The Strategic Disaster of the Imperial German Navy

[welshofficer]

As the 19th century drew to a close, the British Empire and its German descended monarchy remained in splendid isolation and keen to avoid entanglements in European conflicts. Icily watching its two traditional enemies across the English Channel and the Great Game of Asia, France and Russia. And then the Kaiser launched a German naval build-up of unprecedented scale, threatening the imperial trade routes and almost singlehandedly pushing the British Empire into the arms of its two traditional enemies. What did the Imperial German Navy achieve for Germany, at the cost of turning the British Empire into an enemy? It took away vast resourcing from the German Army, as can be seen from the % of peacetime males conscripted in France with Germany. Without the naval build-up, the German Army in 1914 would have been considerably larger on the same overall defence budget and only facing a Franco-Russian enemy. Dreadnoughts were very expensive, both to build and to operate. And when war came, what did it achieve? Did it defeat the Royal Navy or even a sizeable minority of it? No. Did it lift the Royal Navy blockade strangling Germany? No. Did it save any of the German colonies? No. Eventually the best sailors were transferred to the U-Boat arm. The fleet stagnated before mutiny and revolution, and eventually went into post-war internment and scuttling. Was the Imperial German Navy the greatest strategic disaster ever conceived, costing Germany victory in 1914? Discuss.

[Colt45]

I think you have a very good point here. If Germany had not built the navy as large as it did, more resources are available to the army, and that could have changed things since their only hope was to defeat the British and French before America could effectively intervene. With a larger army, they could have lasted in the war of attrition much longer, perhaps winning it. Also, if they hadn't gone heavy in u-boats, they might not have sunk the Lusitania, which was the final straw bringing America into the war.

[welshofficer]

C45,

If the Germans had not built a navy to challenge the RN, there might have been no British Empire entry at all. A deal could have been done over passage through Belgium. France spent the war clinging on for dear life, even with the British Empire covering Flanders and the Somme. Tsarist Russia imploded in February 1917, even with France and the British Empire as allies.

WO

[Colt45]

Agreed. It seems the German government forgot the axiom, "don't feed failure". They should have put resources in the area they had the most chance of success, which was the army. There was no way they could hope to challenge or defeat the British navy. With a bigger army, they could probably have propped up Turkey and help stave off the defeat in the middle east that ended the Ottoman empire.

[welshofficer]

If the German Navy had one strategic point, it was to deter the British Empire from intervening in a continental war. Again, total failure.