The German Experience in Submarine Warfare
Naval architects since even before WW II never really regarded boats like the USS HOLLAND (SS-1, the US Navy's first submarine) to be bonafide submarines. Submarines as envisioned by Jules Verne were true denizons of the deep. Their natural habitat was beneath the waves.
Just as a whale is not a fish. The early underwater boats were not submarines. They were merely submersible boats that periodically went underwater and frequently had to surface for air. Still the moniker of submarine stuck. In the public eye steel boats that could run underwater were "submarines". In maritime design bureaus and laboratories of naval science they were "submersibles".
At the beginning of the 20th century, when any nation or empire of consequence was experimenting with submersible water craft, German designers were hard at work. In light of the times since 1914, the fact that the Russians were the first real beneficieries of German submarine technology seems an odd twist of fate. But exchanges among the subjects of amicable "cousin kings" like Wilhelm II and Nicholas II were par for the course. Queen Victoria had managed to flesh out the thrones of Europe with her progeny as planned. Exchanges of sensitive military technology was the order of the day.
The Russians had dedicated much expenditure of money and sailors lives in starting a viable submarine service, since the turn of the century. Among their own Russian and Polish designs were HOLLAND class subs and the earliest of German designs. Their experiences with submarines in actual combat would be dubious and sparse all the way from their loss in the Russo-Japanese war of 1905 until after WW II. The Russian and Soviet navies would find no wholesale benefit from the submarine until the cold war, which they would lose anyway.
So, as history would have it, the Germans would capitalize on the experience gained at the expense of their future enemy. By the beginning of hostilities in 1914, the Germans were launching the most advanced naval vessels of the day. And they did so at the height of civilizations dependency on sea travel.
With even less reluctance than Frederick the Great, no German leader before, or until Adolf Hitler, was more inclined to war than Kaiser Wilhelm II. A man with a withered arm and an even more withered sense of self, who would have been deemed physically unfit for military service as a private or seaman, viewed himself as a great military leader.
Though it is true physical ability and strategic genious are not mutualy exclusive, Wilhelm also lacked the formal training and experience of a soldier. Still, prefering martial dress to civilian attire, he was almost always in uniform. "Cousin Willie" as he was known in both the royal houses of England and Russia, had a well known penchat for the pomp and ceremony of military life.
When the boxer Rebelion in China broke out, the international community organized in an effort to quell the bloodshed. In a guise that served the purpose of empire more then philanthropy, the royal houses of europe mobilized. The United States sent a naval contingent and a small marine fighting force in the spirit of international cooperation. The seeds for the United Nations were being sewn.
Clumsily as ever, in a speech that would be decried by Germany's chancellor as "the worst speech ever given", Cousin Willie would charge his marine contingent to behave as "Huns" and slaughter all who crossed their path. Wilhelms search for meaning had ended. He would finally become a war-king.
--Kaiser Wilhelm II
Speech to German Marines en route
to the Boxer Rebelion, 27 July 1900
--Nicholas Monsarrat
British Naval Officer WW II, Novelsit, Diplomat
