A study in technology strategy: The curious case of Alfred von Tirpitz

ABSTRACT

While studies of technology and war abound, the processes and reasoning that undergird choices about what to emphasize—i.e., “technology strategy”—have received much less attention. This analysis focuses upon the case of Grand Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz, who had a virtually free hand in setting German naval development strategy during the decades leading up to the outbreak of World War I. As significant technological advances characterized this period, Tirpitz's strategic choices from among a range of promising options comprise a fruitful subject of inquiry. That the current era features similarly significant technological advances and opportunities implies the possibility of drawing useful insights from the study of technology strategy in this earlier time.

Notes on contributor

John Arquilla ([email protected]) is professor of defense analysis at the United States Naval Postgraduate School. He studies the strategic implications of the information age, the challenge of irregular warfare, and the history of military organizational responses to technological change. His books include Dubious Battles (London: Crane Russak, 1992), Networks and Netwars (Santa Monica: RAND, 2001), The Reagan Imprint (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2006), Insurgents, Raiders, and Bandits (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2011), and Afghan Endgames (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2012).

Notes

1. See Martin van Creveld, Technology and War (New York: Free Press, 1991) and Max Boot, War Made Knew (New York: Gotham Books, 2006). Other key studies include, but are hardly limited to, T. N. Dupuy, The Evolution of Weapons and Warfare (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1980); Frank Barnaby, The Automated Battlefield (New York: The Free Press, 1985); and Kenneth Macksey, Technology in War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1986).

2. See Carl von Clausewitz, On War, ed. and trans. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton: Princeton University Press, [1976]1984), 195, 282.

3. Alfred Thayer Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660–1783, American Century ed. (New York: Hill and Wang, [1890]1957), 7.

4. From J. F. C. Fuller, “The Secret of Victory,” Weekly Tank Notes, January 25, 1919. He repeats and expands on this theme in his Armament and History (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1945), 31–32.

5. Barry Posen, The Sources of Military Doctrine: France, Britain, and Germany between the World Wars (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984).

6. Richard Overy, Why the Allies Won (New York: W.W. Norton., 1996), 243.

7. Maxwell Taylor, The Uncertain Trumpet (New York: Harper Brothers, 1959) and Andrew Bacevich, The Pentomic Era: The U.S. Army between Korea and Vietnam (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 1986) offer trenchant critiques.

8. Michael Maclear, The Ten Thousand Day War (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1981).

9. See Stefan T. Possony and Jerry E. Pournelle, The Strategy of Technology: Winning the Decisive War (Cambridge, UK: University Press of Cambridge, 1970).

10. Ervin Ackman, President Reagan's Program to Secure U.S. Leadership Indefinitely: Project Socrates, 4th ed. (Seattle: Amazon Digital Services, 2013).

11. This awareness has been evident for quite some time. See, for example, the keen attentiveness to technology strategy evinced by many Chinese military leaders going back to the 1990s in Michael Pillsbury, ed., Chinese Views of Future Warfare (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 1997). A more recent, and quite troubling, exposition of Chinese technology strategy can be found in William C. Hannas, James Mulvenon, and Anna B. Puglisi, Chinese Industrial Espionage: Technology Acquisition and Military Modernization (London: Routledge, 2013).

12. John Keegan, The First World War (London: Hutchinson, 1998), 420.

13. Correlli Barnett, The Swordbearers: Supreme Command in the First World War (New York: The New American Library, 1965), 129–130.

14. Paul M. Kennedy, The Rise of the Anglo-German Antagonism, 1860–1914 (London: The Ashfield Press, 1980), 421, 423.

15. Alfred von Tirpitz, My Memoirs (New York: Dodd, Mead, and Company, 1919), Vol. I, 179–80.

16. On the increasing lethality of torpedoes, John Keegan, The Price of Admiralty: The Evolution of Naval Warfare (New York: Viking, 1989), 145, noted “a doubling of the range and tripling of the speed of torpedoes between 1906 and 1914,” a development that “called the all-big-gun philosophy into doubt.”

17. Diesel and gas motors were strictly for running on the surface. U-boats ran on batteries when submerged—slowly, and for only short periods before recharging was necessary.

18. Paul G. Halpern, A Naval History of World War I (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1994), 375, also notes that the surface raiders accounted for only 268,000 tons of shipping in the last two years of the war—a time when Allied merchant vessel tonnage increases were exceeding this figure on a monthly basis.

19. Barbara Tuchman, The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World Before the War, 1890–1914 (New York: Macmillian, 1966), 152. Tuchman goes on to note that, in the wake of this meeting, the Kaiser ordered that a German-language translation of Mahan's The Influence of Sea Power upon History be placed in the on-board library of every ship in his fleet.

20. Both citations are from Bernard Brodie, Sea Power in the Machine Age, 2nd ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1943), 292, 295.

21. Cited in Holger Herwig, “Luxury Fleet”: The Imperial German Navy, 1888–1918 (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1980), 224. The reference to “luxury” is from Winston Churchill's comment in the prewar years that a strong navy was a necessity for Britain, a luxury for Germany. However true that might have been, the choice of words was unfortunate. In German, Luxus has pejorative connotations.

22. See Halpern, A Naval History of World War I, 360 (convoy), 427 (wolf pack).

23. Geoffrey Bennett, The Battle of Jutland (London: Batsford, 1964), remains one of the most trenchant analyses of this great naval clash. Interestingly, the one German battle cruiser lost at Jutland was sunk by a torpedo from a British destroyer—not gunfire from a dreadnought.

24. Herwig, “Luxury Fleet,” 147–48. Also, Herwig put the ratio of dreadnoughts, by October 1914, at just 17:15 in favor of the Royal Navy (147).

25. John Terraine, Mons: The Retreat to Victory (London: B.T. Batsford, 1960), 203.

26. Robert K. Massie, Castles of Steel: Britain, Germany, and the Winning of the Great War at Sea (New York: Random House, 2003), 79.

27. Tirpitz, Memoirs, Vol. II, 29.

28. Arthur J. Marder, From the Dreadnought to Scapa Flow, Vol. II, The War Years (London: Oxford University Press, 1965), 43.

29. Admiral G. A. von Müller, The Kaiser and His Court edited by Walter Goerlitz (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1964), 17–19.

30. Ibid., 22.

31. On this theme, see Jonathan Steinberg, “The Copenhagen Complex,” Journal of Contemporary History, vol. 1, no. 3 (July 1966): 23–46.

32. In August 1914, substantial elements of the Grand Fleet were moved closer to the Channel, but still not close enough to prevent a swift raid on the transports taking the BEF to France.

33. Tirpitz's political success in gaining legislative support for shipbuilding pleased the kaiser so much that he ennobled his state secretary for naval affairs with a “von.” See Jonathan Steinberg, Yesterday's Deterrent: Tirpitz and the Birth of the German Battle Fleet (London: Macdonald & Co., 1968), which describes Tirpitz's skillful political maneuverings.

34. His uncle, the Elder, was the great Prussian military leader in the wars of unification a generation before his nephew's time.

35. Herwig, “Luxury” Fleet, 148.

36. Gerhard Ritter, The Schlieffen Plan: Critique of a Myth (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1958), 72.

37. Insightful studies from the German point of view that speak to the challenge of naval technology strategy during this period include Admiral Friedrich Ruge, Der Seekrieg (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1957) and Cajus Bekker, Hitler's Naval War (Garden City: Doubleday, 1974). Clay Blair, author of the definitive account of the American submarine campaign against Japan, Silent Victory, followed with a two-volume study of Hitler's U-boat War (New York: Modern Library, 1996, 1998) that is equally lauded as an analysis of just how close the Germans came to winning the Battle of the Atlantic.

38. Both quotes are from Captain Wayne P. Hughes, Jr. (USN, ret.), Fleet Tactics: Theory and Practice, 1st edition (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1986), 134. For a more complete exposition of Cold War–era Soviet naval strategic thought, see Admiral Sergei Gorshkov, The Sea Power of the State (New York: Pergamon, 1979).

39. For an excellent overview of the emergence of this strand of Chinese naval thought, see the work of then-Captain Shen Zhongchang, Zhang Haiyin, and Zhou Xinsheng, “21st-Century Naval Warfare,” in Michael Pillsbury, ed., Chinese Views of Future Warfare (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 1997). Shen was the head of research and development at the time in the Navy Research Institute in Beijing.

40. See previous note.

41. See, for example, Christopher P. Cavas, “Fighting Swarms with Swarms,” Defense News, October 6, 2014.

42. Vice Admiral Thomas Rowden, “Distributed Lethality,” Proceedings Magazine, vol. 141, no. 1 (January 2015) provides an overview of this innovative concept.