Distant Victory: The Battle of Jutland and the Allied Triumph in the First World War (Praeger Security International)
The book demonstrates compellingly how the real significance of Jutland lies not in ships lost or casualty figures, nor even in the fact that once the guns fell silent, the Grand Fleet was prepared to give battle again on four hours' notice while the High Seas Fleet required over two months to repair and refit. It examines how the pre-war leadership and naval policies of the Royal Navy and the High Seas Fleet produced each nation's respective strategies, analyzes how those strategies affected the command decisions made by admirals on both sides during the battle, and then explains how in the aftermath of Jutland, the failure of the German battleships to break the British blockade—which was slowly starving Germany to death—and the damage done to the German fleet compelled the German Admiralty to decide that some other means of winning the war at sea would have to be found. They then persuaded Germany's civilian leaders allowed themselves to be into making their single most disastrous political decision of the Great War: to embark on a campaign of unrestricted submarine warfare even when such a course of action was certain to bring the United States into the war against Germany, in the hope that it would strangle Britain's sealanes before American intervention became decisive. It was a gamble the Germans lost: when the fighting ceased on November 11, 1918, it was in no small part the result of the distant victory won by the Grand Fleet almost two and one-half years before."Germany's new foreign minister Arthur Zimmerman's equally new maritime policies ensured allied victory in the Great War, and the Battle of Jutland is one the best cases in point. Controversial from the moments the guns silenced, with Germany claiming victory in terms of tonnage sunk and the Royal Navy claiming strategic victory in chasing the German fleet back into their harbors, the battle resulted in the failure of the German fleet to break the British blockade. Realizing that despite the boasts of the German admiralty, Germany had in essence failed, Zimmerman and other civilian authorities turned to submarine warfare, a tactic that was successful only in bringing the US into the war out of fear. Maritime writer Butler concentrates on the little-known reasons why Jutland proved to be decisive in ways even its combatants did not fully realize."-Reference & Research Book News"[D]istant Victoryis an entertaining introduction to the Jutland era in naval history….It provides a good read for buffs."-The Journal of Military History