Tirpitz and the Imperial German Navy

13. The Whirlwind Rises, 1908–1911

293 Diplomatic Complications The 1908 Novelle, and the less celebrated but equally important ratcheting up of the ship cost table, was a great victory. Shipbuilding increased at an energetic pace. Money poured in to expand imperial and private shipyards, as well as Krupp’s great armor and artillery forges. In June 1908 Tirpitz arranged a junket for Reichstag and Bundesrat members. From Danzig to Kiel to Wilhelmshaven, the parliamentarians inspected fortifications and fleet exercises. Tirpitz explained the need for quiet, steady work over the next few years, and radiated confidence that the navy was spending the public’s money efficiently and wisely.1 The 1908 Novelle was a potentially provocative act. Tirpitz tried to soft-pedal it, but he feared that British Conservatives would raise a hue and cry and demand a corresponding expansion of the Royal Navy or, even worse, replay the “Copenhagen” cries heard in 1904–1905.2 Just as threatening for Tirpitz were British diplomatic attempts to limit the arms race. The British Liberals had social reform markers to redeem with their constituency. In the spring of 1908 there was a cabinet reshuffle. Herbert Asquith replaced the mortally ill Campbell-Bannerman as Prime Minister . David Lloyd George took Asquith’s position as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Winston Churchill became President of the Board of Trade. Reginald McKenna replaced the hapless Tweedmouth at the Admiralty. The four tempo Novelle gave Liberals two choices to avoid being savaged by Conservative navalists. They could increase the 1909 building program or reach an arms control understanding with Germany. Accus13 The Whirlwind Rises, 1908–1911 294 Tirpitz and the Imperial German Navy tomed to annual parliamentary appropriations, they had little grasp of the long-term nature of the Navy Law or of Tirpitz’s extraordinary tenacity in upholding it. Perhaps they thought that the Germans were like the French, who often announced ambitious building programs that were never fulfilled. In May 1908 Fisher convinced the Admiralty that at least four large ships were necessary for the 1909 program, with an additional two contingent upon German actions. Grey threatened to resign if the Cabinet did not accept the 4/6 program. Lloyd George and Churchill were reluctant to support as many as four. Both factions looked to negotiations with Germany to ease the situation and to spare them the embarrassment of calling for economies on armaments while then increasing naval estimates.3 In Foreign Office circles suspicion of Germany was growing. In 1907 Sir Eyre Crowe reminded Grey that Britain traditionally had opposed any continental power (e.g., Louis XIV or Napoleon) that threatened continental hegemony. Crowe argued that Germany, intentionally or not, was moving in a hegemonic direction and should draw Britain’s opposition.4 Despite Crowe, Grey was determined to try negotiations. By the summer of 1908 Bülow, too, was interested in diplomacy. He felt pressured by Germany’s growing diplomatic isolation and the pressing need to implement tax reform to pay for the navy. Grey approached German Ambassador Count Paul Wolff-Metternich to discuss the naval question. They spoke informally between March and August 1908. Although the conversations led to nothing specific, the exchange revealed each side’s priorities.5 A complicating factor, then and later, was Coerper’s successor as Naval Attaché in London, Captain Wilhelm Widenmann, a partisan of Tirpitz who consistently undermined Metternich.6 Grey argued that Britain, with its tiny army, could never threaten Germany regardless of how superior its navy; but if Germany’s navy became superior, its army could conquer England. The size of the British battleship-building program depended on Germany’s. Grey, whose threat perception acumen was as obtuse as Tirpitz’s, failed to acknowledge the havoc that a British blockade could wreak on the German economy. He was also ignorant of how the German Navy Law worked. With annual appropriations, Britain could easily vary its program from year to year. He seemed unaware of the German fear that arms control might destroy the Navy Law and bring back the chaos of the 1890s. The Whirlwind Rises, 1908–1911 295 Metternich, and to a certain extent Bülow, stood in the middle. Met­ ter­ nich dutifully passed British views on to the Emperor, who often riddled his dispatches with sarcastic marginalia. In July Metternich met twice with Grey and Lloyd George. They were ignorant of the German domestic complications brought on by the suggestion of an immediate reduction in...