History 325 - Second Term Essay

From 1900 onwards finance was taking on increasing importance all over Europe with respect to military spending.  Great Britain’s huge colonial empire was causing a strain on the country’s resources.  Conflicts like the Boer War increased desire for financial limitations on military spending.  During the years 1900-1903 the government was forced to borrow large sums of money in order to finance its colonial operations and the national debt increased by one quarter.  In order to return to a balanced budget cuts were made in naval expenditures in 1904 and 1905, this lead to the appointment of Admiral Fisher as First Sea Lord of the British navy.

To reform the Royal Navy and solve the crisis of naval competition from continental powers the British Admiralty choose Sir John Arbuthnot Fisher as First Sea Lord in 1904.  From the moment he took power it was obvious that a significant naval overhaul would be inevitable.  Recent attempts had made it clear that a diplomatic agreement with Germany would be difficult if not impossible, which lead to the signing of the Entente Cordiale between Great Britain and France in 1903.  This took attention away from the possibility of a military alliance between France and Russia and increased the significance of maintaining a navy larger than Germany’s High Seas Fleet.  Following Fisher’s appointment in 1905, a shift took place in British politics when William Gladstone and the Liberals replaced the Conservatives in parliament.  Gladstone had left parliament eleven years earlier in opposition to increases navy spending.  He liked Admiral Fisher because Fisher was committed to increasing naval efficiency while Gladstone and the Liberals were committed to decreasing naval costs, which had tripled between 1889 and 1904.  Fisher used a variety of means to achieve support for his many reforms, but one tactic he used more effectively than any other British Sea Lord was manipulating the press.  There has not been a decade since where the British people have been more “navy-minded.” 

The Royal Navy undertook five major reforms during Fisher’s time as First Sea Lord.  First, he completed an educational reform for the student officers in the navy, which scrapped outdated tactical lessons and brought modern concepts into naval education.  Then, he purposed a nucleus crew system that would keep the bulk of the Royal navy near home waters in order to better protect the British coast form invasion.  Admiral Fisher also overhauled the existing navy getting rid of hundreds of obsolete warships and cutting maintenance costs in the process.  Another reform was a redistribution of the fleet, placing less emphasis on past rivals such as France and more emphasis on current threats, mainly Germany.  Sir John Fishers final reform would have the most impact and it could be argued that it did more damage than benefit for Great Britain and the world, I will discuss this last reform in more detail.

In 1898, the German High Seas Fleet was ranked sixth in the world, a small force if you consider the fact that the Royal Navy had more battleships than the second and third ranked navies combined.  But in 1906 Admiral Fisher’s final reform made Britain’s previous supremacy obsolete, the construction of the HMS Dreadnaught.  At 491 feet long and 17,900 tons it was huge for its time but what was revolutionary about the Dreadnaught was its armaments.  Instead of having an armament of large guns and smaller armaments the Dreadnaught used only ten twelve inch guns with no secondary batteries.  The significance of this was that now all previous battleships would be in danger of being sunk before they could even get within range of the Dreadnaught.  This fact rendered the Royal Navies supremacy in Battleships obsolete and levelled the playing field so that other nations, namely Germany, could start at even strength with Great Britain. 

By 1905 for the people of Great Britain the Kaiser’s empire was known as “the enemy.”  The greatest fear of the British masses was a suspension in food imports that would literally starve the British people to death.  The British admiralty was very aware and concerned about this potential problem and the political threat that the British working class held.  The British Merchant Marine constituted over half of the worlds tonnage but even a predominance of ships would not guarantee the safe arrival of goods.  Conversely the German Merchant Marine was one-fifth the size of Great Britain and still the second largest in the world.  In order to be effective in times of war the merchant marine would have to be concentrated.  The idea of a convoy of merchantmen guarded by military vessels seemed preposterous to the British admiralty, who considered merchant captains incapable of sailing their ships in a straight line.  However convoys were implemented during the Great War after Germany declared unrestricted submarine warfare in 1916.  By 1906 the British admiralty looked favourably on the possibility of a sea blockade of Germany in the event of war.  While the average British worker spent about 20% of his budget on food, the average German worker spent about one-third of his.  With this in mind supremacy in warships stationed near the coast of Germany could prove effective in starving Germany out of a possible war, unfortunately this strategy did not assume the use of submarines and sea mines that the Germans could utilize in a war.

By 1908 Great Britain was having difficulty staying ahead in the naval race, despite public opinion and political parties favouring increased naval spending, radical Liberals like David Lloyd-George and Winston Churchill were opposed to any further increase in the navy’s budget.  However, once in 1906 and again in 1907 when the British announced decreases in naval production, the Germans announced increases in their naval construction, which further fuelled British concerns about the threat posed by Germany.  The insistence of Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany on building a navy that could rival the Royal Navy meant that the English would have to continue increasing their spending if they wanted to stay ahead in the naval race.  In 1908 after a fruitless diplomatic mission by King Edward the British public’s fears of Germany increased further.  Then, later in November of 1908, Germany announced that it would not be reducing its naval estimates for the coming year.  Panic followed in England when the public realized that Germany could build Dreadnaught class battleships just as fast as they could, the result was a reduction in any opposition to stepping up production for more battleships for the Royal Navy.  

In February of 1912, Lord Haladane of England left for Germany in the hopes of negotiating a “naval holiday,” or a break from naval construction on both sides.  It was expected at the time that Germany would further increase her high seas fleet thus forcing Great Britain to do the same.  In March, before Lord Haladane had completed his mission, Winston Churchill delivered the first naval estimates wherein he detailed that a superiority of 60 percent was to be maintained, in the case of dreadnaughts, over Germany.  These proposals received a sour reception in Germany where the Kaiser remarked that any form of a “naval holiday” would “only be possible between allies.”  After the completion of Lord Haladane’s mission the naval question was avoided by Germany who did not want to appear as the aggressor by repeatedly refusing a stand-down, however, Churchill called the Kaiser’s bluff and repeated his offer in the autumn.  Again the Germans refused.  The naval deadlock was the result of the common German idea that Great Britain stood in her way of becoming a great power, both at sea and on land.  In England’s defence, she could not allow a large rival navy to jeopardize her food imports, which almost the entire English population depended on.  Adding to the deadlock was the fact that in a newly unified country, like Germany, the navy was national, middle class, and the chief hobby of its leader Kaiser Wilhelm.

        The eventual outbreak of war can be seen as the result of three possible conditions.  First, statesman of all factions lost control over a minor crisis in July of 1914 and this lead to war.  Second, the conflict between Germany and Triple Entente was based on mutual misconceptions of hostile intent, which implies that the conflict was avoidable.  Or third, war arose in part due to the Anglo-German détente of 1911-1914; this last explanation is one I will argue in more detail.  An Anglo-German spiral of hostility, which was fuelled by naval competition, had developed before 1911.  After 1911, British foreign policy towards Germany displayed more willingness to cooperate.  For example, the end result of the Agadir Crisis of 1911 showed signs that Great Britain and Germany’s relations were improving.  The reason for this improvement in relations was because British foreign secretary, Sir Edward Grey, had turned toward a policy of détente.  Before 1912, Grey wished to improve the relationship with Germany by resolving the naval question.  This approach was getting no results and only served to fuel the animosity between London and Berlin.  After 1912 the question of the two country’s navies was not brought up again.  Minor agreements were sought to prove that relations were improving; these agreements were cordial agreements without political understanding.  Radical Liberals liked Grey’s policy of détente and his new direction satisfied many of his domestic opponents as well.  

The deadlock over the issue of the two countries navies was a result of diametrically opposed interests.  Germany would not agree to decrease its navy without a guarantee of neutrality from Great Britain.  Britain could not guarantee neutrality if Germany attacked France.  So attempts to find a basis for cooperation between London and Berlin caused them to turn to peripheral issues, like the crisis in Balkans, where neither country had key interests.  The treaty of London after the first Balkan war was another good sign of increasing cooperation between Berlin and London.  An agreement over the German controlled Baghdad railroad is a further example of this trend.  

        After 1912 the Naval Question was still not resolved, however the pace of naval construction had slackened.  Germany seemed to have recognized that Great Britain would not allow a higher ratio than 16:10 in capital ships.  Also, in Germany, financial limitation was having its effect partly due to an increased emphasis on a larger army.  T        The Anglo-German détente on the eve of war was illusionary because many of the key issues had not been resolved and there were misconceptions on both sides as to the intentions of the other.  Both of the country’s populations recognized the improved relations between their governments and this added to the misconceptions.  When asked, Grey failed to make clear that Britain would side with France in the event of a continental war.  Due to the recent improvement in cordial relations, the Kaiser began to believe it was a good possibility that England would remain neutral.  In Grey’s defence the British cabinet would not agree to a public military alliance with France and Grey believed that an uncommitted position might avoid war.  So when Austria-Hungary decided to take strong action against Serbia, instead of restraining it like Germany had done in 1912, Berlin encouraged Austria-Hungary to take action, the so-called “blank cheque.”  This decision was partly a result of the conception of many German elites that Germany’s chances for expansion were slipping away and also due to the Kaiser’s idea that Great Britain would remain neutral.  When it appeared likely that Great Britain would side with France, Germany foreign secretary Bethmann-Hollweg tried to restrain Austria-Hungary in a telegram he sent the following day.  By that time, unfortunately, it was too late and from then on Bethman-Hollweg as well as the Kaiser blamed the ensuing world war on the entry of Great Britain.  In reality it was a misconception on both sides as to the others intentions.

        The Naval Revolution in Great Britain revolutionized the country’s navy and helped industrialize the nation.  War scares with Russia and France, as well as visionaries like Sir John Fisher helped create a Royal Navy in the twentieth century that was every bit as powerful and held just as much respect as the Royal Navy in the nineteenth century.  Unfortunately the development of the battleship Dreadnaught erased Britain’s previous naval superiority and allowed nations like Germany to catch up and even threaten the Royal Navy’s Grand Fleet.  The ensuing naval race lead both countries to a deadlock and followed with a détente where relations between the two countries became more cordial, at the cost of resolving any of the key issues.  The détente encouraged misconceptions about the intentions of both sides and it was these misconceptions, specifically the question of whether or not Great Britain would remain neutral in the event of a continental war, that lead to the outbreak of World War I.  This is only one single hypothesis about the origins of World War I and it is not the only one.  The origins or World War I can offer an ample number of hypothesise, but no single analogy can capture all the lessons offered by the outbreak of the conflict.  

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