Risk Fleet:
German Cruisers
By Mike Bennighof, Ph.D.
August 2024

One of the reasons I’ve never been wholly comfortable writing alternative history is the apparent lack of thought given by many writers of the genre to the complex processes that combine in often unexpected ways to drive events. Some simple hand waving about “they should have done this” is rarely a realistic alternative - “they”often knew they should have done “this.”

And so it is with our central question in Great War at Sea: Risk Fleet: Germany could have built an even more powerful fleet by 1914 than was actually the case; if she had, how might it have been used? There’s no doubt that Kaiser Wilhelm II and Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz would have gladly built more battleships yet they didn’t fail to do so because of ignorance or stupidity. They faced many challenges: the Krupp-Dillinger armor monopoly, the Reich’s complicated tax structure, the inability of German industry to produce effective turbines, and the massive profiteering by the Navy’s suppliers among others.

Still, the industrial capacity and the political will (at least at the top) were there. Had these managed to come together the High Seas Fleet would have been far more powerful than it was in reality. In a previous installment we looked at the German battleships added to the fleet in Risk Fleet. Today we’ll take a look at the cruisers.

Battle Cruisers
While the Germans placed great faith in their battle cruisers, they proved incredibly expensive and not until very late in the process did they start ordering them in full-sized classes with the Mackensen class under the 1913 fiscal year program. Part of the expense came from the monopoly of the Blohm und Voss yard in Hamburg on their construction, an arrangement not disrupted until Hindenburg was laid down at Wilhelmshaven’s Imperial Dockyard in 1913.

By building some dreadnought battleships in Imperial dockyards, Tirpitz helped keep costs down for ships built by private yards through competition. But the state facilities lacked Blohm und Voss’ experience with turbines, and Tirpitz apparently also hoped to prop up competition for the Krupp combine by giving the most lucrative contracts to a non-Krupp yard. Had Tirpitz obtained the funding to build battle cruisers in pairs, and placed the second order with an Imperial yard, he might have strengthened his hand in the long term. But the Grand Admiral did not believe that he had a long term, and needed to build his fleet strength as quickly as possible.

The increased pace of battle cruiser construction for the High Seas Fleet begins in the 1906 fiscal year, with a pair of battle cruisers laid down to one of the alternative designs for what in reality became Germany’s first battle cruiser, von der Tann (ordered under the 1907 fiscal year appropriation). They have the same armament as von der Tann, but with a layout similar to the Nassau class dreadnoughts (ordered in the same 1906 fiscal year).

Von der Tann receives a sister ship, built to the same design but in a Navy dockyard as a cost-control measure. These two ships are ordered under the 1907 appropriation - with cruisers (including very large ones) and battleships built under separate funding lines, this doesn’t slow the pace of dreadnought construction. This sister is named Jachmann for the founder of the modern Prussian navy, who commanded the fleet in action off Swinemunde in 1864 against the Danes. Von der Tann was a much better fighting ship than the first British battle cruisers.

The next German battle cruiser design, the Moltke class, was a larger and more capable ship, and two were constructed so we did not add any in High Seas Fleet. The fourth battle cruiser, Seydlitz, again was ordered as a single ship and so we added a sister, here named Zieten after another of Frederick the Great’s generals.

The Imperial Navy ordered Seydlitz (and in our enhanced program, Zieten) under the 1909 program, but did not order a new battle cruiser for 1910. We correct that with another alternative design, this time a proposal for the ship that became Seydlitz arranging all of her main turrets on the centerline. This was considered too radical, but the sketches great influenced the next German battle cruiser design, Derfflinger.

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The following generation of German battle cruisers (the Iron Dogs - Derfflinger and her sisters) represented a serious step forward in design and fighting power, and a staggering jump in cost (a 27 percent increase over Seydlitz - an increase driven partly by inflation, the price of sitting out a year). Since we’re playing with German taxpayers’ money here (what’s a few pfennigs more per liter of beer?), we’ve added a fourth ship to the three-ship Derfflinger class, named Schwerin, honoring yet another Prussian general. The Imperial Navy spread the three ships over three fiscal years (1911 - 1913); we’ve given them four ships in 1911, temporarily doubling the pace of two battle cruisers per fiscal year and opening up the 1912 appropriation to a new class.

The 1912 battle cruisers become a variant design for Derfflinger proposed by Senior Naval Architect Hans Hüllman, adding a fifth 305mm twin turret at the cost of about 300 tons added displacement. Tirpitz rejected the design, because he felt it too powerful: those ten 305mm guns equalled the armament of the new König class. If the Imperial Navy built battleships and battle cruisers with the same firepower, then those two separate funding lines might well become one and total less than the two separate appropriations. But in our posited increased pace, the 1912 appropriations would see a much more powerful dreadnought than König, erasing the objection to Hüllman’s proposal.

Armored Cruisers
In December 1903, Kaiser Wilhelm II proposed an armored cruiser design, including his own hand-drawn sketch, and used his position to force the Navy’s Construction Department to turn out preliminary drawings. Several variants appeared, but Risk Fleet’s is based on the Supreme Warlord’s original: a 13,000-ton ship armed with four 280mm (11-inch) guns in twin turrets, and eight 210mm (8.2-inch) guns in an armored casemate amidships.

Wilhelm’s sketch called for a power plant capable of 23,000 horsepower, for a speed of 22.5 knots, which seems awfully precise for a dilettante, but there is it in black and white. He also wanted the ship to be faster than contemporary British armored cruisers, so we’ve given her more horses and more speed to meet that requirement. In the Risk Fleet program, four such ships are authorized in 1904, and join the fleet in 1907.

We looked at the German armored cruiser Blücher in a previous Daily Content piece. Fast, well-protected and well-armed, she was the finest armored cruiser ever built – and obsolete the day she first hit the water. British battle cruisers had eclipsed the armored cruiser as a ship type, and while her 210mm (8.2-inch) guns were a match for the 9.2-inch weapons the Germans expected the new British cruisers would carry. Instead their 12-inch guns left her badly overpowered (but not outranged).

Tirpitz had hoped to lay down six of the big cruisers, the most expensive warships built in Germany up to that moment. Kaiser Wilhelm II for once provided the voice of sanity and only one ship was built. In High Seas Fleet we provide the full class with five more examples. All six ships have been given new gunnery ratings more in keeping with their capabilities, with a powerful secondary gunnery rating but no primary guns.

They’re unique ships, able to absolutely annihilate smaller cruisers but at a huge disadvantage against enemy battle cruisers. If used as super-cruisers instead of weak battle cruisers, they might be very effective for the German player – but they certainly won’t justify the investment.

Light Cruisers
The High Seas Fleet experienced a shortage of light cruisers throughout the war. Not enough of them had been ordered to begin with, with the big ships given priority, and more of those that were built went to overseas stations than had been anticipated. In our book we’ve given the High Seas Fleet a few more light cruisers, but tried to keep their proportion at the actual level, more or less.

There are two more members of the Rostock class laid down in 1911. Both Rostock and her sister, Karlsruhe, were lost before their armament of 105mm guns could be upgraded to the far more potent 150mm pieces, as was done with other German light cruisers in 1915 and 1916. Würzburg and Flensburg likewise have the lighter guns with which they would have been built.

The Wiesbaden class, laid down in 1912, gets two more members, Potsdam and Göttingen, as does the Wiesbaden class of 1913, here named Freiburg and Konstanz. Even with these additional ships, the German player will find his or her torpedo forces much less well-supported by cruiser guns than the British flotillas.

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Beyond Jutland
Risk Fleet
Journal No. 38: Alternative Dreadnoughts
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Mike Bennighof is president of Avalanche Press and holds a doctorate in history from Emory University. A Fulbright Scholar and NASA Journalist in Space finalist, he has published a great many books, games and articles on historical subjects; people are saying that some of them are actually good. He lives in Birmingham, Alabama with his wife, three children, and his new puppy. His Iron Dog, Leopold, was a good dog.

Daily Content includes no AI-generated content or third-party ads. We work hard to keep it that way, and that’s a lot of work. You can help us keep things that way with your gift through this link right here.