Below are the initial chapters of an alternate history of WW1 in which Germany was not defeated, but the war ended in a virtual stalemate. The focus is on a discussion of an alternate post-war naval reduction treaty that might have occurred in this environment. I have ended it before including anything about what the ultimate outcome of these treaty negotiations. I am interested in what others have to say before completing the article:
There are some formatting issues caused by moving the original Word document here.
The 1914-1916 Great War and Postwar Naval Reduction Treaties
The Great War ripped apart several prewar European empires and radically restructured the colonial and non-western world. The western Russian Empire had collapsed into a series of independence-minded and squabbling successor states dominated by Germany, the Austro-Hungarian Empire was on the verge of its ultimate dissolution, and The Ottoman Empire was reduced to the Anatolian peninsula and a small sliver of the Balkans. France was in the hands of a military junta fighting communist insurgencies and close to economic collapse.
Two non-European powers emerged more powerful and influential, largely because they avoided full-scale participation in the conflict. Japan achieved relatively painless conquest of German possessions in Asia and gained further secure footholds in continental Asia from its seizure of Vladivostok and the Kamchatka peninsula during the Russian collapse. The United States stayed out of the conflict altogether, allowing it to use its economic power to build up a modern fleet equaling Great Britain and far superior to its Japanese rival in the Pacific. Due to its power and influence, the US also hosted the final peace treaty.
Two European combatants emerged from the conflict in a manner that could be called “victorious”: Britain and Germany.
Arguably, Britain came out of the conflict in the best overall situation. By not committing its army to the Franco-German front, it avoided the massive human losses faced by France, and to a lesser extent, Germany. Britain’s economy was undamaged, its overseas empire enlarged by the seizure of former German colonies in Africa, and its military and naval power was enhanced at relatively little cost in both manpower and materiel. What economic deprivations caused by the half-hearted German submarine campaign and air attacks by zeppelin airships was more than offset by the massive Royal Navy victory at Jutland in 1916 that virtually eliminated the Imperial German Navy as a serious threat to Britain’s survival.
On the continent, Germany was essentially unbeaten. Both France and Russia were in a state of collapse and forced to accept German-dictated armistice terms. Russian power was crippled for a generation at least, and Germany now dominated, directly or through favorable alliances with newly independent remnants of the former Russian Empire, the Baltic nations, Poland, Byelorussia, and the Ukraine. This, arguably, was the German war aim that appealed most to the broadest segment of the German population. Because of this, Germany could and did offer the French junta relatively lenient terms, which led to the surprisingly quick normalization of relations with France’s new leaders.
It is now known that this victory was quite possibly only made possible by last-minute radical changes in German prewar mobilization and military planning that eliminated plans to violate Belgian neutrality and mount a massive invasion of modern, compact, and heavily industrialized France. France was, in 1914, Germany’s most dangerous enemy but, paradoxically, the one that could be most quickly defeated. Initially, the German high command believed that any Russian offensives into Silesia could be held at bay until France was defeated in a lighting offensive involving a thrust through neutral Belgium.
Although promising the possibility of quick military success over France, this strategy also was likely to ensure immediate and full-strength British entry to the war on the continent. Because of this, the western offensive was problematic to Kaiser Wilhelm II, who throughout his reign liked to imagine Britain as a natural friend of the German Empire – a friend that had unfortunately fallen victim “at present to irrational fears regarding our legitimate and fraternal desire to join with the British Empire as an equal in bringing Christianity and civilization to the heathen world.”[1] The Kaiser, his civilian advisors, and many in the Reichstag, all understood that Britain would feel obliged to assist France and Russia in the event of war between the Central Powers and the Triple Entente. However, they also believed that unless especially provoked, Britain’s military commitment to the Entente might be limited, consisting of little more than the age-old British stratagem of naval blockade and colonial war, commitments that might be swiftly reconsidered should either France or Russia be decisively defeated. Increasingly the Kaiser came to believe that an invasion of Belgium would be such a provocation, and further, if France appeared likely to be conquered by German armies this in itself would provoke a full-scale British intervention on the continent. On February 5, 1914 he ordered his General Staff to prepare entirely new war plans featuring a defensive stance along the common Franco-German border and a massive invasion of Russia. In retrospect, this decision may have saved his reign and the German Empire.[2]
Although none of the European powers really wanted war, growing mistrust – especially between Britain and Germany over the latter’s naval buildup – made it inevitable that a spark would eventually ignite one, and that spark was provided by the assassination of Austro-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand by Serbian terrorists in the summer of 1914. The purpose of this work is not to discuss the Great War in detail, so the following discussion is necessarily brief, focusing on broad outcomes of the conflict, especially as these ultimately related to the postwar treaty structures.
Although often referred to as a “World War”, the 1914-16 conflict actually involved only a handful of European nations, Japan, and the Ottoman Empire. After some dithering, Italy opted not to enter the war as a belligerent, despite its prewar alliance with Germany and Austria-Hungary. Other than Serbia, which was quickly defeated by Austria-Hungary in 1914, the Entente added no new allies other than rebellious Arabs in the Ottoman Empire and a variety of nationalist terrorists in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The United States made its intention clear to remain neutral and President Woodrow Wilson offered his offices to help mediate peace, an offer that was eventually accepted by most of the warring powers in 1917.
American neutrality was tested in late 1914 when Germany announced its policy of unrestricted submarine warfare. Had the 1915 attack on RMS Lusitania carrying a large number of US passengers to Britain resulted in the ship’s sinking, this could have led ultimately to US involvement. However, only one torpedo struck the stern of the ship and apparently failed to detonate. Nonetheless the attack was universally condemned in the US press and in Congress as reckless piracy. In response to US protests, Germany abandoned its “sink on sight” policy and, after a few months, the potential crisis was forgotten.
As anticipated by the Germans, their eastern offensives forced Russian armies into full retreat, Germany, with Austro-Hungarian assistance, seizing much of Poland, Kurland, Belorussia, and the Ukraine. However, ultimate German victory in the east was only assured after the Russian Revolution in December 1915 in St. Petersburg forced the Czar and his family to abdicate and flee through Finland to Sweden. Several coups and counter coups between royalists, socialists, and nationalists followed. During this period of chaos, Russian military resistance essentially ceased, and Germany was able to seize much of western Russia and forge a direct link through the Caucasus to the Ottoman Empire. This gave the German Empire vast swathes of land, some of which was actually of little interest to Germany and was bargained away in 1917 to the newly established, but unstable, Federated Soviet Russian Republic and the Ottoman Empire in the Treaties of Warsaw and Washington.
Also, as Germany hoped, France bled itself dry by repeated assaults on well-entrenched German armies along the German border. French commanders never lost their belief that brave poilus fortified with elan and an offensive spirit could eventually overcome German machine guns, barbed wire, and mortars. By the fall of 1916, France had lost nearly 2,000,000 men in in such attacks, far more than suffered by all other combatants in the Great War, with the possible exception of Russia.[3] Although the Germans were occasionally forced to give ground in the face of these mass offensives, it was the French who suffered. Troop morale dropped and revolutionary sentiments multiplied. Finally, in April 1916, French troops in many units across the front mutinied when given yet another order to charge the German lines. News of this rebellion spread to Paris, leading ultimately to the political collapse of the 3rd Republic. Backed by nationalist elements, a small army force commanded by a young officer named Charles de Gaulle seized power in Paris in order to preempt a radical socialist revolution and negotiate peace with the Germans.
Having achieved all of its possible aims in the east, Germany offered de Gaulle’s junta surprisingly favorable terms: no territorial claims against France or its colonial empire, surprisingly modest reparations, assistance in quelling leftist revolutionaries, and a joint agreement to permanently demilitarize the Franco-German border for 10 years. De Gaulle’s self-styled “Fourth Republic” (actually a military dictatorship), signed a separate armistice with Germany on this basis on June 6, 1916. Because unofficial German war aims widely discussed in the German press and Reichstag had been much more draconian,[4] De Gaulle’s junta was able to present this armistice to the French public as a victory.
With both allies in collapse by mid-1916, the British government began to consider making peace with Germany. This was certainly helped by the soft terms offered to France by Germany, which both preserved the independence of France as a western European bulwark against Germany and avoided any border changes in the west (such as German occupation zones or bases along the English Channel) that would more directly threaten Britain.
However, unlike France and Russia, Britain was still in a very strong position. With her entire military strength focused outside of Europe and a Royal Navy that dominated the sea, she had quickly seized Germany’s colonies in Africa while her Japanese ally had done the same in China and the Pacific. Britain and her Arab nationalist clients had wrested all of Arabia from Ottoman control, including the small German-sponsored Zionist enclave in Palestine. Other than slight damage from zeppelin airship and naval coastal raids, Britain was untouched by war and, with the assistance of the Imperial Dominions, had raised a large and well-equipped army that was largely intact and still expanding. Although desiring peace, the British Government was unprepared to end the war as long as Germany still maintained an ever-expanding and powerful high seas fleet that was an existential threat to Britain’s sea trade and Empire. Despite the loss of her two Continental allies, many in Whitehall began lobbying for a direct seaborne invasion of northern Germany.
Unexpectedly, the door to peace was opened wide in June 1916, when the Royal Navy won an overwhelming victory over the German High Seas Fleet at Jutland. In a little over 24 hours, this victory virtually eliminated the German Navy as a serious threat to British naval dominance.
Against the loss of one battleship (HMS Orion, torpedoed by a submarine after the main engagement), three battlecruisers (HMS Indomitable, HMS Queen Mary, and HMS New Zealand), two obsolete armored cruisers, several destroyers, and fewer than 6000 men, an overwhelming force of the Royal Navy under Lord Jellicoe succeeded in trapping and eliminating much of the German High Seas Fleet off the coast of Denmark – sinking, mortally crippling, or capturing eight dreadnought battleships (SMS Markgraf, SMS Konig, SMS Kaiser, SMS Konig Albert, SMS Oldenberg, SMS Ostfriesland, and SMS Grosser Kurfurst, all four pre-dreadnoughts (SMS Pommern, SMS Schlieswig-Holstein, SMS Schliessen, and SMS Hannover), the battlecruisers SMS Moltke, SMS Seydlitz, SMS Derfflinger, and SMS Lutzow, and many light units. Only dwindling British ammunition reserves and poor visibility allowed the mauled remnants of the routed German fleet to escape, and many of these ships were heavily damaged and would require months to repair and refit. Over 15,000 German officers and men lost their lives in the disaster, including Admirals Scheer and Hipper. Another 8,800 men were rescued from the sea or were taken from surrendered German capital ships into British captivity. As if by an act of God, the Imperial German Navy had ceased to exist. In the words of First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill, “Admiral Jellicoe is the one man who could have won or lost this war in a single day…and in the tradition of Nelson he has won it!”[5]
While Churchill and a few others in the war cabinet argued that the Jutland victory should encourage Britain to continue the war until complete victory was secured, the Asquith government demurred. Britain had, with relatively little cost to itself, eliminated Germany’s overseas empire and crippled the German navy - the only means Germany might have to threaten Britain with direct invasion. Rather than seek a complete victory, which would entail a long and costly European land campaign against the experienced armies that toppled Russia and France, Asquith and his allies in Parliament decided instead to seek a negotiated peace with Germany, one that made permanent the elimination of the German navy as a significant threat to Britain and her Empire.
In Germany, the massive defeat at Jutland was a shock to the Reichstag, Kaiser Wilhelm, and the generally hawkish German press. In a single battle Britain virtually destroyed the fleet that Tirpitz and Wilhelm II had lovingly created over the preceding decade, with billions of Reichsmarks somewhat grudgingly provided by the Reichstag under Tirpitz’s Navy Laws. The Imperial Navy never regained the prestige in the court of Wilhelm II it previously enjoyed. In a manner surprisingly equivalent to the thinking of Asquith and his advisors in Britain, Germany’s leaders came to realize that the naval defeat at Jutland gave them the “out” to seek a negotiated peace that preserved Germany’s gains on the continent while reducing the costly fleet that achieved little in battle and took resources away from the successful army.
Thus, both Britain and Germany came to see there might be basis to negotiate peace without total victory.
Although France and Russia had already signed separate agreements with Germany in early 1916, the United States offered to mediate a British-German peace treaty that would also provide comprehensive settlement among all combatants and establish the structure for a permanent peace in Europe and elsewhere. Negotiations began on July 5, 1917 in Washington DC, and all of the former combatants were invited. Initially only Germany, France, Britain, the Ottoman Empire, Austria-Hungary, and Japan attended. Russia, still in the throes of civil war, did not send a representative. Serbia, which was specifically mentioned in the draft treaty preamble as the nation most responsible for the Great War, no longer existed as an independent nation, and the Central Powers had no desire to see it resurrected. In October 1917, representatives from several newly independent countries carved out of the former Russian Empire by Germany were also invited by US President Wilson to sit in. These included Poland, Belorussia and Ukraine. Finland, which had achieved independence without German assistance during the Russian collapse, was also invited.
Although the Washington Treaty as finally signed on December 6, 1917 did not live up to Woodrow Wilson’s lofty and ultimately unrealistic goal to serve as the springboard for a permanent “League of Nations” it proved to be an enduring document that:
[1] This was only one of the Kaiser’s more restrained statements. In 1905, following the Russo-Japanese War, he wrote, but never posted, a letter to his cousin George V asking that Britain reconsider its alliance with Japan, ending: “The time has come for Germany and England, representing as we do the absolute pinnacle of human achievement, to unite as one being to smite and destroy the growing menace of Asian pagan buddhism with the sword of St Michael and the Judgment of Christ!” (Collected Hohenzollern Archives, Vol XXI, no. 47, Berlin). It is interesting to imagine the jokes that might have been shared around the King’s dinner table had he received this missal.
[2] It certainly saved Wilhelm’s reputation. Despite his unusual and mercurial personality, Wilhelm II had uncanny insight at times that more than once saved his nation and the world from catastrophe, perhaps without knowing it. It is no accident that he is still “revered in Germany and considered throughout the world as one of the great leaders of the 20th century” (The Economist, Vol 23, No. 12).
[3] Russia’s population loss as a result of the Great War may never be fully known, but recent estimates peg this at between 4 and 5 million people, not counting populations that were lost to Russia as a result of border changes. Much was due to disease, starvation, and the long period of civil war and organized violence that continued in Russia and its lost territories well into the 1920’s Given the tendency of poorly led and surrounded Russian units to surrender after an initial stiff resistance, the Germans took over 1.5 million men prisoner. It is estimated that fewer than 350,000 Russian soldiers actually lost their lives fighting Germans. G. Rostropovich, (1954) A statistical analysis of the German War, St. Petersburg.
[4] For example, a November 1915 article in the Frankfurter Zeitung, claimed on presumably good authority that Germany, if victorious in the war, would occupy or even annex large swaths of northeastern France, seize or dismantle her industries, and eventually establish protectorates over Belgium and perhaps even the Netherlands. It is unclear if this ever represented official thinking in Germany.
[5] In 1939, there was a serious effort in Parliament to fund and erect a column to Jellicoe in Trafalgar Square matching Nelson’s column in size and appearance. The two columns would have been immediately adjacent to each other and surrounded by a circular wall containing a bas-relief representation of Nelson’s ships on one half and Jellicoe’s fleet on the other. The square would have been renamed “Royal Navy Square”. According to the London Times, the scheme eventually floundered on the shoals of cost, artistic disagreement, and economy. However Jellicoe’s name has been suitably memorialized in the names of British warships since 1919, the latest being HMS Lord Jellicoe, a 65,000 ton aircraft carrier scheduled to enter the Royal Navy in late 1964.
[6] This codicil was disliked by the Kaiser and extremely unpopular among the more militant members of the Reichstag, since it seemed that Germany was being treated as something less than the outright victor in the Great War. Ratification by Germany was uncertain for several months until a separate agreement was reached with Britain requiring renegotiation and renewal of the Washington codicil every 10 years.
[7] This would be the war in 1929-30 between the United States and Japan, ostensibly fought over the status of the Marshall Islands and other former German Pacific colonies occupied by Japan during the Great War. Although the smaller Japanese navy achieved some early successes through initiative and guile, the much larger US fleet eventually achieved a complete victory at Truk that rivalled Jellicoe’s success against Germany in 1916. Japan sued for peace shortly thereafter. See H. Bywater (1952) The Great Pacific War for a concise and highly readable account of this conflict.
[8] The modern historian cannot criticize the crafters of the Washington Treaty enough for ignoring the Balkan tinderbox that ignited the Great War. Luckily, the dissolution of the Dual Monarchy has to some extent resolved some of the problems ignored by the diplomats. With Austria uniting with the powerful German Empire and an aggressive Hungary expanding in power and influence throughout the region, many power vacuums have been filled and nationalist urges have been at least temporarily quelled.
[9] Probably the most creative and successful German measure to minimize ethnic conflict in Poland, Byelorussia, and Ukraine was the massive support Germany gave to Zionism and the resettlement of millions of eastern European Jews to Palestine.
There are some formatting issues caused by moving the original Word document here.
The 1914-1916 Great War and Postwar Naval Reduction Treaties
The Great War ripped apart several prewar European empires and radically restructured the colonial and non-western world. The western Russian Empire had collapsed into a series of independence-minded and squabbling successor states dominated by Germany, the Austro-Hungarian Empire was on the verge of its ultimate dissolution, and The Ottoman Empire was reduced to the Anatolian peninsula and a small sliver of the Balkans. France was in the hands of a military junta fighting communist insurgencies and close to economic collapse.
Two non-European powers emerged more powerful and influential, largely because they avoided full-scale participation in the conflict. Japan achieved relatively painless conquest of German possessions in Asia and gained further secure footholds in continental Asia from its seizure of Vladivostok and the Kamchatka peninsula during the Russian collapse. The United States stayed out of the conflict altogether, allowing it to use its economic power to build up a modern fleet equaling Great Britain and far superior to its Japanese rival in the Pacific. Due to its power and influence, the US also hosted the final peace treaty.
Two European combatants emerged from the conflict in a manner that could be called “victorious”: Britain and Germany.
Arguably, Britain came out of the conflict in the best overall situation. By not committing its army to the Franco-German front, it avoided the massive human losses faced by France, and to a lesser extent, Germany. Britain’s economy was undamaged, its overseas empire enlarged by the seizure of former German colonies in Africa, and its military and naval power was enhanced at relatively little cost in both manpower and materiel. What economic deprivations caused by the half-hearted German submarine campaign and air attacks by zeppelin airships was more than offset by the massive Royal Navy victory at Jutland in 1916 that virtually eliminated the Imperial German Navy as a serious threat to Britain’s survival.
On the continent, Germany was essentially unbeaten. Both France and Russia were in a state of collapse and forced to accept German-dictated armistice terms. Russian power was crippled for a generation at least, and Germany now dominated, directly or through favorable alliances with newly independent remnants of the former Russian Empire, the Baltic nations, Poland, Byelorussia, and the Ukraine. This, arguably, was the German war aim that appealed most to the broadest segment of the German population. Because of this, Germany could and did offer the French junta relatively lenient terms, which led to the surprisingly quick normalization of relations with France’s new leaders.
It is now known that this victory was quite possibly only made possible by last-minute radical changes in German prewar mobilization and military planning that eliminated plans to violate Belgian neutrality and mount a massive invasion of modern, compact, and heavily industrialized France. France was, in 1914, Germany’s most dangerous enemy but, paradoxically, the one that could be most quickly defeated. Initially, the German high command believed that any Russian offensives into Silesia could be held at bay until France was defeated in a lighting offensive involving a thrust through neutral Belgium.
Although promising the possibility of quick military success over France, this strategy also was likely to ensure immediate and full-strength British entry to the war on the continent. Because of this, the western offensive was problematic to Kaiser Wilhelm II, who throughout his reign liked to imagine Britain as a natural friend of the German Empire – a friend that had unfortunately fallen victim “at present to irrational fears regarding our legitimate and fraternal desire to join with the British Empire as an equal in bringing Christianity and civilization to the heathen world.”[1] The Kaiser, his civilian advisors, and many in the Reichstag, all understood that Britain would feel obliged to assist France and Russia in the event of war between the Central Powers and the Triple Entente. However, they also believed that unless especially provoked, Britain’s military commitment to the Entente might be limited, consisting of little more than the age-old British stratagem of naval blockade and colonial war, commitments that might be swiftly reconsidered should either France or Russia be decisively defeated. Increasingly the Kaiser came to believe that an invasion of Belgium would be such a provocation, and further, if France appeared likely to be conquered by German armies this in itself would provoke a full-scale British intervention on the continent. On February 5, 1914 he ordered his General Staff to prepare entirely new war plans featuring a defensive stance along the common Franco-German border and a massive invasion of Russia. In retrospect, this decision may have saved his reign and the German Empire.[2]
Although none of the European powers really wanted war, growing mistrust – especially between Britain and Germany over the latter’s naval buildup – made it inevitable that a spark would eventually ignite one, and that spark was provided by the assassination of Austro-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand by Serbian terrorists in the summer of 1914. The purpose of this work is not to discuss the Great War in detail, so the following discussion is necessarily brief, focusing on broad outcomes of the conflict, especially as these ultimately related to the postwar treaty structures.
Although often referred to as a “World War”, the 1914-16 conflict actually involved only a handful of European nations, Japan, and the Ottoman Empire. After some dithering, Italy opted not to enter the war as a belligerent, despite its prewar alliance with Germany and Austria-Hungary. Other than Serbia, which was quickly defeated by Austria-Hungary in 1914, the Entente added no new allies other than rebellious Arabs in the Ottoman Empire and a variety of nationalist terrorists in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The United States made its intention clear to remain neutral and President Woodrow Wilson offered his offices to help mediate peace, an offer that was eventually accepted by most of the warring powers in 1917.
American neutrality was tested in late 1914 when Germany announced its policy of unrestricted submarine warfare. Had the 1915 attack on RMS Lusitania carrying a large number of US passengers to Britain resulted in the ship’s sinking, this could have led ultimately to US involvement. However, only one torpedo struck the stern of the ship and apparently failed to detonate. Nonetheless the attack was universally condemned in the US press and in Congress as reckless piracy. In response to US protests, Germany abandoned its “sink on sight” policy and, after a few months, the potential crisis was forgotten.
As anticipated by the Germans, their eastern offensives forced Russian armies into full retreat, Germany, with Austro-Hungarian assistance, seizing much of Poland, Kurland, Belorussia, and the Ukraine. However, ultimate German victory in the east was only assured after the Russian Revolution in December 1915 in St. Petersburg forced the Czar and his family to abdicate and flee through Finland to Sweden. Several coups and counter coups between royalists, socialists, and nationalists followed. During this period of chaos, Russian military resistance essentially ceased, and Germany was able to seize much of western Russia and forge a direct link through the Caucasus to the Ottoman Empire. This gave the German Empire vast swathes of land, some of which was actually of little interest to Germany and was bargained away in 1917 to the newly established, but unstable, Federated Soviet Russian Republic and the Ottoman Empire in the Treaties of Warsaw and Washington.
Also, as Germany hoped, France bled itself dry by repeated assaults on well-entrenched German armies along the German border. French commanders never lost their belief that brave poilus fortified with elan and an offensive spirit could eventually overcome German machine guns, barbed wire, and mortars. By the fall of 1916, France had lost nearly 2,000,000 men in in such attacks, far more than suffered by all other combatants in the Great War, with the possible exception of Russia.[3] Although the Germans were occasionally forced to give ground in the face of these mass offensives, it was the French who suffered. Troop morale dropped and revolutionary sentiments multiplied. Finally, in April 1916, French troops in many units across the front mutinied when given yet another order to charge the German lines. News of this rebellion spread to Paris, leading ultimately to the political collapse of the 3rd Republic. Backed by nationalist elements, a small army force commanded by a young officer named Charles de Gaulle seized power in Paris in order to preempt a radical socialist revolution and negotiate peace with the Germans.
Having achieved all of its possible aims in the east, Germany offered de Gaulle’s junta surprisingly favorable terms: no territorial claims against France or its colonial empire, surprisingly modest reparations, assistance in quelling leftist revolutionaries, and a joint agreement to permanently demilitarize the Franco-German border for 10 years. De Gaulle’s self-styled “Fourth Republic” (actually a military dictatorship), signed a separate armistice with Germany on this basis on June 6, 1916. Because unofficial German war aims widely discussed in the German press and Reichstag had been much more draconian,[4] De Gaulle’s junta was able to present this armistice to the French public as a victory.
With both allies in collapse by mid-1916, the British government began to consider making peace with Germany. This was certainly helped by the soft terms offered to France by Germany, which both preserved the independence of France as a western European bulwark against Germany and avoided any border changes in the west (such as German occupation zones or bases along the English Channel) that would more directly threaten Britain.
However, unlike France and Russia, Britain was still in a very strong position. With her entire military strength focused outside of Europe and a Royal Navy that dominated the sea, she had quickly seized Germany’s colonies in Africa while her Japanese ally had done the same in China and the Pacific. Britain and her Arab nationalist clients had wrested all of Arabia from Ottoman control, including the small German-sponsored Zionist enclave in Palestine. Other than slight damage from zeppelin airship and naval coastal raids, Britain was untouched by war and, with the assistance of the Imperial Dominions, had raised a large and well-equipped army that was largely intact and still expanding. Although desiring peace, the British Government was unprepared to end the war as long as Germany still maintained an ever-expanding and powerful high seas fleet that was an existential threat to Britain’s sea trade and Empire. Despite the loss of her two Continental allies, many in Whitehall began lobbying for a direct seaborne invasion of northern Germany.
Unexpectedly, the door to peace was opened wide in June 1916, when the Royal Navy won an overwhelming victory over the German High Seas Fleet at Jutland. In a little over 24 hours, this victory virtually eliminated the German Navy as a serious threat to British naval dominance.
Against the loss of one battleship (HMS Orion, torpedoed by a submarine after the main engagement), three battlecruisers (HMS Indomitable, HMS Queen Mary, and HMS New Zealand), two obsolete armored cruisers, several destroyers, and fewer than 6000 men, an overwhelming force of the Royal Navy under Lord Jellicoe succeeded in trapping and eliminating much of the German High Seas Fleet off the coast of Denmark – sinking, mortally crippling, or capturing eight dreadnought battleships (SMS Markgraf, SMS Konig, SMS Kaiser, SMS Konig Albert, SMS Oldenberg, SMS Ostfriesland, and SMS Grosser Kurfurst, all four pre-dreadnoughts (SMS Pommern, SMS Schlieswig-Holstein, SMS Schliessen, and SMS Hannover), the battlecruisers SMS Moltke, SMS Seydlitz, SMS Derfflinger, and SMS Lutzow, and many light units. Only dwindling British ammunition reserves and poor visibility allowed the mauled remnants of the routed German fleet to escape, and many of these ships were heavily damaged and would require months to repair and refit. Over 15,000 German officers and men lost their lives in the disaster, including Admirals Scheer and Hipper. Another 8,800 men were rescued from the sea or were taken from surrendered German capital ships into British captivity. As if by an act of God, the Imperial German Navy had ceased to exist. In the words of First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill, “Admiral Jellicoe is the one man who could have won or lost this war in a single day…and in the tradition of Nelson he has won it!”[5]
While Churchill and a few others in the war cabinet argued that the Jutland victory should encourage Britain to continue the war until complete victory was secured, the Asquith government demurred. Britain had, with relatively little cost to itself, eliminated Germany’s overseas empire and crippled the German navy - the only means Germany might have to threaten Britain with direct invasion. Rather than seek a complete victory, which would entail a long and costly European land campaign against the experienced armies that toppled Russia and France, Asquith and his allies in Parliament decided instead to seek a negotiated peace with Germany, one that made permanent the elimination of the German navy as a significant threat to Britain and her Empire.
In Germany, the massive defeat at Jutland was a shock to the Reichstag, Kaiser Wilhelm, and the generally hawkish German press. In a single battle Britain virtually destroyed the fleet that Tirpitz and Wilhelm II had lovingly created over the preceding decade, with billions of Reichsmarks somewhat grudgingly provided by the Reichstag under Tirpitz’s Navy Laws. The Imperial Navy never regained the prestige in the court of Wilhelm II it previously enjoyed. In a manner surprisingly equivalent to the thinking of Asquith and his advisors in Britain, Germany’s leaders came to realize that the naval defeat at Jutland gave them the “out” to seek a negotiated peace that preserved Germany’s gains on the continent while reducing the costly fleet that achieved little in battle and took resources away from the successful army.
Thus, both Britain and Germany came to see there might be basis to negotiate peace without total victory.
Although France and Russia had already signed separate agreements with Germany in early 1916, the United States offered to mediate a British-German peace treaty that would also provide comprehensive settlement among all combatants and establish the structure for a permanent peace in Europe and elsewhere. Negotiations began on July 5, 1917 in Washington DC, and all of the former combatants were invited. Initially only Germany, France, Britain, the Ottoman Empire, Austria-Hungary, and Japan attended. Russia, still in the throes of civil war, did not send a representative. Serbia, which was specifically mentioned in the draft treaty preamble as the nation most responsible for the Great War, no longer existed as an independent nation, and the Central Powers had no desire to see it resurrected. In October 1917, representatives from several newly independent countries carved out of the former Russian Empire by Germany were also invited by US President Wilson to sit in. These included Poland, Belorussia and Ukraine. Finland, which had achieved independence without German assistance during the Russian collapse, was also invited.
Although the Washington Treaty as finally signed on December 6, 1917 did not live up to Woodrow Wilson’s lofty and ultimately unrealistic goal to serve as the springboard for a permanent “League of Nations” it proved to be an enduring document that:
- Formally ended the European war and restored normal diplomatic relations among the signatories;
- Provided formal recognition by all signatories of the previous Russo-German and Franco-German treaties and armistices,
- Provided international recognition for the new nations of central and eastern Europe and established several border adjustments
- Provided international recognition for Finland
- Recognized the Austro-Hungarian annexation of Serbia
- Recognized the independence of Iraq, Syria, Jordan, and Palestine under British protection
- Ended the war between Britain and Germany on terms that were acceptable, if not ideal, to both parties. These terms included:
- Resumption of full diplomatic and economic ties between both nations
- Formal dissolution of the Franco-British alliance
- British acceptance of a sphere of German dominance in central and eastern Europe
- German acceptance of the British conquest of its African colonies
- An agreement by Britain to negotiate with Japan regarding the return of some former German colonies and concessions in China and the Pacific to Germany.
- Recognizing that the Anglo-German naval arms race was a prime cause of the Great War, the Washington Treaty also included a separate naval reduction codicil between Britain and Germany that formally limited the size of any future German navy to one-third of the tonnage of the British navy, with further specific limitations on the actual numbers of capital ships allowed to Germany.[6]
There were, however, a number of unresolved issues or snubs that caused some participants not to sign the treaty and created the stage for future regional conflicts as well as one major war[7] over the following four decades.
The Washington Treaty did not address the Balkans, other than to affirm Austro-Hungarian gains and legitimize the extinction of Serbia as an independent nation. As a result, nationalist movements continued to thrive in and outside of Austria-Hungary. The Dual Monarchy also found itself embroiled in border conflicts with the new German-sponsored nations of Poland and Ukraine. In addition, numerous non-signatories such as Italy and Romania had their own claims and border disputes against Austria and Hungary that the treaty did not address.
This, together with increasing instability in the empire, led in 1926 to the negotiated breakup of the Dual Monarchy into the independent Kingdoms of Austria and Hungary. Despite the Austrian monarchy’s dislike for the Prussian-dominated German Empire, the rump state of Austria soon found itself drawn into the German orbit, eventually negotiating a place in the federal structure of the enlarged German Empire as the semi-autonomous Kingdom of Austria. The Kingdom of Hungary, on the other hand, flourished. With German assistance, Hungary, resorted to sometimes draconian measures to maintain its control over restive Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, south Slavs, Croats, Romanians, and others within its expanded borders.[8]
The Ottoman Empire understandably chafed at being asked to sign a document that recognized the loss of its Arabian territories. However, since the Ottoman government saw little chance of retaining these territories in the foreseeable future, it eventually signed the treaty to restore valuable economic support from Britain and France. Dissatisfaction with this treaty was so high in Turkey, however, that it eventually led to the overthrow of Sultan Mehmed IV by a military coup. Later, Mehmed was returned to the throne as a figurehead monarch under a dictatorship headed by Mustafa Kemal.
Japan did not sign the treaty, seeing the requirement to negotiate with Britain regarding the final status of its conquests in the Pacific as yet another attempt by western powers to deprive it of its well-earned conquests in war. Japan refused to negotiate with either Germany or Britain regarding this matter. This in turn antagonized the United States, which saw the Japanese Pacific conquests as a threat to its own possessions in the western Pacific, particularly the Philippines and Guam. The Americans specifically demanded that German Micronesian and Pacific islands be demilitarized or placed under international control, neither of which the Japanese would agree to. Finally, the US sought to have the Anglo-German naval reduction codicil expanded to include at least the United States and Japan, with Japan limited to the same ratio vis-à-vis the US as the German-British ratio.
In an attempt to mollify the host United States, Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Hungary, and Japan agreed to meet further at Washington in 1918 to negotiate a broader seven-party treaty, dealing specifically with a limitation to future naval expansions. All powers recognized the fact that the increasing size and power of modern capital ships was making costs unsustainable, but each also had their own reasons for seeking some sort of limits on naval expansion.
Britain sought such a treaty to protect its naval preeminence, while at the same time allowing it to reduce naval expenditures, now that a powerful German fleet was no longer a threat. However, left unchecked, current US and Japanese building programs would erode this preeminence even without the German threat and neither country could be seen as reliably an ally in the future.
The US position was framed largely by the perceived Japanese threat. The US sought an abrogation of the Anglo-Japanese defense treaty and a limitation to Japanese naval expansion. Also, the US had the economic strength to complete its massive buildup, it was politically unpopular in Congress. Japan sought its recognition as one of the three major naval powers as well as de jure , if not de facto, equality with the Anglo-American powers. Germany sought to restore at least some of its former position as a major naval power. Italy and France realized they were ultimately left fighting over scraps, but still wanted a place at the table. Other powers, most notably Hungary and the Ottoman Empire, attended as observers.
Finally, the non-participation of Russia at the Washington Peace Treaty and its later naval supplement left the situation in eastern Europe highly unstable, despite Germany’s desire to see the newly independent nations of Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Byelorussia, and Ukraine stable, pro-German, and safely within the German sphere of influence. By 1923, radical communists had seized power in the Russian Federated Soviet Republic, and under the banner of socialist liberation, Russian communists began supporting anti-German “liberation” movements throughout eastern Europe. This resulted in a continued need for German occupation forces in the region, both to support the pro-German governments and to manage increasing ethnic and religious hostility among its occupants.[9]
1917-1918 Naval Building Programs
One of the principal reasons Britain, Germany, France, and other European powers sought to curb naval expenditures was economic. All of these nations had incurred large public debts during the war, and to varying degrees their populaces and parliaments were opposed to spending massive sums on further naval expansion now that the war was over. On the other hand many of the participants in the Washington Naval Treaty negotiations had commenced on pre-war and wartime capital ship building programs they were loath to abandon, in part because they hoped to keep shipyards busy and avoid the specter of working class unemployment leading to dissatisfaction. Most significant were the programs of Britain, the United States, Japan, Germany, France, and Italy. - Great Britain had just laid down four Admiral-class battlecruisers, of which one, HMS Hood was scheduled to be completed in 1918, with her three sisters, Anson, Howe and Rodney scheduled for completion in 1919. In addition, design work was proceeding on new fast battleships that incorporated all of the lessons of the Great War. By 1924, the Royal Navy hoped to have in commission four new battleships armed with nine 18” guns, four new 16” armed battlecruisers, and no fewer than ten other capital ships armed with 15” guns. Although the threat from Germany was significantly reduced over the near future, the Royal Navy saw both Japan and the United States as potential threats. Britain was willing to consider some reduction in this program, but not at the expense of its overall superiority.
- The United States was in the midst of a massive naval buildup, prompted primarily by concerns regarding Japanese naval expansion. Four new Colorado-class battleships armed with 16” guns were nearing completion in 1918, and no fewer than twelve additional capital ships armed with 16” guns were in development and scheduled for completion by 1924-25. In both private and public pronouncements, US officials had stated their desire to create a US fleet at least equal to that of Britain and superior to all others.
- Japan. Although lacking the economic and shipbuilding capacity of either the British Empire or United States, the Imperial Japanese Navy had made tremendous technical strides in the first decades of the 20th Century and, with the destruction of the German High Seas Fleet at Jutland, was easily the third most powerful postwar navy. The Japanese navy saw the US as its most likely future opponent, and believed it was essential for the Japan’s fleet to be at least two thirds the size of the total US fleet to be successful in any future conflict. To meet this goal, Japan already possessed a powerful fleet of eight 14” armed battlecruisers and battleships. Japan also had four 16” armed fast battleships and four 16” armed battlecruisers under construction in 1918, and eight further powerful capital ships on order, four of which would be armed with 18” guns. The extent to which the Japanese shipbuilding industry or economy could support this building program was questionable, however.
Germany had reconciled itself to a substantially reduced fleet, at least when compared to the Royal Navy. - Germany essentially gave up the pretense of being a global naval power. However, it had become the dominant European power, and likely future naval rearmament by France and Italy was a significant concern, and there was always the possibility that Russia would rearm. In 1918, the High Seas Fleet was reduced to a relative handful of dreadnought battleships of which the four 15” armed Baden - class battleships and the two new Mackensen-class battlecruisers were the most powerful. These ships would all be outclassed in a few years by dozens of larger and more powerful British, American, and Japanese capital ships under construction. Further, the Jutland survivors armed with only 11” and 12” guns were approaching obsolescence and would need to be replaced by modern construction. German representatives entered the negotiations intent on preserving their nation’s technical ability to match British, American and Japanese construction with equivalently powerful ships, while acknowledging that the Reich would never seek to match their numbers. Maintaining at least a numerical equivalence with France and Italy, however, was essential.
France. Although France was economically devastated by the war and her naval construction programs were in disarray, the new French government was unwilling to abandon dreams of a new and powerful fleet. The Normandie-class battleships that had been ordered in 1913 were incomplete, now obsolescent, and needed to be replaced by more modern and powerful ships to keep France on an equal footing with the reduced German fleet or even the Italians. The few other French dreadnoughts were next to worthless. Plus, nationalist French politicians, including those in the DeGaulle junta were loath to see France completely abandon the pretense of being a major naval power.
Italy. Italy entered the conference fairly satisfied with its position as a regional naval power. Unlike France, Italy had commissioned a number of excellent modern battleships in 1914-17 that met their needs, and had four newer fast battleships under construction. Italy entered the negotiations primarily to ensure equality with France, its most likely threat in the future. The Italians were also somewhat wary of whatever naval aspirations the Kingdom of Hungary (which inherited the remnants of the former Austro-Hungarian Navy and suitable shipyards and bases on the Adriatic) or the Ottoman Empire might muster.
Of the two invited observers, only Hungary deserves mention, as the Ottoman Empire lacked an indigenous shipbuilding industry, and its only “modern” capital ship was an obsolescent German-built battlecruiser. The Hungarian Kingdom, on the other hand, inherited all of the former K.u.K fleet, including four ageing dreadnought battleships. However, much of the design and shipbuilding expertise behind the old Austro-Hungarian navy was Austrian, and Hungary recognized it lacked the infrastructure and expertise to compete in a naval arms race with France or Italy. As a result the Hungarian government made it known that it was satisfied with the status quo, only stipulating that Hungary would reserve the right to replace its existing capital ships with new construction or purchased ships from another power at an appropriate time.
- Resumption of full diplomatic and economic ties between both nations
[1] This was only one of the Kaiser’s more restrained statements. In 1905, following the Russo-Japanese War, he wrote, but never posted, a letter to his cousin George V asking that Britain reconsider its alliance with Japan, ending: “The time has come for Germany and England, representing as we do the absolute pinnacle of human achievement, to unite as one being to smite and destroy the growing menace of Asian pagan buddhism with the sword of St Michael and the Judgment of Christ!” (Collected Hohenzollern Archives, Vol XXI, no. 47, Berlin). It is interesting to imagine the jokes that might have been shared around the King’s dinner table had he received this missal.
[2] It certainly saved Wilhelm’s reputation. Despite his unusual and mercurial personality, Wilhelm II had uncanny insight at times that more than once saved his nation and the world from catastrophe, perhaps without knowing it. It is no accident that he is still “revered in Germany and considered throughout the world as one of the great leaders of the 20th century” (The Economist, Vol 23, No. 12).
[3] Russia’s population loss as a result of the Great War may never be fully known, but recent estimates peg this at between 4 and 5 million people, not counting populations that were lost to Russia as a result of border changes. Much was due to disease, starvation, and the long period of civil war and organized violence that continued in Russia and its lost territories well into the 1920’s Given the tendency of poorly led and surrounded Russian units to surrender after an initial stiff resistance, the Germans took over 1.5 million men prisoner. It is estimated that fewer than 350,000 Russian soldiers actually lost their lives fighting Germans. G. Rostropovich, (1954) A statistical analysis of the German War, St. Petersburg.
[4] For example, a November 1915 article in the Frankfurter Zeitung, claimed on presumably good authority that Germany, if victorious in the war, would occupy or even annex large swaths of northeastern France, seize or dismantle her industries, and eventually establish protectorates over Belgium and perhaps even the Netherlands. It is unclear if this ever represented official thinking in Germany.
[5] In 1939, there was a serious effort in Parliament to fund and erect a column to Jellicoe in Trafalgar Square matching Nelson’s column in size and appearance. The two columns would have been immediately adjacent to each other and surrounded by a circular wall containing a bas-relief representation of Nelson’s ships on one half and Jellicoe’s fleet on the other. The square would have been renamed “Royal Navy Square”. According to the London Times, the scheme eventually floundered on the shoals of cost, artistic disagreement, and economy. However Jellicoe’s name has been suitably memorialized in the names of British warships since 1919, the latest being HMS Lord Jellicoe, a 65,000 ton aircraft carrier scheduled to enter the Royal Navy in late 1964.
[6] This codicil was disliked by the Kaiser and extremely unpopular among the more militant members of the Reichstag, since it seemed that Germany was being treated as something less than the outright victor in the Great War. Ratification by Germany was uncertain for several months until a separate agreement was reached with Britain requiring renegotiation and renewal of the Washington codicil every 10 years.
[7] This would be the war in 1929-30 between the United States and Japan, ostensibly fought over the status of the Marshall Islands and other former German Pacific colonies occupied by Japan during the Great War. Although the smaller Japanese navy achieved some early successes through initiative and guile, the much larger US fleet eventually achieved a complete victory at Truk that rivalled Jellicoe’s success against Germany in 1916. Japan sued for peace shortly thereafter. See H. Bywater (1952) The Great Pacific War for a concise and highly readable account of this conflict.
[8] The modern historian cannot criticize the crafters of the Washington Treaty enough for ignoring the Balkan tinderbox that ignited the Great War. Luckily, the dissolution of the Dual Monarchy has to some extent resolved some of the problems ignored by the diplomats. With Austria uniting with the powerful German Empire and an aggressive Hungary expanding in power and influence throughout the region, many power vacuums have been filled and nationalist urges have been at least temporarily quelled.
[9] Probably the most creative and successful German measure to minimize ethnic conflict in Poland, Byelorussia, and Ukraine was the massive support Germany gave to Zionism and the resettlement of millions of eastern European Jews to Palestine.
