But this was only the beginning. Two years later Tirpitz went back to the Reichstag with a new naval measure that called for doubling the number of battleships to thirty-nine. Without specifically mentioning Britain, the admiral made clear that the larger fleet was necessary to intimidate that island power. This argument, however, was not by itself convincing enough to win the day in the Reichstag. He secured passage of the Second Naval Bill only with some old-fashioned political logrolling. In brief, he promised the Conservatives higher tariffs on grain imports (duly introduced in 1902), while the clerical Center Party was given a larger influence in educational and cultural affairs.
In Berlin the naval buildup quickly caught fire. Self-interest on the part of groups and institutions that stood to profit from it played a significant role here. The Technical University’s department of shipbuilding, created in 1894, added a number of new faculty, all of them eager propagandists for naval expansion. Not to be outdone, the University of Berlin established its own “Institute for Ocean Research.” Its faculty worked closely with industrial firms in Berlin that built components for the new vessels. Bankers with investments in overseas trade promoted the fleet expansion in the expectation that it would make their ventures more secure. Yet maritime enthusiasm was not restricted to those who stood to gain directly from the construction of a large fleet. Berlin’s chapter of the Navy League was filled with middle-class naval buffs who collected pictures of battleships and thrilled to the idea of the Reich competing with Britain to rule the waves. The League sponsored a Naval Museum in the capital, which opened with much fanfare in 1906. Two years later a large naval and maritime exhibition was held on the grounds of the Berlin Zoo.
Berlin’s enthusiasm was matched by London’s consternation. Determined that Germany not close the naval gap between the two nations, Britain added significantly to its own great fleet, concentrating on the massive Dreadnought-class battleships, which bore the name of eight previous Royal Navy vessels, the first of which had helped Sir Francis Drake defeat the Spanish Armada. Britain calculated that it would be difficult for Germany to match it ship for ship while simultaneously maintaining a huge land army. In 1904 London also abandoned its long-cherished policy of “splendid isolation” by forging the Entente Cordiale with France, one of its main imperial rivals. As a signal of the new cordiality, Paris renounced its claims in Egypt, while Britain recognized France’s dominating interest in Morocco.
This amounted to a major rearrangement of the political chessboard to the disadvantage of the Reich. Alarmed, Germany decided to show Paris that it could not count on its new British partner in a diplomatic crisis. In March 1905, during a pleasure cruise in the Mediterranean, Kaiser Wile disembarked at Tangier to announce that Berlin would protect the independence of Morocco. France immediately protested Berlin’s “interference,” and London, much to Berlin’s chagrin, seconded the protest. Still hoping to isolate France, Germany called for an international conference to determine Morocco’s fate. When the conference convened in January 1906 at the Spanish port of Algeciras, only Austria-Hungary sided with the Reich.
Having inadvertently pushed London and France into bed together, Berlin managed to spur another anti-German coupling on the part of Britain and Russia, old colonial rivals in Central Asia and the Far East. Russia had been looking for support in Europe since its humiliating defeat by Japan in 1905. Germany would have been its natural choice as a partner, given the dynastic ties and strong political affinities between the two authoritarian monarchies. Moreover, Berlin banks had provided much of the funding for Russian economic development, and the German capital was a favorite stopping-off point for Russian aristocrats on their way to the great Central European spas. But precisely because there was so much that pulled Russia toward Berlin, Kaiser Wile’s government did little to nurture the Russo-German relationship. On the contrary, it let Bismarck’s Reinsurance Treaty lapse and gave in to pressures from domestic grain producers for high import tariffs on wheat and rye, which hurt Russian exporters. St. Petersburg thus began working to mend its fences with Britain. The result was the Anglo-Russian Entente of 1907, a pairing so odd that only mutual anxiety over German Weltpolitik could have brought it about. As the kaiser himself was obliged to admit, “Yes, when taken all around, [the Anglo-Russian Entente] is aimed at us.”
Genuinely concerned and nonplussed over the apparent enmity towards Germany in much of the world, Wile decided to combat the trend through personal diplomacy, starting with England. He would show his friends and relatives there that they had nothing to fear from Berlin. On a state visit to Britain in autumn 1907 he held several informal conversations with a pro-German English grandee named Colonel Edward Stuart Wortley. Among other confidences, Wile informed Wort-ley that he had personally drafted the plan by which Britain had been able to defeat the Boers. He claimed also that Berlin, despite considerable pressure from France and Russia, had refused to join a continental alliance designed to help the South African rebels. As for the new German navy, that was designed only to protect German trade, especially in the Far East, where the “Yellow Peril” was giving cause for grave concern. Since British interests were also threatened by the Japanese, said the kaiser, London might be damn glad one day that Germany had a big fleet! The final point, then, was that the English were “mad as hatters” to harbor suspicions against Germany.
Wortley, who was rather a dim bulb, thought Wile’s remarks would do wonders for Anglo-German relations if they were published in a national newspaper. However, before going ahead with publication, he dispatched a text of the comments to Wile for his approval. The kaiser found everything satisfactory, but just to be on the safe side he turned the manuscript over to Chancellor Bülow for vetting. Busy with other matters, Bülow did not bother to read it, and the “interview” came out in the Daily Telegraph in November 1908.
The kaiser’s observations served to strengthen the growing fear in Britain that the German ruler was little short of a lunatic. In Berlin, the affair caused even greater dismay. Most Germans had always supported the Boers, and they assumed that the kaiser had too, but now he was claiming to have helped to defeat them! Worse, his boastful assertions harmonized all too perfectly with stereotypes of the Germans as pushy political parvenus striving desperately to impress. Berlin’s newspapers, even the promonarchical ones, chastised the ruler for making the entire nation look foolish. Baroness von Spitzemberg aptly summed up the prevailing sentiment in her diary: “[Wile] ruins our political position and makes us the laughing stock of the world. It makes one wonder whether one is in a madhouse.” Various parliamentary deputies took up the kaiser’s gaffe in the Reichstag, criticizing the monarch with a vehemence unprecedented in German political history. Chancellor Bülow, who was partly responsible for the mess, did nothing to defend his sovereign. Instead, he lamely promised to persuade Wile to act with more discretion in the future.