Chapter 18 - The Navy Command
AT the end of June, 1918, Admiral von Miiller, the Chief of the Emperor's Naval Cabinet, informed me that Admiral von Holtzendorff's state of health made it improbable that he would be able to hold the post of Chief of the Admiralty Staff much longer. In this event His Majesty had designated me as his probable successor.
This information released me from the obligatipn that had hitherto prevented me from suggesting a change of organisation in the department which had directed the conduct of the war at sea. The system was a failure, was not very popular in the Navy, and our success was less than we had a right to expect. I could not very well recommend myself as head of this department, all the more so as the command of the Fleet involved personal danger, and I did not care to avoid this by getting a position on land. Even the very frank discussions which had taken place between the Chief of the Naval Staff and myself had not resulted in the full satisfaction of the demands of the Fleet. My personal relations with Admiral von Holtzendorff enabled me to speak to him without reserve. We had grown pretty intimate by serving together on the same ships at different times. We were thrown together at sea for the first time in 1884 - 86 on board the cruiser Bismarck, the flagship of Rear- Admiral von Knorr, when we went to West Africa, East Africa and the South Seas to visit our colonies there. After that I was navigating officer in 1895 - 96 in the cruiser Prinz Wilhelm, which Holtzendorff, a commander at the time, commanded on a cruise to the Far East. Later on he offered me the post of Chief of the Staff of the High Sea Fleet, which I held for two years, 1909 - 11, under his command as Commander-in-Chief of the Fleet. On all these occasions I had learnt to appreciate his personality and his capacity as a leader. For this reason I was grieved at the particular cause for the change, but as the spell was broken I urged the Chief of the Naval Cabinet to accomplish it in any case.
I had no occasion to complain of undue influence or limitation of the Fleet by the Chief of the Naval Staff. But his position was not clear; he seemed to us to yield too much to political pressure. The conduct of the U-boat campaign was typical of it. Even at this moment there were serious differences of opinion as to the way it should be carried on. The forces of the Navy were scattered over the various theatres of war, and the Commanders of the Fleet could not see any necessity for this. The Fleet formed a sort of reservoir which was to satisfy all demands for personnel. Naturally there was great opposition to any withdrawal of personnel from the Navy, unless it was clearly conducive to the main aim of the war. But that aim could only be achieved by the Fleet and the U-boats, and the Commander-in-Chief of the Fleet felt himself responsible for this.
There was no post of command superior to his, where full responsibility could be taken for the success of the conduct of war at sea. For the Naval Staff was not a Supreme Command, but an organ of the Emperor as the Supreme War Lord, which could not be bothered with details of the conduct of the war. The relation of the Naval Staff to the Navy was not the same as that of the Supreme Army Command to the Army on land. If, for instance, a plan of campaign in Romania is carried out successfully, that is essentially to the credit of the Supreme Army Command, for it correctly estimated the strength and capability of troops and leaders, and set them a task proportionate to their abilities. In the war at sea the Naval Staff apportioned the existing ships and boats to the different fields of operation- the Baltic, the North Sea, or Flanders, the Mediterranean or foreign parts, and had to leave the officers in command there to act independently in accordance with their general instructions. On land the Supreme Command permanently controlled the war operations; this was not the case at sea. If the Fleet had been defeated in battle, no one would have dreamt of making the Naval Staff responsible, but only the Commander-in-Chief of the Fleet. But there was need of some body which should regulate the distribution of forces with a view to some definite end, and not leave the success of naval activities to the individual admirals in command in the different theatres of war.