.
I am a continental guy when it comes to German military power, and this blog post will show why and how much. Don't despair about the Germany-centric details, some 'fine' generalising stuff was placed at the end:
German navies have barely existed until the late 19th century, save for the period when the
Hanse (a club of Northern German cities with a focus on long-distance trade) mobilised for naval warfare in the Baltic Sea.
This changed with the navy officer
Tirpitz,
Wilhelm II's childish fascination with the fleet and the
Flottenverein pro-navy lobbying association which led to
a series of naval arms race laws beginning in 1898. The strategic raison d'être for the naval arms race and the hyper-expensive warships was the idea that the English could be deterred from siding against Germany in a future war by a German fleet 2/3rds as strong as its own, because it would be too risky.
The English did the exact opposite - they arms-raced against Germany which made the 2/3 rule extremely expensive to achieve, turned strongly against Germany alliance-wise (
1904, 1907) and ultimately joined the war in 1914 based on an obligation that hardly anybody believed to be that important previously.
 |
| Wilhelm II - a navy fanboi who made freehand sketches of the fleet |
Technology played against Germany's navy anyway: The introduction of
wireless long-range telegraphy made commerce-raiding much more dangerous for cruisers. It also failed to build proper protected cruisers with oceanic range (diesel engines for fuel efficiency coupled with coal-fired boilers for steam engines to make use of captured coal), spending almost entirely on strength in the North Sea and Baltic Sea.
Even a British defeat in battle would have been pointless in the North Sea, for the battleships were quite irrelevant for closing the North Sea exits to German blockade runners and merchant raiders. A defeat of the British cruiser fleet in battle was impossible because it wouldn't be concentrated for battle.
The naval arms race since 1898 was politically disastrous by 1904, super-disastrous by 1907 - and still continued till the advent of super-dreadnoughts in 1916 because emotion had overtaken reason.
The German imperial-era navy had little to show for all its budgets; the new submarine arm was the only cost-efficient thing about it. Until its activities added the United States to the long list of enemies during the first World War and thus provided the final impetus towards defeat.
- - - - -
The German naval procurement of the 1920's and early 1930's was a low point. The budget was tight, but it was also squandered. The light cruisers were either obsolete by design (
Emden's old-style armament) or extremely fragile and essentially unfit for combat (the later light cruisers of the
Königsberg and
Leipzig classes). The
Panzerschiffe ('pocket battleships') of the
Deutschland class were extremely poor designs: Too lightly armoured to be a real counter to the (deteriorating)
Soviet battleships and inevitably useless in the merchant raider role for which they were optimised: A handful merchant raiders like them could not possibly make much of an impact save for newspaper headlines. They were political ships in nature; meant to provoke a change in international treaties including Germany's restrictions. Yet as usual, there was no beneficial foreign policy effect from German naval procurement at all.
 |
| Panzerschiffe - big guns for show, thin armour |
- - - - -
The German naval growth of 1933-1939 looks surprisingly* sane by comparison, albeit it's very dubious whether the political capital spent on the submarine treaties with the UK was worth it. The subs' coastal defence role was soon assumed by air power, and the submarine force would have been a wasteful distraction of resources in a conflict with only France or France plus Poland - and that was what the German military was preparing for. A conflict with France and the UK at the same time looked hopeless for economical reasons during the 30's.
The relatively sane part about the naval procurement of about 1934-1938 was the modest expansion speed which avoided personnel shortages and the suitability of this balanced fleet for breaking a French blockade at the North Sea exit between Norway and Scotland. The French could have maintained about half of their fleet as blockade force at most (almost all cruisers and destroyers had a poor endurance and they had but one aircraft carrier). The Kriegsmarine of 1939 could have defeated that half and could thus have enabled blockade running; transatlantic trade with high value goods such as concentrated industrial chemicals and scarce goods such as natural rubber and copper.
Meanwhile, the Soviet navy in the Baltic Sea was increasingly in disrepair and neglect after a sailor revolt during the Russian revolution and the Kriegsmarine was de facto dominating the Baltic Sea with little effort.
- - - - -
It's astonishing that both German post-WW2 states rebuilt navies after so much demonstrated uselessness and budget squandering by historical German navies. Germany could hardly have lost the First World War if but a half of the navy budget of 1898-1913 had been spent on the armies instead (there were still separate armies for all German states, not a national one).
About the same can be said about an alternative allocation of half of the naval spending 1933-1942 on diesel trucks, tanks and guns.
Today we have again a 'balanced' navy, albeit a small one. A couple "frigates", a couple submarines, some mine countermeasure ships and some helicopters in disrepair. Back in 1940 a destroyer was worth about fifty fighters, nowadays a frigate is worth less than ten fighters. This development of prices tells us that the small navy doesn't nearly squander as big a share of the military budget as historically. The level of wastefulness is rather comparable to the Inter-War Years: Small navy, few new hulls, but some very, very pointless ship designs.
Let's elaborate on the "pointless ship designs":
We purchase "corvettes" (
K130) as "replacements" for fast attack craft. The military value in warfare is negligible. Those corvettes aren't even useful as pickets for bigger warships since they lack even basic ASW capabilities. Their crews are furthermore too small for cost-efficient use as training ships.
We purchase colonial patrol cruisers a.k.a. "frigates" (
F125) which are good in patrolling only. We don't have colonies though. Their actual warfare strength is a disgrace. They are huge targets, incapable of self-defence against submarines, with short range air defence capability only and with little offensive power.
Meanwhile the
F123 class of ASW frigates is apparently fine due to its sonar power and the
F124 class of AAW frigates seems to be mediocre. The subs seem to have teething problems (like the corvettes), but are respected. Their miniscule numbers make them almost perfectly irrelevant for national and collective defence, though.
The final replenishment ship ("
EGV") has meanwhile turned into an all-too obvious shipyard subsidy program due to the ridiculous unit price increase.
 |
| K130 corvette design - uselessness redefined! |
- - - - -
The stupid is strong in German navies.
Even occasional and short periods of sanity cannot hide the fact that German naval expenses have been largely wasteful - in ALL German navies; imperial pre-war, imperial wartime, Weimar, Nazi pre-war, Nazi wartime, West German Cold War**, East German Cold War and reunified Germany. The vast majority of their expenses did not serve the security of the people of Germany.
I suppose I expressed my attitude towards German navies clearly. I think quite the same about Italian, Russian/Soviet, French, Spanish, Belgian, Dutch, Polish, Finnish, Swedish, Norwegian, Turkish, Yugoslavian and Portuguese navies.
Naval spending tends to be wasteful:
Supposedly "maritime" countries (such as the UK)
tend to overestimate the utility of a modern navy and are all-too often enticed to overspend on marginally useful naval capabilities.
Naval power was a "winner takes it all" affair until land-based air power came to dominate over warships even hundreds of miles from the shores. Underdog approaches to naval warfare (
Jeune École, submarines, mine warfare) were somewhat promising, but they never reached the critical mass for actually helping to win a war.
The underdog navies which attempted a balanced navy approach merely wasted resources in their delusion of capability.
And then there's the all-too enticing overspending and inefficiency of the dominating navies. That's where the outright ridiculous waste of resources happened and still happens.
S O
*:The incompetent Nazis messed up basically everything that they touched. Their few success stories were built on what was planned before 1933 already or achieved by the industry.
**: The German navies of the Cold War were perfectly irrelevant.
.
