Germany's High Seas Fleet in the World War. Reinhard Scheer
in order to economise coal and save the engines, in war a ship must be in a condition, as soon as she gets to sea, to develop the utmost capacity of her engines, and so all the boilers must be used continuously. With a crew of about a thousand men, which is normal for battleships and battle-cruisers, it is essential to make allowance for a certain percentage of sick and other casualties. Such deficiencies were made good by the mobilisation "supplement," which amounted to about 10 per cent, of the peace establishment. As the war proceeded, the system proved its usefulness by enabling us to let the men go on leave without lowering the standard of the ships' readiness for battle to a disadvantageous degree. The reinforcement was particularly important to the battle-cruisers, which, in view of their enormous consumption of coal in order to attain the very highest speed, were not in a position, with the engine-room complement allowed by establishment, to bring the coal from the. more distant bunkers to the stokehold, so that help had to be requisitioned from the sailors. As far as possible, the bunkers in the immediate vicinity of the stokehold were left untouched, in readiness for action, when not a man on board could be spared from his action station.
The system of command is a question of special importance to the organisation of a navy. The bulk of the ships in home waters were under the command of a single authority, the Commander-in-Chief of the High Sea Fleet. Of course, the ships at distant stations abroad could not be under his command, and certain ships in home waters, operating in a theatre which had no absolutely direct connection with the operations in the main theatre, had a Commander-in-Chief of their own. The number of ships combined under one command must not be so large that their commander cannot control and lead them in action, for one of the most material differences between fighting on land and at sea is that in the latter case the commander himself goes into the firing line. But command goes hand in hand with responsibility for the execution of all plans, and it was therefore a doubtful policy to establish an authority above the Commander-in-Chief of the Fleet who had the most important forces under his command. In view of the peculiarities of naval warfare, the higher authority cannot be in a position to settle beforehand the details of time and method of any particular enterprise which has been decided upon, in the same way as this is both possible and essential for the command of operations on land.
However, the demands of the various theatres in which fighting took place in this war made some central authority necessary which could distribute the number of ships required for all purposes, and which could also have strong influence on the conduct of operations in the individual theatres. The authority for this purpose was the Naval Staff, in which the preliminary work on the plan of operations had already been done. The Chief of the Naval Staff had the duty of laying the proposed orders for the operations before the Supreme War Lord, to whom the Constitution gave the supreme command over all our forces on land and sea. After these orders had received the Imperial approval, the Chief of the Naval Staff had to transmit them to the Fleet.
The functions of the Naval Staff assumed particular importance in this war, in which the closest co-operation of the Fleet and Army for the common end was of quite special importance. The development of the Navy, which had grown to the status of a great war machine in the last decades, had not, however, admitted of the simultaneous satisfaction of the requirements in personnel which made themselves felt in all quarters. The working of the Naval Staff had suffered from this cause in peace time and it produced its effect in war. In peace the influence of the State Secretary of the Imperial Naval Administration was paramount, especially when that office was held by a personality like Grand Admiral von Tirpitz, who by his outstanding abilities had gained an influence which no naval officer had ever before exercised in the history of our Navy. In war, on the other hand, he had no direct influence on the conduct of operations.
The development of our Navy had not taken place without numerous differences of opinion about the best method of its construction. At the front and in the Naval Staff the principal requirement was considered to be that the existing Fleet should be so complete in all its details, and therefore so ready for war, that all differences would be made good. The Secretary of State, on the other hand, who had a great programme in mind and steadily pursued its realisation, attached more importance to having all the essential elements ready, and as regards secondary matters, trusting more or less to improvisation if war came before the final development of the Fleet had been realised. He accordingly promoted the construction of battleships and destroyers primarily, bearing in mind the root principle from which our Navy Bills had sprung, that with the Fleet we should create a weapon which should be strong enough to fight against a superior hostile fleet. The course of the war has proved the soundness of that principle.
Only in one material point were our strategical views based on an assumption which proved unfounded, the assumption that the English Fleet, which had kept ahead of ours in its construction at every stage, would seek battle in the German Bight in the North Sea, or would force its way to wherever it hoped to find the German Fleet. On that account we had attached particular importance to the greatest defensive and offensive powers, and considered we might regard speed and radius of action as secondary matters. The difference between our type of ships and that of the English shows that in both Fleets strategic ideas governed the method of construction. The English were content with less armour, but attached importance to higher speed and the largest possible calibre of gun so that they could impose on their opponent their own choice of battle area.
Side by side with the Commander-in-Chief of the High Sea Fleet a special command was introduced for the Baltic forces. The commanders of ships in foreign waters! were of course independent and received their orders through the Chief of the Naval Staff, whose co-operation in the business of procuring coal and supplies for the conduct of cruiser warfare could not be dispensed with.
Thus for the first time in German history sea power also was to play a mighty part in the great fight for existence with which our nation was faced. As regards the handling of our Fleet, we had not only to consider how we could bring about the most favourable opportunity of winning the victory, but also what tasks, within the framework of the combined operations, fell to our share. The strategical plans of the Army had a decisive influence on the functions of the Fleet. The Navy had the duty of supporting the Army in its uphill task of fighting a superior enemy on two fronts in such a way that its rear was unconditionally secured against any danger threatening from the north. So long as it was only a question of fighting the Dual Alliance the Army was relieved of all anxiety from that direction, as the Fleet was quite equal to its task. The Army had made its plans in such a way that victory could be expected from an offensive, and the full weight of that offensive would at first be directed to one spot. It followed from this that at the outset a defensive attitude would be adopted on the other front, and all preparations for defence would have to be made in that quarter.
The third front, the sea front, acquired a special importance when England joined the ranks of our opponents. But so far as can be seen from the course of the war no material change was made in the fundamental principles underlying our strategic operations on land. As I was then only holding the position of commander of a squadron, I did not know whether, in view of the increasing hostility of England, the idea was considered of adopting a fresh joint plan of operations for the Army and the Fleet, which would be based on the notion of improving our defensive prospects against England. This could have been obtained by the speediest possible acquisition of the sector of the French coast which commanded the Dover-Calais line. In this way the English cross-Channel transport service, as well as the trade routes to the Thames, would have been seriously threatened. If only we had realised from the start that the influence of England's sea power on the course of the war would be as great as it turned out to be later, to our disadvantage, a higher importance would have been attached to this question at the outset. As it happened, the course of the campaign in France forced us into a position in which we were nothing but the flank protection of the right wing of our Army which stretched to the sea and therefore brought us the Flemish coast as our starting point, though nothing like so valuable, for attacks against England. The Navy had to spring into the breach and take up the defence against English sea power. It appeared obvious that the entry of England into the ranks of our enemies would not divert the Army from its task. The Army considered it much more obvious that the Navy should support it by hindering the passage of transports across the Channel. The protection of these transports was one of the principal functions of the English Fleet. We could only interfere with it at the price