36 German strategists, on the other hand: Breemer, Defeating the U-Boat, 12; Frothingham, Naval History, 57; Scheer, Germany’s High Sea Fleet, 25, 88. The German term for “approximate parity” in naval strength was Kr?fteausgleich. Breemer, Defeating the U-Boat, 12.
37 “So we waited”: Churchill, World Crisis, 146; Scheer, Germany’s High Sea Fleet, 11. This stalemate did not sit well with either side. Both navies hoped to distinguish themselves in the war and chafed at the lack of definitive, glory-yielding action. German sailors had to bear mockery by German soldiers, who taunted, “Dear Fatherland rest calmly, the fleet sleeps safely in port.” On the British side, there was the Admiralty’s long heritage of naval success that had to be protected. As one senior officer put it, “Nelson would turn in his grave.”
Jellicoe was sensitive to how so defensive a strategy would sit with his fellow navy men, current and former. In an Oct. 30, 1914, letter to the Admiralty he confessed to fearing that they would find the strategy “repugnant.”
He wrote, “I feel that such tactics, if not understood, may bring odium upon me.” Nonetheless, he wrote, he intended to stick to the strategy, “without regard to uninstructed opinion or criticism.”
Koerver, German Submarine Warfare, xxviii, xv; see Jellicoe’s letter in Frothingham, Naval History, 317.
38 “In those early days”: Hook Papers.
39 He was soon to learn otherwise: Breemer, Defeating the U-Boat, 17; Churchill, World Crisis, 197–98; Marder, From the Dreadnought, 57. Breemer states that more than 2,500 sailors died in the incident.
40 “the live-bait squadron”: When Churchill first heard the nickname “live-bait squadron” during a visit to the fleet, he investigated and grew concerned enough that on Friday, September 18, 1914, he sent a note to his then second in command, Prince Louis of Battenberg (soon to be forced from the job because of his German heritage), urging him to remove the ships. The prince agreed and issued orders to his chief of staff to send the cruisers elsewhere. “With this I was content,” Churchill wrote, “and I dismissed the matter from my mind, being sure that the orders given would be complied with at the earliest moment.”
But four days later the ships were still in place, and in a state even more exposed than usual. Ordinarily a group of destroyers kept watch over them, but over the next several days the weather became so rough that it forced the destroyers to return to their home port. By Tuesday, September 22, the sea had calmed, and the destroyers began making their way back to the patrol zone. Weddigen got there first. Churchill, World Crisis, 197–98.
41 “my first sight of men struggling”: The ship heeled over far enough that part of its bottom was exposed, as was its “bilge keel.” Hook saw “hundreds of men’s heads bobbing” in the water, “while a continuous stream of very scantily-clad men appeared from the upper deck and started tobogganing down the ship’s side, stopping suddenly when they came to the bilge keel, climbing over it, and continuing their slide until they reached the water with a splash. I remember wondering whether they hurt themselves when they started traveling over the barnacles below the water line.” Hook Papers.
42 This posed a particularly acute threat: The two-thirds figure comes from Black, Great War, 50.
43 “doom the entire population”: Telegram, Count Johann-Heinrich von Bernstorff to William Jennings Bryan, Feb. 7, 1915, and see enclosure “Memorandum of the German Government,” Foreign Relations.
44 “Does it really make any difference”: Scheer, Germany’s High Sea Fleet, 218.
Admiral Scheer had a rather cool view of the human costs of war and the role of U-boats in advancing Germany’s goals. “The more vigorously the war is prosecuted the sooner will it come to an end, and countless human beings and treasure will be saved if the duration of the war is curtailed,” he wrote. “Consequently a U-boat cannot spare the crews of steamers, but must send them to the bottom with their ship.” He added, “The gravity of the situation demands that we should free ourselves from all scruples which certainly no longer have justification.”
This logic, he argued, also required that the submarine be used to its fullest advantage. “You do not demand of an aeroplane that it should attack the enemy on its wheels,” Scheer wrote. Failure to make maximum use of the submarine’s ability to attack by surprise, he wrote, “would be nonsensical and unmilitary.”
And besides, Scheer argued, in delineating a war zone and warning ships to stay out, Germany had made its intentions clear. Therefore, if a submarine sank merchant ships, “including their crews and any passengers,” it was the fault of the victims, “who despised our warnings and, open-eyed, ran the risk of being torpedoed” (220, 221, 222–23, 228).
45 “to a strict accountability”: Telegram, William Jennings Bryan to German Foreign Office, via James W. Gerard, Feb. 10, 1915, Foreign Relations.