When Prussia, with her German allies, went to war with the French Empire under Napoleon III, her navy sat with tons of barnacles on the hulls of her battleships. Her navy was small, ineffective, without doctrine and destitute of funding. As nascent Germany struggled to become a ‘Great Power’, the navy was to be thoroughly updated. The man who took on this challenge was Grand Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz, a seasoned sailor who was given huge power as the Secretary of State for the Imperial Navy Office to ring the changes and produce a force that would be a political weapon on the World Stage.Tirpitz and his officers set to work without any of the preconceptions that hamstrung their only obvious opponent, the Royal Navy, and advanced the idea of submarines and torpedoes as critical weapons of Naval importance. The fruits of his labours produced a potent navy which sought to antagonize the Royal Navy into conflict, and during the only major engagement of the First World War at Jutland, their superior gunnery caused much damage to the British Fleet. He was, however, hoisted by his own petard in 1916, brought down by his own restless advocacy of unrestricted submarine warfare.Author – Grand Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz, 1849-1930.Text taken, whole and complete, from the edition published in New York, Dodd, Mead, and company, 1919.Original Page Count – 428 pages