German Submarine Warfare 1914-1918 in the Eyes - British Naval ...

Preface
Editor’s perspective xi
The German Navy 1900-1914 xii
The World merchant fleet 1914 xv
U-boats xvi
Britain and the German submarines 1914-1918 xiii
German submarine warfare 1914-1918 xxi
German naval construction 1914-1918 xxxix
This book contains an immense amount of detail about Imperial German
submarine warfare for the period of the First World War, 1914-1918. The wealth of
data covers technical design, personnel, tactics, individual U-boat cruises, casualties
and much related information about the Central Powers’ Allied opponents. The
text is entirely based on documentary sources at the National Archives, Kew,
England. The materials examined and cited here include prisoner-of-war
statements, intelligence analyses, deciphered wireless traffic communications, as
well as testimony of survivors of sunken ships.
The objective strives to offer a representation of the First World War at sea
on several levels as we near its centennial, including:
• Background of the German naval construction program, 1900-1918, when
the emphasis remained overlong on the pre-eminence of the battleship at
the expense of submarine construction and deployment;
• Discussion of the lead-up to unrestricted submarine warfare;
• Implications of a British naval officer’s manual dated April, 1918 in which
exacting technical information about German submarines is detailed;
• A review of what lay behind the door of Room 40 of the Royal Navy’s
Intelligence Division; and a look at eyewitness reports from German Uboat
POWs as well as from crews of sunken allied merchant ships, reports
of allied warships engaged in anti-submarine warfare operations, and
deciphered German radio communications messages.
Britain
When the first volume (in the twenty-eight volume set) of the History of the
Great War Based on Official Documents was just short of completion in 1923, the
Admiralty announced that their Lordships were not interested in overemphasising
the role of German submarines. Several changes had to be made, most especially to
material that dealt with submarine warfare through April, 1917 because:
“1. These chapters provide gloomy reading from the British point of view and there is much
in them to encourage potential enemies who may consider that it is in their competence to
subjugate the Empire by a large submarine building program.
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