I have been reading Robert Massie’s suberb* Castles of Steel *, and aside from driving me crazy over the sheer amount of stupid decisions and bad luck that plagued the Admiralty, it got me wondering about the entire British warplan in WWI. More specifically, why did they get so involved in the land war? England’s strategy, since Napoleonic times, had been to let its European allies do most of the land fighting while they maintained naval superiority. Yet in WWI, they threw this away and got deeply involved in the land war.
Furthermore, why jump into the war at all? I know about many factors that influenced this decision; the ultra-nationalism of the time, England’s uneasiness over Germany’s naval buildup, treaty obligations to the Belgians, the “understanding” with France and Russia, maintaining the balance of power, etc. But there were equally many good reasons not to declare war.
I know its easy to look back with hindsight, and I know that everyone believed in a short war, but WWI was basically the beginning of the end of the British empire. If they hadn’t joined the war or not gotten involved to the extent that they did, i.e. the land war, things could have been much different. England’s pragmatism with regards to expending too much had been one of the cornerstones of their empire for 100 years. Then in WWI they threw all caution to the wind. Its like betting the house on a weak hand in a poker game that you are already winning. Why? It doesn’t make sense.
Another thing I wanted to discuss, perhaps worthy of another thread, but since it ties to Massie’s book, is the questions of battleships in WWI. Massie raised this point, as does this review of his book from the Guardian, as have many historians of WWI. Specifically, were battleships spectacular failures without much purpose that required escorts and were vulnerable to cheap weapons like mines and submarines?
It is true in a sense that, considering the amount of money invested in them, they weren’t decisive in the way their designers envisioned. But at the same time, their existance made possible England’s blockade of Germany, which, as much as anything, won the war for the Entente.
In my view, battleships in WWI were kind of like machine guns and trenches. On their own, they couldn’t do much to win you the war, but you had to have them to counteract the other side. If England or Germany hadn’t had battleships, each could have done alot of damage to the other side with them, especially the Germans. In a way, like alot of the fighting in WWI, they were the best they could do at the time, given the changing technology. Had they not been dependent on coal, like later English ships that used oil, the German East Pacific fleet could have wrecked havoc on Australia, New Zeeland, or India. There is no way England could have protected its vast empire with mines and subs alone.
Without battleships, given the lack of development of aviation technology, how else could a nation project effective seapower in WW1?
The survival of France was considered a strategic necessity, so exerting maximum effort on preventing the German army from defeating France was the logical thing to do.
France, remember, came pretty close to beaing beaten in 1914.
Well, there you go. The extent of the slaughter simply wasn’t a knowable factor in July of 1914, and preventing German hegemony over continental Europe was considered worth fighting for. What seems obvious to you now wasn’t then. The only reasons NOT to go to war couldn’t have been known in 1914. Nobody knew it was going to be as bad as it was.
, and I know that everyone believed in a short war, but WWI was basically the beginning of the end of the British empire. If they hadn’t joined the war or not gotten involved to the extent that they did, i.e. the land war, things could have been much different. England’s pragmatism with regards to expending too much had been one of the cornerstones of their empire for 100 years. Then in WWI they threw all caution to the wind. Its like betting the house on a weak hand in a poker game that you are already winning. Why? It doesn’t make sense.
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One of the things about late 19th century diplomacy was the prevalance of alliances to stave off war.
As more and more money and material was built up in larger armies and navies, and as the weapons systems themselves become more deadly, nations can’t, or dont want, to face an equally powerful opponent alone.
So, Great Britain had to honor it’s treaty commitments, if it ever wants to be able to enter any mutual defense pacts again in the future. (If it dishonored itself by not coming into a war, say allied with France against Italy, France may seek revenge sometime in the future by hammering together an alliance with the purpose of bringing revenge or ruin to Britain.)
That’s one reason.
Another is that Britain could not afford to have the Continent dominated by a single power. With Kaiser Wilhelm being such an over-the-top bombast, Great Britain could never be sure of friendly intentions from Germany. The language written into Germany’s Naval Law of 1898 was clearly directed towards Great Britain.
Germany had defeated France once in 1870, and looked like it could credibly do so again. If the Channel becomes a base for German subs, minelayers, and such, Great Britain could be in some serious doo-doo. Also, The distance from Dover to Calaise is much shorter than the distance from Dover to Wilhelmshaven. This equates to less of a reaction time for the British battle fleet to repel a potential invasion, compared to one that had to sail from Germany.
There is, and never was, no such thing as a single wonder weapon system, that all on it’s own, wins wars.
In the 1890’s, battleships typically mounted 4 of the best naval guns in service, along with a host of smaller weapons for dealing with smaller ships. (The rate of fire of the largest guns was 1 or 2 rounds a minute. The rate of fire of a 4 or 5 inch weapon, was 1 round every 4 or 5 seconds.)
Moored mines (called torpedoes in the American Civil War) have always been a threat to ships, but typically, they were only found around enemy bases and such. Bigger guns were developed to shell enemy forts and harbor from further out to sea. (In an attempt to avoid the dangers of running through minefields.) Minefields are expensive in both money and manpower to put in place, and to maintain over a prolonged period of time, so large minefields are not found in peacetime, and large stocks of mines typically do not get funded by penny pinching politicians. Mines don’t move, so they are limited to defense anyway.
Self propelled torpedoes, on the other hand, have a more serious potential for offensive use. The first torps were very short ranged, and they had guidance bugs to work out. But as time (and the industrial revolution) wore on, torps became better in every way. (That is, range, accuracy, speed, warhead.)
The all big gun dreadnought was in responce to the perceived need to push the battle range (and the battleship) out further and further from enemy torps (and the enemy battle line). Long range gunfire (in the age before radar and computers) requires accurate plotting of the enemy’s speed and course, and the spotting of your own shellfire (for corrections). It is easier to see a whole bunch of splashes than a single shell splash, from a distance of 10000 yards. (5 miles) Also, at this range, the smaller caliber weapons (5 inch and under) are much less effective (they lose a bit of their energy faster than a heavier shell). So it made sence to do away with the useless intermediate battery in favor of more of the heaviest guns you can ship, which simplifies salvo spotting and fire solution calculations.
Battleships were not failures if viewed as one weapon system (albiet an expensive one) in the whole arsenal of strategic naval warfare.
Assuming seapower is needed (as it would be when fighting Britain), a smaller nation has to resort to commerce warfare. Surface raiders, Auxiliary warships (including merchant ships converted to wartime use/surface raiding, and posibly flying false flags), subs, mines. If you can make the war expensive enough (and assuming that the stakes for Britain aren’t high enough), you may convince Britain to come to the peacetalks with reasonable terms, like the USA did in the War of 1812.
There would, I imagine, have been a forced peace of some kind. U.S. involvement becomes less likely. Russia was doomed to lose its side of the war and the loss of France makes that happen faster, not slower. England would simply have had to deal with the long term consequences of a German empire running most of Europe, with a weakened and marginalized France, and history would be totally different.
The thing with regards to having to prop up France, I understand not wanting German hegemony over the continent, but I don’t see France’s defeat creating this, except maybe in the short term. France was not going to cease existance as a state. As far as Russia, if its history had proven anything, its that it could be beaten yet spring back to fight again relatively quickly (indeed thats exactly what happened later in WWII).
Besides, as was proved by Napoleon, even if you temporarily beat all of your rivals on the continent, England itself could not easily be threatened, nor could any of its major colonial possessions. Further, by WWI England’s interests lay more with its overseas trade than with the continent. So really, the only threat posed to England by German continental domination would be a further naval arms buildup.
Thanks for the recommendation. I actually read that one first. Although since they are both so long, its taken me about 3 years of off and on progress.
I think the UK going to war was pretty much a foregone conclusion. As for the land war, as RickJay said it was of vital strategic importance to the British that there BE no monolithic power in Europe (whoever it would be)…and so the defense of France from German hegemony was crucially important. And the only way to do that was to send over ground troops.
(BTW, as an aside, I’m not sure where you get the idea that the British were timid about sending in their army to fight in Europe. Seems like they did so quite effectively in the last major European conflict with Napoleon, and they weren’t exactly reluctant in the Crimean War).
As to the battleship…well, thats an interesting question. I think you answered your own question here: “Without battleships, given the lack of development of aviation technology, how else could a nation project effective seapower in WW1?” My take on the main ‘problem’ with the battleship during WWI was simply how expensive they were. No navy (including the Royal Navy) wanted to RISK them in an all out confrontation. Certainly Germany didn’t want to risk its much smaller fleet in a head on collission with the main elements of the Royal Navy. Jutland was pretty much a mistake on Germany’s part. IIRC, Scheer’s plan was to cut off and destroy a battle squadron of the British fleet that he felt had made the mistake of coming out too far from the main British fleet…not realizing that it was essentially a trap. By the same token the British were surprised at the accuracy and toughness of the German fleet…and the fog of war played a huge part. So, the battle was pretty much not the decisive engagement that naval planners had felt would be the climax of the war. In the end though I think it was reluctance on the British part to risk the fleet (they were playing NOT to lose…instead of to win…IMHO anyway) while the Germans were reluctant to roll the dice and risk THEIR fleet in a decisive engagement.
All that long winded BS having been said, I think a more interesting question is: Why did the US go to war in WWI? And if we had to go to war, why did WE chose to engage in land warfare in that meat grinder, when we could have declared war on Germany and sent our fleet to ‘assist’ the British in their blockade? Naval power, especially convoy duty with ships actively at war with the Germans would have been useful…and it was something we could do with little risk to ourselves.
After all, it wasn’t OUR fight, despite what Germany was trying to do in Mexico.
Interesting thread…the UK was bound by treaty to go to war. What Kaiser Wilhelm saw in the war was a mystery-germany was beating France economically, and the desire to “have a place in the sun” was absurd-Germany needed African and Asian colonies like a hole in the head. The battleship was a technological dead end-but since germany had them, the British HAD to have them. Their construction absorbed huge resources and millions of man-hours of labor-yet, after the battle of Jutland, the german high seas fleet never challenged the British navy. As for the land “tactics”-I don’t understant why gen. Douglas haig was so well thought of-he showed no adaptability, and kept pinning hishopes on cavalry charges. Why did the war run on for so long? The paranoid and crazy personality of the Kaiser (he kept thinking victory was around the corner).
As an aside: the UK escaped the war with little damage (but about 900K casualties). however, the war used up all the wealth generated by the UK, in the previous 50 years!
The British already had battleships…so the Germans HAD to have them. This then started the back and forth, but Germany was never really in the Brit’s league. While I think Germany’s battleships and heavy crusiers were technically superior (at least tougher), they never had the numbers to really be a major threat to the RN.
Thanks-you were right! Germany competed with the UK, in the naval arms race-but many senior German admirals took a dim view of this-they knew that Germany could NOT outbuild the British navy, and Germany was always ina strategically inferior situation. The german fleet was bottled up in the baltic and North Sea-while the British had the whole Atlantic to play in. As it turned out, the whole german surface fleet was an expensive toy-it never ventured out (after Jutland).
This is true, but especially for the bulk of the Napoleonic wars, the British Army wasn’t doing the heavy lifting on the continent, per se.
Some good questions about the U.S.'s involvement.
First as to why the U.S. got involved, I think that is pretty easy. A blockade of questionable leagality is not quite the same as the unwarned sinking of merchant vessels with Americans on board (more complicated I know, but thats how it appeared to the U.S.). While its true that the U.S. had a large pro-German contingent, the upper levels of U.S. society were much more Anglophile in thier outlook. Also, trade with England brought the two countries closer, whereas trade with Germany ground to a halt due to aforementioned blockade. Another notable point is England controlled U.S. access to news about the war because Germany’s telegraph wires to the outside world had been cut.
With regards to the tactics the U.S. used, you’ve stumped me there. The American navy was, I believe, the 3rd or 4th strongest in the world, seems like a no brainer to use it in conjunction with the Royal Navy. Then again, if Germany wouldn’t come out to fight England, there was no way they would come out to fight a combined fleet.
As to why the U.S. added its forces to the land war, I believe that they felt, rightly I migh add, that with both sides nearing exhaustion, a huge influx of fresh troops could well drive Germany to sue for peace.
As a complete aside, although in a way its cheap theatrics, I always loved Pershing’s “Lafayette, we are here.” line when the U.S. Expeditionary Force arrived in Paris.
Woodrow Wilson was a bit of an idealist. I’m guessing he really believed some of the anti-German propoganda about the “Hun”. He probably did not want to see a single nation dominate Europe any more than GB did.
We absolutely did assist with the naval war. The US sent it’s coal burning Dreadnoughts (as oil was not in an ensured supply) on a rotation to duty in the North Sea with the Grand Fleet, and formed the 6th Battle Squadron. The US Admiral (Admiral Hugh Rodman) got along very well with his British hosts, and eagerly jumped into the grinding, aggressive routine of gunnery practice and patrols that the Grand Fleet was conducting. Admiral Rodman eventually was given command of the Grand Fleet during one of it’s 1918 North Sea sweeps (while the British commanding Admiral Beatty stayed in Scapa Flow.)
Also, American pressure was very important in getting the merchant convoy system reestablished.
However, Germany was not going to be beaten by sea power alone.
As far as the land war, both France and Britain pleaded with the US for more ammo and men. (Both those powers wanted to place the US troops under their own commands.) Russia was knocked out of the war in late 1917, and it wasn’t to hard to figure that a lot of German and Austrian troops would be filing back out west.
The German offensive in 1918 was a near run thing…
The German Army had to be beaten before Germany would surrender.
After the war, I think Britain finally realized what had happened; although many generals were rewarded with titles or whatever, Haig’s was slow in coming and not nearly as elevated as one would expect a commanding general to receive–and I get the sense that the whole nation recoiled in anitpathy from him.
The real waste of resources wasn’t building battleships, it was building battlecruisers. Battlecruisers were designed to stop commerce raiders, but there were never many of them. And even then, their deployment was stupid; they were made part of the main battle fleet, and whenever someone wanted to send them off to stop surface raiders, it was like pulling teeth to get them detached from the main battle fleet.
And the irony is that they were essentially useless in the line of battle, where their thin armor was a definite handicap. Look at the Jutland results.
It’d have been far better if Britain had devoted the resources to building destroyers and other anti-submarine convoy escort vessels.
Also because of the structure of the British army (geographically based units) and the bursts of appalling casualties at varous stages of the war, the losses were felt disproportionately by certain areas of the countrly.
The effect on the class structure was also staggering, with the ascendancy of the middle classes helped by the slaughter of young Second Lieutenants at a rate higher, IIRC, than any other rank of the army.
In WW1, both German submarines & disguised raiders planted mines along British & French coastal areas, & in Allied harbors.
And I would argue that mines are undefunded by Admirals & Generals, who do not view them as items that increase the prestige & influence of their Servies.
