Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz - My Memoirs.

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Text originally published in 1919 under the same title.

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MY MEMOIRS

BY

GRAND ADMIRAL

VON TIRPITZ

VOLUME I

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Entering the Service. Prussian Navy and Prussian politics, 1866-1870. Warfare then and now.2. Foreign political currents. Relations with England. More at home in Plymouth than in Kiel. The superiority of the English. But you are not a sea-going nation.

THE despair that seized upon all patriotically minded Germans when the Empire which we had thought invincible collapsed has also wrecked many peoples faith in our nation and in the continuity of its historical development. It seemed to me my duty therefore to write down my reminiscences, because I can show proofs that the old structure of our state was not antiquated and rotten, but was capable of any development, and moreover that the political legend of a ruthless autocracy and a bellicose military caste having let loose this war is an insult to truth. The Kaiser in particular did not want the war, but did his utmost to prevent it when he realized the danger.

If history is just and cannot be perverted by the fabrication of legends, it should show that by far the greater measure of the responsibility for this war rests with our enemies. The rule of the road at sea puts the blame in collisions on the person who causes the danger of the situation, and not on the one who makes a mistake through incorrect judgment at the last moment in his endeavour to escape from it. Our misfortune, however, did not proceed from the acquisition of power, but from the weakness which did not know how to use that power either for the purpose of preserving or concluding peace, and in addition, from our illusions about our enemies, the nature of their war aims, their conduct of the war, and the nature of the economic war.

In order to make myself understood, I must speak the truth to the best of my knowledge. I am compelled, therefore, to present the actions of persons who are alive according to my own views, which will probably differ from theirs, and consequently give rise to some pain. Nothing is farther from my mind than to impute to them ignoble ends, or any blame in the general sense of the word.

It is only Germanys desperate position which forces me against my own inclination to publish these facts during my lifetime.

Now that the writing of my reminiscences is finished, I feel that I must heartily thank all those who have helped me in my task. Besides my friends and my comrades, both young and old, who have examined the correctness of my statements in the light of their own information, these thanks are due especially to the Professor of History in the University of Frankfort, Dr. Fritz Kern, who has stood at my side from the very beginning in the most sympathetic and untiring way. Lastly, I should like to thank the publisher, Dr. Koehler, for the friendly interest that he has shown in the book.

A. VON TIRPITZ.

JAGDBAUS ZABELSBERG, April, 1919.

WHEN I was a boy there was scarcely any trace left of the enthusiasm for the navy which the Revolution of 48 aroused in Germany, although it flickered up once more in the year 1864 after the Battle of Jasmund. My going into the navy was not the result of a passionate fondness for it, but was the unintentional product of my fathers educational ideal, which was ahead of his time. As my father felt in himself the lack of a knowledge of the exact sciences, he sent my brother and me to the Realschule of our native town Frankfort-on-the-Oder, instead of to the Gymnasium, intending to let us change schools when we reached the top form. But in view of the slight undeveloped state of the realschule at that time, this school proved inadequate; I have felt the effects of this all my life. Our teachers were so old-fashioned that they spoke a language which we really did not understand. As a scholar I was very mediocre, and at Christmas, 1864, my certificate was Moderate. My school friend Maltzahn had expressed his intention of entering the navy, and so it occurred to me that it might mean a certain relief for my parents if I too were to take up the idea. At first my proposal was received in complete silence at home, but after some weeks my father called me to him and told me that my depressed state of mind had been noticed. My mind seemed to be set on the navy, he said, and if I wanted to go, no obstacle would be placed in my way. Nobody could have been more surprised than I; but what was I to do? I kept to my word, and in the spring of 1865 I presented myself at the age of sixteen for the entrance examination at the Naval Cadets Institute of those days in Berlin, passed, to everybodys surprise, fifth on the list, and became a sailor.

The attractions of the navy were, as I have said, slight at that time. In 1861 the corvette Amazone had gone down with almost all the cadets on board who constituted the supply of officers for many years to come. This event reduced the applications for naval cadetships to three the following year, and compelled the conditional acceptance even in my year of several candidates who had failed, in addition to the ten aspirants who were successful. The grasp of naval affairs possessed by the Prussian intelligentsia of those days, as well as the hereditary German tendency to regard everything from the standpoint of domestic party politics, is indicated by an article which appeared at the time in the Gartenlaube. It described in novelistic form how the Prussian Junker party attempted to destroy the liberal institution of the navy by bribing a Danish captain to ram the Amazone. The author of this malicious piece of foolery seemed to overlook the fact that the majority of the cadets who were drowned were themselves Junkers; Prince Adalbert was very careful in his choice of prospective officers.

Moreover, I occasionally found in my earlier presentations of the Navy Estimates to Parliament that certain Conservative circles distrusted the idea of a fleet. It was not considered to be in keeping with the Prussian tradition, it competed in some degree with the army, it seemed too closely related with industry and commerce in view of the agricultural distress of that time and the great economic conflicts of the parties. Individual members of the extreme Right even voted against the Second Navy Bill of 1900, against the horrible Fleet, as a Conservative leader called it,whilst overwhelmingly sympathetic support was to be found from the outset among the Liberal bourgeoisie, side by side with some of the bitterest opposition to the Bill.