Abstract
The centenary of the First World War has confirmed the image of the conflict within British society as one of bloody sacrifice on the battlefields of France and Belgium. Despite the best efforts of the scholarly community, recent experience in Afghanistan and Iraq and the effect of those conflicts upon popular perceptions of war in general have shaped the commemorations and the public response to them. For many, the First World War clearly remains synonymous with futility, incompetence and bungling. Whilst historians now emphasize the ‘wider’ War, examine its myriad theatres and the multitudes it affected, the public discourse remains one defined by British experience on the Western Front.
Norman Friedman aims to provide some corrective to this impression by placing the sea at the heart of his narrative of the War. He describes his central theme as being that ‘the First World War was above all a maritime war, not in the sense that most of the action was at sea, but rather in the sense that maritime realities shaped it’ (p. 12). Nowhere was this truer than in Britain, where some within the Cabinet argued in favour of relying upon a solely maritime approach to the War in August 1914. Yet this book is not solely a popular history; Friedman also has a scholarly and military audience in mind. As with his previous works, Fighting the Great War at Sea is replete with technical detail, augmented in this instance with a narrative of key events and operations. It is therefore a serviceable single volume history of naval operations in the European theatre, with much valuable information on warship design and capabilities with relevance to historians. A final chapter on ‘lessons for the future’, in which he transposes some of his experience of Cold War strategic thinking back onto 1914–1918, appears to cater for a service market. Here, then, is an ambitious attempt to cover an extremely wide range of naval and maritime topics from an international perspective and to provide some insight into how the experience of the First World War did and might still inform subsequent strategic thought.
The potential scope of such a project is so vast that Friedman inevitably has to confine his focus to a certain extent. This is achieved by focusing primarily upon the British and German experience in the North Sea. As one might expect from Friedman’s earlier works, his account is centred round an analysis of technical detail and warship design. This methodology is arguably the book’s most valuable feature, as it illustrates the importance of mastering technical, tactical and operational realities before examining questions of strategy and policy. Easily dismissed as details by historians eager to focus on broader issues, such issues are often central to fully understanding the very questions they seek to address. By beginning from the ‘bottom up’ in this manner, Friedman ensures that his arguments are based upon a firm foundation. Whilst some of his judgments may be open to question, approaching them in this manner empowers the reader to reach their own conclusions, adding to the overall worth of the volume.
His treatment of the literature on the First World War as a whole is less authoritative than his work on ship design and capabilities. For instance, he assumes that Lord Hankey’s polemic memoir Supreme Command, 1914–1918 is an accurate account since its author was ‘an observer rather than a prime mover’ who is, therefore, ‘likely to be less biased than other writers’ (p. 11). Hankey’s recollections are indeed revealing, but the suggestion that he was a disinterested observer would doubtless have come as a surprise to many of those in the Cabinet or the services at the time. Friedman is also not afraid to pass judgment on contemporaries, sometimes with excessive zeal. Sentences like ‘the war in the North Sea demonstrated what should have been (but was not) obvious before the war’ (p. 359) are common. Whilst decisions open to criticism certainly occurred between 1914 and 1918, generalizations such as this are problematic on methodological and factual grounds. The Royal Navy was all too aware of the difficulties of locating the German Fleet – doing so became part of what was referred to as ‘the North Sea problem’ – something Freidman tacitly acknowledges elsewhere within the text itself. Moreover, for a history of the Great War at sea, focusing on the Anglo-German conflict is a severe limitation and one which contradicts the authors own claims about the maritime nature of the war as a whole. This might better be described as a book about naval operations in Europe than a comprehensive study of the maritime aspects of the First World War.
Fighting the Great War at Sea is constructed in the same format as Friedman’s other recent works on warship design; interlacing text, numerous well-produced images and extensive captions. This has the curious effect of simultaneously making the book more difficult to read as a whole, but readily accessible in its individual parts. The main text is rendered less readable by an apparent lack of editing or proof-reading, which has left a number of problematic passages and errors. This makes what is admittedly a large book something of a daunting task to address as a whole, although easy to sample in sections.
This is not a comprehensive treatment of the War at sea, and nor does it engage with much of the recent research on the First World War as a whole. This is unfortunate, as Friedman’s ambition to place naval and maritime affairs at the heart of Britain’s wartime experience is both laudable and appropriate. Nevertheless, by bridging the gap between warship design and strategy, Friedman underlines the importance of operational realities to writing military and naval history. This is a valuable contribution in itself.