The arms race between Great Britain and Germany that occurred from the last decade of the nineteenth century until the advent of World War I in 1914 was one of the intertwined causes of that conflict. While based in a bilateral relationship that had worsened over many decades, the arms race began with a plan by German Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz in 1897 to create a fleet in being to force Britain to make diplomatic concessions; Tirpitz did not expect the Imperial German Navy to defeat the Royal Navy.
With the support of the Kaiser Wilhelm II, Tirpitz began advancing a series of laws to construct an increasing number of large surface warships. The construction of in 1906 prompted Tirpitz to further increase the rate of naval construction. While some British observers were uneasy at German naval expansion, alarm was not general until Germany's naval bill of 1908. The British public and political opposition demanded that the Liberal government meet the German challenge, resulting in the funding of additional dreadnoughts in 1910 and escalating the arms race.
Maintaining Europe's largest army and second-largest navy took an enormous toll on Germany's finances. Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg, German chancellor from 1909, undertook a policy of détente with Britain to alleviate the fiscal strain and focus on the rivalry with France. Under Bethmann Hollweg, and particularly from 1912 onwards, Germany abandoned the dreadnought arms race and focused on a commerce raiding naval strategy to be conducted with submarines.
One of the ironies of the arms race and subsequent conflict was that, while the German battle fleet fought only one major surface engagement (the inconclusive Battle of Jutland) and never seriously threatened British naval supremacy, the commerce raiding strategy that had been the historic focus of German naval doctrine would consistently endanger British merchant shipping and imports throughout the war. The success of German submarine warfare during World War I had great influence on German Naval policy in the lead up to the Second World War, with the utilisation of both U-boats and fast, well armoured battlecruisers for commerce raiding being the primary task of the Kriegsmarine.
Background
Britain had the largest navy in the world and its policy was to ensure the Royal Navy was at least the size of the next two largest navies combined, known as the two-power standard. Britain's economy was dependent on the ability to ship in raw materials and export out a finished product. By 1900, 58% of calories consumed by Britain's population came from overseas, meaning that an inability to guarantee free movement on the seas would result in food shortages. Even before the German naval challenge, British political and military leaders mused about catastrophic economic, social, and political consequences if the Royal Navy could not guarantee British freedom of action. Worry about Britain's ability to defend itself became the focus of the invasion literature genre, which began in 1871, remained popular to World War I, and was highly influential on public opinion.
The first Chancellor of united Germany Otto von Bismarck had skillfully guided Germany's foreign relations so it was not firmly attached to any other European power. After his departure in 1890, Germany's foreign policy drifted into deeper commitment with the Triple Alliance of Austria-Hungary and Italy. Friedrich von Holstein of the German Foreign Office convinced the new Chancellor, Leo von Caprivi, to not renew the Reinsurance Treaty with the Russian Empire in 1890. Bismarck had designed the Reinsurance Treaty to keep Russia from an alliance with France; the Russian search for allies who could finance their enormous debts resulted in the Franco-Russian Alliance several years later. Holstein had hoped that the lapsing of the Reinsurance Treaty would result in a closer relationship with Britain, which was competing with both Russia and France, which did not occur. From 1890 to 1897, Germany wavered between pro-British and pro-Russian policies, reflecting the incoherence of German leadership.
In 1890, Alfred Thayer Mahan, an American naval officer and historian, published The Influence of Sea Power upon History, widely considered the most important work in modern naval strategy. Mahan argued that sea power was the deciding factor that allowed strong nations to thrive and impose their will on weaker nations, and that the proper way to achieve naval supremacy was large-scale battles between fleets. At the time, the Imperial German Navy subscribed to the commerce raiding theory of navy strategy, but Mahan's arguments had enormous influence over subsequent German and British thinking.
Translated into German by Admiral Ludwig Borckenhagen, who supported Mahan's ideas, a copy of the book was placed in every German naval vessel. Kaiser Wilhelm II immediately subscribed to Mahan's ideas after reading his book in 1894 and sought Reichstag funding to implement them.Holger H. Herwig, The Influence of A.T. Mahan upon German Sea Power (U.S. Naval War College, 1990).
The Reichstag funded four of the thirty-six cruisers that Wilhelm requested in 1895, and none at all the following two years. Frustrated at being rebuffed, Wilhelm recalled von Tirpitz from his duties in the Far East to be the Secretary of State of the German Imperial Naval Office in 1897. Tirpitz was a follower of anti-British nationalist Heinrich von Treitschke as well as Mahan's ideas on the primacy of battle fleets. In 1894, he wrote a famous memorandum section titled, The Natural Purpose of a Fleet is the Strategic Offensive, dismissing commerce raiding and coastal defense, and arguing that Germany must prepare for offensive sea battle to ensure its place in the world.
In his first meeting with Wilhelm in June 1897, Tirpitz stated his case that Germany must confront Britain to ensure its place as a European power. He also outlined a strategy that he would follow for many years: build a German navy strong enough that the effort to destroy it would open Britain to attack from Britain's French and Russian rivals, which is a form of Mahan's "fleet in being". Tirpitz calculated that since the British navy was scattered to protect its possessions around the globe, "it comes to a battleship war between Heligoland and the Thames." in Both Tirpitz and Bernhard von Bülow, who was Secretary of State of Foreign Affairs from 1897 to 1900 and then Chancellor until 1909, calculated that once Germany possessed a navy that Britain could not destroy without imperiling itself, Britain would be forced to negotiate with Germany as an equal and perhaps even give up its "splendid isolation" to join the Triple Alliance. Although Britain maintained formal independence from the Triple Alliance, it entered into informal understandings with Italy and Austria-Hungary in the 1887 Mediterranean protocol. These were strategic discussions rather than binding treaties, aimed to check Russian influence and secure access for the Royal Navy.
The German Fleet Acts (1898–1912)
In accord with Wilhelm II's enthusiasm for an expanded German navy and the strategic vision of Tirpitz, five Fleet Acts in 1898, 1900, 1906, 1908, and 1912 greatly expanded the German High Seas Fleet. The German aim was to build a fleet that would be two thirds the size of the British navy.
The First Naval Act passed in March 1898 after an extensive lobbying and public relations campaign led by Wilhelm, Tirpitz, and Bülow. The act funded the building of eleven battleships in the next seven years. Britain had little concern about the First Naval Act as it did not increase Germany's navy to a size relevant to the two-power standard. However, by November 1898, Tirpitz had begun work on a plan to double the fleet to include forty-five battleships and armored cruisers, which he presented to the Kaiser in September 1899. The timing was fortunate, as the eruption of the Second Boer War and British seizure of a German steamer off southern Africa enraged the German public against Britain; the Reichstag passed the Second Navy Law in June 1900.
HMS Dreadnought
The passage of the Second Naval Act in Germany increased worry among British policymakers. In 1902, First Lord of the Admiralty William Palmer, 2nd Earl of Selborne, Tirpitz's British counterpart, told his fellow Cabinet members that the German navy was being built with an eye for war with Britain. Admiral Jacky Fisher was appointed First Sea Lord (professional head of the Royal Navy) in 1904, and massively reorganized the Royal Navy by bringing most of Britain's navy force close to the home isles. He also set up a committee to design a new super battleship, which especially in the wake of the May 1905 Battle of Tsushima seemed to be the future of naval warfare. was launched in February 1906, just 14 months after being approved."The Cause of World War I" Jane's Fighting Ships, an annual reference book on naval warships, noted that HMS Dreadnought was equivalent to two or three normal battleships.
In the beginning of 1905, the German naval attaché in Britain reported to Tirpitz that the British were planning a new class of battleship. That summer, Tirpitz consulted with his advisers; by autumn, he had decided that Germany would match the British naval building plan. Scholars highlight that Imperial German decision-making was so incoherent that Tirpitz could make this decision without consulting the Chancellor, foreign ministry, treasury, the naval strategic planning offices, or the two other naval offices: the Naval High Command and Naval Cabinet. He presented his new supplementary naval bill to the Reichstag, envisioning a 35% increase in spending over the Second Naval Act to build two dreadnoughts and one armored cruiser per year. The bill encountered fierce opposition from across the political spectrum because of the growing government budget balance and resistance by the Reichstag to raising taxes. Fortunately for the bill, the Algeciras Conference that concluded in April 1906 after the First Moroccan Crisis inflamed German nationalist sentiment against Britain and France and the third naval law passed easily in May 1906.
Wilhelm and Tirpitz, among other German leaders, viewed British actions as working in concert with France and Russia to encircle Germany. Tirpitz believed that the British knew that they had made a mistake in building the expensive dreadnoughts and armored cruisers, and that they would realize their folly if Germany did not flinch in following them. German leaders had also become increasingly nervous about a 'Kopenhagen', a British strike to disable their fleet like that conducted in the 1807 Battle of Copenhagen. In December 1904, during the heightened tensions of the Russo-Japanese War, rumours spread that Japan's ally Britain would attack and the German ambassador to Britain, who was in Berlin, had to reassure Wilhelm and other senior officials that Britain did not intend to start a war. As fears rose, so did nationalist sentiment, including right-wing criticism of the leftist Social Democratic Party, who resisted higher defence spending and encouraged peaceful foreign relations.
From 1905 onward, Admiral Fisher developed war plans for blockading the German coast; it became a central British strategy and was implemented in 1914. In 1906, Fisher declared that Germany was the "only probable enemy" and that the Royal Navy should keep a force twice as powerful as Germany's navy within a few hours of Germany's shores. Eyre Crowe of the British Foreign Office wrote a memorandum on 1 January 1907 to Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey that became policy. In it, Crowe urged stalwart resistance to what he viewed as Germany's attempts at hegemony in Europe. He argued that German actions might be the result of a confused strategy, but that the intent was irrelevant to British national security.
Fourth bill (1908)