ABSTRACT
Alfred von Tirpitz was to claim that “Albrecht von Stosch hardly had to reckon with a direct enemy.” In the first years of Stosch’s tenure of office the navy held an insignificant position beside the victorious army on which, of course, fell the burden of operations in a continental war against France, or, as generally anticipated by Helmuth von Moltke after 1879, against both France and Russia. Tirpitz claimed that Leo von Caprivi, by introducing Admiralty staff voyages for the study of specific tasks in a war against France and Russia, which he viewed as imminent, departed from his own ideas of coastal defense and gradually “reached the request for a High Seas Fleet. Caprivi’s activity culminated in his working out our first operations plan, which he did in person, after studying the matter for himself. Caprivi’s considerations were related to attempts to negotiate a military convention between Germany and Italy.
