Did the Battle of Jutland Really Matter?

National Interest ^ | May 20, 2016 | Robert Farley

[C19fan]

A century ago, the two greatest fleets of the industrial age fought an inconclusive battle in the North Sea. The British Grand Fleet and the German High Seas Fleet fielded a total of fifty-eight dreadnought battleships and battle cruisers, ships over the twice the size of most modern surface combatants. Including smaller ships, the battle included 250 vessels in total.

[BroJoeK]

PAR35: "Let’s go back a bit earlier and look at the pre-Dreadnaughts."

Thanks for a great post!
Wonderful numbers, nice to see more than just vague references.

Summaries I've read say the following:

1. Prior to 1898 Germans made no serious efforts to challenge the British navy.
   Your numbers show Germany with 5 battleships, Brits with 24 in the period 1889 to 1897 = 1/4

2. German naval buildup beginning in 1898 was intended to give Germany 2/3 the numbers of Britain.
   Your numbers show Germany 19 to British 27 = approx. 2/3.

3. Britain responded with increased battleship production after 1908, while German production was reduced, primarily to find money for the German Army.
   Your numbers show Britain produced 24 Dreadnaughts from 1909 through 1914, while Germany produced only 13.
   So German numbers, instead of being 2/3 Britain's fell back to 1/2.

[BroJoeK]

Fiji Hill: "The Allies should have also figured that cutting Germany in two with the Polish Corridor could create a casus belli in the future."

You can see for yourself how ludicrous that claim is if you simply visualize a map of Germany after the Second World War.
Then the Polish corridor was not just expanded, but East Prussia itself was eliminated.
And just to be certain, all Germans were driven out of Eastern Europe.
So, was that a casus belli?
No, for at least two reasons: 1) Everyone, including Germans themselves, understood that was just punishment, indeed mild considering the monstrous crimes committed by German leadership.
And 2) the border changes and relocations were enforced by overwhelming military power of the victorious Allies.

So, again, the problem with Versailles is not that it was too harsh, but rather that first, Germans did not feeeeeeel defeated, and second, the terms were not enforced by visible military power.
Indeed, just the opposite, the Allies soon abandoned such efforts.

Bringing this discussion up to date, the "lessons of Versailles" are the same lessons we've learned again in Iraq & Afghanistan: peace treaties not enforced by adequate military power are not worth the paper they're printed on.
All are products of Democrat administrations, Wilson & Obama.

[Robert A Cook PE]

But, you see, once the Dreadnought was built, the previous British lead was erased. BOTH sides started near even - giving the Germans a real-world construction chance at equaling and staying near-equal in the top “new” battleship class.

What Britain had laboriously and expensively built up in pre-dreadnoughts were too slow, too poorly armed with a bad (ineffective) mix of poor gunsights and not-quite-enough not-quite-big-enough big guns, and too many, too small small guns to fight.

So, the British, by building the Dreadnought so much better than any other ship in any Navy in the world, started with only a one-ship lead over the Germans, and both at the start of a new racetrack.

[BroJoeK]

R.A.C.: "I believe that is the history of the last 20 years before the war from the Balkan (NOT German-British!) point of view."

The Balkans were certainly a powder keg, with weak empires versus strong nationalist movements.
Add to that the fact that each belligerent had Great Power allies, which in 1914 were too willing for war to settle disputes.

In July 1914 the German Kaiser's government pushed Austria to make a quick, punishing invasion of Serbia, in response to the Archduke's assassination.
But the Austrians delayed & delayed giving Russia & others time to mobilize.
So when war came, it was not just a local Balkan dispute, but a world war amongst the Great Powers

[Fiji Hill]

You can see for yourself how ludicrous that claim is if you simply visualize a map of Germany after the Second World War. Then the Polish corridor was not just expanded, but East Prussia itself was eliminated. And just to be certain, all Germans were driven out of Eastern Europe. So, was that a casus belli?

Had West Germany not been powerless following WWII, it could have been a casus belli. There was plenty of irredentist sentiment in Germany clear into the 1970's. West Germany's official name for East Germany was the Soviet Zone of Occupation--they didn't consider it a real country--and for a time, West Germany threatened to sever diplomatic relations with any country that recognized East Germany.

West Germany also laid claim to the territories east of the Oder River seized by Poland and the Soviet Union. Any official West German map published before 1972 portrayed Germany with its 1937 borders. The government of Willi Brandt had to overcome considerable oppostion to enact the treaties in which West Germany finally accepted the post-WWII border.

[mowowie]

I read a book on the salvage of Scapa Flow.
It is amazing how that man managed to re-float something like 90% of those scuttled ships.

[elcid1970]

Somebody said scrap steel is still being salvaged from the remaining wrecks in Scapa Flow for the purity compared to modern steels.

[BroJoeK]

Fiji Hill: "Had West Germany not been powerless following WWII, it could have been a casus belli."

Exactly, the great benefit of Unconditional Surrender is that the loser has no rights, no expectations, no legitimate claims, nothing.
They must suffer whatever punishments the victors impose, and learn to like it.
And they must remember forever what happens when you insanely start wars of destruction you cannot win.

Today we are most reluctant to teach our enemies such lessons, so naturally they remain our enemies, constantly fighting to impose their own wills on us.
And we, in response, are so eager not to hurt their feeeeeeeelings, maybe if we're just nice enough to them they'll forget all about how much they loathe & despise us.

That is the "lesson of Versailles."

[Lower Deck]

bfl

[Lower Deck]

bfl

[Fiji Hill]

So are you saying that we should have demanded that Germany surrender unconditionally in 1918 and that we should have continued the war until they did so?

[BroJoeK]

That’s exactly what US leaders like General Pershing said at the time.
They correctly predicted that otherwise Germany would just continue the war in 20 years.
Pershing recommended the Allies do in 1918 what they did do in 1945.
But Pershing was a Republican, from the Unconditional Surrender school of US Grant, while President Wilson was a Southern Democrat from the “peace without victory” school.

The rest, as they say, is history.

[Fiji Hill]

Continuing the war in lieu of the Armistice might not have been such a hot idea.

• Germany may have been in turmoil in November, 1918, but as the Allied armies approached their homeland, the Germans may have risen to the occasion and resisted with a will--perhaps under a reactionary government led by someone like Rüdiger Graf von der Goltz, a coalition government that included radicals such as Karl Liebknecht, or even a Bolshevik regime.

• The Allies would have had to advance through rugged terrain such as the Hürtgen Forest, which they would only fully occupy after five months of heavy fighting in WWII.

• Winter was also coming on, and bad weather would have hindered Allied efforts

• The US had lost over 100,000 men by the time of the Armistice--twice the number that we would lose in Vietnam and in less than a year. Given the American public's historic distaste for protracted foreign wars, would the public have continued to support the war effort?

• Had the Allies prevailed and forced an unconditional surrender, would the American public support a lengthy and expensive occupation of the country and a nation-building program that would be necessary to preclude a power vacuum in Central Europe?

• The Germans could also have cut a deal with the Bolsheviks, as they would do time and again over the next several decades, which could have greatly complicated matters for the allies.

  Some questions to ponder.

[BroJoeK]

In fact, the German army was in far worse shape than people like Hitler later admitted.
It was on the verge of collapse, as was the German economy and political system.
Indeed, Hitler’s later remark about Russia, that it was so rotten you need only kick the door in and the rest would collapse — that could also be said of Germany at the end of 1918.

However, I am not understating the additional effort that would be required of Allies already bled dry, and nearly as demoralized as the Germans at that point.
It absolutely could not happen without strong US leadership, leadership of the kind Franklin Roosevelt provided in WWII, but of which Woodrow Wilson was utterly incapable.

But would it have been worth it?
Well, consider that the death toll in Europe alone in WWII was about 35 million, over half civilians, including six million Jews.
So how many extra deaths in the First World War would seem to you reasonable to have prevented the Second World War entirely?

[Fiji Hill]

Perhaps by fighting all the way to Berlin, we would have created a better world—but again, perhaps not.

On the other hand, had we stayed out of WWI altogether, there might not have been a WWII, a Cold War, a Korean War, a Vietnam War two wars in Iraq, or a war on Islamic terror.

[BroJoeK]

Jawohl, mein Herr.
Und ich spreche “gut deutsch”, also kein problem fur mich.
Aber meine Frau und Kinder... nicht so gut.

;-)

[Fiji Hill]

Im Jahre 1971-1972 war ich Student bei der Universität des Saarlandes in Saarbrücken. Damals war mein Deutsch fliessend, aber heute habe ich viel vergessen.

[BroJoeK]

Seriously, by 1917 the US could in no way remain neutral, much less support the German side.

To understand why, first remember the “roaring twenties” and the Great Depression.
The roaring twenties resulted largely from British & French war debts to the US paid back during those years.
But the money actually came from German reparations payments, so as long as those payments continued, Wall Street and the US economy “roared”.
When payments ended in 1929, first Wall Street, then the world economy collapsed.

Well, had the Brits & French lost in 1919, there would have been no Roaring 20s, instead the Great depression would have started in 1919.

That’s one reason why Wilson sided with the Allies, and possibly why he didn’t want Germany totally ruined.

Of course many Americans did side with Germany, but far more were Anglo & Francophiles.
Especially France, “LaFayette we are here”, they said.

Bottom line: making a nicer peace at Versailles would not have prevented the rise of Hitler during a time of economic crisis.
A more decisive victory or better enforcement or better yet, critical help for the weak Weimar Republic to prevent or to improve the Depression might have.

[Fiji Hill]

To understand why, first remember the “roaring twenties” and the Great Depression. The roaring twenties resulted largely from British & French war debts to the US paid back during those years. But the money actually came from German reparations payments, so as long as those payments continued, Wall Street and the US economy “roared”.

When payments ended in 1929, first Wall Street, then the world economy collapsed.

Well, had the Brits & French lost in 1919, there would have been no Roaring 20s, instead the Great depression would have started in 1919.

---

Never heard that theory before. Murray Rothbard, Garet Garrett, Amity Shlaes and Gene Smiley, who are critically acclaimed analysts of the Great Depression might not agree.

By the way, we did have a depression that started right after the war.

[BroJoeK]

Fiji Hill: "Never heard that theory before."

Preparata, "Conjuring Hitler"

This 2005 book is heavy-duty hi-proof conspiracy theories, not for the faint of heart, nor for the uninformed, and much of it can only be dismissed out of hand.
But it is highly sympathetic to Germans, and its economic analysis rings true to me.
The idea that German reparations helped Brits & French pay their war debts makes sense, as does the "coincidence" that when reparation were rescheduled in 1929 (the Young Plan), soon after the US stock market collapsed.

"Between agreement and adoption of the plan came the Wall Street Crash of 1929, of which the main consequences were twofold.
The American banking system had to recall money from Europe, and cancel the credits that made the Young Plan possible."

That's not to say, of course, it was the only cause of the Great Depression, certainly there were other factors.
But every crash takes a trigger, and this sounds like the one to me.

So I don't buy the conspiracies advanced by "Conjuring Hitler", but I do think the economic part is spot on.