Abstract
The rapid rise of the Imperial German Navy began in the late 1890s, buoyed by a combination of hazy foreign policy goals and domestic pressure. On the one hand, many Germans, especially amongst the middle classes, regarded a strong navy as a necessary precondition for the successful conduct of Weltpolitik. The popular contemporary equation of naval might with global power was strongly reinforced by the writings of Alfred T. Mahan, especially his The Influence of Sea-Power upon History, first published in 1890. Mahan, an American naval officer, argued that only the possession of a strong navy guaranteed great power status.1 On the other hand, domestic pressure groups favoured an expansion of the German fleet for economic reasons. While the shipbuilding, iron, and steel industries lobbied for naval orders, Hanseatic merchants, shippers, and chambers of commerce were calling for increased naval protection for German commercial interests in Latin America, China, and elsewhere.2 It was this combination of hard economic factors and a growing public fascination with naval might that resulted in one of the most ambitious shipbuilding programmes in modern history.
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Notes
Volker Ullrich, Die nervöse Großmacht 1871–1918: Aufstieg und Niedergang des deutschen Kaiserreiches, 3rd edition (Frankfurt/M.: Fischer, 1999), p. 196.
Paul M. Kennedy, The Rise of the Anglo-German Antagonism, 1860–1914 (London: Allen & Unwin, 1980), p. 224.
For Tirpitz and the restructuring of the Imperial Navy see Walther Hubatsch, Der Admiralstab und die obersten Marinebehörden in Deutschland 1848–1945 (Frankfurt/M.: Bernard Graefe, 1958).
Ivo N. Lambi, The Navy and German Power Politics, 1862–1914 (London: Allen & Unwin, 1984), p. 191.
For von Diederichs see also Terell D. Gottschall, By Order of the Kaiser: Otto von Diederichs and the Rise of the Imperial Navy, 1865–1902 (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2003), especially pp. 257–66.
Walter Nicolai, Geheime Mächte: Internationale Spionage und ihre Bekämpfung in Weltkrieg und heute (Lerpzig: Woehler, 1923), p. 150.
Marine-Offizier-Verband (ed.), Die Ehrenrangliste der Kaiserlich Deutschen Marine 1914–1918, bearbeitet von Kontreadmiral a.D. Stoelzel (3 vols, Berlin: Thormann & Goetsch, 1930), 2, pp. 121, 577.
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© 2004 Thomas Boghardt
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Boghardt, T. (2004). The Origins of German Naval Intelligence. In: Spies of the Kaiser. St Antony’s Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230508422_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230508422_2
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