Strange Intelligence: Memoirs of Naval Secret Service (21 page)

Discontent on the lower deck was fostered by an extreme severity of discipline, which often assumed the pettiest forms; by high-handed, and even brutal, behaviour on the part of the officers, and by the arbitrary curtailment of leave. In the summer of 1917 – only a year after the ‘victory’ of Jutland – serious mutinies broke out in several vessels, including the fleet flagship,
Friedrich der Grosse
. On one occasion, at the ceremony of hoisting the colours in this ship, a scrubbing brush was hoisted on the flagstaff in place of the naval ensign, rigging and boat tackle were cut through, and the mutineers threatened to throw the gun sights overboard.

Innumerable instances of arrogant and selfish conduct on the part of officers are cited, based for the most part on official evidence. Herr Alboldt draws a striking contrast between this state of affairs and conditions in the British Navy. From the beginning of the war, he states, the British officers practised self-denial, and so retained the respect and affection of their men.

While the half-starved German sailors were rarely granted leave, were confined to their ships or barracks under iron discipline, and given no opportunities for recreation, the British bluejackets received abundant rations, which differed neither in quantity nor quality from those of the officers; they were encouraged to indulge in all forms of sport, and were treated generally by their superiors as honoured comrades, not as despised underlings. Consequently, the morale and discipline of the British personnel remained at the highest level all through the war.

Of special interest are Herr Alboldt’s comments on the proposed sortie of the High Seas Fleet just before the Armistice. Many of the officers, it appears, had been boasting that rather than see the fleet surrendered to the British they would blow it up, or at least cause it to be sunk in battle. The German seamen, however, were in no mind to be led to the slaughter merely to save the prestige of officers whom they despised. They seem to have discussed among themselves the chances that the fleet would have in a pitched battle with the Grand Fleet, and to have come unanimously to the conclusion that crushing defeat was inevitable.

Herr Alboldt gives a long list of cogent reasons for this lack of confidence. In 1918, he states, the British had adopted a highly efficient type of armour-piercing shell, which would have wrought havoc in the strongest German ships, and in view of the
British superiority in range, the Germans could not have hoped to escape. Moreover, the new and ‘secret’ minefields on which the German fleet was to rely for the protection of its flanks had already been discovered by the British. (That is perfectly true. Thanks in part to the close watch kept on German minelayers by our patrol craft, particularly submarines, and in part to our intelligence reports from the enemy bases, the position of every new minefield became known to us almost immediately after it had been laid.)

Reverting to the ‘stab-in-the-back’ legend now being circulated by former naval officers, Herr Alboldt declares that if such an assassin’s blow were really struck, it can only have come from the navy itself. In this connection he cites Professor Birk, one of the leading citizens of Kiel, who has written:

It should be added that Herr Alboldt’s credentials as a well-informed and conscientious witness are vouched for by Professor Walther Schücking, who was chairman of the Reichstag Committee that investigated the antecedents of the German collapse, and who has written an introduction to Alboldt’s remarkable book.

Apart from our intelligence reports from Germany, the first
intimation we had that the German naval command was planning some important move came in a curiously negative fashion. In the spring of 1918 we found that German minelaying operations in the Dover Patrol area, and also in the Channel, were becoming much less extensive; in fact, they all but ceased in the Dover Patrol zone. Most of this work had been done by the small
UC
submarine minelayers based on Bruges. Originally there had been seventy-nine of these venomous little craft, and, as our intelligence records showed, nearly forty of them were still in existence at the beginning of 1918. Yet, as time went on, it became more and more difficult to discover their whereabouts. Beyond the fact that they had obviously left Bruges we had no information about them – for a time.

But the mystery was very soon cleared up by the ID. It was found that all the
UC
boats had been sent back to Wilhelmshaven and Cuxhaven, whence they were making periodical trips across the North Sea, loaded to capacity with mines. What, then, was their mission? It was nothing less than the sowing of a great belt of mines off the Firth of Tay, some 45 miles east of the Bell Rock. As soon as a
UC
boat had dropped its deadly cargo in the appointed place, closing up another gap in the ever-extending arc, it returned to one or other of the German North Sea bases for a fresh load. Throughout the summer they came and went with timetable regularity, the minefield steadily grew in length and width, and the German naval command firmly believed the whole operation to be going on in profound secrecy.

They were wrong. As early as June 1918 we knew all about it. Once the
UC
flotilla had been re-located, it was comparatively easy to keep its units under observation, and the fact that they were building up a gigantic mine barrier in a certain area left no doubt as to the purpose in view. This was to ambush the
Grand Fleet as it sailed out of its bases. Clearly, then, a dash to the south by the British battle fleet in full force was anticipated by the Germans, and what else than a grand sortie by the High Seas Fleet could occasion such a move? We knew, then, on the strongest circumstantial evidence, that the enemy was meditating a great naval offensive, and, armed with this knowledge, it was a simple matter to take the requisite precautions.

We had no difficulty in locating the ‘secret’ mine barrage. Large sections of it were removed by our minesweepers, but certain patches – after being meticulously noted on our confidential charts – were left in place, to serve as an added protection to the approaches to our own fleet bases and, perhaps, as a menace to enemy raiders or U-boats. To the very end of the war the Germans remained ignorant of the discovery of their ‘secret’, and assumed the immense minefield laid by their
UC
boats to be unsuspected and intact.

As the summer wore on, evidence of the impending sortie accumulated in ever-increasing volume, mostly supplied by our intelligence agents. Battleships, battlecruisers, and light cruisers of the High Seas Fleet were going into dockyard in rotation, where they were overhauled and furbished up in readiness for action. Gunnery and torpedo practice was held almost continuously, for the most part in the Baltic, where there was less danger of interruption from British submarines. Shipwrights and artificers were released from the army to swell the dockyard staffs at Kiel and Wilhelmshaven, both to hasten the preparation of the fleet and to be in readiness to execute repairs on such ships as returned to port after the great battle in the North Sea. A grim but conclusive piece of evidence was supplied by the enlargement of hospital accommodation at the principal bases.

Incredible as it may seem, the British Admiralty knew far more about the proposed sortie than did the German Navy itself. This was due to the strict secrecy in which the plan was shrouded by the German naval command, which realised that even a whisper of what was toward would jeopardise the whole scheme. Admiral von Trotha, the then chief of staff, has since explained why the elaborate precautions to prevent any leakage were necessary. In his evidence before the Reichstag Committee of inquiry into the German collapse, held in 1925–26, he said that owing to the comparative proximity of the Dutch frontier and the crowds of people who came into Wilhelmshaven every day from the surrounding country, there was an ever-present danger that news of any unusual movement by the fleet would be known across the border in a few hours. (He might have added, with truth, that such news did almost invariably leak through to Holland, and thence to London, while it was still fresh.)

Consequently, on this occasion, the naval staff endeavoured to confine the secret to the narrowest circle possible. Of the twenty officers comprising the staff itself, only one-third were made acquainted with the plans. No documents relating to the scheme were sent to imperial GHQ at Spa, nor was it proposed to send any until the fleet was actually at sea. Moreover, said Admiral von Trotha, ‘we had to use extraordinary care when making wireless signals, because the wireless directional stations of the British had become so skilful that, by reasoning from the coded orders sent out by the German wireless stations, they knew whenever a ship came into the roadstead at Wilhelmshaven’.

Questioned as to why the crews of the High Seas Fleet were given no warning of what was intended, the admiral again took refuge behind the plea of secrecy; but other witnesses admitted
that there were grave doubts as to the men’s reception of the news: in other words, the discipline and fighting spirit of the personnel were no longer considered to be above reproach.

When the evidence tendered to the Reichstag Committee seven years later is examined closely, there emerges a story that would be quite unbelievable were it not so fully documented. It is, in effect, the story of a conspiracy by the high naval command to torpedo the negotiations for an armistice that were already in train, to defy Kaiser and Cabinet, and to stake the future of the fatherland on a desperate gamble. If the projected naval offensive had proved victorious, the results, however brilliant, could not possibly have turned the tide of war in Germany’s favour. Even if the Grand Fleet had lost half its ships, the combined naval resources of the Allies would still have been far greater than those of Germany. Thus, the re-establishment of the blockade would have been only a matter of time, and the flow of American troops across the Atlantic would not have been seriously interrupted. Had Germany won a naval victory in October 1918 she would merely have prolonged her own agony.

But, in fact, the prospect of such a victory was remote, and had the proposed sortie of the High Seas Fleet ended in disaster Germany would have found herself in an infinitely worse position than before. She would have been held to have broken faith with the Allies, to have used the armistice negotiations as a cloak for treachery, and her punishment would have been merciless. When Germans complain of the severity of the Treaty of Versailles they might profitably reflect on the terrible price they would have had to pay if this sinister naval conspiracy had not been frustrated in the nick of time.

B
EFORE EXPLAINING IN
greater detail the German naval plans for ‘The Day’ and how they were defeated, it may be as well to emphasise the absolute unanimity of all the evidence available on this subject, whether from the German side or from our intelligence reports of the period. We have to thank the Reichstag Committee of 1925–26 for many illuminating and dramatic revelations, elicited in the course of its exhaustive inquiry into the antecedents of the surrender. While these were new to the world at large, they were fully known to the British Admiralty in 1918. Among the witnesses called upon to testify as to the projected naval offensive of October 1918 were Vice-Admiral von Trotha, Rear-Admiral Heinrich (chief of the torpedo-boat flotillas), Rear-Admiral von Levetzow, General Gröner, General von Kuhl, Professor Hans Delbrück, and Dr Eugen Fischer, Herr Scheidemann, and Herr Otto Wels, the Socialist leaders.

The date of the High Seas Fleet offensive was to be 28 October 1918 – that is, nearly a month after General Ludendorff had demanded an immediate armistice as the only means of saving his armies from utter disaster. Thereupon the German government opened negotiations with President Wilson, and it was while these were proceeding that Admiral Scheer – who had recently relinquished the command of the fleet to become chief of staff – had an audience of the Kaiser at Potsdam, in which he begged for a free hand with the fleet, pointing out that since it was no longer required as a cover for U-boat operations, it ought to be employed in its proper mission of seeking battle with the enemy.

There is no doubt that the Kaiser accepted this view in principle. He did not, however, give his consent to any definite plan, for the sufficient reason that none was submitted to him. Admiral Scheer, conscious of his Imperial Master’s reluctance to risk his beloved battleships, deemed it prudent not to reveal the desperate project he had in view. He went on with his preparations without asking for the Kaiser’s sanction, because, as he subsequently admitted, he was afraid he might not get it.

Nor was it only the Kaiser who was to be kept in the dark. The then Chancellor, Prince Max of Baden, was not consulted, though he was already deeply involved in the armistice negotiations and had given an undertaking to abandon the U-boat campaign. In his own narrative of events he states that he first heard of the naval plan on 2 November, whereas the decisive battle had been timed for 28 October, and had been cancelled on account of mutiny on 31 October. The first intimation he received of what had been going on behind his back was a request from Admiral Scheer that he should sign a manifesto addressed to the crews of the fleet, assuring them that there
was no intention of sending the fleet on a ‘death cruise’, and appealing for the maintenance of discipline.

This official repudiation of the ‘death cruise’ plan, which the Chancellor was inveigled into signing, was, no doubt, correct, strictly speaking, since the naval command expected a victory, not a disaster. Nevertheless it was misleading, in that it was read, and intended to be read, as meaning that there was no question of seeking action with the British fleet, but only of a routine practice cruise for training purposes. Clearly, therefore, the admirals were determined to hoodwink both the Cabinet and the men of the fleet, to seek a pitched battle on their own, and, if fortune did not smile on them, to pretend that the expected encounter with the British fleet had been accidental.

They were preparing to embark on this desperate venture without the sanction of the Supreme War Lord, who was also their Commander-in-Chief; in flat defiance of the Cabinet; in full knowledge that Germany’s honour was already pledged in the conduct of the peace negotiations then in train, and also in the knowledge that their own men would not obey them if the truth of the cruise leaked out! The annals of history may be searched in vain for a parallel to this crazy and unscrupulous attempt by a few admirals to override all authority and stake the future of their country on a single throw of the dice.

Crazy the adventure unquestionably was. Now that the complete facts are known, enabling the chances to be weighed, it can be said with positive certainty that the odds against success were a hundred to one. This opinion is notoriously held by many, if not a majority, of German experts, several of whom testified in that sense before the Reichstag Committee.

The calculations of the admirals who planned the enterprise
were based on false premises. On their own admission, absolute secrecy was an essential pre-condition of success, yet the secret had long since been discovered by the British. That Admiral Scheer and his colleagues should have believed it possible to keep all their elaborate preparations from the enemy’s knowledge – preparations that extended over many months and included the mining of a vast area of open sea – does not say much for their sagacity.

As outlined in the remarkably accurate forecasts by our intelligence department, the plan involved the use of every serviceable unit of the High Seas Fleet, and of every submarine and Zeppelin available. At dawn on 28 October the armada was to have sailed. Two powerful groups of cruisers and destroyers were to advance simultaneously towards the Flanders coast and the mouth of the Thames, bombarding shore targets and sinking everything they came across. The main fleet was to follow, screened from British submarine attack by swarms of destroyers.

Immediately after news of the sortie had been received, the Grand Fleet, it was anticipated, would emerge from its Scottish bases in full strength and steam south at high speed to intercept the enemy. But its path would be strewn with invisible traps. Lines of U-boats would be lying in ambush athwart the course of the fleet. It would also have to pass through the huge cordon of mines, which the
UC
submarines had planted off the Firth of Tay, and, further to the south, through five more mine barriers, containing 1,500 mines, which were to be laid by five fast German cruisers on the day preceding the sortie.

The U-boats were to be arranged on the well-tried method that had once before caused Admiral Jellicoe to report that he had ‘run into a hell of U-boats.’ (This was in August 1916, during
a half-hearted sortie by the German fleet, when the Grand Fleet sighted numerous enemy submarines and lost the light cruisers
Falmouth
and
Nottingham
from this cause.) As an additional guarantee against surprise, twelve Zeppelins were to scout for the fleet, the embargo on their employment in the North Sea area having been lifted for this special occasion.

Finally, the entire force of German torpedo boats was to be hurled against the Grand Fleet during the night of its advance, the captains having orders to sacrifice their craft if necessary, and to get within torpedo range at all costs. Then, when the Grand Fleet had been decimated and demoralised by these repeated attacks, it was to be engaged off Terschelling by the German battle squadrons at full strength.

An important feature of the general plan were raids by cruisers and destroyers on shipping in the Downs and the Thames estuary. The Germans believed we were preparing to throw an army into Holland, with the object of attacking the army group of Crown Prince Rupprecht from the rear and cutting off his retreat. They hoped, therefore, to come upon the transports assembled for this expedition and send them to the bottom.

Secret instructions from the naval staff impressed upon the commanding officer of every German vessel the absolute necessity for the most vigorous and ruthless action. The ‘safety first’ principle that hitherto had governed all operations was to be discarded. Ships and men were to be expended without hesitation to exploit any promising situation, and in every case fire was to be opened without making any recognition signal, since the sortie was so carefully organised that any craft sighted was practically certain to be an enemy. If it were not, so much the worse for the unlucky neutral or friend.

As we have seen, this plan, so impressive on paper, was built up on a number of false assumptions. In the first place, the gigantic minefield off the Firth of Tay, which was expected to sink or cripple many of the best British battleships, had been quietly removed by our sweepers. Secondly, the presence of U-boat ambuscades on the Grand Fleet’s line of advance was taken for granted, and measures were concerted to evade them. Thirdly, we knew beforehand that five German cruisers were to steal across the North Sea to lay additional mine barriers just before the great sortie, and we had arranged for them to be intercepted and destroyed by an overwhelming force long before they reached the points at which their deadly cargoes were to be jettisoned. Fourthly, the Harwich Force and the Dover Patrol had both been warned, and neither would have been caught unprepared, if caught at all. Fifthly, special arrangements were made for the protection of shipping in the Downs, and all cross-Channel transport sailings were to be suspended at the first sign of a move by the enemy.

In the Grand Fleet, everything was in readiness for ‘The Day’. Since Jutland the fleet itself had been strongly reinforced by new vessels of every type, and also by six American battleships under Admiral Rodman. All capital ships had been fitted with devices that reduced the danger of magazine explosions to the minimum, and many had received additional armour protection. Gunnery had improved, and the new armour-piercing shells made it certain that every hit would be effective. All vessels were equipped with paravanes, enabling them to pass through minefields with comparative impunity, while special destroyer flotillas, carrying high-speed paravanes, could steam ahead of the fleet and blaze a safe trail for it through any mine-infested zone.

The Grand Fleet was well provided with aircraft, including many fighters and torpedo planes. The former would unquestionably have given the Zeppelin scouts a rough handling; the torpedo planes would have been launched against the enemy’s battle fleet as soon as it was sighted.

In his evidence before the Reichstag Committee Admiral von Trotha, expatiating on the merits of the plan, said: ‘The advantage lay with the Germans, since the High Seas Fleet would have had to advance only 150 miles, and the cruisers, for their attack in the Channel, the same distance, while the British Grand Fleet would have had to travel 400 miles from Scapa Flow.’ That would have been true had the sortie caught us napping; but we were, in fact, forewarned. Consequently, the Grand Fleet would have left its bases much earlier than the Germans anticipated, and the latter would have found themselves brought to action at a time and place chosen by Admiral Beatty, not by the German naval staff.

That the light flotillas told off to raid the Channel would have been cut off and exterminated is beyond dispute, having regard to the reception that had been prepared for them. That the Zeppelins could have given the German Commander-in-Chief timely warning of the Grand Fleet’s approach is highly improbable, in view of the number of British aeroplanes detailed to look out for and attack the hostile airships. Again, the knowledge we had of the U-boat traps, and the efficiency of our paravane gear, would very probably have saved the Grand Fleet from serious loss through torpedoes or mines. Finally, we knew of the intended mass attack by German destroyers during the night, and did not fear it, since our night-fighting organisation had been improved enormously since Jutland. Moreover, since the Germans in all likelihood would place our fleet some 200 miles
further north than it actually was, their destroyers would have very little chance of finding it.

The prospect was, therefore, that the Grand Fleet would arrive on the scene long before it was expected, and engage the High Seas Fleet with a two-to-one superiority. It was the enemy, not ourselves, who would be caught unawares. On the British side, every man in the fleet would have been thirsting for battle, for at no time had there been the slightest depreciation of discipline or fighting spirit. On the German side the lower-deck personnel, grown stale through years of confinement in harbour, seething with discontent, and openly at variance with its officers, would suddenly have discovered the deathtrap into which it had been led under false pretences. None can tell what would have happened in these circumstances, but to infer that the Germans would have fought rather less gamely than they did at Jutland is not unreasonable. Be that as it may, the result of an action fought to a finish under the conditions here depicted would scarcely have been in doubt. Humanly speaking, a German victory was impossible. At best, a sorely battered remnant of the High Seas Fleet might have limped back to port, but the virtual destruction of the whole force was confidently awaited by British and American flag-officers, who knew not only the preparations we had made, but almost every detail of the German ‘secret’ plan. For that knowledge they were largely indebted to the naval intelligence department.

But the great sortie never took place. In spite of every precaution, the secret leaked out. According to several accounts, suspicion was first aroused on the lower deck by the indiscreet conduct of the younger officers in openly toasting ‘The Day’ while they were at mess, this being reported to the men by the
wardroom stewards. Meanwhile the date of sailing had been altered to 30 October. On the evening of the 29th, therefore, all ships were ordered to raise steam. It was given out that the fleet was to make a short cruise in the Bight; nothing was said even of a possible encounter with the enemy.

By this time, however, the men were convinced that their lives were to be wantonly sacrificed for the personal glory of their officers. Leaflets to this effect had been privily distributed throughout the fleet, urging the men not to allow themselves to be driven to the shambles. As Prince Max of Baden has since pointed out in his memoirs, ‘the naval leaders, whose business it was to make as certain of their morale as their material forces before seeking a decisive action, had planned their undertaking at the worst possible moment, when the armistice negotiations were in progress and a hundred false hopes were being raised in the people. Their scheme was inevitably doomed to failure in face of the men’s feeling that, as peace was about to be concluded, it was senseless to go and get themselves killed.’