Background
Holtzendorff was born into a noble family in Berlin on January 9, 1853.
Holtzendorff was born into a noble family in Berlin on January 9, 1853.
He joined the navy in 1869, served in the Franco-Prussian War and afterwards as a staff officer in the West Africa Squadron.
Thereafter came duty with the newly created Imperial German Navy in the Cameroons and in China during the Boxer Rebellion as battleship commandant. Promoted captain in 1897 and rear admiral in 1904, Holtzendorff served with the East Asian Cruiser Squadron during the Russo-Japanese War in 1905/1906; from 1906 to 1909 Vice Admiral von Holtzendorff commanded the First Squadron of the High Sea Fleet in home waters.
In October 1909, Holtzendorff succeeded Prince Henry as chief of the High Sea Fleet; Reinhard Scheer served as his chief of staff. In the fall of 1912 fleet maneuvers proved a bitter experience for Admiral von Holtzendorff. He recommended a German posture in the waters between Denmark and Norway in case of war with England, but the chief of the Admiralty Staff, August von Heeringen, and especially the kaiser vetoed this plan in favor of "great emphasis on the North Sea as our battlefield." Moreover, Holtzendorff was alarmed over Admiral Alfred von Tirpitzs expansion of the navy at what he felt to be too rapid a pace, and instead favored a slowdown in construction and consolidation of available matériel. As a result, Holtzendorff was forced to resign in the spring of 1913 and to accept forced retirement.
In the spring of 1915, however, Holtzendorff was reactivated and replaced Admiral Gustav Bachmann as head of the Admiralty Staff. Initially not an advocate of unrestricted submarine warfare, Holtzendorff nevertheless came to support it by December 1915. Unfortunately, he never developed a consistent stand on the issue. A brief campaign of U-boat warfare à outrance was called off in April 1916 after sharp American protests over the sinking of the liner Sussex. Throughout 1916 Holtzendorff wavered in his position concerning the underwater offensive, so that in naval circles he gradually was accorded the nickname Inventor of the Lie. This notwithstanding, Holtzendorff on December 22, 1916, penned a memorandum in which he predicted German victory over England as a result of submarine warfare; if the U-boats could destroy about 600,000 tons of shipping bound for Britain each month for six months and if a significant number of neutrals could be driven from the seas, London would be forced to the peace table by August 1917, if the campaign began on February 1, 1917. This mathematical wizardry prompted German leaders on January 9, 1917, in Pless to gamble the future on the U-boats; kaiser, chancellor, and generals all endorsed the naval initiative, believing that the submarines would force a decision in Europe before the resulting (and expected) American intervention could alter the delicate balance on the Continent.
Almost concurrently, in November and December 1916, Holtzendorff worked out an elaborate list of German war aims. These included the coasts of Belgium and Courland, the Faeroe Islands, and naval bases in the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific oceans. In May 1917, flushed with the early successes of the U-boat campaign, Holtzendorff presented these proposals to Wilhelm II, who enthusiastically endorsed them, especially the notion of creating a German colonial empire in central Africa. But the dream was to be short-lived. The British Admiralty, spurred on by Prime Minister David Lloyd George, finally adopted the convoy system of transport and the August 1917 deadline for British surrender passed without the anticipated demise. Moreover, early in 1918 American troops began to arrive in France in force despite the German navy's promise that not a single doughboy would ever set foot in Europe.
General Erich Ludendorff fell out with Holtzendorff, who had accused the quartermaster general of possessing an insatiable "hunger for power," while Ludendorff "declared war" on the head of the Admiralty Staff over Holtzendorff's refusal to endorse the army's vast annexation schemes in the east. In the end, Holtzendorff was forced to yield after Admiral Scheer early in August had taken command of a newly created centralized naval headquarters and personally succeeded Holtzendorff. The latter was promoted grand admiral on July 31, 1918. Already an ill man, Holtzendorff died in Jagow in the Uckermark on June 7, 1919. He was the last imperial naval officer to be promoted grand admiral, and the only head of the Admiralty Staff to receive the order Pour le mérite (March 1917).
