Talk:Navy League (Germany)

Editorial comment
I removed one comment about Britain's "homicidal" policies in the Boer War, which did not seem relevant to me. Another phrase that strikes me as editorializing too much for the specific context of Wikipedia is the last one (in the article's current version): "Nationalistic groups were nothing unusual anywhere at the time, and certainly Germany was no exception." It's been a while since I've read the relevant literature, but most of article deals with the basic facts. Would be nice to see more internal links to other articles, and maybe also some section headers here. mrs (talk) 18:37, 8 May 2008 (UTC)


 * This is a terrible article. It reads like something written by an Anglophobic German with an axe to grind. I have added the neutrality tag because 1) This article treats the arguments for German navalism as objective fact instead of subjective opinion held by policy-makers like Admiral Tirpitz 2) this article makes it sound like it was the British as jealous rivals who were responsible for the break-down of Anglo-German relations. It is all typical here that that Britain is condemned for is "expansionist, colonialist and nationalist zeal" whereas Germany's desire for empire is presented as a very reasonable demand to "have a place in the sun commensurate with its rising industrial strength". The statement that Britain used the German naval build-up as a "pretext" for reaching understandings with France and Russia is entirely false as it suggests that Britain was always out to crush Germany, and the sort of navalism championed by Admiral Tirpitz was just the "pretext" for something that British were always going to do. First thing, the Anglo-German naval race of the early 20th century is probably getting off topic, but it should be made clear that Tirpitz's Riskflotte (Risk Fleet) concept which guilded German naval thinking was always meant to challenge Britain. The purpose of Tirpitz's navy was not to just to give Germany its "place in the sun" as this article claims; rather the "Risk Fleet" concept was intended to give Germany a fleet of such power as to make a war with Germany too risky for Britain, and hence to change the balance of power between the two nations. It was Germany by starting the naval race in 1897, not Britain that was primarily responsible for the breakdown of Anglo-German relations. It is very stupid for this page to claim that German navalism was meant to give Germany a means of projecting power all over the world. It is a matter of fact that the fleet that Tirpitz built was "short-legged", i.e had limited coal-carrying capacity, which meant that the High Seas Fleet was good only for operations on the North Sea. Without going into too much detail, the fact that Tirpitz was prepared to sacrifice coal-carrying capacity for increased firepower and armor shows that the fleet was always intended to threaten Britain, and was not intended to project power all over the world. The part about Germany's industrial rise making an African empire necessary is essentially an apologia for German imperialism. I wonder what a Namibian might make of that. The nonsensicial statement about the British having the world believe that German Navy was intended for world conquest ignores the bascially anti-British line that was inherent in Tirpitz's policy. All of this is rather off-topic, and this article is currently rather rotten for the way it recycles the Navy League's propaganda as fact. Moreover, this article goes out of its way to tell the reader how "legitimate" the Navy League's right-wing tendencies were in the face of the rise of the Social Democrats, which presents certain neutrality issues. Lastly, this article has nothing to say about the long-range anti-democratic implications of the German Navy Laws, which were intended by the government to claw back and reduce the power of the Reichstag. That is a very important of the Navy League's work, which at present this article says nothing about. And in the same vein, this article tells you nothing about who were the people who joined the League and why. The general quality of this page is indicated by the line "Communists advocated a wave of strikes intended to paralyze the economy and gain workers’ solidarity by 1907". The KPD was not founded until 1918, and that it is incredibly wrong to use the term Communist about events taking place in 1907. The fact that whoever wrote this page could not tell the difference between the Social Democrats and the Communists in pre-1914 Germany tells one much about the quality of this page. All said, a rotten page.--A.S. Brown (talk) 23:28, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Another problem?
This article seems to be less about the actual subject (Deutscher Flotten-Verein, "DFV") and more about Kaiserliche Marine and politics. Although a primary goal was to influence policy, (much like a modern-day "lobbying organization", it was most actively involved in educating and generating public support for the navy, promoting naval development, providing support for ship building companies, networking for naval personnel, etc. -- much like a "chamber of commerce" today. I'm only suggesting that this article needs some balance. Perhaps this perception of bias is simply due to the disproportionate level of detail given to Background and not enough to context or even relevant content. Also, I believe the role of Tirpitz is overstated, at least as far as the DFV's founding; and the roles of (Patron) Bernhard von Bulow and (Chairman) Albert Wilhelm Heinrich are barely hinted. ~Eric F 184.76.225.106 (talk) 19:10, 15 May 2012 (UTC) Btw, there's an interesting poster put out by DFV at the Imperial War Museum website, it seems to be recruiting for naval jobs. And: "This item is available to share and reuse under the terms of the IWM Non Commercial Licence." ~E 184.76.225.106 (talk) 21:35, 15 May 2012 (UTC) And, it should be noted that DFV was preceded by Deutschen Seegedanken, and succeeded by Deutscher Seeverein. ~E 184.76.225.106 (talk) 21:49, 15 May 2012 (UTC)