Anglo-German Naval Agreement - Background

Background

Part IV of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles had imposed severe restrictions on the size and capacities on the armed forces of the Reich. In regards to the Navy, Germany was allowed no submarines, no naval aviation, and no battleships; the total naval forces allowed to the Germans were six heavy cruisers of no more than 10,000 tons displacement, six light cruisers of no more than 6,000 tons displacement, 12 destroyers of no more than 800 tonnes displacement and 12 torpedo boats. Through the interwar years, German opinion had protested these restrictions as harsh and unjust, and demanded that either all of the other states of Europe disarm down to German levels, or alternatively, Germany be allowed to rearm to the level of all the other European states. In Britain, where after 1919 there was much guilt over the alleged excessively harsh terms of Versailles, the German claim to “equality” in armaments often met with considerable sympathy. More importantly, every German government of the Weimar Republic was implacably opposed to the terms of Versailles, and given that Germany was potentially Europe’s strongest power, from the British perspective it made sense to revise Versailles in Germany’s favor as the best way of preserving the peace. The British attitude was well summarized in a Foreign Office memo from 1935 that stated “...from the earliest years following the war it was our policy to eliminate those parts of the Peace Settlement which, as practical people, we knew to be unstable and indefensible”. The change of regime in Germany in 1933 did cause alarm in London, but there was considerable uncertainty about what Hitler’s long term intentions were. In August 1933, the chief of the Committee of Imperial Defence (CID), Royal Marine General Sir Maurice Hankey, visited Germany, and wrote down his impressions of the “New Germany” in October 1933. Hankey’s report concluded with the words: “Are we still dealing with the Hitler of Mein Kampf, lulling his opponents to sleep with fair words to gain time to arm his people, and looking always to the day when he can throw off the mask and attack Poland? Or is it a new Hitler, who discovered the burden of responsible office, and wants to extricate himself, like many an earlier tyrant from the commitments of his irresponsible days? That is the riddle that has to be solved”. This uncertainty over what Hitler’s ultimate intentions in foreign policy were was to colour much of British policy towards Germany until 1939.

Equally important as one of the origins of the Treaty were the deep cuts made to the Royal Navy after the Washington Naval Conference of 1921-22 and the London Naval Conference of 1930. The cuts imposed by the two conferences, combined with the effects of the Great Depression, caused the collapse of much of the British shipbuilding industry in the early 1930s. This would seriously hinder efforts at British naval rearmament later in the decade, and would lead the Admiralty to greatly value treaties which imposed quantitative and qualitative limitations on potential enemies as the best way of ensuring British sea supremacy. The British Empire faced worldwide defense commitments, but lacked both the industrial infrastructure and financial resources to build up a navy capable of being simultaneously strong in both Far Eastern and European waters. It was therefore important that potential enemies place voluntary limitations on the size and scale of their navies. In particular, Admiral Sir Ernle Chatfield, the First Sea Lord between 1933 and 1938, came to argue in favor of such treaties. They promised a highly standardized classification of different warships and discouraged technical innovations that, under the existing conditions, the Royal Navy could not always hope to match. Admiral Chatfield especially wished for the Germans to do away with their Deutschland-class Panzerschiffe (known in the press as “pocket battleships” to the British), as such ships, embracing the characteristics of both battleships and cruisers, were highly dangerous to Chatfield’s vision of a world of highly regulated warship types and designs. As part of the effort to do away with the Panzerschiffe, the British Admiralty stated in March 1932 and again in the spring of 1933, that Germany was entitled to “a moral right to some relaxation of the treaty ”.

In February 1932, the World Disarmament Conference opened in Geneva, Switzerland. Among the more hotly debated issues at the conference was the German demand for gleichberechtigung (“equality of armaments”) (i.e. abolishing Part V of Versailles) versus the French demand for sécurité (“security”) in armaments (i.e. maintaining Part V as the best way of ensuring French security). The British position was an attempt to play the “honest broker”, and sought to seek a compromise between the French claim to sécurité and the German claim to gleichberechtigung, which in practice meant backing the German claim to rearm beyond Part V, but not allowing the Germans to rearm enough to threaten France. Various British compromise proposals along these lines were rejected by both the French and German delegations as unacceptable. In September 1932, Germany walked out of the conference, claiming it was impossible to achieve gleichberechtigung. By this time, the electoral success of the National Socialist German Workers Party had alarmed London, and it was felt unless the Weimar Republic could achieve some dramatic foreign policy success, Adolf Hitler might come to power. In order to lure the Germans back to Geneva, after several months of strong British diplomatic pressure on the French, in December 1932, all of the other delegations voted for a British-sponsored resolution that would allow for the “theoretical equality of rights in a system which would provide security for all nations”. Germany agreed to return to the conference. Thus, before Hitler became Chancellor, it had been accepted that Germany could rearm beyond the limits set by Versailles, though the precise extent of German rearmament was still open to negotiation.

During the 1920s, Hitler’s thinking on foreign policy went through a dramatic change. At the beginning of his political career, Hitler was hostile to Britain as one enemies of the Reich, but strongly influenced by the British opposition to the French occupation of the Ruhr in 1923, Hitler came to rank Britain as a potential ally. In Mein Kampf, and even more in its sequel, Zweites Buch, Hitler strongly criticized the pre-1914 German government for embarking on a naval and colonial challenge to the British Empire, and in Hitler’s view, needlessly antagonizing the British. In Hitler’s view, Britain was a fellow “Aryan” power, whose friendship could be won by a German “renunciation” of naval and colonial ambitions against Britain. In return for such a “renunciation”, Hitler expected an Anglo-German alliance directed at France and the Soviet Union, and British support for the German efforts to acquire Lebensraum in Eastern Europe. As the first step towards the Anglo-German alliance, Hitler had written in Mein Kampf of his intention to seek a “sea pact”, by which Germany would “renounce” any naval challenge against Britain.

In January 1933, Hitler became the German chancellor. The new government in Germany had inherited a strong negotiating position at Geneva from the previous government of General Kurt von Schleicher. The German strategy was to make idealistic offers of limited rearmament, out of the expectation that all such offers would be rejected by the French, allowing Germany to go on ultimately with the maximum rearmament. The ultra-nationalism of the Nazi regime had alarmed the French, who put the most minimal possible interpretation of German "theoretical equality” in armaments, and thereby played into the German strategy. In October 1933, the Germans again walked out of the conference, stating that everyone else should either disarm to the Versailles level, or allow Germany to rearm beyond Versailles. Though the Germans never had any serious interest in accepting any of the various British compromise proposals, in London, the German walk-out was widely, if erroneously blamed on French “intransigence”. The British government was left with the conviction that in the future, that opportunities for arms limitation talks with the Germans should not be lost because of French “intransigence”. Subsequent British offers to arrange for the German return to the World Disarmament Conference were sabotaged by the Germans putting forward proposals that were meant to appeal to the British, while being unacceptable to the French. On April 17, 1934, the last such effort ended with the French Foreign Minister Louis Barthou’s rejection of the latest German offer as unacceptable in the so-called “Barthou note” which ended French participation in the Conference while declaring that France would look after its own security in whatever way was necessary. At the same time, Admiral Erich Raeder of the Reichsmarine persuaded Hitler of the advantages of ordering two more Panzerschiffe, and in 1933 advised the Chancellor that Germany would be best off by 1948 a with a fleet of three aircraft carriers, 18 cruisers, eight Panzerschiffe, 48 destroyers and 74 U-boats. Admiral Raeder argued to Hitler that Germany needed naval parity with France as a minimum goal, whereas Hitler from April 1933 onwards, expressed a desire for a Reichsmarine of 33.3% of the total tonnage of the Royal Navy. In November 1934, the Germans formally informed the British of their wish to reach a treaty with Britain, under which the Reichsmarine would be allowed to grow until the size of 35% of the Royal Navy (the figure was raised because the phrase of a German goal of “one third of the Royal Navy except in cruisers, destroyers, and submarines” did not sound well in speeches). Admiral Raeder felt that the 35:100 ratio was unacceptable towards Germany, but was overruled by Hitler who insisted on the 35:100 ratio. Aware of the German desire to expand their Navy beyond Versailles, Admiral Chatfield repeatedly advised it would best to reach a naval treaty with Germany, so to regulate the future size and scale of the German Navy. Through the Admiralty described the idea of a 35:100 tonnage ratio between London and Berlin as “the highest that we could accept for any European power”, it advised the government that the earliest Germany could build a Navy to that size was 1942, and that though they would prefer a smaller tonnage ratio than 35:100, a 35:100 ratio was nonetheless acceptable. In December 1934, a study done by Captain Edward King, Director of the Royal Navy’s Plans Division suggested that the most dangerous form a future German Navy might take from the British perspective would be a Kreuzerkrieg (Cruiser war) fleet. Captain King argued that guerre-de-course German fleet of Panzerschiffe, cruisers, and U-boats operating in task forces would be highly dangerous for the Royal Navy, and that a German “balanced fleet” that would be a mirror image of the Royal Navy would be the least dangerous form the German Navy could take. A German “balanced fleet” would have proportionally the same number of battleships, cruisers, destroyers, etc. that the British fleet possessed, and from the British point of view, this would be in the event of war, the easiest German fleet to defeat.

Through every government of the Weimar Republic had violated Part V of Versailles, in 1933 and 1934, the Nazi government had become more flagrant and open in violating Part V. In 1933, the Germans started to build their first U-boats since World War I, and in April 1935, launched their first U-boats. On April 25, 1935, the British Naval attaché to Germany, Captain Gerard Muirhead-Gould was officially informed by Captain Leopold Bürkner of the Reichsmarine that Germany had laid down twelve 250 ton U-boats at Kiel. On April 29, 1935, the Foreign Secretary Sir John Simon informed the British House of Commons that Germany was now building U-boats. On May 2, 1935, the Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald told the House of his government’s intention to reach a naval pact to regulate the future growth of the German Navy.

In a more general sense, because of the British championship of German “theoretical equality” at the World Disarmament Conference, London was in a weak moral position to oppose the German violations. The German response to British complaints about violations of Part V were that they were merely unilaterally exercising rights the British delegation at Geneva were prepared to concede to the Reich. In March 1934, a British Foreign Office memo stated “Part V of the Treaty of Versailles...is, for practical purposes, dead, and it would become a putrefying corpse which, if left unburied, would soon poison the political atmosphere of Europe. Moreover, if there is to be a funeral, it is clearly better to arrange it while Hitler is still in a mood to pay the undertakers for their services”. In December 1934, a secret Cabinet committee met to discuss the situation caused by German rearmament. The British Foreign Secretary Sir John Simon stated at one of the committee’s meeting that “If the alternative to legalizing German rearmament was to prevent it, there would be everything to be said, for not legalizing it”. But since London had already rejected the idea of a war to end German rearmament, the British government chose a diplomatic strategy that would exchange abolition of Part V in exchange for German return to both the League of Nations, and the World Disarmament Conference”. At the same meeting, Simon stated “Germany would prefer, it appears, to be ‘made an honest woman’; but if she is left too long to indulge in illegitimate practices and to find by experience that she does not suffer for it, this laudable ambition may wear off”. In January 1935, Simon wrote to King George V that “The practical choice is between a Germany which continues to rearm without any regulation or agreement and a Germany which, through getting a recognition of its rights and some modifications of the Peace Treaties enters into the comity of nations and contributes in this or other ways to European stability. As between these two courses, there can be no doubt which is the wiser”. In February 1935, at a summit in London between the French Premier Pierre Laval and the British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald led to an Anglo-French communiqué issued in London that proposed talks with the Germans on arms limitation, an air part, and security pacts for Eastern Europe and the nations along the Danube.

In early March 1935, talks intended to discuss the scale and extent of German rearmament in Berlin between Hitler and Simon were postponed when Hitler took offense at a British government White Paper justifying a higher defense budget under the grounds that Germany was violating Versailles, and claimed to have contracted a “cold”. In the interval between Hitler “recovering” from his “diplomatic cold” and Simon’s visit, the German government took the chance to formally reject all of the clauses of Versailles relating to disarmament on the land and air. In the 1930s, the British government was obsessed with the idea of a German bombing attack destroying London, and so placed a great deal of a value reaching an air pact outlawing bombing. The idea of a naval agreement was felt to be a useful stepping stone to an air pact. On March 26, 1935, during one of his meetings with Simon, and his deputy Sir Anthony Eden, Hitler stated his intention to formally reject the naval disarmament section of Versailles, but was prepared to discuss a treaty regulating the scale of German naval rearmament. On May 21, 1935, Hitler in a speech in Berlin formally offered to discuss a treaty offering a German Navy that was to operate forever on a 35:100 naval ratio. During his “peace speech” of May 21, Hitler disallowed any intention of engaging in a pre-1914 style naval race with Britain, and stated: “The German Reich government recognizes of itself the overwhelming importance for existence and thereby the justification of dominance at sea to protect the British Empire, just as, on the other hand, we are determined to do everything necessary in protection of our own continental existence and freedom”. For Hitler, his speech illustrated the quid pro quo of an Anglo-German alliance, namely British acceptance of German mastery of continental Europe in exchange for German acceptance of British mastery over the seas.