The Conspiracy Behind the Escape of Goeben
and Breslau
xxiii + 458 pages,
20 illustrations,
2 maps
Full bibliography, notes and index
Card cover, 6¼" x 9¼"
ISBN 0 85958 635 9
Published 1996
Introduction
"On…August 10, Ponceau, in the
Quai d’Orsay, advised Isvolsky [the Russian
Ambassador] of Turkish fears about Russian designs
on the Straits. Ponceau told Isvolsky "that it might
be advantageous for us to draw Turkey to the number
of our enemies in order to make an end of her." It
seems to have surprised even the German Embassy to
discover that Mallet [the British Ambassador to the
Sublime Porte] had confided to a Swedish colleague
that Britain let in the German ships because she had
a "lively interest" in not allowing the Straits to
fall into Russian hands."
Late on the afternoon of Monday 10 August 1914 the
German battle cruiser Goeben, accompanied as always
by her faithful consort, the light cruiser Breslau,
appeared on the horizon off the entrance to the
Dardanelles. As the ships steamed past the ancient
battlefield on the plain of Troy the trailing
British Mediterranean Squadron was left floundering,
far away in the western Aegean, with no real clue as
to the whereabouts of the foe they had been pursuing
for a week. Admitted into the sanctuary of the
Straits after German pressure had been applied to
both the Turkish Minister of War, Enver Pasha, and
the unwilling Grand Vizier, Said Halim, the German
ships had successfully completed a remarkable
escape; but escape to where? To venture once more
outside the Straits invited certain retribution at
the hands of the British, who arrived in force on 11
August and remained on guard for the rest of the
war. Goeben’s fighting days were not, however, over
for, at the other end of the Straits, lay the Black
Sea and the coast of Russia — Germany’s enemy. For a
section of the Turkish Government the presence of
the German ships, commanded by the aggressive
Admiral Souchon, was a mixed blessing; for the
British the lamentable episode of the ‘escape’ of
the ships was a disaster of the first order.
Due to shifting allegiances, Britain’s status as a
Mediterranean power had changed considerably in the
quarter century prior to the outbreak of the First
World War. In 1888 the French, at the time the most
likely enemy, concentrated ironclads at Toulon in a
move directed at Italy. The Admiralty, unaware of
the actual motive, and believing the redistribution
threatened the British Mediterranean Squadron,
panicked; in July, the Naval Lords were instructed
to report on the requirements of the fleet should
war break out with France. The agitation reached a
climax in February 1889 with the presentation of the
Report on the Naval Manoeuvres which forced the
Government’s hand and led to the passage of the
Naval Defence Bill, authorizing the building of 10
battleships, 42 cruisers and 18 torpedo boats over a
five year period. By November 1889 the strength of
the Mediterranean Squadron had been increased to
meet the putative threat. Within two years, however,
the French fleet was again stronger. It did not take
long for perceptive commentators to realize that,
rather than create a hostage to fortune by virtue of
a large, and ever growing, fleet stationed at Malta,
it might be preferable to evacuate the Mediterranean
altogether and instead block the enemy’s fleet
inside. In 1895 a series of articles began to appear
whose general tenor was summed up by the title of
William Laird Clowes’ essay, referring to the
Mediterranean as The Millstone Round the Neck of
England. Ironically, and unbeknownst to the authors
of these articles, Admiralty policy since 1888 had
been to concentrate the Mediterranean fleet, at
least in time of war, at Gibraltar — a clear
indication that, as it stood, the position of the
squadron was untenable. What saved the situation was
the inability of the French to match British
shipbuilding after the introduction of the Naval
Defence Act; faced with the twin threats of the
British navy and German army, and unable to compete
financially with both, the French chose to invest
their money in the military. The French naval
estimates remained static between 1894 and 1896 and
actually decreased in 1897. By the time of the
Fashoda crisis the following year the French fleet
was comprehensively outgunned.
When Admiral Fisher, a previous Commander-in-Chief,
Mediterranean, was appointed First Sea Lord in 1904
a series of radical developments designed to
maintain Britain’s naval supremacy was instigated,
not the least of which was the introduction of the
class of ship that should be forever associated with
his name: not, as would commonly be imagined,
Dreadnought, the first all-big-gun battleship; but
Invincible, the first battle cruiser, a concept much
closer to the Admiral’s heart. By 1910, when Fisher
had retired as First Sea Lord, the Mediterranean had
become for the British an Anglo-French lake; in the
intervening decade the strategical situation had
been eradicably altered by the entente cordiale of
1904. Following this official understanding, a
secret British commitment entered into with the
French, falling not far short of an alliance, had
resulted in France assuming control for all but the
eastern basin of the Mediterranean, while – the only
cloud in an otherwise blue sky – Italy and
Austria-Hungary, those most unlikely of allies, vied
with each other to construct the latest
dreadnoughts.
What these indigenous Mediterranean navies lacked
however, was an example of Fisher’s ideal: a ship
powerful enough to destroy any lesser ship yet with
sufficient speed to outrun anything capable of
sinking it — the fast, lightly armoured, all-big-gun
battle cruiser. When the first of these ships was
built in England only Germany, initially and after
some delay, rose to the challenge. The new class
though raised as many questions as it answered: what
would its position be in the line of battle? Would
it be true to maintain that the only ship that would
ever be capable of destroying a battle cruiser in
all circumstances would be another, but more
powerful, battle cruiser? Concomitant with the
advent of these ships was the tremendous increase in
the range of the modern naval gun. By combining
speed with the capability of long range firepower
the lone battle cruiser roaming the oceans would
present a considerable danger to an opposing navy as
well as being a grave menace to the trade routes.
As the threat posed by the new German navy became
increasingly clear in London, the Liberal
Government, hemmed in by financial constraints and
seeking to initiate radical social reforms, faced
the appalling prospect of a naval arms race
spiralling hopelessly out of control. The options
available to meet this threat were, of necessity,
limited: construct new ships, at enormous cost, to
meet the challenge and maintain British naval
superiority, or reorganize the present fleets to
concentrate the greatest force in the North Sea,
facing the one clear threat. Certain assistance was
rendered by the Dominions – New Zealand presented a
battle cruiser and Malaya a dreadnought to the Royal
Navy as a contribution to Imperial defence, while
Australia formed a powerful battle group as the core
of her new navy, relieving the pressure of the
mother country in the defence of that station. The
greatest contribution should have come from Canada;
however the chimerical Canadian dreadnoughts became
more in the nature of a cruel taunt, holding out the
promise of relieving an onerous burden but never
eventuating.
Ultimately, the British position in the
Mediterranean would have to be examined in the
minutest detail in view of the threat in the North
Sea. The mere mention of a British withdrawal from
the middle sea roused passions; the arguments, which
had originally been advanced in the 1890s, were
hotly debated again in 1912 when Churchill, who was
then at the Admiralty, proposed (following the
advice of his First Sea Lord, Prince Louis of
Battenberg) that the Malta battleships should be
withdrawn. Churchill’s original scheme went too far
and, in a climbdown forced upon him by the Committee
of Imperial Defence (and which fed his determination
to circumvent that body in future), a compromise
solution was arrived at: in the interim, battle
cruisers would be sent to safeguard Britain’s
position in the Mediterranean.
In 1914 the only German battle cruiser outside of
the North Sea was Goeben but her advantage was
nullified to some extent by virtue of being trapped
in the Mediterranean on the outbreak of war. With
only two exits from that sea and no fewer than three
British battle cruisers on station at Malta, Admiral
Souchon’s task seemed impossible. The best he could
seemingly hope for was a dash for Gibraltar and
either a short life as an Atlantic commerce raider,
or an ignominious return journey to the North Sea;
failing that he could choose to join his Austrian
allies in the Adriatic and so be condemned, in all
probability, to a war of enforced inactivity.
Souchon followed none of these courses, deciding
instead on a perilous flight to Constantinople the
repercussions of which could hardly have been
anticipated during the fraught days of a simmering
August as he strove to keep one step ahead of the
British. Whatever Souchon’s private thoughts as to
the likelihood of his reaching his destination
unharmed, there is now available unquestionable
evidence that, for a multiplicity of motives, the
Admiral made good his escape only by virtue of an
organized conspiracy in Athens, both to supply his
ships with coal and to withhold vital information
from the British. This conspiracy – at the highest
levels – almost certainly included a serving British
Rear-Admiral.
The Ottoman Empire had also experienced a
fundamental change since the military defeat at the
hands of the Russians in 1877. The lurid western
image of the Sultan, Abdul Hamid (universally known
as Abdul the Damned), masked certain advances that
had been made and which looked likely to continue,
albeit at a snail’s pace. These reforms however
could not come soon enough to head off the pressure
building from within the Empire and which exploded
in 1908 with the Young Turk revolution. Initially
with limited aims, the Young Turks and, in
particular, the inner circle forming the heart of
the party – the Committee of Union and Progress –
would increasingly stand at the centre of Turkish
politics, for good or evil. As with other
reformists, the Young Turks looked beyond their own
borders for help in the task of modernizing the
Ottoman Empire. The German Emperor had already
demonstrated his willingness to assist, his overt
altruism as always underpinned by hard commercial
and strategic logic. Sir Edward Grey, the British
Foreign Secretary, also made soothing noises in
London and, for one brief shining moment, British
stock in Turkey rose to unheard of heights
culminating in a spontaneous public display of
approbation when the new Ambassador, Sir Gerard
Lowther, arrived soon after the revolution.
The pieces were there to be picked up; but Lowther
would not stoop. Malign influence from within the
Embassy, together with his own haughty personality,
combined to bankrupt the British stock and leave the
way open for Germany. Nevertheless, it should not be
thought that the scheming Teutons then proceeded to
coerce the Turks to their bidding; for the Turks
could be equally scheming. The end result – Turkey’s
entry into the war as an ally of Germany – owed more
to the machinations of Souchon and Enver than it did
to the prevarication of the less rabid members of
the Committee of Union and Progress who had hoped to
use Germany until it was felt the moment had arrived
when Turkey could be admitted as a fully paid-up
member of the international club and join the
exclusive coterie of nations entitled to be
described as Powers, with all the majesty denoted by
that imposing capital letter. As part of this grand
scheme, and at Turkish invitation, Britain undertook
the onerous task of modernizing Turkey’s navy;
Germany reformed her army; France contributed most
financially.
Despite this, the Ottoman Empire in the early
twentieth century was still an unwieldy product of
past glories with glistening fruits at the
extremities which were ripe for the plucking. The
power base of the Young Turks was too narrow and,
while the heart beat more strongly in Constantinople
after the revolution, the effect was too late to
save the atrophied limbs. When trouble struck the
new regime at the Sublime Porte in 1911 (the
certainty of which was only partly offset by the
surprise felt that it should be the Italians who
began the process of dismantling the Empire), the
Young Turks turned to Britain for an alliance; they
were rebuffed. Further approaches were made, all
with the same result. But Grey did not write Turkey
off: after the disappointing tenure of Lowther, one
of the rising stars of the Foreign Office, Sir Louis
Mallet, was dispatched as Ambassador with a remit to
repair the damage done by Lowther. This Mallet
attempted to do. That he was, ultimately,
unsuccessful was due more to a combination of the
sinister forces that continued to operate within the
British Embassy at Pera and a fatal defect in Mallet
himself: seeing what he wanted to see. The flattery
lavished on his hosts was used against him; paternal
and gullible in equal measure, Mallet’s mission was
a failure. Whether it could have been otherwise if
more support had been forthcoming from London is
problematical.
By the Spring of 1914, having weathered the Turco-Italian
war and both Balkan Wars, the Turks could be
forgiven for thinking that their erstwhile saviours
were now poised to deliver the coup de grāce — what
the minor powers had failed to accomplish, the major
powers would finish. All it would take was for one
of them to make the first move; each power had its
particular area mapped out dignified by such names
as ‘sphere of interest’ if little else. In a last
ditch attempt to forestall the inevitable the Turks
turned to Russia. Nothing could have better
illustrated the innate weakness of the Turkish
position. In the circumstances Russian suspicion and
the pressure of events resulted in the final, fatal
adherence to Germany. Even here the outcome might
have been different: the German Ambassador to the
Porte reported ruefully on Turkey’s usefulness as an
ally and was over-ruled; the Turks themselves
pursued a course of delaying for as long as possible
the moment when the debt incurred following the
signature of the Turco-German Treaty of Alliance on
2 August 1914 would be called in. This begs the
question, for how long could the Turks have kept up
the pretence had their hand not been forced by
Admiral Souchon?
The episode of Goeben and Breslau ruined many a
reputation. The first to suffer were Admiral Sir
Archibald Berkeley Milne, Commander-in-Chief of the
British Mediterranean Squadron, and Rear-Admiral Sir
Ernest Troubridge, commanding the First Cruiser
Squadron, who abandoned the attempt to intercept the
German battle cruiser with his lighter ships.
Troubridge was court-martialled, acquitted (to the
dismay of the Admiralty) and then dispatched, for
his alleged sins, to Serbia. Milne spent the
remainder of the war unemployed and has been
portrayed ever since as an incompetent dandy who was
better suited to the rigours of Court life than
command of a fighting squadron. Captain Fawcet Wray,
who was held to have influenced Troubridge in making
his fateful decision, was ostracized. All three felt
bitter at their treatment. Similarly, Mallet’s
career was prematurely brought to an end. The
longest fall however, if only because he had further
to slide than anybody else, was Churchill’s. The
First Lord of the Admiralty successfully avoided
being tarred with the same brush as his naval
commanders but harboured a secret enmity towards the
Turks whose first manifestation was the order for a
futile bombardment of the Dardanelles forts in
November 1914 (before a declaration of war!) and
which ended in the horrors of Gallipoli. Churchill,
like the others involved, sought to invoke a higher
defence to excuse the transgressions that were
perpetrated: the coincidences were too numerous, too
meaningful, to be otherwise than the product of
fate. A close study of the events and the decisions
faced by the participants is therefore essential to
decide whether it is possible, in any sense, to say
that the actions described were fated to happen.
The current work is the first volume of a trilogy
which, together, will examine the forces that
resulted in Turkey’s entry into the war; it is,
therefore, a precursor to the Gallipoli campaign and
attempts, in particular, to explain the numerous
errors of diplomacy, lack of strategic vision and
tactical incompetence that, together, failed to
circumvent the intentions of Admiral Wilhelm Souchon
in August and October 1914 and so resulted in the
slaughter of 1915. It delves into the mysterious
goings on in Athens as Souchon was fleeing his
pursuers and endeavours to prove that there was an
organized conspiracy, involving an Admiral in the
Royal Navy, to ensure that the German ships made
good their escape. It will also chart the decline of
the British Mediterranean Squadron from its apogee
in 1902/3 to its position in 1914 as no more than a
rump of the Royal Navy: a compromise force whose
vulnerability against its likely foes was only
offset by the questionable expediency of a moral
commitment to France that was to have such a baleful
influence in the counsels of August 1914. And
finally, it will examine the origins of the
Dardanelles campaign with particular reference to
the continuing faction fighting in Athens and the
part played by the Admiralty’s new-found dependence
on oil and how this might have affected the complex
reasoning behind the difficult strategic decisions
that had to be made after Turkey’s entry into the
war.
There are few full-length treatments of British
naval policy in the Mediterranean during this time
as, also, little has been written describing in any
depth British diplomatic policy towards Turkey. To
my knowledge, the episode I have labelled The Greek
Connexion breaks new ground. On the other hand there
have been two full-length treatments, in English, of
the escape of Goeben and Breslau. The first of these
(by Redmond McLaughlin in 1974) has no pretensions
and makes no claims; the second (by Dan van der Vat
in 1985) is less satisfactory in that it aims to
broaden the horizon but does so on too limited a
range of sources; in addition there are errors of
fact and interpretation for which the rationale
cannot be ascertained as no detailed references are
given. Any attempt to retell this particular episode
must run up against the excellent and comprehensive
account provided by the documents edited by Mr E. W.
R. Lumby in his Policy and Operations in the
Mediterranean, 1912-1914 for the Navy Records
Society. While most of the documents therein could
also be consulted at the Public Record Office, Mr
Lumby was instrumental in obtaining access to the
transcript of the Court of Inquiry into Troubridge’s
conduct and the subsequent Court Martial. Without
his efforts, these files would have remained closed
for years.
I have chosen to go down a different path to
McLaughlin and van der Vat by eschewing a
chronological format in the present work. In so
doing I have taken evidence given at the Court of
Inquiry and Court Martial, where it was used to
explain actions and motivations, and have
incorporated it in the main narrative in an attempt
to illustrate more clearly how decisions were
reached. Inevitably, anyone following the footnotes
will – in the relevant sections – see the name
‘Lumby’ cropping up with monotonous regularity;
nevertheless, I have tried to present a broader
picture than is available solely through Lumby
which, for example, does not mention the Greek
connexion, and is not particularly concerned with
the diplomatic side. In addition, I have checked all
the dispatches, signals and reports in Lumby with
the archives: in many cases the Admiralty minutes
(generally not given in Lumby) are more illuminating
than the message to which they refer! Important
additional sources were provided by the
Commander-in-Chief’s Signal Log in the Milne papers;
the W/T Signal Log of HMS Defence at the Imperial
War Museum; Captain Kennedy’s Narrative at the
Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives; and the
private papers of Admirals Milne, Troubridge,
Battenberg, Hamilton and Limpus. The crucial
documents for the Greek connexion are available in
the Athens’ Legation Archives at the Public Record
Office.
Admiral Sir Archibald Berkeley Milne
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JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN GREAT WAR SOCIETY
Fine as Miller’s account is of the events at
sea, the book’s meat lies in the allegation
in the subtitle, which advances a contention
so novel that revisionistic is too mild a
term for it. This is that three
highly-placed individuals in Athens
connived, directly or indirectly, to abet
the escape … Miller’s version of events
seems confirmed by his highly impressive
research in primary sources … a valuable
contribution to Great War naval literature.