Alfred von Tirpitz

Alfred von Tirpitz (born March 19, 1849, Küstrin, Prussia—died March 6, 1930, Ebenhausen, near Munich) was a German admiral, the chief builder of the German Navy in the 17 years preceding World War I and a dominant personality of the emperor William II’s reign. He was ennobled in 1900 and attained the rank of admiral in 1903 and that of grand admiral in 1911; he retired in 1916.

Early career and rise to power

Tirpitz was the son of a Prussian civil servant. He enlisted in the Prussian Navy as a midshipman in 1865, attended the Kiel Naval School, and was commissioned in 1869. After serving as commander of a torpedo-boat flotilla and as inspector general of the torpedo fleet, he demonstrated his technical ability and devised the tactical principles that were developed systematically when he became chief of staff of the Navy High Command. Promoted to rear admiral in 1895, Tirpitz was sent to command the German cruiser squadron in East Asia from 1896 to 1897 and selected Tsingtao as a future German naval base in China. In June 1897 Tirpitz became secretary of state of the Imperial Navy Department, an appointment that marked the beginning of his two-decade buildup of the German fleet in close collaboration with Emperor William II.

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German Empire: Tirpitz and the German navy

In 1898 Tirpitz introduced the First Fleet Act, for the reorganization of Germany’s sea power. This law provided for an active navy consisting of 1 flagship, 16 battleships, 8 armoured coastal ships, and a force of 9 large and 26 small cruisers to be ready by 1904. Such a navy was regarded as strong enough for limited offensives in a war against France and Russia. While the 1898 act was designed to meet the need for a high-seas battle fleet, Tirpitz’s Second Fleet Act of 1900 laid down an ambitious program—to build a larger and more modern oceangoing fleet—that the navy was never able to practically fulfill. This law set 1917 as the year of completion for an active navy of 2 flagships, 36 battleships, 11 large cruisers, and 34 small cruisers. Tirpitz knew how to stimulate public interest in a bigger navy, and, as secretary of state from 1897, he displayed great skill as a parliamentarian. Tirpitz was ennobled in 1900 and awarded the Order of the Black Eagle; and in 1911 he rose to the rank of grand admiral.

In the meantime not even the 1900 navy law had evoked any significant political response in Britain. The reactions were late in coming: not until the British formed their alliances of 1904 (with France) and 1907 (with Russia) and launched the Dreadnought (1906) in an effort to score an important technical advantage by constructing oversized capital ships. Their building program turned out to be a miscalculation, however, because not only all the other great powers but even many countries with small navies such as Chile and Turkey immediately followed suit. Nevertheless, because Britain had had a head start since 1905, when it had an edge of seven capital ships over its principal rival, Germany, and because of rapidly increasing British and declining German construction, there were 49 British battleships either in service or being built in 1914, as against 29 German vessels of the same type.

Critique of Tirpitz’s policy

The decisive question in considering Tirpitz’s objectives is whether it was good policy to augment the navy laws to the point that they could not be implemented and must inevitably result in political difficulties. From 1900 onward, when the so-called Risikoflotte (“risk fleet”—i.e., a deterrent for potential attackers) was established under the second navy law, it became obvious that the navy was intended not only for actual defense but also as an alliance asset in time of peace. The emperor and Tirpitz hoped to be able, through mounting financial and military pressure, to force Britain to loosen its alliances. But when the British war minister Lord Haldane finally arrived in Berlin in 1912 for talks, political concessions were no longer obtainable from Britain. By that time Germany had discontinued its four-per-year naval vessel production rate and had abandoned the naval armament race with Britain. Thus, Tirpitz’s naval policy was no longer an actual threat, but it may have continued to play such a role in the minds of the British public.

However eagerly Tirpitz may have wanted the high-seas fleet to go into action in World War I, he was forced to realize that, given the vastly superior naval strength of the Allies, his policy of naval deterrence had failed and that the conditions for a decision at sea were unfavourable to Germany. Even unlimited submarine warfare, which he favoured but for which the necessary vessels had still to be built, could no longer have had any more than a temporary impact. Faced with mounting opposition, Tirpitz drew the correct conclusion from the failure of his plans when he resigned in March 1916. With anxiety he saw the loss of morale on the home front; he thus became cofounder of the patriotic rallying movement known as the Fatherland Party, which, however, made only a small impact on an increasingly war-weary nation. Once again Tirpitz sat in the Reichstag, from 1924 to 1928 as a deputy of the German National People’s Party. But, as circumstances had changed completely, he had lost the power to persuade. He retired to Upper Bavaria, where he died, at Ebenhausen, in 1930.

Legacy

Tirpitz was, by the standards of his time, a modern naval officer. He possessed a sound knowledge of the world, a dedicated mind, and an active interest in technology, and he was a brilliant organizer. He was obsessed by his work; he therefore tended to be biased and, once he had enunciated his principles, raised them to the status of a doctrine. The continuous and steady implementation of the naval laws took priority over other technical, tactical, and political considerations. Naval construction and its impact were to determine how the navy was to be used and hence its political value, and not vice versa. With the largest German navy, which under him became the world’s second largest, Tirpitz forged an efficient military weapon that did not see the action for which it was intended in the war and finally collapsed from within.