The Emergence and Consequences of the Anglo-German Naval Rivalry

Unbeknown to most people at the time, the year 1897 marked a turning point in Anglo-German relations. In June of that year a ministerial reshuffle in the German government led to the appointment of new set of officials dedicated to revolutionising the Reich's place in the world. Unwilling to accept Bismarck's dictum that Germany was a ‘saturated’ European power with no further desires for expansion, they sought instead to transform their country into a ‘World Power’ (Weltmacht) capable of challenging the three global super-states, ‘Greater Britain, Continental Russia and Pan-America’.

Most prominent of the new appointees was the new Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and future Reich Chancellor Bernhard von Bülow. His avowed goal, articulated in the slogan Weltpolitik (‘world policy’), was to embark upon a new and dramatic foreign policy designed to ensure that Germany attained her ‘place in the sun’. Although it was never Bülow's intention to antagonise Britain, his method of implementing Weltpolitik – involving Germany ostentatiously in any global problems that arose anywhere in the world – would nevertheless ultimately arouse suspicions in London as to Germany's hostile intent. However, the probability is that very little would have come of these suspicions were it not for the actions of another of the new appointees, Admiral Alfred Tirpitz, the new Secretary of State at the Imperial Naval Office (Reichsmarineamt).

If Bülow was the most prominent of the new appointees, Tirpitz was certainly the most important of them, at least in so far as Anglo-German relations were concerned. The reason for this was that Tirpitz came to office with a very particular agenda in mind. Viewing the United Kingdom as Germany's ‘most dangerous naval enemy’ and the one against whom Germany most urgently needed ‘a certain measure of naval force as a political power factor’, he concluded that German naval expansion should be directed against Britain. As he put it: ‘the military situation against England demands battleships in as great a number as possible’. As a result of this thinking, he set out to transform Germany's naval position. In place of the existing meagre force of coastal defence ships and small cruisers, he sought to build a battle fleet capable of confronting the Royal Navy in the North Sea.