David H Olivier. German Naval Strategy 1856-1888: Forerunners of Tirpitz. London: Frank Cass, 2004. xi + 213 pp. $125.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-7146-5553-6.
Reviewed by David Brandon Dennis (Department of History, Ohio State University)
Published on H-German (June, 2007)
Public Privateering? Staatskaperei before Tirpitz
Compared with its European counterparts, the German navy is a young organization, barely a century-and-a-half old. The third quarter of the nineteenth century saw its transformation from the diminutive Royal Prussian Navy, with only three officers and one seagoing corvette in 1848, to the world's third largest navy by the early 1880s. Despite such dynamic growth, the navy remained subordinate to army leadership and peripheral to Prussia's and, later, the empire's overall military strategy before the era of Wilhelm II and Alfred von Tirpitz. For this reason historians have, until recently, paid little attention to the early years of its development prior to 1888. Recent scholarship, however, has reevaluated the historical significance of Tirpitz's "forerunners," revealing the foundations they laid for later eras.[1] Building on this work, David Olivier's brief but insightful study adds to the relatively few available studies of this period in German naval history.
Olivier focuses primarily on the ways in which cruiser warfare doctrine, or in other words, commerce raiding, shaped German naval strategy before 1888, suggesting that it became the navy's "orthodox heresy." Because the German Navy lacked long-standing traditions, Olivier contends, it readily adopted the radical doctrine of cruiser warfare, considered heresy by other navies, as its de facto strategy in war planning. Army generals like Albrecht von Stosch and Leo von Caprivi led the Navy before 1888. While they put coastal defense and commerce protection first, they never explicitly rejected cruiser warfare. Instead, they stationed large numbers of long-range cruisers overseas to protect a rapidly expanding German merchant marine and, after 1884, to provide support for colonial ventures. Parliamentarians and naval officers, inspired by the successes of Confederate commerce raiders in the American Civil War, recognized that these cruisers constituted a ready force for commerce raiding. In this way, a majority faction within the navy and its allies in the Reichstag came to view cruiser warfare as the appropriate strategy to "take the battle to the foe ... and to uphold the honour of the junior branch of the German military" (p. 4). But this German doctrine of cruiser warfare was not simply a theoretical echo of the French Social Darwinist Jeune Ecole, as previous scholarship has maintained. Olivier convincingly demonstrates that the former developed at least two decades prior to and lacked the ruthlessness advocated by the latter. Nevertheless, due to Otto von Bismarck's opposition and the unsuitability of German colonies, Germany never gained the overseas naval bases required for effective cruiser warfare.
This volume takes a standard top-down approach, relying on naval records as well as the memoirs, diaries, letters, and published writings of political figures, administrators, theorists, admirals, and captains. Three nice appendices, covering warship terminology, the Prussian and German navies' use of overseas ports, and German cruiser classes, combined with Olivier's meticulous care in defining his terms, make the material highly accessible for non-specialists. The book falls into two different parts, one comparative and one historical. The comparative section explores the ways in which international law and technology changed the horizons of naval warfare during the second half of the nineteenth century. The second part deals with the historical evolution of doctrine within the German navy.
The first part explores developments in naval warfare in the late nineteenth century, paying close attention to the British, French, American (both Union and Confederate), and German navies. It begins with the 1856 Declaration of Paris, through which sea powers agreed to end privateering. While the Declaration aimed to protect the rights of neutral countries on the high seas, it unintentionally encouraged Staatskaperei, or "nationalized privateering" (p. 184). Denying the enemy the means to wage war, rather than profit, became the chief motivation for a war on commerce that would now be run by navies. Here, Olivier sketches the intriguing thesis that German naval strategy before 1888 was deeply influenced by the U.S. Civil War. Since that war was the first to be fought under the new rules of maritime engagement, naval strategists around the world focused on the CSS Alabama's successful raids on Union merchant shipping. Commerce destruction seemed to be the new direction of naval warfare as Confederate raiders added "sink" to the "stop, search, and seize" of typical privateering actions (p. 17).
Even as international rules of naval warfare shifted, new technology ushered in a potentially confusing "transition era" in naval strategy. The advent of steam, armor plating, and especially the torpedo made investment in large capital ships look risky. Many navies came to view the cheaper, faster cruiser as an acceptable alternative. Olivier ends part 1 with an analysis of two naval theorists' responses to the new technologies. While J.C.R. Colomb, a Briton, emphasized commerce protection and Richild Grivel, a Frenchman, emphasized commerce destruction, both believed that in an industrializing world of imperialist competition the "flow of commerce" was "key to victory at sea" (p. 23). Cruiser warfare, Olivier contends, had become the order of the day.
In part 2, Olivier skillfully traces the historical development of first Prussian and then German naval doctrine between the Danish Blockade in 1848 and Caprivi's resignation in 1888. The Franco-Prussian War stands out as an important turning point in his narrative. 1871 represented an "unhappy peace" for naval officers humiliated by the German fleet's poor showing against the French (p. 80). To fix the problems the navy faced during the war, the newly organized empire embarked on a second fleet construction plan (Flottengründungsplan) in 1873 (the Prussian Landtag had passed the first in 1867). In one chapter, Olivier details the progress of the 1873 plan during Stosch's stint as Chef der Admiraltät. Stosch oversaw tremendous expansion of both the fleet and German shipyards, even as he continued to give priority to coastal defense and commerce protection. But he ignored and alienated his officer corps, which argued for cruiser warfare and overseas naval bases. His successor, Caprivi, was more amenable to listening to his officers, convening an Admiralty Council in 1884. Documents from this council comprise the centerpiece of Olivier's evidence. The council recommended that cruiser warfare be the navy's primary strategy and designed two cruiser classes that could carry out the task. Caprivi ultimately rejected these recommendations, preferring the construction of a fleet of capital ships, a task he nevertheless failed to carry out. Olivier defends Caprivi against critics who decry the failure of his battle fleet plan. He points out that Caprivi, who guided the navy through the rough early years of German colonialism, accomplished much more than has been recognized in terms of organizational planning, strategy, and tactics, calling his policy "the best policy for the Imperial German Navy in the turbulent times of the 1880s" (p. 177). Ultimately, Olivier condemns the "orthodox heresy" as "an illusion" because Germany lacked the overseas naval bases to support cruiser warfare (p. 187).
Although expensive, this volume is a compact, accessible addition to the few existing studies of the German navy before Tirpitz. It contains material that will interest not only naval historians, but also scholars of German overseas trade and colonialism. The suggestion that German naval strategists drew inspiration from Confederate commerce raiders is compelling. Yet one wishes Olivier had provided more evidence demonstrating the link between the two navies, particularly in a study billed as comparative. Moreover, the choice of "orthodox heresy" to describe a doctrine endorsed only by naval officers and their parliamentary allies and ultimately rejected by Caprivi seems to reach a bit. These reservations aside, Olivier has written a book that provides engaging arguments for the specialist, as well as a solid introduction to early German naval history for the non-specialist.
Note
[1]. Rolf Hobson, Imperialism at Sea: Naval Strategic Thought, the Ideology of Sea Power and the Tirpitz Plan, 1875-1914 (Boston: Brill, 2002); Ivo N. Lambi, The Navy and German Power Politics, 1862-1914 (Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1984); Lawrence Sondhaus, Preparing for Weltpolitik: German Sea Power before the Tirpitz Era (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1997).
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Citation:
David Brandon Dennis. Review of Olivier, David H, German Naval Strategy 1856-1888: Forerunners of Tirpitz.
H-German, H-Net Reviews.
June, 2007.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=13311
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