Talk:Anglo-German Naval Agreement

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[edit] Kiel canal

The article states: "Of course, at the time of the signing of the AGNA, Denmark had the capability of deciding what ships made their way into and out of the Baltic".

The Kiel canal existed, so wouldn't it have meant that the ship had to pass either through Germand or Denmark? Therefore, Denmark wasn't able to control German ships going in and out of the Baltic, as they could just pass through the Kiel canal, right? Correct me if I'm wrong. The article just gives the impression that Denmark could also stop German ships from passing. --HJV 02:07, 18 March 2006 (UTC)


[edit] Clean-Up

This article has it now stands is totally atrocious. Nearly every assertion in this article is dead wrong, standing with the claim that the A.G.N.A. gave control of the Baltic Sea to the Germans. There was no such clause in the A.G.N.A. at all. As someone who wrote a lengthy undergraduate paper on the A.G.N.A., I must read the text of the agreement about thousand times, and I can state quite firmly that nowhere in the A.G.N.A does it say anything about giving control of the Baltic to the Kriegsmarine. What the A.G.N.A. does say is that Germany can build a fleet to a size of 35% of the Royal Navy, and yes, it is true, that a Kriegsmarine that would be at the 35% of the Royal Navy’s strength could dominate the Baltic. But getting to the main point, the main counter-factual assumption of this article, that without the A.G.N.A. the British could dominate the Baltic and cut the Germans off the supply of Swedish iron ore, is completely wrong. To enter and leave the Baltic, one has to go through the Danish Sound, and given that Denmark was a militarily weak state (it took the Germans only 48 hours to seize Denmark in 1940), long before World War Two, the British Admiralty had correctly worked out that if a British fleet entered the Baltic, the Germans would seize Denmark and lay mines in the Danish Sound, and that the only way the British could counter this would be to land a force of their own in Denmark; given that the British had a very bad experience in World War One at Gallipoli, the British were most reluctant to put themselves through a similar experience in World War Two. It is true after for a brief period after World War One, a British fleet did operate in the Baltic, but it was withdrawn in 1921. The British had always taken the view that without control of Denmark and the waters of the Skagerrakand the Kattegat, it would be quite impossible for a fleet to operate in the Baltic.

The narrow waters of the Kattegat, the Great Belt and the Little Belt, if mined would present great difficulties for any fleet that tried to cross them, and given that the Germans would almost certainly station guns on the Jutland to blow out of the water any British minesweepers, the British would have to seize Jutland themselves, which would have presented great problems as the Wehrmacht was a vastly larger and much better equipped force then the British Army, and one is not even considering the logistical problems posed by the fact that Denmark is right next to Germany, and there are excellent roads and rail-roads linking the two countries, whereas any British force landing in Denmark would have to supplied across the North Sea, and the British would have to somehow seize and hold a port to properly supply their forces if such a operation were acutally attempted. During the Gallipoli campaign of 1915, the British learned much to their cost, it was impossible to sail up the Dardanelles without sweeping the mines first, and it was impossible to sweep the mines without first seizing the Gallipoli peninsula, which its turn, proved impossible to do because of stronger Turkish forces. When the First Lord of the Admiratly, Winston Churchill did suggest sending a British fleet into the Baltic in the fall of 1939, he was told quite firmly by the Admiralty, that such a operation would merely result in a repeat of Gallipoli. A.G.N.A. or no A.G.N.A., the British would not have able to operate in the Baltic anyhow. There’s an lot of other problems with this page, when I get more time, I will correct, but until then, one would be best to disregard its contents. --A.S. Brown 19:13, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

I went through and did a grammar clean-up on the article, but it still needs a factual clean-up. I don't consider myself qualified, so will wait for you or someone else to do so. StuRat 05:09, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
I have added a citation needed to the Baltic claim in the article, and also an external link to a text of the agreement at [1]. I'm not a historian, but hope these will enable editors more knowledgeable than myself to improve the article. DuncanHill 11:29, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
I added some citations to the ref desk question supporting a claim that the British conceded mastery of the Baltic (or at least appeared to). After coming here and reading the article tho, i'd agree w/ A.S. Brown, "totally atrocious" and in need of a rewrite.—eric 19:33, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] SoItalic textme sharp criticism

I am cut 'n pasting the following posts from the Reference Desk, without editing them. The seeds of an improved article are contained in the following posts. --Wetman 08:04, 31 July 2007 (UTC)


Can Clio, or some other knowledgeble person, please have a look at the page on the Anglo-German Naval Agreement? There is something seriously wrong here. Is there anything to back up the claim that the Agreement sacrificed control of the Baltic to the Germans? A major objection to this article has been raised on the talk page, but it has not been answered. S. J. Blair 11:03, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

This text [2] does not appear to mention the Baltic at all. DuncanHill 11:20, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
I have added a citation needed to the relevant part of the article, and also an external link to the agreement text as given above. DuncanHill 11:26, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

AS Brown's thesis on the talk page would be a start. He can state, quite categorically, the claim about the Baltic is absolute rubbish. It would be a mistake to ignore someone who studied this at university, and has read the treaty text "a thousand times".martianlostinspace 11:55, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

  • "...the British gave up naval mastery in the Baltic to Germany through the Anglo-German naval agreement of June 1935..." Aselius, Gunnar (2004) The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Navy in the Baltic 1921-1940, p. 118 citing "The Royal Navy and the Strategic Origins of the Anglo-German Naval Agreement 1935", Journal of Strategic Studies, 20(2) (June 1997).
  • "Admittedly the Anglo-German Naval Agreement of June 1935 showed that the Admiralty had effectively abandoned the idea of intervention in the Baltic by the British fleet." Hiden, John, Patrik Salmon (1994) Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in the Twentieth Century, p. 99.
  • "...German domination over the Baltic which the Anglo-German naval agreement tacitly conceded in 1935." Reddaway, W.F. (1940) Problems of the Baltic, p. 58.
  • "The Anglo-German Naval Agreement, he said, went along with Hitler's strategy of rapprochement with England and at the same time "gave Germany domination of the Baltic and de facto recognition" of the breaching of the Treaty of Versailles." Offner, Arnold A. (1969) American Appeasement: United States Foreign Policy and Germany, 1933-1938, p. 173. Quoting William Edward Dodd.
  • " The British, overburdened by world-wide commitments and multiple threats, were forced to make some hard choices. The Anglo-German Naval Agreement of June 1935 was one such choice. As mentioned before, the British signed the agreement because German adherence to the global system of qualitative naval limitation would further the Admiralty's programme for defending British sea supremacy. Outwardly, however, the agreement appeared to condone Hitler's blatant violation of the military clauses of the Treaty of Versailles. It also appeared to signal British indifference to the strategic situation of the small northern states, particularly in the Baltic. As Laurence Collier, the head of the Foreign Office's Northern Department, lamented in July 1935, the bad impression made by the naval agreement in the region 'seems to be deepening and spreading'." Hobson, Rolf, Tom Kristiansen, Frank Cass (2004) Navies in Northern Waters, 1721-2000, p. 195.
—eric 17:46, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
First and foremost I think eric should be commended for the tremendous work he has done in digging out these references.
Now to the main point. I agree completely with S. J. Blair and A. S. Brown that there is, to put it mildly, a serious problem with this page. Inferences are made which cannot be supported in fact, the above sources notwithstanding. The suggestion that Britain agreed to withdraw its navy from the Batlic as part of the 1935 Agreement is both false and misleading. Such an inference might be made, but this does not make it an established fact. According to Grunnar (op cit, 2004) Britain 'gave up naval mastery in the Baltic.' All I can say here is that this is a statement verging on the absurd. How could Britain give up what it did not have; and what it most assuredly did not have in 1935 was 'naval mastery of the Baltic'. Such mastery could only be achieved if Britain somehow knocked out Denmark, as it did in 1801 and 1807 during the Napoleonic Wars. Otherwise any British naval force operating in these waters, far from home and with no bases, risked being cut off and destroyed if the Germans occupied Denmark, and thus attained control of the vital passages of the Skagerrak and the Kattegat, a point made by A. S. Blair.
I also have to ask, as far as the Wikipedia treatment of this subject is concerned, where on earth does the quotation from Hitler in the first paragraph come from? Also, anyone reading the article is led (by the nose) to the conclusion that the Kriegsmarine somehow became a third as strong as the Royal Navy virtually overnight, at a time when it was weaker than the Russian Baltic Fleet, at a time when it possessed no battleships, few submarines and even fewer crusiers and destroyers. Indeed, even after the outbreak of war in 1939 the Germans had only 57 U-boats for every theatre of operation. The Navy envisaged in 1935 existed on paper only; this should not need to be said, but it clearly does.
So, perhaps a few background facts might help to understand where the Agreement fits, in naval strategy, in politics and in international diplomacy.
Politically the seeds of the Naval Agreement are to be found on Mein Kampf, of all places. It was Hitler's belief that the naval and foreign policy of the Kaiserreich had been a mistake; that the quest for overseas colonies had been wrong, as had the naval programme that followed from this, because it caused a clash with Great Britain. It was his belief, moreover, that Britain was one of Germany's 'natural allies', and a limitation of Germany's naval ambitions was one way to achieve a basis for mutual understanding. Supplementray to this, a bilateral arrangement between Britain and Germany had the advantage of undermining both the Stresa Front and the arms provisions of the Treaty of Versailles. The agreement of 1935 was held to be one of Joachim von Ribbentrop's great diplomatic coups; but, as always, Ribbentrop only ever kicked at doors that were already open.
As early as 1933 the British Admiralty had entertained the prospect of an arms agreement with Germany, for the simple reason that ever since the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 it no longer had the same capacity to deal with worldwide problems. In the mid-1930s Japan was seen to be a greater danger than Germany. The cabinet accepted this reasoning, and the idea of a naval limitation agreement was raised by Sir John Simon when he visited Berlin in March 1935. The agreement was thus concluded because it was in Britain's strategic interests to do so, and was pursued despite the temporary rupture it was to cause with the French. It was thus no more than an act of political and strategic realism. It was never implied or suggested that the Germans thereby would obtain control of any of the European waters.
In the end the Naval Agreement was one bargain that Hitler stuck to, if by default only. There was indeed a plan for significant expansion favoured by Erich Raeder and those of the old Admiral Tirpitz school; but it was far from completion in 1939, and the question of naval armaments was not uppermost among Hitler's priorities. He was later to consider scrapping the surface fleet altogether and switching the whole emphasis of German naval warfare on to the U-boat arm.
Please forgive me for going on at such length, guys. All this boils down to one simple fact: the Wikipedia page on the Anglo-German naval agreement verges on the intellectually worthless. The point can be made about possible German domination of the Baltic, but it should be considered under a heading of general implications. She says it as she sees it! Clio the Muse 00:14, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
I may have done a disservice to Gunnar by using the quote you took issue with. He is of course looking at the issue from a Soviet perspective, and explaining a shift in their strategic planning in early '35. Prior to this the theoretical war was a Great Power invasion through the border states with a neutral Germany, and where the Royal Navy would be dominate in the Baltic. Events of '35 forced the Soviets to consider war with a rearmed Germany. Still, he does say that the British "gave up naval mastery", and mentions that they ceased all friendly calls to Baltic ports for some time after signing the agreement.
Aren't you and A. S. Brown getting ahead of yourselves a bit? Fleets do not come into being overnight, but neither do armies and air forces which can invade Denmark and close the Baltic in two hours. The agreement was only three months after the beginning of rearmament and two months after Stresa. Your argument is that the Royal Navy could not have fought in the Baltic in 1935 because of the threat of a German invasion of Denmark, but really, could the German army have done any such thing at the time? Why couldn't the British dominate the Baltic when Germany was still limited by Versailles? and wasn't this agreement one of the first real indications that they would not be in the future?
By the way, found a couple more mentions of the British "agreeing" to exit the Baltic due to the agreement: Swedish iron ore during World War II#Background and British submarine flotilla in the Baltic#Aftermath. I hadn't seen that claim when i added the above, and wasn't trying to support it with those citations.—eric 22:05, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
I did not assume you were! The fundamental point here is that the article in linking the Anglo-German Naval Agreement with alleged 'withdrawal' from the Baltic is grossly misleading. In operational terms the British could only truly 'dominate' the Baltic if they had both bases and control of the narrow straits; otherwise this bottle-neck could be lethal; and by the summer of 1935 the Luftwaffe, formally reinstated in February, had enough planes to cause serious damage. But the point about naval mastery was meant to be understood as a long-term strategic concept. The article is still atrocious, as you yourself have rightly noted on the talk page. Clio the Muse 02:07, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
I am somewhat surprised then my comments created the degree of debate that they did, but for far it is worth, the claim that about the A.G.N.A allowing German "domination" of the Baltic is only partially. A Kriegsmarine that was 35% the size of the Royal Navy could dominate the Baltic in regards to Baltic powers e.g Sweden, Denmark, Finland, the Soviet Union, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania a and Poland. However, a Kriegsmarine that was only 35% the size of the Royal Navy could not dominate the Baltic in regards to the Royal Navy, and to say as this page does, that because Germany could dominate the Baltic in regards to the Baltic powers that this also applied to Britain indicates that someone is either being dishonest or is confused. On September 3, 1939 upon hearing that Britain had declared war on Germany, Admiral Erich Raeder wrote the following:

"Today the war against England and France, which the Führer had previously assured us we would not be have to confront until 1944 and which he believed he could avoid until the last minute began... As far as the Kriegsmarine is concerned, it is obvious that it is not remotely ready for the titantic struggle against England. To be be sure, the brief period of time that has elapsed since the Agreement of 1935 has witnessed the creation of a well-trained and well-conceived force of U-boats, of which approximately twenty-six are currently ready for Atlantic operations, but these boats are still far too few to exert a decisive influence upon the war. The surface forces,moreover are so weak and so few in number vis-a-vis the British fleet that the only course open for them-presupposing their active employment-is to show that they know how to die gallantly and thereby to create the basis for an eventual rebirth in the future" (Thomas, Charles The German Navy in the Nazi Era, Annapolis, Md. : Naval Institute Press, 1990 page 187).

The point is that the Royal Navy had an overwhelming margin of strength over the Kriegsmarine. In 1939, Britain had 15 Battleships & battlecruisers, 7 Aircraft carriers, 66 Cruisers, and 184 Destroyers. By contrast, the Kriegsmarine had only 2 modern battleships, two pre-dreadnought battleships, 3 "pocket battleships", 3 heavy cruisers, 6 light cruisers, and 27 destroyers. Hence Raeder's gloom relating the prospects of his service against the Royal Navy. In fleet battle between the Royal Navy and the Kriegsmarine in the North Sea could only in the latter's annihilation. Yet somehow, it is proposed that because the Kriegsmarine was stronger then the Baltic powers that this meant that the Royal Navy could not annihilate the Kriegsmarine in the Baltic. Had the Royal Navy fought the Kriegsmarine in a fleet action in the Baltic, the outcome would have the same as a fleet action in the North Sea; the only problem is as already noted, the problem of Denmark. --A.S. Brown (talk) 01:24, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] The 35000 ton limitation

The Bismark article suggests that

Officially, however, her tonnage was 35,000 tons to suggest parity with ships built within the limits of the Anglo-German Naval Agreement (1935) that allowed Germany to build up to five 35,000-ton battleships... etc

of which there is no indication here. Is that a mistake or did the Agreement actually include such clause? The notes to the agreement linked to here also have no mention of such limitation. Could anyone clarify? Saaska (talk) 05:00, 29 December 2007 (UTC)