Today, of course, the system of naval administration under the Defense Department is more centralized, resulting in speedier decision-making, less friction in implementing decisions, and elimination of some waste and duplication of effort, but also in the power to bring both obstructionists and creative dissenters into the fold of orthodoxy. In the past, men like Admiral William S. Sims and his gunners, John H. Towers and his fliers, and Hyman G. Rickover and his submariners were able to prevail over the orthodoxies of their times. They triumphed mostly because they were right, but partly because the orthodox lacked the power to overwhelm them without producing administrative chaos. Today, administrators have such power, and while it is often beneficial to Navy and nation that they do, it will not prove so in the long run unless they remember that, the proverb to the contrary notwithstanding, often in unity there is weakness.
4. Germany: Ships and Strategy
BERLIN WAS ALWAYS WELL AWARE of the hostility of the United States, even in the thirties when few substantive issues arose to mar relations between the two powers. The problems that did evolve were not of a critical politico-strategic nature but peripheral matters involving German attempts to undercut U.S. markets in Latin America as part of the general economic nationalism of a Depression decade or, more importantly, German persecution of Jews. But ideological animosity engendered bitterness, and consequently, despite the lack of pivotal grievances, German-American relations were cold and mutually distrustful.1
German statesmen well understood that American isolationism was “an unreal utopianism” that would soon vanish once “values which concern the United States are at stake.” Ambassador Hans H. Dieckhoff warned from Washington that “neither the indifference of the rank and file toward foreign affairs” nor “the dogmatism of the pacifists” would preserve American neutrality if the survival of Britain were at stake. He reported so frequently on the transient nature of American isolationism that he was moved to apologize for his tenacity:
I am perhaps becoming a bore in Berlin, because I repeatedly point out . . . we can no longer count on America’s isolation, and that, on the contrary, we must certainly be prepared, in case of a world conflict, to see the Americans throw their weight into the British scale.2
In Berlin, both the political and naval leadership assumed at the outset of World War II that American intervention was inevitable, merely “a question of time and opportunity.” Hitler sought to avert American entry into the war in two ways: first, by driving America’s natural allies out of the war quickly through blitzkrieg techniques of warfare; second, by keeping German warships out of the western Atlantic and by forbidding U-boats to attack American shipping anywhere on the high seas, thereby avoiding “incidents” with the United States.3 A Wehrmacht command memorandum issued on the eve of war best expressed the Fuehrer’s policy:
The American Neutrality Law is a shackle for the most war-loving of American Presidents, one which presumably cannot be shaken off so long as we do not provide him with the excuse to breach this shackle. . . . Even if we are convinced that, should the war be of long duration, the USA will enter it in any case . . . it must be our object to delay this event so long that American help would come too late.4
Yet Hitler soon found that “the American danger was the one against which he could do nothing directly in advance.” The Germans lacked the sea power and bases to project their ample military strength to the approaches to the New World. For their part, the Americans lacked the Army and Air Force necessary to intervene in Europe, and their youth were “little inclined to war service.” Both sides needed time: the Americans to repair their weak defenses and refurbish their spirit; the Germans to deter American intervention by defeating the Allies. Thus, the Fuehrer’s policy was prudent and sensible. But it possessed two great drawbacks: first, German military successes, far from intimidating the Americans, only spurred them to a more combative position; second, Hitler’s reticence left the initiative in the Atlantic to the American President.5
Adolf Hitler once said that he was a hero on land, but a coward at sea. A continentalist, he eschewed colonies and large ships as hostages to his enemies’ fleets. He believed that modern improvements in military transportation and communications made it possible at last for land powers to hold their own in warfare against the traditionally more mobile sea powers.
Germany’s geographical position between France and Russia has bred in her statesmen an obsession with national security and a desire to gain strategic depth by encroaching on the domains of weaker neighbors. To this traditional thrust of policy, the Fuehrer added the intense nationalism of an Austrian outlander and the fever of an ideology half-revolutionary, half-atavistic. The new states of central and eastern Europe were weak, allowing Nazi expansionism to march along the path of least resistance. This course had the additional advantage of leading to Hitler’s ultimate foe, Russia, which, because of shared origins and characteristics, both repelled and fascinated Hitler’s Germany in, as H.R. Trevor-Roper has said, the same way a snake repels and fascinates a bird. But another impulse moved the Germans east. Although the Fuehrer often ridiculed large warships, he never quite evaded the nagging ghost of Mahan. Thus, he found the teachings of the geopoliticians attractive. In the vast Eurasian heartland, immune to the assaults of the sea powers, he saw the ultimate haven of his Reich. Psychology was perfectly wedded to strategy, for years of constant strife gave the Fuehrer the harried weariness of the inveterate outlaw; in the Urals heartland, he might rest at last, finally secure from foes both real and imagined. The escapism inherent in high places and dark forests appealed to him; it was more than the good infantryman’s respect for tenable ground that impelled him to seek recreation or conduct business in mountain or forest regions. He sought an impregnable redoubt and built one in his mind.
A creative soldier, he complained often—as did his great adversaries, Roosevelt and Churchill—that his military advisers were too conservative. “The technicians,” he asserted, “know only one word: No.” A shrewd tactician, he saw better than his generals that tanks, trucks, aircraft, and mobile artillery had restored mobility to modern warfare and that the positional tactics and trench-fortress cast of thought from World War I were passé. But restless and impulsive, he lacked the patience and method to plan an effective long-range strategy for Germany. He built a powerful modern Army, the best in the world, and a largely tactical Air Force to support the tanks and infantry. But his continental outlook and impulsiveness, German industry’s sluggishness in making a thorough transition to wartime production requirements, and Germany’s insufficiency of vital natural resources, including metal ores and oil, all limited the growth of the Navy, which had a small submarine fleet and no aircraft at all.a Without a formidable Navy and a strategic Air Force, the Germans lacked the best weaponry to defeat Great Britain in time to deter the intervention of the rearmed United States, and lacked the realistic strategic planning efficiently to wage a protracted war once American intervention occurred.6
Frustration had long been the companion of the German Navy, which had played an insignificant part in the nineteenth century wars of unification; unlike the U.S. Navy, its traditions were not inextricably linked with the birth of the nation. The service fared better in the era of rapid industrialization and colonial expansion, and by World War I disposed a formidable array of modern vessels, outnumbered by but qualitatively superior to those of the Royal Navy. But geography and inexperience at sea doomed the Germans. They expected the British to mount a close blockade of the German coast, dispersing their forces in order to keep the German High Seas Fleet penned up in its ports. The Germans planned to whittle down the British blockading units spread out by weather, need to refuel, and tactical imperatives with quick, hit-and-run attacks by superior forces. Eventually, with British strength sapped by these tactics, the High Seas Fleet might be able at last to steam boldly into the North Sea and challenge the Grand Fleet in equal and decisive battle for command of the seas and victory.
But geography, the speed of radio communications, and the mine, submarine, and airplane impelled the British to forego the traditional close blockade; they found that they could intercept the High Seas Fleet from home waters. The British Isles served as a cork wedged deep into the neck of the North Sea bottle; and in