The Tirpitz Legacy: The Political Ideology of German Sea Power

Maritimer Imperialismus: Seemachtideologie, seestrategisches Denken und der Tirpitzplan 1875 bis 1914. By Rolf Hobson. Munich: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 2004. ISBN 3-486-56671-7. Bibliography. Index. Pp. x, 388. Euro 34.80.

Albert Hopman: Das ereignisreiche Leben eines "Wilhelminers." Tagebücher, Briefe, Aufzeichnungen 1901 bis 1920. Edited by Michael Epkenhans. Munich: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 2004. ISBN 3-486-56840-X. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. x, 1231. Euro 49.80.

On 7 June 2004, the German Military History Research Office (MGFA) hosted its first program on naval history since it relocated from Freiburg to Potsdam in 1994. This occasion was prompted by the publication of two new and significant works: the German translation of Rolf Hobson's 2002 ground-breaking Imperialism at Sea (Boston and Leiden: Brill) in collaboration with the Norwegian Institute of Defense Studies, and Michael Epkenhans's edition of Vice Admiral Albert Hopman's diaries, letters, and writings, 1901–20. The program began with a panel of "naval history experts" chaired by Jost Dülffer. The panel focused on an examination of the Weltmachthorizonte (perspectives on world power) of four Imperial naval officers: Alfred von Tirpitz (Hobson), Albert Hopman (Epkenhans), Paul Hintze (Johannes Hürter) and Erich Raeder (Jörg Hillman). The discussion among the panelists and the audience was lively and underscored the significance of Hobson's groundbreaking insights regarding the origins and goals of Tirpitz's strategy. Moreover, Hobson's interpretations present new implications for the "continuity" thesis of German naval history in the period 1890–1945. Although the panel participants had not yet assimilated the impact of Hobson's prescient (and long-overdue) revisionist reassessment of Wilhelmian naval policy and politics and redefinition of the historiographical landscape of the scholarly debate over the aims of German navalism, the overarching discussion reflected the issues brought to the surface by Volker Berghahn's seminal 1971 study of the Tirpitz Plan. Bergahn had emphasized the political and social implications of Tirpitz's naval race with the British (a fleet built against the Reichstag and England). Germany's fleet-building was an attempt to preserve the politico-social status quo of the Kaiserreich's ruling elite through a radical reordering of the international balance of power. Berghahn's interpretation subsequently provided the framework for a rich debate in the 1970s and 1980s over the causes of German navalism and its influence across two world wars. Jost Dülffer's 1973 detailed analysis of fleet-building in the Weimar Republic and the Third Reich further illuminated the postwar navy's role in domestic and foreign policy and documented how its leaders continued to keep alive its global ambitions to become a "world sea power." In the late 1970s and 1980s, Gerhard Schreiber demonstrated how the continuity of the navy's concept of Seemacht, blended with the officer corps' Weltmachthorizonte to create Tirpitz's unique concept of Seemachtideologie (ideology of sea power). This navalist ideology underpinned the Germany's navy's goal of "revising" the Versailles Treaty restrictions and resuming the quest for naval world power status.

Critics of these scholars rejected what they saw as the "preconceived theoretical frameworks" and the role of social-political motives behind German fleet-building, both before and after Tirpitz, and the "psychological analysis" of the navy's Seemacht ideology. They argued that the documentary records of ambitious fleet plans and aggressive expressions of pursuing world power did not represent military reality and failed to see the catalyst role that the "English problem" played in Tirpitz's formulation (and the perpetuation of his legacy).

In spite of Schreiber's additional documentary evidence supporting the linkage between the Tirpitz-Raeder political ideology of sea power and the actual decisions and policies made during the period 1888–1945 (which cannot be simply dismissed as "fantasies" or "utopian"), the controversy over the interpretations of Berghahn, Dülffer, and Schreiber resurfaced in Jörg Hillmann's remarks on Raeder. Challenging...