German Naval Strategy 1856-1888: Forerunners of Tirpitz (review)

Until recently scholars had largely neglected the study of Germany's pre-1888 period of naval development to concentrate on its two bids to become a world naval power. Within this context, the Tirpitz Era was regarded as a "definite break" with the past with little emphasis being placed on continuity. Building on the seminal works of Lawrence Sondhaus (Preparing for Weltpolitik, 1997)—who argued that Germany's drive for world power preceded Tirpitz and that the "Fleet Builder" took advantage of earlier developments to build his vision of German sea power—and Rolf Hobson (Imperialism at Sea, 2002), who presents the development of a unique "Prussian school" of naval thought in the pre-1888 period which preceded Tirpitz's "German school," David Olivier's comparatively slim but well documented and researched text (188 pages) provides a solid contribution to further fill the gap in the scholarship of this critical period of pre-Tirpitz German naval development and the evolution of its strategy.

In particular, Olivier examines the origins of cruiser warfare doctrines and their significance in the pre-1888 navy. The author makes a convincing argument that the concept of commerce raiding was more of an orthodoxy (the navy's "orthodox heresy") of the incipient German navy than earlier studies have recognized and not merely a response to the domination of the army, the influence of the French Jeune École in the mid-1880s, or the opposition to Tirpitz's plans which would emerge after the 1890s. He credits the navy's early founders with understanding the changes in maritime law and naval technology foreshadowed by the Confederacy's commerce raiders in America's civil war. The outlawing of privateering in 1856 meant that the denial of the enemy's means to wage war would be one of navies, not privateers, and consequently, in the increasing industrialization of the world's economies "more ruthless" than before (foreshadowing the international debate over unrestricted submarine warfare in two world wars).

The author's perceptive analysis adds a new dimension to our understanding of the evolution of German naval doctrine in the context of its internal and external environments and the historic issue of how to balance sea power within the primacy of the army in national defense and how both were to provide Germany its place in the sun. This concise study raises a number of topics that deserve expansion and further study. The influence of these early proponents of the guerre de course, for example, suggest a stronger continuity to the naval policies of German naval leadership and the concept of the navy's vision of waging a global war in the second world war. The question of whether there was ever a "very brief window of opportunity" for the proponents of Staatskaperei (state-sanctioned pirating) to emulate the naval strategy of the Confederacy is an intriguing one which will be sure to spark more comprehensive investigations into the debate over the role of commerce raiding and its role in international navalism.

Specialists will want to have this book in their library in spite of its cost.