Castles of Steel (152 page)

Hipper issued his tactical orders on October 24. The entire High Seas Fleet would leave Heligoland Bight at night and advance into the southern part of the North Sea. The force would be more powerful than that commanded by Scheer at Jutland: Hipper would bring five battle cruisers, eighteen dreadnought battleships, twelve light cruisers, and seventy-two destroyers. The purpose of the operation was to lure the Grand Fleet over freshly laid minefields and six lines of waiting U-boats into the southern North Sea, where the High Seas Fleet would be waiting to engage whatever British warships survived the passage south. To create this lure, German light cruisers and destroyers would launch provocative raids along the Belgian coast and into the Thames estuary. Specifically, one destroyer flotilla supported by three light cruisers would bombard the coast of Flanders, which had been abandoned by the German army a week before, while five destroyers and seven light cruisers attacked shipping in the Thames estuary. The Flanders bombardment would be supported by Hipper’s battle fleet of eighteen dreadnought battleships escorted by forty-three destroyers, while the Thames attack was to be covered by five German battle cruisers including the new
Hindenburg.
After the raids, the retiring squadrons and flotillas would retreat to the Dutch coast, where the entire High Seas Fleet would concentrate. There, Hipper expected to meet the Grand Fleet coming down from the north and to bring it to action on the evening of the second day, October 31. If, by some mischance, the two battle fleets did not meet, all available German destroyers were to break away and sweep north toward the Firth of Forth. If the British fleet was found, the destroyers were instructed to launch their torpedoes in mass volleys, no less than three from each destroyer at a single time. The operation, for all its “death ride,” Götterdämmerung appearance, was well planned and stood a chance of success—at least, as success was defined by Scheer and Hipper. Both admirals hoped that, in addition to salvaging the honor of the German navy, “a tactical success might reverse the military position and avert surrender.”

On October 27, Scheer approved Hipper’s plan and the operation was set for October 30. Twenty-two U-boats took positions along the Grand Fleet’s probable line of advance from Scotland; one of these was
UB-116,
which would be blown up by shore-controlled mines while trying to enter Scapa Flow. The surface ships of the High Seas Fleet began to assemble in Schillig roads on the afternoon of October 29, with the sortie scheduled for dawn the next day. The admirals had not reckoned, however, on the war-weariness and defeatism of the German crews. Rumors of the impending operation and the words “suicide mission” were spreading from mouth to mouth and ship to ship. On October 27, when light cruisers of the 4th Scouting Group were ordered to load mines at Cuxhaven, forty-five stokers from
Strassburg
hid themselves in the dockyard. When the battle cruisers passed through the locks from Wilhelmshaven’s inner harbor into the roadstead, 300 men from
Derfflinger
and
Von der Tann
climbed over the side and disappeared ashore.

The arrival in the anchorage of three battleship squadrons from other naval bases gave substance to the rumor that the fleet was about to go out to seek a glorious end off the coast of England. Unlike the admirals and officers, the seamen had no intention of being sacrificed for honor’s sake. Not only could they see no point in defeat and meaningless death, but they regarded the operation as a deliberate attempt to sabotage negotiations to end a war already lost. When one
Markgraf
seaman jumped on a turret and called for three cheers for President Wilson, a deck crowded with men roared approval. Insubordination welled up on
König, Kronprinz Wilhelm, Kaiserin, Thüringen,
and
Helgoland
. On all these ships, seamen had no interest in “an honorable death for the glory of the fleet”; they wanted surrender, discharge, and permission to go home.

A red sunset on the evening of October 29 turned the calm waters of the anchorage crimson. About 7:00 p.m., the wind came up, bringing a series of rain squalls. Hipper summoned his admirals and captains on board his flagship,
Baden,
for a final briefing. The conference was delayed because on
Thüringen
the crew made trouble about the captain’s boat leaving the ship. At first, Hipper tried to disregard news of these disturbances, but at 10:00 p.m., he changed his mind and decided that the fleet was not ready to sail. Next morning, when the destroyer crews learned of the disturbances on the battleships, they asked to continue alone with the planned operation. Hipper considered this possibility, but when he heard that the trouble had spread to
Friedrich der Grosse
and
König Albert
and that the disturbances on
Thüringen
and
Helgoland
had developed into full-scale mutinies, he decided that he had no choice but to cancel the entire operation. To prevent the spread of mutiny, he ordered the dreadnought squadrons dispersed to Kiel, Cuxhaven, and Wilhelmshaven.

Thüringen
and
Helgoland
remained behind. When their crews still refused orders, Hipper ordered marines to arrest them. Two steamers carrying 250 heavily armed marines approached the battleships, while a submarine and five destroyers, their torpedo tubes loaded, cleared for action at pointblank range. The mutineers surrendered and were taken to prison in Wilhelmshaven. Meanwhile, however, Hipper’s dispersal of the fleet, instead of quarantining the disloyal groups, served only to spread the infection. The 3rd Battle Squadron—
König, Kronprinz Wilhelm, Kaiserin,
and
Markgraf
—reached Kiel on November 1 with many seamen in irons. On arrival, 4,000 sailors paraded in the streets and demanded release of the prisoners. Workers’ and Sailors’ Councils were formed and on November 4 took control of the port. The battleship
König
had gone into dry dock with the flag of the Imperial Navy still flying. On November 5, when a sailor attempted to replace the flag with a red banner, the ship’s captain shot him dead near the mast. The response was rifle fire from buildings overlooking the ship, which wounded the captain and killed two officers. Later that day a band of sailors invaded the residence in Kiel Castle of Grand Admiral Prince Henry of Prussia, the kaiser’s brother and Commander-in-Chief of the Baltic Fleet. Henry fled, escaping from Kiel driving a truck that flew a red flag. By the end of the first week of November, mutiny had become revolution. Thirty-five thousand armed sailors crowded the streets of Wilhelmshaven, Workers’ and Soldiers’ Councils had been established in the port city, and briefly there existed a Republic of Oldenburg with Leading Stoker Bernhard Kuhnt as president. On November 9, when the red flag was hoisted on Hipper’s flagship
Baden,
the Commander-in-Chief of the High Seas Fleet silently packed his bags and went ashore. Groups of sailors streamed out of Kiel and Wilhelmshaven by truck, train, and ship and raised red flags in naval harbors along the North Sea and Baltic coasts. Then came the great commercial ports of Hamburg and Bremen and, as revolution spread across Germany, interior cities such as Cologne, Hanover, Frankfurt, Dresden, Munich, and, eventually, Berlin.

On Friday morning, November 8, Marshal Foch, representing all Allied armies, and the First Sea Lord, Admiral Wemyss, representing the Allied navies, waited on a train parked on a siding in the forest of Compiègne for the arrival of Germany’s armistice delegation. While a cold rain fell on the oak trees outside, Foch assured Wemyss that if the Germans refused to agree to Allied armistice terms, he could force the capitulation of the entire German army within three weeks. At 7:00 a.m. a train carrying the German delegates, led by the Reichstag leader, Matthias Erzberger, rolled into another siding 200 yards away. Other than the French sentries in blue-gray uniforms pacing under the trees, there was nothing in sight but rain and falling leaves.

The meeting began at 9:00 a.m. and Foch presented the Allies’ terms. The naval demands included demilitarization of Heligoland, all nations to be given access to the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal, surrender of all submarines and internment of Germany’s ten latest battleships, six battle cruisers, eight light cruisers, and fifty most modern destroyers. Failure to execute any of these terms would allow the Allies to resume the war within forty-eight hours. Meanwhile, until the treaty of peace was actually signed, the blockade of Germany would remain in force. The German naval representative, Captain Vanselow, protested that internment of the German fleet could not be accepted because the fleet had never been beaten. Grimly, Wemyss replied that if that was what was needed, the German fleet had only to come out. When Wemyss asked for 160 submarines, Vaneslow replied that there were not nearly 160 to be had. This gave Wemyss the chance to demand what he really wanted:
all
German submarines. The meeting was adjourned so that the German delegation could communicate these terms to Berlin.

On November 9, even as Foch was dictating terms to Erzberger, Admiral Scheer informed the kaiser that he could no longer rely on the navy. “My dear admiral,” William replied, “I no longer have a navy.” In fact, he was losing far more than that. Before the end of that day, William had abdicated, both as German emperor and as King of Prussia, and the establishment of a German republic had been proclaimed from a balcony of the Reichstag building. Early the following morning, William was persuaded to leave Spa for the Netherlands, thirty miles away, where he had been offered refuge in Kasteel Amerongen, the home of the Dutch-English Count Godard Bentinck. On the journey through a driving rain, William was silent. But when the car pulled up in the rain before the main entrance of the moated seventeenth-century château, he gave a deep sigh of relief. “Now,” he said to Count Bentinck, rubbing his hands together, “you must let me have a cup of real, good, hot, strong English tea.” Instead of English tea, he got a real Scots high tea: Amerongen had a Scots housekeeper, and soon a teapot and a tray of biscuits, scones, and shortbread were set before Queen Victoria’s eldest grandson.

A week later, on November 16, Erich Ludendorff disguised himself with a false beard and a pair of blue spectacles and sneaked away to Denmark. Recognized in Copenhagen, he fled again, this time to Sweden, where he lived for three months in a country house near Stockholm before returning to Germany. He met Adolf Hitler and in 1923 marched at his side in the unsuccessful Munich Beer Hall Putsch. In 1924, Ludendorff was elected to the Reichstag as a Nazi deputy and in 1925, Hitler persuaded him to run for president of Germany. Of 24 million votes cast, Ludendorff received 280,000.

The German delegation returned to Compiègne on Sunday, November 10, and was received at midnight. At 5:10 a.m. on November 11—the 1,586th day of the Great War—the weary delegates finally signed the document ending hostilities that day at 11 a.m. Before signing, Erzberger looked at Foch and said, “The German people, who stood steadfast against a world of enemies for fifty months, will preserve their freedom and unity no matter how great the external pressure. A people of seventy millions may suffer but it cannot die.” Steadily gazing back, Foch said,
“Très bien.”

That afternoon, in the Firth of Forth, the Grand Fleet Commander-in-Chief ordered all ships to “splice the main brace”—to serve the men an extra ration of rum. The exceptions to Beatty’s order were the American ships, which were dry. At seven that night, the men in the anchorage were deafened by a continuous din of foghorns, sirens, and steam whistles. Sky rockets and colored signal bombs burst in the air, while searchlight beams swept across water and sky, finding and fixing on White Ensigns and American flags. On the big ships, bands played and sailors mobbed sacrosanct quarterdecks.
Queen Elizabeth
’s crew came in a body to the admiral’s cabin where Beatty and his staff were sitting down to dinner. “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow” rose from hundreds of throats. The men invited the officers to dance, and captains, commanders, and lieutenants waltzed, fox-trotted, and did the military polka with seamen and marines until two o’clock in the morning. At one point, a picket boat from
Inflexible
came alongside
New York
to take a group of American officers to the battle cruiser where they could drink champagne.

It was agreed by all the Allied powers that the entire German submarine fleet would be surrendered with no possibility of return. The British and French governments also wanted the German surface fleet surrendered to the Allies. The Americans were less eager for this; they did not want the ships, but preferred that neither the British nor the French have them. Instead, the United States proposed temporary internment of the surface vessels in neutral ports until a final decision was made at the peace conference. This course was adopted and two neutral governments, Norway and Spain, were approached. Both declined to receive the German ships, now seething with mutiny. Accordingly, the Allied Naval Council accepted Wemyss’s suggestion that all seventy-four surface ships be interned at Scapa Flow under the supervision of the Grand Fleet. There, German skeleton crews would remain on board because, under international law, interned ships still belonged to the German government. Little time was allowed for delivery. If the ships designated for internment were not ready to sail on November 18, the Allies said, Hel-igoland would be occupied. On the night of November 12, a radio message from Beatty requested that a German flag officer come to the Firth of Forth to make arrangements. The next afternoon, Hipper’s representative, Rear Admiral Hugo Meurer, left Wilhelmshaven for Scotland on the new light cruiser
Königsberg.

At seven o’clock on the evening of November 15, Meurer and four other German officers walked up the gangplank of
Queen Elizabeth.
Around them, a black night and thick fog in the Firth of Forth hid the shapes and lights of the rows of dreadnoughts near Beatty’s flagship. Reaching the quarterdeck, Meurer was received in silence by two British officers assigned to escort him to the Commander-in-Chief. Powerful electric lights created a path across the quarterdeck to Beatty’s quarters; outside the path everything was darkness, but along its edge stood a line of marine sentries, light gleaming off the steel of their fixed bayonets. Beatty and his officers sat at a large dining room table with their backs to a wall hung with prints of Nelson’s victories. On the table was a small bronze lion, a reminder of the admiral’s years with the battle cruisers. When the Germans entered, Beatty stood and, looking straight at Meurer, said, “Who are you?” “Rear Admiral Hugo Meurer,” the German replied. “Have you been sent by Admiral von Hipper to arrange the details for carrying out the terms of the armistice which refer to the surrender of the German fleet?” Beatty asked. “Yes,” said Meurer. “Where are your credentials?” Beatty asked. These were produced, and Beatty said, “Pray be seated.” Beatty then read his prepared instructions. “They were greatly depressed,” Beatty wrote afterward to Eugenie, “and I kept feeling sorry for them, but kept repeating to myself,
Lusitania,
Belgian atrocities, British prisoners of war. . . . Meurer, in a voice like lead with an ashen grey face, said, ‘I do not think the Commander-in-Chief is aware of the condition of Germany,’ and then began to describe the effect of the blockade. Germany was destroyed utterly. I said to myself thank God for the British navy and told them to return with their answers in the morning.” Meurer then informed Beatty that three delegates of the Sailors’ and Workers’ Council were on board
Königsberg
and insisted on accompanying him and taking part in the discussions. “I naturally said I knew them not and did not intend to know them better,” Beatty reported, telling Meurer that no one but the German admiral and his staff would be allowed to leave
Königsberg.
This “seemed a source of relief to the stricken party.” At 9:00 p.m.
,
the Germans stepped back into the darkness to begin the twelve-mile trip to their ship. Beatty went to bed “and was nearly sick.”