Eduard von Capelle becomes naval secretary

On 15 March 1916 the semi-official Wolff agency announced in Berlin that Grand Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz was leaving the Imperial Naval Office (Reichsmarineamt) and that his successor would be Admiral Eduard von Capelle. The new state secretary was no newcomer in the navy. For almost twenty years he had been one of Tirpitz’s closest collaborators, and his appointment was meant to reassure those who saw the dismissal of the creator of the fleet as a capitulation to the Chancellor.

Capelle was born in 1855 in Celle, the son of a manufacturer. He joined the navy in 1872, and from the early 1890s he worked in the Imperial Naval Office. Under Tirpitz he headed the budget section and then the administrative department. He was regarded as a master of finance and budgets, and it was largely he who prepared the drafts of the successive Navy Laws for the expansion of the fleet, as well as their amendments of 1906, 1908 and 1912. In 1912 he was ennobled, and in 1913 he was promoted to admiral. By 1914 he was Tirpitz’s deputy. During the July Crisis, when the state secretary was on leave, Capelle stood in for him in Berlin.

In the summer of 1915 Capelle fell seriously ill. Tirpitz wrote in his letters at the time that his deputy’s illness was “a great misfortune” for him. According to some biographers, the admiral asked to be released from service and retired in the autumn of 1915. In March 1916 he was recalled to service to take over the office from Tirpitz. The Chancellor, Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg, wanted someone in this post who would not oppose him. According to Tirpitz’s memoirs, Capelle, who in the summer of 1915 had been a determined advocate of submarine warfare, had to undertake before taking office that he would support the Chancellor in all matters of naval policy, including the submarine question.

The Wolff communiqué, on the other hand, gave assurances that the choice of successor was a guarantee that “nothing will change in the vigour with which the naval war is waged”. In practice the position of the Imperial Naval Office was markedly weakened. Capelle had neither the authority nor the political ambitions of his predecessor, and naval operations were decided above all by the commander of the High Seas Fleet and the Chief of the Admiralty Staff. Admiral Paul Behncke, later Capelle’s successor, stated that the office had become purely administrative and had ceased to play a leading role.

Capelle headed the office until the autumn of 1918. At first he was opposed to unrestricted submarine warfare, but in time he let himself be persuaded by its supporters in the navy and backed the decision to resume it from 1 February 1917, which led to the United States entering the war. He left in the second half of 1918, when after the defeats on the Western Front Reinhard Scheer reorganised the naval high command.