ABSTRACT
In his memoirs, Alfred von Tirpitz maintains that the legal determination of the size of the navy and the ship types was necessary to secure its systematic development against the interventions of Kaiser Wilhelm II and against different opinions within the navy itself. Uniformity of opinion among naval officers was essential to secure the support of the Reichstag and of the public for the Tirpitz Plan. Tirpitz also had to ensure that limited financial resources would be directed to the battle fleet and that the fleet law not be jeopardized in favor of the demands of other naval agencies or of the Kaiser himself. As the chief protagonist of the battleship school Tirpitz had, as Chief of Staff in the High Command, developed great skill in the in-fighting between the supreme naval agencies. Tirpitz’s building program led to the beginning of the creation of a second active squadron in 1903.
