Chapter Ninety-Three: A Challenge Letter

After the Kaiser personally convened the war council, Germany’s fundamental problems remained unresolved, but Feng Chengqian obtained precisely what he had hoped for. By imperial decree, eight infantry divisions from the second-line forces stationed in Belgium were placed directly under the Naval Command, to be moved at Marshal Tirpitz’s discretion.

Feng Chengqian did not linger in Berlin. Once the necessary business had been concluded, he returned to Wilhelmshaven.

By then, the eastern and western fronts had entered their first brief lull since the war began. After the battles of the Masurian Lakes and the Marne, both sides needed time to adjust their deployments, to rest armies that had been locked in combat for more than two months, and to draw up new plans of operation.

Of course, this was only the calm on the surface.

At the imperial conference, the Kaiser had stressed the need to place the utmost weight on the sustained fighting capacity of Britain and France, and to abandon all unrealistic fantasies. Though he did not say it plainly, his meaning was clear enough: Germany could no longer hope to defeat France within a few months, as the Schlieffen Plan had envisioned.

Curiously, Falkenhayn seemed not to grasp the Kaiser’s intent.

Even after the Kaiser repeatedly insisted that a swift victory was improbable, Falkenhayn still maintained that a proper adjustment to the existing war plan might yet defeat France. He proposed that an offensive launched through the center of the front could break the French line.

His refusal to yield greatly angered the Kaiser.

In the end, the Kaiser and Falkenhayn each had to compromise. The Kaiser agreed to let Falkenhayn mount one more offensive on the Western Front, while Falkenhayn agreed to do so with only the forces already available.

In truth, it was not the Kaiser who gave way, but Falkenhayn.

Given the situation at the time, if Falkenhayn refused to concede on troop allocation, the Kaiser might well have appointed Hindenburg as Chief of the Imperial General Staff.

The result was that Falkenhayn had only one hundred and eighty divisions at his disposal on the Western Front.

Could such a force launch an offensive capable of breaking through the French line?

On the face of it, one hundred and eighty divisions did not seem few. When the great war broke out, the Imperial Army as a whole had not even been that large, and the French across the way had at most one hundred and forty divisions. The problem was that this was the total strength on the Western Front, not the force Falkenhayn could actually employ in attack. After subtracting the troops tied down elsewhere along the front, the number available for an offensive would not exceed sixty divisions.

In a sense, that was not entirely a bad thing.

At that time, the Imperial Army’s total strength had already exceeded three hundred divisions. After removing the forty divisions still in training, roughly two hundred and sixty divisions could be moved. Before this, Ludendorff had commanded only two corps on the Eastern Front, fewer than forty divisions. In other words, so long as the situation required, the Kaiser could send the forty divisions remaining at home to the Eastern Front and let Ludendorff wage a proper campaign there.

Indeed, that was precisely the purpose behind the Kaiser’s pressure on Falkenhayn.

The Kaiser adopted Feng Chengqian’s advice: since swift victory in the West was impossible, shift the Schwerpunkt eastward, first crush Russia, and then strive to bring the Ottoman Empire, Romania, and others into the Axis camp. More importantly, if Russia were defeated in 1915 or 1916, Italy would be persuaded that the Second German Empire could surely prevail on the European continent.

One might say this was the crucial step in persuading Italy to enter the war as a member of the Axis.

Not long after Feng Chengqian returned to Wilhelmshaven, the Kaiser, under the pretext of inspecting the troops, went to East Prussia and held face-to-face talks with Ludendorff, Hoffmann, and other key commanders on the Eastern Front. He obtained a detailed understanding of the situation there and assigned Ludendorff an important task.

If all went well, Ludendorff would launch a major offensive by the end of the year, or at the latest in early 1915.

In mid-November, Feng Chengqian received an order from the Kaiser. Since Ludendorff had already planned the offensive in the East, the navy was to become more active as well.

Even without the Kaiser’s command, Feng Chengqian would have planned a large-scale operation.

By this time, Count Spee’s fleet had passed through the Strait of Magellan and entered the South Atlantic. Because he had received Tirpitz’s orders, Spee did not head for the Falkland Islands; instead, he proceeded to the more remote island of South Georgia. According to Tirpitz’s arrangements, Spee’s squadron would rendezvous there with colliers, replenish coal, carry out necessary repairs to the boilers and other equipment, and then head straight north.

If all went well, Spee would be back in the North Atlantic by the end of November.

In fact, his return came at an inopportune moment, because in the High Seas Fleet, the battle cruisers Moltke and Von der Tann had not yet been repaired, leaving only six battle cruisers, led by Derfflinger. Yet the Grand Fleet’s situation was even worse, for its strength was so dispersed that it was actually smaller than the High Seas Fleet. To say nothing of anything else, Jellicoe had at most four battle cruisers available at the time, and Lion and Princess Royal had returned home at the end of October for comprehensive maintenance and overhaul.

The key question was whether the Grand Fleet would sail to intercept Spee’s squadron and fight a decisive battle with the High Seas Fleet.

Feng Chengqian did not know, nor did he dwell on it. One thing was clear: the High Seas Fleet had to put to sea to cover Spee’s squadron. If the Grand Fleet avoided battle, it would once again cast disgrace on the Royal Navy, deal a heavy blow to British morale, and perhaps even rouse resentment among Britain’s allies.

Put simply, as long as the Grand Fleet stayed in harbor, Feng Chengqian would once again have won.

At the very least, it would be a major political victory.

For in the past two centuries, the Royal Navy had never cowered in harbor simply because an enemy was too strong. It was precisely this fearless spirit of combat that had forged the Royal Navy’s legend of ranging the seas and never suffering defeat, and that had made other nations regard it with profound dread.

To shatter that miracle would be to break the will of the Royal Navy itself.

If the Royal Navy could be beaten at sea, so much the better.

For that reason, the first thing Feng Chengqian did after returning to Wilhelmshaven was to let it be known that the High Seas Fleet was preparing to sail and cover Spee’s squadron.

In truth, the question was no longer whether the High Seas Fleet could fight; it was whether the Grand Fleet was willing to fight.

Clearly, Feng Chengqian was issuing a challenge to the Grand Fleet.

Would Jellicoe come out to meet it?

If it were only Jellicoe, he would certainly not accept Feng Chengqian’s challenge, for the balance of forces was plain enough. Even if he could defeat the High Seas Fleet, he would have to pay an extraordinarily heavy price, and as commander of the Grand Fleet, Jellicoe’s foremost duty was to ensure its safety.

But Jellicoe was only the commander of the Grand Fleet. He commanded it in battle, yet how it should be fought was not for him alone to decide.

At that time, the man most vigorously urging a sortie was First Lord of the Admiralty Churchill.

Yet Churchill was no fool.

Upon learning that the High Seas Fleet was about to sortie again, the first thing that came to his mind was not Spee’s squadron, but the possibility that the High Seas Fleet meant to seize the chance to force a decisive battle with the Grand Fleet.

The situation was perfectly clear: it was not the Grand Fleet that sought a battle, but the High Seas Fleet.

Because the Royal Navy possessed the strategic advantage, even if the Grand Fleet never left port, it could still impose a strategic blockade upon the Second German Empire. Therefore, when necessary, the Grand Fleet could remain safely in harbor and wait until the time was ripe before engaging the High Seas Fleet in decisive battle.

By contrast, if the Second German Empire wished to break the blockade, it had to defeat the Royal Navy at sea.

On the surface, even if the Grand Fleet stayed in port, the advantage still lay with Britain.

But if the Grand Fleet remained in harbor instead of meeting the challenge, Britain would lose the support of all its allies, and the High Seas Fleet would seize command of the North Sea.

For Britain, that was plainly intolerable.

The Grand Fleet had to put to sea, had to defeat the High Seas Fleet in battle, if Britain was to preserve command of the sea and maintain a full blockade of the Second German Empire.

Since the Battle of the Shetlands, the Grand Fleet’s retreat into harbor had already produced grave adverse effects.

According to an investigative report Churchill submitted to the House of Commons, within two months of the war’s outbreak, because it had failed to impose a comprehensive and complete blockade on the Second German Empire, Germany had already imported by sea from overseas strategic materials equivalent to a full year’s peacetime trade. The report concluded that if the channels by which the Second German Empire acquired strategic resources from abroad were not severed, France would be defeated by the end of June 1915, and Russia would likewise be defeated by the end of 1915.

Though the report was perhaps somewhat exaggerated, it sufficiently demonstrated the importance and urgency of a strategic blockade of Germany.

If the Second German Empire was to be subjected to a complete strategic blockade, the only way was to defeat the High Seas Fleet, or at the very least force it to cower in harbor.

Before the war, the vast majority of Royal Navy officers believed that once war began, the High Seas Fleet would remain hidden in port.

The reason was simple enough: the strength of the British and German fleets was there for all to see. Unless the German Navy did not care about its expensive battleships, it would not dare challenge the Royal Navy.

Clearly, those Royal Navy officers had been mistaken.

The High Seas Fleet fought with great aggression, and by seizing upon the Royal Navy’s unpreparedness at the outbreak of war, it had scored an early success.

At that point, the Royal Navy’s position was no longer so favorable.

Although, in the broader strategic sense, the Royal Navy still held the initiative—for example, in other theaters it was destroying the raiding ships of the Second German Empire—at the military level it was deeply on the defensive, because whenever the High Seas Fleet challenged it, the Grand Fleet was compelled to answer.

One might say that this was precisely Churchill’s view, and the view of many hard-liners as well.

Feng Chengqian had thrown down the gauntlet. Even if Jellicoe were most unwilling a hundred thousand times over, he could not simply hide to one side and allow the High Seas Fleet to come and go freely in the North Sea.