Alfred von Tirpitz

Alfred von Tirpitz built the German High Seas Fleet and the naval race that helped bring Britain into the war. Born in Küstrin in 1849, the son of a lawyer and judge, he joined the Prussian navy at sixteen — a service of almost no consequence at the time — and made his early reputation on torpedo development. He was appointed Secretary of State of the Imperial Naval Office in 1897 and held it for nineteen years. His strategy was the risk theory. Germany could not match the Royal Navy, but a battle fleet concentrated in the North Sea and strong enough that Britain could not attack it without unacceptable losses would deter interference and force Britain into concessions or alliance. He built political support for it with unusual skill, founding a Navy League with over a million members and lobbying the Reichstag through successive Naval Laws from 1898, which fixed building programmes for years ahead so that funding could not be reversed. The theory failed. Britain did not concede; it accelerated, launching HMS Dreadnought in 1906 — which made every existing battleship obsolete and reset the race on terms Germany could not win — settled its differences with France and Russia, and concentrated its fleet in home waters. The High Seas Fleet fought once, at Jutland in 1916, and spent the rest of the war in harbour. He pressed for unrestricted submarine warfare, was overruled, and resigned in March 1916; the policy was adopted the following year and brought the United States in. He sat in the Reichstag for the nationalist right and died in 1930.

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