From Imperial Splendour to Internment

From Imperial Splendor to Internment: The German Navy in the First World War by Nicolas Wolz

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Wolz starts in a different war, comparing the fates of Graf Spee scuttled at Montevideo in 1939 and Bismarck which went down with flag defiantly flying and immense loss of life in 1941. A point he could have made, but didn't, was that the damage to Graf Spee's fuel processing plant and Bismarck's rudder meant that neither ship had any chance of making a friendly port. Nonetheless Graf Spee's Langsdorff, having chosen to spare his crew the slaughter of facing what he believed to be an overwhelming force, felt he had no option but to shoot himself. Captain Lindemann, of course, went down with his ship.

This sets the theme for the book which explores the difference between the German and British concepts of naval honour and discipline in the First World War. Operations and battles are described only as far as needed to provide the context for this discussion.

You need to read his arguments and make up your own mind whether they hold water. That being so, I don't believe it's a spoiler to outline his conclusions. If you disagree, stop reading NOW.

Wolz seems, in my view, to say that the Kaiser's then brand-new navy looked to copy the Royal Navy's traditions but took a puritanical slant on them. So, while a RN captain needed a jolly good reason not to go down with his flag flying, there were at least admitted circumstances where further sacrifice was pointless. While the RN was still class-bound it accepted the need to lead rather than drive, and promotion 'through the hawse-hole' was not unknown. In the Kaiserliche Marine these concepts were an anathema.

The thesis needs taking seriously. Certainly the 'humiliation' of the High Seas Fleet's internment and scuttling in 1918-19 weighed heavily on the later Kriegsmarine's culture. I was left wondering if it had any bearing on the startling fact that when the WW2 Scharnhorst went down in 1943 the horrifying casualty toll was partly due to the fact that the crew had done no, repeat no, abandon-ship drills.

And if Langsdorff had known he was still only up against three cruisers instead of the battlefleet brilliantly imagined by British disinformation, would he have taken a punt on sinking at least one of them to even the score a little? Which comes back to relying on the captain's discretion. But sometimes the one-in-a-million chance pays off.

I think I would still like to see an equally informed cross-bearing on this topic.



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