Militarism in a Global Age: Naval Ambitions in Germany and the United States before World War I

Chapter 8. Manufacturing Consent

Chapter 8 Manufacturing Consent In an important article on German-American naval competition before World War I, published in 1939, Alfred Vagts, a German émigré historian in the United States, insisted on the commonality of the two navies’ approaches to politics and propaganda. Both had recognized, claimed Vagts, “that they had to make and keep their peoples ‘navy minded’; hence the interest in the ‘navy leagues’, pressure groups useful against the sometimes hesitant parliamentarians or governments; hence the wide and constant use of the mass of newspapers.”To persuade the “great masses,” both navies had even felt the need to invent “virile and reckless” enemies to concretize their “sea power doctrine.” Such commonality, in turn, had stemmed from close mutual observation between two navies that considered each other probable opponents. “Imitating the enemy” and “improving on his lines” had “engaged a large part” of the “political and technical efforts of the two navies,” extending in particular to the mobilization of public consent.1 AsVagts suggested, U.S. and German naval elites strove to promote the cause of maritime expansion and transform the contested terrain of naval policymaking in strikingly similar ways. Navalists’ quest for power and resources entailed the vigorous pursuit of political opportunity and domestic consent, which, in turn, fed on a keen sense of the realities of participatory Manufacturing Consent 201 politics and the power of public opinion.Traversing the realms of national politics, civil society, and popular culture, officers engaged in a wide array of activities to further the cause of their navy. They ranged from parliamentary lobbying to public relations work and pressure-group politics. Seizing upon the opportunities opened up by new modes of mass communication and the profound changes in the public spheres in the two countries, the two navies’policy makers engaged in propaganda efforts and strove to forge a navalist public. By 1900, the Imperial Naval Office under Tirpitz came to set the tone for the two navies’ efforts to play politics and shape public opinion. The Americans openly admired the German example and sought to emulate it. But well before the Germans could provide inspiration, the Americans had already been intervening in the political arena and entering the public and literary spheres to promote the cause of naval expansion. U.S. naval militarists did not need the German example, or any other for that matter, to recognize that the pursuit of maritime force did not take place in a “professional vacuum.”2 Points of Departure The two navies pursued different institutional approaches to the matter of naval propaganda and politicking, which were emblematic of the different landscapes each group of navalists navigated in its quest for power and resources. In Imperial Germany, the navy followed a bureaucratic model. The organization of the navy and the structure of the state favored the formation of a cohesive, far-reaching, and aggressive strategy by a powerful naval agency.3 Most directly,the navy was part of a strong imperial state that was prone to exert pressure on the parliament, shape public opinion, and involve itself in electoral politics and civil society.4 The Imperial Naval Office created a framework that allowed its officers to fuse policy, lobbying, and public relations work into a seamless whole. Already during his first campaign for the office of the secretary of the navy in 1895–96,Tirpitz had given this issue considerable thought, sharing in a growing consensus among senior naval officers and the emperor about the need for increased public agitation to prepare the ground for new navy bills.5 The propaganda campaign for the army bill in 1893 served as a major source of inspiration.6 The immediate reason was the opposition of the Reichstag to massive naval expansion, which had come to the fore in the 202 The Quest for Power debates surrounding the naval budgets of the mid-1890s.The imperial state, it once again became evident, could not command the parliament at will.7 Yet the Germans were also intensely aware of the examples set by other navies. British methods of naval propaganda cast a long shadow on the thinking of Tirpitz and his aides. When Tirpitz took office he commissioned a report by the German naval attaché in London about the “movement among the English people,which led to a large increase of the English Navy during the past 10–20 years.”The 141-page report that the attaché presented...