Abstract
How do you create and develop a new military capability in time of war? This, basically, is what Steve Dunn examines in this, his latest book. Between 1914 and 1918 the need to render the North Sea, if not a safe haven, then at least not too dangerous a passage for merchant ships plying between the British Isles and Scandinavia presented a great challenge for the Royal Navy.
At the outbreak of the war in 1914, German surface ships, as well as submarines, were regarded as threats to the British commercial traffic to the three Scandinavian countries, especially the ports of Norway. In addition to the protection of this trade there was also another important task, namely to establish and maintain the blockade of Germany. This, of course, was achieved by sealing the Straits of Dover and what is now known as the GIUK (Greenland-Iceland-UK) Gap.
The central problem was how to implement the treaties of Paris (1856) and The Hague (1899 and 1907) in practice, without driving neutral powers into the arms of Germany. Before 1917 this was particularly important in the case of the United States. The difficulties of creating a well-functioning system of ship and cargo control are well illustrated by the destinies of Swedish merchant ships, which could be stopped and checked up to half a dozen times by ships of the Royal Navy.
Steve Dunn has worked through a large number of archival sources, and thus manages to describe in detail the development of the Royal Navy’s forces in the North Sea, based at Lerwick and Methil. The most interesting aspect of his study is the development of effective anti-submarine capability. For a long time the Navy’s principal approach was offensive, mounting large sweeps by surface vessels hunting for submarines. It was not until 1917 that the more defensive tactic of convoying became commonplace, after which it quickly proved its effectiveness. Dunn’s treatment of this process is the strongest part of the book, and well illustrated with numerous examples. It demonstrates how difficult, and how costly, changes of tactics in the middle of a major conflict are. Numerous British ships were used, ranging from cruisers, via destroyers of various classes, to a variety of smaller vessels. Dunn discusses ably their advantages and disadvantages for the task at hand.
The blockade of Germany is another aspect of the story, but the treatment of it is rather brief, and subsumed into the wider discussion of how British and allied tonnage and trade were protected. A further aspect is how all of this was seen from the point of view of the neutral powers, especially the United States and the three Scandinavian countries (Sweden, Norway and Denmark, Iceland still being a Danish possession until 1944). The Americans were initially very sensitive to attacks on their rights as neutrals and interdiction of their shipping both to Germany and Scandinavia. Yet from 1917 the American attitude pivoted towards a more uncompromising approach to Scandinavia, and greater tolerance of British activities.
Dunn unpicks the differing approaches taken by each of the Scandinavian countries, whose agendas differed according to their political and strategic situations. Norway was the most obviously pro-British, whilst Denmark’s geographical position left her the most dependent on Germany. Sweden sat somewhere between the two, and had important commercial connections with both Germany and Britain. Useful though this section is, it is not discussed in its own section but subsumed into the main narrative, and is probably the weakest part of the book. Dunn is perhaps understandably critical of the neutrals, whose decisions ultimately cost British lives, but does not take sufficient account of some aspects of the case.
Denmark, after the loss of Schleswig-Holstein to Prussia in 1864, was in an almost hopeless strategic situation. In case of war with Germany her defence plan focused on a last stand around Copenhagen and the hope of assistance from abroad. Sweden was in military terms the strongest of the three nations, with a modern navy and a large conscript army, but faced strategic confusion because of the extreme importance of her trade with both Britain and Germany. Moreover, from a Swedish point of view the traditional enemy was Russia, and all political parties from the conservatives to the liberals and the social-democrats regarded the Tsarist regime as their enemy (although for somewhat different reasons). The sympathies of the conservatives leaned towards Germany, as did those of some social-democrats (whose party had its ideological roots among the German social democrats). But Dunn’s contention that the German ‘offer’ of Swedish influence in Estonia and Latvia if she joined Germany in the war was tempting in Stockholm is a total misunderstanding, and was not the case. Yet for both Sweden and Denmark, Germany was the most important country in terms of culture, language and education, and more broadly many liberals’ and social democrats’ sympathies were with the western powers, whilst they feared Russia above all. This political complexity explains much of the trade policy of both countries, and to a lesser extent that of Norway.
Ultimately, Steve Dunn’s analysis tends to gloss over such complexities, and tends to treat the Scandinavian countries as simply neutral or otherwise. On the ground the situation was far more complex, at a time when such small countries were squeezed between the great belligerent powers and had to look first and foremost to their own survival. When hunger demonstrations took place in Sweden in 1917 many blamed the government for the desperate situation, but others blamed the British. Steve Dunn mentions the Norwegian Henrik Ibsen’s poem Terje Vigen about a man fighting the British blockade during the Napoleonic wars. In 1917 Terje Vigen became a movie in Sweden, with the sting directed towards Britain.
Despite this criticism, however, Steve Dunn’s book remains a most valuable and interesting one, and a useful contribution to the literature on the war in the North Sea, and the ships and men who fought it.