Alfred von Tirpitz
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Alfred von Tirpitz (March 19, 1849 – March 6, 1930) was a German Admiral, Secretary of State of the Imperial Naval Office, the powerful administrative branch of the Kaiserliche Marine from 1897 until 1916.
Born in Küstrin in Brandenburg, the son of a senior civil servant, he grew up in Frankfurt (Oder). He joined the Prussian Navy in 1865 and attended Kiel Naval School, gaining his commission in 1869. Upon the creation of the German fleet in 1871 he was part of a torpedo squadron. In 1877 he rose to become the head of the torpedo-arm which he re-organised into the torpedo inspectorate.
Captain Tirpitz became Chief of the Naval staff in 1892 and was made a Rear Admiral in 1895. In 1896-97 he commanded the Asian cruiser squadron and oversaw the gain of Kiaochow as a German naval base. In 1897 he was made Secretary of State of the Reichsmarineamt - the Imperial Naval Office. An energetic campaigner for a greatly enlarged fleet, he attracted the attention and support of the Kaiser. Tirpitz was ennobled to von Tirpitz in 1900. Tirpitz' design to achieve world power status through naval power, while at the same time addressing domestic issues are commonly referred to as the Tirpitz Plan. Politically, the Tirpitz-Plan was marked by the Fleet Acts of 1898, 1900, 1908 and 1912. By 1914, they had given Germany the second largest naval force in the world (roughly 40% smaller than the Royal Navy). It included seven modern dreadnoughts, five battlecruisers, twenty-five cruisers and twenty pre-dreadnought battleships as well as over forty submarines. Although including fairly unrealistic targets, the expansion program was sufficient to alarm the British, starting a costly naval arms race, pushing the British into closer ties with the French.
Tirpitz developed a "risk theory" (an analysis which today would be considered part of game theory) whereby, if the German Navy reached a certain level of strength relative to the British Navy, the British would try to avoid confrontation with Germany (that is, maintain a fleet in being). If the two navies fought, the German Navy would inflict enough damage on the British, that the latter ran a risk of losing their naval dominance. Because the British relied on their navy to maintain control over the British Empire, Tirpitz felt they would rather maintain naval supremacy in order to safeguard their empire, and let Germany become a world power, than lose the empire as the cost of keeping Germany less powerful. This theory sparked a naval arms race between Germany and Great Britain in the first decade of the 20th century.
However, this theory was based on the assumption that Great Britain would have to send its fleet into the North Sea to blockade the German ports (blockading Germany was the only way the Royal Navy could seriously harm Germany), where the German Navy could force a battle. But due to Germany's geographic location, Great Britain could blockade Germany by closing the entrance to the North Sea in the English Channel and the area between Bergen and the Shetland Islands. Faced with this option a German Admiral commented, "If the British do that, the role of our navy will be a sad one", correctly predicting the role the surface fleet would have during World War I.
Tirpitz had been made a Grand Admiral in 1911. Despite the building program he felt the war had come too soon for a successful surface challenge to the Royal Navy as the fleet act of 1900 had included a seventeen year timetable. Unable to influence naval operations from his purely administrative position, Tirpitz became a vocal spokesman for a unrestricted U-boat warfare, which he felt could break the British strangelehold on Germany's sea lines of communication. Interestingly, his construction policy never bore out his political stance on submarines, and by 1917 there was a severe shortage of newly built submarines. When restrictions on the submarine war were not lifted he fell out with emperor and was compelled to resign on March 15, 1916. He was replaced as Secretary of State of the Imperial Naval Office by Eduard von Capelle.
In 1917 Tirpitz became head of the short-lived Fatherland Party (Deutsche Vaterlandspartei), which sought to rally popular support for an all-out effort to win the First World War. After Germany's defeat he supported the right-wing Deutschnationalen Volkspartei (DNVP, German National People Party) and sat for it in the Reichstag from 1924 until 1928.
The German battleship Tirpitz was named after him in 1939.
