The Royal Navy and German Naval Disarmament 1942-1947

Chris Madsen

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9781135223656
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

After the bitter lessons of German self-disarmament in 1919, Britain was far more alert and focused when it came to overseeing the disarmament of Germany's naval forces after World War II. This book shows how well-prepared the British were second time around.

1

Post-Hostilities Planning

The Royal Navy’s preoccupation with German naval disarmament arose from a peculiar interaction between past experience and future concerns. German sea offensives brought Great Britain dangerously close to disaster in two world wars. The Royal Navy only defeated the U-boat menace at an extremely high cost in lives and material and with considerable Allied support. As the Royal Navy’s participation through various governmental and interallied planning bodies demonstrates, British authorities saw the prospective work in Germany as preventative. The Royal Navy wished to eliminate Germany’s capability to wage another aggressive sea campaign against Great Britain. Such feeling was particularly strong among senior British officers, many of whom had as juniors first fought the Germans in World War I. In naval planning, Germany persisted as the traditional and principal maritime enemy. The rapid rise of German naval power in the interwar period showed the potential for resurgence. Despite conflicting priorities, the Admiralty considered control and disarmament of the Kriegsmarine as important and vitally necessary.

The origins of the Royal Navy’s planning for German naval disarmament began before the Allies won major victories against the German armed forces in the Soviet Union, North Africa, and the Atlantic. On 1 June 1942 the War Cabinet approved the establishment of a Military Sub-Committee to work with the Ministerial Committee on Reconstruction Problems. It was nominally under the Chiefs of Staff Committee’s general direction through the Directors of Plans.¹ The purpose of the Military Sub-Committee – composed of three members from the War Office, Air Ministry, and the Admiralty – was to consider armistice and post-hostilities problems affecting the British services.

The Admiralty appointed Rear-Admiral Roger Mowbray Bellairs, RN, to represent the Royal Navy on the Military Sub-Committee. The selection was both convenient and logical. His senior rank guaranteed the chairmanship of the sub-committee. Bellairs made sure no important or controversial decisions were taken without the Admiralty’s consent.² Although accepting the need for post-hostilities planning, the First Sea Lord, Admiral of the Fleet Sir Dudley Pound, RN, was anxious that these activities should not interfere with current operational planning. Events changed too quickly and unexpectedly to warrant more than the formulation of general principles. Bellairs, a retired flag officer whom Pound had called back at the beginning of the war to study the German surface raider problem, seemed uniquely qualified for the task.³ He was an intelligent naval officer familiar with committee work and the complex foreign policy issues affecting navies. Bellairs had been director of the Admiralty’s Plans Division between 1928 and 1930, adviser at several interwar naval disarmament conferences, and a representative on the League of Nations Permanent Advisory Commission. In 1942 he was the Director of Naval Intelligence’s deputy for the appreciation of German intentions on the Joint Intelligence Committee.⁴ The Military Sub-Committee position continued parallel to these other duties. The Admiralty assigned Paymaster Captain Cecil Kingsley Lloyd, RN, an officer who had previously worked with Bellairs, to assist the Military Sub-Committee.⁵ The backgrounds of the appointees indicated that the Royal Navy took post-hostilities planning for German naval disarmament seriously from an early date.

In keeping with the Admiralty’s desire to refrain from specifics until later, the Military Sub-Committee’s work was predominantly exploratory and educational. A directive from the Chiefs of Staff emphasized the importance of historical example:

The Sub-Committee will first undertake a study of the military aspects of lessons that may be drawn from previous attempts to secure lasting peace. Previous armistice conventions, policies and methods of disarmament and peace treaties are to be studied to this end.⁶

The peace settlement after World War I was the most obvious precedent, but the various interwar disarmament conferences and the French armistice in 1940 were also considered pertinent. The Military Sub-Committee studied past experience in a systematic and extended fashion. As contemporaries of the events themselves, Bellairs and his colleagues sincerely believed that mistakes in the past could be identified and corrected.⁷ The Royal Navy expected to learn from history.

Following extensive study of the historical lessons, the Military Sub-Committee turned towards general armistice and disarmament problems associated with a proposed Allied occupation. Draft surrender terms were discussed with a parallel Foreign Office committee.⁸ For the sake of clarity, the services’ representatives favoured a detailed surrender document. In early 1943 the Military Sub-Committee, as the first British planning body to consider future occupation zones, recommended that British forces should occupy the north-west region of Germany.⁹ Bellairs, in particular, noted the Royal Navy’s interest in the coastline and the major ports. Nonetheless, the careful and methodical pace of the Military Sub-Committee’s work seemed too slow in some quarters.¹⁰ The supposed effects of Allied strategic bombing, the German capitulation in Tunisia, and dramatic Soviet advances in the east made a looming German collapse appear plausible.

At the instigation of the Foreign Office, a Post-Hostilities Planning Sub-Committee replaced the Military Sub-Committee. The Admiralty received, with some suspicion, arguments for a new mandate and a wider membership.¹¹ The Military Sub-Committee was sufficient for the Royal Navy’s needs, and Admiralty officials privately believed that the reorganization was an attempt by the Foreign Office to control post-hostilities planning. Nonetheless, the Chiefs of Staff approved formation of the Post-Hostilities Planning Sub-Committee in mid-1943.¹² The Military Sub-Committee’s original three members remained, but Gladwyn Jebb, head of the Foreign Office’s Economic and Reconstruction Department, replaced Bellairs as chairperson. Jebb’s ostensible role was to ensure effective coordination between civil and military post-hostilities planning. At the same time, additional services representatives augmented the new planning body.

The enlarged Post-Hostilities Planning Sub-Committee compelled the Admiralty to devote more staff to post-hostilities planning. Claud Humphrey Meredith Waldock, head of the Military Branch I, the section within the Admiralty which handled international law questions, and later a principal assistant secretary, joined Bellairs as an official member.¹³ The choice was ideal for several reasons. Waldock, the author of numerous fleet orders earlier in the war, had formulated and interpreted many aspects of British naval policy. Within the Admiralty, he had gained the reputation of being a clever thinker. Furthermore, Waldock’s position brought him into frequent contact with other service and civil departments within the government. Lloyd, who continued as an assistant, represented the Post-Hostilities Planning Sub-Committee for a short time in Washington.¹⁴ As the number of topics and resulting workload increased, the Admiralty devoted more staff to post-hostilities planning. A captain, two lieutenant-commanders, and WRNS secretarial staff joined the sub-committee.¹⁵ This assignment of qualified personnel and resources was indicative of the fact that the Admiralty took a growing interest in armistice and post-hostilities work.

Placed under direct control of the Chiefs of Staff Committee, the Post-Hostilities Planning Sub-Committee acquired more power to make detailed plans for the post-war period than the Military Sub-Committee. Since Italy was soon out of the war and Japan was principally an American concern, the sub-committee focused on Germany’s occupation and control. Planners felt that the physical presence of Allied occupation forces was needed to bring home the reality of defeat to the German people. With the experience after World War I in mind, the British intended to send two naval squadrons, consisting of battleships, cruisers, destroyers, and smaller craft, to the main naval bases at Wilhelmshaven and Kiel.¹⁶ Once established in Germany, the Royal Navy was to control all major ports, with the exception of Rostock and Stettin which were earmarked for the Soviets, and institute regular patrols on the River Rhine and Kiel Canal. Bellairs also acquainted the sub-committee with the Admiralty’s proposals for a central Allied organization to supervise mine clearance operations in European waters.¹⁷ The Royal Navy expected to make full use of German minesweepers under the armistice terms. The planned naval occupation, which envisaged complete control and disarmament through four distinct stages, was ‘to demonstrate the failure of the German navy and of the U-boat campaign’.¹⁸ The Royal Navy approached the post-hostilities planning with a clear idea of what it wanted to achieve in Germany.

The assumption that the British should occupy a north-west zone in a three-way division of Germany underscored the Post-Hostilities Planning Sub-Committee’s work. In early December 1943 the American Joint Chiefs of Staff, at the insistence of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, proposed American occupation of north-west Germany under ‘Rankin Case C’, an operational plan for an Allied return to the continent in the event of a sudden German collapse or armistice.¹⁹ The large German ports, the Americans argued, were required for logistical supply and evacuation of US armies. Of course, the proposal went against British post-hostilities plans. In response to the suggestion that the Americans might want to occupy a north-west zone, Waldock stressed the Royal Navy’s proprietorial stake in German naval disarmament:

The events of the last thirty years have made the naval disarmament of Germany a matter of such peculiar interest to us that we have an obvious and strong claim to seeing that it is carried out with the utmost thoroughness and efficiency. The same experience has left us better equipped than any other Power to ensure that this disarmament is carried through. The occupying naval forces are in any case likely to be British because the American naval forces over here will not be adequate for the purpose.²⁰

Naval arguments alone made a British-occupied north-west zone imperative. The intention of US officials to withdraw American occupation forces from Germany at the earliest opportunity certainly did not inspire trust in the Americans to do the job properly. During a meeting of the Combined Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Sir Percy Noble, RN, head of the British Admiralty Delegation and the First Sea Lord’s representative in Washington, asserted that ‘owing to her geographical position, the rapid and effective disarmament of the German naval bases from Kiel to the Baltic was obviously of vital importance to Great Britain’.²¹ The Royal Navy viewed the elimination of German naval power as its special preserve. When Roosevelt sent a renewed appeal for an American north-west occupation zone, the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, again evoked the argument for German naval disarmament to justify a British presence in north-west Germany.²² Although the issue of occupation zones was not finally resolved until the Quebec Conference in September 1944, the British presented definite proposals for Germany’s control and disarmament.

Drawing upon the work of the Post-Hostilities Planning Sub-Committee, the British took the lead in interallied post-war planning. At the Moscow Conference of Foreign Ministers in November 1943, the United Sta...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Series Editor’s Preface
• Introduction
• Abbreviations
• 1 Post-Hostilities Planning
• 2 Preparation and Operations
• 3 Surrender
• 4 Control and Disbandment
• 5 Division of the German Fleet
• 6 British Naval Commander-in-Chief Germany
• 7 Scientists, Archives and Admirals
• 8 War Crimes Trials
• 9 Dumping, Demolitions and Dismantling
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index