Why built useless battleships?

From the birth of the Dreadnought to the period immediately after the end of World War I.
OpanaPointer
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Re: Why built useless battleships?

Post by OpanaPointer »

A long forgotten source reported that KW II drew a battleship on a napkin during a diner date one night. Not known if he pursued that project. I suspect a psychological profile would read ADHD at minimum.
Byron Angel
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Re: Why built useless battleships?

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OpanaPointer wrote: Wed Mar 08, 2023 7:12 pm A long forgotten source reported that KW II drew a battleship on a napkin during a diner date one night. Not known if he pursued that project. I suspect a psychological profile would read ADHD at minimum.

You never know, OpenaPointer,
There is an apocryphal story that the designer of the Grumman F8F Bearcat sat down one night and sketched out the basics of the design on the back of an envelope in a hotel room.

FWIW ... :shock:

Byron
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Re: Why built useless battleships?

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The head of the History Department at Purdue, Gordon Mork, recommended the book to me. I was doing a reading semester on the HSF, pre-WWI. My brain might fire up eventually.

Don't bet the ranch on that.
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Re: Why built useless battleships?

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OpanaPointer wrote: Sun Mar 26, 2023 1:06 am The head of the History Department at Purdue, Gordon Mork, recommended the book to me. I was doing a reading semester on the HSF, pre-WWI. My brain might fire up eventually.

Don't bet the ranch on that.

I'd absolutely be willing to believe the napkin story. IIRC, Wilhelm was quite impressed by the size and prestige of the Royal Navy ... and perhaps navies in general. All humans are IMO subject to such sentiments, even emperors. That having been said, there was nevertheless good reason, from a national interest point of view, for Germany to desire/require a substantial navy at that particular point in its history.

Strictly my opinion, of course - not seeking to reignite the debate fuze.

Byron
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Re: Why built useless battleships?

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It MIGHT HAVE BEEN from Holger's "Luxury Fleet." Don't hate me if I'm wrong.
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Re: Why built useless battleships?

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OpanaPointer wrote: Sun Mar 26, 2023 10:22 pm Don't hate me if I'm wrong.
😋

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Re: Why built useless battleships?

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paul.mercer wrote: Fri Oct 07, 2022 10:18 am What great war of aggression against Germany? If I recall my history correctly, Germany was the aggressor in WW1 and WW2.
I think causes of World War I were a bit too complex for any single country to be pointed at as the aggressor.
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Re: Why built useless battleships?

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Pukovnik7 wrote: Sun Apr 02, 2023 1:06 pm
paul.mercer wrote: Fri Oct 07, 2022 10:18 am What great war of aggression against Germany? If I recall my history correctly, Germany was the aggressor in WW1 and WW2.
I think causes of World War I were a bit too complex for any single country to be pointed at as the aggressor.
I was Randy Robert's TA for his graduate level WWI class. I concur with your estimate.
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Re: Why built useless battleships?

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Pukovnik7 wrote: Sun Apr 02, 2023 1:06 pm I think causes of World War I were a bit too complex for any single country to be pointed at as the aggressor.
I too agree with your comment ... and would go even further.

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wadinga
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Re: Why built useless battleships?

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Hello All,

There are sources I have addressed above which not only fail to prove their own accusations eg Owen and McMeekin, and offered others which uncover Germany's longstanding plans for aggressive war like Fritz Fischer and Barbara Tuchman. German railways were built to Aachen specifically to support the longstanding Schlieffen plan for attack through neutral Belgium. It would be useful to see some specific response to this evidence rather than vague assertions.

German military assistance to Turkey started long before 1913
As regards our army, I don't think we must hesitate any longer to adopt the methods of the Germans. For more than thirty years we have had German instructors in our army, our Corps of Officers is trained entirely on German lines, and our army is absolutely familiar with the spirit of German training and military education. It is quite impossible to change all that now. I therefore intend to send for a German military mission on the grand scale and, if necessary, I shall even appoint a German general to command a Turkish army corps, place German staff and regimental officers in command of every unit comprising it, and in this way form a model army corps. -Mahmud Şefket Paşa Grand Vizier

and culminated in a treaty signed on August 2nd 1914 by Enver Pascha for that country to attack Russia when Germany declared war on Russia. It failed to do so until the unannounced attack by SMS Goeben wearing Turkish colours on Sevastopol in November 1914. If Germany was "lured down a dangerous path" as Richard Evans stated, by the weakness of the Ottoman empire, it raced joyfully down that path by installing itself at the highest level of influence within that empire, by training its army, with clear intention to further its colonialism and threaten Russian access through the Bosphorus. Goeben/Yavuz was clearly not a useless battleship/cruiser.

The pressure cooker of the Dreadnought race may have increased tensions, the French certainly resented occupied Alsace-Lorraine, and there were other contributory factors for a naiive general enthusiasm for war, but the evidence against Wilhelmine Germany as the principal instigator is surely unassailable.

Byron, would you care to expand on
there was nevertheless good reason, from a national interest point of view, for Germany to desire/require a substantial navy at that particular point in its history.
Are we talking about the aggressive taking over of the international assets of other colonial powers?
I was officer of the deck one morning when a young German officer came from Admiral von Diederichs with a communication for Admiral Dewey. The latter was on the quarter deck with his secretary, Ensign Caldwell. Dewey read the communication, slapped it against his left hand, and handed it to Caldwell with some remark I couldn’t hear, then turned to the German officer with some words of dismissal, for the latter saluted stiffly, heels together, and turned to go. Dewey called after him: “And you may tell Admiral von Diederichs again that if he wants a fight, I’ll be ready for him in half an hour.”
See www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1955 ... manila-bay

Germany had been trying to get control of the Philippines from the weakening Spanish when the upstart Americans took it for themselves.

The age of imperialist aggression was over by 1900 but the Kaiser and his militaristic cronies didn't realise it and tried to get their own by waging aggressive war. They lost and tried desperately to spread the blame for the ghastly results of that ambition. Many Marx inspired writers have for their own reasons miscast it as a war caused by capitalism, but wise Moltke the Elder had realised capitalism and industrial power would have given Germany the dominance it craved without war.

All the best

wadinga
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Re: Why built useless battleships?

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Wadinga wrote -
"Byron, would you care to expand on - '.... there was nevertheless good reason, from a national interest point of view, for Germany to desire/require a substantial navy at that particular point in its history.' "

>>>>> Why do you suppose a nation like Germany, after having surpassed Great Britain to become the second largest economy on the planet behind only the USA, with rapidly growing international trade and economic interests around the world, might want to reliably secure free access to the global sea lanes? On exactly what grounds could that be criticized?


Wadinga wrote -
"Are we talking about the aggressive taking over of the international assets of other colonial powers?"

>>>>> How do you suppose Great Britain acquired a colonial empire covering a quarter of the Earth's surface and a quarter of the global population?


Thanks for participating. Please consider this response as my final word to you on this subject. No need to reply.

Have a nice day.
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wadinga
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Re: Why built useless battleships?

Post by wadinga »

Hello All,

Well at the risk of alienating someone else I shall continue to participate.

How do you suppose Great Britain acquired a colonial empire covering a quarter of the Earth's surface and a quarter of the global population?
Well by
the aggressive taking over of the international assets of other colonial powers
of course.

Most notably French interests in India and Canada, but this was in the 1700s in what some have called the real First World War, not nearly a century and a half later in the 1900s when European nations appeared to have settled down into a peaceful and fairly civilised co-existence. Even Prussian militarism seemed to have calmed down a bit after fighting Denmark, Austria and invading France and creating their new German empire in the occupied palace of Versailles in the later 1800s. However, the second Wilhelm thought differently as he apparently told Cecil Rhodes:
Germany has begun her colonial enterprise very late, and was, therefore, at the disadvantage of finding all the desirable places already occupied.


So why was the massive expenditure on German fleet expansion ( Naval Bills of 1898, 1900, 1908 and 1912) required, since her empire consisted of a few African colonies and some isolated islands in the Pacific? Because Kaiser Bill and Tirpitz wanted it. Unlike the German army, administered through complex channels based around the constituent states, the Navy was was Wilhelm II's personal project, and as an autocratic leader he controlled the Admiralty, the Naval Office and Naval Ministry directly. He was in German law, by his decree of 1899, Supreme Commander of the Navy.

Previous heads of the Navy, before Tirpitz, had been satisfied with coast defence vessels, torpedo boats and a few long range cruisers to make sure those vital imports of coconuts from the South Seas were not interfered with. The cruisers would let Germany co-operate with other Great Powers and pretend to be World Police as in the Boxer Rebellion. Tirpitz, although a torpedo specialist, was not interested in Jeune Ecole ideas, he wanted a proper battleship fleet, and Wilhelm loved the idea of emulating his Granny's Navy. In January 1900 when RN ships stopped and inspected German mail steamers, suspecting they were supplying munitions to the Boers, and apology was not enough to assuage German outrage, Tirpitz demanded and got the Second German Naval Law upgrade from a planned 19 to 38 battleships, all to be available by 1917. These were laws which meant funding had to be found in the future for the programme whether it was convenient or affordable.

Naturally all this expenditure for an eventually-futile battleship race with the British was unpopular with the Army which saw itself as the pre-eminent German military force, and through Schlieffen, Moltke the younger and senior army men's efforts, Wilhelm's wandering attention was drawn away from Tirpitz and his plans. As recounted earlier, when the army's long-planned war actually happened in August 1914, the German Navy had no idea what to do, except that a Trafalgar/Tsushima North Sea battle would be suicide based on numbers alone. Besides Moltke was confident the French would collapse as in 1870 and the British would lose any interest and come to a rapprochement with their Anglo-Saxon "brothers".

So in answer to the question "Why built useless battleships?" the answer is just because Wilhelm II and von Tirpitz wanted them. Is "Luxury Fleet" an ironic title for Holger?

All the best

wadinga
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Re: Why built useless battleships?

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Not that I noticed. Been a good few years since I read it, of course. "Luxury" came out as "expensive" rather than "useless".
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Re: Why built useless battleships?

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Hi Opana and all,

On this anniversary of Jutland we can consider the origin of the description of the High Seas Fleet as a "luxury" as adopted by Holger, but surely originating with none other than Winston S Churchill.

In a speech in 1912, on becoming First Lord of the Admiralty:
The purposes of British naval power are essentially defensive. We have no thoughts, and we have never had any thoughts of aggression, and we attribute no such thoughts to other great Powers. There is, however, this difference between the British naval power and the naval power of the great and friendly Empire – and I trust it may long remain the great and friendly Empire – of Germany. The British Navy is to us a necessity and, from some points of view, the German Navy is to them more in the nature of a luxury. Our naval power involves British existence. It is existence to us; it is expansion to them. We cannot menace the peace of a single Continental hamlet, no matter how great and supreme our Navy may become. But, on the other hand, the whole fortunes of our race and Empire, the whole treasure accumulated during so many centuries of sacrifice and achievement, would perish and be swept utterly away if our naval supremacy were to be impaired. It is the British Navy which makes Great Britain a great power. But Germany was a great power, respected and honoured all over the world, before she had a single ship
Typical Churchillian hyperbole and including some questionable points, but the essence is surely correct. As a continental economic powerhouse Germany had no need for a battlefleet and luckily for Europe (and perhaps the World), the resources wasted on that ineffectual fleet, splendidly constructed and manned as it was, perhaps denied the German army the ultimate strength necessary to overcome the alliance of France, the UK, Russia and finally the USA. The "luxury" element did not refer to whether the Hochseeflotte exceeded the minimum fitness-for-purpose, but that it existed at all.

If we are still searching for an individual responsible for starting the War we have Moltke the Younger's admission, in a letter he wrote to a fellow Field-Marshall after his fall from grace:
It is dreadful to be condemned to inactivity in this war which I prepared and initiated.
All the best

wadinga
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Re: Why built useless battleships?

Post by OpanaPointer »

The long forgotten source is most probably Holger Herwig's Luxury Fleet. T/Y to my lurker friends at Purdue. :clap:
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