Strange Intelligence: Memoirs of Naval Secret Service by Hector C. Bywater, H. C. Ferraby Read Free Book Online Page B

that when ‘ Der Tag ’ dawned his imperial master would order him to forsake his desk in the Navy Office for the bridge of the flagship Friedrich der Grosse as Commander-in-Chief of the entire fleet.
    All his plans were based upon that assumption. It was to be the apotheosis of those long years of single-minded and devoted service to the fatherland. And when the opportunity came he was determined to make the most of it. Not for him the timid, cautious strategy of keeping the fleet intact behind the shoals, minefields, and batteries of ‘the wet triangle’, preserving it as an asset for securing favourable peace terms. To him it was as a mighty sword for the striking of deadly blows at British sea power, which he had always recognised as the most formidable obstacle to the realisation of Germany’s soaring ambitions.
    Tirpitz, therefore, intended to seek a decisive battle with the British fleet at the earliest possible moment. He had a well-founded faith in the weapon he had forged, tempered and tested repeatedly in manoeuvres. If he exaggerated the power of the surfacetorpedo boat and under-estimated that of the submarine, he erred in the company of nearly all the senior naval officers of his day. The soundness of his policy in regard to capital ship construction and armament was brilliantly vindicated at Jutland. The German battlecruisers, especially, were magnificent fighting machines. That he was not personally responsible for the inadequate armament of the German light cruisers is conclusively proved by his memoirs.
    But the declaration of hostilities brought him the bitterest disappointment of his life.
    The Kaiser ignored his urgent request to be granted a free hand in directing the operations of the fleet, and retained in the chief command Admiral von Ingenohl, an officer of mediocre abilities who owed his advancement to the personal friendship of the Supreme War Lord and to prolonged service in the imperial yacht.
    Nor was this all.
    King Edward, many years before, had enraged his nephew by referring to the German fleet as ‘Willie’s toy’. This jest contained a profound truth. It soon became evident that Wilhelm II regarded the fleet as his personal property, to be cherished and conserved at all costs. The prospect of exposing his precious ships to the rude blasts of war filled him with dismay. He could view with equanimity the sacrifice of whole army corps on the battlefield, but he shrank from risking a single one of the dreadnoughts, which were, to him, majestic symbols of the aggrandisement and prestige of the Hohenzollern dynasty.
    Therefore, immediately after Great Britain had declared war, he drafted with his own hand the notorious ‘ Operations-Befehl ’, which doomed the German fleet to inactivity at the very moment when a prompt and resolute offensive might well have yielded the most fruitful results.
    There is no question that even a partial German success in the North Sea would have delayed indefinitely the passage of the British Expeditionary Force to France, and vitally affected the whole war situation to the detriment of the Allied cause. Without the presence of the BEF, the Battle of the Marne might never have been fought, or, if it had been fought, the result would probably have been very different. Even a mass attack by German submarines in the southern area of the North Sea would have seriously embarrassed and retarded our military dispositions. Moreover, a bold offensive by the navy would have evoked intense enthusiasm in Germany and, by enhancing the popularity and prestige of what was, after all, a new and untried arm, might have so raised the morale of the sea service as to render impossible the humiliating events of November 1918.
    But the Kaiser thought of none of these things. ‘My ships must not be risked’ was the purport of his ‘operational orders’.
    These forbade the High Seas Fleet to leave its sheltered anchorages except in the remote contingency of a British attack on