Chapter Ninety: Turning the Tide

Hipper and Scheer were put in charge of repairing the battlecruisers and putting the fleet back in order. Feng Chengqian did not return to Wilhelmshaven; he remained in Berlin.

At that moment, what most gripped the public imagination was Count Spee’s East Asia Fleet.

Although Spee had achieved many startling feats over the past month, such as destroying two Royal Navy light cruisers in the South China Sea and intercepting more than a dozen British merchantmen, his position was perilous in the extreme. The Royal Navy had dispatched two forces, led respectively by the battlecruisers Australia and New Zealand, to await him in the western Pacific and the Indian Ocean, ready for him to walk into the trap.

Clearly, if Spee went into the Indian Ocean, he would be marching to his death.

For that reason, Tirpitz had already ordered him to take the South Pacific route, pass through the Strait of Magellan, enter the South Atlantic, and then return to the imperial homeland.

The trouble was that this route was by no means smooth.

Setting aside everything else, even if Spee could obtain some fuel by raiding along the way, he would still not have the capacity to make it back to the homeland. Midway through the voyage, the fleet would certainly have to put in somewhere for boiler and engine repairs, and along this route there were no imperial colonies.

Tirpitz could do no more than try his best to persuade certain neutral countries to open their ports to Spee.

Even if they would not open their ports, letting Spee’s fleet anchor in a river harbor would suffice.

To that end, the imperial foreign minister had already approached Argentina, hoping the Argentine authorities would turn a blind eye and provide assistance when Spee’s fleet arrived.

It seemed the problem had been solved.

Of course, the danger still remained, and it was immense.

First, Spee would not reach the South Atlantic until the end of the year at the earliest. Over the course of such a long voyage, no one could guarantee that those armored cruisers would remain intact. Second, the Royal Navy had already prepared for him, and the battlecruiser Invincible had long since been sent to the South Atlantic. Lastly, even if Spee could replenish in the South Atlantic, once he returned to the North Atlantic he still might not be able to break through the Royal Navy’s blockade.

Of course, it was too early to say any of this.

Feng Chengqian remained in Berlin precisely to help Tirpitz solve this problem.

In the history Feng Chengqian knew, after Count Spee had suffered untold hardships and finally reached the South Atlantic, he was caught by the British fleet at the Malvinas, or Falkland, Islands. In the end, the light cruiser Dresden escaped, while several warships, including the armored cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, were sunk in battle. At last, even Dresden failed to return home.

Although Spee’s fleet would not greatly alter the balance of power between the British and German navies, bringing it home would certainly boost morale and strike a blow at the Royal Navy’s arrogance. More importantly, if Spee’s fleet could return to the North Atlantic, it might even create an opportunity for a decisive battle.

It should be remembered that the ones refusing to let go were not the imperial navy, but the Royal Navy.

After the Battle of the Shetland Islands, the Royal Navy, desperate to restore its honor, would surely pursue Spee relentlessly, perhaps even treating the destruction of Spee’s fleet as the action that would turn the war around. By contrast, on the imperial navy’s side, Tirpitz had only one aim: to bring Spee’s fleet back home.

So how was Spee’s fleet to return home?

Feng Chengqian put forward two suggestions. First, use the ships still operating in waters near Africa, and not yet destroyed by the Royal Navy, to carry coal and other supplies to Spee’s fleet. Second, avoid the Falkland Islands and prevent any encounter with the British fleet there. Third, launch an operation in the North Sea as soon as possible, pinning down the Royal Navy’s main battle force and drawing the British’s attention away.

At that time, the only thing Feng Chengqian could do was challenge the Grand Fleet in the North Sea.

After discussing it with Tirpitz, Feng Chengqian prepared to return to Wilhelmshaven.

On October 4, the day before he was to leave Berlin, word came from the Eastern Front: the Russian army had captured Lemberg, nearly four hundred thousand Austro-Hungarian troops had been annihilated, and the remaining more than two hundred thousand had fallen back to the Carpathians. Ludendorff had already taken action, shifting two corps from East Prussia southward, and was expected to launch an offensive within ten days. His purpose was clear: to strike back while the Russian army had not yet firmly established itself in Silesia.

This development had not exceeded Feng Chengqian’s expectations.

Because Ludendorff had been preparing for some time, and the Ninth and Tenth Corps had also completed their readiness work, Feng Chengqian had ample reason to believe that Ludendorff would create brilliance once again.

The key remained in the west.

The Battle of the Marne had already begun. After holding out for several days, Mackensen had no choice but to withdraw, and de Marwitz was forced to pull back with him.

This was the first operational withdrawal by the German army on the Western Front since the war began.

In a sense, the Schlieffen Plan had already failed. More precisely, the Schlieffen Plan, after being heavily altered by the younger Moltke, had failed.

Although in the end the younger Moltke refused to admit that he had ruined Germany’s bright prospects, once the German army began its retreat along the Marne line, his position was certainly untenable.

On October 7, the Kaiser dismissed Moltke.

However, the Kaiser did not appoint Hindenburg as Chief of the General Staff. Instead, he made the Minister of War, Falkenhayn, Chief of the General Staff, while Hindenburg remained on the Eastern Front.

The Kaiser’s arrangement was not without reason, for the fighting in the east was about to begin. Although overall operations were in the hands of Ludendorff and Hoffmann, Hindenburg, with his great prestige, could provide excellent support to them both. According to the Kaiser’s intention, after the Russians had been defeated, Hindenburg would then be sent to the Western Front as supreme commander. If he could achieve some results there, he would then be promoted to Chief of the General Staff.

Having Falkenhayn as Chief of the General Staff was not necessarily a bad thing; at least he was not as arrogant as the younger Moltke.

On October 10, Feng Chengqian received good news from Hipper. After nearly a month of effort, the Vulcan Shipyard had repaired the battlecruiser Derfflinger, which had not suffered severe damage, and during the repairs had fitted her with nine 30-centimeter guns of 52-caliber length as her main armament. The boilers, steam turbines, and other machinery had also undergone a thorough overhaul, bringing the ship to peak condition. On her first sea trial after the repairs, Derfflinger reached a top speed of 27.2 knots, more than two knots above her designed speed.

Derfflinger’s successful return to the fleet was certainly a good thing.

However, the condition of Moltke and Von der Tann was extremely poor. Moltke could be repaired by early December at the earliest, while Von der Tann would not be ready until the end of December. In other words, the two battlecruisers would not rejoin the fleet until early 1915.

But that was still not the worst of it.

Because three battlecruisers had to be repaired, the construction of the three Derfflinger-class battlecruisers was inevitably affected. The commissioning of Derfflinger was delayed from January 1915 to March, and the latter two were pushed back even further, into the second half of the year.

As for battleships, the four Bayern-class ships on which such high hopes had been placed could not possibly be completed in 1915.

It could be said that, after the outbreak of war, the imperial navy had not benefited at all; on the contrary, it had been negatively affected. Not to mention anything else, during wartime the army’s supply had to be given priority, so the resources originally intended for the navy were cut drastically, and it was no surprise that the pace of shipbuilding slowed.

In truth, what lay before Feng Chengqian was a game of formidable difficulty.

To win this game, he had to find ways to wear down his opponent’s pieces while doing everything possible to preserve his own.

So how was he to play this game well?

When Hipper returned, the two of them discussed the matter, and Feng Chengqian decided to strike at Russia again. Under the pretext of assisting Ludendorff’s offensive in the east, he would send the fleet into the Gulf of Finland.

This time, however, it would not be a feint, but the main attack.

On October 15, the High Seas Fleet left Wilhelmshaven and entered the Baltic Sea through the Kiel Canal.

This time, in addition to seventeen battleships and six battlecruisers, Hipper’s force also included more than sixty medium and small vessels, among them eighteen light cruisers, as well as more than twenty requisitioned merchant ships. According to Feng Chengqian’s plan, if the Russian Baltic Fleet came out to fight, the main objective would be to annihilate it. If the Russian fleet still crouched in harbor, the aim would be to blockade the port. Of course, not by sending the fleet to blockade it, but by having the requisitioned merchant ships lay mines outside the Russian ports.

No matter how one looked at it, the Russian Baltic Fleet was a potential threat.

If it could not be destroyed, then it must at least be kept forever in port.

Clearly, Feng Chengqian had thought too much.

Faced with the High Seas Fleet, led by twenty-three capital ships, the Russian Baltic Fleet, with only four capital ships of its own, did not dare to put to sea.

Before the High Seas Fleet had even reached the Gulf of Finland, all Russian ships had already withdrawn.

The blockade operation proceeded very smoothly. In only three days, the High Seas Fleet destroyed the Russian coastal gun turrets, and then had the merchant ships lay mines.

On October 24, after completing the mining operation, the High Seas Fleet left the Gulf of Finland.

Throughout the entire operation, the High Seas Fleet never fought the Russian Baltic Fleet; instead, several small vessels that ventured deep into the bay exchanged fire with Russian ships on a few occasions.

After the mining task was completed, Hipper left only a small force centered on light cruisers.

As long as the Russian Baltic Fleet remained in port, there was no need to deploy too many warships in the Gulf of Finland, let alone commit capital ships.

That day, the Battle of the Masurian Lakes, planned by Ludendorff, began.

In the history Feng Chengqian knew, posterity held Ludendorff in very high esteem, and many even believed that had Ludendorff been entrusted with executing the Schlieffen Plan, the German army might well have defeated France before 1915 arrived and ultimately won the First World War.

It must be admitted that Ludendorff was indeed a genius.

If the triumph at Tannenberg merely proved his talent, then the Battle of the Masurian Lakes made the whole world aware of him.

This time, Ludendorff still had only two corps, with fewer than two hundred thousand men.

His opponent, Brusilov, had deployed four corps, with a total strength approaching one million.

By ordinary standards, Ludendorff had no chance of victory. Yet not only did he win the battle, he created a miracle that all found hard to believe: in a single engagement, he annihilated nearly eight hundred thousand enemy troops, and in one stroke removed the German army’s threat on the Eastern Front.

It was precisely after the First Battle of the Masurian Lakes that the Russian army was no longer able to pose a threat to the homeland of the Second German Empire.