sea might bestow or whether it could be obtained by means other than decisive battle. The memorandum was an early example of his recurring tendency to extrapolate from sound tactical observations, via some tenuous connections, much less sound strategic conclusions.

52   Writings Tirpitz’s enduring belief in the importance of decisive battle emerged again in 1891 when he was the Baltic Station Chief of Staff. That year he wrote three important memoranda, influenced by his previous work in torpedoes and by the Army­-​­centric and Clausewitz­-​­influenced “Prussian School” of thought.8 He appeared to abandon his earlier emphasis on the difference between war on land and at sea, advocating that the Navy should “ ‘lean on’ the Army ‘as much as possible’ in its development of strategy and tactics”. This meant a commitment to offensive action and a “battle of armies on water”.9 The first memorandum, dated February 1891, was titled “Reason for the Retention of an Oberkommando with a Powerful Competence”. Tirpitz argued for the primacy of the OK so that it could pursue the Navy’s main task­  – ­preparing for decisive battle. He thus combined bureaucratic and operational arguments in the ongoing “turf war” between the OK and RMA, advancing a position he was later to reverse.10 His second paper in April, “Our Further Maritime and Military Development”, was widely circulated and may have been seen by the Kaiser.11 Tirpitz pointed out that strategy and tactics had not kept up with recent technological innovations, resulting in a “muddled” condition of the Navy.12 He focused entirely on the role of the Navy in European waters and ignored the defence of Germany’s embryonic overseas empire, a task he always saw as a distraction. He acknowledged the importance of coastal defence, including fortifications (such as Helgoland) and torpedo craft (his own particular expertise). But his main thrust, as always, was the need to prepare for a decisive encounter with the enemy, which would reduce the need for defence of Germany’s coasts and open up further possibilities for offensive action. The key question for Tirpitz was how to bring about this decisive battle: There is now agreement over the need to fight the enemy navy in open battle. There is however still some disagreement as to the significance of this battle and as to whether we should adopt an offensive or defensive strategy to bring it about.13 There were three notable omissions from this second memorandum. It did not discuss the “cruiser warfare” ideas of the French Jeune École, which were influential in Germany at the time. It did not mention the world’s strongest fleet (the British Royal Navy) and it did not use the phrase “Command of the Sea” even though it was an established concept and Alfred Mahan’s ground­-​­breaking work The Influence of Sea Power Upon History had been published the previous year. Rolf Hobson believes that Tirpitz had yet to read Mahan,14 which if true makes it the more remarkable that he was independently developing some of the same ideas in support of a battlefleet and in particular the importance of destroying the enemy’s main fleet.15 “Tirpitz … needed no Mahan to crystallize his ideas regarding German naval policy.”16 The second memorandum did cite Clausewitz’s dictum that war is the continuation of politics, and the political purpose of seapower was to underpin

Tirpitz – his writings   53 Tirpitz’s thinking in later life. He also emphasised the need for a concentration of force, given the size of potential enemy fleets and this perhaps explains his deliberate neglect of operations outside European waters. Finally, he asserted the importance of systematic trials and experiments (a result of his time with torpedoes), though how these could resolve strategic, as opposed to tactical, issues he did not explain. Tirpitz’s third, and longest, memorandum, “Manuscript about the New Organization of our Armoured Fleet”, decried Hollmann’s plans for manning the fleet during the winter months when much of it was laid up. He proposed a more efficient system in which tactics, training and organization would combine to support the winning of decisive battle. Again, the memorandum is notable for what it does not say. Tirpitz made no recommendations as to what size of fleet Germany should have, nor how it should act in the face of a superior enemy, a dilemma he never adequately addressed until it was too late, at the end of 1914.17 Hobson plausibly argues that Tirpitz’s insistence on the primacy of battle was a result of two factors: the influence of Prussian short war offensive military doctrine and a determination to avoid humiliating inaction as in 1866 and 1870–1871.18 Battle became, in Tirpitz’s mind, an end in its own right rather than a means to an end. Dirk Bonker calls this the “Cult of the Battle”.19 Soon after completing these memoranda, Tirpitz moved to the OK as Chief of Staff with particular responsibility for tactical development and the chance to put his ideas on an official footing. The result was his most famous and influential work, Dienstschrift IX of 1894.20 By now he had read Mahan,21 though he later claimed to have worked out line of battle tactics and the principle of working in squadrons as a result of practical exercises while Mahan was doing so separately based on historical study.22 In reality, most of Dienstschrift IX was based on Tirpitz’s own reading of history (and of Mahan).23 The preface to Dienstschrift IX stressed the importance of “systematic observation and analysis” of peacetime exercises in determining “proper action” in war, while acknowledging the practical limitations of such trials. This could be seen as an attempt to adopt a “scientific” method to resolve naval questions, foreshadowing Gorshkov’s Marxist­-​­Leninist scientific approach decades later. But Tirpitz soon proceeded from what was ostensibly a report on the autumn manoeuvres to a wide­-​­ranging strategic document, for which a modest peacetime tactical exercise could provide scant evidence. The second section of Dienstschrift IX, “The natural purpose of a fleet is the strategic offensive”, made clear that command of the sea (“the struggle for naval command”) is “the first task of a fleet; For it is only when the mastery of the sea has been attained that the means are ready to force the enemy to make peace”.24 Tirpitz believed naval engagements would take place along the coast “… and it is only a question of whether this takes place on the coast [the “sea boundaries”] of one’s own state or that of the enemy”. Naval operations would consist mainly of landings, coastal bombardment and blockade, all of which required the fleet to take the strategic offensive. The primacy of the offensive on land (reflecting Prussian military tradition) was even more marked at sea. It was essential to

54   Writings seek out battle, so that a successful outcome would allow the resultant command of the sea to be exploited­  – on the enemy’s coast. The alternative, a defensive posture, meant inactivity and “moral self­-​­destruction” (a clear reference to the Prussian Navy’s experience in the Wars of Unification). It also meant surrendering “… one’s own interests in the vast neutral regions of the sea”. Tirpitz’s critique of the strategic defensive accurately prophesised the dilemma his Navy would face after 1914.25 He understood that an inferior fleet cannot be made to fight, but a superior fleet should nonetheless seek battle. Being himself committed to the offensive, he completely failed to anticipate that a superior fleet might avoid battle but still reap the advantages of command of the sea. He did recognise the potential for a temporarily defensive strategy, but cautioned that a “defensive” fleet cannot take the offensive, while an “offensive” fleet can adopt a defensive posture. “… [T]he strategic offensive will always have to be the guiding star. The struggle for maritime command remains the ultimate goal.” There is a further purpose behind an offensive fleet, which is as a “desirable alliance force”, a theoretical advantage to which Tirpitz returned as State Secretary. He was never able to explain which other country would value Germany as an ally because of the strength of its battlefleet (its army was a different matter). Dienstschrift IX provided an important new departure for Tirpitz. For the first time, and no doubt influenced by his recent reading of Mahan, he discussed the peacetime importance of the navy. Trade, fishing and colonies “… are impossible without a fleet capable of taking the offensive”. Without such a fleet, the business world would lack confidence. “This is the chief purpose of the fleet.” This is, of course, a simplistic reading of Mahan’s more sophisticated view of the interrelationship of the different components of seapower. (He completely ignores one of Mahan’s factors, geography, which in Germany’s case was a fundamental weakness.) Hobson’s critique is damning: “Quite how … warships could conquer and retain markets more effectively than businessmen … Tirpitz  … [n]ever bothered to explain.”26 Tirpitz concluded the section by stating “The starting point of the development of a fleet must be the sea and the interests of the nation,” which perhaps sounds more profound than it is. Tirpitz opened his third section, “General observations about offensive naval warfare”, with a surprising and in modern terms very “Joint” observation. “…  [N]aval war does not stand alone, but forms part of the overall war. Its correct direction is therefore not possible in isolation, without taking into account the policy and management of the land war … the fleet [can be] entirely at the service of the operation of the army, or vice versa.” In such cases, the selection of the overall commander should be dictated by the nature of the operation.27 He extolled the importance of mutual understanding, which we may take as an entreaty to the dominant Army High Command to better appreciate the importance of the fleet. Gorshkov would have understood and sympathised. Given his emphasis on the strategic offensive in order to win command of the sea, it is perhaps not surprising that Tirpitz dealt with a battle­-​­avoiding inferior

Tirpitz – his writings   55 fleet (a “Fleet in Being”) as a problem rather than an opportunity (if it was Germany that had the inferior fleet). He understood that a Fleet in Being threatens the enemy’s sea command, and so it must be brought to battle. There can be no tactical defensive at sea (unlike on land) and no means by which an inferior fleet can defeat a superior one (again, unlike on land, where terrain plays a major role). So, the fleet must be superior and it must attack. Tirpitz, based on the lessons of the sailing era, recommended a one­-​­third superiority. Having previously ignored the Jeune École, Tirpitz addressed it directly. He rejected the idea that modern technology had made offensive operations by battle squadrons unfeasible. Steam propulsion made coal supply an issue, but Tirpitz thought the greater mobility and imperviousness to weather of steam ships more than compensated. “… [O]n the whole with steam power the strategic offensive is more favoured compared with earlier times.” On the subject of torpedo boats, the focus of much Jeune École thinking, Tirpitz drew directly on his own experience and the recent exercises to acknowledge their utility in preventing a close blockade in daylight. But he concluded that they did not pose an insuperable challenge to heavy ships, especially at night or offshore. “It is therefore proven that battle, especially large battles … [and] the offensive of large squadrons … will be decisive for the outcome of the war.” Tirpitz agreed with the Jeune École that cruiser­-​­based warfare against enemy merchant ships may be the correct path. But it was the strategy of the weak, when enemy squadrons still dominated the seas. It “… therefore must not be the planned goal of the development of a great naval power”. Tirpitz was advocating a fleet superior to its likely enemies, so he did not consider whether a cruiser­-​­based attack on trade might be appropriate if Germany did find itself (as it was later to do) the inferior naval power. That Tirpitz devoted more than a quarter of the entire memorandum to refuting the ideas of the Jeune École is significant. German naval inferiority appeared a given to most Germans, including many naval officers. The idea that Germany might one day challenge the Royal Navy would have seemed preposterous­  – Russia and France were the likely enemies.28 In arguing for a powerful German battlefleet, ostensibly measured against those two countries’ fleets, Tirpitz had to demonstrate why an acceptance of naval inferiority was the wrong course of action. He concluded: Irrespective of whether the strategic plan is offensive or defensive, fought exclusively by [battlefleet] squadrons or with cruisers as well, the struggle for naval dominance forms the decisive phase and its resolution will be effected by battle just as it always has been. Dienstschrift IX laid the foundation for what came to be known as the “Tirpitz Plan”. But it wasn’t Tirpitz’s last word and we should not retrospectively read into it elements that only appeared later. For example, Gary Weir is quite wrong to say that in 1894 Tirpitz was advocating a challenge to the

56   Writings Royal Navy by means of what came to be known as the Risk Theory,29 whatever his private thoughts might have been. Both are entirely absent from Dienstschrift IX. But Weir is right to observe that a coastal defence mind­-set ​­ would have been incompatible with Weltpolitik ambitions.30 Nonetheless, it is clear that in Dienstschrift IX Tirpitz was laying the foundations for his later strategic blunders. Kelly is right that “Strategically, the OK under Tirpitz perpetuated illusions even before the navy got a whiff of Mahan. Aggressive operations plans were entirely unrealistic. Sensible defensive schemes, using Germany’s great geographical advantage in a war with France and Russia [emphasis added] were not even considered.”31 Once Tirpitz did get a “whiff of Mahan” his commitment to an offensive strategy only strengthened. But nowhere does Dienstschrift IX explain how the all­-important ​­ decisive engagement could be brought about. In the Appendix to Dienstschrift IX, Tirpitz explicitly laid out the size of fleet Germany needed in order to provide the necessary one­-third ​­ measure of superiority over the French North Sea Fleet or the Russian Baltic Fleet. Germany required 17 battleships (two squadrons and a flagship) plus cruisers and torpedo­-​ ­boat flotillas. This was to form the basis of the First Navy Law four years later. Eighteen months after Tirpitz wrote Dienstschrift IX, he made his next major contribution to German naval thinking, in his commentary on the OK’s memorandum of November 1895.32 The OK’s paper argued for a comprehensive building programme at the heart of which was a two­-​­squadron battlefleet for service in home waters, in contrast to the RMA’s plan for a cruiser­-​­based fleet for overseas service. As the former was what Tirpitz had argued for in Dienstschrift IX, it was not surprising that Tirpitz’s own paper33 began by endorsing the OK memorandum. He observed “… once 2 squadrons … are actually available and concentrated, they will constitute a remarkable power, even if they face a fleet of the first rank [emphasis added]”. The significance of this statement may not have been understood at the time, but this is the first oblique reference to Britain, for only the Royal Navy was a “fleet of the first rank”. Nonetheless, the risk of a two­-​­front war (i.e. with France and Russia) was the “chief strategic argument for getting approval for the fleet strength we initially need and … determining precisely that strength.” After proposing a modest revision of the OK’s proposed programme, Tirpitz characteristically ventured into wider strategic matters: Owing to the international situation, there is a risk that our Empire will lose its position as a major power in the coming century unless no time is lost in promoting vigorously and systematically all our maritime interests. At the same time, this creates the best remedy against educated and uneducated social democracy.… The awareness that developing our maritime interests constitutes the new, unique national task has grown in recent years. But … although Germany ha[s] sailors it [is] not a sea­-going ​­ nation.

Tirpitz – his writings   57 There is even less appreciation, even amongst the educated classes of our nation, of the fact that only maritime power can provide a sound basis for the maritime interests of our empire in a world where things clash violently. This was a fusing of conservative Prussian/German nationalism with Mahanian seapower advocacy. Tirpitz went on to set out the foundation of what would later be known as the Risk Theory directed at Britain, though the country was still only obliquely referred to: Even the greatest European maritime state would be more conciliatory towards us if we were able to bring to bear the influence of 2–3 good, highly trained squadrons in politics and­  – if necessary­  – in conflicts. We would never achieve this with cruisers deployed abroad. How “2–3 squadrons” to influence relations with Britain could be squared with Dienstschrift IX’s advocacy of the strategic offensive was not explained. Though he didn’t use the term, he was setting out the case for a type of Fleet in Being34 despite his previous denigration of an inferior fleet. Tirpitz concluded the paper with a series of measures to build support for such a navy, of the kind that he was to implement after 1897.35 In a letter to General Stosch in February, widely quoted by historians, Tirpitz expanded on some of his arguments, and named Britain for the first time. He re­-​­stated the perceived “alliance value” of a German fleet, but bemoaned that: Up to the present time our policy has failed completely to grasp the political importance of sea power [Emphasis in the original]. Moreover, if we endeavour to venture into the world [a reference to Weltpolitik] and strengthen ourselves commercially by means of the sea, then, if we do not provide ourselves simultaneously with a certain measure of sea power, we shall be erecting a perfectly hollow structure. When we go out into the world we shall run against interests everywhere that are either already established or to be developed in the future. This means conflicts of interest.… Sea power alone comprehends the many­-​­sidedness of world policy. Even if it does not come to war, therefore, we shall always come off worst politically.   Cruiser warfare [commerce raiding] does not look very promising to me … we lack any harbour of refuge.… What remains [for us] is the battle fleet proper which is to be concentrated in the North Sea.…   Though not for a second do I harbour any doubts that in this case England will emerge victorious, however, a rather unpleasant complication would arise from the little war against Germany.36 Tirpitz has erected his own “hollow structure” here. He explained neither why Germany would want to pick a fight with the strongest naval power nor how an inferior battlefleet in the North Sea could protect Germany’s overseas

58   Writings interests. He hinted at how to reconcile these two dilemmas with his embryonic Risk Theory (the “unpleasant complication”) but is yet to elaborate on how that might actually work. Kelly describes it as an attempt to paper over an insoluble problem.37 Tirpitz, consciously or not, was also wrestling with another dilemma. In a further letter to Stosch he wrote, echoing Mahan, “naval power is the only politically versatile type of power there is”.38 But Mahan was writing about one maritime power, Britain, for another maritime audience, the United States. Could Mahan’s observations be applied to an almost landlocked continental state like Germany? Admiral Muller, a member of the “Torpedo Gang” who served with Tirpitz in the OK, wrote the following year “Either we harness the total strength of the nation, ruthlessly, even if it means accepting the risk of a major war, or we limit ourselves to continental power alone”.39 This was an astute observation, but Tirpitz himself never faced up to the starkness of the choice. In June 1897, Tirpitz returned from the Far East to become State Secretary. From now on, the significance of what he said was matched by the importance of who was saying it. Nor did he waste time in saying it. Within two weeks of taking office, he presented a secret memorandum to the Kaiser in person. “General Criteria for the Establishment of Our Fleet According to Ship Classes and Ship Designs,”40 “the most remarkable document in the history of the German Navy … changed the course of modern history”.41 The memorandum included a detailed, costed plan for the fleet Tirpitz wanted to build, following the template previously laid down in Dienstschrift IX. But, as ever, the importance of the document lay as much in its strategic rationale as in its detailed proposals: 1

The most difficult wartime situation in which our fleet may find itself should be taken as the basis for determining the ship classes.… For the composition which meets the requirements of the most difficult situation must also be assumed to be adequate for all other situations.

In other words, a fleet built against Britain would also be able to deal with France and Russia. 2

For Germany, England is at present the most dangerous opponent at sea. It is also the opponent against whom we most urgently need a certain measure of naval power as a political power factor.

Tirpitz did not explain why Britain [“England”] should be an opponent. But he had introduced the idea of having some naval strength for political purposes. 3

Owing to a lack of bases on our part and an abundance of them on the part of England, a cruiser and transoceanic war against England is so hopeless that this type of war against England must be excluded from any planning.…

Tirpitz – his writings   59 This was a sound judgement. Commerce warfare could, until the advent of submarines and, later, aircraft, only be carried out by surface ships in the face of the Royal Navy’s incontestable command of the sea. But Tirpitz did not explain why a war based on an inferior battlefleet should be any more attractive a prospect. 4

… [O]ur fleet must be established in a form that enables it to display its maximum war­-​­fighting capability between Helgoland and the River Thames.

Which is where it can directly threaten Britain while remaining within reach of its own bases in northwest Germany. This explains why German ships had a relatively short range and poor habitability. They were designed solely to operate for short periods in the North Sea. 5

A fleet formed on this basis will also meet our requirements against France up to Brest or Cherbourg and against Russia up to Kronstadt.…

Tirpitz appeared to be anticipating at least the possibility of war against all three, which was to prove a self­-​­fulfilling prophecy when his naval challenge to Britain drove it closer to the Dual Alliance powers. 6

The military situation against England requires as great a number of battleships as possible.

There was no “military situation” against Britain until Tirpitz created one. What came to be known as the “Tirpitz Memorandum” (of course there were many others, before and after) not only set out the plan to be implemented in the First Navy Law, it also provided the strategic underpinning for the much more ambitious plans that were to follow. It marked an important departure from German policy and Tirpitz’s own writings up to this point. The Memorandum abandoned the pursuit of a one­-​­third superior fleet with which to adopt the “strategic offensive” and it explicitly, if secretly, identified Britain as the country against which the fleet was to be built. Tirpitz later wrote that “The lever of our Weltpolitik was the North Sea; it influenced the entire globe without us needing to be directly engaged in any other place”.42 The Navy would compel Britain to come to terms with Germany’s interests throughout the world and grant it its “place in the sun”.43 Paul Kennedy calls it the “dagger at the throat strategy”.44 If Dienstschrift IX was the “bible”45 of the Imperial German Navy, the 1897 Tirpitz Memorandum was its “birth certificate”.46 It was a watershed in the history of the German Navy and it marked both the beginning of the “Tirpitz Plan” for fleet expansion and the re­-​­orientation of German naval policy away from a wartime strategic offensive against an inferior fleet and towards a political factor in peacetime relations with a superior naval power­  – “a shortcut to Weltpolitik”.47

60   Writings The immediate consequence of the 1897 memorandum was the First Navy Law of the following year.48 The Law itself dealt entirely with the future fleet that was to be acquired. The rationale for it was provided by government statements in the Reichstag, which were careful to avoid the strategic ambitions of Tirpitz’s memorandum. He only hinted at the British focus of the fleet plan: “… you can create enough ships so that even a seapower of the first rank would hesitate three times before attacking our coasts.”49 We have already seen in Chapter 2 that the 1898 Law was but the first stage of the “Tirpitz Plan”. In preparation for the second Law, Tirpitz compiled a briefing for the Kaiser in September 1899.50 He proposed a more than doubling of the battlefleet: As soon as the objective has been achieved, Your Majesty will have an effective power of 45 battleships and all supporting forces. The power will be so enormous that only England will be superior. However, even versus England the odds are undoubtedly in our favour in view of the given geographical circumstances, military service system, mobilisation, torpedo boats, tactical training, organisational structure … and unified command under the monarch. The relative moderation of the 1898 Law had been discarded and Tirpitz was now proposing a fleet, the second strongest in the world, which could contemplate facing the Royal Navy in battle. Aside from the combat situation, which is by no means hopeless for us, England, for general political reasons and from a down­-​­to­-​­earth businesslike point of view, will have lost any inclination to attack Germany so that Your Majesty will be conceded such a degree of naval prestige as to allow Your Majesty to pursue a grand overseas policy.… The new fleet will deter Britain from an attack on Germany, but Tirpitz provided no evidence (for there was none) that this might be Britain’s intention. But, once the idea of British enmity had taken hold, every subsequent squabble (most of them of Germany’s making) was taken as evidence of British hostility.51 Tirpitz then made a further leap in assuming that, free from the (non­-​­existent) threat of attack, Germany will secure a worldwide freedom of action. … [T]he establishment of a powerful fleet for Germany is such an absolute necessity that without it Germany would descend into ruin.   There are 4 world powers. Russia, England, America and Germany. Because 2 of these powers can be reached only by sea, state power at sea moves to the fore.…   The major states are getting bigger and stronger, whereas the small ones are becoming smaller and weaker.…

Tirpitz – his writings   61   … As Germany has lagged behind in particular with respect to sea power, it is vital for Germany, as a world power and a great cultural nation, to make up lost ground.… Sea power is indispensible [sic.] for Germany if it does not want to go into decline quickly. The Social Darwinist impulse behind these statements is clear: expand or die.52 Tirpitz was right to understand that Britain and the United States could only be reached by seapower, though he doesn’t explain how a battlefleet in the North Sea could affect the United States, and the implication was that in addition to France, Russia and Britain, the United States was now also seen as a potential enemy.53 A “Justification” (Begründung) attached to the 1900 Second Naval Law54 that followed made it publicly clear, for the first time, who the fleet was really aimed at. To the German Empire the security of its economic development, and more especially of its foreign trade throughout the world, is a vital question. To attain this the German Empire requires not only peace on land but peace also at sea­ – not peace at any price, but peace with honour, making provision for its legitimate requirements.…   An unfortunate [i.e. losing] naval war, of even one year’s duration only, would annihilate Germany’s sea trade and thereby bring about the most calamitous conditions … in economic respects and … in social respects also.…   The [First] Navy Act has not made provision for the eventuality of a naval war against a great Sea Power.… This is the first public, if cautious, reference to Britain. And we now know that this was, at best, disingenuous, as Tirpitz had included Britain in his thinking at least as early as 1897. He goes on: … the fleet must retire into a port and await a favourable opportunity for a sortie. Even supposing it scores a success.… The enemy possessing a superior number of vessels may replace his losses, but we cannot. In a war against a materially superior Naval Power, the fleet provided for in the [First] Navy Act will render a blockade difficult … but it will never be able to prevent it … no great country can be shut off more easily than Germany from any sea traffic worth speaking of.… There is some strategic wisdom in these observations, which accurately forecast the position in which Germany was to find itself between 1914 and 1918. One way to avoid a stifling of German trade would have been to avert war with the country that could threaten it­  – Britain. It had, by way of a loose parallel, long been a staple of British foreign policy that the security of Canada and the West Indies could only be secured by avoiding conflict with the United States.

62   Writings Tirpitz and the German government chose a different route, what came to be known as the Risk Theory: … [I]n order to protect Germany’s sea trade and colonies, there is one means only: Germany must have a fleet of such strength that, even for the mightiest Naval Power, a war with her would involve such risks as to ­jeopardise its own supremacy.   For this purpose it is not absolutely necessary that the German fleet should be as strong as that of the greatest Sea Power, because, generally, a great Sea Power will not be in a position to concentrate all of its forces against us. But, even if it should succeed in confronting us in superior force, the enemy would be so considerably weakened in overcoming the resistance of a strong German fleet that, notwithstanding a victory gained, the enemy’s supremacy would not at first be secured any longer by a sufficient fleet. The Risk Theory was Tirpitz’s one entirely original contribution to naval thought. It sought to make a virtue of necessity, recognising German inferiority with respect to Britain and also Germany’s constrained geographic position. It adapted the Fleet in Being principle to achieve a deterrent effect against its “most likely” foe. It was an imaginative attempt to achieve leverage over a stronger opponent, but it crucially relied on the threat of a third party to make it effective. In 1900 that was not an unreasonable assumption. Britain was on no better terms with France and Russia than it was with Germany, though the supreme irony was that the 1900 Naval Law was instrumental in causing Britain to revise its relations with those same powers. In that sense, the 1900 Law and the Risk Theory contained the seeds of their own ultimate failure. The Risk Theory contained another inherent flaw. Were it ever to be tested, it assumed a German defeat. The prospect of this was hardly a basis on which to carry out such an ambitious programme, not least for the men who would serve in this sacrificial fleet.55 But it was never meant to be tested. It was supposed to deter Britain, not defeat it. Tirpitz also made two critical, but mistaken, assumptions. One was that Britain would be unable to concentrate all its naval strength in home waters, due to its worldwide imperial responsibilities (though Tirpitz himself was doing just that). This would improve the odds for Germany. Second, the navy of Drake and Nelson would automatically adopt the strategic offensive56 (which Tirpitz himself had abandoned) and offer battle where it best suited Germany, between Helgoland and the Thames. Neither assumption proved correct. Tirpitz was consistently clear that the ultimate purpose of the fleet was as a “political power factor”, a view entirely in accord with Clausewitz’s teaching. But he was inconsistent in how that would play out. The Risk Theory assumed that victory for the British would be so expensive that they would avoid inflicting defeat on Germany. But, as the 1897 Memorandum makes clear, Tirpitz was looking for a way for Germany to defeat Britain. This dichotomy mattered, because one meant the avoidance of war (by both parties) and the other

Tirpitz – his writings   63 required Germany to seek it (though only under favourable circumstances). In operational terms, the two approaches would require very different deployment plans. In consequence, “… German naval planning for a war against England … appears to have been exceedingly erratic and confused”.57 In terms of the “Tirpitz Plan” itself, the significance of the Risk Theory was that the one­-​­third superiority required by the offensive was turned on its head. It was now Britain that required the margin of local superiority so that Germany could contemplate “deterring” Britain while remaining numerically inferior, in contrast to the earlier requirement for a one­-​­third superiority over France or Russia. Tirpitz was ambivalent about whether the Risk Theory was a defensive way to deter Britain from attacking Germany or an offensive means of coercing Britain into conceding equality in international and colonial affairs58 (its “place in the sun”). Tirpitz separately claimed both, but never fully reconciled them in one place. Britain, at whom the Risk Theory was directed, was unconcerned by the former as it had no intention of attacking Germany, certainly not until Germans themselves started talking about it. But the latter was a clear challenge and Tirpitz understood it as such. Thus he conflated the two as there was, he believed, a “danger zone” during which the British might conduct a pre­-​ ­emptive attack on the growing fleet to forestall a future challenge­ – what came to be known as the “Copenhagen Complex”.59 Here the logic became truly “Kafkaesque”. A fleet built to deter an attack might just provoke one. To avoid that provocation, it was necessary to avoid challenging Britain elsewhere, though the purpose of the fleet was to pose just such a challenge. Patrick Kelly has demonstrated how Tirpitz’s so­-​­called “quiet years” after 1900 were, behind the scenes, anything but quiescent.60 But, having by now developed and set out his main ideas, Tirpitz had relatively little new to say in doctrinal and policy terms. During the Russo­-Japanese ​­ War, he did intervene in diplomatic matters to advise against a mooted alliance with Russia. His contribution to a short­-​­lived debate in German policy circles is revealing: … [A]n alliance with Russia … would not only be worth nothing in military terms in a naval war, but, in my judgement, it would not be of much importance in a land war either.… In my opinion, the passive benefit that is intended to be drawn from the security of our border to the East solely on account of such an alliance existing has already been achieved on account of Russia’s present condition, without the alliance … even after the war, Russia will be too paralysed for quite some time to launch an offensive westwards so that, in my judgement, with respect to grand policy we may actually consider our eastern border to not be under threat.…   The main thing … remains the fact that an alliance with Russia will not yield a real, i.e. a military, benefit for us.…61 Tirpitz goes on to argue that an alliance with Russia would not prevent Britain from attacking Germany, but would constrain Germany in dealing with

64   Writings France. He concluded, tellingly, “… gaining time and expanding our fleet are our most important political tasks”. The strategic unreality of some of Tirpitz’s observations is startling. That he could so lightly dismiss the potential threat from Russia, even if it was temporarily reduced by events in the Far East, is extraordinary, especially as he had previously identified Russia as one of the four “world powers”. But he was fixated by Britain and the need to grow his fleet. In his eyes, all matters of high policy were to be subordinated to his navalist ambitions. For an avowed student of Clausewitz, this reversal of the relationship between politics and the military instrument demonstrates his ability, as with his reading of Mahan, to misunderstand, or at least wilfully misinterpret, the works of others. Tirpitz also intervened in a debate concerning the right of capture in naval warfare, part of a wider American proposal to refine the laws of war at sea. This being a more tactical, if also legal, issue, Tirpitz is on much sounder ground: “The right of capture is such an indispensible [sic.] asset of naval warfare for imposing one’s will on the enemy that anyone who thinks he can take advantage of it would never dispense with it.”62 It was also true that, if such a ban could be made effective, two principal rationales for navies­ – the protection of one’s own trade and the interdiction of the enemy’s trade­ – would have gone. In advance of the 1906 Novelle, Tirpitz prepared a lengthy and wide­-ranging ​­ memorandum for the Chancellor.63 Aside from the details of the proposed amendment to the 1900 Law and a discussion of relations with the Reichstag, the paper delved into foreign and domestic policies. … [T]he realisation that England will have to reckon on a future planned inventory of 50 to 60 first­-​­rate German battleships will result in such a shift in real power factors that even a calm and reasonable government will be forced to decide to crush such an opponent before he can achieve this kind of military strength with its inherent threat to England’s position as a world power.   The probability of becoming embroiled in an armed conflict within the next 4 years, before even one of the new battleships could be completed, would be greatly increased by this. Considering the political events which occurred in rapid succession during the last 10 years [a reference to a series of international crises] and the resulting, quite legitimate desire to be able to bring also a substantial German naval power to bear on political decisions as soon as possible, the naval administration and finally Germany herself has been constantly faced with the unpalatable fact that, while it is possible to produce armies out of thin air in an emergency64 the creation of a fleet requires the work of a generation, as Napoleon found out to his detriment. Owing to this fact, there is no way for us to avoid pursuing a course via a completely unsatisfactory fleet and afterwards a purely defensive fleet, and the unpleasant political and military consequences arising from this we have to accept as irremediable to the best of our ability. Sheer impatience will do only harm.…

Tirpitz – his writings   65   Whether the end result should be an offensive fleet as desired by the Navy League can be left completely undecided at present … such an alteration of naval policy [i.e. to seek a fleet superior to Britain’s] should only be initiated at a point in time when the defensive [i.e. Risk] fleet is actually afloat.   Raising offensive perspectives at the present moment is to be regarded as irresponsible. This is a frank acknowledgement of the “danger zone”65 when the risk of being “Copenhagened” is at its greatest with the resultant constraints on German policy­ – the precise opposite of the freedom of action a “political power factor” was supposed to create. Tirpitz was pleading, again, for political and diplomatic restraint in order not to prejudice the fleet plan. In his discussion of domestic politics, Tirpitz was concerned solely with getting the new measures passed and financed by the Reichstag. There is no mention of a domestic political rationale for fleet expansion, which supports Kelly’s view that Tirpitz’s naval advocacy had more limited objectives.66 In a 1907 memorandum on the continuing debate about the right of capture, Tirpitz outlined more fully than hitherto his views on the reasons for British hostility towards Germany.67 The reasons for this threat lie in economic interests and in what in England is referred to as naval supremacy and political freedom. With respect to both aspects England feels disturbed by Germany. Naval supremacy and political action have always, primarily, merely served as a means to advance economic interests and, therefore, the latter can be considered to be the ultimate cause for the threat of war. The expansion of our fleet constrains England’s power to put forward its interests recklessly and without consideration of others. That is why our fleet is of course a thorn in England’s flesh as it interferes with the implementation of English pressure politics.…   It has always been the “City of London”68 which ultimately made the decision of whether to start these wars [with Spain, Holland and France] … England as a “businessman”69 currently considers Germany as a national enemy and, therefore, in my point of view the risk of a war with England is high and it is the central issue with regard to Germany’s political situation.… Tirpitz here combines a neo­-​­mercantilist, zero­-​­sum view of economics with an almost Marxist belief in the primacy of economic motivations. It never occurred to him that Britain was not just Germany’s economic competitor but also that each country was the other’s greatest customer. He goes on to examine German and British options in a naval war. The highest degree of safety for our merchant vessels at sea at the outbreak of war can be achieved by … us providing England with more important tasks than hunting German merchant vessels.…

66   Writings   At present [1907] England might be able to maintain a blockade in the North Sea in the old sense [i.e. a close blockade].… After a couple of years England will probably no longer be able to proceed like this. It will then be forced to confine itself to blockade the passage to the south and north of England.… The main effect of a blockade widened that way would not affect us much less than the closer inshore blockade. From an economic point of view, we would also not be in a position to withstand it for a long time.… The only course of action then open to us in order to make England feel the effects of war would be to apply in the most reckless way the right of capture in the broadest sense including the harassment of the English coast and harbours by our battle fleet or parts of it. We do not have any other means and England knows this. A blockade of England imposed by us is not in question in the foreseeable future. Landings in England in the manner of Napoleon are a pipedream as long as the English fleet exists; even a temporarily significantly weaker English fleet would make such landings impossible.   If we do not want to step down from the world stage, and that is what we are talking about, this guarantee will only be provided by our own strength and the potential to hit England hard during a war.… Here the bankruptcy of Tirpitz’s strategic reasoning is laid bare­ – by Tirpitz himself. In the event of war with Britain, Germany faces an economically ruinous blockade. If the Royal Navy is forced to mount a distant, as opposed to close, blockade (as was to happen in 1914–1918) it will make little difference. Germany for its part can neither invade Britain nor blockade it. All it can do is bombard its North Sea coastal towns (as it was to do in 1914–1916). Tirpitz never considered trying to defend German colonies or trade directly. But still, somehow, Germany’s place on the world stage is to be secured by the ability to “hit England hard”. By 1910, Tirpitz had to face the twin possibilities that Britain would maintain a sufficient naval superiority as to negate the Risk Theory, and that a naval limitation agreement might curtail his own building programme: The backbone of Your Majesty’s naval policy is that the German fleet must be so powerful that an attack would be a great risk for England. Germany’s position as a world power and the impact of our navy to keep the peace rest on this risk.   If the result [of naval limitation] is both to make and preserve an English navy so powerful that launching an attack on Germany is no risk at all, the German naval expansion was a mistake from an historical point of view; Your Majesty’s naval policy will have ended up in utter fiasco. Against the background of the political situation, Germany’s status as a world power would remain dependent on England’s good will.   Our naval programme requires the adherence to a specific ratio to the English navy.… An adequate ratio (2 to 3) must be the goal.… This is necessary

Tirpitz – his writings   67 a. for our naval policy not to look pointless and hopeless and b. to maintain our political position in the world.70 This was a classic example of the “sunk costs” argument, often used to justify the continuation of failing policies.71 But it was sufficient to persuade the Kaiser to overrule the sceptical Chancellor, Bethmann­-​­Hollweg. It was also significant because a number had been applied to the Risk Theory. Germany required two­-​ ­thirds of British strength in order to pose the required level of risk. A year later, Tirpitz’s growing pessimism was evident. Historical judgement will depend on whether our purpose, i.e. protection against an English attack­  – a good chance to defend ourselves­  – has been achieved.   In case the purpose is not achieved, Your Majesty’s policy will always have to show consideration for England. All sacrifices for naval forces would have been in vain. History [will] condemn us.72 By now Tirpitz had come round to the idea of a naval agreement as the best means of securing the 2 : 3 (or perhaps 10 : 16) ratio necessary for the Risk Theory to operate.73 Without it, he feared that his fleet might face a worse ratio, perhaps 1 : 2. Tirpitz’s gloom was echoed by the Commander­-​­in­-​­Chief in January 1912 when he wrote, “The English superiority in terms of numbers, character and preparedness is overwhelming”.74 Operational planning became increasingly cautious, sharply at odds with Tirpitz’s earlier emphasis on the strategic offensive and a decisive battle. Tirpitz himself argued against stationing the fleet at Kiel rather than Wilhelmshaven as it “would undoubtedly be interpreted by the public as an indication that the navy will forgo defending against a blockade of our North Sea coast … and would justifiably question why such huge amounts of money had to be sacrificed for it”.75 The matter was resolved in favour of Wilhelmshaven, but at the cost of an overtly defensive strategy.76 The following year he was even more fatalistic, commenting, “… it seems more worthy of a great nation to fight for the supreme objective and maybe perish with honour rather than to relinquish its future ingloriously”.77 His final word before the outbreak of war acknowledged the failure of his policies: “The English navy is developing so strongly that the risk principle and thus the basis of our naval policy are in danger.”78 We saw in Chapter 2 that the coming of war in the summer of 1914 quickly led to Tirpitz’s marginalisation, though his influence had been in decline for at least a couple of years before that. Just as his appointment as State Secretary in 1897 lent real importance to what he said and wrote, the outbreak of hostilities had the opposite effect. This was probably just as well for, as previously noted, his operational and tactical ideas were out of date and impractical. He had no better ideas as to how to resolve Germany’s strategic dilemma either, in common with the rest of the naval leadership. Intermittently

68   Writings he returned to his old belief in decisive battle, if only to demonstrate relevance and valour in order to maintain the Navy’s call on resources after the War. He also expressed caution and wanted to preserve his fleet as a factor in the eventual peace settlement. He could not reconcile these competing instincts and was further distracted by a fear of repeating the inaction of 1866 and 1870–1871.79 Once the War had begun, Tirpitz could be more open about his ultimate objective and admitted that “… a fleet equally as strong as Britain’s” had always been his intent. The Risk Theory had been a public rationale for inferiority until equality with Britain was achieved.80 In the meantime, he quickly realised that an answer was required to the British blockade, and that success was unlikely against the British Grand Fleet.81 The result was his swift and enthusiastic conversion to a commerce war, not of the type he had long dismissed (conducted by cruisers), but by submarines whose technical evolution now made a U­-​­Boat offensive realistic. Tirpitz’s final words on seapower derive mainly from his memoirs published in 1919. They need to be read with great caution; they are a post facto justification for Tirpitz’s policies and an exculpation of any responsibility for Germany’s recent defeat.82 But, however partial a view they present, there is no reason to think Tirpitz did not himself believe his own (selective) version of events, a few blatant untruths notwithstanding.83 They also set out, more clearly than he was sometimes free to do at the time, the beliefs and principles behind his policies when in office. Harking back to his time at the OK, Tirpitz recalled that: Two lines of thought were emerging at that time: the tactical necessity for a battle fleet, if we were striving for sea­-power ​­ and wanted to build ships to some purpose; and the political necessity of establishing a protecting navy for Germany’s maritime interests, which were growing at such an irresistible pace. The navy never seemed to me to be an end in itself [Tirpitz really is stretching credulity here], but always a function of these maritime interests. Without sea­-power ​­ Germany’s position in the world resembled a mollusc without a shell. The flag had to follow trade.…   We owed the growth of our physical and material strength to the growth of our industry. We increased our population by a million every year … within the unalterable and narrow limits of our native soil; and all this depended upon the maintenance of our export trade, which for the lack of our sea­-power ​­ depended solely upon the favour of foreigners, i.e. competitors [Britain].…   This, combined with our hemmed­-​­in and dangerous continental position, strengthened me in my conviction that no time was to be lost in beginning the attempt to constitute ourselves a sea­-power. ​­ For only a fleet, which represented alliance­-value ​­ to other great powers, in other words a competent battle fleet, could put into the hands of our diplomats the tool, which if used to good purpose, could supplement our power on land.84

Tirpitz – his writings   69 To what extent Tirpitz had really thought all this out as early as 1895 is immaterial, though these strategic ideas do go beyond what he had written in 1894 in Dienstschrift IX. The significance of Tirpitz’s words is that they were a succinct statement of much of his thinking. Germany’s greatness and prosperity relies on the sea, but, in the absence of a powerful navy and in view of Germany’s encircled continental position, it is all at the mercy of Britain. So, Germany needs a battlefleet with “alliance value” as a diplomatic tool, a powerful hint as to the peacetime value of a fleet designed for war. Tirpitz always resisted two ideas: … the idea of a special coastal defence and that of a cruiser fleet for foreign service. The world­-​­war has proved that the best coastal defence is a battle­-​ ­fleet. As to the cruiser war … a war on the high seas against England and other great States is altogether excluded by our lack of foreign bases and by Germany’s geographical situation … what we need is a battle fleet, which can be stationed between Helgoland and the Thames.85 Tirpitz was effectively dismissing the ideas of the Jeune École, but didn’t explain how a battlefleet would be any better, other than for its “alliance value”. Nor, even as late as 1919, could he identify who such an ally might have been (he had argued against an alliance with Russia). Germany’s actual allies in the years before the War were Austria­-​­Hungary and Italy, second­-​­or even third­-​­rate naval powers most concerned about each other in the Adriatic, far away from German interests. A good example of Tirpitz’s ability to invert the truth is the statement that “… we were compelled by the threats of the British in the first decade of this century to concentrate our fleet in home waters”.86 Substitute “the Germans” for “the British” and this could, with considerably more justification, have been the words of Jacky Fisher.87 Tirpitz was also capable of acknowledging the adverse impact of his policies, without apparently realising that he was doing so. Thus “… the fact of our building a fleet was felt by England to be an encroachment upon her monopoly of the seas, and that in this respect the building of the fleet made our diplomatic position more difficult”.88 And yet, two pages later, he could also assert “The building of the German fleet was now improving from year to year the conditions for an Anglo­-German ​­ understanding, for it was repressing England’s own inclination to war …”.89 Tirpitz summed up his belief in seapower thus: In 1914 … protected as Germany was by the construction of our fleet, which had almost passed through the “danger zone”, we had practically won by peaceful methods the rank of fourth world­-​­Power, without England having found an opportunity as yet to intervene.… There was no other way to the position of world­-​­power than by building a fleet. Great prosperity is not given to a nation for nothing. Sea­-​­power was a natural and necessary function of our national economy … such developments as

70   Writings those in over­-​­seas trade and sea­-​­power cannot be effected to order, but must proceed organically from the inner development of the nation, and that without a dominating export trade a nation of seventy millions on a confined territory will literally starve.90 It is important to understand that Tirpitz was not alone in the views expressed above. His long­-​­term political ally, Bulow, for example, was just as capable of a selective and self­-​­defeating interpretation of German policy: The fleet that we have built since 1897 and that, though far inferior to England’s, has made us the second Sea Power of the world, enables us to support our interests everywhere with all the weight of our reputation as a Great Power. The foremost duty of our navy is to protect our world commerce and the lives and honour of our fellow­-​­countrymen abroad. German battleships have performed this task in the West Indies and the Far East [they had not, though cruisers had]. Emphatically, it is a largely defensive role that we assign to our fleet. It is self­-​­understood that this defensive role might become an offensive one in serious international conflicts.91 James Holmes has identified the extent to which Tirpitz was influenced by Mahan. “All of the strands of thought in Mahan’s work­ – geography, commerce, naval strategy, Darwinian struggle­  – seemed to fuse in Tirpitz’s mind, and to command the acquisition of battleships.… Only when the Reich possessed a powerful battlefleet could it expect ‘fair play’ from Great Britain.”92 Holmes perhaps overlooks the extent to which Tirpitz arrived at similar conclusions before reading Mahan, but he is surely right to point out that not only was Tirpitz’s reading of Mahan “thoroughly disfigured”93 but that Mahan’s theories were themselves flawed, “… foster[ing] a cleavage between national policy and military strategy …”.94 Herwig Holger agrees, arguing that Tirpitz ignored several of Mahan’s key tenets such as the need for “ready access to the ocean” while sharing “… several important shortcomings in their naval philosophies”. He concludes that “Tirpitz’s plan was as much political as it was psychological; it was not strategic. In fact, Tirpitz hardly used the word at all …”.95

Notes   1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8

Kelly JMH October 2002 p. 1049. Kelly Tirpitz pp. 36–37. Tirpitz’s letter to his parents was dated 11 September 1871. Tirpitz went on to serve in British­-​­and French­-​­built ships. Eventually acquired in 1890 in exchange for Zanzibar. The island of Helgoland dominates the approaches to the Elbe estuary. Construction began in 1887. See Chapter 2. Kelly Tirpitz p. 50. Rolf Hobson Imperialism at Sea: Naval Strategic Thought, The Ideology of Sea Power and the Tirpitz Plan, 1875–1914 Boston MA: Brill Academic Publishers, 2002 p. 194.

Tirpitz – his writings   71   9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43

Bonker p. 104. See Chapter 2. Kelly Tirpitz p. 77. Germany was arguably not unique in this regard. Quoted in Hobson p. 197. Hobson p.  196. For a useful selection of Mahan’s work, see Allan Westcott (ed.) Mahan on Naval Warfare: Selections from the Writings of Rear Admiral Alfred T. Mahan Boston MA: Little, Brown and Company, 1942. Geoffrey Till discusses Mahan’s more nuanced view of decisive battle in Seapower: A Guide for the Twenty­-​­First Century London: Frank Cass, 2004 pp. 39–42. Azar Gat A History of Military Thought: From the Enlightenment to the Cold War Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001 p. 455. See Chapter 2. Hobson pp. 200–201. Bonker Part II. Tactical and Strategic Orders of the Naval Command of the Navy No. IX (henceforth D IX) Berlin: Naval High Command, 16 June 1894. The full text is at Appendix (i), the first time it has been reproduced in full in English. Bonker p. 256. Hobson p. 203. Bonker p. 262. Translation of Tirpitz’s late­-​­nineteenth century High German into modern English is a delicate balance. Too literal a translation makes little sense to the modern reader, but too much interpretation of Tirpitz’s original meaning can alter the text beyond recognition. The same extract can appear quite differently in separate works. Kelly Tirpitz p. 92. Hobson p. 190. Today this would be expressed as the relationship between “Supported” and “Supporting” Components. Following the loss of Alsace and Lorraine in 1871, France was irreconcilable. A Franco­-​­Russian military convention had been signed two years before D IX, which later led to a formal alliance aimed against Germany. Gary E. Weir “Naval Strategy and Industrial Mobilization at the Twelfth Hour: The Sheer Programme of 1918” The Mariner’s Mirror 77:3 (August 1991) p. 276. Weir repeats the claim a year later in Building the Kaiser’s Navy p. 20. Weir Building the Kaiser’s Navy p. 20. Kelly JMH Oct 2002 p. 1059. “High Command of the Navy, Report to the Emperor” in NRS Abyss pp. 15–30. Rear Admiral Tirpitz “Memorandum on the fleet construction programme of the High Command of the Navy” submitted 3 January 1896 NRS Abyss pp. 31–37. A concept dating back to 1690. See Till Seapower pp. 180–186. Chapter 2. Tirpitz to Stosch NRS Abyss pp. 37–41. Kelly Tirpitz p. 116. Park p. 140. Quoted in William Simpson The Second Reich: Germany 1871–1918 Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995 p. 92. NRS Abyss pp. 42–48. Steinberg pp. 129 & 126. Kennedy Strategy and Diplomacy p. 133. Foreign Secretary Bulow, speech to the Reichstag 6 December 1897. “We do not want to put anyone into the shadow, but we also demand our place in the sun.” James R. Holmes, “Mahan, a ‘Place in the Sun’ and Germany’s Quest for Sea Power” Comparative Strategy 23 (2004) p. 27.

72   Writings 44 Cited in Herwig Holger “The Failure of German Sea Power: Mahan, Tirpitz and Raeder reconsidered” The International History Review 10:1 (February 1988) p. 78. 45 Weir Building the Kaiser’s Fleet p. 21. 46 Jan Ruger The Great Naval Game: Britain and Germany in the Age of Empire Cambridge; Cambridge University Press, 2007 p. 210. 47 Michelle Murray “Identity, Insecurity and Great Power Politics: The Tragedy of German Naval Ambition Before the First World War” Security Studies 19 (2010) p. 680. 48 NRS Abyss pp. 49–52. 49 Kelly Tirpitz p. 147. 50 NRS Abyss pp. 55–58. 51 Holmes p. 46. 52 Art p. 183. 53 Bonker p. 61. 54 “Amendment to the Act Concerning the German Navy of 10 April 1898, including Justification.” 25 January 1900. NRS Abyss pp. 59–80. 55 Kelly Tirpitz p. 199. 56 Bonker p. 139. 57 Paul Kennedy “German Naval Plans Against England” in Paul Kennedy (ed.) The War Plans of the Great Powers 1880–1914 London: Allen & Unwin, 1979 p. 189. 58 Stephen R. Rock “Risk Theory Reconsidered: American Success and German Failure in the Coercion of Britain, 1890–1914” The Journal of Strategic Studies 11:3 (1988) pp. 343–344. 59 Jonathan Steinberg “The Copenhagen Complex” Journal of Contemporary History 1:3 July 1966 pp. 23–46. 60 Kelly Tirpitz chapter 11. 61 Rear Admiral von Tirpitz to Freiherr von Richthofen, State Secretary of the Foreign Office, 1 November 1904. NRS Abyss pp. 98–100. 62 Tirpitz to Richthofen, 2 December 1904. NRS Abyss p. 101. 63 Tirpitz to Bulow, 18 November 1905. NRS Abyss pp. 176–184. 64 A questionable assertion. 65 Padfield p. 123. 66 Chapter 2. 67 Tirpitz “Memorandum concerning the Significance of the Right of Capture” NRS Abyss pp. 222–226. 68 Tirpitz uses “City of London” as shorthand for British commercial interests. 69 A phrase reminiscent of Napoleon’s observation that the English were a “nation of shopkeepers”. Dirk Bonker calls it a “fantastical interpretation” (p. 68). 70 Tirpitz “Notes for a Report to the Sovereign, concerning the naval relation to England” 24 October 1910. NRS Abyss pp. 319–320. 71 Kelly Tirpitz p. 309. 72 Tirpitz “Notes for the Report to the Sovereign on the question of future naval policy” NRS Abyss pp. 320–323. 73 Thomas Hoerber “Prevail or Perish: Angle­-​­German naval competition at the beginning of the twentieth century” European Security 20:1 (March 2011) p. 77. 74 Admiral von Holtzendorf “Commander­-​­in­-​­Chief of the High Sea Fleet, Report to the Sovereign” 30 January 2012. NRS Abyss pp. 332–338. 75 Tirpitz “Report to the Sovereign” 2 February 1912. NRS Abyss pp. 338–341. 76 Kennedy War Plans p. 187. 77 NRS Abyss p. 400. 78 Tirpitz “Notes to the Report to the Sovereign” NRS Abyss pp. 411–412. 79 Kelly Tirpitz p. 379. 80 Bonker p. 78. 81 Tirpitz to Muller 25 January 1915 cited in Epkenhans p. 65.

Tirpitz – his writings   73 82 Paul Kennedy “The Development of German Naval Operations Plans against England, 1896–1914” The English Historical Review 89:350 (January 1974) p. 71. 83 For example, on p.  67 of his memoirs Tirpitz claims “The plan of a German battle fleet was evolved without any idea of a war with England”. 84 Tirpitz Memoirs Vol. I pp. 58–60. 85 Tirpitz p. 92. 86 Tirpitz p. 151. 87 Admiral Sir John Fisher, First Sea Lord 1904–1910 and 1914–1915. 88 Tirpitz Memoirs p. 197. 89 Tirpitz p. 199. 90 Tirpitz pp. 230–231. 91 Prince Bernhard von Bulow Imperial Germany London: Cassell and Company, 1914 pp. 36–37. 92 Holmes pp. 42–43. 93 Holmes p. 47. 94 Holmes p. 52. 95 Herwig IHR 10:1 pp. 72 & 80.

5 Gorshkov­ – his writings

Gorshkov was a more prolific writer than Tirpitz and while in office his work included two books and numerous journal articles, whereas the German Admiral’s official output was confined to private correspondence, internal memoranda and text attached to his Navy Bills. Gorshkov’s thought also has an enduring relevance as evidenced by a recent re­-​­interpretation of his work for the twenty­-​­first century,1 while apart from the Risk Theory contribution to deterrence thinking Tirpitz’s work was more of its time. Nonetheless, both writers tried to grapple with similar strategic dilemmas and political/­ bureaucratic challenges. Both men were not just the architects of their respective fleets, but their leading advocates as well. Counter­-​­intuitively in a relatively closed society like the Soviet Union, Russian naval policy and doctrine were publicly debated in a way unusual even in more liberal countries.2 But, to understand what Gorshkov is really saying, one needs to do two pieces of code­-​­breaking. One is to penetrate the turgid veneer of Marxist­-​­Leninist rhetoric and the other is to understand the extent to which historical and foreign surrogates are used to make Russian arguments. This necessary process has been likened to “Kremlinology”, the Cold War­-era ​­ study of tiny pieces of information in order to deduce what was really happening at the heart of the Soviet government and within the Communist Party. Unlike Tirpitz, Gorshkov seems to have written relatively little of note prior to assuming command of the Navy. His first published article appeared in 1944, relating his experiences planning and conducting amphibious operations.3 Gorshkov stressed the need for what he calls “combat support”4 by covering forces to create “favourable conditions” (local sea control) combined with flexible command­-​­and­-​­control and effective cooperation with Army forces. Robert Herrick believes this early work shows that Gorshkov was already influenced by the “Soviet School” teachings of Professor Belli at the War College, who Gorshkov had listened to before the War. When Gorshkov became Commander­-in­ ​­ -​­Chief in 1956, the Soviet Navy, despite its big­-​­ship building programme, had a doctrine of tactical offensive to dispute local command of the sea in a strategically defensive posture. Stalin himself declared, “We are not thinking about conducting ocean battles, but will fight close to our shores …”.5 Mahan’s teachings were explicitly rejected in

Gorshkov – his writings   75 favour of the defence of the Motherland’s maritime frontiers and Western, especially US, dominance at sea seemed unchallengeable.6 Gorshkov’s first public statement after his appointment as Commander­-​­in­-​ ­Chief highlighted the threat to the Soviet Union from Western amphibious invasion. It was a point to which he returned in subsequent years, reflecting a widespread Soviet counter­-​­invasion paranoia as a result of the Western allies’ 1944 landings in Normandy.7 Such fears were, of course, as wholly unrealistic as Tirpitz’s fear of a British pre­-​­emptive attack. But they do, perhaps, suggest an underlying awareness of the strategic freedoms that the maritime powers enjoyed and the Soviets did not. We saw in Chapter 3 that the “Soviet School” approach adopted by Stalin was under challenge by the time Gorshkov arrived in Moscow. Khrushchev was opposed to a Tirpitz­-​­style big­-​­ship navy and favoured a submarine force of the kind to which Tirpitz had been a belated convert. On coming into office, Tirpitz had quickly been able to persuade his political master of the kind of fleet to acquire. For Gorshkov, it was to be a longer and more cautious effort. Some years later, he wrote that, according to “influential authorities” (i.e. Khrushchev and the Army Command), “… all of the basic missions in a future war allegedly could be fully carried out without the participation of the Navy”.8 His first task was therefore to get Soviet military doctrine updated to allocate specific missions to the Navy, on which basis he could then argue for the necessary funding and authorisation of his fleet plans. A fleet designed for coastal defence and support to the Army on its maritime flanks was one thing; a fleet that could challenge the established navies of the NATO powers was something else altogether. Tirpitz would have understood the challenge. During the Khrushchev years (1956–1964), most of Gorshkov’s writings focused on the relative importance of submarines and surface ships as part of his efforts to secure a “balanced fleet”. This was not, of course, just about ship types but was a consequence of the wider and long­-​­running dispute between the “New” and “Soviet” Schools. In 1959, Gorshkov wrote in Pravda that “it [is] possible to arm our Navy with completely modern submarines and surface ships, and with a first­-​ ­class naval air arm”.9 Four years later, he felt able to spell this out more explicitly: It is unsound from the military­-​­strategic point of view to hold that one weapon system or another, even the most modern, is universal. It must not be forgotten that the means for the struggle against submarines are being modernized in the same measure as the development of submarines themselves. The experience of military history teaches that no weapons system, no matter how modern it may be, is capable of carrying out all of the missions at sea.10 Gorshkov was arguing that neither submarines, nor missiles, nor nuclear weapons (Khrushchev’s enthusiasms) are a panacea. Two months later, he amplified the point: Modern submarines and missile aviation now constitute the basic striking forces of our Navy. Yet, in order that the Navy can be in a condition to

76   Writings carry out its missions, it must also have, in addition to these basic long­-​ ­range striking forces, the other forces necessary not only for active warfare against any adversary within the defended zone of a theatre but also for the full support of the combat and operational activity of the basic striking forces of the Navy. Among these forces are missile surface ships, small craft, antisubmarine ships and aircraft, minesweepers, combatant ships, coastal missile units.…11 In 1959, Gorshkov first introduced an idea that was to become a dominant theme in his later writing, “to reliably guard the Homeland’s state interests on the seas and oceans …”.12 This is an early reference to the peacetime function of the Navy and an indication that he felt able to move beyond wartime requirements that were necessarily dominated by the Army, Air Defence Forces and Strategic Rocket Forces. However, Gorshkov remained cautious on this issue, writing five years later at the end of the Khrushchev era that the “protection of state interests” included defence against seaborne attacks, diluting the concept to almost meaninglessness.13 When Brezhnev replaced Khrushchev, Gorshkov could be somewhat more assertive, though he was still constrained by the primacy accorded the Army. Four issues dominated his output in the years before publication of his seminal Navies in War and Peace series in 1972. The Navy’s role in strategic nuclear deterrence was something of an isolated issue. The defence of the homeland, “command of the ocean” and the continuing battle over a submarine­-​­based “basic force” versus a “balanced force” were all inter­-​­related. We saw in Chapter 3 that Gorshkov tried to get the Navy a share in the strategic deterrence role performed by the Strategic Rocket Forces. In an otherwise obscure article published in 1966, he declared “Our Navy is ready to fight the navy of any adversary and, in the event of war, to operationally destroy important targets on his territory”.14 A year later, he used a surrogate argument from the Great Patriotic War to highlight naval forces’ (and by implication SSBNs in particular) “high mobility, constant readiness for action, great striking power and the capability over a long time of delivering powerful strikes at an enemy at great distances from our bases”.15 He later became more explicit, asserting that the Navy “constitut[es] a formidable force of inexorable retribution to aggressors” and “an impressive deterrent factor in the way of imperialist aggression”.16 The significance of these declarations is that Gorshkov was stating the capability of his ballistic missile submarines rather than an agreed policy of sea­-​­based strategic nuclear deterrence. His advocacy of the Navy’s capabilities could, on occasion, over­-​­reach itself. He once claimed, for instance, that “The Soviet Navy follows the movement of [enemy] SSBNs, knows the areas of their combat patrol stations, and keeps aimed at these positions their own missiles which carry multi­-​­megaton warheads”.17 Even a quarter of a century later this remained a pipe­-​­dream. Gorshkov persistently argued for a naval role that extended beyond the defence of the Soviet Union’s maritime frontiers, in the face of the Army’s

Gorshkov – his writings   77 insistence on a “Blue Belt of Defence” announced at the 23rd Party Congress in April 1966. This envisaged a three­-​­zone tiered defence, the outer limit of which would keep Western Polaris submarines and aircraft carriers out of range of the Soviet homeland. This was, in effect, an extended­-​­range version of the “Neo­-​ ­Young School” sea­-​­denial approach previously favoured by Khrushchev.18 Gorshkov’s response to this limitation was delivered in October 1967, when he argued “The Soviet Navy is capable of delivering strikes at the enemy in the oceans and on his overseas territory as well as of defending the USSR’s own installations from oceanic directions. It is just such a navy that we are building.”19 The emphasis on capabilities rather than agreed missions is again noteworthy, but this is a claim to take the fight to the enemy rather than a pure strategically defensive posture. The following year, he took the argument a stage further, referring to “annihilating strikes on the enemy’s naval forces in the remote regions [emphasis added] of the oceans”.20 In a thinly veiled attack on the limitations of the zonal defence approach, he used another historical surrogate to criticise “a lag in military thought [due to] ingrained views as to the naval forces’ employment close to the coast … a sort of brake preventing growth of the combat might of the Navy”.21 We can deduce from this that official policy for the employment of the fleet was not keeping up with its expanding capabilities. Command of the Sea had been a contentious issue in Soviet naval doctrine since the Revolution, sometimes being equated with “imperialist aggression” but more often eschewed as a consequence of a realistic appraisal of the Soviet Union’s geographic and resource limitations. But Gorshkov could only argue to extend the Navy’s role beyond the defence belt if the purpose of doing so was at least to contest Western command of the high seas. Over the years, he made numerous references to “putting an end to the unlimited command of the ocean of the traditional naval powers”.22 By 1967, he felt able to claim “As concerns full command of the sea, the major capitalist powers lost it long ago and sooner or later they will be forced to understand that they do not have any command of the sea”.23 This was premature, but it was true that command of the sea was increasingly being contested by the Soviets in ever more regions of the oceans. But contesting command of the sea was not the same as establishing it for oneself. This remained a Soviet ambition only within the (increasingly large) zones defined by the “Blue Belt”. Once Khrushchev had gone, Gorshkov wasted little time in arguing his case for surface ships. For Armed Forces Day in May 1965, an article made the first explicit reference to a “balanced fleet” and observed “Missile, antisubmarine and amphibious­-​­landing surface ships enable the Soviet Navy to successfully accomplish the complex of missions that constitute warfare at sea”.24 He later explained: By a well­-​­balanced navy we mean a navy which, in its composition and armament, is capable of carrying out the missions assigned it, not only in a nuclear war but in a war which does not make use of nuclear weapons and is also able to support state interests at sea in peacetime.25

78   Writings This was a significant departure, for not only does he argue the case for surface ships but also explicitly introduces the value of a fleet in peacetime. However, the main focus remained the Navy’s utility in war: In order to carry out the missions assigned to the Navy, the main forces must possess great striking power and high combat stability that are organically combined with mobility, universality and long range, that is, the capability of delivering devastating strikes on targets ashore as well as at sea. Nuclear powered submarines for various purposes and naval missile aviation meet these requirements to the greatest extent.26 Gorshkov’s identification of mobility and long range as characteristics of naval forces, with the ability to strike targets at sea and on land, is entirely consistent with Western maritime doctrine.27 By now he felt able to take the case for surface ships directly to an Army readership: Scientific progress, which opened up possibilities for the construction of modern surface ships which satisfied the conditions and requirements for nuclear warfare, has made it possible to arm our Navy with guided­-​­missile ships, antisubmarine ships, landing craft and other ships needed for the successful discharge of a broad range of military missions in an armed conflict at sea.28 Gorshkov also laid the foundations for his later advocacy of aircraft carriers, by the usual means of providing a historical lesson, this one from the Second World War: Our own as well as foreign military thought clearly underestimated by far the growing combat capabilities of aviation which had, by the beginning of the War, already become a mighty strike force in armed conflict at sea … we did not build aircraft carriers which [could] take an active part in fleet combat operations. Nor did we have fighter aircraft, which were able to provide cover for ships at sea at long distances from our shores.… Even the large surface navy which we began to build on the eve of war was doomed to operate only in coastal waters.29 This was a clever attempt to use the Navy’s poor performance in the War to justify a more capable fleet. However, Gorshkov’s sure political instincts reined­-​­in his ambitions and he went on to say that, though “some people” advocated acquisition of carriers, they could not match the strike capabilities of submarines and shore­-​­based missile­-​­firing aircraft. But he didn’t expressly rule out carriers and these comments are consistent with the later decision to build carriers with anti­-​­submarine and air­-defence ​­ aircraft while continuing to rely on long­-​­range missiles for surface strike.30 There was a surprising omission from Gorshkov’s naval advocacy, particularly given NATO’s concerns about the matter. This was the interdiction of the

Gorshkov – his writings   79 transatlantic shipping that was so essential for the West’s plans to reinforce Europe in the event of war. It appears the Soviets thought this task was, despite the strength of their submarine force, beyond their resources and anyway of limited importance in a short nuclear war. An article in Naval Digest in 1965 concluded “… the disruption … of intercontinental shipping can play only an auxiliary role among the missions to be carried out by naval forces”.31 Perhaps this was deliberate. An anti­-​­SLOC32 mission would have implied an all­-​ ­submarine force, at least for operations beyond Russia’s defence belt. During these early Brezhnev years, Gorshkov underpinned his naval advocacy with warnings of attack on the Soviet Union from the sea: The armed forces of the aggressive blocs, headed by the traditional naval powers, principally the United States, are now deployed against the socialist camp.… This means that the threat of attack against our country from the oceans has sharply increased.33 This was still redolent of Tirpitz’s warnings about the threat of attack by the Royal Navy. Gorshkov had been Commander­-​­in­-​­Chief for 16 years by the time his most famous, and most significant, work was published. Starting in February 1972, a series of 11 articles appeared in Morskoi Sbornik (Naval Digest). Such was the impact of Gorshkov’s nearly 55,000 words that English translations were published in the United States Naval Institute Proceedings in 1974, each with a commentary by a senior US naval officer, including five former Chiefs of Naval Operations (CNOs), Gorshkov’s opposite numbers.34 Whether these articles were an announcement of official doctrine or a piece of public advocacy was briefly discussed in Chapter 3. But it may be significant that the articles were published in a Navy­-​­controlled journal rather than a government, Party or MoD outlet. What matters to us here is what Gorshkov actually said, and what we think he meant by it. The first, and perhaps most influential, of Gorshkov’s 11 articles was published in February 1972 under the title subsequently attached to the series as a whole, “Navies in War and Peace”.35 It is reproduced in full in Appendix ii but the key highlights are below. It is a historically­-​­based scene­-​­setter for what follows, setting out the importance of seapower for national defence and economic development. While paying due observance to Marxist­-​­Leninist dogma and Lenin’s sayings in particular, Gorshkov was also happy to cite the founder of the Russian Navy, Tsar Peter I (Peter the Great): “Every potentate who has only ground forces has only one hand; yet whoever has a navy too, has both hands.” … [C]ombat operations at sea, just as on land, by obeying the general laws of the dialectic which are constantly in effect, cannot be conducted separately from the goals of that policy which led to the war [a very Clauswitzian observation].

80   Writings   The development of armed forces is linked in the most direct manner to the history of socio­-​­economic systems [a blend of Marxist and Mahanian thought].…   … [T]he focus of attention on the Navy does not in any way imply any sort of unique importance of naval forces [a “Joint” statement that also pays respect to Army pre­-eminence]. ​­   Proceeding from the special features of the Navy as a political factor which can also be used in peacetime for purposes of demonstrating the economic and military power of states beyond their borders, and from the fact that over a period of many centuries it has been the solitary branch of the armed forces capable of protecting the interests of a country beyond its borders … it is impossible not to note how the ability of peoples to learn to appreciate the ocean, and to use it for their own needs, directly affects the growth of the political prestige of the country and its economic and military power [in essence, navies have unique reach and a vital peacetime role].   Naval might has been one of the factors, which has enabled individual states to advance into the ranks of the great powers. Moreover, history shows that those states which do not have naval forces at their disposal have not been able to hold the status of a great power for very long [a not very subtle hint that if the Soviet Union wants to remain a superpower, it needs a powerful navy and if that’s not plain enough:].… All of the modern great powers are maritime states.   From all that has been said, it follows that from the dawning of the capitalist era, the navies of the Western states have represented not only a part of the armed forces, which were employed in war in the naval theaters, but also a weapon of state policy in peacetime.… Maritime states having great economic capabilities have widely used their naval forces in peacetime to put pressure on their enemies, as a type of military demonstration, as threats of interrupting sea communications, and as a hindrance to ocean commerce [if the capitalists have this asset, the Soviet Union should have it too]. Had he still been alive, Gorshkov would have agreed wholeheartedly with Colin Gray’s 1992 assertion that “Great sea powers or maritime coalitions have either won or, occasionally, drawn every major war in modern history”.36 The Soviet Union could therefore not afford not to be a great sea power. In the second article, Gorshkov traced Russia’s eighteenth­-century ​­ naval history37, taking some liberties with historical accuracy along the way. Due to a series of political and historical reasons, the development of the Navy of Russia, the largest continental power in the world, transpired in a very unique manner.   Without a strong Navy, Russia had been unable to join the ranks of the great powers. However, at various stages in history her leaders often did not understand the role of the Navy within the system of the country’s armed

Gorshkov – his writings   81 forces and underestimated its capabilities … [a not very subtle swipe at Soviet Russia’s recent leadership].   The hostile propaganda continually propagated the idea that Russia is not a maritime country, but rather a continental one and therefore she does not need a Navy.… These ideas were based on the slanderous assertion that the Russians are not a seagoing nation … [Even Tirpitz acknowledged that Germany was not actually a sea­-​­going nation.]38   … [N]o one reproached Germany for the fact that, while a continental power, it was striving to have a large Navy [though Winston Churchill, amongst others, regarded it as a “Luxury Fleet”].   The considerable difficulties for Russian seapower stemmed from her geographical position, which required having an independent fleet … in each of the far­-​­flung naval theaters … [which is an honest assessment of one of Russia’s inherent disadvantages].   … Russia is a Mediterranean power.… Today, when the capabilities of the imperialist aggressors to attack the Soviet Union directly from the Mediterranean Sea have increased extraordinarily, this region has assumed especially important significance in the defense of our homeland [a justification for permanently stationing ships in the Mediterranean]. Article 3 examined the Russian Navy in the nineteenth century.39 Curiously overlooking the Navy’s role in the War of Greek Independence, Gorshkov takes his readers through the Crimean War, the Russo­-Turkish ​­ War of 1877–1878 and the disastrous Russo­-​­Japanese War. He argued that the latter is what happens when Russia’s leaders neglect their Navy, and concluded with a lesson of contemporary relevance. The Soviet Union must have a Navy to advance its interests, but that Navy must be tailored to the Soviet Union’s own particular needs. … [T]he Tsarist government, as demonstrated by subsequent events, failed to draw the necessary conclusions from the bitter experience of war and did not change its attitude toward the naval component of the armed forces of the country. The construction of the Navy proceeded basically from considerations of prestige and not from the true interests of the state. Therefore, they tried to build warships similar to foreign warships, without taking into account the conditions under which they would operate and ignoring the requirements, unique to Russia, stemming from her geographical location.   … [T]he ruling circles of Tsarist Russia, despite repeated grave lessons demonstrating the absolute need of the State for sea power, still did not understand the importance of a navy in the achievement of political objectives. Gorshkov opened his next article on the First World War40 with an observation by Lenin no serious student of the Great War could endorse: “… contradictions between the capitalist countries predetermined the character

82   Writings of the approaching war as an imperialist war, i.e. a war ‘between two groups of plundering great powers over the distribution of colonies, over the robbing of other nations and over advantage and privileges in the world market’.” However, Tirpitz, though no Marxist, did think that Britain’s hostility towards Germany was driven by “trade jealousy” rather than security fears. Gorshkov notes that Tirpitz’s surface­-​­ship navy did not realise its hoped­-​­for effect and consequently Germany turned to submarine warfare, “… and Great Britain herself seemed to be on the verge of economic catastrophe, nearly forcing her to her knees”. But “… we must point out a great miscalculation of the German command; it did not employ submarines to sever military sea shipping, which was widely used by the Entente countries”. From this one might expect Gorshkov to conclude that the Soviet Union should eschew surface ships in favour of an all­-​­out submarine campaign against NATO shipping. Of course, he did not. But, while asserting that “The struggle in the oceanic and sea theaters in the First World War did not play such a decisive role as in the earlier wars”, he observed “… the struggle of the navies for control of the sea continued: it was regarded as an important factor ensuring the achievement of strategic and operational goals …”. His ambivalence is probably explained by a need to push the case for naval power without overtly challenging the Army’s dominance. Gorshkov devoted an entire article to the role of sailors in the 1917 Revolution and its aftermath,41 providing him with an opportunity to burnish the revolutionary credentials of the Navy. “… [N]avymen played an important role in the overthrow of the autocracy and in supporting the victory of the Great October Socialist Revolution. They were a true bulwark of the Communist Party and a reliable conductor of its policies.” Just to drive the point home, the author provided a lengthy discourse on Lenin’s military thought, concluding with “The vivifying ideas of Vladimir Illich [Lenin] and the tireless organisational work of the Communist Party in bringing them to life found full support among the navymen and served as a guiding star for them in the struggle with the enemies of the Soviet state.” This was a delicate point, as Red Navy sailors at the Kronstadt naval base in the Baltic rebelled in 1921, demanding political reforms.42 They were brutally suppressed by the Army and thereafter, despite its prominent role in 1917, the Navy was viewed with some suspicion by Party leaders. Gorshkov ignored this embarrassing incident, instead alleging: In contrast to the ruling circles of Tsarist Russia who did not understand the role of the Navy in the military might of the country the Communist Party and the Soviet government attached great importance to it.…   The Soviet Union, having revived the Navy, acquired a real means of defending her maritime borders, which are over 40,000 kilometers in length. And although her forces were not yet large, and were unable to independently carry out missions on a strategic scale, the young Soviet Navy became an important political factor. And the enemies of our country were forced to reckon with it.

Gorshkov – his writings   83 This rosy picture is at variance with the actual inter­-war ​­ history of the Soviet Navy, which remained poorly equipped and trained and its role confined to the Army’s maritime flanks. Gorshkov would have been painfully aware of all that, but his purpose was to demonstrate the relevance of the Navy to the Party and the Soviet state, not to write objective history. In this respect, Tirpitz was much luckier. Neither the Kaiser nor Chancellor Bulow required persuading of the value of a powerful fleet for the Imperial regime. In the sixth article,43 the Party was once again credited with wisdom in rebuilding the fleet in the 1930s, providing a surrogate argument that was clearly meant to suggest it should carry on doing so. The character of naval construction in that period was determined by the missions confronting the Navy, views of the methods of its combat employment, the capabilities of industry and the achievements of science and technology, both at home and abroad.…   … [T]he Eighth Party Congress made a wise decision with respect to the need of the Soviet Union to have a mighty and oceanic Navy, corresponding to its interests. Alluding to the bitter doctrinal disputes of the time, Gorshkov set out the basic issues:44 Questions concerning theory in the naval art were worked out in accordance with the new missions of the Navy in the academies and scientific research institutes. This creative process took place amid a situation of a sharp clash of opinions between proponents of offensive and defensive views45 on the role and employment of naval forces.… The former were still under the influence of the “small war” theory, which was correct in its day, while the latter, believing that our Navy had already become capable of conducting combat operations beyond the limits of our own coastal waters, held to the “control of the sea” theory. However, the interpretation of the term “control of the sea” was somewhat different than that held in the West. Thus … to achieve superiority of forces over the enemy in the main sector and to pin him down in the secondary sectors at the same time of the operation means to achieve control of the sea in a theater or a sector of a theater, i.e. to create such a situation that the enemy will be paralysed or constrained in his operations, or weakened and thereby hampered from interfering with our execution of a given operation.… The implication is clear: this is not just how it was before the War, this is how Gorshkov saw things. Presumably he had not read Sir Julian Corbett as, despite Gorshkov making a distinction between Soviet and Western views, they do agree on the nature of local command of the sea. The latter put it this way: “Local command implies a state of things in which we are able to prevent the enemy from interfering with our passage and communications in one or more

84   Writings theatres of operation.”46 For Gorshkov this was a fundamental doctrinal issue if the Navy was to have anything more than a sea­-​­denial, coastal defence mission (as proposed by the “New” School). One analysis of Gorshkov’s work after his death suggests that his first article on the Second World War47 “is probably the most blatant in its distortion of history”.48 He had to stress the leading part played by the Soviet Union in defeating Germany­  – which means the Red Army. Western successes, such as the amphibious landings in North Africa and Normandy, were only possible thanks to the bulk of German forces being engaged on the Eastern Front and notwithstanding the “Western falsifiers of history”, the Soviet Union could have defeated Nazi Germany on its own. That the Soviet Union was an ally of Germany until attacked is of course overlooked, as is the Western allies’ re­-​ ­supply of the Red Army via the Arctic route. Even in the Pacific it was, apparently, Soviet success against Germany that forced Japan onto the defensive. Gorshkov faces a dilemma here, wanting to extol the impact of seapower, aircraft carriers in particular, but also having to assert that it was the USSR’s entry into the Pacific War that brought about Japan’s surrender, not the United States’ use of atomic weapons. Gorshkov’s take on the overall course of the Second World War is simply Cold War propaganda and need not detain us further. Gorshkov’s eighth article examines the Soviet Navy’s particular role in the War.49 Apart from Gorshkov’s own Azov and Danube Flotillas, this ought be a very short account but that would not serve his purpose, which was to extol the Navy’s importance to the Soviet Union. Gorshkov made the most of the little he has to work with, including the use of 400,000 men from the Navy in the ground war, which while impressive in an institutional sense, hardly makes a case for the importance of seapower. He cannot have truly believed his own conclusion: … [T]he Soviet Navy played an important role in the Great Patriotic War and, consequently, in the Second World War as a whole. Its dogged, resolute opposition to the powerful naval foe and the retention of the initiative at sea in combat operations throughout the entire war created conditions which ruled out the employment by the enemy of such forms of armed conflict as landing and antilanding operations. As an example of a very selective interpretation of history the article is of note, but otherwise cannot be counted among Gorshkov’s finer work. The third of his pieces on the Second World War is more interesting.50 The Second World War was basically a continental war, since its main goals were achieved by armed combat on the ground fronts. However, certain strategic missions could not have been executed without the participation (especially in the Pacific Theater); for example, sea and ocean communi­ cations were disrupted almost exclusively by naval forces. Consequently,

Gorshkov – his writings   85 combat operations at sea, although by nature generally subordinate to the strategic missions executed by the ground forces, nevertheless had a significant effect on the course of the war as a whole.   In our view, in the Second World War, navies were charged with the following missions: to disrupt the sea and ocean communications of the enemy in order to undermine his military­-​­economic potential; to protect own communications; to cooperate with own ground forces in defensive and offensive operations and, above all, in the opening of new areas of military operations on land and in increasing the rate of the offensive operations of own ground forces in the coastal areas by carrying out amphibious operations of various scales; and also to destroy groupings of hostile naval forces.…   … [W]e may conclude that the navies of the belligerent states played a significant role in World War II, which had a clearly expressed continental nature. The activity of the navies was goal­-​­oriented toward cooperation with the ground fronts and toward supporting their needs.…   The activity of the navies in the secondary theaters of the war [i.e. anywhere except the Eastern Front] was very important, since it considerably affected the economic level of the belligerents and supported the execution of strategic missions by their armed forces. Gorshkov is nothing if not consistent: Navies carried out a wide range of tasks, demonstrating their essential contribution to victory, but it was really the Army that won the war. He didn’t say so, but it is obvious from his extensive analysis of British and American naval operations and scant mention of the Soviet Navy that the latter played a very minor role, his previous article notwithstanding. He could not resist a familiar conclusion: “Naval combat activity revealed the growing necessity for a balancing of forces to the extent needed to execute the wide range of missions arising for the navies.” The article includes an extensive analysis of submarine and anti­-​­submarine operations. Submarines accounted for 68 per cent of Allied and 62 per cent of Japanese shipping sunk, so “… submarines were actually the main force in the battle with enemy shipping …”. As with his article on the First World War, Gorshkov did not conclude that the Soviet Navy should therefore concentrate on an offensive submarine force, despite noting “… they are even more important in today’s context.” Instead, he argued that the invasion of the Soviet Union forced Germany to divert surface ships and aircraft to support of the land forces, leaving submarines to fight the Battle of the Atlantic alone. Without aerial reconnaissance support and forces with which to attack Allied anti­-​­submarine warfare (ASW) forces, the “… effectiveness of German submarine employment in disrupting the enemy’s shipping in the Atlantic was considerably reduced …”. And anyway: … there is no basis to believe that the Battle for the Atlantic had a decisive effect on the course and outcome of World War II … the entire course of the

86   Writings battle of Atlantic communications directly depended on the events on the main front of the war­ – the Soviet­-​­German front­ – where the fate of the peoples of the world, including the English and American people, was decided. The historical accuracy of these conclusions is beside the point­ – Gorshkov was arguing that an effective submarine force requires the support of a “balanced fleet”, even if asserting the primacy of the Soviet Union’s contribution to victory necessarily means conceding the primacy of the Army. Gorshkov’s penultimate article in the series has a very gunboat diplomacy feel about it, as well as being a piece of Cold War polemics. In “Navies as Instruments of Peacetime Imperialism”, he turned to the cause he had been tentatively advancing for some years: the use of seapower in peacetime.51 … [T]he capability of navies to suddenly appear close to the shore of different countries and immediately proceed to carry out their assigned missions has been used for ages by various aggressive states as an important weapon of diplomacy and policy in peacetime, which in many cases has permitted the achievement of political goals without resorting to military operations by merely threatening to initiate them.   Consequently, the role of a navy is not limited to the execution of important missions in armed combat. While representing a formidable force in war, it has always been an instrument of policy of the imperialist states and an important support for diplomacy in peacetime owing to its inherent qualities, which permit it to a greater degree than other branches of the armed forces to exert pressure on potential enemies without the direct employment of weaponry.…   It would be difficult to find an area on our planet where U.S. leaders have not used their pet instrument of foreign policy­  – the Navy­  – against the progressive forces of the peoples of various countries. Shorn of its anti­-​­imperialistic rhetoric, Sir James Cable­  – the “father” of modern gunboat diplomacy, would not demur from a word of this. His definition is more succinct: Gunboat diplomacy is the use or threat of limited naval force, otherwise than as an act of war, in order to secure advantage or to avert loss, either in the furtherance of an international dispute or else against foreign nationals within the territory or jurisdiction of their own state.52 Cable first wrote these words in 1971, a year before Gorshkov. It is possible, though perhaps unlikely, that Gorshkov had read Cable. Unlike Cable, Gorshkov was critical of the practice until, that is, it is employed by the Soviets. With the emergence of the Soviet Navy onto the ocean expanses, our warships are calling with continually greater frequency at foreign ports, fulfilling the role of “plenipotentiaries” of the Socialist countries.…

Gorshkov – his writings   87   The friendly visits of Soviet navymen make it possible for the peoples of many countries to become convinced with their own eyes of the creativity of the ideas of Communism.…   Official visits and business calls of the warships of the Navy are making a significant contribution to improving mutual relations between states and peoples and to strengthening the international influence of the Soviet Union.   … [I]t quite clearly follows that navies, being one branch of the armed forces and the instrument of armed combat at sea, therefore, have played and are playing the role of an instrument of state policy in peacetime. If the first article in the series argued for the historical importance of seapower, the final one brought the case right up to date.53 In recent decades in the era of the exploitation of the resources of the World Ocean, an ever­-​­increasing struggle has begun between imperialist countries for the division of it for economic and military aims, since it is becoming an immediate objective of their expansion [a view somewhat similar to Imperial Germany’s Social Darwinist assumptions].…   The level and tempo of the development of science and technology … are creating vast possibilities for the study, mastery and use of the World Ocean and its bottom for practical and military purposes.…   The main reason for the level of interest by states in the World Ocean is its truly inexhaustible resources [a contentious assertion], while the aggressive powers are attracted by its vast military significance [as was Gorshkov himself]. The emphasis on the resources of the seas was of its time and a view shared in the West.54 Gorshkov went on to detail the Soviet Union’s hydrographic research, its merchant marine and its fishing fleet, all of them essential economic assets. However, we must consider the most important component of the sea power of the state to be the Navy, whose mission is to protect state interests on the seas and oceans and to defend the country from possible attacks from the direction of the seas and oceans.…   The need to have a powerful Navy corresponding both to the geographic position of our country and to its political importance as a great world power has already long been understood.…   Could the Soviet Union reconcile itself … to an age­-​­long domination of the seas and oceans by the traditional western sea powers …? Of course not! This could be Tirpitz or Bulow asserting a “place in the sun” for a “world power”. Gorshkov went on to advance some of his familiar themes more explicitly than hitherto. One is the fear of encirclement­  – another of Tirpitz’s

88   Writings worries­ – accusing the “imperialists” of striving to “surround the Socialist countries with a ring of their naval and air bases …”. Western leaders described this as “containment” but it amounted to the same thing. Perhaps most important for the development of his balanced fleet is the clearest statement yet of why a submarine­-only ​­ navy is the wrong course. … [A] modern navy, whose mission is to conduct operations against a strong enemy, cannot only be an undersea navy. The underestimation of the need to support submarine operations with aircraft and surface ships cost the German high command dearly in the last two wars. In particular … one of the reasons for the failure of the ‘unlimited submarine war’ prosecuted by the Germans was the absence of such support for the submarines, which forced them to operate alone without the support of other forces.   Therefore we, while giving priority to the development of submarine forces, believe that we have a need not only for submarines but also for various types of surface ships. The latter, in addition to giving combat stability to the submarines, are intended to accomplish a wide range of missions both in peacetime and in war. These missions Gorshkov defined as … [P]articipation in the attacks of the country’s strategic nuclear forces [a long­-​­term ambition], the blunting of the nuclear attacks by the enemy navy from the direction of the oceans [which requires ASW forces] and participation in the operations conducted by ground forces in the continental theaters of operations [the traditional ‘faithful helper’ role].…   Important missions in protecting the interests of the Soviet state and the countries of the Socialist community confront the Navy in peacetime too [what Western maritime doctrine calls naval presence].   This latter point is particularly important because [of] local wars, which imperialism is waging practically uninterruptedly [only the Navy can influence what NATO called ‘out of area’ operations in the Third World].… Here we have Gorshkov’s rationale for his Navy, in peace and war. The notable omission, once again, is attacks on enemy shipping. Included for the first time in Gorshkov’s writings is the “battle for the first salvo”, which places a premium on the high readiness he attributes to naval forces. Perhaps borne of Soviet awareness of vulnerability away from home waters, it was important to strike the first blow in the event of war­ – an echo of Tirpitz’s belief that there was no tactical defensive at sea. Gorshkov concluded the final article in the series with a statement of the growing importance of seapower. An analysis of the alignment of forces in the international arena today and the sharp increase in the capabilities of modern navies to have a decisive

Gorshkov – his writings   89 effect on all fronts of an armed struggle provide the basis to assert that the absolute and relative importance of naval warfare in the overall course of a war has indisputedly grown.…   While the navies of the imperialist states are an instrument of aggression and neo­-​­colonialism, the Soviet Navy is a powerful factor in the creation of favorable conditions for the building of Socialism and Communism, for the active defense of peace and for strengthening international security. In short, when capitalists exercise seapower it is bad, but when socialists do so it is good. But, in either event, seapower is essential. Viewed as a whole, which is surely how Gorshkov meant them to be read, these 11 articles provide a very modern exposition of the importance of seapower. Once the reader gets beyond the ideological rhetoric, the use and misuse of history and the ever­-​ ­present need to argue an internal political/bureaucratic case for resources, one is left with a maritime case that few exponents of the strategic importance of seapower would take issue with. Gorshkov touched most of the essential issues: • • • • • •

the growing importance of the sea, both economic and military; the inextricable link between great power status and possession of a powerful navy; the utility of seapower as an instrument of the state, in peace as well as in war (in contrast to armies); the reach of seapower beyond the state’s land frontiers (again, in contrast to armies); the need for a balanced fleet, its composition tailored to the particular requirements of the state; the importance of seizing and maintaining the initiative.

Gorshkov argued these points in a generally nuanced way. He was careful not to alienate the Army, with whom he was inevitably competing for money. He must advance the case for more resources without drawing too much attention to existing weaknesses, and he had to do so in a political and strategic environment that was changing with the onset of a limited détente with the West. That could have undermined the argument for resources to fight a war with the West, but it strengthened the Navy’s case for its utility in peacetime strategic competition. These points were all repeated in Gorshkov’s “magnum opus”.55 The Sea Power of the State was published three years after the last of the Navies in War and Peace articles.56 Though much longer, somewhat broader in scope and a more developed thesis, the arguments are similar to his earlier work. One commentator at the time described the book as “… dense, rich, logical and almost overpowering in breadth”.57 It is, by any standards, one of the more important works of naval strategy of the twentieth century both because of what it says and who was saying it. Though Gorshkov remained in office for another decade after

90   Writings its publication, nothing that followed matches its significance. Noting that many of Gorshkov’s ideas had already been expressed in the earlier series, rather than repeat them it is useful here to examine how they were developed and expanded, as well as what was genuinely new. The Sea Power of the State is, like the articles, a work of both advocacy and authority. But it is more ambitious and is clearly meant as a major work of naval strategy. To that end, Gorshkov set out a clear vision of seapower, which is strongly redolent of Mahan. … [T]he totality of the means of harnessing the World Ocean and the means of defending the interests of the state when rationally combined constitute the sea power of the state, which determines the capacity of a particular country to use the military­-​­economic possibilities of the ocean for its own purposes.   … [T]he sea power of the state [i]s a system characterised not only by the presence of links between its components (military, merchant, fishing, scientific research fleet etc) but also by the inseparable union with the environment­  – the ocean in the mutual relations with which the system expresses its wholeness.…   The importance of the ocean cannot be overestimated in the development of productive forces and accumulation of wealth by states. As a rule, civilisations emerged and developed precisely on the shores of the seas and oceans.…   … [T]he sea power of the state … characterizes the economic and military power of a country and hence its role on the world stage.   At the same time sea power, naturally together with other components, also includes the ability of our armed forces to protect the country from threat of attack from the oceans. This aspect of sea power assumes greater importance the greater the military threat to our security.   … [T]he navy must be regarded as one of the most important components of sea power, serving as a reliable guarantee of the security of our country and an important means of ensuring its interests at sea.   The growing sea might of our country ensures the successful conduct of its foreign policy.…58 There is, however, a subtle but important difference between Gorshkov and Mahan in their identification of the components of seapower. Gorshkov was clear about why the sea matters, in both its civil and military dimensions and therefore why Russia needed to be a major power at sea. But he tended to overlook Mahan’s stress on what makes a country a sea power: I. Geographical Position. II. Physical Conformation, including … natural production and climate. III. Extent of Territory. IV. Number of Population. V. Character of the People. VI. Character of the Government, including … national institutions.59

Gorshkov – his writings   91 The omission is probably deliberate for Russia scores badly on several counts. Geography, climate and character of the people cannot be counted as natural Russian advantages and Gorshkov, committed Marxist though he was, could not have failed to notice that historically the great sea powers were liberal trading states not authoritarian bureaucracies. Nor could he acknowledge his debt to Mahan, for “… bourgeois naval theories … rest on altogether different ideological and political principles …”60­  – even if they came to similar conclusions! Gorshkov attempted to provide an alternative underpinning for Soviet seapower: Marxist­-​­Leninist “scientific” doctrine, which also served a political purpose in distinguishing between “good” and “bad” seapower. The scientific ideological and theoretical basis of the building of the armed forces of our state is the Marxist­-​­Leninist theory of war and the army. Therefore, the creation of armed forces of a new type also called for the creation of their own Soviet military science.…   Leninist precepts played a tremendous role in working out the bases of Soviet military science … and the building of a Soviet ocean­-​­going fleet. They are the methodological base of Soviet military doctrine, the foundation of the military and naval sciences and form the basis of the military policy of the Party.…   It is necessary to emphasize again the radical difference in goals, to which ends they have been created and maintained, between the navies of the imperialist states on the one hand and the navy of the Soviet Union on the other. While the naval forces of the imperialist states are an instrument of aggression and neo­-​­colonialism, the Soviet fleet is a powerful factor in creating favourable conditions for the building of socialism and communism, a factor in the active defence of peace and strengthening of international security.61 Gorshkov didn’t explain how Soviet armed forces were so fundamentally different to those of the West, other than the propaganda point about socialism versus capitalism. As to their scientific basis, he correctly identified the importance of technological progress but he meant more than just this, for Leninist military doctrine itself had a “scientific” foundation. He seems to assume that his readers will already be steeped in Marxist­-​­Leninist dialectical materialism and other doctrinal concepts, as he said little about how they actually translate into the nature of the Soviet armed forces. It is hard not to conclude he was paying lip­-​­service to Party orthodoxies in what is otherwise a well­-​­reasoned, if selective, exposition on seapower. But this aspect of Gorshkov’s work is useful in reminding us of the strategic and historical context in which he was writing, much as Mahan’s eulogising of British eighteenth­-​­century naval power was meant to persuade a contemporary American audience of the importance of seapower for the United States at the end of the nineteenth century.

92   Writings Geography matters­  – a lot­  – and Gorshkov fully understood this. It matters first for its economic importance, due to the “infinite wealth of the World Ocean” and because “the transport significance of the ocean is very considerable”. The sea occupies almost three­-​­quarters of the world’s surface.62 The sea is also where threats to the homeland can originate, and from where the Soviet Union can strike its enemies. This has assumed enormous importance since nuclear weapons first went to sea, though identifying the problem didn’t mean the Soviets could necessarily do much about it, other than pose a similar threat to their enemies. At present, a fleet with its strikes from the sea is capable of changing the course and outcome of an armed struggle even in continental theatres of military operations.…   Could the Soviet Union, faced with such a threat, agree with the age­-​­old dominance on the seas of and oceans of the Western maritime powers, especially in conditions when extensive areas of the oceans have become the launching platforms of nuclear missile weapons? Of course not!63 Gorshkov was acutely aware, as was Tirpitz, of his Navy’s geographic disadvantages, which in Russia’s case are perhaps even greater than Germany’s. Like Tirpitz, he side­-​­stepped the question of whether his country should therefore limit its maritime ambitions, instead drawing attention to the fact that the Soviet Union had to maintain, in effect, four separate fleets and that three of them faced severe weather conditions and ice for several months of the year. But his greatest concern was reserved for his country’s restricted access to the “World Ocean”. … [T]he fleets of the imperialist states possess advantageous positions in the World Ocean. Having naval bases in the direct proximity of the territory of our country … they are concentrating efforts in the strategically important zones of the World Ocean. Even in peacetime, in establishing control over straits and narrows, they are seeking to create all the pre­-​ ­requisites for achieving dominance in these areas.…   … [O]ur navy, not having overseas bases, to move out into the ocean is forced to cover enormous distances and force narrows and straits either controlled by the fleets of the imperialist states or permanently under surveillance by their allies.…64 Geography brings Gorshkov to an issue at the heart of this study of continental seapower: the relationships between seapower and landpower and between maritime states and continental states. He clearly had a point to prove and was as sensitive on the matter as was Tirpitz’s angry rejection of the assertion that, for Germany, seapower was an unnecessary “luxury”. Hostile propaganda tirelessly affirmed that Russia was not a maritime but only a continental country and needed a fleet only for resolving the modest task of coastal defence.

Gorshkov – his writings   93   Russia … [has] always been a great sea power.…   The last war was a continental war … [but] now we are threatened by a coalition of maritime powers.…   … NATO is an alliance of maritime states, with powerful naval forces occupying advantageous strategic positions in the World Ocean.65 This is a two­-​­pronged argument. The Soviet Union herself is a maritime state as well as a continental power, and her enemies are maritime. On both counts, the Soviet Union must be strong at sea. We will try to assess these claims and their implications in later chapters, but for the moment we can see where Gorshkov stood. He continued the maritime/continental dichotomy with an issue to which he returns many times, “fleet against fleet and fleet against shore”.66 Writing in 1911, Corbett had observed: Since men live upon the land and not upon the sea, great issues between nations have always been decided­  – except in the rarest cases­  – either by what your army can do against your enemy’s territory and national life or else by the fear of what the fleet makes it possible for your army to do.67 Two­-​­thirds of a century later Gorshkov agreed: Since the goals of a war were achieved mostly by taking over the territory of the enemy, successful operations of a fleet against the shore brought a better result than the operations of fleet against fleet.68 As aficionados of Corbett have long recognised, this is a more sophisticated (and more “Joint”) argument than Mahan’s and one that better fits the Soviet Union’s position as a pre­-​­eminent continental power. It also meets Gorshkov’s continuing need to acknowledge Army primacy. But he was careful not to dismiss the significance of fleet against fleet operations and introduced a sub­-​ ­division of relevance to more than just a Soviet readership. He emphasised that operations at sea have a bearing on the war on land as they ensure transoceanic communications. Though of marginal importance to the Soviet Union, sea communications are obviously vital to the maritime NATO alliance and therefore ripe to be threatened by the Soviet Navy.69 Gorshkov successfully fuses Mahan and Corbett, arguing that what happens at sea is important for the effect it has on events on land. Even the “purest” at­-​ ­sea operation, interdiction of shipping, is an indirect form of fleet against shore as commercial and military cargoes alike are destined for use on shore. “These operations are now the most important constituent part of the efforts of a fleet, aimed at undermining the military­-​­economic potential of the enemy …”.70 So perhaps anti­-​­SLOC operations might be important, after all, and Gorshkov argued that this is actually more important than simply fighting the enemy’s own fleet. Corbett agreed, though Mahan (and Tirpitz) did not. But there is not

94   Writings enough in Sea Power of the State to conclude that large­-scale ​­ attacks on shipping had become a major role for the Navy.71 Given Gorshkov’s advocacy of a large surface fleet, this is perhaps not surprising, as it might have re­-​­directed efforts back to the submarine arm. Gorshkov didn’t say much that is new about the most obvious form of fleet against shore, amphibious operations. The threat, and the potential, of these were well understood in the Soviet Union. Instead he stressed, “The destructive force of nuclear strikes is seen as a new, additional measure of sea power used in operations of the fleet against the shore”,72 which put his long­-​­standing SSBN advocacy into the wider doctrinal context of the Navy’s impact on shore. This also touches on an issue long a subject of speculation in the West, the so­-​­called “withholding strategy” for the SSBN force. The secure second­-strike ​­ nature of SSBNs certainly suggested that, in the event of nuclear war, they should be “withheld”, perhaps as a factor in the post­-​­war nuclear balance.73 But that also suggested they would not have a part in the main nuclear strike role accorded the Strategic Rocket Forces. Withholding was a variant on the Fleet in Being concept that also featured in Tirpitz’s thinking, though the latter could never have foreseen the potential leverage of an SSBN force. Interdiction of enemy shipping and the SSBN force both raised once again the vexed issue of the right balance between the Navy’s submarine and surface ship arms. Gorshkov re­-​­iterated his earlier arguments in favour of a balanced fleet at length but said nothing he had not already expressed, so this point need not detain us long, other than to note that this was clearly an argument he felt he had to keep on making. He was again at pains to make the point that the German submarine offensive in the Second Word War failed through lack of support from other arms, especially those that could have countered the Allies’ anti­-​ ­submarine forces. The implications for the Soviet Union, another continental state facing a maritime coalition, were too obvious to need much elaboration. Gorshkov concluded his argument in favour of a balanced fleet thus: The multi­-faceted ​­ activity of the navy in wars and peacetime, the wide range of tasks solved by it, each of which requires the participation of diverse forces and means, have governed the need for balancing the forces of the fleet by different criteria and forms. Analysis of the combat experiences of the fleets in past wars shows that the imbalance in their forces was manifest not only in the limitation of the possibilities of solving that task for which the given forces were created, but also in fulfilling a number of contiguous, attendant tasks.74 Beneath the somewhat tortured prose there is an argument here not just for a balanced fleet but also for its flexibility and adaptability. Gorshkov took his argument in favour of naval aviation a stage further than he had to date­ – by this time the Soviet Navy had its first “hybrid” aircraft carrier in service with another two under construction. He argued that naval aviation had become “oceanic”

Gorshkov – his writings   95 and a “most important means” of war at sea. However, given the modest scale of organic (i.e. embarked) aviation and a continuing controversy in Soviet military circles on the subject, Gorshkov was probably referring to land­-​­based strike aircraft as much as he was to carriers. Gorshkov returned several times to one of his persistent themes: the need for seapower. … [I]n the pages of the foreign press and the utterances of political and military figures the rhetorical question is often raised “Why does the Soviet Union need an ocean fleet?”.…   … [B]oth military necessity and the development of the economy, bound up with the sea, and political struggle have always and on an ever­-​ ­increasing scale encouraged states to create, possess and support navies suited to their times.…   Our brief perusal of the role of the fleet in the history of Russia, in her emergence and economic development, leads to the main conclusion: at all stages of the life of the country her armed forces needed a powerful navy, matching the interests of a world power.…   Our state­ – a great continental and maritime world power­ – at all stages of its history has needed a powerful fleet as an essential constituent of the armed forces.75 The temporary lessening of Cold War tensions marked by Détente in the 1970s both required and enabled Gorshkov to press another of his favourite arguments, the value of seapower in peacetime. He emphasised the diplomatic role of navies, exploiting the neutrality of the “World Ocean” that allows ships to deploy overseas without violating international law. In this respect, the Soviet Navy is no different to any other.76 The stress Gorshkov gave to naval diplomacy (he avoided the pejorative “gunboat diplomacy” but it amounts to the same thing) suggests that he saw this not as a useful adjunct, but part of the reason for having an ocean­-​­going fleet in the first place.77 Tirpitz tended to overlook this aspect of a navy’s utility in peacetime and resisted spending money on overseas cruisers. He might have agreed with Kenneth McGruther’s description of the Soviet Navy as “Gorshkov’s show fleet”.78 But where the two admirals are in agreement is in the peacetime deterrence role of a fleet. Gorshkov referred to “demonstrative actions” as a means of exerting pressure short of actual war.79 As with his articles, all Gorshkov’s arguments are underpinned by a selective use of history. His chapter on the historical significance of navies, and the Russian navy in particular, is much the longest but does little more than expand on the earlier Navies in War and Peace series. His conclusions are important, for he was at pains to ensure his readers didn’t miss the point. History patently confirmed that without a strong fleet Russia could not take its place among the great powers.…

96   Writings   At the same time history gives us examples of how fleets merely by their presence or even simply existence in one of the opposing sides have exerted a definite, sometimes very substantial, influence on the outcome of armed struggle.…80   He has to fight tooth and nail to show that the course of action he advocates has precedent in victories during the class struggle.… He gets little help from the Red Navy’s history, because by and large it is a minefield of disasters.81 Gorshkov is much more interesting on the subject of “Naval Art”.82 Slightly confusingly, Gorshkov claimed it was a scientific theory, though of course all Marxist political and economic theories claim to be scientifically based. He also said naval art is a historical category, as the theory and practice of naval warfare reflects the stage of development of “material means”­ – i.e. technology. Naval art, like any other scientific theory, is intimately connected with practice, and rests on the lessons from past wars and the many­-​­sided experience of operational and combat training conducted in peacetime. Practice is a criterion of the truth. Without study of the experience of past wars and its critical application, the development of naval art cannot be ensured. Study of historical experience on the basis of dialectical materialism is a method of grasping the patterns of armed struggle at sea, the laws, lines and directions of the development of naval art.83 Gorshkov believed that there is an objective truth about warfare at sea, which changes according to time, circumstances and technology, and which can be divined by observation and analysis­ – hence its “scientific” but also its historical basis. This is vaguely reminiscent of Tirpitz’s use of experimentation to understand the impact and potential use of new technologies, especially torpedoes, but it is an altogether grander claim for scientific understanding. Gorshkov was very cleverly arguing that because there is an objective truth to be discovered, based on Marxist methodology, it would be incorrect not to draw the “right” conclusions­ – that Russia needs a powerful fleet, of the type being advocated by Gorshkov himself. In reality, this means putting a pseudo­-​­scientific Marxist­-​­Leninist gloss on ideas that would otherwise be familiar to non­-​­Marxist naval strategists. A correct understanding of naval art reveals the nature and purposes of seapower: A most important feature of the current stage in the development of naval art is the intensive extension of its size and composition and the increasingly many­-​­sided elaboration of new forms and ways of using the forces of the fleet at different operational levels. This is due primarily to the influence of scientific and technical progress, resulting in sharp qualitative changes in modes of combat, which ultimately means profound

Gorshkov – his writings   97 qualitative transformations in the material­-​­technical base of armed struggle at sea.84 This is pretty dense stuff, perhaps deliberately, for its impenetrability suggests a profound wisdom, which you would need to be very sure of your ground to challenge. Gorshkov goes on to discuss what he calls categories of naval art.85 Under the heading “Scope of Conflict”, he observed: A modern navy possesses universality and mobility and is capable of concentrating strike power, which may be used not only for fighting a sea foe but also in the sphere of operations of other branches of the armed forces. Thanks to this, the scope of the armed struggle at sea is increasing to global proportions. Here Gorshkov is combining his Fleet v Fleet and Fleet v Shore concept with a claim of global reach and influence. Though he didn’t say so, the implication is obvious. Only the Navy can do this, the Army being confined to confrontations with NATO in Central Europe and with China in the Far East. His second category is “Strike”: “The growth of the power of naval weapons  … [has] brought a quite new understanding of such a category as strike.” This has developed from a tactical concept into a strategic goal, which may be conducted by conventional or nuclear means and against targets on shore as well as at sea. Under “Battle” Gorshkov said “The battle was and remains the main means of solving tactical tasks. For a long time, it remained the sole form of combat use of the navy”­  – a reference to Mahan’s and Tirpitz’s emphasis on decisive battle. Technology now means that battles are conducted at ever­-​­greater ranges, and in three dimensions, but “It is assumed that … tactics forming … the classical scheme of the sea battle­ – seek out the enemy, tactical deployment and delivery of strikes after the weapon carrier has moved into the release position­ – will also persist in the future.” But the time available for “solving combat tasks” has shortened and battle “will become more fleeting, dynamic and productive”. Decisive combat will therefore continue to matter at sea, with the implication that getting in the first strike will be the key to success­  – perhaps because the Soviet Navy would have little other choice. The more diverse nature of naval forces­ – air, surface and sub­-​­surface­ – and improved means of communication and coordination means a greater role for Gorshkov’s next category, “Interaction”. The category “Manoeuvre” might seem familiar to anyone versed in current Western military doctrine. However, Gorshkov used the term in a more limited manner to describe the physical, tactical movement of forces for optimum employment. Manoeuvre as an alternative to “attrition”, based on the “effect” being sought rather than destruction of the enemy didn’t feature in Gorshkov’s thinking and, to be fair, was not yet a dominant feature of Western thought at the time he was writing.

98   Writings He dealt with “Speed” and “Time” as separate categories, but reached the same conclusion. Things will happen in a short space of time. Gorshkov notes that some tasks­ – he gives the example of attacking a convoy­ – can be accomplished over a period of time, but: Now such an approach will often be inapplicable. In a number of cases the groupings of the forces of the enemy fleet will have to be destroyed in a definite very short time interval, before they can make full use of their weapons.… The growing demands for shortening the times of solving tasks decisive for the development of all forms of armed conflict at sea have made it necessary to keep the forces of the fleet in readiness for immediate delivery of strikes on the enemy.… So, it will be necessary to get in the first blow. Russia’s circumstances­ – at least beyond its immediate waters­  – does not allow it to assume a tactical (or even operational) defensive. Gorshkov moved logically from this point to his final category, “Dominance at Sea”. This is a special category particular solely to the armed conflict in marine theatres. The naval forces do not form a line of a front, they are mobile, their operations are not connected with moving through, capture or retention of certain spaces. They operate on “no man’s water” in stretches where there is no “sovereign” ruler since international conventions recognize the principle of the sea open (free) to all. Victory in a sea battle does not always mean the achievement of territorial changes.… However, any fleet always seeks to create in a particular area of the sea the regime necessary for it, for example, to gain control of shipping and ensuring its safety, freedom to deploy one’s forces, etc. Gorshkov discussed this category at much greater length than any of the others, suggesting the importance he attributed to a correct understanding of this­ – in Soviet circles at least­ – contested concept. He stressed that, for Russia anyway, dominance at sea is limited in space and time, as a necessary condition for the accomplishment of other tasks­  – a point he had made in his first published article in 1944.86 Nowhere does he advocate a more general command of the sea, merely the need to prevent the “imperialists” securing it. Gorshkov therefore combined the imperative to deny a more general dominance by others with a requirement to establish local dominance for one’s self. Corbett understood and preached this many years before; Tirpitz’s thinking was not as subtle. Gorshkov concluded The Sea Power of the State with a claim “for the switch of the centre of gravity to naval forces” because the Soviet Union’s opponents were maritime states enjoying “advantageous strategic positions”. In addition, technological developments­ – especially but not only nuclear weapons­ – meant that naval forces now had important roles to perform against the shore.

Gorshkov – his writings   99 All this has determined the need and rationale of the efforts, which are being made in our country to develop the navy­ – the basic component of the sea power of the state capable of withstanding the oceanic strategy of imperialism. The sea power of our country is directed at ensuring favourable conditions for building communism, the intensive expansion of the economic power of the country and the steady consolidation of its defence capability.87 Apart from the dutiful references to imperialism and communism this could be a claim by any proponent of seapower, whether from a “maritime” or a “continental” state. Tirpitz might have used similar words, though one writer says “This is the first articulated maritime strategy for use in continental wars”.88 Gorshkov remained active on paper after publication of Sea Power of the State right up to his retirement in 1985 and beyond. Most of his output reiterated familiar themes suggesting that internal doctrinal and resource­-​­allocation debates were far from settled. A further series of 11 articles appeared in Naval Digest between April 1981 and July 1983, though this time most were by subordinates and Gorshkov himself only penned a summary.89 Robert Herrick believes that, by the early 1980s, the Navy had three settled roles: a share in nuclear deterrence, defence of the homeland against seaborne attack and protection of “state interests” at sea.90 These, not surprisingly, were the main themes Gorshkov and others pursued. The role of Soviet SSBNs revealed differences with Western practice. SSBN strikes against population centres were said to be “strategic” while attacks on coastal (naval) targets were considered “operational”.91 Western doctrine­ – then and now­ – regards any use of nuclear weapons against the enemy’s homeland as “strategic”. Gorshkov could claim, in February 1985, a strategic deterrence role, the “employment of the strategic armament of the Navy against the shore for an answering strike” but this still suggested something like a withholding strategy rather than the long­-​­sought naval role in the initial nuclear strike.92 He went on to say “This direction for the operational­-​­strategic use of the Navy has moved ever more decisively into first place and has become the main aim of the actions of the Navy. All else is subordinated to this”, a statement that perhaps reflects renewed nuclear confrontation with the United States at the time. A few months later, Gorshkov updated the zonal defence concept by describing a “Near Zone” (a coastal perimeter) and a “Far Zone” (“the far regions of the seas and oceans”).93 This was probably an attempt to square the General Staff’s insistence on the primacy of homeland defence with Gorshkov’s ambitions for a global presence. Gorshkov’s long­-​­term advocacy of a “balanced fleet” was tied to the protection of Soviet interests. “Thanks to the constant concern of the Communist Party and Soviet government we have in all respects a balanced Navy capable of reliably assuring state interests at sea.”94 A year later, he further pressed the point, arguing that previously a submarine­-​­dominant fleet was all the Soviet Union could afford (making a virtue of necessity) but now the

100   Writings balanced fleet enabled the Navy to challenge enemy naval forces in any region of the ocean.95 Shortly before his death in 1988, Gorshkov made a final contribution to naval thought, as editor of The Navy: Its Role, Prospects for Development and Employment.96 Neither Gorshkov’s own Foreword nor the main text introduce much that is new, but it advances old arguments in the new context of Gorbachev’s budgetary restraint, Glasnost, Perestroika and the rapid easing of Cold War tensions. It was argued at the time that it was a last­-​­ditch effort to retain Gorshkov­-​­style seapower in a fast­-​­changing political and economic environment.97 The book cannot find any new missions for the Navy, merely re­-​ ­ordering some of them and vainly arguing for a larger slice of a diminishing resource pie. One reviewer, even before the Soviet Union itself fell apart, believed Even the tone seems wrong. In his Foreword, Gorshkov sounds like a museum piece. General Secretary Gorbachev and his advisors … do not organize their thinking around such classic Marxist­-​­Leninist rhetoric as “imperialism’s intensified aggressiveness” and the “irreconcilable struggle,” which Gorshkov trots out.98 The time for such thinking had passed. There is a paradox about Gorshkov’s writings.99 The purpose behind them­ – advocating and justifying a Cold War­-​­era fleet­ – has long passed. His ideas drew on a highly selective and sometimes falsified historical analysis and an equally suspect Marxist­-Leninist ​­ theoretical framework. His “idealized truth”100 is anything but objective. He must, at least in part, have been aware of that because he transcends his own shortcomings and his work, shorn of its context­-​­specific rhetoric and detail, retains an enduring value. Gorshkov has left behind a sophisticated theory of seapower, despite rather than because of its underpinnings. Gorshkov, consciously or not, fused elements of Mahan, Corbett, Cable and others to fit the circumstances of a maritime challenger. He argued for the utility of seapower in peace and in war as an instrument of the state’s security and the furtherance of its interests. His work identified the need to defend against threats from the sea, to use the sea to bring pressure on the state’s enemies, to exploit the sea as a resource to further prosperity and to use the Navy as a diplomatic tool. Taking the Soviet Union to sea increased its strategic leverage, far beyond the geographic limitations of its continent­-​­bound land power. Soviet seapower, in combination with its nuclear capabilities, transformed the Soviet Union from a dominant regional power into a world power. Though undoubtably a “navalist”, Gorshkov understood, as did Corbett, that power at sea matters for the impact it has on land. If anything, Gorshkov’s view was a more developed and sophisticated one. All the things naval forces can do­  – strike at and from the sea, amphibious landings, strategic deterrence, defence of the homeland, protection and interdiction of shipping, diplomatic presence­ – matter because of their decisive influence ashore. To achieve all this,

Gorshkov – his writings   101 Gorshkov developed a credible conception of sea control (or “dominance at sea”), which successfully fuses sometimes mutually exclusive concepts of command of the sea and sea denial. He embraced the role of battle and of a Fleet in Being, understood the role of technological developments, argued for an all­-​ ­arms Joint approach and asserted the need for a balanced fleet, the exact composition of which must be tailored to a particular country’s circumstances and requirements. Gorshkov’s contribution to seapower thinking is also significant because, perhaps more than any other writer, he fuses military, economic, scientific and political elements into an overarching whole. This may be because in the Soviet Union all were directly controlled instruments of the state, in contrast to liberal trading nations, past and present.101 There were things Gorshkov couldn’t do. No amount of political advocacy and doctrinal reasoning could overcome geographic reality. Russia was not, is not and cannot be, a maritime state as much as it is a continental state. Its strategic centre of gravity will always lie on the Eurasian landmass, not at sea. But, for the written part of Gorshkov’s legacy, that doesn’t matter. He has left a model of seapower for continental states and, more than that, a substantial contribution to enduring ideas about the strategic exploitation of the sea.

Notes    1 Rowlands 21st Century Gorshkov.    2 Herrick Doctrine and Policy Book One p. xiii. Unless otherwise stated, subsequent journal citations are from Robert Herrick’s three­-​­volume Soviet Naval Doctrine and Policy 1956–1986.    3 Rear Admiral Gorshkov “Amphibious Landing Operations of the Azov Military Flotilla” Morskoi Sbornik April 1944. Cited in Herrick Gorshkov’s Inheritance pp. 149–150.    4 Not to be confused with Combat Support (“Fires”) in land warfare.    5 Natalia Yegorova “Stalin’s Conception of Maritime Power: Revelations from the Russian Archives” The Journal of Strategic Studies 28:2 (April 2005) p. 163.    6 Hudson pp. 42–65.    7 Herrick Book One pp. 74 & 224.    8 Gorshkov “The Development of Soviet Naval Art” Morskoi Sbornik 2 February 1967.    9 Pravda 26 July 1959 p. 93.   10 Izvestiya 19 May 1963.   11 Morskoi Sbornik July 1963.   12 Pravda 26 July 1959.   13 Pravda 26 July 1964.   14 Herrick Book One p. 232.   15 Morskoi Sbornik February 1967.   16 Herrick Book One p. 227.   17 Herrick Book One p. 274.   18 It has a contemporary equivalent known as “Anti­-​­Access, Area Denial” (A2AD).   19 Morskoi Sbornik October 1967.   20 Pravda 28 July 1968.   21 Morskoi Sbornik February 1967.

102   Writings   22   23   24   25   26   27   28   29   30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37   38   39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54

  55   56   57   58   59   60

For example, in Krasnaya Zvezda (Red Star) February 1963. Pravda 30 July 1967. Literaturnaya Gazeta May 1965. Morskoi Sbornik February 1967. Pravda 14 February 1968. For example, the US Navy’s seminal From the Sea White Paper published in 1992. Voennaya Mysl (Military Thought) January 1968. Morskoi Sbornik February 1967. Future Soviet carriers were to carry their own long­-​­range anti­-​­ship missiles instead of attack aircraft, a marked difference with Western practice. Morskoi Sbornik March 1965. Sea Lines of Communication. Bloknot Agitatora (Agitator) July 1969. The articles and their commentaries were subsequently re­-​­published in book form as Red Star Rising at Sea op. cit. “Navvies in War and Peace” Proceedings 100:1, January 1974. Gray Leverage of Sea Power p. ix. “Russia’s Road to the Sea, Peter I to Napoleon” Proceedings 100:2, February 1974. Memorandum dated 3 January 1896 cited in Chapter 4. “The Post­-​­Napoleonic Period to Russo­-​­Japanese War” Proceedings 100:3, March 1974. “The First World War” Proceedings 100:4, April 1974. “The Soviet Navy in the Revolution” Proceedings 100:5, May 1974. Of course, there was no “Soviet Navy” until after the Bolshevik seizure of power. Mitchell p. 343 “The Soviet Navy Rebuilds, 1928–41” Proceedings 100:6, June 1974. Chapter 3. The “Old” and “New” schools, respectively. Julian S. Corbett Some Principles of Maritime Strategy with an Introduction and Notes by Eric J. Grove Annapolis MD: Naval Institute Press, 1988 p. 318. Corbett’s work was originally published in 1911. “The Second World War” Proceedings 100:7, July 1974. Whitten p. 66. “The Soviet Navy in the Great Patriotic War” Proceedings 100:8, August 1974. “Analysis of Navies in the Second World War” Proceedings 100:9, September 1974. “Navies as Instruments of Peacetime Imperialism” Proceedings 100:10, October 1974. James Cable Gunboat Diplomacy 1919–1991 (3rded) Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1994 p. 14. “Some Problems in Mastering the World Ocean” Proceedings 100:11, November 1974. In the 1970s there was, for example, much interest in “manganese nodules” apparently littering the sea floor. Resource exploitation played a bigger part in negotiations leading to the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) than might be the case today. Bruce W. Watson “Comments on Gorshkov’s ‘Sea Power of the State’ ” US Naval Institute Proceedings 103:4 (April 1977) p. 46. The English translation appeared later, in 1979. David J. Kenney “A primer on S.G. Gorshkov’s Sea Power of the State” Naval War College Review XXIX:4 (Spring 1977) p. 94. SPOS pp. ix, 1–2, 58. Mahan The Influence p. 25. SPOS p. 271.

Gorshkov – his writings   103   61   62   63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99 100 101

SPOS pp. 130–131, 212 & 245. SPOS pp. ix, 5–6 & 9. SPOS pp. x & 178. One of many exact repetitions from the earlier articles. SPOS p. 183. SPOS pp. x, 68–69 & 159. SPOS p. 214. Corbett p. 16. SPOS p. 214. SPOS pp. 216–217. SPOS p. 221. Till Maritime Strategy p. 73. SPOS p. 4. Herrick Book Two p. 592. SPOS p. 277. SPOS pp. 180, 60, 82–83 & 154–155. SPOS pp. 248–251. Ranft & Till p. 194 Kenneth R. McGruther The Evolving Soviet Navy Newport RI: Naval War College Press, 1978 p. 69. SPOS pp. 247–248. SPOS pp. 66, 153 & 144. Kenney p. 97. SPOS Chapter 4. Such is its significance, the chapter is reproduced in full in Kevin Rowland’s recent re­-​­interpretation 21st Century Gorshkov op. cit. SPOS p. 213. SPOS p. 222. SPOS pp. 222–234. Footnote 3, above. SPOS p. 284. Rear Admiral Raja Menon Maritime Strategy and Continental Wars London; Frank Cass, 1998 p. 36. Michael MccGwire “Gorshkov’s Navy Part II” United States Naval Institute Proceedings 115:9 (September 1989) p. 44. Herrick Book Three p. 1069. Book Three p. 1097. Voyennaya Mysl February 1985. Voyenno­-​­Istoricheskiy Zhurnal July 1985. Morskoi Sbornik May 1984. Morskoi Sbornik April 1985. The book has not been translated in full, but is extensively cited and analysed in Captain Steve F. Kime et al. “Gorshkov’s Final Words: What Do They Mean?” USNI Proceedings 115:5 (May 1989) pp. 131–148. Kime p. 132. Captain Larry Seaquist in Kime p. 142. Jessica Huckabey “The Paradox of Admiral Gorshkov” Center for International Maritime Security, 1 October 2015. http://cimsec.org/paradox­-​­admiral­-​­gorshkov/13197 Robert B. Bathurst Understanding the Soviet Navy: A Handbook Newport RI: Naval War College Press, 1979 p. 2. I am grateful to Captain Kevin Rowlands RN for emphasizing this point to me.

Part III

Fleets

6 The Imperial German Navy

Having examined the lives of Admirals Tirpitz and Gorshkov and explored their respective ideas, we can now turn to the fleets they created. Both the Imperial German Navy and the Soviet Navy were significant achievements in their own right. But they had much wider consequences and it is from these that we can, in succeeding chapters, draw some enduring lessons about the continental experience with large­-​­scale seapower. When Tirpitz became State Secretary in 1897, the German Navy already had the third largest force of armoured ships in Europe.1 It comprised a mix of armoured and coast­-​­defence vessels for use at home and a disparate collection of cruisers and gunboats for overseas service. But, thanks to the vicissitudes outlined in Chapter 2, it was, in Tirpitz’s own words, “a collection of experiments in shipbuilding surpassed in exoticism only by the Russian Navy of Nicholas II”.2 The eight small coast defence battleships of the Siegfried class completed between 1889 and 1896 had a bizarre arrangement of side­-​­by­-​­side forward turrets. Eight true “pre­-​­dreadnought” battleships completed between 1893 and 1901 were more conventional but were wholly outclassed by contemporary British ships, though at the time France and Russia were seen as the likely opponents. German cruisers were in the main no more satisfactory, tending to be top­-​­heavy and their secondary battery casements liable to flooding.3 This fleet reflected the lack of consistent German planning before Tirpitz took over. “As a result of the cruiser­-​­battleship debate that persisted until 1897, the German navy found itself in a real predicament: the Naval Office built ships for which there was no strategy, while the High Command formulated strategy for which there were no ships.”4 The fleet that Tirpitz built divides chronologically into two distinct phases; the pre­-​­dreadnought and dreadnought eras. The transition from one to the other was dictated by British, not German, policy. Indeed, it was the case that, while the quantative race was initiated by the Germans, it was generally the British that led the qualitative competition. It was the realisation that Germany could not win either that led to the unravelling of the “Tirpitz Plan”.

108   Fleets The First Navy Law set out Tirpitz’s initial template:5 1. The number of ships of the German Navy­  – excluding torpedo boats, training vessels, special service vessels and gun boats­ – will be established to be: a) ready for service: 1 flagship of the fleet, 2 squadrons, each consisting of 8 battleships, 2 divisions, each consisting of 4 coast­-​­defence ships, 6 large cruisers }  as scouting vessels of the 16 small cruisers }  battle fleet in home waters 3 large cruisers } 10 small cruisers }  for foreign service b) as a reserve: 2 battleships 3 large cruisers 4 small cruisers The law went on to specify the ships already available or under construction that were to count against these totals, namely 12 battleships, eight coast­-​ ­defence ships, ten large and 23 small cruisers. That left an additional seven battleships, two large and seven small cruisers to be acquired. Unsurprisingly in view of Tirpitz’s emphasis on the need for a battlefleet, much the biggest proportionate increase was in battleships. Overall this was a significant but not dramatic increase and explains why, at least in terms of numbers, the First Navy Law did not arouse much concern in Britain. The first battleships ordered as a result of the Navy Law were five Wittlesbach­-​­class ships, which were little different to the preceding (and pre­-​ ­Tirpitz) Kaiser­-​­class. Contemporary British ships of the Majestic, Canopus, Formidable and London classes (23 ships in total) were significantly larger and more heavily armed, having 12­-​­inch main guns to the German ships’ 9.5­-inch ​­ (240 mm). Even the follow­-​­on Braunschweig­-​­class only carried 11­-inch ​­ guns, a mark of Tirpitz’s prioritisation of numbers over individual ship capabilities. This had some logic, as German battleships were always meant to fight as a fleet rather than as individual units.6 But, in the long run, it condemned the German Navy to qualitative and quantitative inferiority. In 1900, the Second Navy Law doubled the projected size of the fleet.7 It was this that started the first naval race with Britain. It [the fleet] shall be composed as follows: 1. The battle fleet consisting of: 2 flagships of the fleet 4 squadrons, each consisting of 8 battleships 8 large cruisers 24 small cruisers

The Imperial German Navy   109 2. The fleet for service abroad consisting of: 3 large cruisers 10 small cruisers 3. The material reserve consisting of: 4 battleships 3 large cruisers 4 small cruisers The eight Siegfried­-​­class coast defence ships would count as battleships until replaced. Battleships would be replaced after 25 years’ service, cruisers after 20. In conformity with the Risk Theory that the 1900 Law articulated, Tirpitz’s battleships were limited in range and habitability. They did not need to venture far from their bases, nor for very long. The first manifestation of the Second Navy Law, though some new ships would have been ordered anyway, were the five Deutschland­-​­class laid down between 1903 and 1905.8 They were slightly improved versions of the previous class, demonstrating Tirpitz’s conservatism when it came to technical innovation. Dreadnought was in service before all but one of this class commissioned, which were therefore immediately obsolescent. They were the last pre­-​ ­dreadnoughts built in Germany and, thanks to the impact of the British ship on German plans, no new German battleships were completed between July 1908 (Schleswig­-​­Holstein) and July 1910 (Nassau). This two­-​­year hiatus occurred just as Anglo­-​­German naval tensions were intensifying. Nor were the Deutschland­-​ ­class outmatched only by Dreadnought. The last British pre­-​­dreadnoughts, the 16 ships of the Duncan, King Edward VII and Lord Nelson classes, were also superior in numbers, size and main armament. Despite his fleet being clearly outmatched by the Royal Navy, the intention behind Tirpitz’s plans was enough to alarm the British Admiralty. The First Lord, Selborne, wrote in a memorandum for the Cabinet that: The naval policy of Germany… is definite and persistent … it follows that the German naval strength must be raised so as to compare more advantageously than at present with ours. The result of this policy will be to place Germany in a commanding position if ever we find ourselves at war with France and Russia.…9 This was, for the moment at least, a partial vindication of the Risk Theory and even perhaps the “alliance value” of the German fleet. But, as we shall see, the diplomatic context changed before the fleet itself could grow sufficiently to satisfy its rationale. Before moving on to the dreadnought era and the second phase of the Anglo­-​ ­German naval race, it is worth considering how Tirpitz’s plan would have fared had the dreadnought revolution not intervened. Assuming a continuation of the Navy Law three­-​­ship annual tempo, the Imperial German Navy would have

110   Fleets reached the planned 38 battleships (including the Siegfrieds) and 14 large cruisers by about 1913/1914. Thereafter the coast­-​­defence ships and early armoured cruisers would require replacing as they reached 25 and 20 years old, respectively. Also, assuming a continuing trajectory for British construction (an admittedly large assumption, as British shipbuilding was not governed by legislation as it was in Germany), by the same dates the Royal Navy would have a total force of 60–70 battleships and a similar number of large armoured cruisers. The Siegfrieds, though counting against the German battleship tally, were actually inferior to many British cruisers other than in thickness of armour. Tirpitz’s battleships would therefore have been outnumbered 2 : 1 by the Royal Navy (as well as being out­-​­gunned) and the disparity in large cruisers even greater. That is probably as far as we can usefully take counterfactual speculation and it must remain unknown whether these ratios were sufficient to meet the requirements of the Risk Theory. There is evidence that Tirpitz was aiming for more­  – as many as 60 battleships and 20 large cruisers­  – by the 1920s.10 A three­-ship ​­ tempo would almost, though not quite, sustain this provided the age at which ships were replaced was not reduced. However, the rate of growth towards these totals would slow once existing ships came up for replacement, starting in about 1914. Even before the details of Dreadnought and her large cruiser equivalent Invincible became known, Tirpitz was therefore already facing insurmountable odds for at least the next decade. British ships were larger and more heavily armed and there were a lot more of them. Tirpitz, for all his skill in getting a much­-enhanced ​­ fleet authorised by the Kaiser and the Reichstag, was constrained on all sides­ – by the width of the Kaiser Wilhelm (Kiel) Canal, the capacity of German shipyards, a fleet budget controlled (and limited) by the Reichstag and a British determination to retain a commanding lead in the new arms race. By 1906, it was clear that Germany was condemned to permanent naval inferiority. Then Dreadnought changed the dynamics, and not to Germany’s advantage. The appearance of HMS Dreadnought, laid down in October 1905 and commissioned 15 months later, upset all of Tirpitz’s assumptions and planning. This is not the place to detail in full the origins of the British ship’s revolutionary design, though a few salient points need to be made.11 Dreadnought introduced a single­-calibre ​­ main armament of ten 12­-​­inch guns, whereas the recent King Edward VII and Lord Nelson classes carried four 12­-​­inch and a powerful secondary battery of 9.2­-​­inch guns. The latter replaced 6­-​­inch weapons in earlier classes and represented an intermediate development on the way to adoption of a uniform big­-​­gun main armament, such that the Lord Nelsons are sometimes described as “semi­-​­dreadnoughts”.12 Tirpitz was planning a similar ship but was forestalled by the appearance of the “full” dreadnought, which actually entered service before the two Lord Nelsons. All­-big ​­ gun designs were already under consideration in the United States, Japan and Italy. The Kaiser had seen an Italian design on a visit to Messina and urged something similar on Tirpitz, though the latter initially resisted the idea as his priority remained numbers, not expensive innovations.13

The Imperial German Navy   111 Equally important was Dreadnought’s turbines in place of reciprocating engines. Turbines were lighter, more compact and gave higher speeds, 21 knots compared to a pre­-​­dreadnought’s 18 knots. As well as more speed, adoption of turbines gave greater design flexibility amidships, which in turn permitted turrets to be mounted on the centreline. Dreadnought could therefore fire a broadside of eight guns from a total of ten, whereas the early German dreadnoughts had to mount 12 big guns for an eight­-​­gun broadside. Once details of the Dreadnought arrived in Germany, Tirpitz was faced with a critical dilemma. The cost implications of following the British lead were substantial and not just in terms of the larger ships themselves, for the existing canal and dock infrastructure would need to be enlarged as well. The whole Tirpitz plan was predicated on keeping unit costs down in order to build numbers, within the self­-​­imposed fiscal limits of the Navy Laws. But, if Germany did not build its own dreadnoughts, Tirpitz’s new fleet would be obsolete even as it entered the water and could not credibly meet the requirements of the Risk Theory. It was probably inevitable that: Tirpitz now decided to pick up the gauntlet that he felt Fisher had thrown him … he could not allow his forces to be more than numerically one­-​­third weaker than the enemy’s. Nor could he permit British quality to be substantially higher than his own.14 A dreadnought­-​­type battleship had double the big­-​­gun broadside of a pre­-​ ­dreadnought, so the competition in numbers was about guns as well as hulls. Dreadnought rendered all other battleships, if not obsolete, at least obsolescent. It re­-​­started the Anglo­-​­German naval competition (“probably the most celebrated arms race in history”15) from scratch, or at least appeared to. The strategic reality was more complex. As soon as Tirpitz, belatedly, decided to follow the British lead he stopped ordering pre­-​­dreadnoughts and the design for a “semi­-​­dreadnought” was re­-​­cast to produce the full thing. This had two effects. First, until both countries built a significant number of the new ships, which would take some years, Britain’s superiority in pre­-​­dreadnoughts would continue to matter. By 1908, the Royal Navy had 41 such ships, the Imperial German Navy 23 somewhat inferior vessels. An end to pre­-​­dreadnought building sealed this British advantage. Second, Admiral Fisher had stolen a march on his German counterpart in the new arms race. By the time the first four German dreadnoughts were commissioned in 1910 (the Nassau­-​­class),16 the Royal Navy had ten dreadnoughts in service: seven battleships and three battlecruisers. By the end of 1912, Britain had 22 dreadnoughts to Germany’s 12. Nor was the British advantage confined to numbers alone. Tirpitz continued his pre­-​­1906 pattern of playing catch­-​­up in ship characteristics. For a numerically inferior fleet this was fateful,17 but Tirpitz’s dogged adherence to his Navy Laws, as amended by successive Novelles, meant he had to maintain numbers while restricting cost growth. Accordingly, he tried to build all big­-​­gun

112   Fleets ships as economically as possible without fully matching British designs, balancing numbers against capability but falling short of his opponent in both respects. German ships were actually better in some aspects. They had superior watertight integrity and were generally more heavily armoured, which went some way to offset British ships’ greater firepower. They also had better (stereoscopic) rangefinders and their shells were considered to be of superior quality.18 But, throughout the evolution of dreadnought­-​­type ships over the following decade, German ships consistently lagged behind their opponents in the key characteristics of firepower and speed­  – the characteristics that Fisher always emphasised. It was not until December 1912, six years after the Dreadnought, that a turbine­-​­driven German battleship entered service. Even then, German battleships were about two knots slower than their British contemporaries. Tirpitz’s difficulties are best illustrated, not by battleships, but by a large cruiser. He had always tried to save money on cruiser designs in order to maximise the funds available for battleships.19 Fisher was careful to keep secret the details of the new Invincible­-​­class’s main armament, leading Tirpitz to conclude it would carry the same 9.2­-inch ​­ weapon as previous armoured cruisers. Accordingly, the first German dreadnought­-​­era large cruiser Blucher was armed with 8.2­-​­inch (210 mm) guns, which were considered an adequate match.20 By the time Blucher was launched, the eight 12­-​­inch guns of the Invincibles had been revealed and the German ship was out­-classed ​­ even before it entered service. Employed as a weak battlecruiser, Blucher was sunk at the Battle of the Dogger Bank in January 1915 in action with 12­-​­ and 13.5­-inch ​­ gunned ships. Once Tirpitz accepted that he was going to have to follow the Dreadnought example, work to design a German equivalent led to a rapid increase in the size of the new ship. It went from a 13,000­-​­ton pre­-dreadnought ​­ to an 18,000­-ton ​­ dreadnought in just 12 months, with predictable effects on cost.21 Once the new design had been finalised, the 1906 programme comprised the Blucher and the first two of four Nassau­-​­class battleships. These latter vessels were the same displacement as Dreadnought, but with reciprocating engines and slightly thicker armour they were two knots slower. They carried the same 11­-inch ​­ (280 mm) guns as their predecessors, but 12 of them instead of four. The 1907 programme added the second pair of Nassaus and Germany’s first true battlecruiser (as the new dreadnought­-​­style large cruisers were soon known), the Von der Tann. This ship, in contrast to German battleships, is generally regarded as superior to contemporary British equivalents and was the first large German ship with turbine engines­  – of British Parsons design. But it came at a cost; henceforth, battlecruisers tended to cost almost as much as contemporaneous battleships and eventually became more expensive. We have seen that the other response to Dreadnought and Invincible was the 1908 Novelle. This reduced the service life of battleships from 25 to 20 years and introduced a four­-​­ship building tempo for the years 1908 to 1911. The 1908 programme therefore comprised three Helgoland­-​­class battleships (essentially

The Imperial German Navy   113 repeat Nassaus but with 12­-​­inch guns) and an improved (but still 11­-​­inch gunned) battlecruiser, Moltke. But the consequence of the Novelle was, perversely, to reinforce German naval inferiority. The “naval scare” it prompted resulted in a British order for eight ships in a single year (1909), five of which carried a new 13.5­-​­inch gun. Germany’s own 1909 orders comprised a fourth Helgoland, another Moltke­-​­class and two Kaiser­-​­class battleships, still armed with 12­-​­inch guns but now turbine­-​­driven and finally matching Dreadnought for speed. The 1910 programme comprised three more Kaisers and another battlecruiser (Seydlitz). In 1911, continuing the pattern of three battleships and a single battlecruiser per year, Tirpitz ordered three improved Konig­-​­class battleships­ – still with 12­-​­inch guns­ – and Germany’s first 12­-​­inch battlecruiser, Derfflinger. By this stage, Britain had on order 11 ships with the larger 13.5­-​­inch guns and another five soon to follow. The new gun could fire a heavier shell over a greater distance (1,400 lbs and 24,000 yards) than the smaller German weapons (666 or 893 lbs and up to 22,400 yards).22 Then things got even worse for Tirpitz. In Britain, the 1912 programme comprised five Queen Elizabeth­-​­class battleships. Mounting eight 15­-​­inch guns and with oil­-​­fired boilers capable of 25 knots, these were the first “super­-​ ­dreadnoughts”. The new gun fired a projectile more than double the weight of any German weapon then in service. Tirpitz’s own programme for that year included just two large ships as the 1908 Novelle tempo reduced from four to two. Both were 12­-​­inch gunned. The year 1912 also saw Tirpitz’s final Novelle. This reinstated a three­-​­ship tempo for 1913 and 1916 and introduced some manning measures to improve fleet readiness.23 Its greatest significance, however, was in providing money, for the first time, for Zeppelin airships and a large­-​­scale commitment to submarines. Though remaining sceptical about the importance of these new craft, Tirpitz could not ignore them indefinitely. The future strength of the German Navy would therefore comprise: 41 battleships 20 battlecruisers 40 cruisers 144 torpedo boats 72 submarines.24 This might pose more than just a “risk” to the Royal Navy,25 especially given the latter’s worldwide commitments. Perhaps as important, the fleet would renew itself automatically as each large ship reached 20 years of age, with a sustained three­-​­ship tempo after 1917. The Novelle was accompanied by a behind­-​­the­-​­scenes debate about how to respond to the new challenge posed by the Queen Elizabeths.26 The perpetual trade­-​­off between cost and capability remained but was resolved in favour of a slower 15­-​­inch battleship (the two­-​­ship Baden­-​­class) and another 12­-​­inch

114   Fleets battlecruiser (Hindenburg), the three ships comprising the 1913 programme. These were the last capital ships actually completed for the Imperial German Navy, in 1916–1917. The final pre­-​­war building programme of 1914 consisted of two slightly improved Sachsen­-​­class battleships and a 13.8­-​­inch battlecruiser, which though launched during the war were never completed. The scale but also the inadequacy of the German naval challenge to Britain was apparent when war was declared in early August 1914. In terms of simple Dreadnought numbers, the respective fleets, in service and under construction, comprised: Battleships Battlecruisers

Germany 13 + 7 5 + 3

Britain 20 + 12 9 + 1

This does not tell the whole story, however. Three ships under construction in Britain for the Turkish and Chilean navies were soon completed and taken into Royal Navy service, an option that did not exist for Germany as it had little additional capacity to build large warships for other countries. One fast battleship was under construction for Greece. However, it was to carry American 14­-​­inch guns, which the British blockade prevented from being delivered (and which were later purchased by Britain). More significant than that, was the relative weight of fire represented by each battlefleet. The total broadside from Germany’s 1914 fleet of dreadnoughts was 128,000 lbs, Britain’s 275,000. By the time Jutland was fought in May 1916, the relative figures were 176,500 and 464,500­  – a 2.5 : 1 British advantage. Britain at this time had eight 15­-​­inch super­-​­dreadnoughts; Germany had none. And there was still the substantial British advantage in pre­-​­dreadnoughts. Tirpitz “could not disguise the fact that he had lost the race against Germany’s ‘most important enemy’ ”.27 The overall technological inferiority of individual Germans ships compared to British is striking, resulting from the need to restrain unit costs in order to maximise numbers. In relation to limited operating range and poor habitability, this was consistent with the strategic and tactical requirements of the North Sea­-​ ­oriented Risk Theory. But slower speeds and lighter main armaments exacerbated the competitive inferiority of smaller numbers, reducing the “risk” the High Seas Fleet could pose to the Royal Navy’s dominance. The course and the outcome of the First World War demonstrated that Tirpitz’s High Seas Fleet could neither deter nor defeat the Royal Navy. As we saw in Chapter 2, this was apparent to the naval High Command, including Tirpitz himself, as early as the end of 1914. Capital ship construction was curtailed in favour of building U­-​­Boats, a very different sort of fleet to the one Tirpitz had been developing since 1897. Some of the big guns originally destined for the fleet ended up mounted on railway carriages on the Western Front, a neat parable for the switch to a land orientation once hostilities commenced. The High Seas Fleet itself spent most of the War in harbour.

The Imperial German Navy   115 Tirpitz’s neglect of submarines seems surprising on two counts. First, his early work in torpedoes and, second, the near­-​­war winning potential they demonstrated during both World Wars. But his attitude towards them is explicable, even if not, with hindsight, entirely sensible. At root, the Tirpitz Plan and the Risk Theory were tools of peacetime compellence, which required a powerful battlefleet.28 Submarines might provide victory in wartime, but the primitive boats available before about 1912 could perform only a peripheral role. “In prewar Germany, U­-​­boats suffered because battleships prospered.”29 There was also Tirpitz’s technical conservatism, perhaps as a consequence of his time at the Torpedo Commission. He understood the need to prove a new technology before spending large sums introducing it into service, an attitude also exhibited in his dismissal of both German and Russian “collections of experiments”. Submarines could potentially perform three roles. First, coastal defence against a superior attacking force of the kind Tirpitz imagined the Royal Navy would present. He did invest in torpedo boats for this purpose (144 under the 1912 Novelle), which until at least 1912 had greater speed and range than submarines, and were cheaper. Second, engagement of a superior battlefleet further out in the North Sea, for which they had inadequate range and might undermine the case for a German battlefleet. Third, submarines could act as commerce­-​ ­raiders to inflict economic damage on the enemy. Again, early U­-​­Boats lacked the range for this and Tirpitz had already rejected a cruiser­-​­based commerce strategy before introducing the First Navy Law in 1898. Early German submarines were somewhat inferior to contemporary British and French boats, not least because Germany did not adopt diesel propulsion until 1910. Before the 1912 Novelle, Tirpitz spent very little on U­-​­Boats and, even as late as 1910, the entire budget for them represented just a third of the cost of a single dreadnought.30 At the outbreak of war, Germany possessed 28 submarines, while Britain had 55 and France 77. We saw in Chapter 2 that, by the beginning of 1915, Tirpitz was a belated convert to submarine warfare. “It seemed as if the U­-​­boat, the unwanted step­-​ ­child of the von Tirpitz era, had become the only effective offensive weapon the Imperial Navy possessed.”31 But his pre­-​­war policy with respect to U­-​­Boats meant that, even by the end of that year, Germany still possessed only 54 submarines. Barely a third might be at sea at any one time, so this force was quite inadequate for the kind of commercial warfare for which the improved types of U­-​­Boat were so ideal and which might have real strategic impact on the course of the War. When unrestricted submarine warfare was halted after the sinking of the Lusitania, it merely confirmed that, individual ship sinkings apart, Germany was not ready for this form of warfare on a decisive scale. By January 1916, a further 165 U­-​­Boats were under construction and the Navy was planning an eventual total of 350, not including the early pre­-​­war designs that were of limited use. But this was not Tirpitz’s fleet and he was soon gone altogether. When unrestricted submarine warfare was resumed in January 1917, Germany had finally achieved a force capable of undertaking the new

116   Fleets strategy, with over 120 boats immediately available. Such was the priority accorded to U­-​­Boat construction that work was stopped on seven dreadnoughts, including the two Sachsen­-​­class, and five battlecruisers. The German Navy received no new capital ships after May 1917. No fleet is just about lists of ships, however impressive. Manpower is at least as important. We saw in Chapter 2 that the “Front” (i.e. the fleet) made repeated demands for more resources to be devoted to supplying and supporting the growing fleet, in particular care and training of its crews. At root were the conflicting demands of building for the long­-​­term future versus achieving short­-​­term readiness.32 Tirpitz’s priority was always the former, and does much to explain why, in 1912, he had to declare to the Kaiser and the Army that the fleet was still not ready for war. It had neither the numbers nor the readiness. We have already noted that accommodation standards on board ship were poor, as the High Seas Fleet was not designed for extended periods at sea. But the same was true ashore and compounded the effect of poor pay and food. An early and vocal critic of Tirpitz’s policies was Captain Lothar Persius, who wrote soon after the end of the War “These things all combined, even before the outbreak of war, to influence unfavourably the feeling in the Fleet”.33 Followed by four years largely inactive in harbour, it is perhaps not surprising that unrest in the fleet was one of the first indications of the imminent overthrow of the Imperial regime in November 1918. Things started to come to a head after 1912 when it became increasingly difficult to man the growing fleet and maintain a worthwhile state of readiness.34 To compound matters, this was just when money and manpower were beginning to be re­-​­diverted to the needs of the Army. Tirpitz always assumed that Germany’s system of conscription would regularly bring in fresh cohorts of manpower, allowing him to man his growing fleet. The Royal Navy’s all­-​ ­volunteer long­-​­service model would not allow it to expand at anything like the same rate. In fact, the reverse proved to be true. Fisher generated the manpower he needed for dreadnoughts at least in part by scrapping large numbers of obsolete ships based overseas. Longer service also reduced training needs. By contrast, the German Navy did grow from approximately 26,000 officers and men in 1897 to around 80,000 in 1914, an extraordinary expansion that would have been a challenging training task for any Service.35 The high turnover of conscripts (up to 20,000 per year) and the lack of a substantial corps of non­-​ ­commissioned petty officers (not unlike the Soviet Navy in the Cold War) exacerbated this problem. Though it proved itself in certain tasks, notably the quality of its gunnery, in general “merely going to sea was a much greater ordeal for the German Fleet than for the Royal Navy”.36 The cost of Tirpitz’s fleet was prodigious. This was always Tirpitz’s central dilemma­  – how to build the fleet he (and the Kaiser) wanted and achieve the strategic effect promised by the Risk Theory, without breaking the bank. The fleet had to be affordable and, as important, the German people and the Reichstag had to be persuaded that they could afford it.37

The Imperial German Navy   117 Tirpitz’s greatest challenge was one that he did not foresee. The Navy Laws of 1898 and 1900 were predicated on the assumption that significant technological innovation was unlikely. The cost of individual ships would therefore remain stable and the increased budgets would simply pay for more of them. Even before the appearance of Dreadnought forced a German response, this assumption proved fragile as demand for steel increased its price. The increase in the size of main guns, to 11­-​­inch, had a similar effect and unit costs increased overall by about 8 per cent between 1902 and 1908. But it was the dreadnought revolution that really brought about a major cost escalation. It was not that the new ships were necessarily more complex than their predecessors, but rather that they were just bigger and carried more large guns.38 Germany’s first dreadnoughts, the Nassau class, displaced over 18,000 tons against 14,000 for the pre­-​­dreadnought Braunschweig and Deutschland classes. Accordingly, Nassau cost 38.4 million marks, while the last pre­-dreadnoughts ​­ were just 24.5 million­ – a staggering 50 per cent increase in unit cost in two years.39 This was just the beginning. During the roughly ten­-​­year evolution of German dreadnoughts, the increasing size of hulls and guns as well as the faster turbine engines brought yet further escalation in costs. The cost of battleships rose by a further 17 per cent in just three years, while battlecruisers rose even more; Derfflinger at 56 million marks was 53 per cent more expensive than Von der Tann and nearly three times the cost of a pre­-dreadnought ​­ armoured cruiser.40 Nor was this the full financial story of the naval arms race with Britain. The cost of British ships certainly went up, and for similar reasons. But it went up much more slowly and from a lower cost base to begin with. By 1912, German ships were around 30 per cent more expensive than their Royal Navy equivalents. There were several reasons for this. Britain had more, longer­-​ ­established building yards and enjoyed greater economies of scale. For example, the two British classes of 15­-inch ​­ battleships comprised five vessels each. Their German equivalents were just two ships per class. Britain led the qualitative race and could therefore plan improvements more systematically, while Tirpitz always had to respond to the latest British innovations. Notwithstanding the usual assumptions about German industrial efficiency (which Tirpitz certainly relied on), it appears that when it came to building large warships the British were the more efficient. The budgetary impact of sharply rising costs was disastrous for Tirpitz’s efforts to challenge Britain while mollifying the Reichstag and in part explains the need for repeated Novelles. Tirpitz found he had to play catch­-up ​­ in financial terms as well as technological. In 1906, a lengthy memorandum from the Budget Division of the Naval Office predicted that the naval budget would grow from 118 million marks in 1897 to 409 million by 1917­ – a 246 per cent increase in 20 years.41 And that was before Germany had to respond to the dreadnought revolution. Even so, Britain still outspent Germany. In 1899, Tirpitz’s budget was 27 per cent that for the Royal Navy and by 1913/1914 it had barely reached 50 per cent of that of its rival. The British budget less than doubled during this period, while the German budget was three and a half times the size of 15 years

118   Fleets before.42 The disparity in unit costs meant that Britain’s naval expenditure also went further, a trend exacerbated by the greater German need for infrastructure spending such as widening locks, docks and the canal. The result was a huge increase in Imperial government expenditure. The armed forces accounted for a consistent 85 to 90 per cent of all federal spending in the years 1898–1914, including interest on loans raised to pay for the fleet. But the overall budget went from around 840 million marks in 1898 to nearly three times that amount in 1913, some 2,400 million marks. Spending on civilian departments and on modest social security provision went up by similar ratios, but its effect was modest, accounting for around 10 per cent of expenditure.43 The position was complicated by the particular budgetary and fiscal arrangements of the Reich. Only the individual states could levy direct taxes on income. The Imperial government was reliant on indirect taxes such as customs duties and sales taxes, grants from the states and borrowing. In 1902, a rise in agricultural tariffs pleased the landowning classes and raised money to help pay for the 1900 Navy Law but tax increases, if pushed too far, risked undermining support for Weltpolitik and the Navy. Being concentrated on items like beer and railway tickets, where price rises were immediately apparent, exacerbated their political impact. So, the Imperial Treasury, reluctantly, made increasing use of loans and the federal debt went up accordingly. By 1909, borrowing accounted for 28 per cent of spending­  – an annual deficit of 500 million marks.44 In 1914, the national debt reached five billion marks, nearly double annual expenditure. By now, “the money had run out”.45 Even Tirpitz had to acknowledge that it was: Practically impossible to go beyond three­-​­ship rate: a) due to cost b) out of consideration for foreign policy. Normal cost for ship construction per year at three­-​­ship rate already 250 million; fourth ship (+60 million) is stretching things too far.46 Before 1897, no German leader would have questioned that the country’s security relied, above all else, on the Army. We saw in Chapter 2 that one of Tirpitz’s achievements was to successfully challenge that consensus. As the naval budget increased, it had obvious implications for the Army, though the latter remained throughout much the biggest item of government expenditure. At the time of the First Navy Law, the naval budget represented less than 20 per cent that for the Army. By 1911, it was a little over half. Army spending went up during this period, but at a third the rate of the naval estimates.47 Surprisingly, until about 1911, this marked shift in priorities did not arouse much opposition from senior army officers, despite there being some question as to whether there were enough troops available to execute the General Staff’s plans in the event of a two­-​­front war with France and Russia. It has been argued that this was because

The Imperial German Navy   119 any further expansion of the Army would dilute the aristocratic dominance of the officer corps.48 1911 marked the peak of naval expenditure in relation to that on the Army. Having reached almost 55 per cent of the latter, two years later it was down to less than a third. The reason was simple. Germany’s worsening relations with the other Great Powers (to which Tirpitz’s fleet had contributed) meant that the country’s strategic position was deteriorating, especially as Russia recovered from defeat and revolution in 1905. Fear of a continental war replaced ambitions for Weltpolitik.49 Chancellor Bethmann­-​­Hollweg and the Reich Treasury made it clear that Germany could afford to expand the Army or the Navy, but not both and “Germany’s true power lay with the army …”.50 After the modest Novelle of 1912 came an Army Bill in 1913 that consumed all the fresh revenues raised by a new finance bill. A glance at a map of Europe in the years before 1914 makes obvious an essential truth. Whether or not the Navy was a “luxury”, the Army was certainly a necessity. Imperial Germany’s new fleet was both an expression and a tool of Weltpolitik. The irony of the Risk Theory was that it required a fleet based in Europe to underpin a world policy, which explains why after Tsingtao Germany acquired no other permanent naval bases overseas. It was also a national project for a Germany in which, Prussian dominance notwithstanding, the individual states retained substantial autonomy and continued to control most other institutions such as the railways and postal services.51 Though the Army was funded by the Imperial government, it retained Prussian, Bavarian and other local identities. The Navy­ – for Tirpitz, the Kaiser and much of the populace­ – was a “vehicle for a national emphasis” in a country that had been united, and then only partially, as recently as 1871.52 The postscript to the Tirpitz Plan was the very opposite of what Tirpitz and the Kaiser had envisaged. Far from being the deterrent envisaged by the Risk Theory or a symbol of German national unity and greatness, its fate was neatly symbolic of a wider defeat. The terms of the Armistice in November 1918 included the surrender of 16 dreadnoughts, several cruisers and destroyers and all of the U­-​­Boats. The big ships sailed to the British base at Scapa Flow on 21 November, under Royal Navy escort. There they remained with their crews until 21 June the following year. Believing that the Armistice was about to expire, Vice­-​­Admiral Reuter ordered the High Seas Fleet to scuttle itself. Approximately half a million tons of warships costing over 855 million marks were sunk by their own crews.53

Postscript­ – the ship Tirpitz The ship that bore Admiral Tirpitz’s name was laid down on 24 October 1936 in the home of Tirpitz’s fleet, Wilhelmshaven. It was launched two and half years later by his daughter, Ilse von Hassel. The Tirpitz was the second of two Bismarck­-​­class 15­-​­inch fast battleships, the largest ships completed for a new German Navy that tried, once again, to challenge Britain’s maritime supremacy.54

120   Fleets The battleships Bismarck and Tirpitz, plus a handful of heavy cruisers and the first of a new fleet of U­-​­Boats, were the early manifestations of Nazi Germany’s renewed naval ambitions. More was to follow and, in April 1939, Hitler repudiated a 1935 Anglo­-German ​­ Naval Agreement to permit a naval programme explicitly aimed at Britain. The new “Z­-Plan” ​­ would, by 1944, produce a fleet of ten battleships, four aircraft carriers, six battlecruisers and “pocket” battleships and over 250 U­-​­Boats. Two battleships and a single carrier from this programme were laid down but never completed as, just as in the First World War, once war broke out (again, earlier than the Navy hoped) naval construction was focused on submarines. Tirpitz was therefore the last capital ship completed for the Reichsmarine. The design was a much­-​­updated development of the last dreadnoughts completed by Tirpitz himself, the Badens. The ship Tirpitz was, in programmatic terms, a replacement for the old pre­-​­dreadnought Schleswig­-​­Holstein authorised under Tirpitz’s Second Navy Law and commissioned in 1908, the last of the type.55 Tirpitz was commissioned on 25 February 1940 and, having completed trials and defect rectification, was operational in September 1941, by which time her sister ship had already been sunk in action. Tirpitz saw little action other than being the subject of no less than 22 separate air and submarine attacks. But the potential threat this single ship posed to Arctic convoys en route to Russia meant that Tirpitz performed a classic Fleet in Being role, tying down a significant portion of the Royal Navy’s large surface ships and disrupting the conduct of convoy operations, most notably the famous PQ­-​­17 convoy in July 1942. The ship was finally sunk in November 1944. “Tirpitz, which had long haunted enemy strategy on the broad oceans she never sailed, was finally destroyed. Her fate resembles that of the German High Seas Fleet of World War I: both were potent threats contained by the British at great cost.”56

Notes   1   2   3   4   5   6   7   8   9 10 11 12 13

Park p. 129. Massie p. 173. For details of the ships Tirpitz inherited, see Conway’s 1860–1905 pp. 242–265. Art p. 180. NRS Abyss p. 49. Padfield p. 112. NRS Abyss pp. 59–60. For details of the German pre­-​­dreadnought classes of battleships, see Conway’s 1860–1905 pp. 247–249. Lord Selborne “The Navy Estimates and the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s Memorandum on the Growth of Expenditure” Abyss pp. 119–120. Hobson p. 252. For details of HMS Dreadnought, see Conway’s 1906–1921 pp. 21–22. Norman Friedman Fighting the Great War at Sea: Strategy, Tactics and Technology Barnsley: Seaforth Publishing, 2014 p. 37. Padfield p. 126.

The Imperial German Navy   121 14 Herwig Luxury Fleet p. 58. 15 Bernard Brodie, quoted in Holger Herwig “The German Reaction to the Dreadnought Revolution” The International History Review (IHR) 13:2 (1991) p. 274. 16 For details of German dreadnoughts, see Conway’s 1906–1921 pp. 145–155. 17 As some of his staff advised. Bonker p. 285. 18 Arthur J. Marder From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow: The Royal Navy in the Fisher Era, 1904–1919. Vol. I The Road to War, 1904–1914 pp. 416–420. 19 Friedman p. 196. 20 Massie p. 496. 21 Friedman p. 198. 22 Conway’s 1906–1921 p. 140. 23 Kelly p. 341. 24 NRS Abyss p. 277. 25 Ibid. 26 For an extensive coverage of the options considered by Tirpitz, see Friedman pp. 204–206. 27 Epkenhans p. 53. 28 Art p. 170. 29 Art p. 195. 30 Herwig Luxury Fleet pp. 61 & 88. 31 Weir Building the Kaiser’s Navy p. 143. 32 Kelly p. 137. 33 Captain L. Persius “How Tirpitz Ruined the German Fleet” translated by Captain Frank C. Bowen RM RUSI Journal 64:3 (August 1919) p. 504. 34 Bonker p. 287. 35 Herwig Luxury Fleet p. 111. 36 Friedman p. 124. 37 Art p. 183. 38 Philip Pugh The Cost of Seapower: The Influence of Money on Naval Affairs from 1815 to the Present Day London: Conway Maritime Press, 1986 p. 169. 39 Herwig Luxury Fleet pp. 44 & 61. 40 Kelly p. 332 & Herwig Luxury Fleet Table 7. 41 Imperial Navy Office, Budget Division “Memorandum Concerning the Further Development of the Navy” May 1906 Abyss pp. 198–211. 42 Herwig Luxury Fleet Table 17. 43 Volker R. Berghahn Imperial Germany 1871–1914: Economy, Society, Culture and Politics Providence RI: Berghahn Books, 1994 pp. 330–331. 44 Herwig Luxury Fleet p. 72. 45 Weir Chapter 5. 46 Tirpitz “Notes to the Report to the Sovereign” 17 May 1914 Abyss p. 411. 47 Herwig Luxury Fleet p. 75. 48 Hobson p. 244. 49 Berghahn p. 280. 50 Weir p. 118. 51 Jonathan Steinberg “The Kaiser’s Navy and German Society” Past and Present 28, (July 1964) p. 104. 52 Ruger p. 144. 53 Herwig Luxury Fleet p. 256. 54 For details, see Bernard Ireland Jane’s Battleships of the 20th Century London: HarperCollins, 1996 pp. 50–51. 55 David Brown Tirpitz: The Floating Fortress London: Arms and Armour Press, 1977 p. 15. 56 Rear Admiral William H. Langenberg “The German Battleship Tirpitz: A Strategic Warship?” Naval War College Review XXXIV: 4 (July­-​­August 1981) p. 90.

7 The Soviet Navy

When Gorshkov became Navy Commander­-​­in­-​­Chief in 1956, the Soviet Union was less than 40 years old. When Tirpitz was appointed State Secretary, the German Reich had been in existence for just 26 years. But the somewhat greater longevity of the Soviet state did not mean that Russian naval policy was any more settled. We saw in earlier chapters that the long­-​­running contest between the “Old”, “New” and “Soviet” schools of naval thought was still unresolved. Elements of this debate continued throughout Gorshkov’s tenure and were reflected both in the fleet he inherited in 1956 and the one he passed on 30 years later. Like Tirpitz before him, Gorshkov did not start with a clean slate. From a post­-​­revolutionary nadir in the 1920s, by 1939 spending on the Navy accounted for 18.5 per cent of the Soviet defence budget,1 though in relation to the Soviet Union such figures must be treated with a great deal of caution. All significant elements of the Soviet economy were directly owned and controlled by the state and, in theory at least, subordinated to the goals of state policy. Deciding precisely what did, and did not, constitute defence spending is therefore a rather arbitrary judgement.2 But the legacy of defeat in 1905 and 1918, revolutionary turmoil and post­-​­revolution neglect meant “… the Soviet Navy was a Cinderella, the least potent and most obsolescent of the three services”.3 The original decision to create a large, ocean­-​­going fleet was taken by Stalin in 1936.4 He saw a large fleet as a necessary part of Great Power status, and it was enabled by the success of his rapid industrialisation programme. A big, “balanced” fleet would serve the twin needs of deterrence and prestige.5 Tirpitz and the Kaiser would have understood and approved, on all counts. By 1939, the Soviet Union already had the world’s largest submarine fleet (a  building programme had been initiated under the Second Five­-​­Year Plan of 1933).6 But Stalin’s ambitious programme of surface ship construction was interrupted by the German invasion in June 1941. We have seen that the Soviet Navy, even its large submarine arm, performed no better during the War than its Tsarist predecessor had in previous conflicts. The Soviet victory in 1945 left the Navy in as bad a shape as had defeat in 1905 and 1918. Once Germany was defeated, the pre­-​­war plan could be resumed once the shipyards had been repaired. Stalin did over­-​­rule Kuznetsov and halted

The Soviet Navy   123 battleship construction, but otherwise a very conventional fleet began to emerge consisting of large cruisers, destroyers, small coastal combatants and of course submarines. Designs for the latter drew heavily on captured German technology. A revised ten­-​­year plan was approved by Stalin on 27 October 1945 and comprised 40 cruisers, an astonishing 365 destroyers and frigates, and an equally astonishing 367 submarines.7 Most of the surface ships were updated pre­-​­war designs armed with guns and torpedoes. The Project 68 Sverdlov­-​­class 6­-​­inch cruisers looked somewhat like Italian and Japanese ships built in the 1930s and the 72 Project 30 Skory­-​­class destroyers completed between 1949 and 1953 were similarly dated designs. Contemporary Western analysts noted their weak anti­-​­aircraft armament and primitive fire­-​­control, despite the obvious lessons of the recent War.8 This looked like the Soviets building what they could, rather than what they should. Gorshkov himself later wrote that “… in the first post­-​­war decade, especially at the start of it, when decisions were taken to build the fleet, there were no real technical possibilities for creating fundamentally new forces”.9 The Skory­-​­class was soon followed by a genuinely post­-war ​­ design, the Project 56 Kotlins, the first of which entered service in 1955.10 Other than a much­-​­improved radar fit, these were still very conventional destroyers that would not have looked out of place in a pre­-​­war fleet, though some were later modernised during Gorshkov’s time as Commander­-in­ ​­ -​­Chief with first­-​ ­generation guided missiles. Smaller frigate equivalents were eight Project 42 Kola­-​­class and the 64­-​­strong Project 50 Riga­-​­class, which were soon as obsolescent as the destroyers. The Soviets made more rapid technological progress with submarines. Beginning in 1950, they commissioned a staggering 236 Project 613 Whiskey­-​­class medium submarines. The design was heavily influenced by the wartime Type XXI German U­-​­Boat and was capable of speeds that posed a real challenge to existing Western anti­-​­submarine forces. Their size and range suggested they were meant to defeat hostile naval forces at some distance off the Soviet coastlines. A longer­-​­range but much less numerous Zulu­-​­class were genuine ocean­-​ ­going boats while the smaller Quebec­-​­class were meant only for coastal operations. What Robert Herrick calls a “fortress fleet”11 also included hundreds of small torpedo boats and minesweepers.12 Impressive though the numbers were, many ships were behind schedule and suffered from quality­-​­control problems. In 1949, just 19 surface vessels of a planned 118 were delivered, comprising two destroyers, 11 minesweepers and six torpedo boats.13 This was just when the Soviet Union was embarking on the Cold War confrontation with the Western maritime powers. Partly in response to these production delays and in part as a reaction to the Korean War, which quickly demonstrated the Western allies’ maritime superiority, a revised shipbuilding plan was adopted in December 1950. It was endorsed by the Council of Ministers the following year and made provision for the construction of 27 cruisers, 120 destroyers, over 1,000 smaller surface ships and over 200 submarines, all to be completed by the end of 1955.14

124   Fleets Kuznetsov proposed an even more ambitious plan. It would have included small aircraft carriers to enable the fleet to operate in the Atlantic and Pacific beyond the cover of shore­-​­based aircraft. However, Stalin still thought in terms of defending the Soviet Union’s maritime borders in wartime. Large surface ships, especially the planned Stalingrad­-class ​­ heavy cruisers, would provide national prestige in peacetime. Neither task required carriers, which were probably beyond the Soviet Union’s already stretched industrial capacity anyway. Instead, an even greater emphasis was accorded to submarine construction, including the first nuclear­-powered ​­ boat authorised in September 1952. Stalin died in March the following year. This brought Khrushchev to power and then the appointment of Gorshkov as Navy Commander­-in­ ​­ -​­Chief in June 1956.15 Gorshkov’s inheritance can be summarised as follows:16   Cruisers   Destroyers   Frigates   Submarines  

In Commission   Building 19    16 112    15 48    32 430    61

We saw in Chapter 3 that Gorshkov’s immediate task after his appointment was to rescue what he could of Stalin’s fleet plan in the face of Khrushchev’s aversion to large surface ships. In this he was only partially successful. In particular, all three Stalingrads under construction and several of the Sverdlovs were cancelled. A Russian analyst from the Naval Museum in St Petersburg assesses that the “losses” to the Soviet Fleet at this time amounted to double the Navy’s combat losses during the Second World War.17 Ships were not the only casualties of Khrushchev’s revised priorities. The naval infantry was disbanded and the Navy’s land­-based ​­ fighter aircraft transferred to the National Air Defence Force. The Soviet Union at this time had just two overseas naval bases and one of those was not far away, in Finland. The other was Port Arthur (Lushunkou) in northeast China, which was voluntarily relinquished­  – perhaps symbolic of a return to a more defensive­-​­deterrent naval posture focused closer to home.18 What Gorshkov himself calls the “second stage” in the construction of the Fleet began at this time.19 Whatever longer­-​­term ambitions for a “balanced fleet” Gorshkov had, the emphasis now was firmly on nuclear weapons, nuclear­-​ ­powered submarines and guided missiles, all of them enjoying Khrushchev’s support. In this the latter probably had a firmer grasp of future requirements, albeit without much underlying analysis, than his Commander­-​­in­-​­Chief. It is hard to see what useful role more gun­-armed ​­ cruisers, including the 12­-inch ​­ Stalingrads, could have performed in the 1960s and beyond. To stretch the parallel perhaps a little, we might observe that the Kaiser’s initial enthusiasm for overseas cruisers was a better way forward for Germany than his admiral’s desire for a North Sea battlefleet.

The Soviet Navy   125 Given the curtailment of the cruiser programme, it is not surprising that the focus was henceforth on submarines, destroyers and small coastal craft, all drawing on programmes initiated before 1956. The huge Whiskey class was succeeded by the improved Romeos and later the Foxtrots, though in more modest numbers as the priority shifted to nuclear­-powered ​­ boats. The first of these, K3, was lead ship of the 15­-​­strong Project 627 November class and commissioned in April 1958. In addition to these torpedo­-​­armed “attack” boats (SSNs in NATO parlance), Gorshkov also introduced submarines armed with ballistic or cruise missiles. The early examples were conventionally powered, comprising the purpose­-​­designed Golfs with ballistic missiles and converted Whiskeys with cruise missiles. Both types had to surface in order to launch their relatively short­-​­range missiles. They were soon followed by nuclear­-​ ­powered equivalents, the six­-​­strong Hotel­-​­class ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) and five Echo I cruise missile boats (SSGNs). Armed with the SS­-​­N­-4​­ and SS­-​­N­-​­3 (NATO designation) missiles respectively, they were originally intended for the strategic land­-​­attack role. Once Gorshkov had lost his fight for a share in this task, the SSGNs were adapted to the anti­-​­ship (especially anti­-​ ­carrier) role. They could not operate the anti­-ship ​­ version of the SS­-​­N­-​­3 and so became SSNs using torpedoes rather than missiles. The Hotels retained a “theatre”20 nuclear role. In order to take first­-generation ​­ missiles to sea in surface ships, Gorshkov initially adapted existing classes. The Kildin, Krupny, Kanin and SAM­-​­Kotlin destroyers were all conversions of conventional designs armed with early surface­-​­to­-​­air or surface­-​­to­-​­surface guided missiles. The first, Bedovyy, entered service in 1960 and was the world’s first guided­-​­missile destroyer.21 This “offshore defence force”22 was supplemented by a coastal defence force comprising hundreds of small attack craft, initially torpedo­-armed ​­ but from 1958 about 100 were converted to carry the new SS­-​­N­-​­2 Styx surface­-​­to­-​­surface missile (the Komar class). The Soviet Naval Air Force (SNAF) began to deploy air­-​­launched anti­-​­ship missiles in 1961, which using the Tu­-16 ​­ (Badger) bomber gave the Soviet Union a much longer­-​­range maritime strike capability than its relatively small missile­-​­armed surface ships. By the turn of the decade, the Soviet Navy started to introduce platforms whose gestation post­-dates ​­ Gorshkov’s appointment. The most obvious sign of his thinking was four Project 58 Kynda­-​­class missile cruisers laid down between 1959 and 1962 and commissioned three years later. These may have been designed for strategic land­-​­attack but, by the time they entered service, they carried the anti­-ship ​­ version of the SS­-​­N­-​­3 and were given the anti­-​­carrier role. At less than 6,000 tons full­-load ​­ displacement, they were little larger than some Western destroyers but warranted the “cruiser” designation as they were clearly major fleet units. The Kyndas were followed by the rather larger Kresta I cruisers, which sacrificed some of the surface­-​­to­-​­surface missiles of their predecessors in favour of greater anti­-​­air and anti­-​­submarine weaponry and the addition of an embarked helicopter. They were altogether more balanced and survivable ships, designed from the outset for the anti­-​­carrier role.23 But, after

126   Fleets just four units were built, the design was recast as the Kresta II with the emphasis on ASW rather than anti­-​­surface (see below). The new cruisers represented the fusing of Gorshkov’s ambitions for large surface ships with Khrushchev’s belief in missiles and the primacy of the homeland defence role. The balanced fleet received a further boost with the arrival, from 1963 on, of the new Project 61 Kashin­-​­class destroyers, larger than their predecessors and with the world’s first all­-​­gas turbine propulsion system. The contemporary Petya­-​­class coastal frigates were similarly a substantial improvement over the pre­-​­Gorshkov Rigas. Almost 300 Osa­-​­class missile attack craft were purpose­-​­designed rather than adapted torpedo craft like the earlier Komars. Over 100 were exported, mainly in the developing world. The post­-​­war Soviet Union was a significant exporter of warships, unlike Imperial Germany whose shipbuilding resources were devoted almost entirely to its own Navy. Soviet arms exports served both diplomatic and economic objectives. The growing Soviet surface fleet was impressive in terms of sheer numbers, missile launchers and burgeoning radar aerials. But accommodation standards were poor and most ships had limited endurance.24 The Navy’s ability to conduct underway replenishment was rudimentary. This was still a fleet designed to venture not far from home, nor for very long. The emphasis on a single decisive engagement in waters adjacent to the Soviet homeland offers an obvious parallel, albeit for different strategic reasons, with Tirpitz’s North Sea battlefleet. As to submarines, the improved Echo II SSGNs (29 in total) and a conventionally propelled equivalent, the Juliett­-​­class (16 boats), entered service from 1961 onwards. They were devoted, like the new cruisers, to the anti­-​­carrier role as part of the layered or zonal defence of the homeland outlined in Chapter 5. Perhaps the most striking innovation in these years was the construction of two Moskva­-​­class (Project 1123) helicopter ships that began in 1962. In size and aircraft capacity, they equated to small carriers, but had a cruiser configuration with superstructure and weapons forward and flight deck aft.25 A somewhat unsatisfactory design,26 they may have been an early, rushed answer to the need for anti­-​­submarine ships to counter US missile submarines (see below) or an ASW counterpart to a planned but never built large anti­-​­surface cruiser. Or they may simply have been the most “carrier­-​­like” ships Gorshkov could get Khrushchev to approve. It was sometimes reported that they were to be the first of 12 units but the programme was curtailed when their shortcomings became apparent. Once Khrushchev left office, no more were laid down and design effort was devoted to a “true” carrier. As previously described, the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis marks something of a watershed in the Soviet Navy’s development. It demonstrated Soviet weakness at sea (rather as had the Bundesrath incident for Germany) and contributed to the downfall of Khrushchev. Only one Service­ – the Navy­ – could have rescued the Soviet Union’s position in the Caribbean if it had had the capability to do so.27 These events also coincided with the deployment of the Polaris A­-​­1 SLBM by the US Navy, which added a submarine dimension to the existing carrier

The Soviet Navy   127 threat to the Soviet homeland. Under Khrushchev’s successor, Leonid Brezhnev, Gorshkov therefore enjoyed a much more favourable political environment for naval expansion, to meet these twin challenges.28 A rejuvenated naval programme was instituted on the basis of overlapping ten­-​­year plans (1966–1975 and 1971–1980).29 By the end of the 1960s, the Navy was deploying ships resulting from this more permissive policy, what some analysts have called the “Third Phase” of post­-​­war Soviet naval development.30 Others have described it as the start of the “Blue­-​­Water” phase.31 Responding, at least in part, to the strategic threat from Polaris, a much greater emphasis was given to anti­-​­submarine capabilities, using surface ships, submarines and land­-based ​­ aircraft. This was a significant development, and one not fully understood at the time within NATO.32 The Soviets thought that the increasing range of both carrier­-​­launched aircraft and submarine­-​­launched missiles required them to “move forward in strategic defense”.33 To their Western opponents, this looked like a more assertive and threatening maritime policy. One of the early manifestations of the post­-​­Khrushchev change was an ASW variant of the existing Kresta cruiser, the first of ten ships being laid down in 1966. Seven larger Kara­-class ​­ followed from 1968 onwards. At nearly 10,000 tons, the latter were especially impressive ships, bristling with weapons and radars.34 A year later, the first of 32 Project 1135 Krivak­-class ​­ ASW ships was commissioned. Though referred to as “frigates” in the West, they were as large as the earlier destroyer classes and carried the same Soviet designator (BPK­ – large ASW ship) as the Kashins. They carried the same SS­-​­N­-14 ​­ ASW missile as the Karas and, between them, these two classes represented a significant change in priorities. The mid­-​­ to late­-​­1960s also saw the introduction of new submarine classes that, while still noisy by Western standards, were a marked improvement over the earlier first­-​­generation nuclear boats. These second­-​­generation submarines comprised 34 Yankee SSBNs, 17 Charlie SSGNs and an eventual 48 Victor SSNs. Production of conventionally powered boats also continued. The Yankees were broadly comparable to their US and British Polaris equivalents, but suffered from a major strategic disadvantage. The United States could forward­-​ ­base many of its ballistic missile submarines in Scotland, Spain and Guam. This meant very short transits to patrol areas within range of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Navy did not have access to suitable overseas bases and the Yankees had to transit much of the North Atlantic or Pacific to bring the continental United States within range of their missiles. The Charlies posed a different, tactical rather than strategic, problem for Western navies. Their anti­-​­ship missiles were relatively short­-range ​­ but could be fired submerged and did not require third­-​­party targeting information. They were a real threat to NATO task groups, especially carriers, and prompted some profound tactical changes.35 But the relative numbers of each type of submarine is telling­ – the most numerous were the primarily anti­-​­submarine SSNs. Khrushchev’s departure and his replacement by Brezhnev also allowed Gorshkov to reverse an earlier decision. In 1967, the naval infantry was

128   Fleets reconstituted, supported by a growing force of landing ships and air­-​­cushion vehicles (hovercraft). This was not, however, a force equivalent to the US Marine Corps, capable of large­-​­scale, long­-​­range amphibious assault. It was, rather, a short­-​­range force designed to operate on the maritime flanks of the Army, much as it had (under Gorshkov’s operational command) in the Second World War. It might also have been used to seize exit points from constrained waters in the Baltic and Black Seas.36 On the other side of this particular coin, the Soviets persisted with their unrealistic obsession with the threat of amphibious assault and so replaced old coast­-defence ​­ artillery with new shore­-​ ­based missile batteries.37 The point at which the first worldwide OKEAN exercise took place, 1970, is a convenient time to assess how far the Soviet Navy had progressed. It was almost the mid­-​­point of Gorshkov’s time as Commander­-in­ ​­ -​­Chief, and the point at which post­-​­Khrushchev ships were starting to enter service. The fleet’s numerical strength was impressive, clearly the world’s second strongest fleet having surpassed the Royal Navy during the 1950s.

Strength of the Soviet Navy, 197038 Aircraft carriers Helicopter carriers Cruisers Ballistic missile submarines Cruise missile submarines Attack submarines39 Destroyers Frigates & corvettes Missile boats Landing ships Minesweepers * numbers approximate

0 2 25 53 47 280 114 190* 130* 90* 300*

10 missile­-​­armed 18 nuclear­-​­powered 25 nuclear­-​­powered 17 nuclear­-powered ​­ 39 missile­-​­armed

This was a fleet still in transition. Nuclear­-​­powered submarines and missile­-​ a­ rmed vessels­  – surface and sub­-​­surface­  – were entering service in increasing numbers. A tentative start had been made on organic aviation at sea, but so far only rotary­-​­wing. But it was still mainly an offshore and coastal defence force, numerically dominated by conventionally powered submarines and small surface combatants. Among the larger surface ships, those armed with guided missiles were still in the minority. A simple comparison with the US Navy of the time is instructive.

Strength of the US Navy, 197040 Aircraft carriers Helicopter carriers

20 7

1 nuclear­-​­powered

The Soviet Navy   129 Cruisers Ballistic missile submarines Cruise missile submarines Attack submarines Destroyers Frigates Large amphibious ships

28 41 0 103 187 43 37

3 nuclear­-​­powered, 28 missile­-​­armed all nuclear­-​­powered 45 nuclear­-​­powered 39 missile­-​­armed classified as ‘destroyers escorts’ by USN

These were the navies of the two superpowers, but they were very different. Gorshkov explicitly did not want to challenge the US Navy on its own terms­ – this was a key difference from Tirpitz’s approach. However alarming the rise of Soviet naval strength was for the Western powers, it was a very inferior surface fleet, and that’s not counting the United States’ maritime allies in the equation. The opposite was true in terms of submarines, even allowing for American technological advantages such as noise quietening. The US Navy was the fleet of a dominant maritime power with global reach. The Soviet fleet was that of a continental power seeking to challenge, but not supplant, its maritime adversary. We must note one important exception to this general observation, however. Both navies deployed large numbers of ballistic missile­-​­firing submarines as part of their respective nuclear arsenals, notwithstanding Gorshkov’s continuing struggle to get a share of the strategic role. The year 1970 was significant not just for the OKEAN exercise. The Soviet Union’s first “real” aircraft carrier, Kiev, was laid down in September of the same year, the first of an eventual total of four Project 1143.1 ships. Commissioned in 1975 (coincidentally the year of the second OKEAN), Kiev was the most obvious consequence of post­-Khrushchev ​­ naval ambitions. The new carrier was more than twice the size of Moskva and had a large angled flight deck, though it did not extend through the ship’s full length. This was not, however, a carrier in the Western sense but rather a hybrid aircraft carrier/ missile cruiser.41 It operated the same Hormone (KA­-25) ​­ helicopters as the earlier ships and the Forger (YAK­-​­38) vertical take­-off ​­ and landing (VTOL) fighter aircraft. But the ship also carried a formidable missile armament, including the new SS­-​­N­-​­12 anti­-​­ship missile, a successor to the older SS­-​­N­-3. ​­ This was the Kiev’s principal strike weapon, its modest air group being used for limited air defence, light attack, ASW and long­-​­range targeting for the missiles. The Kievs attracted more attention in the West than perhaps their small number and tactical limitations warranted.42 Their significance lay more in what they indicated about Soviet ambitions. Though no match for contemporary US carriers­  – which they weren’t meant to be anyway­  – the Kievs did represent a “blue water” capability hitherto lacking. With limited air cover of their own they could venture further forward as well as act in a defensive posture as major ASW ships. But, given their limitations, these ships probably represented the Soviets once again building what they could rather than what they should (or at least what Gorshkov wanted to).

130   Fleets Soon after the new carriers came a huge strike cruiser (Project 1144), the first of which, Kirov, was laid down in 1973. These ships took rather longer to build, presumably because they were nuclear­-​­powered, and Kirov was not commissioned until 1980. Displacing 28,000 tons, this “battlecruiser” as it was called in the West was bigger than any contemporary US surface ship other than the carriers and comparable in size to Tirpitz’s “real” battlecruisers. In one important respect it was similar to the Kievs, in that its main armament was another long­-​­range anti­-​­ship missile, this time the SS­-​­N­-​­19. Its surface­-​­to­-​­air missile armament, guns and ASW weapons were more modern equivalents of those in the carrier as well. As an anti­-​­carrier surface ship this was another way of achieving the same task, relying on a better defensive armament rather than fighter aircraft for its own protection. One wonders what Khrushchev would have made of it.43 The other big post­-​­Khrushchev development was the Delta­-​­class SSBNs. Eventually totalling 43 boats in four variants, they were built between 1968 and 1990. With a new generation of longer­-​­range ballistic missiles, they were the first boats able to strike the continental United States without first having to transit the Greenland­-Iceland­ ​­ -​­Britain (GIUK) “gap” and its associated SOSUS submarine detection system. The Deltas therefore overcame the substantial disadvantage of the earlier Hotel and Yankee classes and represented a true “peer competitor” to US and British SSBNs. As such, they were genuinely strategic submarines and submarine­-​­launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) were included in the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) held in Helsinki between 1969 and 1972. This was despite their earlier exclusion from the strategic role in the Soviet Union. Although the Soviet Union continued to rely on land­-​­based ICBMs to a greater extent than did the United States, in this respect at least the Soviet Navy was now challenging its rival on something like equal terms. The Soviet Union was also a peer competitor to the United States in space, and this had a direct bearing on the rivalry at sea. A growing number of satellites provided the fleet with radar, photographic and electronic surveillance and targeting, in addition to a large force of land­-​­based reconnaissance aircraft and intelligence­-gathering ​­ surface ships (called AGIs in NATO). Known in the West as the SOSS (Soviet Ocean Surveillance System), this integrated information system provided Gorshkov and his commanders with an increasingly comprehensive and accurate picture of Western units at sea and was used to target anti­-​ ­ship missiles fired from the air, surface ships and submarines. The High Seas were no longer a vast and largely unknown space from which the Soviet Union could be threatened with impunity. By the late 1970s the Soviet Navy numbered approximately 430,000 officers and men, and enjoyed a position in public life not unlike that of the Imperial Navy in Wilhelmine Germany.44 Gorshkov’s fleet, more so than Tirpitz’s, remained, however, a junior partner to the Army. About three­-​­quarters of its personnel were conscripts serving three­-year ​­ terms, with a new intake twice a year. This meant the Navy suffered up to a 15 per cent turnover of personnel

The Soviet Navy   131 every six months­ – a problem that would have been familiar to German officers before 1914.45 Many were not ethnic Russians and some would have a limited command of the language. The result of this high turnover among a disparate conscript force was that sailors tended to be more specialised and less flexible than their professional Western counterparts. Reliance on conscripts also meant the Navy lacked a strong non­-commissioned ​­ officer corps. The commissioned officers, in a supposedly class­-​­free society, were a class apart.46 They were largely recruited from Party, government or Navy backgrounds and, if the word is not anachronistic in a communist society, somewhat bourgeois. The Soviet Fleet tended to suffer from poor levels of maintenance and support. This was due, at least in part, to Soviet industry’s habit of producing new units to add to the Order of Battle, what Norman Polmar calls a “numbers mentality”, devoting rather less attention to subsequent “through­-​­life” support.47 Tirpitz’s critics in the German fleet were all too familiar with the problem, though their ships generally did not suffer from the quality­-control ​­ build problems sometimes associated with Soviet new construction. In the mid­-​­1970s, a whole new generation of ships and submarines started to be laid down, following­-​­on from the Kirovs. Post­-​­dating the first OKEAN worldwide exercise of 1970, these designs can be seen as an expression of Gorshkov’s true blue­-​­water vision and a determined attempt to challenge the United States well beyond the limitations of the “blue belt” offshore defence posture. At the same time, the increasing range of Soviet SLBMs allowed their missile submarines to retreat away from Western ASW forces to operate closer to the Soviet homeland, especially in Arctic waters. Gorshkov continued his earlier practice of introducing several types of submarine at the same time. In parallel with the later Delta SSBNs Gorshkov introduced the huge 24,000­-​­ton Project 941 Typhoon­-​­class boats, the first of an eventual six being laid down in 1976 and commissioned five years later.48 The Typhoons carried 20 SS­-N­ ​­ -​­20 missiles each with ten warheads and a range of 5,200 miles. The Alfa was a revolutionary titanium­-hulled ​­ SSN capable of very deep diving. The Typhoons were the largest submarines ever built and the Alfas the fastest.49 A third new class was the Oscar SSGN armed with the same SS­-​­N­-​­19 missiles as the surface battlecruisers. In their different ways these submarine classes represented capabilities with no direct equivalents or equals in the West. The Soviets also continued production of diesel­-​­electric submarines, notably the Kilo class (another export success in addition to those built for Soviet service). By the end of the 1970s, the Soviet Union had, since the end of the War, built over 600 submarines, four times the number built in the United States.50 However, over time the total number of boats in commission was to decline as older diesel­-​­electric submarines (such as the Whiskeys) were replaced by fewer, but much larger, nuclear boats. A new generation of large surface ships were classed as destroyers in the West, but were larger than the early guided missile cruisers. This was in line

132   Fleets with the NATO practice of giving the title destroyer to ships that hitherto would, in terms of size, capability and function, have been called cruisers.51 The first of 12 Udaloy­-​­class large ASW ships was laid down in 1977. They carried the same ASW missile, the SS­-​­N­-​­14, as their Kara­-​­class predecessors (and the same “BPK” classification) but with a much more modern fit of radars, guns and surface­-​­to­-air ​­ missiles. Their anti­-​­surface equivalents were the Sovremenny­-​­class of similar size, which carried the new SS­-​­N­-​­22 missile and larger guns than anything seen since the Sverdlovs 25 years before. A total of 17 units were commissioned between 1980 and 1993. If operated together, an Udaloy and a Sovremenny represented the ASW/strike pairing first mooted in the early 1960s. Interestingly, the former had gas turbines and the latter steam, possibly as a consequence of their respective building yards’ capabilities. Neither ship had a direct US equivalent, though a loose parallel was sometimes drawn between the Udaloy and the USN’s Spruance of similar size and vintage.52 The key difference, however, was that similar­-sized ​­ American ships were mainly escorts for carriers and large amphibious ships. Lacking many such high­-​­value units, their Soviet counterparts were major combatants in their own right. Had Tirpitz built the fleet the Kaiser originally wanted, his cruisers would have operated independently rather than as adjuncts to bigger ships. Not content with the Kirov and Sovremenny classes of anti­-​­surface combatants, Gorshkov introduced the 12,000­-​­ton Slava­-​­class cruisers, the name­-​ ­ship of which was laid down at the same time as the Udaloys and Sovremennys. A later Slava would have carried Gorshkov’s name but, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, it was never laid down.53 The Slavas carried the same SS­-​­N­-​­12 missiles as the Kievs so that the Soviets built ships with four different anti­-ship ​­ missile systems (SS­-​­N­-​­9, ­-​­12, ­-​­19 and ­-​­22) all at much the same time. This profusion of ship and missile types may be explained by industrial factors, between them originating from four different shipyards and three different missile design bureaus.54 The needs of the suppliers (the shipyards) could be as much a determining factor in new construction as the needs of the customer (the Navy), though of course in the Soviet planned economy no such supplier/ customer distinction was really made. A Russian naval historian observes that “There were instances in which the “industrialists” simply “twisted the navy’s arms”, supplying not what met the sailors’ needs, but what was judged to be in their own best interests”.55 Gorshkov continued production of smaller surface combatants. These comprised Grisha­-​­class ASW frigates56 and Nanuchka­-​­class missile corvettes armed with the same SS­-​­N­-​­9 anti­-​­ship missiles as the later Charlie SSGNs. A follow­-​ ­on class, the Tarantul was also another export success. All the new classes of large surface ships­  – the Kievs, Kirovs, Slavas, Udaloys and Sovremennys­  – had their gestation in the late 1960s and early 1970s, in the halcyon post­-​­Khrushchev years. Once they had entered service in any numbers (20 in total by the time Gorshkov retired in 1986), they represented a transformation in the Soviet Fleet. This wasn’t just the number of large surface

The Soviet Navy   133 ships (55 in total including the older Kyndas, Krestas, Karas, Moskvas and some surviving Sverdlovs). It was also a re­-​­emphasis on anti­-​­surface warfare, away from the ASW focus of the later Krestas, the Moskvas and the Karas. Even the final Udaloy substituted the anti­-​­surface SS­-​­N­-​­22 in place of the anti­-​­submarine SS­-​­N­-​­14. The explanation for this may be the increased range of SLBMs, both Soviet and American. The size of Trident submarine patrol areas, far distant from Soviet waters, made SSBN hunting by surface ships an unrewarding prospect. Similarly, Soviet SSBNs could stay closer to home and protecting them from Western SSNs did not require long­-​­range ocean­-​­going surface ships. It did require smaller ASW frigates, SSNs and shore­-based ​­ maritime patrol aircraft. What the new, large ships did do was contest Western dominance of the High Seas in peacetime as much as in war. They were the physical manifestations of Gorshkov’s 1963 edict ordering the fleet “to sea”.57 The crowning glory of Gorshkov’s fleet was its first “big­-deck”, ​­ though still hybrid, aircraft carrier. Classified by the Russians as a Heavy Aircraft­-​­Carrying Missile Cruiser (TAVKR), the first Project 1143.5 hull was laid down in April 1982 and commissioned in 1990, by now named after Gorshkov’s predecessor Admiral Kuznetsov. Gorshkov himself did not live to see it enter service. Built in what is now Ukraine, the Kuznetsov was a logical evolution of the Project 1143.1 Kiev class. Displacing over 50,000 tons, the ship, like its predecessors, had a substantial armament including SS­-​­N­-19 ​­ missiles as its principal anti­-​ ­surface capability. But, rather than being limited to VTOL fixed­-​­wing aircraft, Kuznetsov was configured as “STOBAR”,58 which combined the “ski­-​­jump” of contemporary British carriers with the arrestor wires of a US ship. This allowed it to launch and recover “conventional” aircraft such as the Sukhoi Su­-33, ​­ albeit with some performance limitations. When the building of the new carrier became apparent, it was assumed by Western analysts that it would, like the Kirov, have nuclear propulsion. But, despite the obvious speed and endurance advantages of nuclear power, the ship was completed with oil­-​­fired steam turbines, perhaps because the only shipyard that could build a carrier­-​­sized ship could not at the time also install a nuclear plant. The SS­-​­N­-​­19s were removed in the 2010s, which today makes the Kuznetsov more of a “pure” aircraft carrier. But, as built, she was a logical development of the Kiev design concept with the same hybrid operational philosophy. A second ship was laid down and launched as the Varyag, but was never completed for Russian service. It serves today as the Chinese Liaoning. An even larger ship, Ulyanovsk, was laid down in 1988, just after Varyag was launched and, like US carriers, would have had a nuclear plant and steam catapults. In 1992, the newly independent Ukrainian government scrapped the hull, which was just 20 per cent complete. Similarly, some of Tirpitz’s largest and most advanced ships were never completed, overtaken by the demise of the regime that had ordered them. The new carriers were not the only significant development in Soviet naval aviation during the later Gorshkov years. Newer types of shore­-​­based aircraft,

134   Fleets some of them supersonic, supplemented the older subsonic aircraft like the Bear and the Badger. Most significant was the Tupolev TU­-22M ​­ Backfire bomber first introduced in the mid­-​­1970s. Armed with a steep­-​­diving, supersonic anti­-​ ­ship missile known to NATO as the AS­-​­4, this combination was one of the principal above­-​­water threats to Western surface forces during the 1980s. Like most Soviet maritime capabilities of the period, it had no direct NATO equivalent. By the end of the 1970s, the SNAF operated over 700 large shore­-​­based aircraft for surveillance, as missile carriers and for ASW.59 The limited realisation of Gorshkov’s carrier ambitions post­-​­dated his retirement in 1986. His fleet was therefore still a work in progress, but was being transformed from the expansive sea­-​­denial force of his early days into something altogether more ambitious. It never matched its US rival but, unlike Tirpitz’s fleet and its opponent, was never meant to. Gorshkov’s inheritance in 1956 was a meagre one, though becoming a formidable submarine force. His legacy 30 years later was impressive:

Strength of the Soviet Navy, 198660 Aircraft carriers Helicopter carriers Battlecruisers Cruisers & large destroyers61 Ballistic missile submarines Cruise missile submarines Attack submarines (SSNs) Attack submarines (SSKs) Destroyers & large frigates62 Small frigates & corvettes Large landing ships * numbers approximate

In service 3 2 2 48 76 65 72 120* 90 220* 32

Building 3 – 2 13 8 4 10 3 3 13 11

In terms of hull numbers, the Soviet fleet was the largest in the world, though second to that of the United States in total tonnage. This was because the Soviets continued to operate large numbers of “fortress fleet” small coastal combatants of which the US Navy had almost none, while the latter operated more large carriers and amphibious ships.63 But the Soviet numbers being built are revealing. The inventory of large ships and submarines would continue to grow. But the number of smaller submarines, destroyers and frigates being built could not possibly keep up with the likely rate at which older vessels ordered during the 1950s and 1960s would be retired. The numerical strength of the Soviet fleet was about to start collapsing, even without the demise of the Soviet Union soon after Gorshkov’s death. Though the Soviet Navy was never going to mirror image the US Navy (a “false symmetry”64), it was going to look more like it, with larger but fewer ships and submarines than hitherto.

The Soviet Navy   135 It may therefore be instructive, if highly speculative, to compare what a Soviet fleet might have looked like a decade after Gorshkov’s retirement with what the post­-​­Soviet Russian fleet actually did have.

Possible Soviet Navy versus actual Russian Navy, 1995 Aircraft carriers Helicopter carriers Battlecruisers Cruisers and large destroyers SSBNs SSGNs SSNs SSKs Destroyers and large frigates Small frigates and corvettes Large landing ships

Soviet Navy 7 2 5 67 32 24 69 63 56 200 46

Russian Navy 2 1 3 39 27 16 49 49 38 185 45

These figures are illustrative only. Those for the Soviet Navy are highly speculative, based on the likely retirement dates of existing ships and commissioning rates for new construction. The actual Russian Navy totals are misleading as much of the remaining fleet, while not yet formally decommissioned, was in a very poor state. The immediate consequence of the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989–1991 was a reduction in readiness: the numbers came later. The number of small ships held up relatively well, as these were the easiest to operate and, for peacetime coastal security tasks, the most in demand. In 1972, a US Naval Officer wrote “The Soviet Fleet presents itself to the world as an effective fighting force, yet this new Soviet Navy has never seen combat. Its primary peacetime function appears to be contributing toward the realization of Soviet foreign policy objectives.”65 Happily, and unlike Tirpitz’s fleet, it never did see combat, though its end was no less ignominious. Instead of being surrendered and then scuttled, much of it was simply left to rust at its moorings. Unlike Tirpitz, Gorshkov was spared seeing the demise of his “show fleet”.66 Gorshkov, like Tirpitz, set out to challenge his maritime rival but had no “master plan” like the Navy Laws. He built what changing circumstances allowed him to. By the 1980s, he was building the kind of navy his writings suggest he always wanted, but he got to that point incrementally, always constrained by what was politically, technically and industrially feasible. But, at the time of his retirement and then death, it was an unfinished project, what Evan Mawdsley calls “an historical event with a beginning and an end”.67 … Gorshkov’s Grand Fleet [one might better describe it as a High Seas Fleet] was a remarkable achievement of domestic science and industry. At

136   Fleets the height of the efforts to create an ‘ocean­-​­going aircraft­-​­carrying fleet’ … the ambitious shipbuilding plans were first halted and then abandoned altogether … Russia never had a balanced navy.68 To the end, the Soviet Navy retained its heavy emphasis on submarines and it was these that presented the greatest challenge to the Western maritime powers, notwithstanding the dramatic appearance of ever­-​­more and ever­-​­larger surface ships. Only long­-​­range submarines could fully overcome the Soviet Union’s inherent geographic disadvantages, especially restricted access to the open oceans. Its surface fleet, if forward­-​­deployed, could not have survived long in a hostile environment distant from shore­-​­based support, especially air cover, and surrounded by the land masses and naval and air forces of its opponents. This helps to explain the apparent “one­-​­shot” nature of Soviet surface ships’ armament. They were not designed for sustained wartime operations. But what the submarine arm could not do was establish a peacetime presence or, in war, any sort of even localised sea control. Those were the jobs of the surface ships. Submarines provided the sea­-​­based element of the Soviet Union’s nuclear retaliatory force, the principal component of its anti­-​ ­submarine capability and a large part of its anti­-​­surface strike force. The Soviet Navy retained a huge number of platforms­  – air, surface and sub­-​ ­surface­ – for its traditional roles defending the country’s maritime borders and operating on the maritime flanks of the ground forces. Its larger surface ships went out to dispute Western dominance of the high seas, in peace as much as in wartime. “The Russian drive for seapower was, as it turned out, doomed to fail.”69 Whether the Soviet Union was right to make such an attempt and what were its consequences will be examined in Chapter 9.

Postscript­ – the ship Gorshkov The ship that was to carry Admiral Gorshkov’s name was laid down on 17 February 1978 as the Baku, the fourth and final ship of the Project 1143 Kiev­-​ ­class carriers.70 The ship was launched four years later and commissioned at the end of 1987. The basic design was therefore nearly 20 years old, the first of the class having been laid down in 1970. Baku differed from the three earlier ships in having a new command system, a phased­-​­array radar and an improved weapon fit. In equipment terms, the ship represented an intermediate stage between the earlier Kievs and the first of the larger Project 1143.5 Tbilisi class (later named Leonid Brezhnev then Admiral Kuznetzov). The ship’s career in Soviet/Russian service was short­-​­lived. In 1991, the last of the YAK­-​­38 Forger aircraft were retired, many airframes being no longer airworthy. Baku carried out trials with its planned successor, the supersonic YAK­-​­141 Freehand, in September 1991 but soon afterwards the programme was cancelled, one of many consequences for the Navy of the collapse of the Soviet Union. In the same year, the ship was renamed Admiral of the Fleet of the

The Soviet Navy   137 Soviet Union Gorshkov as the city of Baku was now the capital of the newly­-​ ­independent republic of Azerbaijan in the Caucasus. Now operating only helicopters (when she was at sea at all), in 1994 the ship suffered a boiler explosion and was in repair for over a year. The ship was finally retired from Russian service in 1996, less than nine years after being commissioned, and offered for sale. Negotiations with India proceeded fitfully until agreement was reached in 2004. The contract provided for conversion from VTOL to STOBAR configuration, regeneration of the now long­-​­dormant ship and supply of MiG­-​­29 aircraft.71 The ship had been built at the Nikolayev yard in Ukraine. By now Ukraine was an independent state, so the rebuilding of Gorshkov, now renamed again as Vikramaditya, was undertaken at the Sevmash shipyard in Severodvinsk in the Russian north. The work transformed the ship from hybrid cruiser/carrier into a pure carrier with a full­-​­length flight deck with a “ski­-​­jump” and eliminating the main missile armament. The ship was originally scheduled for delivery in 2008 but, as the scale of the work required became evident, this was delayed until 2013, amid increases in cost and political controversy in India.72 Vikramaditya eventually arrived in India in January 2014, over five years late and costing nearly three times as much as the original contract. The ship suffered another major fire in April 2019. The name Admiral Gorshkov73 is today (2020) carried by a much more modest ship. Gorshkov is lead ship of a new class of 5,400­-ton ​­ Project 22350 frigates designed at the turn of the century as successors to the Soviet­-​­era Krivaks. Laid down in 2006, Gorshkov took over 12 years to complete due to funding and technical difficulties.74 The Gorshkov was heralded by Moscow as marking a renaissance in Russian naval shipbuilding (hence the name), but this new beginning appears to have faltered­ – and the Gorshkov­-​­class frigates are the largest surface combatants under construction for the Russian Navy. All its larger units, from a single carrier through cruisers to the destroyers, are ageing Cold War­-​­era designs. Unless the Russian Federation manages to recommence building large surface warships, the future Russian fleet will look rather like the pre­-​­Gorshkov Navy­  – submarines and small, mainly coastal combatants. It’s not quite what Gorshkov had in mind.

Notes   1 Yegorova p. 158.   2 For example, Soviet fleet auxiliaries were operated as part of the (state­-​­owned) civilian merchant marine.   3 Milan L. Hauner “Stalin’s Big­-​­Fleet Program” Naval War College Review LVII: 2, (Spring 2004) p. 88.   4 Yegorova p. 158.   5 Herrick Soviet Naval Strategy p. 35.   6 Ibid. p. 24.   7 Mawdsley p. 165.   8 Conway’s 1947–1995 p. 386.   9 SPOS p. 179.

138   Fleets 10 Project numbers are the original Soviet designators. Phonetic names (submarines) and class names beginning with the letter “K” (surface ships) are NATO designators. 11 Herrick Soviet Naval Strategy p. 61. 12 Conway’s 1947–1995 pp. 337–425 provides copious detail of Soviet ships completed after the Second World War and during much of the Gorshkov era. 13 Ministry of Shipbuilding figures, cited in Yegorova p. 165. 14 Draft Resolution of the USSR Council of Ministers, 12 September 1951. Cited in Yegorova p. 172. 15 See Chapter 3. 16 Numbers are approximate as exact commissioning dates and operational status are sometimes unknown. Source: Conway’s 1922–1946 & 1947–1995. 17 Chernyavskii p.  290. Similar claims can be made about other navies. For example, the Royal Navy has “lost” many more ships to successive Defence Reviews than to the Argentine air force and navy in 1982. 18 Herrick Soviet Naval Strategy p. 69. 19 SPOS p. 179. 20 What today might be called “sub­-​­strategic”. 21 For details, see Ranft & Till pp. 98–99 and Conways 1947–1995 pp. 388–390. 22 Ranft & Till p. 95. 23 For details of the Kyndas and Krestas, see Conway’s 1947–1995 pp. 380–381. 24 Ranft & Till p. 145. 25 Conway’s 1947–1995 pp. 375–376. 26 They were consistently trimmed bow­-​­down, and a stern flight deck was not the most efficient way to operate more than a dozen helicopters. 27 Watson p. 19. 28 Polmar Guide to the Soviet Navy p. 2. See also Chapter 3. 29 Mawdsley p. 167. 30 Ibid. 31 McGruther p. 31. 32 Not least because a new anti­-​­submarine missile system (SS­-​­N­-​­14) was initially believed to be an anti­-​­ship weapon. 33 MccGwire Proceedings 115:8 p. 47. 34 Conway’s 1947–1995 p. 382. 35 For example, the short­-​­notice, “pop­-​­up” nature of the threat meant ships might not have time to go to General Quarters (USN) or Action Stations (RN). Henceforth, ships would be manned and trained to fight with no more than 50 per cent of the crew closed­-​­up. It was also the catalyst for the Royal Navy’s adoption of the multi­-​­role Principal Warfare Officer (PWO) system later copied by most Western navies (though not the USN). 36 Ranft & Till p. 118. 37 Chernyavskii p. 297. 38 Sources: Conway’s 1947–1995 & Fairhall p. 250. Figures are the total inventory, and numbers of the smaller types are approximate. A significant proportion would be in refit or reserve at any one time. 39 Armed with torpedoes only. 40 Source: Conway’s 1947–1995. 41 Classified by the Soviets as a “TAKR”­ – heavy aircraft carrying cruiser. Full details are in Conway’s 1947–1995 pp. 374–375. 42 The fourth ship of the class, eventually named Admiral Gorshkov, did not enter service until 1987, 13 years after the first of the class. The Forger was subsonic, single­-​­seat and carried no radar. Its effective radius of action was little more than the 300 miles range of the SS­-​­N­-​­12 missiles. 43 Khrushchev died in 1971. 44 Polmar The Modern Soviet Navy p. 41.

The Soviet Navy   139 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55

56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74

See Chapter 6. Ranft & Till p. 127. Polmar Guide to the Soviet Navy pp. 79–80. A seventh boat was laid down but never completed. Over 40 knots. Polmar Modern Soviet Navy p. 19. Such as the British County and US Spruance classes. Polmar Guide to the Soviet Navy p. 156. The name Gorshkov was re­-​­allocated to the fourth of the Kiev­-​­class carriers. The SS­-​­N­-​­19 was developed from the SS­-​­N­-​­12. Chernyavskii p.  303. This cosy relationship was an embodiment of what President Eisenhower had pejoratively described in the United States as the “military/industrial complex”, to which socialist societies were apparently every bit as susceptible as capitalist states. Called “small ASW ships” or “MPK” by the Soviets. Chapter 3. Short Take­-​­off But Arrested Recovery. Polmar Modern Soviet Navy p. 74. See also Ranft & Till pp. 114–116. Source: Conway’s 1947–1995. Sovremenny & Udaloy classes. Krivak class. Polmar Guide to the Soviet Navy p. xi. Captain (later Vice Admiral) Arthur K Cebrowski “A Matter of Timing” US Naval Institute Proceedings 115:5 (May 1989) p. 138. Commander Richard T. Ackley “The Soviet Navy’s Role in Foreign Policy” Naval War College Review XXIV:9 (May 1972) p. 62. McGruther p. 69. Mawdsley p. 165. Chernyavskii pp. 297 & 300. Mawdsley p. 178. The second and third ships were named Minsk and Novorossiysk, respectively. Details of the Kiev class are in Conway’s 1947–1995 pp. 374–375. VTOL­  – Vertical Take­-​­Off and Landing. STOBAR­  – Short Take­-​­Off But Arrested Recovery. Jane’s Defence Weekly 18 October 2017 pp. 25–26. The ship’s full name is Admiral of the Fleet of the Soviet Union Gorshkov. www.iiss.org/blogs/military­-​­balance/2018/08/russian­-​­navy­-​­admiral­-​­gorshkov­-​­frigate. Accessed 4 March 2020.

Part IV

Consequences

8 Consequences and assessment­ – Tirpitz

Having examined the lives of our two admirals, what they wrote and the fleets they created, we can now turn to the consequences of their actions. Some judgements must be speculative; for we cannot know how events might have unfolded if either had pursued a different course of action. For example, if Imperial Germany had still pursued a policy of Weltpolitik but built a fleet of cruisers for overseas service rather than a North Sea battlefleet, would Britain still have been drawn into an anti­-​­German coalition? Weltpolitik itself is a good place to start. The navalism of the Kaiser, Tirpitz and others is inseparable from the wider urge to “world politics” of Wilhelmine Germany. The two must be considered as part of a single Imperial project and the fleet was the most important, and most visible, manifestation of Weltpolitik. Underpinning it was a simplistic reading of Mahan. “Weltpolitik … was Mahanian navalism undiluted by political and geographical reality.”1 For all the modern industrialisation of the German economy, the prevalence of Social Darwinist assumptions gave Germany’s leaders a somewhat pre­-​ ­industrial, mercantilist and zero­-​­sum view of economic competition. Tirpitz himself observed that Germany was one of four world powers struggling for supremacy, a “life and death question” in which “power, and therefore sea power, is essential if Germany is not to go under swiftly”.2 This attitude helps to explain how Tirpitz and others came to see “commercial jealousy” as motivating British hostility rather than understanding that the two countries were each other’s most important trading partners.3 The rapid growth of the German economy and, with it, the country’s international trade made a foreign policy that looked beyond the confines of continental Europe a natural step. But what Germany produced was a somewhat incoherent diplomacy that, beyond slogans like “a place in the sun”, lacked any unifying theme.4 A colonial empire could have been an expression of Weltpolitik but Germany’s modest overseas possessions pre­-​­dated Weltpolitik, were of negligible economic value and were home to less than 1 per cent of all Germans living overseas.5 German seaborne trade, especially with the Americas, was important but prospered without much of a navy before the 1898 First Navy Law and with a navy after that date that didn’t venture much beyond the North Sea.

144   Consequences Weltpolitik therefore came down to not much more than assertiveness, as expressed by the Kaiser himself in 1900: “… in distant areas, no important decision should be taken without Germany and the German Emperor.”6 The result was a bombastic and sometimes bullying diplomacy, which was more opportunistic than consistent and often backfired to Germany’s disadvantage.7 The detailed history of German foreign policy in the years of Weltpolitik is outside the scope of this study, but we shall return to its consequences for Germany’s international position later in this chapter.8 This brief discussion of Weltpolitik is important for two reasons. First, because, in assessing the impact of Tirpitz’s fleet on German and European history, it is impossible to divorce it from the wider policies pursued by the Kaiser and his Ministers and second, because the fleet was supposed to support Weltpolitik yet never achieved either a form or a mass that allowed Germany to actually practice it.9 But Weltpolitik was not the only motivation behind German naval expansion. Enthusiasm for navies, or “navalism”, and their part in national greatness was not confined to Germany alone­  – it played an important role in Germany’s naval opponent, Britain­ – but was especially significant for a country with no naval tradition and little apparent affinity with the sea. The Kaiser was not alone in seeing the Navy as a symbol of national greatness and a means of boosting the country’s international status. This required a reading of Mahan that overlooked many of the caveats the American applied to the decisive impact of seapower and whose recommendations were aimed at natural maritime states like Britain and potentially the United States, rather than an almost land­-​­locked continental power like Germany.10 In a nutshell, the German reading of Mahan was: … a unified vision of the links between the state, naval power and world power status.… Naval power, it was understood, had always been and would be the decisive factor in … [Great Power] struggles and, therefore, was the prerequisite for world power status.   The centrepiece of naval strategy was the battleship.…   A powerful German fleet would enable Germany to follow Weltpolitik and gain its place in the sun.11 Xu distils these ideas as the simplistic formula “High Seas Fleet = overseas interests = being a global power”.12 This approach made the Imperial German Navy a political project more than a military instrument. The Risk Theory envisaged using the battlefleet as a deterrent to a hitherto non­-​­existent threat and as a means of exerting diplomatic pressure. But it could no more ignore military realities than could the Army. The latter faced the prospect of a two­-​­front war on Germany’s land frontiers, while the Navy remained resolutely outnumbered by Britain, which also commanded the Reich’s sea frontiers in the North Sea. Tirpitz’s interpretation of Mahan asserted that a powerful navy was a necessary precondition for economic growth, especially a state’s overseas trade. The

Consequences and assessment – Tirpitz   145 ironic truth was that it was German economic growth (the largest economy in Europe by 1914) that enabled naval expansion. The fleet could not create prosperity (though shipbuilding orders did provide a Keynesian boost), it required it. Dreadnoughts were expensive. We have already seen in Chapter 6 how the cost of Tirpitz’s ships escalated, more so than did British dreadnoughts. For Germany this was fateful and merely exacerbated a fundamental Mahanian dictum that Tirpitz either was unaware of or (more likely) wilfully ignored: History has conclusively demonstrated the inability of a state with even a single continental frontier to compete in naval development with one that is insular, although of smaller population and resources.13 The scale of German and British defence spending in the years before 1914 was actually quite modest by later twentieth­-​­century standards. Counterintuitively, at the turn of the century, Britain was spending more than Germany and, moreover, was spending more on its army. But this was the short­-​­term effect of the Boer War and, by 1904, spending had returned to a historical norm. In that year, German defence spending matched and thereafter exceeded British outlays.14 By 1913, Germany was spending over 50 per cent more on defence than Britain in cash terms and its “defence burden” as expressed as a proportion of economic output was 4.9 per cent compared to Britain’s 3.4 per cent.15 This was while, as we saw earlier, losing the naval race with Britain. German naval expenditure never came close to matching British and only just exceeded half of spending on the Royal Navy in the years 1908–1912. Public expenditure was much more limited in scope than is the case today and in Germany spending on the armed forces accounted for nearly 90 per cent of the federal budget. The inability of the Reich Treasury to levy direct taxes meant the cost of the Navy between 1901 and 1909 was almost exactly matched by borrowing.16 If we therefore assume that revenues were adequate to fund the Army, the Navy was, in effect, paid for entirely by expanding the federal debt, which more than doubled in peacetime in the decade between 1900 and 1910.17 The onset of the dreadnought race was therefore accompanied by a burgeoning financial crisis that, if the Kaiser didn’t recognise it (“Money is sufficiently available. The Imperial Treasury does not know what to do with it all”),18 his Treasury certainly did. So did Albert Ballin, the influential director of the Hamburg­-​­United States shipping line: “We cannot let ourselves in for a dreadnought competition with the much richer English.”19 This failure to align policy with resources was a strategic error of the first order. It was not only the Imperial Treasury that paid the cost of Tirpitz’s naval plans. So too, at least by omission, did the Army. “The German economy never possessed the strength to sustain such a naval program and maintain its continental defense commitments.”20 After the War, Army officers liked to claim that the Navy “ate up all the funds”.21 It would be more true to say the Navy ate up

146   Consequences all the extra funds. Until 1912, spending on the Army increased only modestly and its numerical strength went up by just 35,000 between 1897 and 1911, a rise of less than 6 per cent. Germany’s total population increased by 16 per cent in the same period, so the Army was actually getting smaller in relation to the German populace as a whole.22 As a consequence of moderation in Army spending and the escalating cost of the Tirpitz Plan, the naval budget went from 20 per cent of that for the Army in 1898 to almost 55 per cent by 1911.23 This was a huge shift in defence priorities at a time when Germany’s diplomatic position was becoming increasingly isolated and the prospect of war with France and Russia seemed to be growing. As Germany faced two fronts on land and one at sea, the country was in effect allocating roughly equal resources to each of its three potential enemies.24 This was not just Tirpitz’s doing, however. The Army’s “lost years”25 were actually years of self­-​­restraint. There were two reasons for this. Senior Army officers were sceptical about the wisdom of naval expansion, especially as they feared its potential implications for their own service. But they well understood the Kaiser’s preferences and did not dare intervene too openly. Second, they had their own reasons for being ambivalent about an expansion of the Army, for it might dilute the aristocratic nature of the officer corps (which distinguished it from the much more bourgeoisie Navy) and bring an influx of socialist­-inclined ​­ urban workers into the ranks.26 Tirpitz’s fellow advocate of Weltpolitik, Chancellor Bulow, began to have second thoughts about the primacy accorded to the Navy as early as 1908­  – before Germany had commissioned a single dreadnought. As German relations with both Britain and Russia deteriorated, and in the wake of the 1907 Anglo­-​ ­Russian Entente, he came to realise that Germany could not afford Europe’s largest army and its second largest navy. The former would have to take priority: “We cannot weaken the army, for our destiny will be decided on land.”27 This was, in effect, a belated repudiation of Weltpolitik but, with his resignation in 1909, it had little immediate effect on German policy. Things started to come to a head in late 1911. We have already seen that the new Chancellor, Bethmann, was at best sceptical about the Tirpitz Plan. In order to forestall yet another Novelle, he invited the Army to state its requirements before a decision was reached on the new Navy Bill.28 Two factors combined to prompt a more assertive Army response. First, the deteriorating international situation (brought about in part by German diplomacy) raised the prospect of a future continental war and, second, the evident determination of Britain to out­-​ ­build Tirpitz made further naval expansion seem futile. The Prussian War Minister echoed Bulow’s earlier judgement and replied to Bethmann that “The fate of the Hohenzollern crown … rests upon either victory or defeat of the German army”.29 The Army Bills of 1912 and 1913 marked a significant change in German priorities.30 Expenditure on the Army increased by two­-thirds ​­ in just two years, while that on the Navy remained almost constant (and the construction budget actually went down, just when Britain starting building the Queen

Consequences and assessment – Tirpitz   147 Elizabeth­-​­class super­-​­dreadnoughts). The General Staff proposed an increase of 300,000 soldiers, but this was beyond even the bigger budget and the active Army got an extra 117,000, a significant increase nonetheless, plus some modernisation measures.31 Economic historian Niall Ferguson argues that the larger increase could have been affordable with increased borrowing and taxation, but politically that was unacceptable.32 Of course, without the huge naval budget, a bigger Army would have been achievable without more taxes or spending. The steel that went into battleships could have been used for artillery and mechanised transport.33 We cannot know what difference the extra troops might have made in August and September 1914, though one historian believes Tirpitz “… couldn’t help the Army in its battles­ – indeed his large following had denied them the small extra margin of superiority which would have ensured easy victory”.34 The other event of 1912 was the “war council” in December where the Chief of the Great General Staff, Moltke, highlighted the worsening position on land vis à vis the Franco­-​­Russian Alliance and Tirpitz had to admit that the fleet was not ready against Britain.35 The increases in the Army (“too little, too late”36) could not rectify a deteriorating balance, especially as Russia rapidly recovered from its 1905 defeat by Japan. The combined French and Russian army budgets were nearly 50 per cent greater than German and Austro­-​­Hungarian spending, which meant that in 1914 the latter had 128 Divisions against 187 for the Entente.37 The other armed service affected by competition from the Tirpitz Plan was, of course, the Royal Navy. We have already seen how the German naval challenge to Great Britain failed in both quantitative and qualitative terms. What concerns us here is the significance of that failed challenge. The Tirpitz Plan relied on a series of assumptions all of which ignored the central characteristic of strategic competition, namely that it is an interactive process. Tirpitz needed Britain not to adjust its own shipbuilding plans in the light of the German programme, not to alter the deployment of the Royal Navy to face its new, and most serious, challenge and that, in the event of hostilities, it would offer battle in the Helgoland Bight under conditions advantageous to Germany. As Paul Kennedy observes, “When all three of these assumptions proved erroneous, the value of his entire battlefleet­-​­centred policy became worthless”.38 Nor was the Risk Theory any more successful. Taken at face value, it was meant to pressure Britain into accommodating Germany’s rise to world power status. Instead, it provoked Britain to resist Germany in Europe. We saw in Chapter 6 the scale of the British response to Tirpitz’s fleet expansion. It remains uncertain whether Tirpitz’s real aim was eventually to out­-​ ­build Britain, but if that was his ultimate ambition it merely exacerbates his dilemma. Britain saw an inferior German fleet as sufficiently dangerous that it was resolved to maintain at least a 3 : 2 advantage, which ironically is what Tirpitz came to accept as sufficient to meet the requirements of the Risk Theory. But, getting even that far meant passing through the Danger Zone. Fears of being “Copenhagened” in the process were unrealistic and perhaps meant only

148   Consequences for propaganda effect anyway. But the British response meant that the Danger Zone itself never passed.39 Tirpitz never achieved even a margin of inferiority to satisfy his own strategy. The Navy was never large enough to achieve a favourable decision at sea, but was too large and valuable to be risked.40 As it grew, it became more defensively minded and the “Risk” it posed was mainly to itself. A challenger needs to challenge, which a defensive posture prohibits. Instead, Germany came to adopt a Fleet in Being strategy without being able to define what it was remaining in being for. German acceptance of permanent inferiority in relation to the Royal Navy’s overall strength made more strategic sense if it only had to face the British home fleet. This hope was dashed by Fisher’s reforms in 1904–1905. Over 150 older ships, of doubtful combat value, were scrapped, releasing their crews to man new dreadnoughts. Even more significant was a substantial re­-​­deployment, which saw overseas stations consolidated and the battle squadrons concentrated at home, at Gibraltar and at Malta. Whether the initial impetus behind this was a residual fear of France or Russia or of a rising Germany is somewhat beside the point,41 but an anti­-​­German rationale for re­-​­deployment was provided as early as August 1902: In view of the fact that the whole of the German fleet is always within striking distance of our shores, it is no longer safe to dispense with a modern and powerful fleet in home waters. The maintenance of a large fleet in the Mediterranean and the China Sea does not guarantee us against German attack.42 The effect was to negate any hope Tirpitz might have had of only having to measure his growing fleet against just a part of the Royal Navy. By 1906 at the latest, Germany was the sole focus of British naval policy, quarrels with France having been resolved and the Russian fleet having been destroyed by the Japanese Navy. Fisher himself identified Germany as Britain’s “only probable enemy”.43 This process was completed in 1912 when the Malta ships transferred to Gibraltar and the Gibraltar ships to the Home Fleet. Soon after, an agreement with France meant the latter took responsibility for the Mediterranean, freeing the Royal Navy to concentrate on the North Sea.44 As Captain Persius, a persistent critic of Tirpitz, put it after the War, Tirpitz was “guilty of many mistakes in constructing vessels which, though useless in war, yet helped to bring war upon us”.45 It was, perhaps, less a “luxury fleet” than a liability fleet. In 1911, Tirpitz himself admitted as much: “Our chances in a war with England are thoroughly unsatisfactory. Naturally, I cannot concede this in public.”46 Tirpitz’s failure to anticipate Britain’s reaction in peacetime was matched by a similar failure to understand its likely actions in war. Accepting that the Navy and the Risk Theory were meant to have peacetime deterrent and diplomatic functions, Tirpitz, the Admiralty Staff and the Fleet Commander still needed plans for the employment of the High Seas Fleet in the event of war, both to make its deterrent effect credible and to prepare for war if it came. Numerical

Consequences and assessment – Tirpitz   149 inferiority necessarily required a strategic defensive, but Tirpitz hoped to conduct a tactical offensive under circumstances favourable to Germany. This required the Royal Navy to adopt an offensive strategy, imposing a traditional close blockade of the German coast and offering its exposed fleet to engagement by German forces enjoying local superiority. It was the only way to rationalise challenging a dominant opponent from a position of inferiority, but it relied on his enemy doing as he wished. Curiously, while Tirpitz tended to view economic competition in erroneous zero­-​­sum terms, he failed to fully understand that armed conflict is zero­-​­sum and that Britain’s actions were unlikely to fit neatly with his plans­ – “the enemy has a vote”. Many in Berlin understood early on the implications of a British blockade: “a financial and social crisis whose consequences were incalculable.”47 A persistent subject in German war planning was therefore how to avoid such a blockade, but it presented a dilemma as insoluble as how to defeat a numerically superior enemy.48 The result was that Germany had no real plans for fighting a war in the North Sea. Tirpitz himself insisted that Germany had to wait and see what Britain would do, thereby ceding the initiative to his enemy.49 In an ironic twist, bringing the British fleet to action under circumstances favourable to Germany actually required that the country be blockaded. For the very reason that it suited Germany, Britain declined to offer close blockade and imposed a distant blockade as soon as hostilities began in August 1914. Instead of isolating Germany from the high seas off its own coast, the exits from the North Sea were sealed. This also had been foreseen, so that, in May 1914, when Tirpitz asked Fleet Commander Admiral Ingenohl what he would do if the British did not offer battle near Helgoland, neither admiral had an answer.50 The German naval challenge to Britain therefore brought about the very type of blockade to which it had no adequate response. Tirpitz’s difficulties and, ultimately, his failure were greatly exacerbated by geography. As a continental power, Germany’s central position in Europe gave it a significant advantage, being able to exploit internal lines of communication, essentially railways, to rapidly concentrate forces wherever required. A two­-​ ­front war such as Germany faced in both World Wars only became a strategic liability if the overall balance of forces tipped significantly in favour of the country’s enemies, forcing Germany to fight on two fronts at the same time­ – as indeed happened in both conflicts. By contrast, geography could never favour a German attempt to become a significant sea power. This was not just a function of a limited coastline (much of it along the enclosed Baltic) and inadequate harbours (the High Seas Fleet could not depart from the Jade Estuary during a single high tide). It had as much to do with British geography as it did German, as Mahan identified (but Tirpitz ignored) in 1902: “The dilemma of Great Britain is that she cannot help commanding the approaches to Germany …”.51 The British Isles blocked open access to the high seas from Germany (and indeed from the Netherlands in the seventeenth century), in a way that they had not blocked French or Spanish access in previous centuries. “England … stood like a giant break­-​­water off her exits to the sea.”52 Occupation of Dutch

150   Consequences and Belgian ports would make little difference; securing unhindered access to the open sea would require the defeat of France (on land) and the use of ports on the French Atlantic coast­  – which is exactly what happened in the Second World War. Germany’s dismal maritime geography, somewhat ironically, provided a powerful push behind the country’s challenge to Britain. It was Britain’s geographic position astride Germany’s trade routes as much as the strength of the Royal Navy that made German maritime interests a hostage to British goodwill. It lends some logic to Tirpitz’s decision to challenge Britain in the North Sea­ – “the maritime link to its place in the sun”.53 German vulnerability at sea­  – its overseas trade, access to its modest colonial empire and its ability to influence world events beyond the continent of Europe­  – gave Germany two options, either to ensure British goodwill or to challenge Britain. The German government chose the latter. And it was Germany’s very proximity to the British Isles that meant Britain could only resist that challenge. It could cede primacy in the Far East to its new Japanese ally and it could appease American interests to secure its otherwise indefensible territories in Canada and the Caribbean.54 But it could not tolerate a German challenge in the North Sea. Perhaps Tirpitz’s greatest error was not to recognise that strategic truth. The strategy, if we can call it that, behind the Tirpitz Plan was a coercive one aimed at Britain. The fleet would deter a British attack and compel Britain to accede to Germany’s rise to world power status. The growth of the Imperial German Navy (the sixth largest in the world in 1898, the second largest just 16 years later55) may have been an end in itself for Tirpitz and the Kaiser, but it also had to serve the ends of German policy towards Britain. Before Tirpitz, there were certainly quarrels between the two countries, for example over Samoa and South Africa, but neither country was the other’s main security concern. Both, for different reasons, felt more threatened by France and Russia, and for some policy­-​­makers in both countries an Anglo­-​ ­German alliance would be both a natural and a desirable arrangement. Even without an alliance, as Colin Gray observes “Britain could have coexisted in peace indefinitely with a Bismarckian Germany [i.e. a dominant but not hegemonic continental power] but not with the anti­-​­British naval construction program of Wilhelminian Germany and her vague aspirations for grandiose Weltpolitik”.56 The Tirpitz Plan was therefore a provocation Britain could not ignore. It produced one of history’s archetypal arms races and a deep­-​­seated animosity between the two countries. But it was not the only factor in the deteriorating relations between London and Berlin. Once the two countries came to view each other with hostility, Britain had to consider afresh the significance of the German Army as much as its Navy. British policy had, for centuries, been to resist any substantial challenge to its maritime supremacy, but also to resist the domination of the European continent by a single (land) power. Its attitude towards Imperial Germany was entirely consistent with earlier policies in regard to Habsburg Spain and Bourbon and Napoleonic France. The former Prime

Consequences and assessment – Tirpitz   151 Minister, Arthur Balfour (and future First Lord of the Admiralty), spelled it out to a German audience in 1912: Without a superior fleet Britain would no longer count as a Power. Without any fleet at all Germany would remain the greatest Power in Europe.… The danger lies … in the co­-​­existence of that marvellous instrument of warfare, the German army and navy, with the most assiduous … advocacy of a policy which it seems impossible to reconcile with the peace of the world or the rights of nations.57 The expansion of the German Navy was alarming in itself, but it came to be seen as signifying something deeper and prompted a growing fear of German intentions. In 1910, Sir Eyre Crowe, a diplomat who specialised in German relations, wrote: It is not merely or even principally the question of naval armaments which is the cause of the existing estrangement. The building of the German fleet is but one of the symptoms of the disease. It is the political ambitions of the German government and nation which are the source of the mischief.58 We now know that, vague Weltpolitik aspirations notwithstanding, prior to 1914 Germany did not harbour serious hegemonic intentions within Europe and nor did it seek to overthrow the British Empire beyond Europe. As the 1912 “War Council” showed, Germany was actually becoming more fearful than ambitious. It was the great mistake of German diplomacy to give a much more malign impression than was its intent; neither the Kaiser’s intemperate interventions nor the growth of Tirpitz’s fleet helped in this regard. It was not just the naval threat itself, serious though that was, but what the German naval build­-​­up seemed to imply about wider German intentions towards Britain that mattered.59 The consequence of growing Anglo­-​­German mistrust was the speedy abandonment of the British policy of “splendid isolation”, which had sought to preserve Britain’s freedom of action in relation to the other European states and thereby maintain a balance of power. From the middle of the 1890s, a newly assertive Germany seemed to threaten that balance. To begin with, Britain feared “… Germany [would be] in a commanding position if ever we find ourselves at war with France and Russia”.60 This could be seen as a partial vindication of the Risk Theory or, alternatively, of the “alliance value” of the German fleet, but it assumed that Britain would remain at diplomatic odds with the Dual Alliance powers and aloof from the European alliance system. Part of the rationale for the fleet and the threat it posed to Britain was that the latter could be “forced to be friendly”.61 The British reaction demonstrated the opposite, because while France and Russia (and indeed the United States) might threaten British overseas interests, only Germany could threaten British vital (home) interests. When Germany shifted its emphasis from a continental strategy focused on its European neighbours to a maritime, or world, strategy aimed at Britain, it

152   Consequences produced exactly the opposite effect on British policy. Beginning with the Anglo­-​­Japanese alliance of 1902, Britain progressively tidied­-​­up a series of extra­-​­European issues, mainly with France (1904) and Russia (1907), in order to concentrate on European affairs and the perceived threat from Germany. This “emerging dominance of continentalism”62 included army staff talks with France that, beginning in 1906, gradually produced an expectation of British assistance to France on land in the event of war with Germany. In this manner, the naval challenge to Britain not only denied the German Army potential resources, it also added the small but professional British Army to its potential enemies. This was not, as it is sometimes portrayed, a simple maritime versus continental strategic choice by Britain. “It was fear of what the Germans might do with their navy after a defeat of France.”63 By 1912, the nadir of Anglo­-​­German relations had passed. It was clear to both governments that Britain could maintain sufficient supremacy at sea to assuage British fears of the German naval threat. This realisation engendered a limited degree of mutual understanding, a lessening of tensions and some attempts to formalise improved relations. The scope for doing so was limited, however, as each had divergent objectives. Germany, increasingly worried about its diplomatic isolation, wanted an agreement with Britain that would secure the latter’s neutrality in the event of war with France and Russia. For its part, Britain sought a naval agreement that would permanently and formally end the German naval challenge.64 Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, proposed a “naval holiday” (a one­-​­year cessation of orders for new dreadnoughts), which was refused by Tirpitz.65 The Kaiser observed that such an agreement was possible only between allies, but of course between allies no such agreement is required. Talk of a fixed 16 : 10 ratio between the two navies fared no better, but the time when such agreements, formal or otherwise, were really needed was over. In February 1913, Tirpitz announced in the Reichstag that Churchill’s 16 : 10 formula was, after all, acceptable. “Germany’s renunciation of the Anglo­-​ ­German naval arms race was effectively unilateral.”66 This implicit understanding came too late. By now Britain was positioned diplomatically within the Triple Entente and committed to resisting any German challenge to the European balance. If Germany’s attention was now mainly on deteriorating relations with France and Russia, Britain remained focused on Germany and its perceived threat to British interests­ – in Europe and beyond. Still the dominant power on the European continent, Germany’s growing estrangement from Britain would have mattered less if it retained a Bismarckian network of overlapping relationships with the other great powers, even in the face of irreconcilable French hostility.67 But, once Bismarck had gone (he was forced to resign in 1890 and died in 1898), “German diplomacy staggered from one crisis to another”.68 The German naval challenge to Britain was only one cause of a growing belief in other European capitals that Germany under Wilhelm II had become a dangerous and revisionist power. The two Moroccan crises of 1905–1906 and 1911 were particularly important in pushing Britain and France together, while successive Balkan crises between 1908 and 1914

Consequences and assessment – Tirpitz   153 pushed Russia and Austria­-Hungary ​­ (and therefore Germany) further apart. From 1907 on, Germany increasingly felt itself encircled (Einkreisrung) with just a single reliable ally, Austria­-​­Hungary, which was significantly weaker than any of Germany’s opponents in the Triple Entente. This had the perverse effect of making Germany unduly reliant on its only friend, which Berlin believed therefore had to be supported under any circumstances. In July 1914, this was to prove fateful. At the turn of the century, Bulow wrote “The future task of the German government … is to preserve good relations with both Britain and Russia”.69 Given the hostility between the two at the time, this was a very Bismarckian approach, but subsequent German policy managed only to reconcile the two with each other while alienating both from Germany. “There can be no greater indictment of German diplomacy than the fact that the deep­-​­seated hostilities of Britain, France and Russia had been resolved so rapidly.”70 Deteriorating relations with Russia were as important in this as was the growing rivalry with Britain, so it cannot be said that Germany’s increasing isolation was entirely the fault of the Tirpitz Plan. The Navy was but part of a wider failure of German policy, as Bethmann correctly identified when he expressed his frustration with: … the earlier errors: a Turkish [Balkan] policy against Russia, Morocco against France, fleet against England, all at the same time­ – challenge everybody, get in everyone’s way and actually, in the course of all this, weaken nobody.71 What, then, was the role of Tirpitz’s fleet in the outbreak of war in late July and early August 1914? Directly, the Anglo­-​­German naval rivalry played no part at all. Yet another Balkan crisis and the escalating responses of first Austria­-​ ­Hungary, then Russia, then Germany, then France and finally Britain were the immediate cause of hostilities. The precise allocation of blame for the unfolding tragedy is still, over a century later, contested among historians.72 Most are agreed that the system of alliances that developed in the 20 years or so before 1914 played a role, as did what Rolf Hobson calls “the increasing militarization of international politics”.73 German navalism was merely the most extreme manifestation of this militarisation, but which by 1914 had already peaked. Tirpitz later sought to absolve himself from all responsibility for the war and Germany’s defeat, but was, unusually, quite accurate when he wrote: If Germany’s armies had marched into Belgium and France, indeed if we had wrestled successfully with Russia and France, a Germany without a fleet would still have had England for an enemy. In keeping with her traditional policy, England would never have suffered our superiority on the Continent, even if she had had no formal ententes with the other Powers.74 In this at least we must side with Tirpitz rather than historian Arthur Marder, who said “… the naval rivalry did not cause the war; but it ensured that when

154   Consequences war did break out, Great Britain would be on the side of Germany’s enemies”.75 The German Navy alone did not bring about Britain’s diplomatic and military re­-alignment, ​­ but it was at least the catalyst, proof of what British Foreign ­Secretary Edward Grey believed was Germany’s “itch to dominate”.76 The final cause of British intervention in 1914 actually lay on land with the invasion of Belgium, though that was perhaps only symbolic of Britain’s enduring commitment to prevent continental hegemony on the part of any single (land) power. Once Britain and Germany went to war, Germany’s combination of numerical inferiority and geographic disadvantage could not be overcome. Within days, the High Seas Fleet was effectively confined to the southeast corner of the North Sea (which it lacked the range to venture much beyond anyway) and the Royal Navy blocked the exits to the North Sea off Dover and the northeast of Scotland. Britain’s essential strategic objective at sea was achieved in the first days of August 1914. The High Seas Fleet did have an immediate opportunity to support Germany’s opening offensive on land, by interdicting the transfer of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) to France. No such attempt was made, however, for fear of being intercepted in turn by the British fleet closing from the north. Seven British divisions were deployed to the French left wing uninterrupted. Nor, of course, could the High Seas Fleet protect Germany’s colonial empire (part of its “place in the sun”). Germany’s only overseas naval base, at Tsingtao, fell to Japanese troops on 7 November. By this time, Germany’s other Pacific possessions had all gone as well, taken by Japanese, Australian or New Zealand forces. German colonies in Africa fared rather better but, by 1916, German troops only held out in German East Africa (present­-​­day Tanzania). In the first couple of years, German commerce raiders had some success beyond Europe, the Royal Navy was embarrassed in the Mediterranean by the escape to Constantinople of the cruisers Goeben and Breslau, and both sides achieved some tactical successes in the North Sea and beyond. “Hit and Run” raids on east coast towns by German battlecruisers were a further embarrassment to the British Admiralty.77 But the High Seas Fleet battleships remained largely inactive, and the stalemate on land was matched by stalemate at sea.78 Both sides maintained a Fleet in Being strategy, but for different reasons. Britain had its maritime superiority and need not imperil it in action. In Churchill’s famous words, the Grand Fleet’s Commander­-​­in­-​­Chief, John Jellicoe, “was the only man on either side who could lose the war in an afternoon”.79 Germany maintained its Fleet in Being because it had no sensible alternative and nothing for the fleet to do other than to exist and wait for peace. It was not even the German battleships that kept the Grand Fleet out of the Helgoland Bight, where Tirpitz had hoped they would venture. Rather, it was the threat of mines, submarines and torpedo attacks by destroyers.80 The High Seas Fleet was not the only German fleet neutered by the Royal Navy’s dominance. Other than in the Baltic, Germany’s merchant shipping was either destroyed, captured or interned in neutral ports. German seaborne trade ceased almost immediately on the outbreak of war. The effect on the German

Consequences and assessment – Tirpitz   155 economy was gradual, but inexorable, and contributed to the final German collapse in late 1918.81 The corollary of the British blockade of Germany was a German blockade of Britain. For this Tirpitz’s dreadnoughts were quite useless. Even if they had enjoyed unfettered access to the sea off Britain’s main ports (many, like Bristol, Liverpool and Glasgow, on the west coast of Britain), they lacked the range to operate there anyway. Instead, the task fell to the arm of the Navy long neglected by Tirpitz, the U­-​­Boats. This was not just a policy change in terms of the kind of fleet to be used, but also the type of campaign to be fought (Kleinkrieg instead of Grosskrieg), in other words the Guerre de Course anti­-​ ­shipping war long dismissed by Tirpitz. U­-Boats ​­ enjoyed early successes, between September 1914 and January 1915 sinking six cruisers (one of them Russian), a battleship and a seaplane carrier.82 These successes contrasted with the mixed fortunes of German surface ships (victory at the Battle of Coronel, complete or partial defeat at the battles of the Helgoland Bight, the Falkland Islands and the Dogger Bank) and the relative inaction of the main High Seas Fleet. By late January 1915, even Tirpitz was converted to the idea of a U­-Boat ​­ offensive, not just against the Royal Navy but also aimed at British merchant shipping. Thanks to the belated German submarine construction programme,83 the new undersea campaign that began in late February 1915 started out with just 29 available U­-​­Boats of limited capabilities. Sinking individual British warships when the opportunity presented was one thing, but a concerted campaign against British seaborne trade was quite another. In the whole of 1915, U­-​­Boats sank 748,000 tons of British shipping, which was replaced by 1.3 million tons of new construction.84 The loss of American lives in the sinking of the liners Lusitania in May and Arabic in August led to sharp protests from Washington. As a consequence, in September unrestricted submarine warfare was abandoned and with it any chance of a comprehensive blockade of Britain, even if Germany had had the submarine numbers to make it effective. A brief resumption in February 1916 ended two months later after another liner sinking prompted another American protest. The evident stalemate on land and sea meant Germany could not afford to risk adding to the list of its enemies before a submarine campaign could have any chance of defeating one of its existing foes. In the middle of 1916, the High Seas Fleet had an opportunity to prove its strategic relevance. At the Battle of Jutland, a combination of luck, circumstances and British mistakes produced heavier British casualties than German and, arguably, a limited tactical success for the latter.85 Jutland was the “afternoon” to which Churchill referred, and British Commander­-in­ ​­ -​­Chief John Jellicoe did not lose the war during it. The Kaiser claimed that “the spell of Trafalgar has been broken”, but an American journalist was more prescient when he observed, “The German Fleet has assaulted its jailor, but is still in jail”.86 Strategically, which is what mattered, Jutland merely confirmed that the High Seas Fleet had no satisfactory answer to its numerical and geographic handicaps. This brief attempt at Grosskrieg soon saw a return to Kleinkrieg.

156   Consequences Jutland confirmed to the German leadership that the High Seas Fleet could not remove Britain from the list of Germany’s enemies. The Army was having no more success on land in defeating either France in the West or Russia in the East. Attention therefore turned back to the still modest U­-​­Boat force. A month after the battle, German fleet commander Reinhard Sheer told the Kaiser that not even “… the most successful outcome of a fleet action … could force England to make peace …”. He concluded the answer was “… the defeat of British economic life­ – that is, by using the U­-​­boats against British trade”.87 A limited submarine campaign began in October and, by the end of the year, the Allies were losing over 300,000 tons of shipping per month. Sixty­-​­five merchant ships were sunk for each U­-​­Boat lost.88 This was not enough, however, to be decisive. In January 1917, a War Council of Germany’s political and military leaders decided to resume unrestricted submarine warfare and accept the risk of American intervention. The new campaign opened on 1 February with around 100 submarines, of which about a third were available at sea at any one time. The means were still inadequate to the task and, though Germany completed 87 new boats in the next year, they did little more than replace losses over the same period.89 Nonetheless, the U­-​­Boat campaign brought Britain closer to defeat at sea than the High Seas Fleet ever looked like doing. In April 1917, the Allies lost 860,000 tons of shipping with 167 ships sunk for every U­-​­Boat lost.90 This loss rate was unsustainable for Britain, but, due in large part to the introduction of a convoy system, it was not sustained and April 1917 marked the high point of Germany’s submarine campaign. In the final 18 months of the war, merchant ship sinking fell to a loss rate of just 0.41 per cent.91 During 1914–1918 as a whole, the German Navy operated 273 submarines, of which 178 (65 per cent) were lost. They accounted for nearly 6,400 ships, totalling almost 12 million tons, an exchange ratio of 1 : 35 hulls. They also sank more Allied warships than did the High Seas Fleet, a total of ten battleships, 13 cruisers and 21 destroyers.92 To put the merchant tonnage figure in perspective, the Germans calculated at the end of 1916, just prior to the resumption of unrestricted submarine operations, that the total amount of shipping supplying Britain was less than 11 million tons. One can only speculate what a larger scale of effort based on a much earlier and bigger (pre­-​­war) commitment to U­-​­Boat construction might have achieved for Germany. Had Germany been able to destroy a million tons of shipping per month for a six­-​­month period, even allowing for replacement construction, the total available to Britain would have been almost halved. The U­-​­Boat offensive did finally bring the United States into the war, yet failed to stop the delivery of almost two million American troops to Europe­ – an echo perhaps of the High Seas Fleet’s failure to intercept the BEF in 1914 having, at least in part, been responsible for British intervention in the first place. In early 1918, the German Army did defeat one of its enemies and Russia, under its new revolutionary government, was forced into a punitive peace. German naval operations in the Baltic had played only a peripheral role. Victory

Consequences and assessment – Tirpitz   157 on land in the East, the failure of the U­-​­Boat campaign to defeat Britain and the imminent arrival of the Americans pushed Germany into a fresh attempt to achieve a decision on the Western Front. It was there that the final German defeat occurred in the autumn of 1918. For the Navy’s part, its final effort was the “Scheer Programme” of August 1918, which aimed to increase U­-​­Boat production to 36 a month by the end of 1919, with 332 submarines being completed in the period October 1918 to December 1919.93 This scale of effort might have made a difference four years earlier, but by now it was too late and was soon overtaken by the final German collapse in November 1918. On 21 October 1918, the U­-​­Boats were recalled as armistice negotiations proceeded. German naval plans shifted for one last time to the surface fleet. Scheer, by now Chief of Naval Staff, and Admiral Hipper, his replacement as Commander­-​­in­-​ ­Chief, planned a final sortie against the British Grand Fleet. Their aim was to inflict as much damage on the enemy as possible, whatever the cost to the German fleet, in order to improve Germany’s bargaining position in the armistice negotiations. It was a final, desperate, attempt to prove the fleet’s strategic relevance. By now thoroughly demoralised through inaction and unwilling to be sacrificed in this manner, much of the fleet mutinied and refused to put to sea.94 On 9 November, Scheer told the Kaiser his Navy could no longer be relied upon. After observing, “I have no longer a Navy” the latter abdicated later the same day.95 The Armistice in November 1918 brought about counterintuitive outcomes for the German armed forces. The Army was still fighting on enemy soil when Germany surrendered and units returned home largely intact. The Navy, by contrast, had spent almost the entire war at home but was required to leave what was effectively “internment” at Wilhelmshaven for a real internment in the enemy’s main base at Scapa Flow. The explanation for this divergence may be that the Army was beaten, and its leadership knew it. The Navy had not been beaten­ – at least not in battle­ – and still posed a potential threat. Under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, Germany was denied both dreadnoughts and submarines and permitted to retain only six obsolete pre­-​­dreadnought battleships. It was as though the Tirpitz Plan had never existed. What alternative course of action might Germany have followed? At the grand strategic level, Germany might have maintained Bismarck’s recognition of the weaknesses as well as the strengths of the country’s geo­-​­strategic position in the middle of Europe. A sounder foreign policy combined with more adroit diplomacy might have avoided the self­-encirclement ​­ that led to war and then defeat. It was, perhaps, the weakness of the “Bismarck system” that it required a Bismarck to run it. Having got rid of one Bismarck, Wilhelmine Germany was incapable of generating another. France was probably irreconcilable. Russia became increasingly alienated because of German support for Austria­-​­Hungary in the Balkans. Britain went from sympathetic neutral to opponent because Weltpolitik threatened Britain outside Europe, the Tirpitz fleet threatened Britain’s maritime supremacy and German diplomacy threatened the peaceful balance of Europe. German policy therefore managed to challenge all three pillars of British security­ – the Empire, the Navy and the Balance of Power.

158   Consequences Underpinning these errors was a failure to understand that security can never be absolute, and that every action produces a reaction.96 If Germany was resolved to take its “place in the sun” and behave as a revisionist rather than satisfied power, it could have pursued one of two policies. One would be to unite the continent against Britain (which is what both Napoleon and Hitler attempted) or to reconcile itself to its position outside Europe being conditional on British goodwill. Instead, Germany blundered into dividing the continent and challenging Britain. Of more direct concern to us here, is what alternative naval policy Germany might have adopted. There were, indeed, contemporary voices calling for a different approach and foreseeing the difficulties the Tirpitz Plan would create. We have already noted that, as Chancellor, Bethmann­-​­Hollweg at least partially understood the wider consequences of fleet expansion and the deterioration of German security that it produced. There were also several voices of opposition from within the Navy itself, all them ruthlessly silenced by Tirpitz for as long as he was able. Three names stand out: Vice Admiral Carl Galster, Captain Lothar Persius and Lieutenant Commander (later Vice Admiral) Wolfgang Wegener. Just when Tirpitz was facing up to the Dreadnought challenge, Galster published a pamphlet in October 1907, which stimulated a public debate about German arms policy. Galster argued that an inferior battlefleet had no military value and could not prevent a blockade of Germany in time of war. Nor could it achieve the deterrent effect promised by the Risk Theory. Instead, he argued for weapons that could really threaten British naval and merchant shipping, namely cruisers and submarines.97 The RMA made sure he was ostracised and his recommendations ignored. Persius offered a similar critique, as a result of which he was forced to retire in 1908. He continued to make increasingly trenchant observations, which came to a head after the War.98 He criticised Tirpitz not just for overlooking the potential of the U­-Boat, ​­ but also for producing surface ships that were qualitatively inferior to their British counterparts. He was a fierce opponent of the invasion of Belgium (for prompting British intervention) and unrestricted submarine warfare (for bringing the Americans in). Wegener’s contribution is perhaps the best known and most influential. In 1915, he was a staff officer in the First Battle Squadron, where he wrote three papers that were widely circulated. He argued that the Helgoland Bight was a strategic dead­-​­end. The High Seas Fleet should venture further afield, to Norwegian and Danish waters and even (somewhat oddly) concentrate its best units in the Baltic. His priority was access to the open sea, not decisive battle per se. The Army’s aim should be the capture of France’s Atlantic coast ports. All reflected the need to establish a position that would out­-​­flank the British Isles. Of course, Tirpitz’s short­-​­range battlefleet was ill suited to these approaches. Wegener’s post­-​­war criticism of Tirpitz opined that “… we never really understood the sea. Not one of us”.99 In some respects, he was even more ambitious in his strategic outlook than Tirpitz, who he criticised for an essentially coast­-​ ­defence mentality. Wegener’s views are sometimes regarded as a blueprint for

Consequences and assessment – Tirpitz   159 Admiral Raeder’s policy in 1940, when Germany did just what Wegener had earlier advocated­ – seizing Denmark, Norway and northern France.100 All these critiques were developed after Germany had already challenged Britain at sea. They therefore took enmity with Britain somewhat for granted and recommended alternatives for defeating Britain rather than avoiding war with her altogether. In essence, Germany had two choices to make: first, whether to challenge Britain’s battlefleet or its merchant fleet and, second, whether to use a battlefleet of its own or a force of cruisers and latterly submarines. Tirpitz, of course, chose the battlefleet versus battlefleet option. The cruiser force initially favoured by the Kaiser could not have done that, but the events of 1914–1918 demonstrated the potential of U­-​­Boats to constrain and, on occasion, to sink capital ships (though no dreadnoughts were actually sunk by submarines). But that still left the question: what for? U­-​­Boats, together with mines and torpedo­-​ ­boats, could prevent a close blockade by a battlefleet, but Germany’s geography made a distant blockade almost as damaging, and one that could be imposed more effectively by enemy cruisers than by battleships. Distant blockade was a form of reverse Guerre de Course to which Germany could have no effective answer. Instead of planning to take on the British battlefleet, Germany could have sought from the outset to attack Britain’s real and assailable vulnerability, its merchant fleet. This is what Germany turned to in 1915, but only after the futility of challenging the Grand Fleet had become apparent. Tirpitz’s short­-​ ­range North Sea battlefleet was quite unsuited to the task, but the isolated successes of German surface raiders indicated what an overseas cruiser force might achieve. But Germany’s strategic circumstances were not much more favourable for this than for a battlefleet, as Tirpitz himself identified in 1897: Commerce­-​­raiding and transatlantic war against England is so hopeless, because of the shortage of bases on our side and the superfluity on England’s side, that we must ignore this type of war against England.…101 In particular, cruisers would have been vulnerable to the British battlefleet if they tried to operate where British merchant shipping was most concentrated­ – in the approaches to the British Isles. The invention of the long­-​­range submarine fundamentally changed this dynamic. Submarines themselves were impervious to an enemy battlefleet (though Dreadnought herself did successfully ram U­-29 ​­ in March 1915) and effectively by­-​­passed British supremacy on the surface of the sea until the latter built very large numbers of small anti­-submarine ​­ escorts. U­-​­Boats were regarded as the weapons of the weak­  – hence Tirpitz’s initial disdain for them­ – but Germany was weak at sea: geography made it so. Guerre de Course using submarines brought Britain closer to defeat­  – in both World Wars­  – than a battlefleet, aerial bombardment or the threat of invasion could ever have done. But such an approach would have required Germany to eschew what Mahan advocated­  – command of the sea­  – and be satisfied with simply denying that command to its enemy. Until the realities of war forced it upon

160   Consequences them, the German leadership was not ready to concede this point. Wilhelm and Tirpitz were Mahanians, but did not accept (or understand) Mahan’s own requirements for the successful application of seapower. Nor did they recognise early enough that the development of submarine technology had transformed the U­-​­Boat from a purely defensive into an offensive weapon. Nor should we overlook another tool of Guerre de Course­  – the sea mine. German mines accounted for over 50 warships (including the new dreadnought HMS Audacious) and over a million tons of merchant shipping.102 An earlier resort to this form of sea­-​­denial might also have reaped benefits for Germany, such as clandestine mining of the approaches to French Channel ports to hinder the deployment of the BEF. By any objective analysis, the Tirpitz Plan was a colossal failure. The extent of Tirpitz’s culpability for events that led to war in 1914 and Germany’s defeat four years later will remain contested and ultimately unknowable. One of his biographers, Michael Epkenhans, calls him “one of the architects of a policy that led to the catastrophes of the twentieth century”.103 Michelle Murray offers a milder, but no less damning, indictment, calling Germany’s decision to launch a huge naval build up “suboptimal arming”.104 Holger Herwig calls it an “atrophy of strategic thought”.105 He is surely right, for the rationales behind the Tirpitz Plan were either fatally flawed or simply post­-​­facto slogans to justify a navalist programme that was pursued for its own sake. Great powers had large navies. Germany was a European great power and wanted to be a world power, so it had to have a big navy. A big navy meant a big battlefleet. By 1911 at the latest, it was apparent, even to Tirpitz in his more reflective moments, that the fleet could not achieve the purposes for which it was ostensibly being built. Construction of the world’s second­-​­strongest fleet had simply turned the strongest fleet into an enemy. “The situation had reverted to that existing in the mid­-​­1890s before Tirpitz took over: ships were being built for which no coherent war plans existed to guide their use.”106 But, by then, too much had already been invested, politically and financially, for a re­-​­think. In October 1910, Tirpitz employed the classic “sunk costs” argument when he told the Kaiser that to accede to permanent British superiority would mean “German naval development … would have been a failure and the naval policy of Your Majesty a historical failure”.107 But it was a failure anyway, and Germany was less secure in 1914 with a large fleet than it had been in 1900 without one.108 When war came it was simply impossible for Germany to devise an effective strategy for the employment of Tirpitz’s battlefleet. The fatal combination of numerical inferiority and geographic disadvantage could not be overcome. Germany needed either to avoid war with Britain altogether, or adopt­  – and resource­  – a Guerre de Course strategy that might have been able to achieve what the High Seas Fleet certainly could not. But to challenge the Royal Navy on its own terms from a position of inherent inferiority was strategic ineptitude of the first order. To be fair, that was never Tirpitz’s intent. The fleet was meant to deter and coerce Britain, not fight it. Instead, the Tirpitz Plan played a

Consequences and assessment – Tirpitz   161 significant role in ensuring that Germany would fight Britain and that Germany had the wrong fleet with which to do it.

Notes    1 Holmes p. 37.    2 Tirpitz “Report to the Sovereign” 28 September 1899. NRS Abyss pp. 55–56.    3 Paul Papayoanou “Interdependence, Institutions and the Balance of Power: Britain, Germany and World War I” International Security 20:4 (Spring 1996) pp. 42–76.    4 A point forcefully made by a recent Chinese study of Imperial Germany’s rise and fall. Qiyu Xu Fragile Rise: Grand Strategy and the Fate of Imperial Germany, 1871–1914 op. cit.    5 Ibid. p. 157.    6 Epkenhans Tirpitz p. 33.    7 For example, the two Moroccan crises in 1905–1906 and 1911.    8 German external relations in this period are covered in, among a huge literature, Craig Germany 1866–1945, Xu Qiyu Fragile Rise, Kennedy Anglo­-​­German Antagonism, Henry Kissinger Diplomacy New York: Touchstone, 1994 Chapter 7 and Christopher Clark The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914 London: Penguin, 2013 Part Two.    9 Kelly p. 462.   10 Park p. 133.   11 Murray pp. 665–666 & 678.   12 Xu p. 198.   13 Cited in Herwig IHR 10:1 p. 80.   14 David Stevenson Armaments and the Coming of War: Europe 1904–1914 Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996 p. 2 Fig. 1.   15 Ibid. p. 6 Table 4.   16 Padfield p. 234.   17 From 2,298.5 million marks to 4,844.1 million marks in ten years. NRS Abyss p. 155.   18 Herwig Luxury Fleet p. 72.   19 Ibid. p. 61.   20 Murray p. 658.   21 Steinberg Past & Present 28 p. 1203.   22 Gat p. 358.   23 Herwig Luxury Fleet p. 75.   24 Angus Ross “Nationalism, Geopolitics and Naval Expansion: From the Nineteenth Century to the Rise of China” Naval War College Review 71:4 (Autumn 2018) p. 18.   25 Holger Herwig “Strategic uncertainties of a nation­-​­state: Prussia­-​­Germany, 1871–1918” in Williamson Murray et al. (eds) The Making of Strategy: Rulers, States and War Cambridge; Cambridge University Press, 1994 p. 263.   26 Herwig Luxury Fleet p. 20 & Gat pp. 359–360.   27 Epkenhans Tirpitz p. 41.   28 Padfield p. 273.   29 NRS Abyss p. 283.   30 Stevenson pp. 7–8 Tables 6 & 8.   31 Dennis Showalter “From Deterrent to Doomsday Machine: The German Way of War, 1890–1914” The Journal of Military History 64:3 (July 2000) p. 694.   32 Niall Ferguson The Pity of War London: Allen Lane, 1998 p. 141.   33 Xu p. 225.   34 Padfield p. 345.   35 Chapter 2.

162   Consequences   36 Terence Zuber The Real German War Plan, 1904–1914 Stroud: The History Press, 2011 p. 175.   37 Stevenson Table 8 & Zuber p. 180.   38 Paul M. Kennedy “Fisher and Tirpitz: Political Admiral in the Age of Imperialism” in Jordan (ed.) Naval Warfare p. 54.   39 Holmes p. 50.   40 Herwig IHR 10:1 p. 82.   41 NRS Abyss p. 104 & Ruddock F. Mackay “The Admiralty, The German Navy and the Redistribution of the British Fleet, 1904–1905” The Mariner’s Mirror 56:3 (1970) pp. 341–346.   42 H. Arnold­-​­Foster “Notes on a Visit to Kiel and Wilhelmshaven” August 1902 in NRS Abyss pp. 132–137.   43 Herwig Luxury Fleet p. 50.   44 Craig p. 331.   45 Persius p. 515.   46 Cited in Kelly p. 202.   47 Vice Admiral Büchsel in 1905, cited in Herwig “German Reaction” p. 281.   48 Kennedy (ed.) War Plans of the Great Powers Chapter 8.   49 Kelly p. 363. Strachan pp. 410–413 contains a good discussion of the German strategic dilemma.   50 Art pp. 196–197.   51 Cited in Marder Dreadnought to Scapa Flow Vol. I p. 431.   52 Padfield p. 80.   53 Holmes p. 46.   54 Rock p. 353.   55 Xu p. 225.   56 Gray Leverage of Seapower p. 201.   57 Cited in Richard Langhorne “The Naval Question in Anglo­-​­German Relations, 1912–1914” The Historical Journal 14:2 (June 1971) p. 361.   58 Cited in Arthur J. Marder British Naval Policy 1880–1905: The Anatomy of British Sea Power London: Putnam & Company 1940 p. 456.   59 Murray p. 684.   60 Lord Selborne, First Lord of the Admiralty “Naval Policy of Foreign Countries” 16 November 1901 NRS Abyss p. 119.   61 Kennedy Strategy and Diplomacy p. 156.   62 Huw Strachan The First World War London: Oxford University Press, 2003 p. 26.   63 David Stafford “A Moral Tale: Anglo­-​­German Relations, 1860–1914” The International History Review 4:2 (May 1982) p. 253.   64 Sean Lynn­-Jones ​­ “Détente and Deterrence: Anglo­-​­German Relations, 1911–1914 International Security 11:2, (Fall 1986) pp. 121–150.   65 Maurer “Averting the Great War?” pp. 25–42.   66 Strachan p. 33.   67 A consequence of the German annexation of the French provinces of Alsace and Lorraine in 1871.   68 Steinberg “Copenhagen Complex” p. 31. For a recent and authoritative analysis of European diplomatic crises in the years before 1914, see Clark The Sleepwalkers Part Two.   69 Craig p. 311.   70 Strachan p. 20.   71 Cited in Craig p. 337.   72 The title of Christopher Clark’s Sleepwalkers is suggestive of a recent thesis­ – that no one actively sought a European war but all blundered into it.   73 Hobson p. 56.   74 Tirpitz Vol. I p. 284.

Consequences and assessment – Tirpitz   163   75 Marder Dreadnought to Scapa Flow Vol. I p. 432.   76 Ibid.   77 The detailed naval history of the First World War is beyond the scope of this work. Among a huge literature, some of the better accounts are Halpern A Naval History of the First World War, Friedman Fighting the Great War at Sea and Robert K. Massie Castles of Steel: Britain, Germany and the Winning of the Great War at Sea London: Jonathan Cape, 2004.   78 Roger Chickering Imperial Germany and the Great War, 1914–1918 Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004 p. 88.   79 Herwig Luxury Fleet p. 149.   80 Padfield p. 343.   81 Strachan pp. 208–215.   82 Herwig Luxury Fleet p. 162.   83 Chapter 6.   84 Herwig Luxury Fleet p. 165.   85 The conduct and outcome of Jutland remain as controversial as the origins of the War. One of the most comprehensive and authoritative analyses seen from the British perspective is Andrew Gordon The Rules of the Game: Jutland and British Naval Command London: John Murray, 1996. Also good is John Campbell Jutland: An Analysis of the Fighting London: Conway, 1986. An authoritative shorter account is in Halpern pp. 310–329.   86 Halpern p. 328.   87 Herwig “Strategic uncertainties” p. 271.   88 Halpern p. 335.   89 Williamson Murray “Naval Power in World War I” in Colin S. Gray & Roger W. Barnett (eds) Seapower and Strategy Annapolis MD: US Naval Institute Press, 1989 pp. 186–212.   90 Halpern p. 341.   91 Ibid. p. 380.   92 Herwig Luxury Fleet p. 247.   93 Weir “The Scheer Programme of 1918” The Mariner’s Mirror 77:3.   94 Even after four and half years fighting on the Western Front, no such mutinies occurred in the Army.   95 Halpern p. 447.   96 Xu p. 201.   97 Hobson pp. 261–262.   98 Persius “How Tirpitz Ruined the German Fleet” op. cit.   99 NRS Abyss p. xxxix. 100 Herwig Luxury Fleet p. 191. 101 Kennedy War Plans of the Great Powers p. 190. 102 Herwig Luxury Fleet p. 208. 103 Epkenhans p. 86. 104 Murray p. 670. 105 Holwig IHR 10:1 p. 83. 106 Art p. 197. 107 Kelly p. 463. 108 Kelly p. 6.

9 Consequences and assessment­ – Gorshkov

When Admiral Gorshkov retired in 1986, two American observers of Soviet naval affairs wrote: Since Admiral Sergei G. Gorshkov’s appointment as commander in chief in 1956, the Soviet Navy has made remarkable progress, advancing from little more than a coastal defence force to one of the world’s two strongest navies.   By any standards, the modern Soviet Navy represents a remarkable organizational and industrial achievement.…1 Change the names and dates and this could describe Tirpitz and the Imperial German Navy. Gorshkov’s Navy was sometimes described by Soviet critics as an “expensive toy”2, an echo of the Kaiser’s “mechanical toy”. Khrushchev himself described its ships as “metal eaters”.3 Western analysts frequently asserted that the Soviet Union, a continental power with little reliance on overseas trade, had more seapower than it “needed”, with the implicit assumption that the Soviet Navy was a “luxury” whose possession could only suggest an aggressive intent.4 Like the pre­-​­1914 German Navy, the Soviet Navy had little tradition of successful combat and, at its height in the mid­-​­1980s, had not seen action for decades. Gorshkov, as had Tirpitz, tried to answer the question “What is needed in order to become a great sea power?”5 Tirpitz’s greatest mistake was, perhaps, to construct a fleet that was a mirror image of its larger rival. Gorshkov took a different route and, while building a fleet to challenge the Soviet Union’s opponent, developed a very different kind of navy. He had, by the time of his retirement, produced a broadly “balanced” fleet containing most of the principal elements of a late­-​­twentieth­-​­century navy, but the balance was quite unlike Western fleets. In the Soviet Union, the Army retained primacy in determining the respective size and shape of the armed forces, with the ironic result that the Soviet Navy assumed a form better suited to the country’s strategic circumstances than was the case in navalist Wilhelmine Germany. The Soviet fleet sacrificed some general­-​­purpose flexibility, which its geographic circumstances limited anyway, in favour of a somewhat more specialised force structure better able to apply pressure to its opponent, in peace and in war.

Consequences and assessment – Gorshkov   165 We have seen that, in the face of political and Army scepticism, Gorshkov was able to advance his ambitions only incrementally. The long lead­-​­times entailed in producing large, complex pieces of equipment such as warships meant that, even with a more permissive environment from the mid­-​­1960s, it took many years before this was manifested in the overall shape of the fleet. But, by the early 1980s, the new types of ships entering service represented a greater emphasis on general­-​­purpose, ocean­-​­going capabilities. Gorshkov’s retirement in early 1986, soon followed by his death and then the collapse of the Soviet Union, mean we cannot know how the uninterrupted progress of his plans might have gone. We do know that overall numbers would have come down substantially with a greater emphasis on fewer, larger, less specialised surface ships and a submarine force similarly comprising a smaller number of larger boats. In that sense it was starting to look a little more like its American opponent, though its individual ships still looked, and were, very different. The development of the Soviet Navy was always subject to two countervailing imperatives. First, to recognise the country’s particular strategic geography (something Tirpitz signally failed to do in relation to Germany) and, second, to respond to the challenge, threat even, of a maritime superpower rival (which was also Tirpitz’s task). A key difference, however, is that Weltpolitik and the Imperial German Navy between them did much to create the animosity of the maritime rival. In the Soviet case, the Cold War was already well underway before Gorshkov started the transformation of the Navy. By posing an asymmetric challenge to the Western maritime powers, Gorshkov avoided Tirpitz’s mistake. Numerically, the bulk of the fleet comprised coastal forces to protect the maritime frontiers and operate on the maritime flanks of the Army, together with a huge submarine arm and powerful land­-based ​­ naval air force to threaten NATO’s superiority on the surface of the high seas, especially in the approaches to the Soviet Union. The growing force of large, ocean­-​­going combatants could take the defence of the homeland further out to sea in war and, as important, take a Soviet peacetime presence into the “World Ocean” in support of “state interests”. This was a late­-​ ­twentieth­-​­century equivalent of the late­-​­nineteenth­-​­century, pre­-​­Tirpitz fleet: a coastal defence force and an overseas cruiser force. A third, new, type of component took part of the Soviets’ nuclear arsenal to sea. Tirpitz found himself playing catch­-​­up in technological terms. Gorshkov was more fortunate, or more prescient. Not only did he build a fleet quite unlike that of the United States, he used new technologies to out­-​­flank existing Western advantages. The Soviets were at the forefront of the introduction of nuclear propulsion, nuclear weapons, electronics and guided missiles, allowing the Americans no substantial lead in these areas.6 While Tirpitz lagged behind the British in introducing steam turbines for warship propulsion, Gorshkov was ahead of the US with gas turbines. Gorshkov did follow Tirpitz’s example in one important respect. A similar focus on producing lots of ever­-​­larger ships with impressive weaponry and electronics meant insufficient resources went to maintenance facilities and

166   Consequences sustainable standards of accommodation, ashore and afloat.7 Russian naval historians have subsequently confirmed that: The political and military leadership became carried away with one side of the problem­  – the quantitative growth of combatant forces.… The results became apparent in the second half of the 1980s, when ships, not having been given systematic repairs, were decommissioned prematurely. Therefore, the main reason for the general state of the fatherland’s navy lies in the fact that the Soviet Union was poorly organized for the naval arms race.8 Written in 2005, this analysis overlooks the principal reasons for the decline in the Russian Navy, which were the end of the Cold War that removed its strategic rationale and the collapse of the Soviet Union that removed its political and resource base. But the authors are right to identify the Tirpitz­-​­like fixation with building new ships at the expense of properly sustaining existing ones. Part of the explanation for this lies in the influence of the Soviet shipbuilding industry, whose focus was construction rather than maintenance.9 The Soviet Navy shared another of the Imperial German Navy’s handicaps, the lack of secure overseas bases. This was, at root, a consequence of their common encircled strategic geography. Bases were hard to establish and vulnerable if they were acquired. The Soviet Union did have more success than Imperial Germany, securing bases of variable quality as far afield as Cuba, West and East Africa, Syria and Vietnam. Their utility in war would likely have been short­-​­lived and their principal value was probably in supporting the Navy’s growing presence in peacetime. This limitation was exacerbated by relatively rudimentary underway replenishment and the Soviet Navy relied heavily on stationary refuelling in shallow­-water ​­ anchorages. This was adequate in peacetime, but would have proved a major liability in war. Gorshkov could no more escape from geography than could Tirpitz. His geographic challenge was, if anything, even greater. Tirpitz only had to build a single fleet, based on Germany’s coastlines in the north. Gorshkov had to build four essentially separate fleets (Northern, Baltic, Black Sea and Pacific). Though in peacetime ships could move between fleets (the Mediterranean squadron was drawn from both the Northern and Black Sea fleets), in wartime there would have been little they could do to support one another. The Baltic and Black Sea fleets would have been confined to their respective seas, as the single egress in each case was controlled by NATO (the Skagerrak and Bosphorus, respectively). The two larger fleets (Northern and Pacific) were 11 time zones apart and would have conducted essentially quite separate campaigns. The problem of chokepoints effectively “blockading” the two smaller fleets could have been overcome if their seizure during hostilities had been a priority for the ground forces. But the Soviet Army was no more interested in seizing Denmark to help the Navy than had been the German Army in Tirpitz’s time.10 This was less of a problem than one might suppose, however, because the large

Consequences and assessment – Gorshkov   167 ocean­-going ​­ ships and submarines were, for that very reason, based in the Northern and Pacific fleets. Ships built in the Black Sea yards, including all the carriers, were transferred elsewhere as soon as they became operational. The two larger fleets were not confined in the same way that the Baltic and Black Sea fleets were, but they still faced potentially hostile territory (Norway and Japan in particular) adjacent to their egress routes. As Clyde Smith put it in 1974, “The Soviets will continue to work under the strategic hardships of unfavourable geography which both fragments and encloses their naval power”.11 Climate and weather have affected the Russian Navy throughout its history, probably more than any other fleet. Many of its ports are ice­-​­bound for part of the year and operations in adjacent sea areas can be hampered by severe weather conditions. Even maintenance in port is constrained by extreme cold and icing. Perhaps Gorshkov’s greatest geographic handicap was one of distance. Tirpitz’s maritime opponent was a short distance away, across the North Sea. Gorshkov’s was on the other side of three oceans (Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic). The continental United States was even less accessible to the Soviet Army. Both Services therefore had to satisfy themselves with being able to threaten American allies (especially in Western Europe) rather than the main opponent. Only the Strategic Rocket Forces could directly threaten the American homeland, which perhaps explains why Gorshkov had been so anxious to secure for the Navy a share in this task. Oceanic separation works both ways, of course, but the United States had powerful allies (unlike the Soviet Union) that were both adjacent to the Soviet homeland and maritime powers in their own right. Cuba was no substitute for Japan or Britain. For the Soviet Union as a whole, this need not have been the handicap it seemed to Gorshkov. “Since the rise of Muskovy, the physical security and economic survival of the Russian state have been almost wholly dependent upon activities on the Eurasian landmass.”12 One could make a similar observation about Germany, substituting Europe for Eurasia. But, to accept that reality would mean conceding control of the “World Ocean”, indeed of the world itself beyond the principal landmass, to the maritime competitor. The problem was freely acknowledged in 1983 by Vice Admiral Stalbo, one of Gorshkov’s leading naval thinkers: “The United States can, with the help of its allies, control virtually all of the most important sea and oceanic communications of the world and also the straits and narrows used by international shipping.”13 We saw in the previous chapter that Tirpitz did not face serious competition for resources from the Army until about 1912. Throughout his time in office, Gorshkov had to compete with four other Services­  – the Army, the Strategic Rocket Forces, the Air Force and the Air Defence Forces. Given the primacy accorded the first two in particular, the Navy share of the defence budget rarely exceeded about 13 per cent of the total.14 Its proportion of defence manpower was even smaller, perhaps 10 per cent according to a 1988 CIA estimate.15 In trying to assess the significance of the “defence burden” on the Soviet economy, therefore, we have to note that the fleet accounted for less than one­-eighth ​­ of the

168   Consequences load. Even a much smaller (and so cheaper) force would have made only a modest reduction in the overall defence drain on national resources. The full extent of that drain is impossible to assess with confidence or accuracy, due to the nature of the Soviet command economy. In the 1970s, the US government believed the Soviets were devoting between 11 and 13 per cent of the economy to defence, compared to 6 per cent (of a much larger economy) for the United States. Later assessments suggested that they had over­-​­estimated the size of the Russian economy, so the defence burden was that much greater­  – at least 25 per cent.16 Even Soviet leader Brezhnev admitted in 1976 that “real” defence spending was two and half times higher than the official figure, at around 20  per  cent of Gross National Product (GNP).17 Others put the figure even higher, and suggest that the Soviets themselves did not understand the true total.18 The opacity of the Soviet system means the defence burden cannot be assessed simply in terms of its share of GNP. The absence of market mechanisms meant spending and investment decisions took on more of a zero­-​ ­sum, opportunity cost than was the case in Western economies. Particular sectors of the economy could only expand as a result of political investment decisions and not in response to market­-​­driven demands, even when those demands originated in government procurement decisions. Increased defence spending would not, in itself, create additional industrial capacity. The result was that, in one Soviet assessment, military production accounted for 70 per cent of industrial output.19 Another Soviet analyst later remarked that the military­-​­industrial complex was “a gigantic uncontrollable enclave … functioning according to its own logic and devouring colossal resources”.20 This was especially true of the Navy, which required ever­-larger ​­ and ever­-​­more sophisticated pieces of equipment, many of them with nuclear propulsion and all relying on the latest electronics. A consequence of high levels of expenditure on the armed forces was that there were automatically fewer resources available for the civilian part of the economy, both in terms of investment and consumption­  – the classic “guns versus butter” or perhaps “guns versus drilling rigs” dilemmas.21 For most of the Gorshkov period, military expenditure would not have been seen, as it was in the West, as a “burden”, but as the necessary and desirable output of a functioning socialist economy in competition with the capitalist world. This was not, then, just a simple trade­-off ​­ in expenditure terms (economic output) but also investment (economic input), including the centralised allocation of skilled manpower and capital equipment. By the 1970s, a further dilemma was facing the Soviet leadership, in that Western investment and even food imports were increasingly required in order to maintain an economy that was being harnessed to compete militarily with that same West.22 This should have served as a warning to the Soviets earlier than it apparently did, but by the time Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in March 1985 the futility of military competition with the much richer West was increasingly obvious. Gorbachev himself opined that “We cannot permit

Consequences and assessment – Gorshkov   169 ourselves the luxury of imitating the US, Nato and Japan in all their military­-​ ­technological innovations”.23 Russian writers have alleged, at the time and subsequently, that the Soviet Union was forced into a naval competition it could not win: “The United States wants to ruin us through an unprecedented arms race.”24 Another writer asserted that, from the 1960s on, the United States tried “… to push the USSR into the water”.25 As the Soviet Union was the challenger to the established maritime powers, this position is hard to sustain, at least until the Reagan “600 ship” plan was instituted in the early 1980s. Even this was as much a response to the Soviet naval build­-​­up as it was a means of exerting pressure on the Soviet Union by the newly assertive United States.26 But such views do at least show a growing recognition of the unsustainable cost­  – and opportunity cost­  – of Gorshkov’s naval expansion. Soon after his death even a retired admiral could ask, “Does our country at this time need a Navy that is so expensive?”27 As the naval race between the Soviet Union and the United States intensified throughout the 1980s, “The West had a sound economic base on which to fall back; the East did not”.28 In the words of a former US naval attaché to Moscow, “… we [now] know that the Soviet Union was being driven to bankruptcy”.29 The attitude of the other armed services to the Navy was not unlike that of the pre­-​­1914 German Army. Beyond a vague sense that “since other countries have navies, then so should we”, they were neither interested nor understanding, regarding the Navy as an expensive distraction.30 General Gareyev, a prominent military theorist, wrote in 1984 “First, a fleet is very expensive; second, the outcome of a future war would be decided in the continental theaters; and third, our fleets [do] not have direct access to the major water expanses.”31 The Army applied one important caveat to that, however; a concern that the Navy’s global role should not distract from its traditional function as the Army’s “faithful helper” on its maritime flanks.32 In this sense, the small and enclosed Baltic and Black Sea fleets would be regarded as the more important. The Army might have been right. Whatever their other similarities, there is one big difference between Tirpitz and Gorshkov. Though both wrote for their particular times and for their particular purposes, Gorshkov’s thought has a lasting relevance, which Tirpitz’s more limited output does not. Gorshkov wrote throughout most of his time in office, but his works of most significance appeared in the early 1970s when, in the earlier Brezhnev years, he was most free to set out his thinking and argue for his policies. It was then that he set the template for the fleet that appeared a decade later. Part advocacy, part propaganda, Gorshkov’s Morskoi Sbornik articles33 and then Seapower of the State two years later are where we find his biggest contributions to maritime thought. The enduring elements (much of it does reflect specifically Soviet conditions during the Cold War) are an important part of late­-​­twentieth­-​­century maritime strategic thinking. Gorshkov did as good a job as anyone in combining all aspects of maritime (as opposed to just naval) power in a single whole. As important, perhaps, he provided a seapower perspective

170   Consequences from a continentalist standpoint, reminding us that Western maritime states do not have a monopoly of wisdom when it comes to the sea.34 Gorshkov would himself have rejected the notion that he was “continentalist” and that Russia is not a natural seapower. That is not the point. He wrote, consciously or not, from the perspective of one standing ashore and looking out to sea, while Western theorists of seapower, quite naturally, tend to look ashore from the sea, or at least from beyond the sea. They both understand, and agree on, much of the sea’s importance. Gorshkov shows what looking out to sea means. Reaction to the Gorshkov articles in the West was mixed. Some of it was decidedly alarmist, though that may have been to achieve a mirror image of what Gorshkov himself was trying to do­  – secure resources for the Navy. No less a person than Admiral Zumwalt35 opined that: … the Soviets have now turned to the oceans with the objective of establishing their superiority in this one remaining area of traditional Western predominance.   If they accomplish this, we will be confronted with the unprecedented situation of Soviet superiority in all facets of military power.36 Others went further. The commentary attached to the first article alleged “Almost overnight the Soviets have rushed ahead to pass the United States and to become Number One on the oceans”.37 Gorshkov himself was no doubt flattered and astonished in equal measure to read this. At the time, the Soviets did not possess a single aircraft carrier while the US Navy had 14. A more measured assessment of Gorshkov’s series was provided by a much more junior officer. Soviet naval strategy is defensive and deterrent. It is a strategy of sea denial rather than sea control. It is a strategy reactive to our Navy, designed to prevent us from accomplishing our mission … their major mission in war is to destroy or repulse our Navy should it attempt to approach the Soviet Union.…38 Michael MccGwire, a long­-​­time analyst of Soviet naval policy, noted early on that a “Western amplifier” tended to exaggerate the capabilities and intentions of the Soviets at sea, by taking too much of what the Russians, especially Gorshkov himself, said at face value. In terms of influence, “…  Western comment … brought the Russians political benefits which the Soviet Navy could never have achieved on its own”.39 It suited the Soviet leadership to suggest that Western command of the sea was over and too many in the West agreed when such judgements were, at best, premature. What, then, was the real substance of Gorshkov’s achievement? What strategic impact did it have? As we have already noted, the Soviet Navy did not bring about the adversarial strategic context within which it grew­ – this is a key difference with Tirpitz’s fleet. By the late 1940s, the Soviet Union was already

Consequences and assessment – Gorshkov   171 engaged in an all­-​­encompassing strategic competition with the liberal, capitalist West and especially the United States. For most of its history, Russia’s enemies and rivals had been on land­  – Sweden, France, Austria, Turkey, Germany, China, the British (in India) and the Japanese (in Manchuria). Now its principal opponent was on the far side of oceans, albeit with allies and forward­-​­deployed forces on the Eurasian landmass. If the Soviet Union was not to concede global primacy to the United States, a maritime challenge to the latter was probably inevitable, not least because an American challenge to the Soviet Union came from, over or via the sea. “Encirclement” became a persistent Soviet worry, which could only be exacerbated by explicit American references to “containment”. Prior to 1914, the German leadership felt much the same way. Gorshkov was able to challenge the US Navy at sea because he persuaded Brezhnev that the security of the Soviet Union at home and the furtherance of its interests abroad required it. With Khrushchev, he had been much less successful and what he did achieve for the Navy in his first eight years was a substantial political and bureaucratic accomplishment, in spite of rather than because of his political master’s attitude. By contrast, though Brezhnev was a much less active patron than Wilhelm II had been, his importance in the growth of Soviet naval power has perhaps been overlooked. Without, at the very least, his acquiescence, Gorshkov might have got no further than he did with Khrushchev. His blue­-​­water fleet transformed the Soviet Union from a regional power (albeit a very large region­  – Eurasia) into a world power.40 It was not just the fleet that did that, of course. The Soviet Union’s nuclear arsenal, Soviet diplomacy, economic aid to developing nations and ideological ties with fellow socialists all played a role. But the fleet was an essential, and very visible, component of Soviet “Weltpolitik”. This was more than just a strategic choice on the part of the Soviet leadership; there was a compelling logic, given the established fact of the Cold War. The sea not only gave the United States a worldwide freedom of manoeuvre denied to a purely continental rival, it was also, given the West’s reliance on seaborne trade and the movement of military forces by sea, a potential source of strategic weakness to be exploited by a continental challenger. Whether this made Soviet naval strategy essentially defensive or offensive is beside the point.41 It was reactive, both to the maritime hegemony but also the maritime vulnerability of the Soviet Union’s opponents. Neither the United States nor the Soviet Union could afford to ignore the other at sea. In fact, both were vulnerable; the United States to attack at sea from the land and the Soviet Union to attack on land from the sea. It was the appearance of Soviet surface ships on the high seas, far distant from the Soviet homeland, which attracted most attention. A growing ability to conduct “gunboat diplomacy” (though Gorshkov himself was at pains to disavow the phrase) gave the Soviet leadership a physical presence in areas of the world previously considered to be beyond Russian influence. Naval deployments played a tangible role in supporting and encouraging the spread of “socialist” regimes in the developing world, while demonstrating that the Soviet

172   Consequences Union had to be taken into account in international relations. It was also a means of exerting pressure on the United States from a new direction. Soviet writers noted that: A further strengthening of the positions of socialism in the world, including particularly the Soviet Union’s military might [is] required so that … U.S. ruling circles recognise the futility of the attempt to talk to the Soviet Union “from a position of strength” and to come to the conclusion that it was more sensible to build relations with the Soviet Union on the basis of a recognition of equality.42 Tirpitz would have endorsed the approach. The key difference, however, was that Tirpitz tried to exercise Weltpolitik from the North Sea. Gorshkov understood that it required a presence out in the world if it was to advance Soviet foreign policy. Naval deployments demonstrated an ability to challenge the United States in areas, such as the Caribbean and the coasts of Africa, where hitherto the West had enjoyed a maritime monopoly. They were also tools of Soviet “soft power” (the Soviet Union didn’t have many others) by portraying Soviet sailors as benign but disciplined representatives of wider Soviet society. The scale of Soviet deployments, other than for occasional major exercises such as the OKEAN series, as well as logistic handicaps, meant this “out of area” challenge could only be a peacetime one. There could be no coherent strategy for wartime operations against the West beyond the “blue belt” seaward approaches to the Soviet homeland, other than a submarine interdiction campaign. In this Gorshkov’s dilemma was no different to Tirpitz’s. We can surmise that, in the event of war, Soviet­-​­deployed units would, sooner or later (probably sooner, given the advances in maritime surveillance), have succumbed just as did German surface raiders. This, then, was Gorshkov’s “show fleet”, which took the ideological and strategic battle with the Americans out to sea and into the wider world. No other instrument of the Soviet state could do this, and certainly not any of the other armed services. The peacetime roles of these were confined to the security of the homeland’s borders, garrisoning the Soviet Union’s enforced allies in Eastern Europe, and strategic deterrence (nuclear and conventional). Only the Navy could perform a global diplomatic role and Gorshkov’s writings suggest he saw this as its most important function.43 The reality of the fleet’s impact overseas was, however, over­-​­stated by Gorshkov. Naval support to other socialist regimes and “liberation” movements tended to be moral rather than substantive. In Seapower of the State, Gorshkov claimed a role in managing local crises, exercising local control and intervening in local wars.44 This is certainly what Western navies did, repeatedly, but it is hard to identify many instances where the Soviet Navy actually intervened in this way. We cannot know with confidence how the Soviet Navy might have performed if the Cold War had ended with a Third World War, rather than a peaceful defeat

Consequences and assessment – Gorshkov   173 of the Soviet Union. Any speculative judgements must depend on when such a cataclysmic conflict broke out and whether it included a nuclear exchange. The outcome at sea would have been very different if, say, the superpowers went to war in 1962 (the Cuban Missile Crisis) or 1983 (the Able Archer NATO exercise that so alarmed the Soviets). All we can do is make some general observations based on geo­-​­strategic truths and what the Soviets called the “correlation of forces”. Soviet war planning assumed a relatively brief conflict (much as did pre­-​­1914 war plans in Europe). This was in part because of the likelihood that Soviet armies would soon overrun NATO territory in Western Europe, and because they assumed the early and large­-​­scale use of nuclear weapons.45 This approach was of course entirely consistent with the primacy accorded to the Army and the Strategic Rocket Forces, and consigned Gorshkov’s Navy to a subordinate and secondary role in wartime. The “brief war” assumption probably explains the relative neglect of maritime logistics and the apparent “one­-​­shot” nature of Soviet warships’ formidable weaponry. Gorshkov fully recognised the importance of the nuclear role and always sought to enhance the Navy’s relevance by putting a portion of the Soviet Union’s nuclear armoury to sea. Until the 1970s, that meant forward­-positioning ​­ large numbers of SSBNs so their relatively short­-​­range missiles could reach the continental United States. By the time the Soviets became aware of Western advances in ASW, principally because of their ability to passively track noisy Soviet submarines, the issue was partly resolved by the introduction of much longer­-​­range missiles that allowed SSBNs to remain much closer to Soviet coasts in protected “bastions”.46 However, some SSBNs continued to be deployed far out into the North Atlantic and North Pacific, in order to minimise the flight­-​­times of their missiles and so reduce warning times.47 This essentially replaced the threat posed by the missiles removed from Cuba in 1962, and is where some of the ASW battle with NATO navies would have been fought. More generally, the importance of strategic missile submarines in the overall balance is obvious, perhaps better appreciated in the West than in the Soviet Union itself. It was often speculated in the West that, in the event of a nuclear war, the sea­-​­based nuclear forces, being much less vulnerable than land­-based ​­ and air­-​­launched systems, would be “withheld” from the initial exchange to play their part in whatever post­-​­apocalypse relationship might develop.48 One can see a very loose parallel with the desire to preserve the High Seas Fleet as a post­-​ ­war bargaining chip, but in neither case did this version of a Fleet in Being work as intended. The corollary of the operation and protection of Soviet SSBNs was the location and destruction of their Western equivalents. In the early Polaris days, when such submarines had to approach relatively close to the Soviet coasts, this looked like a feasible task alongside countering NATO surface (also nuclear­-​ ­armed) forces. It helps to explain the early Soviet investment in anti­-​­submarine forces like the Moskva class and the large number of SSNs. But, once much longer­-​­range submarine­-launched ​­ missiles were introduced and submarine patrol

174   Consequences areas expanded accordingly, this came to be seen as a forlorn task and did not occupy much Soviet attention.49 From a Western perspective, the rest of the Soviet Navy looked like what a maritime challenger would look like, namely a sea denial force. The Soviet perspective was rather different and Gorshkov himself would never concede the Western primacy that a sea denial strategy implied. Instead, the Soviet view was that the Navy’s task was to establish Sea Dominance (sea control in Western parlance).50 This would deny the use of the sea to the enemy and secure it for oneself. This would necessarily be limited in time and space and concentrated in the sea areas of most concern to the Soviet Union, namely its maritime approaches. Local sea control meant securing the homeland’s maritime frontiers, which in the era of Polaris and strike carriers meant hundreds of miles out to sea. Until the 1980s, faced by the Soviet Union’s huge inventory of coastal forces, submarines and land­-​­based naval air forces, NATO largely acquiesced in this.51 As well as reaching ever further out to sea, the Navy maintained its more traditional functions of coastal defence and support to the Army on its maritime flanks. If a war with NATO was to be decided on land, it was there that the Navy would play its part, and it was in these respects that Gorshkov had the least impact on Soviet naval developments, as both were long­-​­established functions. It was also, ironically, where Gorshkov’s own operational experience lay. The U­-Boat ​­ experience of both World Wars naturally suggested that the Soviets’ huge submarine force would perform a similar role if the Cold War became hot. Given Western reliance on seaborne trade and military reinforcement of the European theatre, submarine (and to a lesser extent air) interdiction of NATO shipping in the North Atlantic seemed an obvious prospect. Much of Western tactical training at sea assumed a defensive posture, protecting “high value” units crossing from West to East. But it seems this was not as high a Soviet priority as was sometimes assumed.52 Short war assumptions on the part of the Russians meant that the impact of the degradation of Western trade and reinforcement of Europe would be limited. Protection of SSBNs and keeping NATO forces at arm’s length were greater, and more urgent, priorities. If the short­-​­war scenario did not materialise, the ability to interdict NATO shipping might have become more important. The likely outcome of a campaign between Soviet submarines and NATO ASW forces in the North Atlantic must be unknown, but the chances of a sustained third Battle of the Atlantic along the lines of 1915–1918 and 1940–1944 in the context of a clash between nuclear­-​ ­armed protagonists were probably slim. The anti­-​­carrier role remained a hardy perennial of Soviet naval intentions. From the very early development of anti­-​­ship missiles until the end of the Cold War ships, submarines and long­-​­range aircraft all had this as a primary function. In Soviet eyes, carriers were a threat to the homeland as well as a principal means by which the United States exercised sea control and diplomatic influence around the globe. Soviet missile capabilities and their associated surveillance and targeting support were a potent air threat to Western surface forces from the

Consequences and assessment – Gorshkov   175 beginning of the 1960s on. In the event of hostilities, they would have played a significant and probably effective role in the war at sea, though of course this could never be more than a long­-​­range sea denial capability. What the Soviet Navy could not achieve was air cover for its own surface forces beyond the range of land­-​­based aircraft.53 The limited fighter capability of the few Kiev­-​­class carriers could do little more than protect the ships themselves whose main striking power was missiles rather than aircraft. Other surface ships would have to rely solely on their own defences, which further suggests that they could have operated either as part of the “blue belt” layered defence within range of shore­-​­based air cover, or accept that they had an initial “one­-​­shot” only function, then to be written­-​­off as not survivable. The West’s strategic reticence of the 1970s ended in the early 1980s with the Reagan Administration in the United States. A new American assertiveness included a more robust attitude towards Soviet naval capabilities and culminated in the 1986 Maritime Strategy. This rejected the ceding of sea areas like the Norwegian Sea and North­-​­West Pacific to the Soviet Union and introduced a forward presence designed to exert direct pressure on the Soviet leadership.54 The Maritime Strategy transformed the strategic balance between the Soviet Navy and its Western opponents and, in conjunction with Reagan’s “Star Wars” programme and Mikhail Gorbachev’s re­-evaluation ​­ of Soviet prospects, it pushed the Soviet Union into a defensive and reactive posture. One senior Soviet official said “It is hardly possible to imagine anything worse”.55 The most immediate consequence was a dramatic reorientation of Soviet naval activity back towards home waters, partly as a consequence of resource pressures as the Soviet economy faltered, but also “… a Soviet fleet positioning and training to counter the maritime strategy”.56 Whatever had previously been the case, Soviet naval strategy was now firmly reactive to Western initiative, reflecting the broader shift in the strategic balance between East and West as the Cold War approached its final denouement. We will, thankfully, never know how the Soviet Navy would have fared in a war with NATO and other American allies, like Japan. Its scale, sophistication and ambition were undisputed. Its operational effectiveness was in some doubt, not least due to its reliance on semi­-​­trained conscripts and a culture of command that arguably inhibited initiative. Nothing could overcome its severe geographic handicaps and nor could Gorshkov’s skilful yet guarded advocacy alter the fact that Soviet security rested on its army and strategic nuclear forces, not its navy. Even Gorshkov himself understood that. But, then, the Soviet Navy was never meant to fight a war, except as a last resort. It was a tool of peacetime influence and a deterrent against a stronger opponent. Though Gorshkov never drew the comparison, the parallel with Tirpitz’s fleet is apparent. The difference is that the latter did have to fight, an experience that exposed its strategic inadequacy. Though it didn’t fight, Gorshkov’s fleet could do no more than had Tirpitz’s to save the homeland from collapse. Tirpitz fell from favour just when his fleet reached its greatest extent. So it was with Gorshkov, but rather than facing a disillusioned political master was

176   Consequences dismissed by a new one with new thinking. It was significant that Gorshkov’s replacement as Commander­-​­in­-​­Chief was Admiral Chernavin, a submariner. As the 1980s and the Cold War drew to a close, one Soviet specialist in the United States wrote: Moscow seems to have calculated that large, forward­-​­deployed naval forces are destabilising and are to be deemphasised. Gorshkov’s 30­-​­year campaign has failed to sell the idea of a positive correlation between a global navy and global influence to a nation that is now manoeuvring for breathing room while it tackles daunting problems of internal revitalisation.57 Soon after the Soviet Union itself collapsed, this analysis was broadly shared by Soviet naval writers who stated that: … our country was effectively drawn into an arms race in general, and a naval arms race in particular, that was beyond the strength of its economy.… All the while, the realistic capabilities of the country were not taken into account, and insufficient political, diplomatic and economic measures were employed to restrict this race.… The US leadership consciously imposed an arms race on the USSR, with the assumption that the latter’s economy would not sustain such a lengthy and expensive competition. And it was not mistaken.58 We are left with a “chicken­-​­and­-​­egg” question: Did Gorshkov’s navy contribute to the collapse of the Soviet Union, or was the demise of his navy a consequence of the Soviet Union’s own demise? The answer is both and neither is separable from the other. The naval build­-up ​­ was but part­  – and not the most important part­  – of the Soviets’ political, economic and strategic competition with the West; a competition they did not, and could not, win. The Soviet leadership came to understand this rather sooner than did most of their opponents. That the Cold War ended when it did, and ended peacefully, was more due to Gorbachev than to the man he dismissed, Gorshkov.59 But neither, if they had acted differently, could have avoided the eventual collapse of the Soviet system. “The Russian drive for seapower was, as it turned out, doomed to fail … Russia did not come close to effectively challenging Western maritime supremacy, but even the limited achievements were undone because the Soviet system collapsed.”60 “In a matter of years the collapse of the world’s most powerful war machine was clear for all to see in the rusting ship­-​­graveyards of Petropavlovsk, Vladivostok, Polyarnoe, Kronstadt, Kaliningrad and Sevastopol.”61 By the mid­-​ ­1990s, most of Gorshkov’s big ships had been decommissioned and dozens of nuclear­-​­powered submarines were left to rot, creating a potential environmental catastrophe. “The build­-​­up of the Russian Navy in the post­-​­war years is now an historical event with a beginning and an end.”62 At one level, Gorshkov’s historical

Consequences and assessment – Gorshkov   177 balance sheet is a positive one. In the space of 30 years, he transformed the Soviet fleet from a coastal defence force of limited reach into an oceanic navy able to seriously challenge a maritime superpower. He also made a major contribution to maritime strategic thought. He was “both a theorist and a realist …”.63 And he did all this in a profoundly continentalist state. Over 30 years after his death, his writings still reward the reader, and today’s Russian fleet still includes a few of the big ships that he initiated, including its only aircraft carrier and a giant (but equally ageing) “battlecruiser”. Russia retains more of Gorshkov’s legacy than did Germany Tirpitz’s legacy. But it would be hard to argue that Gorshkov’s undoubted achievements actually achieved anything for the state he served. Like Tirpitz before him, he constructed a fleet that was beyond the capacity of the country to support and which could still not overcome the facts of the country’s geography. However much either man or either fleet alarmed their respective opponents, they played a weak hand and lost.

Notes   1 Watson pp. xiii & 3.   2 Chernyavski p. 305.   3 Norman Friedman Seapower as Strategy: Navies and National Interests Annapolis MD: Naval Institute Press, 2001 p. 207.   4 Michael MccGwire “Naval Power and Soviet Global Strategy” in Steven E. Miller & Stephen Van Evera (eds) Navakl Strategy and National Security Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988 p. 166.   5 Barnett “Soviet Maritime Strategy” in Gray & Barnett (eds) p. 297.   6 Rowlands p. 2.   7 Chernyavskii p. 301.   8 Vladimir Kuzin  & Sergei Chernyavskii “Russian Reactions to Reagan’s Maritime Strategy” The Journal of Strategic Studies 28:2 (April 2005) p. 438.   9 Chernyavskii pp. 303–304. 10 Friedman Seapower as Strategy p. 207. 11 Smith “Gorshkov Articles” NWCR XXVI:5 p. 35. 12 Peter Tsouras “Soviet Naval Tradition” in Watson (eds) p. 3. 13 Vice Admiral (and Professor) K. Stalbo in Morskoi Sbornik October 1983. Herrick Book III p. 1015. 14 Kuzin and Chernyavskii put the figure at 17 per cent, but the essential point remains the same. 15 Mawdsley p. 178 & note 60. 16 Friedman Fifty Year War p. 418. 17 Vladislav M. Zubok A Failed Empire: The Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev Chapel Hill NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 2007 p. 277. 18 Tyrus W. Cobb “The Future of the Soviet Defense Burden: The Political Economy of Contemporary Soviet Security Policy” Naval War College Review XXXIV:4 (July­-​ ­August 1981) p.  35  & J.  T. Westwood “Soviet Naval Strategy 1968–1978: A Reexamination” US Naval Institute Proceedings 105:5 (May 1978) p. 120. 19 Jonathan Haslam Russia’s Cold War New Haven CT: Yale University Press, 2001 p. 357. 20 Cited in Norman Cigar “The Navy’s Battle of the Budget: Soviet Style” Naval War College Review XLIII:2 (Spring 1990) p. 9. 21 Cobb p. 31. 22 Ranft & Till p. 209.

178   Consequences 23 Cited in Cigar p. 7. 24 Aleksandr Prokhanov in Literaturnaya Gazeta 7 September 1983. See also Chernyavskii pp. 305–306. 25 Cigar p. 11. 26 John Lehman Oceans Ventured: Winning the Cold War at Sea New York: Norton & Co, 2018. 27 Rear Admiral Valentin Kozlov, cited in Cigar p. 11. 28 Rowlands p. 34. 29 Kurth p. 279. 30 Chernyavskii p. 287. 31 Cited in Herrick Book Three p. 874. 32 Herrick Book One p. xiv. 33 Republished as Red Star Rising at Sea. 34 A point eloquently made in Kevin Rowlands’s recent re­-interpretation ​­ of Gorshkov already cited. 35 Chief of Naval Operations 1970–1974. 36 Admiral Elmo Zumwalt “Introduction”, RSRS. 37 Rear Admiral E. M. Miller “Commentary” RSRS p. 22. 38 Smith NWCR XXVI:5 p. 20. 39 Michael MccGwire “The Background to Soviet Naval Developments” The World Today 27:3 (March 1971) p. 103. 40 Geoffrey Till “The Soviet Navy after Gorshkov” RUSI Journal 128:4 (December 1983) pp. 62–64. 41 Geoffrey Till “Present and Future Roles of the Soviet Navy” RUSI & Brassey’s Defence Yearbook 1990 London: Brassey’s, 1990 p. 282. 42 K. M. Grorgiev  & M. O. Kolosov “Soviet­-​­U.S. Relations at a New State”, cited in Cobb p. 44. 43 Zumwalt, Introduction to RSRS. 44 McGruther pp. 66–67. 45 Chernyavskii p. 299. 46 Especially the Delta IV and Typhoon SSBN classes. 47 Herrick Book Three pp. 1228–1229. 48 Till in Brassey’s Yearbook 1990 p. 278. 49 Herrick Book Three p. 1122. 50 Till in Brassey’s Defence Yearbook 1990 p. 274. 51 Lehman p. 53. 52 Ranft & Till pp. 181–182. 53 McGruther p. 72. 54 For a recent and authoritative, but necessarily partial, account see John Lehman’s Oceans Ventured. Lehman was Reagan’s Secretary of the Navy between 1981 and 1987. 55 David A. Rosenburg “ ‘It is Hardly Possible to Imagine Anything Worse’: Soviet Thoughts on the Maritime Strategy” Naval War College Review XLI:3 (Summer 1988) pp. 69–105. 56 James Westwood “Soviet Reaction to the U.S. Maritime Strategy” Naval War College Review XLI:3 (Spring 1988) p. 63. 57 Captain Larry Seaquist USN “Hull Down on the Red Horizon” US Naval Institute Proceedings 115:5 (May 1989) p. 147. 58 Kuzin & Chernyavskii p. 438. 59 Haslam p. 398 & Rowlands p. 151. 60 Mawdsley p. 178. 61 Hauner p. 116. 62 Mawdsley p. 165. 63 Polmar et al. Gorshkov p. 203.

Part V

Conclusions

10 The continental experience with seapower

As we noted at the beginning of this book, a comparison between Admirals Tirpitz and Gorshkov is not an entirely new idea. Several historians and strategists have made passing reference to some of the more obvious parallels.1 Robert Herrick wrote: In thinking of Sergei Gorshkov, one is reminded of another officer long in power, Grand Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz.… Indeed, just as Gorshkov’s was near the end of the 20th Century, Tirpitz’s fleet was the world’s second­-​­most powerful near the century’s beginning.… War came in 1914 and that fleet found itself imprisoned and then defeated by the combined forces of unfavourable geography and the world’s most powerful fleet.… Should war ever have come between the Soviet Union and NATO, Gorshkov’s fleet might have been defeated by a similar combination of geography and power.2 In considering the careers, the writings, the accomplishments and the consequences of each man, this work has tried to draw out the similarities, and identify the important differences, between the two. The careers of the two admirals and the fleets they created are now of more historical than contemporary interest, important though they are in the strategic history of the twentieth century. Their writings have fared differently, Tirpitz’s theorising being largely discredited while Gorshkov’s much fuller work has some enduring relevance. Perhaps most important, and interesting, is what this comparison can tell us about the experience of continental powers in their attempts to generate large­-​­scale seapower and with it challenge the major maritime powers of their day. This matters, as the continuing interest of Indian and Chinese writers in their German and Russian predecessors attests.3 How far these historical case studies are relevant to today’s emerging sea powers is one question this chapter will try to answer. Generating seapower is not the same as deriving strategic benefit from it. One observer of the Soviet Navy wrote in 1974 “As Germany learned in both World Wars, a naval fleet and the national geography from which it must project its naval power are two parts of an inseparable system. Like the Germans, the

182   Conclusions Soviets can have a great navy, but not necessarily be a great naval power.”4 While Tirpitz could not have foreseen Gorshkov and his strategic challenges, Gorshkov was certainly aware of Tirpitz’s difficulties and was at pains to explain how the Soviet Navy could avoid repeating them, even if he sometimes took liberties with truth and logic in order to do so. For example and quite implausibly, he claimed “… no one reproached Germany for the fact that, while a continental power, it was striving to have a large Navy”.5 He even took the eventual failure of both U­-​­Boat campaigns to argue for surface ships, even though the Germans had only turned to submarines when their surface fleet failed to yield its expected results.6 “The strategic geography of the East­-​­West standoff of the Cold War had to give historians a pervasive sense of déjà vu”, as Colin Gray succinctly put it as the Cold War itself ended.7 A continental seaborne challenge to an overseas maritime rival was only part of the historical encore. Both Germany (twice) and Russia (once) faced the prospect of a two­-front ​­ war on land for supremacy on the European or Eurasian landmass as well as a one­-​­sided and ultimately fruitless contest at sea. In each case the continental challenger was defeated where it mattered to both sides­  – on land as well as at sea. So, the maritime powers ventured ashore, just as the continental powers went to sea. The Central Front in Germany played a similar role in the Cold War, as had the Western Front in the First World War. For both Germany and Russia, their strategic “centre of gravity” remained firmly on land. After 1989, Russian soldiers could argue that spending on the Navy robbed them of resources that might have been better employed elsewhere. German soldiers advanced a similar case after 1919.8 But this opportunity cost argument obscures a deeper truth. In all three of the major strategic clashes of the twentieth century, 1914–1918, 1939–1945 and 1947–1989, the continental power was defeated by a maritime­-based ​­ coalition with superior resources and sounder strategy. Gorshkov scared the Americans as much as Tirpitz scared the British and both sought to apply pressure to their opponent in peacetime by means of their naval build­-​­up. But neither had an answer to the limitations of geography and resources they faced, never mind the dysfunctional regimes they served. Both raised expectations they could not satisfy and there is more to this history than just a conflict between powers that were either “continental” or “maritime”. “Wars between maritime and continental states or coalitions cannot usefully be dissected for precise determination of the relative importance of sea power or land power.”9 Gorshkov made extensive use of historical lessons to argue his case, but studiously avoided the precedent of most relevance, namely Tirpitz. Given the discrediting of the latter’s ideas and policies and their woeful outcome for Germany, that should not surprise us. How far Tirpitz’s mistakes and ultimate failure preyed on Gorshkov’s mind we cannot know, but he could not have been oblivious to the parallels. And for all the greater sophistication of Gorshkov’s thinking, he was no more able than Tirpitz to overcome similar handicaps of poor geography and limited resources.

The continental experience with seapower   183 The most immediate challenge faced by both men was an internal one, namely that they sought to create large ocean­-​­going fleets in countries that were close to being land­-​­locked and, more importantly, dominated by Army­-​­centric strategic cultures. Tirpitz and Gorshkov both had to argue, against domestic critics as much as foreign, that their respective countries were “legitimate” and “natural” sea powers. Both men used comments from abroad to the effect that they were not real sea powers to argue that this was merely hostile propaganda, thereby strengthening their domestic case. The two men proved to be among the most important naval figures of the twentieth century, yet neither was a seagoing commander of any note.10 They were political, or perhaps bureaucratic, admirals. They combined an ambitious vision for their respective services with the ability to translate their ideas into practical plans and then implement them within unpromising contexts. Each combined effective advocacy with administrative skill to transform their navies. They were not the first naval officers to win fame ashore rather than afloat­  – Admiral Charles Middleton, later Lord Barham, secured a peerage (and later a battleship named after him) through a successful tenure at the British Admiralty during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars.11 Jackie Fisher followed his example a century later. In each case, the ability to work with, or at the very least not unduly alienate, their political masters was key. “Politics is held to be the art of the possible. Admiral Gorshkov was a master of that art.”12 So was Tirpitz. The political and administrative skills of both men, combined with their poor strategic outcomes, might be said to be examples of doing the wrong thing well. Patrick Kelly concludes his biography of Tirpitz by observing, “His success at bureaucratic politics was both his triumph and his downfall”.13 The same might be said of Gorshkov. Both men, interestingly, achieved the peak of their influence some years before their respective fleets achieved their greatest extent. By 1910, with the first German dreadnoughts only then being commissioned, Tirpitz was facing increasing opposition from within the German government, including the new Chancellor, Bethmann­-​­Hollweg. Two years later, the Army was firmly in the ascendency again as the futility of challenging Britain at sea became apparent and the threat of a two­-front ​­ war on land became equally obvious. But Tirpitz’s fleet went on growing until at least 1917, after he had left office. In Gorshkov’s case, his influence was probably at its greatest in the late 1970s, soon after Seapower of the State was published.14 His fleet also continued to grow in strength, if not in numbers of hulls, throughout the 1980s and certainly beyond his own retirement in 1985. But the American response, which culminated in the 1986 Maritime Strategy, had a similar effect as had Fisher’s dreadnought revolution, confirming a strategic competition that could not be won. Imperial Germany and Soviet Russia’s bids to become significant powers at sea are often considered examples of “sub­-optimal” ​­ arming; that is when states acquire military capabilities that actually reduce their security. Michelle Murray, for example, argues, “A large fleet of battleships was peripheral to Germany’s

184   Conclusions genuine security concerns”.15 Norman Cigar similarly cites a Russian analyst who averred that attempts to compete with the US Navy “… divert[ed] resources from important tasks to goals that [were] unachievable”.16 This of course still begs the question of what constitutes a genuine security interest to begin with. If the national interest is defined as maintaining one’s position as one of the four “world powers” (in the case of Germany) or competing throughout the world with the superpower rival (in the case of Russia), then acquisition of the world’s second­-​­largest navy (in both cases) may be a natural consequence. That both projects ended in failure may have more to do with the flawed ambitions that spawned them, or perhaps a particular chain of historical events that led to their (not inevitable) demise. Tirpitz and Gorshkov both argued, not always plausibly, that their respective countries, by virtue of their circumstances, required a measure of seapower that was not necessarily measured against another state. Beyond a requirement to manage what today we would call the “offshore estate”, this position is hard to sustain. Power in international affairs is relative and seapower works only in relation to other states. The scale and nature of both countries’ fleets must therefore be judged in relation to their strategic outcomes and specifically against their competitors. In this the navies created by Tirpitz and Gorshkov can only be found wanting. Clausewitz taught us that the use, or threat, of force should be a tool of politics. But the nature of first German and then Soviet seapower was such that the navy became a determinant as much as an instrument of foreign policy.17 Tirpitz’s fleet certainly did much to create the British “threat” that it was supposed to deter and greatly contributed to a worsening of Germany’s diplomatic position. That criticism is less sustainable in Gorshkov’s case as the Cold War was well under way before he started to expand the Soviet Navy. But it certainly played a role in exacerbating Western fears of the Soviet Union and perpetuating a strategic competition that was eventually to destroy it. In both cases, the naval arms race contributed to what Hew Strachan calls “militarized international relations”.18 That’s another way of describing a Cold War in which the opposing sides both provoke and react to each other. A cold war arms race blurs the distinction between peace and war, in that relations are conditioned by competitive armaments without shots actually being fired.19 States seek to achieve strategic objectives, both offensive and defensive, through the threat rather than actual use of force. Such a race may or may not eventually lead to a “hot” war. In the case of Wilhelmine Germany war did come, but only after the naval arms race had passed its most intensive phase. The Soviet Union, of course, collapsed under the strain of its own contradictions of which its naval expansion was but one element. Whatever else these arms races did, they did not lead directly to war. Both the First World War and the Cold War, and specifically the commitment of the maritime powers to fighting those conflicts, arose because of a perceived hegemonic threat on the continent of Europe, not a threat to Western vital interests at sea.

The continental experience with seapower   185 Charles Glaser makes the powerful point that an arms build­-​­up needs to avoid reducing an adversary’s security as well as one’s own, because of the likely reactions of the other state(s).20 This gets to the heart of much of the criticism of both Tirpitz’s and Gorshkov’s actions. Bethmann understood this when he bemoaned the “challenge everybody … weaken nobody …”. nature of German policy.21 A US Navy that had not had to respond to the Soviet Navy would likely not have been strong enough to exert pressure in turn by means of the Maritime Strategy.22 What neither Germany nor the Soviet Union apparently understood was that their maritime opponents not only could respond to their respective challenges, they had to. Germany and Russia could both lose at sea and survive. Britain and, to a lesser extent the United States, could not. “Arms races are not always bad.”23 But if you are going to “race” it’s a good idea to “win”. Germany had lost the naval arms race with Britain even before war came in 1914. Similarly, the Soviet Union in the 1980s lost its much more all­-​­encompassing arms race with the United States and its allies. In the latter case, the end of the Cold War and the collapse of communism were the wholly beneficial­ – and peaceful­ – outcomes. Though the First World War ended­ – for the time being­  – the German hegemonic threat to Europe, it was of course a much less peaceful or enduring outcome. How much is “enough” is a perennial issue in arms policy. The answer depends on what you are trying to achieve. Equally important, is whether your objectives are consistent with the resources you can, or are prepared to, make available. In Germany’s case, a successful naval challenge to Britain would have required more resources than even the Kaiser and Tirpitz could devote to it, and would have entailed an abandonment of Germany’s vital security interests on the European mainland. For the Soviet Union, the matter was even more grave, as it simply lacked the ability, in the long run, to successfully compete with the much richer United States. The naval competition was but part of that unfavourable equation. It may be significant that, in both cases, the continental challenger realised the game was up sooner than did their respective maritime opponents. The naval competitions initiated by first Tirpitz and later Gorshkov were asymmetric contests. In this they were rather different to more symmetrical conflicts between essentially or predominantly maritime powers such as those between England and first Spain and then Holland, or between Britain and France or between Japan and the United States. When first Germany and later the Soviet Union embarked on large­-​­scale naval programmes, it mattered that their respective rivals were the “traditional maritime powers”.24 Whatever the underlying motives, these were revisionist challenges to an established order at sea in which the challengers sought to wrest the initiative from the existing predominant states. The difference, perhaps, was that Wilhelmine Germany chose to challenge a maritime power. The nature of the Soviet Union’s strategic and ideological contest with the West meant it had to. In challenging the established maritime powers, Tirpitz and Gorshkov faced challenges of their own. The first, and most obvious, was that Britain and the

186   Conclusions United States already had large navies. Less obviously but no less importantly, they were inaccessible to a continental power. Britain was only a few miles away but the North Sea was a formidable barrier, what John Mearsheimer calls “the stopping power of water”.25 The United States was oceans away from the Eurasian landmass, though admittedly also reachable by long­-​­range air power (missiles as well as aircraft). Tirpitz himself understood that “… these world powers can only be reached over the sea …”.26 More recently, Roger Barnett has written, “Seapower permitted geographically widely separated states to reach one another”.27 The corollary of British and American security beyond their sea barriers was that Germany and Russia were, or so it seemed to leaders accustomed to think in terms of vulnerability to invasion, accessible to their (maritime) enemies from or via the sea. Tirpitz’s fears of being “Copenhagened” and Gorshkov’s fears of being subject to a Normandy­-​­style invasion of the homeland may have been unrealistic (if indeed they were genuine fears to begin with), but they created a need, first to hold Britain and the United States at arm’s length and, second, to be able to take the fight to them. The maritime nature of Germany’s and Russia’s enemies was their vulnerability as well as their strength, as a former US Navy Chief of Naval Operations suggested in 1974: Were the Soviet Union to be deprived of its access to the sea, it would work a diplomatic and, to a lesser degree, an economic hardship; but it would not impact severely upon the survival of the Soviet Union. Were the United States to be deprived of free use of the seas, however, it could represent political, economic and military disaster.28 It might be argued that Zumwalt was over­-​­stating the US case, in a Tirpitz­-​­or Gorshkov­-​­style advocacy for his service. Andrew Lambert says that “Modern American views of the sea are strategic, rather than cultural” and he is surely right.29 He might have added “rather than economic” as well. The United States is much more economically self­-​­sufficient than a state like Britain or Japan. It has never depended on overseas trade to the same extent as either of those two, much smaller, island nations, in the British case for the past several centuries and in the case of Japan since the start of its industrialisation in the late nineteenth century. But, in its strategic competition with the Soviet Union (and previously with Germany and Japan), the United States did rely on the use of the sea to reach both its enemies and its allies. Russia can reach many of its allies (when it has any) and many of its enemies by land. Tirpitz planned to threaten Britain’s maritime supremacy by means of a battlefleet, thereby securing political and strategic advantage for Germany. Only when this policy had evidently failed did he become a belated convert to a Guerre de Course campaign to exploit Britain’s dependence on seaborne trade. Similarly, Soviet plans for naval war with NATO did not greatly feature attacks on trade or seaborne reinforcement. These failures to fully exploit their

The continental experience with seapower   187 opponents’ key vulnerability require some explanation. It may be in part because each was, in their different way, a “navalist”. Tirpitz tried to mimic the bigger navy of his rival. Gorshkov explicitly declined to mirror­-​­image the US Navy, but still insisted on the need for a “balanced” fleet.30 It was also the case that both men stressed the utility of their fleets in peace rather than in war, which a fleet configured for a trade war (especially a submarine force) does little to enhance. And neither expected the sort of protracted conflict in which attacks on trade have a gradual but cumulative effect. Both men argued, correctly, that only a navy could bring force to bear on world events beyond their respective countries’ frontiers.31 It was this that tied both naval programmes to ideas of a “world policy”. Tirpitz tried to do it from the North Sea, while Gorshkov realised that a world policy actually required a presence out in the world. It also required allies. Britain and the United States in the twentieth century both understood that to compete with large land powers they needed allies on land­ – France and Russia in the former case and NATO Europe and, to a degree, China in the latter. Neither Germany nor the Soviet Union could obtain maritime allies to assist their confrontations with maritime opponents. Nor did either state do enough to coordinate their own forces on land and at sea. No discussion of either Tirpitz or Gorshkov is possible without returning, time and again, to the subject of geography. It permeates everything. The consequences of constrained access to the high seas, and the command of the egress points by Germany and Russia’s opponents, have been discussed and need little elaboration. Additionally, Russia suffered, and continues to suffer, from a further disadvantage in that it has to maintain four essentially quite separate fleets. This is not a uniquely continental problem, however. The United States has almost completely separate fleets on its east and west coasts. In the Second World War, Britain had to fight three separate naval campaigns, in the North Atlantic against Germany, the Mediterranean against Italy and Germany (mainly its air force) and against Japan in the Indian Ocean and South­-East ​­ Asia. But the maritime powers could use their command of much of the “World Ocean” to transfer forces from one region to another as circumstances required. The destruction of the Russian Baltic Fleet at Tsushima in 1905 was a much less encouraging precedent for the Soviets. Geography also had less direct, but no less important, effects. In both cases, the continental powers felt themselves encircled, on land as well as at sea. This was, of course, a matter of diplomatic alignment as much as it was physical geography. The imperative to “go to sea” can be seen, in part, as an attempt to break out of this encirclement. But it did so in the face of strategic mind­-sets ​­ that remained essentially continentalist and land­-​­dominated­  – as a natural consequence of that same geo­-strategic ​­ reality. Indeed, in switching to a more maritime­-​­focused strategy, both states traded a favourable geographic situation (especially internal lines of communication) for a deeply unfavourable one (constrained on all sides).32 A successful challenge to the established maritime powers­ – who already had large navies­  – required a huge allocation of national resources. But geography

188   Conclusions dictated that the security of both states would continue to depend on their respective armies. Even at the height of Tirpitz’s influence and the Kaiser’s enthusiasm, the Army accounted for the majority of overall German defence spending. In the Soviet Union, the Navy was even more of a junior partner, attracting little more than 15 per cent of defence spending. Whatever the maritime ambitions of both states, the inescapable geo­-​­strategic reality of continental powers would always limit the resources available for the Navy. Lambert argues that “Seapower flow[s] from inclusive political systems … and constitutionally constrained rulers”.33 It is certainly the case, as Lambert’s historical survey demonstrates, that maritime states have tended to be liberal, trading nations. But we should be wary of concluding that political plurality is essential to the creation and sustainment of large­-​­scale naval forces. Authoritarian states have always managed to maintain large standing armies, even if a lack of plurality limits their economic performance and therefore their ability to finance their armed forces. It is, perhaps, more a matter of priorities. For authoritarian continental states, a large navy is discretionary; a substantial army is not, especially as the latter also serves as an instrument of domestic authority. Tirpitz and Gorshkov’s bids for large­-​­scale seapower, if constrained by geography, were motivated by a desire to escape its limitations. Neither was content for their countries to be just the predominant power in Europe or Eurasia, respectively. Both understood, largely correctly, that they were “world empires”, one of four in the case of pre­-​­1914 Germany and one of just two in the case of post­-​­1945 Russia, in the latter period two of the four having mutually exhausted and diminished each other in both World Wars.34 Being a world empire meant competition with the other world empire(s) and a belief that the choice was “world power or decline”.35 In these terms the strategic history of the twentieth century was the reduction in the number of world powers from four to two, and then to just one. From this extra­-​­European view of international affairs stemmed a sort of “naval nationalism” that equated a large navy with great power status.36 Gorshkov argued that the Soviet Union “… needed a powerful navy, matching the interests of a world power”.37 More than that, a state could only be a great power if it was also a great sea power.38 For all their elaborate naval advocacy, at its root the navalism of both Tirpitz and Gorshkov was instinctively grounded in the aphorism that “since other [great] countries have navies, then so should we”.39 A sort of seapower ideology, drawing extensively on a selective reading of Mahan, equated national survival, prosperity and greatness with the possession and exercise of seapower.40 The Kaiser insisted that once Germany had seapower, no world question could be settled without the involvement of the German government. Brezhnev used almost identical words in relation to the Soviet Union.41 Seapower was therefore a means to exercise influence and, where necessary, to coerce other states. The ability of a navy to operate away from the homeland made it a political and diplomatic lever in a way that a large army, deployable only against near neighbours, could not be. This leverage might extract

The continental experience with seapower   189 concessions from others through its ability to intervene and also to alter the worldwide balance of power beyond the confines of Europe. Seapower would enable a state to compete, politically and economically, with other great powers and especially with maritime great powers (which, according to both men, by definition all great powers were). As a minimum, seapower would act as a deterrent to aggressive actions by potential (maritime) opponents. Used more assertively, it could coerce or blackmail them to secure concessions and obtain advantage. The demise, first of Imperial Germany and then of Soviet Russia, suggests these assumptions did not work. But, arguably, they did, at least up to a point. By 1912, Germany had lost the naval arms race with Britain but had secured an acknowledgement of its place as Europe’s second naval power as well as its leading land power. Similarly, the Soviet Union also became the world’s second naval power as well as the dominant land power of Eurasia. Both achieved, perhaps in part because of their respective naval challenges, a détente with their Western rivals. Those détentes came to an end, not as a result of naval events, but through the actions of the German Army (in Belgium) and the Soviet Army (in Afghanistan). Mahan claimed that no power could be predominant on land and sea at the same time.42 Writing during the final year of the Cold War, Russian strategic analyst Aleksei Arbatov seemed to agree: “Why get involved in competition on someone else’s turf when all the conditions are more favourable for us on our own?”43 A century earlier, just as Tirpitz rose to power, a former Chief of the German General Staff, Field Marshal von Waldersee, had asked essentially the same question: “… what will the Navy do if the Army should be defeated …?”44 Ten years later, an anonymous article published in Germany made the same point: “Boxed in between France and Russia, Germany has to maintain the greatest army in the world.… It is obviously beyond the capacity of the German economy to support at the same time a fleet which could outgrow the British.”45 This, then, is about competing priorities and the allocation of finite resources, or perhaps in the case of a “land versus sea” choice (to put it at its most simplistic) the difference between what you have to do and what you want to do. In modern history only one state has not faced that choice. With the end of the Cold War, and for perhaps twenty years thereafter, the United States was the sole remaining “world power”. The United States had sufficient economic resources, a secure home continent and no global “peer competitors” such that it could, at reasonable cost, maintain an all­-​­domain dominance. That was probably a historical aberration and a short­-​­lived one. Tirpitz tried to simply ignore this land versus sea tension while Gorshkov, perhaps more honestly, attempted to finesse it. He argued, first, that the ability of naval forces to intervene on land, especially in the nuclear missile age, meant there was no tension between the Soviet Union’s security on land and spending on the navy. And, second, that the Soviet Union could be both “a great continental and maritime world power”.46 Nor is it as simple as a land or sea strategy. Tirpitz’s political ally, Chancellor Bulow, recognised that the basis of Germany’s Weltpolitik had to be its strength in Europe.47 Neither Gorshkov nor

190   Conclusions Brezhnev would have demurred in the case of the Soviet Union. And, when the maritime powers intervened on the European continent, Germany or Russia could try to limit the extent and effectiveness of that intervention by attacking the maritime predominance that enabled it.48 It might be thought that the development of air­-​­, space­-,​­ nuclear­-​­ and cyber­-​ ­power has diminished the relative importance of land­-​­ and seapower. It has certainly made strategy much more multi­-dimensional. ​­ But these recent technology­-​­based innovations operate from either the sea or the land. We remain a surface­-​­bound species. The recent and temporary example of the United States apart, “… in extremis every country is obliged to be more attentive either to landward or seaward threats”.49 Here is an important point. Being a great land or sea power is a source of both strength and potential vulnerability, as we have already seen. The threat to one’s interests and survival may come from land or sea, whether one is a continental or a maritime power. Britain has repeatedly faced threats at sea posed by powers on the continent of Europe, either in the form of economic blockade or threats of invasion. Britain has, in turn, generally more successfully imposed maritime blockades and conducted land operations against her continental rivals. This points to a general truism of recent centuries. Maritime­-​­based coalitions, once freed of substantial challenges at sea, or at least able to contain them, have been able to generate significant landpower to intervene ashore. Normandy in 1944 is but one of the more recent of many historical examples. Britain’s intervention against Napoleonic France on the Iberian Peninsula in the early nineteenth century is another. Continental powers have been much less successful in freeing themselves of dangerous distractions on land and thus have been unable to devote sufficient resources to a successful challenge at sea.50 Had the France of Louis XIV or Napoleon I, the Germany of Wilhelm II or Adolf Hitler, or the Soviet Union of Stalin or Brezhnev been able to establish continental hegemony, they might then have been able to generate sufficient strength at sea to successfully challenge either Britain or the United States. This was Halford Mackinder’s fear: What if the Great Continent, the whole World­-Island ​­ [Eurasia] or a large part of it, were at some future time to become a single and united base of sea­-power? ​­ Would not the other insular bases be outbuild as regards ships and out­-​­manned as regards seamen?51 The Soviet Union did indeed occupy the central portion of this world­-​­island, but never enough of it, and nor with a sufficiently dynamic economy, to become the dominant “heartland” state that could overcome the “insular” maritime states. The United States has, to a degree, fulfilled Mackinder’s prediction­  – a continentally hegemonic and economically successful state that can in turn generate dominant seapower. But it’s not the Eurasian heartland that the United States occupies, so in strategic terms it’s still “insular”.

The continental experience with seapower   191 Andrew Lambert, in his recent work Seapower States, alleges that Britain was the last seapower great power and that large continental states cannot be true sea powers. He includes the United States in that judgement, despite “American superpower status depend[ing] on the ability to operate globally … making the navy the key enabler” that will strike many readers as a pretty good description of what does make a state a sea power.52 This may be a distinction without a difference and whether the United States is, or is not, a sea power depends on one’s precise definition of the term. Lambert employs a more restrictive definition than would many: “medium­-​­sized powers attempting to exploit the asymmetric strategic and economic advantages of maritime power”53 But most historians and strategists know a sea power when they see one and would include the United States in that category. A continental­-​­scale state it may be, but its land borders to the north and south have been strategically insignificant since the mid­-​­ to late­-​­nineteenth century and, as Lambert himself acknowledges, the exercise of seapower is critical to the United States’ great power status. Indeed, it is the “continental” scale of the American economy that enables the generation of dominant seapower to an extent that successive Spanish, French, German and Russian empires could not. We can probably all agree that geography, for the reasons already discussed, prevents either Germany or Russia being “sea powers” despite, from time to time, acquiring a measure of seapower (principally a large navy). The cases of France, India and China are more complex. Like Germany and Russia, these states have land frontiers that, unlike the United States, have rarely been of little strategic significance. But, unlike Germany and Russia, they also have large coastlines and relatively unfettered access to the high seas and the world beyond.54 They cannot be considered solely or even principally either continental or maritime. They must, of necessity, be “attentive” (to use Gray’s term) to both land and sea. This is likely to be more a weakness than a strength. In China’s case in particular, its continental hinterland will constrain the effort it can devote to a maritime challenge to the United States, should that ever be its intention. Though China is better placed to exploit seapower than Germany or Russia, it can no more accord it priority over landpower than could they. From the discussion so far, it is possible to dismiss the strategic circumstances of a continental state rather too readily. The era of the maritime­-​ ­based colonial empires has passed. But imperial­-​­scale territorially contiguous states are still with us and are likely to remain. Brazil, Russia, India and China (the “BRIC”s) all look rather imperial being large, populous and multi­-​­ethnic. But they have expanded and then consolidated on land, rather than via the sea. By exercise of their strength on land, they dominate, not the world or the oceans, but at least their respective localities. At the same time, continental states have usually appeared more threatening to their neighbours than have maritime states. This is in part because large armies can invade countries, but navies themselves cannot. And, for reasons that largely lie outside the scope of this work, authoritarian political systems (like Wilhelmine Germany or the Soviet Union) are more often associated with continental powers while

192   Conclusions maritime states are more prone to being liberal, trading societies. Thus, states have tended to balance against potential hegemons on land but been, in the main, more sanguine about maritime hegemons like Britain and the United States.55 We should not conclude from the twentieth­-​­century experiences of first Germany and then Russia that a second­-​­class naval power cannot successfully challenge a dominant rival. Both U­-​­Boat campaigns inflicted severe losses on the Allies, Britain in particular, and, prosecuted earlier and with greater resources, might have had a decisive effect. The Soviet Union’s even more impressive submarine force was a major factor in the East­-​­West strategic balance, though we cannot­  – thankfully­  – know how it might have fared in a third Battle of the Atlantic. Perhaps Colin Gray has it right when he observes “Maritime ambush is an unpromising strategy for a disadvantaged continental naval power but is always a source of anxiety for the superior sea power”.56 “Anxiety” is a strategic effect in its own right, which will induce a change of behaviour by the state being made anxious. That British and American anxieties prompted reactions that proved counter­-​­productive to Germany and Russia does not, in itself, negate the potential to create and successfully exploit alarm. At the very least, an inferior Fleet in Being (provided it actually remains in being and is not destroyed by a superior enemy) will constrain the activities of a larger foe. The battleship Tirpitz was to demonstrate this principle very clearly until it was destroyed. A recent analysis of Imperial Germany’s challenge to Great Britain by a Chinese military writer, Colonel Xu Qiyu, focuses on the conflict between a “rising” and an “established” great power.57 He is careful not to draw explicit parallels with China and the United States, but the reader is left in no doubt about the salutary warnings he thinks are offered by Imperial Germany’s strategic failures. We can be sure Xu is alert to “Thucydides’s Trap”: “When a rising power threatens to displace a ruling one, the most likely outcome is war.”58 This is only half of China’s challenge, however, if it is not to repeat the experiences of Imperial Germany (and indeed the Soviet Union). The United States is, of course, not just an established power; it is a continental­-​­scale maritime power. China is not just a rising power; it is also a largely continental power with maritime aspirations. China has the world’s second­-​­largest economy (which could soon become the largest), the world’s largest army and second­-​­largest navy. It is governed by a highly authoritarian regime resentful of what it sees as the unfair advantages enjoyed by others and determined to restore China’s rightful place in the world.59 Mahan is avidly read and quoted in Beijing and China is “develop[ing] an eerie, colonial­-​­like presence throughout parts of sub­-​­Saharan Africa, the South China Sea and [the] Indian Ocean”.60 It is also expanding its influence westwards on land, further into Mackinder’s heartland. Perhaps the most important strategic issue of the mid­-​­twenty­-​­first century may therefore be how successfully or otherwise the Chinese leadership manages not just the country’s political and economic rise, but also its “going to sea”.

The continental experience with seapower   193 China is not the only emergent continental/maritime hybrid. If “Mahan is alive and well and living in Beijing”,61 he is also spending time in New Delhi. China has commissioned an ex­-​­Soviet aircraft carrier; so has India, the ship previously called Admiral Gorshkov.62 India, too, has continental scale and strategically significant land borders­ – with Pakistan in the northwest and China in the northeast. It also has a huge coastline (larger in relation to its landmass than China)63 and, unlike China, its free access to the high seas is not limited by anything like the “First Island Chain”.64 Its economy, if not on the same scale as China’s, is still among the ten largest in the world and likely to move up the rankings. And it is a functioning democracy, the world’s largest. Geography and politics may therefore combine to give India even more of a nascent maritime identity than China. In the middle years of this century, we may therefore come to see not just one but three continental­-​­scale maritime powers. If China and India can both keep their landward distractions within manageable bounds and avoid the policy drift characteristic of Wilhelmine Germany, that could be of profound strategic consequence, especially in terms of their relationships with each other and with the United States. If they heed the German and Russian experiences, both will need to avoid, not just Thucydides’s Trap, but also Tirpitz’s Trap.

Notes   1 For example, a section in Robert Whitten’s 1998 article in the Journal of Slavic Military Studies on pp. 74–77 refers to “parallel paths”.   2 Herrick Book One p. xx.   3 See Menon Maritime Strategy and Continental Wars and Xu Fragile Rise.   4 Clyde A. Smith “Constraints of Naval Geography on Soviet Naval Power” Naval War College Review XXVII:5 (September­-​­October 1974) p. 48.   5 RSRS p. 12.   6 Morskoi Sbornik 1973. Cited in Smith NWCR XXVI:5 p. 30.   7 Gray Leverage of Seapower p. 266.   8 Friedman Seapower as Strategy pp. 206–207.   9 Gray Leverage of Seapower p. 279. 10 Gorshkov’s successful wartime command was largely a shore­-​­based one and focused on combined­-​­arms operations against and along the shore and up rivers. 11 https://morethannelson.com/officer/charles­-​­middleton­-​­1st­-​­lord­-​­barham/. Accessed 2 March 2020. Barham, who died in 1813, was a leading advocate of the abolition of the slave trade. 12 Kurth p. 266. 13 Kelly p. 466. 14 MccGuire Proceedings 115:8 p. 51. 15 Murray p.  671  & Charles L. Glaser “When Are Arms Races Dangerous? Rational versus Suboptimal Arming” International Security 28:4 (Spring 2004) pp. 44–84. 16 Cigar p. 11. 17 Steven Miller “Assessing the Soviet Navy” Naval War College Review XXXII:6 (September­-​­October 1979) p. 64. 18 Strachan p. 34. 19 Hobson p. 42. 20 Glaser p. 52.

194   Conclusions 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58

Chapter 8 footnote 71. Lehman Chapter 6. Glaser p. 81. MccGuire “Naval Power and Soviet Global Strategy” p. 134. John J. Mearsheimer The Tragedy of Great Power Politics New York: Norton  & Company, 2001 p. 114. Bonker p. 61. Gray & Barnett p. 351. Admiral Zumwalt “Conclusion” in RSRS p. 141. Andrew Lambert Seapower States: Maritime Culture, Continental Empires and the Conflict That Made the Modern World New Haven CT: Yale University Press, 2018 p. 313. SPOS p. 254. With the caveat that in the nuclear age the continental United States was vulnerable to long­-​­range strike from both land and sea. Murray p. 669. Lambert p. 327. Arguably it should be five prior to 1914­ – France had a much bigger overseas empire than Germany, was a significant naval power in its own right and had a formidable army in Europe. Holmes “Mahan, a ‘Place in the Sun’” p. 41. Ross p. 37. SPOS p. 83. Vice Admiral Turner, commentary on “Some Problems in Mastering the World Oceans” RSRS p. 135. Chernyavskii p. 287. This point is argued at length by Dirk Bonker Militarism in a Global Age and Rolf Hobson Imperialism at Sea. Polmar et al. Gorshkov pp. 170–171. Mahan p. 65. Cited in Cigar p. 12. Cited in Herwig Luxury Fleet p. 92. Ferguson The Pity of War p. 85. SPOS p. 154. Bulow p. 46. James Cable The Political Influence of Naval Force in History Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1998 p. 110 & C. G. Jacobsen “Soviet Strategy: The Naval Dimension” Naval War College Review XXXX:2 Spring 1987 p. 17. Gray & Barnett p. xii. Colin Gray is eloquent on this point. See Gray  & Barnett Chapter 1 and Gray Leverage of Seapower. Cited in Commander Robert B. Rogers “Trends in Soviet Naval Strategy” Naval War College Review XXI:2 (February 1969) p. 25. Lambert p. 321. Lambert p. 333. Russia’s long but ice­-​­bound northern coast means the country remains, in strategic terms, largely land­-​­locked. For a much fuller discussion of this point, see Jack Levy  & William Thompson “Balancing on Land and at Sea” International Security 35:1 (Summer 2010) pp. 7–43. Gray Leverage of Seapower p. 79. Xu Fragile Rise, especially Chapters Six to Nine. Graham Allison Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap? Boston MA: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017. Revealingly, Allison wrote the Forward to the English translation of Xu’s work. The term Thucydides’s Trap refers

The continental experience with seapower   195 59 60 61 62 63 64

to the apocryphal observation of the Peloponnesian War: “It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable.” Ross p. 32. Robert D. Kaplan The Revenge of Geography: What the Map Tells us about Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate New York: Random House, 2012 pp. 110 & 199. Holmes p. 53. Chapter 7. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_length_of_coastline. Accessed 24 April 2019. Kaplan p. 214.

Appendix (i) Dienstschrift IX Berlin, 16 June 1894

Tactical and Strategic Orders of the Naval Command of the Navy No. IX. General experience from the manoeuvres of the Autumn training Fleet

I Preface The uncertainty which prevails over the nature and task of a fleet has, since the emergence of our navy, contributed greatly to weakening its development. If, by the best opinion, a change has occurred the nature of things can only be discerned by everyone after years of work. Expecting this situation, and by means of tactical and strategic trials and Admiralty work conducted in a planned manner, we have started in recent years to find a perhaps not absolutely correct but a definite and unified path for our development. Such peacetime exercises and works will never be able to replace real war experiences, but it must also be borne in mind that past war experiences have deceived us in the present, and secondly, that only in times of peace can a number of questions be subjected to systematic observation and analysis. In this way, a clearer knowledge of what is correct can often be determined for such questions as the naval war with its rare crises and decisions, its narrower coverage, and its great psychological impressions. In this way, we also answer questions, which are not solvable in peacetime, at least a treasure of reflections, which in the war facilitates proper action and, above all, unified cooperation without which success in the naval war is impossible to imagine. If these objectives are not disregarded under the command of His Majesty the Emperor, then we expect actions of the force to be vigorous. With the support and cooperation of the whole officer corps, success will not elude us. It must be reserved for the future, in the form of instructions for action or ordinances, to express the way and the direction to be pursued in our development, as the army has done in its classical field orders. The results of our autumn exercises are still incomplete in every respect. Time was too short, the conditions of peace were too restrictive for fleet manoeuvres, general knowledge was still too little advanced and modern cruisers and the train, indispensable in war, were wholly lacking. Nevertheless, the

Appendices   197 present need seemed so urgent to the Command that some of the experiences and impressions that had been gained were brought together here as building blocks of a structure to be erected. They must not be regarded as important or complete in every respect in their respective fields, since they must still be able to keep up with changes in detail, but they will serve as a point of departure for further investigations and may give stimulus and reference to those points needing particular attention.

II  The natural purpose of a fleet is the strategic offensive Fleets were, in the beginning, merely a means of transporting the forces of a country across the sea to the enemy’s territory, and in those days this alone formed the battlefield. It was only later, when the sea was recognised and used as the best route for intercourse between peoples, that ships and fleets emerged and the sea became a place of war, and the struggle for naval command, the first task of a fleet; for it is only when the mastery of the sea has been attained that the means are ready to force the enemy to make peace. Therefore the main considerations are: 1 2 3 4 5

Landings, especially those connected with the army, or at least the threat of landings. The creation of main or secondary operational bases for the army. Blockade and thus the prevention of trade with the enemy coast and traffic through neutrals. The damage caused to the transatlantic interests of the enemy state. Destruction and arraignment of enemy coastal cities or other objectives.

As a consequence of these factors, naval warfare will take place in the main along the coast, that is to say, the sea boundaries of the state and it is only a question of whether this takes place on the coast of one’s own state or that of the enemy. From the outset, this gives us the chance to establish the development of a fleet for the strategic offensive, and in the war itself to take the naval offensive. Moreover, the reasons for the election of the offensive in the land war, and which have been most convincingly portrayed by writers of the first rank, are even more conducive to naval warfare. Naval war does not develop like land war, which begins at the common frontier, and gradually, according to merit and fortune, is transferred into enemy territory. In terms of the naval war, only one party suffers since the best protection for the other party is assured when the naval war has been transferred to the coast of the enemy. Apart from this considerable difference, the strategic defence in a land war usually also offers special advantages to the tactical defensive. This does not apply, however, to the actual fight of fleets against fleets, as there is no tactical defensive at all in this sense at sea. This only occurs in connection with coastal

198   Appendices structures. But it can be shown that, in principle, fleets are not a rational means of supporting or supplementing coastal works, since they can easily be countered or rolled up by enemy naval forces in particular circumstances. Coastal works are effective against fleets, but coastal works are in themselves worthless or worth only what is behind them. However, ships have their own value because they can also be used in other places. It is, therefore, in principle correct and much cheaper to effect desired reinforcement of coasts by improving and multiplying forts. On the other hand, the effects of a hostile fleet can only be countered by one’s own fleet, outside the range of fire of the guns on the ground, and thus also on the parts of the coast which have no installations. Advocacy of the fleet defensive is now often based on the assumption that the offensive opponent always has the initiative. This is true only to a very limited extent. The harassing activity of the enemy is by no means always to play hard on the coast, or even on a special place along the coast, but can be very far off at sea. At any rate the only choice remains between inactivity, that is, moral self­-​ ­destruction and decisive struggle on the open sea. It follows immediately, however, that if a fleet is triumphant at sea, and if it is able to pursue and take advantage of such a victory, it will very greatly contribute to attainment of the immediate strategic objective itself. But it must also be borne in mind that a naval defensive is not only without a positive influence on the enemy, but that it deliberately surrenders to the enemy one’s own interests in the vast neutral regions of the sea. This is another case of the necessity of the fleet offensive. A state that has sea interests, or, for this purpose, world­-​­wide interests, must be represented and its power must be felt beyond its territorial waters. National world trade, world industry, to some extent also deep­-sea ​­ fishing, world traffic and colonies are impossible without a fleet capable of taking the offensive. The conflicts of interests of the nations, and a lack of confidence in Capital and the business world, would in the course of time lead to the death of such a state of existence and the absence of national power on the seas, that is, beyond our waters. This is the chief purpose of the fleet. Germany perished as a sea and a world state when the maritime power of the Hanseatic League collapsed. Holland dropped from first place to seventh place, after De Ruyter’s fleets were definitely beaten. Conversely, we can now see how mercantile North America is creating an offensive war fleet in order to acquire maritime trade and maritime interests. For the European nations with their developed culture and in order not to limit themselves to the simple yield of their soil, this is particularly true. Instinctively we recognise these conditions and despite the aftermath of our former political disunity and a certain slowness of the German nature we can slowly come to a more precise understanding of this national task. Following this line, if we consider the value of a Fleet whose existence is justified in the local defence of coastal cities and estuaries or which only strives to

Appendices   199 encounter the fleet of the enemy in close vicinity to its own coastline, one will have to admit that such kind of fleet has only weak grounds for its existence. This is different to the case of the Land forces for the actual purpose of the present national heroes is, in fact, the immediate defence of the country, and a great insurance premium against the event of war is easier to bear. Every resident taxpayer easily understands the effect it has when the enemy enters the country. The effects of hostile fleets on the domestic hearth are more difficult; they are, in fact, often not so immediate and not so rapid as war in the country can produce for they directly and immediately affect only the economic interests of the state or its merchants, but not the individual citizens. For the same reason, persons with little understanding of the sea and our interests at sea are often more inclined to pay for coastal defences and for a supposed defensive fleet, in order to prevent an economic slump in their own country. They are afraid, however, to establish the fleet on the offensive. It is only when a nation has understood that a fleet, even in peacetime, gives economic advantages to the Fatherland and when general clarity prevails that a fleet can only assert its special advantages as a force of defence if it is capable of attacking offensively, that the requisite national understanding of the nature and purpose of a fleet will be established, and corresponding money expenditures for the fleet will not be spared. It is often overlooked that, in a defensive posture, it would only be logical and much less expensive to restrict oneself to strong coasts and good machinery, but to renounce a fleet altogether. Only the development of an offensive fleet is a desirable alliance force, but a defensive fleet is quite ineffective in this direction. This great disadvantage of a defensive fleet does not only come into its own in the war, but in all political negotiations of a state, which concern its interests. These negotiations are without the weight of direct power, and are naturally less favourable to the state without effective naval power. So even in this sense the creation of a defensive fleet is a mistake. There will undoubtedly be political and military situations in which a fleet must be limited to the strategic defensive. But even then the strategic offensive will always have to be the guiding star. The struggle for maritime command remains the ultimate goal. If circumstances make this necessary, a fleet developed for the offensive could also be used well for the strategic defensive, but a defensive fleet would not be the other way round for the offensive. This evokes an impulse that speaks of the Fleet offensive as a fundamental element in the development of a fleet. If this principle is acknowledged, organisation, replacement, preparation for war, mobilisation, maritime trade, shipbuilding and mechanical engineering, and, finally, the use of the fleet must also develop correspondingly and must respect the true nature of these armed forces. One can even go further and postulate that a country with limited resources has to pursue this more rigidly, or if you will, narrowly, compared to a country with abundant resources. England and France can afford the luxury of special coastal defence vessels and mobile defence already organised in peace. Germany, however, cannot. Nor

200   Appendices can we begin, in the creation of a fleet, to start from the coasts, the river mouths and ports, then access the sea itself. The sea and the coast are, by their very nature, bound together and the development of the fleet for strong coastal defence leads in a fundamentally wrong direction. The starting point of the development of a fleet must be the sea and the interests of the nation.

III  General observations about offensive naval warfare While the use of our naval forces on the defensive is reserved for special treatment, the following sections about the naval war are only to be considered with regard to the naval offensive. From the outset, it is always appropriate to see that the naval war does not stand alone, but forms part of the overall war. Its correct direction is therefore not possible in isolation, without taking into account the policy and the management of the land war. Politics plays an even more immediate role in the naval war than in the land war, because the naval war is largely carried out on neutral land, namely the sea, and the interests of the neutrals are much more directly injured than on land where borders meet borders. As history shows, naval wars therefore have much more often a cooperative character than an independent one. It is not right to assume that the development of international maritime law in the meantime has resulted in a major change in major conflicts. Thus, there is no need to explain that the strategic naval offensive is much more strongly influenced than the defensive by neutral interests and the attitude of neutral maritime powers. In some areas of the fleet defensive, however, a certain disregard of neutrals cannot be avoided in order to achieve the purpose of war. However, this will, as a rule, only be possible with a certain surplus of strength and is applicable both for the great European war and for small transatlantic conflicts. Since the sea and land war of a state has the same end, it is self­-​­evident that a war plan and its implementation by the forces of land and naval forces must be brought into harmony so that the sum of the means of war employed becomes the highest attainable. Such a congruence becomes all the more necessary the closer the operations of the army and the fleet are, and it can go so far that the fleet is entirely at the service of the operation of the army, or vice versa. If such operations assume the character of expeditions, it will usually be appropriate to determine a joint and sole responsible commander­-​­in­-​­chief with an appropriately composed staff. This commander­-​­in­-​­chief will have to be a naval officer if the success of the operation primarily depends on the proper handling of the naval forces, if the operation takes place chiefly along the coast, and the strategic movements depend essentially on the sea as a road. If this is not the case and the main fleet is only a means for a single movement to a place of troop disembarkation and the decision is not on the coast, but more deeply in the interior, the chief commander will suitably be an army officer.

Appendices   201 Because of the very different capabilities of land and naval forces, a considerable degree of mutual understanding, and selflessness on one’s part is often necessary in order to achieve commonality of action appropriate for a specific situation. The history of war shows that this goal was often not met and many operations were disadvantaged or harmed. If circumstances are such that the fleet offensive is essentially an independent part of the war one has to consider how the fleet is to be used in order to achieve the greatest effect on the enemy. Land warfare seeks to achieve the purpose of the war in the first place by the destruction of hostile forces and then occupation of enemy territory. In order to prevent the latter, in general, hostile forces will, from the outset, put up a fight and thus have to be destroyed. The enemy fleet, however, as our objective, can entirely escape a strategic offensive and the mere presence of a fleet in hostile waters does not yet mean full naval domination. In order to overcome them a division of forces, a scattering of the fleet, is required, and this cannot be achieved as long as the enemy fleet is still able to strike, that is, it has not yet been decisively defeated. Only when this has been achieved can the state have an effect against the enemy shore, which can be regarded as an analogy with the occupation of enemy territory in land warfare. The whole endeavour of the strategic fleet offensive will, therefore, in principle have to be directed to coming quickly to battle. An offensive fleet cannot be inferior and, as already mentioned, there is no tactical defensive at sea by which a smaller force can counter a superior fleet. However, the defensive fleet can be retained in port relying on the naturally greater difficulty of the offensive and the related effect on personnel and materiel, which compensates for the initial difference between the forces. Under these circumstances the attacker is unable to apply his full forces unless full sea control has already been achieved. But this is limited by the fact that the fleet must be ready to go into battle at short notice. Nevertheless, the peculiarity of naval warfare, illustrated here, demonstrates the possibility that a defensive fleet, of adequate strength, is not beaten merely by the fact of its existence. A result of these characteristics of naval warfare is that an attacking power requires the greater strength, quite apart from the needs that arise from the protection of long routes and the necessity for forces to be relieved for various reasons. The greater the material and personnel superiority, the earlier a state of maritime supremacy will be achieved despite the enemy’s fleet remaining in harbour. At the time of the great naval wars of the sailing era, a one­-​­third superiority proved to be necessary for the fleet offensive. Even in the land war, offensive opponents will generally have to have greater strength. A difficulty, however, which is not known on land, consists in the struggle against the natural forces of the sea, to which the offensive fleet is exposed day and night, week after week. Certainly, the difficulties and troubles of a naval offensive are great; the constant bombardment of the fighting, the constant waiting for the enemy, and hard service. On the other hand, we must not forget that, contrary to an offensive on

202   Appendices land, a modern fleet also has some advantages in comparison with armies. These are the opportunity not only to strike but also to move in unison, the relative independence from specific approaches and thus also the possibility of surprise and superior strength in one place and, finally, for the life of the men greater physical convenience and better food. Whatever the difficulties and advantages of the offensive at sea, we really know from the past how iron endurance carried the fleet offensive even under the most difficult circumstances and thus often achieved the greatest success. As the history of all previous naval warfare shows irrefutably, squadron war is the most effective form of naval offensive, and therefore of naval warfare in general, and the war’s outcome resides in battle. Since the middle of the Eighties in France naval officers, the so­-​­called Jeune École, vigorously reject the offensive with squadrons, and thus squadron war, or at least consider it as extremely difficult or practically unfeasible because of the development of modern technology. It is, therefore, necessary to undertake a closer examination of their reasoning, which would overturn the experience of the history of naval warfare. In actual fact, only the permanent coal supply of the fleet and the torpedo boat are actually new. Without a doubt, the supply of coal to the fleet off the enemy coast will make the strategic offensive more difficult in the future. The necessity of carbon re­-​ ­supply could at most cause a temporary or partial retreat of the fleet from a hostile coast, in the same way as in the case of offshore stormy winds, blockade fleets were temporarily expelled. On the other hand, if we consider the power which steam has given us against the forces of nature at sea, while the means for augmenting firepower have become more and more developed, it is not too much to say that on the whole with steam power the strategic offensive is more favoured compared to earlier times. Never before in the history of the world has a naval strategic offensive been carried out with such effectiveness as in the American Civil War, in which for the first time steam had completely supplanted sail. The influence of the torpedo boat on the feasibility of the strategic offensive is more difficult to foresee in advance, since applicable historical experience is missing. Its importance in today’s naval forces is dealt with separately in Appendix 1, and the reason for this is that the development of the torpedo boat is not capable of preventing a squadron offensive, and thus squadron war. As our manoeuvres prove, torpedo boats have high value only in conjunction with ships in battle conditions during the day and during bright nights. It is, therefore, only to be considered whether the torpedo boat is so capable of aggravating the presence of heavy ships near the enemy’s coast on a dark night that a successful offensive becomes impossible. As far as our manoeuvring experience is concerned, these difficulties are by no means insuperable. Quite apart from the resistance that technical innovations put in the way of the torpedo weapon and torpedo boats by means of bottom obstacles, nets, light artillery etc the protection of heavy ships against torpedo boats limits the chances of their success.

Appendices   203 The fact that light forces at sea have considerably increased in number and in importance will be a lasting effect of the torpedo force. In the end, however, it would be the numbers of these defensive light forces, which will determine whether it is possible to make a blockade sufficiently effective even during the night, close to port entrances. Our experiences, however, which have not been very satisfactory in this respect, have further shown that strategic and tactical measures are available to heavy ships at distance from the coast. Dispersed formations during the night also diminish the influence of enemy torpedo boats. Finally, the general conclusion is that if the counters to the enemy’s torpedo boats are not sufficient, which current experience does not support, the result will only be that even the heaviest battleships will require higher speeds at the expense of other characteristics. If the torpedo boat no longer possesses a great speed superiority over the heavy battleship, its importance as a whole, and especially for night­-fighting, ​­ is so markedly diminished that there is no question of a fundamental influence on naval warfare, let alone of a fundamental change. A lasting effect of the torpedo force, and the development of modern technology overall, is perhaps the greater importance which is given to the attainment of a near base or a safe anchorage. The nearer one is to the enemy’s coast, the easier and more sustainably the offensive will be carried out. We therefore see in this sense all the naval powers endeavouring to secure fortified bases as close as possible to the coast which is probably hostile (Biserta, Libau, Boulogne, and Dunkirk, Aggersoe). The foregoing observations suffice to show that no innovation of the modern age justifies the assumption that an offensive with large squadrons will be more difficult than in past times. But since, in many cases, it is the only form of naval warfare capable of producing a positive effect upon the enemy, it will be as correct and necessary as naval warfare itself in the future. It is therefore proven that battle, especially large battles, and as in earlier times so as in future, it is the offensive of large squadrons that will be decisive for the outcome of the war. If offensive naval warfare were to be waged without unity, without squadrons, in the sense of the Jeune École, defensive squadrons, though weak, would be able to prevent any serious and vigorous warfare. Such an enemy would always be in tactical retreat and thereby lose its moral force. Even if his individual ships were considerably faster than the defensive units as a whole, random meetings and occasional machine failures, etc., would have to lead to partial defeats, and their final defeat would be certain. What the Jeune École understands by offensives against a hostile coast is merely surprise raids, which, as a rule, cannot lead to a decision. This can be achieved only by the permanent control of the sea and constant pressure on the enemy. The approach of the Jeune École is directed to a very specific part of naval warfare on the high seas, with only enemy merchant ships as the objective. It is

204   Appendices certainly true that exclusively cruiser warfare may be the correct path. But this naval war would also be conducted in the most unfavourable circumstances where enemy squadrons dominate the sea, as previous naval wars have proved. Then the squadrons form the firm basis on which counter­-​­attacks on trade by cruisers are based. Since, however, exclusively cruiser­-​­based warfare lacks the strongest means available in naval warfare, it can only be employed in particular circumstances and therefore must not be the planned goal of the development of a great naval power. It is, on the contrary, the last or only means of the vanquished or the initially powerless. If, however, cruiser warfare forms only a part of the naval war, every battle won, apart from its immediate consequences, also increases the chances of cruiser warfare on both sides. Irrespective of whether the strategic plan is offensive or defensive, fought exclusively by squadrons or with cruisers as well, the struggle for naval dominance forms the decisive phase and its resolution will be effected by battle just as it always has been.

Appendix (ii) Navies in War and Peace Morskoi Sbornik February 1972

English translation US Naval Institute Proceedings 100:1 January 1974 pp. 18–27 Reprinted from Proceedings with permission; Copyright © 1974 U.S. Naval Institute/www.usni.org. For many centuries the ocean expanses have not only been a convenient means of communication between continents and between the suppliers of products vitally essential to mankind, but also an arena of fierce struggle and military conflicts. The scale of utilising the water for military aims, i.e. for the defense of one’s own country and to seize overseas possessions, has grown in relation to man’s knowledge and mastery of the ocean. At the present time, in an ear of far­-​­reaching scientific discoveries and the utilisation of them for military needs, the capabilities for conducting combat operations on the oceanic expanses have increased incredibly, while the naval arms race abroad, and the creation of diverse means of naval combat have reached unprecedentedly imposing scales. The hallmark of naval forces is their high degree or manoeuvrability and ability to concentrate secretly and to form powerful groupings, which are of surprise to the enemy. At the same time, naval forces are more stable against the effects of nuclear weaponry than land forces. All of this has catapulted the navies into the front ranks of the diverse, modern means or armed combat. Their employment in nuclear­-​­missile warfare is related to the introduction of much of what is new in tactics and operational skills, in ship design and in the outfitting of ships with equipment and armament. The qualitative transformations which have taken place in naval forces have also changed the approach to evaluation the relative might of navies and their combat groupings. We have had to cease comparing the number of warships of one type or another and their total displacement (or the number of guns in a salvo, or the weight of this salvo) and turn to a more complex, but also more correct appraisal of the striking and defensive power of ships, based on a mathematical analysis of their capabilities and qualitative characteristics. The military technical revolution is constantly introducing new things in all areas of military affairs, but the final goals of naval warfare remain the same: the defeat of the enemy and the destruction of his vital forces and materiel (i.e. his

206   Appendices ships with their crews and weapons stores, and weapons or shore objectives located within range). Therefore, combat operations at sea, just as on land, by obeying the general laws of the dialectic which are constantly in effect, cannot be conducted separately from the goals of that policy which led to the war. Therefore, in today’s context it is interesting to trace, from a historical standpoint, the dialectical relationship between the development of naval forces and the state policy goals which they were intended to serve. V.I. Lenin pointed out that “Every war is inseparably linked with the political system from which it stems. That very policy which a certain power and a certain class within this power conducted for a long time prior to the war, inevitably and unavoidably will be continued by this same class during a war, changing only the form of action.” And further, “Policy is reason, while war is only the instrument and not the opposite. Consequently, it only remains to subordinate the military point of view to the political.” The basic and sole means of waging armed conflict between states has always been the army and navy, which in peacetime have continued to serves as the instrument or weapon of state policies. Many examples from history attest to the fact that in the age of feudalism and capitalism all problems of foreign policy were always decided on the basis of, and taking into account, the military power of the ‘negotiating’ sides and that the potential military might of one state or another, built up in accordance with its economic capabilities and political orientation, permitted it to conduct a policy advantageous to itself to the detriment of other states not possessing corresponding military power. The development of armed forces is linked in the most direct manner to the history of social­-​­economic systems, and to the methods or material production characteristic of them. The flourishing or decline of them is determined by the process of the formation or decay of one social system or another. Thus, these periods when one social system was being replaced by another, more progressive system have given considerable impetus to progress in the military area. Technical discoveries have always had a revolutionising effect on the development of armed forces and on the art of employing them. This demonstrates the pattern of the influence on the military field of the society’s economic development and the growth of its productive forces. In this connection, V.I. Lenin wrote: “Military tactics depend on the level of development of military equipment.” Such highly important factors as the social and political system, the social composition of the people from whom the armed forces are drawn, the extent of combat training, the level of knowledge and the moral make­-​­up of the personnel also affect the condition of the armed forces and the level of the art of their employment. In turn, the above qualities depend on the character of the leaders of the fighting men. Marxism considers the geographic environment, which also influences the character and direction of the development of armed forces, to be one of the

Appendices   207 constant and invariable conditions in the development of human society. Among the many elements embraced by the concept of the geographical environment and affecting the development of mankind and, consequently, also of the armed forces of states, are the seas and oceans. In solving problems of commerce, of reliable routes of communication, of relationships between peoples and of the fishing and maritime industries, men back in ancient history had already opened up individual littoral areas of the seas and oceans. The maritime location of many countries fostered the development in them of specific areas of industry (eg shipbuilding, the catching and processing of fish and marine animals etc) which had a beneficial effect on the overall progress of these countries that, naturally, also left an impression on the development of the armed forces of the states which, to one degree of another, were engaged in the construction of navies and to a greater or lesser degree employed them in wars. In different historical eras the above factors have had a definite effect on the character and structure of the armed forces which were made up of various components. Without resorting to a detailed examination of the changes in the structure of the armed forces of states on an historical plane, let us simply note that all maritime countries, without exception, usually have had (or strove to have) both ground forces and a navy. Apropos of this, Peter I said: “Every potentate who has only ground forces has only one hand; yet whoever has a navy too, has both hands.” The role and importance of each of them, at the level of development of technology and the economic capabilities which existed, were always determined by the unfolding political strategic situation and the mutual positions of the states or nature of the coalitions. In some stages of the history of states, ground forces have played the main role and in others, the navy. The place and role of each of the branches of the country’s armed forces can change both in peacetime and in war depending on technical reorganisation, on the enemy being confronted, the geographical conditions etc. History presents many examples of this. From them we may recall the growth of the role of the Navy in the Northern War of 1700–1721, when Russia transferred operations from her own territory to the territory of the enemy, thereby forcing him to sign a peace treaty. Sometimes, however, wars which began with the Navy being predominantly important were ended by the overwhelming actions of the Army (for example, the Russo­-​­Japanese War of 1904–1905). Clearly, in all cases, one aspect remains unchanged: the results of the victory in a campaign or war can only be secured by ground forces capable of confirming the reality of it by their actual presence. Moreover, the experience of history attests to the fact that each branch of the armed forces makes its own certain and always discernable [sic.] contribution to victory. To achieve victory, the presence of all branches of armed forces, properly organised, equipped and trained, is essential. Each of them has its own specific features, sphere of employment and condition for concerted action. The skilful (or on the other hand, the unskilful) employment and the consideration of

208   Appendices these specific features often determine the success (or failure) of operations, campaigns, or even the war as a whole. In the modern context, in speaking of the military might of states, it is a matter of harmoniously combing all branches of developed and rationally balanced armed forces and it is precisely because of this that the principle of cooperation among all branches of the armed forces is the basis of Soviet military doctrine. Only by coordinating their efforts can victory be achieved. As early as 1921, M.V. Frunze wrote about this in works devoted to the building up of the Red Army. The idea of the decisive importance or coordinated actions by the Army and the Navy in all areas of armed combat was vividly expressed in his work ‘A Single Military Doctrine and the Red Army’. An analysis of the employment of various branches of armed forces in time of war, or in peacetime, is of definite interest from the point of view of both the development of the art of war and the knowledge by the command personnel, of the specific features with which each of the branches of the armed forces is imbued. Taking into account that such an understanding fosters the development of a unity of operational views in the command personnel of the armed forces and is an indispensible [sic.] and most important condition for skill in acting in concert, let us examine those questions applicable to the Navy, both in the historical and problem aspects. In this connection, we do not intend to cover the history of the naval art, much less define the prospects for the development of naval forces. We intend only to express a few thoughts about the role and place of navies in various historical eras and at different stages in the development of military equipment and of the art of war, in order, on this basis, to determine the trends and principles of the change in the role and position of navies in wars and also in their employment in peacetime as an instrument of state policy. In this connection, the focus of attention on the Navy does not in any way imply any sort of unique importance of naval forces in modern armed combat, but stems from the above mentioned considerations. Proceeding from the special features of the Navy as a military factor which can be used also in peacetime for purposes of demonstrating the economic and military power of states beyond their borders and from the fact that over a period of many centuries it has been the solitary branch of armed forces capable of protecting the interest of a country beyond its borders, in our view it is useful to examine questions related to this specific feature of naval forces as a real component part of the military organisation of a state. In examining these questions, one should also take into account the ever growing interest in oceanic problems of various quarters from different aspects­ – economic, political and military­ – and in their dialectical relationship. In tracing the direct dependence of mankind on the World Ocean over the entire course of its centuries of history, it is impossible not to note how the ability of peoples to learn to appreciate the ocean and to use it for their own needs, directly affects the growth of the political prestige of the country and its economic and military power.

Appendices   209

Times distant, yet important for understanding the role of navies Navies have always played a great role in strengthening the independence of states whose territories are washed by seas and oceans, since they were an important instrument of policy. Naval might has been one of the factors which has enable individual states to advance into the ranks of the great powers. Moreover, history shows that those states which do not have naval forces at their disposal have not been able to hold the status of a great power for very long. And, it cannot be otherwise, for the sphere of naval operations is the seas and oceans which occupy seven­-​­tenths of the surface of the planet. The continents are essentially gigantic islands whose total area is barely 150,000,000 square kilometres. They are surrounded, connected with one another and kept in many respects (in particular, with regard to climate) in a constant state of dependence on the World Ocean, whose surface is equal to 350,000,000 square kilometres. The seas and oceans serve as an inexhaustible source of diverse food resources, industrial raw materials and energy. The most important and most economically advantageous routes of communication between countries, through which trade and other ties between countries, through which trade and other ties between peoples are carried out, pass through the seas and oceans. All of this determines the special role of the seas and oceans in the economy of states. The development of maritime states has turned out to be so closely connected with the sea that, as a rule, their capitals and largest cities have grown up on the coasts. Seven of today’s ten largest cities of the world are located on the shores of seas and oceans. The building­-​­up, in the maritime countries, of many areas of industry and the economy dependent on the sea, which has brought about higher industrial development in these countries, has fostered the overall growth of the economy of maritime countries and the rate of growth. Therefore, it is not by accident that civilisation, as a rule, originated and developed most often on the shores of seas and oceans. It is also not accidental that countries whose populations have been connected with seafaring have become economically strong earlier than others. Among these we may cite various periods in history, Spain, England, Holland, France, Portugal, Turkey and the U.S.A. All of the modern great powers are maritime states. At the same time, for a long time wars have been waged not only on land, but also on the watery expanses, at first on rivers and lakes and in coastal areas of the seas and later on the seas and oceans. Military necessity, the development of an economy related to the sea and political conflict have always and on an ever increasing scale, forced states to build, possess and maintain naval forces on a modern level within the overall system of armed forces. At a certain stage of development, many states (primarily Holland, Spain, England, France, Japan and the U.S.A.) have formulated their military strategy primarily on the basis of sea power. Every social­-economic ​­ system has built up armed forces, including navies, corresponding to its economic and technical capabilities. Thus, in the

210   Appendices slave­-​­holding society, galleys were the basis of the navies. In the era of feudalism, sailing ships appeared, which were developed more fully up to the moment of capitalism’s entry into the world area. The scientific technical revolution of that day led, in the mid­-19th ​­ century, to the following fundamental change in the material resources and equipment of naval forces­ – to the creation of the steam fleet and later to undersea forces. And finally, recently even more profound and revolutionary changes have taken place in connection with the construction of the nuclear­-powered ​­ navy of the nuclear­-​ ­missile era. These stages of naval development were not just stages in the technical improvement of warships. At the same time as the material resources and equipment were being altered, changes were also taking place in its position within the system of armed forces, in its basic mission and in its role in the policy of the state in peacetime and in military operations at sea. Even in ancient times, in solving problems concerning trade, routes of communications, ties between people and of the fishing and marine industries, mankind developed several coastal areas of the sea and oceans. Parallel to this, knowledge was accumulated and expanded, at first about the individual regions of the earth; and later about the entire planet including the World Ocean. It is difficult to overestimate the role of the Navy in this. At the same time, from the era of the slave­-​­holding society even up to our day, navies have been employed in numerous wars as the most important (and often the only) means of supporting the transport of military cargoes and land forces or the invasion by troops of the enemy territory, as well as to protect their own sea routes and to attack the enemy’s merchant ships. In the 16th to 17th centuries, one of the most important periods in the history of mankind began­  – the era of great geographical discoveries, the era of the initial accumulation of capital and the development of capitalism. The major countries of Western Europe converted their navies into one of the instruments of the initial accumulation of capital: they were used so seize colonies, for the enslavement of peoples of entire continents and to plunder them and as the agents for the fierce struggles between rivals in the plundering of colonies and also for control in the colonies and of the sea routes. “The discovery of gold and silver mines in America, the eradication, enslavement and the burning alive of the natives in pits, the first steps toward conquering and plundering East India and the transformation of Africa into a preserve for hunting blacks­  – this was the dawning of the capitalist era of production.”1 Spain and Portugal were the first to rush to discover new lands and colonise them. Sailing expeditions by Columbus, Magellan, Vasco da Gama and other seafarers not only opened the American continent, extended the water route round Africa to India and China and discovered many Pacific Ocean islands, but also initiated the colonisation of these regions and countries. The English, French and Dutch joined the Spanish and Portuguese in participating in the geographic discoveries and in the colonisation of the new lands.

Appendices   211 In the 16th century it seemed that Spain had firmly established a position as a great power, possessing vast colonies. But due to political backwardness and the inability to compete with rapidly developing England, she was not able to exploit the riches plundered from the colonies, to rapidly develop her economy and her industry and consequently to build up armed forces and particularly a navy, which were modern for that day. Soon after the defeat of the ‘unbeatable armada’ by the more modern English Fleet, Spain, being in no condition to protect her overseas possessions, lost them and was gradually transformed from a great power into a third­-​­rate state. In the middle of the 17th century, Holland, which had taken the capitalist path of development earlier than the others and had the strongest navy in the world at its disposal, became the largest colonial power and reached the apex of its power. But soon England, where industrial capital played the leading role as opposed to trade capital which held sway in Holland, became its main rival. The struggle between these countries became the hottest in several wars which history has named the Anglo­-​­Dutch wars. The North Sea was the main arena for their struggles. After losing several naval battles and after attacks by the English from land, Holland acknowledged defeat and became a second­-​­rate colonial power. Its fate was sealed by the victory of the industrial capital of England over Holland’s trade capital, which was manifested militarily in the superiority of the English Fleet (or, in the final analysis, in the naval might of England). Karl Marx wrote about this in this manner: “… trade domination is now already related to the greater of lesser predominance of the conditions of the existence of major industry. It pays to compare, for example, England and Holland. The history of the fall of Holland as the dominant trade nation is a history of the subordination of trade capital to industrial capital.” England also often used her Navy for direct enrichment. It is sufficient to recall that many English ships and merchantmen in the service of the King acted as pirates: they robbed the merchant ships of other countries, seized them and dragged them away into English ports. Thus, instead of a consumer, the Navy became a source of enrichment to the state. At the beginning of the 18th century, France also took the path of capitalist development. Through the enslavement of overseas countries, in which the Navy played an important role, she was also transformed into a vast colonial empire possessing Canada, large territories in the Mississippi Valley, several West Indian islands, part of India and broad regions in Africa. The core of England’s policy was to attain the position of ‘Mistress of the Sea’, personifying a world economic and political power; she chose to use every possible way to bring down her rivals at sea to the level of the states which were incapable of opposing her Navy as one way of achieving this goal. At this time the struggle in the world arena for economic hegemony, colonial possessions and domination in world trade shifted to the sphere of rivalry between England and France. The culmination of this struggle was the so­-​­called Seven Years’ War in which almost all of the states of Europe were involved. “England and France fought over colonies in the Seven Years’ War, i.e. they waged an imperialistic war …”.2

212   Appendices The principal events at that time unfolded at sea, as a result of which the navies played the most important role. The outcome of the battles between the English and French Fleets played a decisive role in achieving the political goals of this war. As a result of their hostilities, France, having lost any hope of domination or even a predominant position on the sea and having lost control over the sea lanes, was forced to relinquish North America and India to England. In the middle of the 18th century, having surpassed the other countries in economic development and possessing a developed industry and numerous colonies, England became the first world power. Backed by a powerful economy which provided England the supremacy of having the strongest fleet on the World Ocean, she assumed the leading position among the capitalist countries and held it for almost two centuries. The desire of the British capitalists to hinder the development of industries in the colonies by every means, in order to keep them as mere suppliers of raw materials and as consumers of the goods of British industry, produced the war for independence of the more developed of its North American colonies. The navies of England’s former rivals, France, Holland and Spain, acted on the colonies’ behalf. The position of Russia, which declared a so­-​­called ‘armed neutrality’ supported by the power of the Russian Navy, did not permit England to blockade America, also played a positive role for the Americans. The ‘mistress of the seas’ had to fight a war under conditions in which her Navy was considerably inferior to the united fleet of the enemies. After England had lost several battles on land, considering the unfavourable relative strength of the forces on the sea which prevented unhindered supplying of reinforcements via the ocean, she was forced to recognise the independence of the United States of North America. Despite the fact that the main missions in the war for independence were executed by the armies, it once more affirmed the growing influence of naval forces on the course and outcome of armed conflicts fought on land. In this war, naval operations were shifted from European waters to distant ocean regions which sharply increased the importance of communications and problems of defending and hindering them in support of military actions on land arose on such a scale for the first time. The new conditions of naval combat operations imposed higher demands on the seakeeping ability of the warships and on their combat stability. In connection with this, their dimensions were increased, designs were changed, armament strengthened and subsequently armour made its appearance. The considerable growth in the capabilities of the rapidly developing capitalist industry fostered the building up of warship inventory, taking the new demands into account. All of this speeded up naval development and at the turn of the 19th century permitted the naval role in political struggles and in military operations to be enhanced even further. The main organising force of the wars in the above period was the English bourgeoisie, which intended to seize France’s remaining colonial possessions. In

Appendices   213 this connection, England tried to transfer the weight of the battles on the continent to her European allies, while limiting her participation in the wars mainly to operations at sea and against France’s maritime territories. It should be noted that the large bourgeoisie which came to power in France after the Thermidorean coup also made it a primary task to reduce England’s colonial power. Bonaparte’s expedition into Egypt was undertaken for this purpose and with the future goal of seizing India. The French troops, which were transported across the sea unbeknownst to the English, began successful combat operations in Egypt. Within just two and a half months the English Fleet, under the command of Nelson, found the French warships anchored in Aboukir Bay and defeated them. The destruction of the French Fleet primarily affected the combat capability of that part of the army which was in Egypt and which turned out to be cut off from its main supply bases located in Europe. Moreover, it also affected the operations of the main forces of the French Army which, within six months of the defeat of the French Fleet at Aboukir, surrendered to the enemy in a few months that which Bonaparte had won in his day in dozens of victorious battles. Thus, the weakness of the French Fleet became one of the main reasons for the failure of the plans for the conquest of Egypt, the passage to India and the curtailing of English colonial power, even though France had the necessary ground forces at its disposal. Continuing the struggle, Napoleon decided to land a large landing force directly on the British Isles, for which 2,343 diverse transport ships were readied. It seemed that a fatal threat hung over England. However, the preparation for the invasion was delayed. An attack, initiated by Russian troops under the command of Kutuzov, forced Napoleon to abandon entirely the landing of a force in England. On 21 October 1805 in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Spain, the battle of Trafalgar took place in which the English, under the command of Nelson, inflicted a decisive defeat on the Franco­-​­Spanish Fleet. The significance of this battle, as well as the role of the English Fleet in the struggle with Napoleonic France, were actually great but were exaggerated to an even greater degree by a Western European historian who asserted that “at Trafalgar not only the greatest naval victory was won, but also the greatest and most remarkable victory of all those won on land and at sea in the course of the entire revolutionary war. No single victory nor any series of victories by Napoleon had such an effect on Europe.”3 One cannot agree with this. As is well known, the struggle against Napoleon lasted many years and the main and decisive role in it was played by Russia, which destroyed the French Army in the Patriotic War of 1812. The victory gained by Russia actually had a greater effect on the political situation in Europe. As for the Battle of Trafalgar, with respect to its consequences it, of course, was not an ordinary military clash of fleets. After the series of defeats of the French Fleet, its final rout in this battle demonstrated France’s inability to carry on a battle at sea with an enemy having a more modern fleet consisting of better

214   Appendices quality ships, manned by more highly trained personnel and employing tactics which were new for that time. The main result of the victory achieved in the naval engagement was that the home country and the British colonies became practically invulnerable to attacks from the direction of the sea. England was able to deprive the enemy of the weapon which was most dangerous for her­  – the navy. Only a navy at that time could directly threaten the home country and the security of the communications connecting England with the colonies which supplied the raw materials for her industry and food products for the population. The liquidation of the threat from the sea freed the hands of the English bourgeoisie to organise and finance new alliances to continue the struggle with Napoleonic France. France, however, was forced to refrain once and for all from combat operations at sea and to seek other ways not connected with the sea to combat her main enemy. Thus, the course of the war at sea and the gaining of domination by the English Nay had a great effect on the further policy of the belligerents. From all that has been said, it follows that from the dawning of the capitalist era, the navies of the Western states have represented not only a part of the armed forces, which were employed in war in the naval theatres, but also a weapon of state policy in peacetime, which permitted them to enslave underdeveloped peoples and countries overseas and to transform them into their own colonies. The fleets of the Western European powers travelled the path from ‘privateers in the service of the King’ to regular naval forces which received an organised structure and official operational tactics. The employment of this naval force in wars, especially when it was the main force in achieving the goals of the war, had a considerable influence on state policy, which was determined and conducted taking into account the disposition of the forces at sea at certain times. Maritime states having great economic capabilities have wisely used their naval forces in peacetime to put pressure on their enemies, as a type of military demonstration, as threats of interrupting sea communications and as a hindrance to ocean commerce. Navies have served these states as an important means of further enrichment and of extending expansion and colonisation. In addition, navies have also carried out the pleasant mission of being discoverers. Naval ships of the great powers, including Russia, have carried out wide­-​­scale oceanographic studies and made an inestimable contribution to the science of geography. This tradition of mariners (including also naval mariners) still continues even today, when the ‘blank spots’ in the ocean are becoming fewer and fewer, yet the knowledge of the secrets of the ocean represents a very great scientific task even today.

Notes 1 Karl Marx Kapital Vol. 1 p. 754. 2 Karl Marx Kapital Vol. 3 p. 345. 3 Fyffe’s History of Modern Europe Vol. 1 p. 281.

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(iii) General Allison, Graham Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap? Boston MA: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017 Cable, James Gunboat Diplomacy 1919–1991 (3rd ed) Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1994 Cable, James, The Political Influence of Naval Force in History London & Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1998 Colomb, Philip Naval Warfare. London: Allen, 1899 Corbett, Julian S. Some Principles of Maritime Strategy. With an Introduction and Notes by Eric J. Grove Annapolis MD: United States Naval Institute Press, 1988. Original work first published in 1911 Friedman, Norman, Seapower as Strategy: Navies and National Interest Annapolis MD: Naval Institute Press, 2001 Gat, Azar, A History of Military Thought: From the Enlightenment to the Cold War Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001 Glaser, Charles L. “When Are Arms Races Dangerous? Rational versus Suboptimal Arming” International Security 28:4 (Spring 2004) pp. 44–84 Gray, Colin S. The Leverage of Sea Power: The Strategic Advantage of Navies in War New York: The Free Press, 1992 -​­ Cold War World University Park PA: The Gray, Colin S. The Navy in the Post­ Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994 Gray, Colin S. & Barnett, Roger W. (eds) Seapower and Strategy Annapolis MD: Naval Institute Press, 1989 Ireland, Bernard, Jane’s Battleships of the 20th Century London: HarperCollins, 1996 Kaplan, Robert D. The Revenge of Geography: What the Map Tells us about Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate New York: Random House, 2012 Keegan, John & Wheatcroft, Andrew, Who’s Who in Military History (3rd ed.) London: Routledge, 1996 Lambert, Andrew, Seapower States: Maritime Culture, Continental Empires and the Conflict That Made to Modern World New Haven CT: Yale University Press, 2018

222   Bibliography Levy, Jack S.  & Thompson, William R. “Balancing on Land and at Sea” International Security 35:1 (Summer 2010) pp. 7–43 Mahan, Alfred T. The Influence of Seapower upon History 1660–1783 Boston MA: Little, Brown & Co, 1890 Mearsheimer, John, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics New York: Norton & Co, 2001 O’Brien, Phillips P. Technology and Naval Combat in the Twentieth Century and Beyond London: Frank Cass, 2001 Pugh, Philip, The Cost of Seapower: The Influence of Money on Naval Affairs from 1815 to the Present Day London: Conway Maritime Press, 1986 Ross, Angus “Nationalism, Geopolitics and Naval Expansionism: From the Nineteenth Century to the Rise of China” Naval War College Review 71:4 (Autumn 2018) pp. 11–44 Speller, Ian, Understanding Naval Warfare Abingdon: Routledge, 2014 Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War Translated by Res Warner. London: Penguin Books, 1954 Till, Geoffrey, Seapower: A Guide for the Twenty­-​­First Century London: Frank Cass, 2004 Westcott, Allan (ed.) Mahan on Naval Warfare: Selections from the Writings of Read Admiral Alfred T. Mahan Boston MA: Little, Brown and Company, 1942

Index

aircraft carriers 34–5, 37, 40, 42, 77–8, 84, 95, 102n30, 120, 124, 127–30, 133–6, 174–5 ‘alliance value’ 54, 57, 68–9, 109, 151, 199 amphibious operations 1, 31–2, 74–5, 84–5, 94, 100, 101n3, 128 arms races x–xi, 3–4, 20, 110–11, 117, 147, 150, 152, 166, 169, 176, 184–5, 189, 205 army (German) 9, 17, 22, 24, 52, 54, 116, 118–19, 145–7, 150–2, 156–8, 163n94, 189 army (Soviet) 31–7, 43, 74–6, 80, 82–6, 89, 92–3, 130, 164–9, 174–5, 182, 189 Azov Flotilla 31–2, 84, 101n3 ‘balanced fleet’ 2, 34, 36–7, 40, 75–7, 85–6, 88–9, 94, 99–101, 122, 124–6, 136, 164, 187 ballistic missiles 38, 40, 46n53, 76, 125, 127–30, 134; see also SLBMs; SSBNs Baltic Sea 2–3, 9, 12, 33, 51–2, 82, 128, 149, 154, 156, 158, 166 bases, overseas 13–14, 40, 43, 58, 69, 88, 92, 119, 124, 127, 154, 159, 166 battlecruisers 20, 22, 111–17, 120, 130–1, 134–5, 154, 177 battlefleet 4–5, 13, 17, 20, 23, 25, 51–2, 54–61, 69–70, 108, 114–15, 124, 126, 143–4, 147, 158–60, 186 Belgium 23–4, 153–4, 158, 189 Belli, Vladimir 34–5, 45n29, 74 Bethmann-Hollweg, Theobald 21, 24, 67, 119, 146, 153, 158, 183, 185 Bismarck, Otto von 10, 150, 152–3, 157 Black Sea 2, 29–35, 41, 128, 166–9, 189 blockade 5, 24, 38, 53, 55, 61, 66–8, 114, 149, 155, 158–9, 166, 190, 197, 202–3, 212

Blucher 11, 112 ‘Blue Belt of Defence’ 77, 131, 172, 175 Boer War 2, 15, 18, 145 Brezhnev, Leonid 31, 33, 36, 39, 42–4, 76, 79, 127, 168–71, 188, 190 Britain xii, 3–5, 58, 61, 144, 157, 167, 185–7, 190; blockade of Germany 149, 154; and France 18–19, 62, 152–3; geography 150; and German blockade 155–7, 159, 186, 192; and Germany 18, 20–3, 63–6, 68–70, 117, 120, 143, 146–8, 150–2, 157–61, 186, 192; response to Navy Laws 108, 113; and Russia 62, 152–3; and Soviet Union 34, 186; spending 117–18, 145–6; and ‘Tirpitz Plan’ 15, 17–20, 26, 56–63, 65, 68, 111, 114–15, 117, 144, 147, 149–51, 185, 189 Bulow, Bernhard von 14, 16, 20–1, 25, 36, 70, 71n43 Bundesrath 18, 38–9, 126 Cable, Sir James 86, 100 Capelle, Eduard von 17 Caprivi, Leo von 11–12 China xi, 13–14, 39, 97, 124, 171, 187, 191–3 Chernavin, Vladimir 36, 43, 196 Churchill, Winston 3, 5n2, 5n7, 21, 81, 152, 154–5 Clausewitz, Carl von 52, 62, 64, 79, 184 climate 90–1, 167, 209 coastal defence 3, 5, 35, 51–2, 56, 69, 75, 84, 92, 99, 115, 125, 128, 164–5, 174, 177, 197–200 Cold War xi, 4, 33, 36, 43, 74, 84, 95, 100, 123, 165–6, 169, 171–2, 174–6, 182, 184–5, 189 command of the sea 34–5, 44, 51–5, 59, 74, 76–7, 83, 98, 101, 159, 170, 187

224   Index commerce-raiding see trade war continental states xi–xii, 1–4, 15, 58, 80–1, 92–5, 101, 129, 144, 149–50, 164, 171, 177, 181–2, 186–8, 190–2 “Copenhagened” 19–20, 27n50, 63, 65, 147, 186 Corbett, Sir Julian 83, 93, 98, 100 Crimea 30–1 Crowe, Sir Eyre 151 cruisers 13–15, 17, 19–20, 27n28, 30, 34–7, 39, 41, 43, 55–7, 68–70, 95, 107–13, 117, 119–20, 123–9, 131–2, 137, 143, 154–6, 158–9, 165, 196, 204; see also battlecruisers; Sverdlov-class cruisers Cuban Missile Crisis 2, 38–9, 41, 126, 173 ‘danger zone’ 63, 65, 69, 147–8 Danube Flotilla 32–3, 35, 84 decisive battle 51–3, 56, 67–8, 97, 126, 158, 213 defence spending see money defensive, the 32, 35, 37, 52, 54–6, 63–5, 67, 70, 74, 77, 85, 88, 98, 129, 148–9, 171, 174–5, 197–201, 203–4 Denmark 9, 159, 166 deployments overseas 40, 171–2 détente 89, 95, 189 deterrence 1, 26, 38, 74, 76, 95, 99–100, 122, 172 Dienstschrift IX 12–14, 53–9, 69, 71n20, 196–204 diplomacy 86, 95, 143–4, 151–3, 157, 171–2 Dreadnought, HMS 19–20, 22, 109–13, 120n11, 159 dreadnoughts 2, 20, 22, 27n61, 36, 46n73, 107, 109, 111–17, 119–20, 145–8, 152, 155, 159, 183 encirclement 87, 157, 171, 187 England see Britain Flottenverein (Navy League) 15–16, 19–20 First World War 3, 82, 85, 114, 120, 185; course of 153–7 ‘fleet in being’ 55, 57, 71n34, 94, 96, 101, 120, 148, 154, 173, 192 Fisher, Sir John 69, 73n87, 111–12, 116, 148, 183 France 3–5, 11, 14–15, 18, 55–6, 58–9, 61–5, 71n28, 107, 109, 115, 118, 146,

148, 150–4, 156–9, 171, 185, 187, 189–91, 194n34, 199, 209, 211–14 Galster, Carl 158 geography xii, 2, 54, 70, 91–2, 149–50, 159, 165–7, 177, 181–2, 187, 191, 193 Germany 1–5, 10, 15, 18–20, 25, 54, 58, 60–2, 66–9, 119, 143–7, 149–54; colonies 14, 52, 62, 154, 158–60, 182, 184–7, 189; relations with Russia 63, 109, 171; in WWI 24, 61, 154–6; see also Imperial German Navy; relations with Britain; Weltpolitik gunboat diplomacy 86, 95; see also peacetime, navies in Gorbachev, Mikhail 43, 100, 168, 175–6 Gorshkov, Sergei x–xi, 1–5, 122; early life 29; in the Pacific 29–30; in the Black Sea Fleet 30–2; and Danube campaign 32–3; after the War 33; becomes Commander-in-Chief 34–6; inherited navy 122–4; naval expansion 37–8, 40–1, 43, 124–34; end of career 43; writings 38–9, 41–2, 74–9, 99–101; assessment of 43–4, 135–6, 164–77; comparison with Tirpitz x, 181–93; see also Red Star Rising at Sea; Seapower of the State; Soviet Navy Gorshkov (ships) 136–7, 138n42, 139n73, 139n74, 193 Gray, Colin xii, 3, 80, 150, 182, 191–2 great power status 3, 61–2, 67, 69–70, 80, 87, 89, 91, 95, 122, 144, 151, 160, 182, 188–91, 209, 211 Grechko, Andrei 31, 36, 40–2 Guerre de Course 4, 5n11, 79, 155–6, 159–60, 186 Helgoland 51–2, 59, 62, 69, 70n4, 147, 149, 154–5, 158 Herrick, Robert 35, 74, 99, 123, 181 Herwig, Holger 70 High Seas Fleet see Imperial German Navy history, use and misuse of 32, 53, 80, 83–4, 89, 95–6, 145, 202, 206–9 Hollmann, Friedrich von 12–14, 16–17, 53 Imperial German Navy x, 2–3, 12, 14, 23, 59, 107–17; surrender 24; see also Navy Laws India xi, 137, 171, 181, 191–3, 211–13 Invincible-class battlecruisers 20, 112

Index   225 Japan xii, 30, 63, 84–5, 110, 147, 150, 152, 154, 167, 169, 175, 185–7, 209 Jeune École 4, 5n11, 13, 52, 55, 69, 202–3 Jutland, battle of 24, 36, 114, 155–6, 163n85 Kaiser Wilhelm II see Wilhelm II Kelly, Patrick x, 19, 23–4, 26, 51, 56, 58, 63, 65, 183 Kennedy, Paul 21, 59, 147 Kiel 9–10, 67 Kiel Canal 20, 110 Kiev-class aircraft carriers 42, 129–30, 132–3, 136, 139n53, 139n70, 175 Khrushchev, Nikita 31, 33–9, 42, 75–7, 124, 126–30, 132, 164, 171 Kirov-class battlecruisers 130–1, 133 Kuznetsov, Nicolai 29–30, 33–6, 38, 122, 124 Kuznetsov (ship) 47n84, 133

143; Second Navy Law 18–20, 27n45, 60–2, 108–9 ‘New School’ 34–6, 43, 84, 122 North Sea 2–3, 10, 41, 51, 57, 59, 61, 66–7, 114–15, 143–4, 148–50, 154, 167, 172, 186–7, 211 Northern Fleet 33, 41, 43, 166–7 Norway 159, 167 Novelles 18–19, 111, 117, 146; 1906 20, 64; 1908 20–1, 112–13; 1912 22, 113, 115 nuclear propulsion 2, 36–8, 40, 42, 78, 124–5, 127–8, 130–1, 133, 165–6, 168, 176, 210 nuclear weapons 2, 35, 38, 77–8, 88, 92, 94, 98–9, 124, 129, 136, 165, 171, 173–5, 189, 205, 210

Lenin, Vladimir 79, 81–2, 206 Lusitania 23, 115, 155 ‘luxury’ fleet 2, 5n2, 21, 81, 92, 119, 148, 164

Oberkommando (OK) 12–14, 16–17, 52–3, 56, 58, 68 Odessa 30 offensive, the 23, 52–6, 59, 62–8, 70, 74, 83, 85, 115, 149, 160, 171, 184, 197–204 OKEAN exercises 40–1, 128–9, 172 ‘Old School’ 34, 102n45, 122

Mackinder, Sir Halford 190, 192 Marinekabininett (MK) 12, 23 Marxism-Leninism 38, 42, 53, 74, 79, 91, 96, 100 Mahan, Alfred 4, 13–14, 19, 44, 51–8, 64, 70, 71n14, 74, 80, 90–3, 97, 100, 143–5, 149, 159–60, 188–9, 192–3 Malinovsky, Rodion 31, 34, 36, 40, 45n25 Maritime Strategy (1986) 175, 183 MccGwire, Michael 170 missiles 2, 35–8, 40, 75, 78, 102n30, 165, 173–5; see also ballistic missiles Money 20–2, 67, 89, 112–13, 116–19, 122–3, 145–6, 167–9, 199 Morskoi Sbornik 41, 79, 169, 205 Moskva-class helicopter carriers 37, 126, 129, 133, 173

peacetime, navies in 39, 41, 44, 54, 59, 69, 76–80, 86–9, 92, 94–6, 115, 124, 133, 135–6, 148, 165–6, 172, 175, 182, 199, 206–8, 210, 214 Peloponnesian War 4, 195n58; see also Thucydides Persius, Lothar 116, 148, 158 ‘place in the Sun’ 2, 59, 63, 71n43, 87, 143–4, 150, 154, 158 Polaris 77, 126–7, 173–4 Polmar, Norman xi, 42, 131 pre-dreadnought battleships 36, 107, 109, 111–12, 114, 117, 120, 120n8, 157 Proceedings (USNI) 79, 205 Prussia 3, 9–10, 53, 57, 119; see also Prussian Navy Prussian Navy 1, 9–10, 26n3, 30, 54

NATO xi, 33, 75, 78, 88, 93, 97, 125, 127, 134, 165–6, 169, 173–5, 181, 186–7 Nassau-class battleships 20, 109, 111–13, 117 ‘naval holiday’ 22, 152 navalism 22, 143–4, 153, 188 Navies in War and Peace 41, 76, 205–14; see also Red Star Rising at Sea Navy Laws 15, 21–2, 111, 117; First Navy Law 15, 17–18, 27n38, 56, 59–60, 108,

Queen Elizabeth-class battleships 22, 113, 146–7 Red Army; see army (Soviet) Red Star Rising at Sea xi, 5n3, 35, 79–89, 102n34, 178n33 Reichsmarineamt (RMA) 12–17, 19, 23, 52, 56, 158 Reichstag 13–15, 64–5, 71n43, 110, 116–17, 152; and Tirpitz 15–18, 21;

226   Index Reichstag continued passes Navy Laws 17–22, 60; post‑WWI 25 Revolution 1917 34, 40, 77, 82, 122, 156 Risk Theory 1, 19, 26, 56–8, 62–3, 66–8, 74, 109–11, 114–16, 119, 144, 147–8, 151, 158 Royal Navy 5, 11, 17, 20, 22, 41, 52, 55–6, 59–60, 66, 79, 109–20, 145, 147–50, 154–5, 160 Russia xi, 2–3, 5, 11, 14–15, 17–18, 29, 35, 38, 41, 44, 55–6, 58–64, 69, 79–82, 90–3, 95–8, 107, 109, 118–20, 137, 146–8, 150–6, 167–8, 170, 176–7, 182–93, 212–14; see also Soviet Union sea control 41–2, 74, 82–3, 101, 136, 170, 172, 174, 201, 203, 212 sea denial 35, 42, 77, 84, 101, 101n18, 134, 160, 170, 174–5 Seapower x–xii, 1–4, 41, 44, 52, 54, 68–9, 79, 84, 87–92, 95–6, 100–1, 136, 144, 160, 169–70, 181, 184, 186, 188–91 Sea Power of the State, The xi, 42, 89–99, 169, 172, 183 shipbuilding 21–2, 43, 107, 110, 123, 136–7, 145, 147, 166, 199, 207 Siegfried-class ships 107, 109–10 Skory-class destroyers 33, 123 SLBMs 126, 130–1, 133 Social Darwinism 14, 25, 61, 70, 87, 143 Soviet Naval Air Force (SNAF) 125, 134 Soviet Navy xi, 1–3, 164–5; pre-WWII 29–30, 80–3, 122; in WWII 31–2, 84–5; post-WWII 35, 123–4; Gorshkov years 35–8, 40–4, 124–34; post-Gorshkov 134–5, 175–7; assessment of 166–75 ‘Soviet School’ 34–5, 74–5, 122 Soviet Union 1, 4, 30, 34–41, 74–7, 79–82, 84, 87, 90–5, 98–101, 123–6, 165–7, 170–5, 185–90; pre-WWII 34, 122, 136; in WWII 35, 84–6; collapse 4, 43, 134–6, 165, 169, 176, 185; in space 130; see also Soviet Navy SSBNs 76, 94, 99, 125, 127, 130–5, 173–4, 178n46 Stalin, Josef 29–30, 33–6, 74–5, 122–4, 190 Stalingrad-class cruisers 124 Steinberg, Jonathan x, 25 Stosch, Albrecht 11, 13–14, 51, 57–8 Strategic Rocket Forces 38, 40, 76, 94, 167, 173

Submarines 2–3, 5, 22–4, 35, 114–16; see also SSBNs Sverdlov-class cruisers 33, 36, 123–4, 132–3 SSBN Thames, estuary 59, 62, 69 Thucydides 4, 192–3, 194n58 Till, Geoffrey 71n15 Tirpitz, Alfred von x, 1–5; early life 9; as junior officer 9–10; with Torpedo Commission 11–12, 51; as Captain 12–13; in Far East 13–14; as State Secretary 14–17; and First and Second Navy Laws 17–19, 108; and Novelles 20–2; declining influence 22–3; and outbreak of war 23; resignation 24; out of office 24–5; death 25; assessment 25–6; memoranda; 52; see also Dienstschrift IX; Imperial German Navy; Navy Laws; Risk Theory; Tirpitz Plan Tirpitz (ship) xi, 119–20, 121n55, 121n56, 192 Tirpitz Plan x, 17, 26, 63, 107, 111 torpedo boats 11–12, 52, 55–6, 60, 108, 113, 115, 123, 125–6, 159, 202–3 ‘Torpedo Gang’ 10–12, 15, 23, 58 trade 16, 51, 54–5, 61–2, 64–5, 68, 70, 82, 143–4, 150, 154–6, 164, 171, 174, 186, 198–9, 209–11 trade war see Guerre de Course U-boats see submarines Ukraine 1, 29–30, 133, 137 United States of America xii, 3–4, 19, 60, 150, 155–8, 167, 171–2, 175, 182, 186, 191, 212 USSR see Soviet Union Ustinov, Dmitri 42 Von der Tann 112, 117 war council (1912) 22, 147, 151; (1917) 156 Wegener, Wolfgang 158–9 Weltpolitik 14, 21, 25–6, 38, 56–7, 59, 118–19, 143–4, 146, 150–1, 157, 165, 171–2, 189 Whiskey-class submarines 33, 35, 123, 125, 131 Wilhelm II 12–16, 160, 190; relationship with Tirpitz 14, 16, 22, 24; wants a navy 14–15, 17, 19; Daily Telegraph interview 21; estrangement from Tirpitz 23–4

Index   227 Wilhelmshaven 10, 23, 67, 119, 157 World Ocean 3, 44, 87, 90, 92–3, 95, 165, 167, 187, 208–10, 212 World Politics see Weltpolitik world (or great) powers 3, 60, 62, 64, 80, 82, 91, 95, 119, 143, 152, 160, 184, 186, 188–9, 209, 214

Xu, Qiyu xi, 144, 161n4, 192 zonal defence 77, 99, 126; see also Blue Belt of Defence