ABSTRACT
Alfred v. Tirpitz is born as the son of a county court judge in Kustrin, Brandenburg, on 19 March 1849; Tirpitz entered the Navy in 1865 and was commissioned four years later at a time when, by his own admission, the Navy was hardly a popular institution. Ten years older than Wilhelm II, Tirpitz had witnessed the wars of unification as a midshipman and then an ensign in the Royal Prussian Navy. Tirpitz viewed as his ultimate goal a navy of 60 capital ships and 40 light cruisers. The fleet of the 1898 Navy Bill was organized into the First Squadron, composed of four ships of the Brandenburg class as well as four of the Sachsen class. The period of construction under the first two Navy Bills ended in 1905 with the annihilation of the Russian East Asian and Baltic Sea fleets by Japan in Port Arthur and the Korea Straits, near the island of Tsushima.
