Under the auspices of the Corbett Centre for Maritime Policy Studies comes a thoughtful book by Jeremy Stocker, Architects of Continental Sea-power: Comparing Tirpitz and Gorschkov, shedding light on Grand Admiral Tirpitz and Admiral Sergei Gorschkov, two important naval figures of the 20th century, who wrestled with the problems and challenges of creating formidable navies for primarily continental countries.
Tirpitz was a product of Wilhelmine Germany and used his contacts with chancellor Bulow to satisfy Kaiser Wilhelm’s ambition to make a ‘great power’ of the newly created state. The Kaiser’s passion for heraldry, uniforms, military pomp and ceremony carried itself forward into a disastrous foreign policy, which would eventually lead to war and the destruction of the nascent state.
How much of an accomplice in this tragic endeavour was Tirpitz is rightly brought out by the author, who writes that Tirpitz’s ambition need not necessarily have resulted in a fleet of battleships, but battleships were large, with an overwhelming presence and glory. This, unlike, for instance, the U-boats of Germany that eventually did more damage to the enemy in the first world war.
Jeremy Stocker
Architects of Continental Sea-power; Comparing Tirpitz and Gorschkov
Routledge (October 2020)
The author rightly criticises both the Kaiser and Tirpitz for having unsatisfactory strategic objectives, in building a battle line, other than giving Germany ‘a place in the sun’ and building a navy of a ‘great power’.
Having served in the navy at about the time that Alfred Thayer Mahan was writing his great work, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History: 1660–1783, Tirpitz did not seem to have taken Mahan’s caution of maritime geography, seriously enough.
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Although given enough funds to build three capital ships a year, the High Seas Fleet played little part in influencing the land-centric centre of gravity, permitting as many as seven infantry divisions to be landed by Britain on the coast of France, without interference.
Tirpitz’s ambition set off a naval arms race with Britain, in which the latter, with its vast financial resources, easily outpaced the German building capacity. Eventually, Britain, the chief trading partner of pre-war Germany, opted for a strategy of a distant blockade, which crushed the morale of the German people and forced the yet undefeated German army to sue for peace.
Tirpitz was partly right in foreseeing that building a battle fleet would result in a Mahanian decisive battle, and so it occurred at Jutland, but it was too little, too late. The British Grand Fleet though tactically defeated, continued to rule the waves, while Admiral Hipper was forced to shelter Wilhelms. The author rightly says that if the funds spent on Tirpitz’s fleet had been given to the army, the German army might have pulled it off on the Western front.
Admiral Sergei Gorschkov
Gorschkov, unlike Tirpitz, had a relatively undistinguished, but meteoric naval career, making it to flag rank by the age of 31. This didn’t get him very far, having to deal with a triumphant Soviet Army, which had, according to Stalin, won the war alone against Hitler, with a little help, of course from Stalin himself.
There were bright stars in the Soviet army, including Koniev, Zhukov and Chuirkov, so bright that Stalin sidelined them all. Soviet geography was again, a deterrent to an admiral, and the Soviets attempted to solve this by forming three separate fleets. Gorschkov was further crippled by party mumbo-jumbo, having to give all credit, not to rational thinking, but communist inspiration.
With these constraints, submarines were easy to get approved, because they were sea-denial platforms and the natural enemy of imperialist warmongers. Stalin, fortunately, had a touch of the Kaiser’s disease, in a fondness for big ships, for they gave the USSR ‘a place in the sun’.
Admiral Sergei Gorschkov. Photo: Mil.ru/Wikimedia Commons CC BY 4.0
So ships like the Sverdlovs were easier to get sanctioned, with a glavny Shtab dominated by the marshals, who never forgot to stress that the armed forces belonged to the party and not the state. So Gorschkov had to wait many years to write a book like The Seapower of the State. True, the Cuban crisis helped matters a bit, particularly against Kruschev, who had been the army’s political commissar at Stalingrad, and disliked big ships.
Above all, even with all his fame, Gorschkov was careful to walk respectfully two paces behind Marshal Grechko when they visited New Delhi. Gorschkov had a soft corner for the Indian Navy, often advising Indian admirals on which Soviet ships to acquire, and which to avoid.
The Indian Navy’s early connection with the Soviet Navy was an eye-opener on many individual technologies in which the Soviets were ahead of the West, and quite a few in which they lagged.
Gorschkov, unlike Tirpitz, made a significant contribution to maritime strategy apart from building a navy. This was in the idea of the ‘all arms battle’, which he developed from his analysis of the failure of Hitler’s U-boats in the battle of the Atlantic.
Gorschkov theorised that Goering refused to cooperate with Doenitz in continuing to provide FW – Condors over the Atlantic to home in U-boats. Accordingly, he withdrew his SSBNs to the Bering Sea, where, with the helicopter carriers and TU-22s, he was prepared to give decisive battle to the US Navy.
The author rightly mentions other German naval writers, but perhaps he underrates Wolfgang Wegener, who was the only one to actually suggest a solution to Germany’s unfavourable maritime geography. However, this book should be a compulsory professional read in all military and naval institutions.
Admiral Raja Menon was a career officer and a submarine specialist in the Indian Navy. He commanded seven ships and submarines before retiring in 1994 as assistant chief of naval staff (operations).
