Chapter 129: Significance

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If one were to say that the Norway Sea Battle had crippled the British Royal Navy, it would still be too early to draw such a conclusion.

Strictly speaking, the Norway Sea Battle had merely shaken the Royal Navy’s position of supremacy. It had neither defeated the Royal Navy outright nor achieved the objective of replacing it. The reason was simple: the High Seas Fleet had paid an enormous price as well. Two battleships had been sunk, three battleships had suffered heavy damage, another twelve had sustained varying degrees of damage, and none of the five battlecruisers had escaped unscathed.

For a month afterward, only eleven ships of the High Seas Fleet were fit to put to sea. Even three months later, that number had risen only to fifteen. It was not until the end of 1915 that the High Seas Fleet had recovered its strength to its pre-battle level.

There was no denying that the Grand Fleet had suffered far greater losses.

In the battle, the Grand Fleet had lost five battleships. Eight battleships and three battlecruisers had been heavily damaged, while the remaining thirteen battleships had also sustained damage. A month later, only eight capital ships of the Grand Fleet were capable of putting to sea; three months later, there were still only sixteen.

Clearly, the Grand Fleet remained superior in strength to the High Seas Fleet.

More importantly, by the end of 1915, with the final four Queen Elizabeth-class battleships and the first three Revenge-class battleships entering service in succession, together with the damaged warships being gradually repaired, the Royal Navy’s capital ships would outnumber those it had possessed before the battle, reaching the astonishing total of twenty-six. If construction of the two Renown-class battlecruisers were accelerated and they were completed by the end of 1915, that figure would rise to twenty-eight.

There was no doubt that the High Seas Fleet could not possibly overtake the Grand Fleet.

In fact, even if all four Bayern-class battleships were completed by the end of 1915, the three Derfflinger-class battlecruisers were finished ahead of schedule, and the damaged capital ships were restored to service, the Imperial Navy would have no more than twenty-seven capital ships. Too many warships had been damaged in the battle and required extensive repairs. As a result, the seven capital ships still under construction were not merely unlikely to be completed ahead of schedule; they might well be delayed.

Under those circumstances, the High Seas Fleet might not catch up with the Grand Fleet in strength until the middle of 1916.

By then, however, the Royal Navy would have acquired at least four Revenge-class battleships, bringing its total number of capital ships to thirty. Even if the Imperial Navy worked at full capacity, it would still be impossible for it to obtain so many capital ships by the middle of 1916.

Thus, the High Seas Fleet had still failed to gain numerical superiority, let alone crush the Grand Fleet completely.

Yet the strategic and political significance of the battle plainly far exceeded its military significance.

Before the battle, the Royal Navy had controlled the sea lanes of the North Sea and guarded the maritime routes connecting the German Second Empire with the outside world. After the battle, however, the Royal Navy could no longer impose a comprehensive blockade upon the German Second Empire.

In the final twenty days of May alone, the Empire’s foreign trade increased by eighty percent compared with the previous month.

For example, in mid-May Feng Chengqian had arranged a long-range convoy operation. A convoy fleet composed of twelve light cruisers escorted a fleet of more than thirty merchant ships from Wilhelmshaven. Passing through the Faroe Islands, it entered the North Atlantic and then proceeded to Boston on the American east coast. The fleet not only reopened the trade route between Germany and the United States, but also carried a special envoy from the emperor of the German Second Empire. In mid-June, the fleet departed Boston and returned to Wilhelmshaven on the first day of July, bringing back hundreds of thousands of tons of American goods.

Although such a quantity of cargo amounted to virtually nothing for the Empire—the German army on the Western Front consumed three hundred thousand tons of various supplies in a single day—the political, diplomatic, and commercial significance of this “trade mission” was immense and critical.

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Quite apart from anything else, at least the American public gained an entirely new understanding of the Empire.

Nor was it only maritime trade with the United States that was restored.

By July, the Empire’s foreign trade had increased fivefold compared with April, reaching a postwar high and even surpassing the monthly average before the outbreak of the Great War.

In fact, the greatest impact was diplomatic.

Before the battle began, Britain had been negotiating with Japan in the hope of persuading it to join the Allied camp. Britain had even made promises to that end, undertaking to recognize after the war all the gains Japan acquired in the western Pacific, including every colony and sphere of influence belonging to the German Second Empire in that region. Earlier, in order to obtain Chinese labor, Britain had already signed an agreement with the Chinese government promising to return the Shandong Peninsula, which was under the control of the German Second Empire, after the war. In other words, Britain’s promise to Japan already violated the agreement it had reached with China. Clearly, in its efforts to win over Japan, this rising power, Britain had ceased to care about such considerations.

Unfortunately, after the Norway Sea Battle, Japan’s position began to waver.

Although the war was being fought on the opposite side of the Eurasian continent, the performance of the German Second Empire forced the Japanese authorities to take certain concerns into account. Put simply, even if the German Second Empire was temporarily unable to turn its attention eastward and could not attend to its colonies and spheres of influence in the Far East, once it emerged as the final victor in the European war, it would certainly be capable of defeating Britain on the maritime battlefield—and therefore capable of sending troops to the Far East.

Even as an emerging power in the Far East, Japan was, at most, a nouveau riche. Compared with an empire like the German Second Empire, which possessed a long history and had been founded upon military strength, Japan was far inferior. And even if the German Second Empire proved unable to defeat Japan in the Far East, it would still be capable of supporting another strong power there—one that could pose a threat to Japan.

Clearly, Japan could not risk antagonizing the German Second Empire while it was at the height of its power.

In other words, if Britain wanted to bring Japan into the war, it would have to offer a higher price—enough to make Japan believe that the benefits justified the risk of offending the German Second Empire.

The question was, what else could Britain offer?

It had to be admitted that Japan’s ambitions were considerable, and so was its courage.

At the end of May, when the British found themselves helpless, the Japanese authorities took the initiative and named their conditions: if Britain transferred its Far Eastern colonies, including Singapore, to Japan, Japan would enter the war as a member of the Allied Powers and dispatch its fleet and armed forces to fight in Europe.

This time, it was Britain that was tempted.

Britain had originally hoped only that Japan would enter the war, help clear the Far East, and eliminate the German Second Empire’s bases there. It had never expected Japan to send its fleet and army into the war, much less counted on Japan making any contribution on the European battlefield. Besides, even if Britain agreed, France, Russia, and the other Allied powers were unlikely to accept Japanese intervention in the European war.

Of course, what Britain valued was not the Japanese army, but the Japanese navy.

Although the Japanese navy was far inferior in size and strength to the European powers—and could not even match Italy, a merely second-rate naval power in Europe—Britain’s Royal Navy had suffered one defeat after another and was much weaker than before, while its long maritime routes still required protection. If Japan could dispatch its fleet to the war, even if only to perform convoy duties in a theater such as the Mediterranean, where the Royal Navy held mastery, it would greatly ease Britain’s wartime burden and allow the Royal Navy to send more ships to the all-important North Sea.

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In June, the British prime minister’s special envoy traveled personally to Tokyo for the final negotiations over Japan’s accession to the alliance.

The British envoy carried generous terms authorized by the prime minister, and his purpose was clear: building upon Japan’s demands, he was to bring Japan into the war at the lowest possible cost.

Whether Japan could be won over, however, remained unknown.

Japan was not the only country whose position had been affected. The attitude of the United States had also changed.

Before this, American bankers, industrialists, and merchants had placed most of their bets on Britain. This was plainly reflected in American foreign lending: the majority of loans had gone to Britain, while relatively little had been extended to the German Second Empire. After the battle, more and more Americans—especially the great capitalists who controlled the lifeblood of the country—realized that Britain might not be the final victor. If the German Second Empire won the war, every wager America had placed on Britain would be lost.

In June, American wartime loans to the German Second Empire surged to 140 million imperial marks.

What did that figure mean? During the preceding six months or more, the total wartime loans America had extended to the German Second Empire had amounted to less than 200 million imperial marks.

Clearly, the Americans had realized that putting all their eggs in one basket was extremely unsafe.

America’s attitude toward lending amounted to a shift in its diplomatic position. The United States might not have been seeking to make the German Second Empire win the war, but the situation on the battlefield had already shown that none of the European powers involved could become the true victor. Under such circumstances, America’s ambitions began to emerge.

Put simply, America had begun financing the German Second Empire not because it wanted the Empire to become the ultimate victor, but because it hoped to use the German Second Empire to cripple Britain—to turn Britain into a victorious loser, stripped after the war of the ability to maintain its global hegemony, and ultimately transfer that hegemony to the United States.

The nation as a whole did not yet possess such an awareness, of course, but the groups that held power within the nation did.

That awareness would inevitably be transformed into action.

It was therefore clear that the greatest significance of the Norway Sea Battle lay in the fact that it made more countries realize that the mighty British Empire, on which the sun never set, might not be able to win this war sweeping across all of Europe and much of the world. The rising German Second Empire, meanwhile, might well emerge as the final victor.

That was precisely the objective Feng Chengqian had sought to achieve.

It could be said that every naval battle Feng Chengqian planned was aimed at Britain’s foundations—at its fatal “Achilles’ heel.”

Every victory won by the Imperial Navy meant that the British Empire drew one step closer to decline.

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