The significance of the German navigation attashes’ reports from London and Petersburg for the formation of Germany's marine policy in 1904–1912

The article deals with the German naval attaches' reports from London and St. Petersburg in the period of 1904-1912 and identifies their influence on the general maritime policy of Kaiser Germany in relation to Great Britain and Russia formation. These two states were of special importance in the maritime department of State Secretary A. Tirpitz and in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Wilhelmstrasse. The success of the Second Reich "world policy" depended to a large extent on the achievements in the "British and Russian directions", and its actively built new battle fleet was to become its instrument. In Russian and foreign research literature, the role of the the Naval Ministry representatives' messages in the indicated time period taken in parallel comparison did not become the subject of a separate study. The ability to analyze documents from the German Military Archive (Freiburg) allows us to close this gap. The messages of the German naval attaches K. Coerper, W. Wiedenmann in the UK, P. Hintze, W. Keyserlingk in Russia are valuable and significant not only in their contents, but also to understand their importance for the German political and military authorities, who were solving difficult issues of implementing the naval strategy formulated at the turn of the century in the context of intensively transforming international relations. Unlike their colleagues in other countries, K. Coerper, W. Wiedenmann, P. Hintze due to the principal significance of the “English” and “Russian” directions, carried out not only the analysis of the current naval situation, predicted its further evolution and gave recommendations on this matter, but also projected the ongoing precedents in their area of responsibility onto “big politics”. In fact, they went beyond their competence, which caused great dissatisfaction on the part of the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs representatives and Reich Chancellors B. Byulov and T. Bethmann-Hollweg, which led to conflicts and even to removal from offices as it happened, for instance, with K. Coerper and W. Wiedenmann. From the very beginning of his activity in Russia, P. Hintze occupied a somewhat different, “higher” position in this sense and had the rights of personal reports to Emperor Wilhelm II, he also had a wide circle of contacts in various spheres of the Russian society and even audiences with Tsar Nicholas II. It is noteworthy that the subsequent naval attaches in London and St. Petersburg after W. Wiedenmann and P. Hintze never played such a significant role. This can be seen in the example of W. Keyserlingk's activity. Their "factual" contribution to the understanding of the general information and analytical picture of Great Britain and Russia's maritime policy was no longer generalizing because of its overall clarity and certainty in the main points. The authors declare no conflicts of interests.

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