I hope you enjoy this short documentary looking at Jackie Fisher's plans to win the First World War. I'd recommend a talk by Andrew Lambert here on YT hosted by the Western Front Association, which goes into a lot more detail, if you would like to learn more. As a side note, the incident regarding Submarine E13 I've based on Lambert's description, but have also seen sources that don't mention any Danish nationals killed in the incident. Thank you for watching, any feedback is as always appreciated.

And there goes another point in my “Churchill is a terrible military strategist” bucket

I never used to think there was anyone at this time who learned from the past, or had pragmatic ideas, but it turns out there were, there were many, but all coincidentally couldn't save their nation from the horrors of WW1, Bismarck, Schwarzenberg, Cavour, Victor Emmanuel II, Alexander II, Salisbury, Theodore Roosevelt, and now I add Fisher to the basket.

Fisher was a controversial man, no doubt. His "large light cruisers" were probably the peak of his madness for speed on battleship-armed capital ships. The ships proved problematic to integrate with cruiser forces, but at least offered large, fast hulls to be converted into crucial aircraft carriers.

And please, consider continuing these stratagem and grand plans, I find them most intriguing as it encompasses much, and your way of delivery is always a delight.

I am more than a little doubtful about the Courageous-class. They had so little armor that the 12inch gunned German battleships and battlecruisers would have had very little trouble in achieving penetrating hits. Yes, these ships could in theory not catch the Courageous-class. But given the confined conditions of the Baltic, it isn't hard to imagine the British ships being cornered - German battlecruisers were not that much slower. To top it of, Jutland showed that the German battleships of the Kaiser and König classes and the battlecruisers of the Derfflinger and Seydlitz classes could stand up to 15inch gunfire for at least a limited amount of time. And there is of course the fact that the 11inch guns of Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were more than sufficient to put Glorious down.

The weakness of the plan is that Danmark has weak land forces. Thus Germany could have conquerred Danmark quickly. Any British navy ship in the Baltic sea would have been trapped. Germany could have shifted its complete seapower within 2 days to the Baltic via a channel to the Baltic and back. It had harbours for the logistical support while the British could only use the Russian ports. A sea battle in the Baltic would have been a nightmare for the British navy.

Arguably one of the most underrated history channels. Covering relatively unknown subjects, giving extensive information and, of course, the map is juicy af.

Whoa. Really smart planning. I guess large industrial states are much more reliant on trade than smaller powers.

"the greatest admiral since Nelson or a senile old fool." I go with yes. I think a submarine campaign in the Baltic could have worked, but I don't understand how any capital ships could have survived in the region. The High Seas Fleet was slower yes, but the Baltic isn't very big so there isn't much room to maneuver. As built the Courageous class were awful ships, if Drachinifel is to be believed. They were structurally unable to handle the firing of their own guns and their armor couldn't protect them against a light cruiser. Still, here Fischer's plan seems much less insane than it seems at first glance. Did Britain ever send submarines or small boats into the Baltic to raid? It seems like a missed opportunity.

It is interesting how during the next war, Germany did invade not only demark but also norway to secure iron from Sweden

Grandpa wake up, Old Britannia uploaded

The British considering and perhaps eyeing the Danish a little bit too fondly, My, that sounds awfully familiar.

Another fantastic upload. Please keep making more I haven't been disappointed with a video yet.

Keep making videos, You're covering very interesting stuff that no one else is

Interesting topic centered on an interesting man. Thank you for taking the time to create these videos!

Funny how there are thousands of videos about WWI that talk about basically the same things over and over after seemingly running out of topics, and yet this channel once again manages to bring something new to the table.

I have to disagree with the basic strategy as presented. The fact that Fisher's battlecruisers were faster than the German dreadnoughts does not (in any way) mean that the Brits could not be, quite easily, be cut off from the North Sea and destroyed by the Grand fleet. Meanwhile, I agree that Gallipoli and the Dardanelles campaigns were badly done, Fischer's refusal to risk a few obsolete pre-Dreadnoughts in order to force the channel of the Dardanelles is a far bigger reason for their failure than Churchill wanting a "naval-only" victory.

Coming from the boer war video, it seems to me that Jackie Fisher was the last man that could’ve saved the British empire. Who knows if his plans could’ve succeeded but an entente victory in 1916 without needing to finance a large conscription army would have had massive ripple effect on the post war period. The British empire was an economic juggernaut but had vast responsibilities to garrison 35,000,000km2 and maintain the Royal Navy and still out produced the WW2 European axis powers in some sectors (like aircraft production) while still exhausted. If there is a second war in this timeline, all of Britains rivals minus the USA will be exhausted after it and Britain would be just fine and be in an even better position than 1814, pax britannica for another hundred years essentially.

I've said it before but this is an unbelievable channel

Another excellent documentary from one of my favourite history channels, really fascinating and a real tragedy an opportunity to half the pain and suffering of The Great War was missed. My question: does anyone know what size and composition this fleet would have needed to be?.

Great Video! I had never heard of this plan, a very interesting "Might have been" very well rooted in Britain's historic strategy of preventing a continental hegemon from emerging.

Bravo on your channel, succinctly conveying complex lesser-known subjects in a scope manageable for laymen, not just for authors of encyclopedic citations of archives, memoirs, eyewitnesses, etc. Great format, and well-executed. But the video about Fisher’s Baltic project left me with a major question: What about the Imperial Russian Baltic Fleet? It wasn’t cited, but a little digging showed how that Fleet did, indeed, harass ships carrying crucial Swedish iron ore to Germany, esp. by using submarines and crews from Britain. Perhaps Fisher might have been wiser to focus on getting more British subs into the Baltic, rather than trying to get a whole new fleet of purpose-built capital ships built. Especially at a time when British industrial capacity already was strained with the war effort. Did Fisher ever consider coordinating such a strategy with the Russians? Speaking of Russian contributions, we in the West tend to focus so intensely on ‘The Trenches’ when speaking about World War 1 that we don't consider the colossal - and horrific - Eastern Front of the War, from the Adriatic to the Baltic. Unlike the Western Front, that was far more fluid, spreading havoc over much larger areas. The bloodshed and destruction there deserves to be part of our collective memory also, and Eastern Europeans might, to this day, have reason to feel their suffering - in both World Wars - is somewhat overlooked by 'The West.' Perhaps ‘Old Britannia’ could do an episode on that, focusing on British efforts to shore up their tottering Russian ally? Or to thwart the Bolsheviks who eventually replaced the Czar/Kerensky?

Love your vids, bro!!!

Bro every upload is a banger keep it up

Nice video, just wanna ask if you have a source for Admiral Fisher moving his fleet into the Baltic during the Moroccan Crisis. I can't seem to find anything on it online.

Churchill is remembered as a Hero, which he to some degree def was, but knowing this makes him and his arrogant friends the reason the British Empire died.

I take issue with the calling of HMS Queen Elizabeth R08 "almost obsolete" in the present day. What do you believe it fails at in its role as an aircraft carrier?

A fantastic, well-researched video on a topic not often discussed. Props to you, Sir.

Great video and topic

Nice video. I understand the attraction for you that the realisation of the baltic plan could have prevented the massacre of british soldiers on the western front. But even this plan looks good there are serious shortcomings. First a strong BEF Army was needed in France because the Western Front was the decisive theater. Second any close blockade of the german coast especially at the whole length of the baltic would stretch the royal navy made it vulnerable. Third: Why do you believe that the German High Sees Fleet would have done nothing to counter attack a british baltic blockade fleet. Over the whole WWI the Imperial Fleet tried to provoke the Royal Navy to split its strength and than to attack its different forces with the whole High Sees Fleet. Fishers light Baltic Blockade Fleet would have been a perfect target for a German Counter Attack which would have use its inner lines by the Kaiser Wilhelm Chanel and the Grand Fleet in Scotland would have been to far away for any support. Fourth: A close Blockade of a whole coastline is a serious encounter which needed a vast number of ships. For any ship on patrol you need two other ship on rotation and reserve duty and the supply line from the baltic ports back to England is long and also vulnerable. Support of Fuel, Food and Ammunition at sea was imposible at the time of WWI. Fifth: The whole baltic plan depends on a german preemptive strike against denmark. Which the German Govermenent never did. Otherwise Britain had to invade Denmark first to secure Kopenhagen and the Straits which no Cabinett Goverment would have done in WWI. So even this is an attractive counter historical idea there are good and rational reasons why id never happened

This content Is great!

Excellent documentary thanks fir this information.

I am trying to remember all I can about Norman Friedman's Fighting the Great War at Sea, which is where I first read about Fisher's Baltic Plan. He discusses it extensively and agrees that it offered a viable alternative to fighting a massive land war on the Continent. However, he discusses it not so much in terms of cutting of trade with Sweden as much as conducting pinprick raids against the North German coast, forcing Germany to divert its attention for more obviously vital fronts (sounds not unlike the Commando raids in WWII). As for throwing shades at Churchill and the Dardanelles operation, I recall that Friedman defended both on the grounds that something had to be done to keep Russian wheat exports flowing through the Black Sea (hmm, that sounds familiar), and also that Churchill was hardly the only one in Cabinet who argued for such a move, but he definitely took the worst fall for it, and he continues to take the worst fall for it long after his death. From other sources, it seems to me that the Dardanelles operation, for all its failings, actually came closer to succeeding than is often recognized - the initial landings could very well have opened the way to Constantinople, but for the efforts of Mustafa Kemal. It's hard to plan for your enemy showing such heroism as the future Ataturk.

Love your Channel!

🙂 I really appreciated this video. Fisher doesn't get the recognition he deserves and it's hard to find sources that cover him well. One problem with his Baltic plan is that Sweden, which fears Russia (before, then, and now), genuinely favored Germany in WW1 and might not have remained idle if Denmark were violated. Unlike WW2, when Swedish trade with and accommodation of Hitler's Germany was an uncomfortable matter of survival at gunpoint, WW1 came much closer to being a clash of big empires than a war of at least relative good versus obvious evil and the trade was a willing choice that benefited both sides. A Baltic incursion with purpose built, necessarily undergunned ships might have aggravated Sweden and made the effort tough to sustain. Though a minor sea power, Sweden had some ability to defend its coasts and home waters. It's unlikely Britain could have prepared Sweden diplomatically to accept a Fisher plan, and trying to involve any Russian sea power in the effort (for whatever its worth would have been) only would have worsened the problem. What eventually changed Sweden's trade posture was mounting food shortages, or Sweden starting to share Germany's privation. Could these have been caused earlier, to gain that leverage sooner? Maybe some unexplored avenues of commercial shipping leverage didn't incur the risk of a Baltic campaign. For example, in 1940 when Germany attacked Denmark, Norway, and the Netherlands, their large commercial shippers chose to stop serving Japan, which considerably damaged Japan's war machine as Japan could not itself make up the difference. Just thinking out loud here ~ this isn't a topic I know in depth, honestly.

terrific channel

Fantastic yet again Do you have a patreon account?

How do you make those portraits? They look quite good.

Excellent. Very interesting. Thank You. I like Churchill for many things but I never thought he was a great strategist.

I thing I would add (and someone else may have already said this) that Churchills focus on Galipolli over the development of a baltic strategy may have roots in British designs for the Arab world post Ottoman rule. Weakening the Ottomans would secure British territories and had the possibility for them to expand them. Churchill was trying to win more British global while Fisher was trying to secure more British continental power. Churchill wasnt playing the game of military strategy well (at all) but was instead thinking he could win a larger game (british domination of middle east)

Awesome video! One thing that probably should have been clarified is where the main German fleet was. I sortve assumed part of it was on Germany's North Sea coast and part of it was on the Baltic coast. I'm going to assume after watching this video that all or most of it was on the North Sea coast. (Because how could Britain lure it into a fight with the Grand Fleet which was in the North Sea?) But as I said amazing video!

Great video

A great video taking Lambert's ideas and reminding Britain the maritime thinking it has lost

Good Video 👌🏻

Excellent look at a often neglected figure. You should be proud of your work so far on UKposts.

1:38 keep in mind that the dreadnought displaced at deep load a third of the queen Elizabeth, had no radar, and was constructed at a time when it was possible that Britain would, in the lifetime of the vessel, ever use it in combat

Outstanding video. I'm a huge fan of Fisher and glad to see his thinking get more airtime.

This is a very useful video summary of how the Great War could have been ended much earlier. In my forthcoming counterfactual-historical novel, "From Jutland To Victory" (to be published by Legiron Books before Christmas 2022) I narrate a fictional scenario in which the Admiralty and Beatty give Jellicoe the _correct_ information about the High Seas Fleet, it is anihilated and Britain then takes the newer BEF divisions into the Baltic; and then Germany collapses in demoralisation. I won't spoil the plot for you, so that's enough for the moment!

What is it they say about plans? No plan survives contact with the enemy? I think this plan was a bit optimistic on how things would allegedly play out.

Damn love your content you should try to get on nebula! It’s for great content creators

Good stuff

What is the background music you use in your videos? Another fantastic upload btw!

Any incarnation of the Baltic project was just utter insanity. Even if everything went exactly as Fisher planned - a very big assumption - the Germans would just have mined and closed off the Skagerrak and Kattegat; effectively trapping the entire BEF on the belt isles without any supply. Forget Salonica, *this* would have been the largest open air POW camp in the world.

An interesting option using resources cleverly

J.Arbuthnot Fisher. A brilliant plan,never even "discussed"so to speak

Another great video mate. I was wondering if you know anything about the Hanoverian opinion of the War? Did any of them feel strange fighting against their once shared monarch of less than 80 years prior?

This plan fills me with such Glee. The description that WWI was war essentially on German terms is accurate on Reflection and the British opted to use and Expand the BEF (along with all the social and political ramifications attached) one has to wonder what the world would look like if more pragmatic minds opted for the Baltic plan.

The admiralty: you want to do what? Fisher: Y E S

The 1905 visit to Germany fanned the flames of the naval arms race and drove Germany greater into paranoia. There was a similar fear on the British side, with even novels written about the defeat of the Royal Navy and a German invasion of England.

Yes, churchill who was an army major telling the best naval mind and admiral of the fleet how best to deploy the navy

2:35 escalating the naval arms race at such a time was probably the absolute worse diplomatic move that could have been done at the time

Churchil does have a tendacy to fight the enemy in the peripheries rather than to force a direct confrontation. In WWII too he kept advocating for small and flanking fronts like landing in Greece and the Adriatic

I highly doubt that a british fleet to build from scratch could've beaten the german navy in the baltics (while keeping a whole fleet in the North sea) after the construction of the Kiel canal. It would've been way easier for the germans to manouver between the two seas than for the british. And keep in mind that the british fleet did not perform well in any way during ww1, compared with the expectations from before. A navy is simply not that decisive in an industrial war with long continental fronts, warfare changed with ww1, so it does make sense that you can't fight this like it's Napoleon again.

Interesting video. I wonder if Fisher is related to the former speaker of the house of commons; John Bercow. The look similair, and their temper seem to have a likness to one another.

Jackie Fisher "We'll just bomb Germany from its coasts with our dreadnoughts." Lowly clerk "What about the mines, subs and torpedo boats?" Fisher "Damn." (Gotta keep my mouth shut.)

Thank you so much for posting this. I have become interested in the Baltic Project, and have read both a) it was a crazy idea and b) it was the obvious thing to do. It now seems to me like it was neither. I had no idea the Danes mined their Strait. I have read Corbett's Principals of Maritime Strategy but it offered me no insight into this issue. Could you share what source(s) you used to make this?

A difficult question to answer is would France have held out alone if the BEF had not reinforced their Northern flank in France and Belgium, France had by far the larger army in WW1 of the allies but if Germany had broken them in 1914-15 then we would have faced the same problem we had when Germany did defeat France in WW2 in gifting Germany Atlantic ports. With Atlantic ports any 'bottle them up in the Baltic' strategy becomes pointless. A difficult counter-factual to debate.

I think a good future idea would be “the Baghdad berlin railway project” or the “hijaz railway project” to use

epic video

well said

I don't understand why,once an oil powered fleet was decided upon,some"one"did not propose a class of ship super armored w/little else to sweep mines by"racing"right into them. How much boom,boom would a 15inch hardened steel hull take,if same was all the heaviest armor,the biggest engines&small,well "protected"crew???

But would France have held on if the UK had not sent so many troops to France?

It should always be assumed that a war is going to be fought by ordinary men under ordinary leadership. Any plan that relies on brilliance of individuals is bound to fail.

This plan is so genius. I honestly can't believe it wasn't implemented sooner. It could've saved a lot of future lives that were unfortunately lost in the trenches.

Can you do a video about the time britain almost joined the triple alliance in the 1880s

Please do one on the Anglo-German Naval Arms Race

Well maybe I don't see the reason as I m not at all a naval expert... But what's stopping the German navy from going through the Kiel Kanal with some of their best ships and fucking up all of those lighter British ships in the Baltic?

needa discussion w/Drachinifel. He's a"ship"guy y'all could exchange&share details(please!)

The continental blockade didn't exactly work against Napoleonic France. Ultimately Napoleon had to be defeated on the ground. Why would it be any different with Germany in WW1?

A daring plan, and as we know these always survive contact with the enemy.

Last time I was this early Germany hadn't yet lost a world war!

Do you have a discord server?

The introduction should say to "sever trade" not "severe trade".

interesting, I never even heard of this plan, too bad it was never tried

Fascinating plan, I would love to know if it could have worked as planned

Two competing legacy's, Wellington vs Nelson.

Provoking Imperial Germany into a pre-emptive response and Denmark's response to RN incursion appear uncertain. Repeating a move of 1905 in 1914 or 1915 and expecting no counter measures seems dubious. How without a general staff and political agreement was the BEF to be kept on the sidelines? Copenhagen remembers Nelson's visit, they may well have feared occupation and being dragged into the war. Frankly Fisher comes over as ineffective here, the Dardanelles operation was hastily put together after the Ottoman empire attacked the Russian empire in the Black sea. If marines and combined forces were required he needed to make the case.

I have 17 Victorian Campaign medals including 3 for Alexandria 1882, where fisher served. One is Royal Marine HMS Inflexible. It's part of 114 Victorian campaign medals I've collected. Most are Africa 1853 and 78-79 Zulu and Cape wars, India and Mutiny. 10 boer war. Plus Afghanistan 1842 and 80.

It is an interesting ‘what if’, but I often wonder if the proponents of ‘anything other than the Western Front’ seriously consider the risk to all of these strategies. I seriously question whether a Baltic Strategy would have been as decisive as envisioned. The loss of Swedish iron ore would have been painful…but war ending? I am afraid that by the time any of this would have borne fruit, France would have been defeated without the BEF and the eventual ground commitment made by Britain. German mastery of the continent would eventually have made Britains position untenable and she would have been forced into an ignominious peace. Some even recognize this possibility as preferable to the horrors that did befall a generation of Brits on the Western Front, but that is more the ‘devil you don’t know’ being able to be spun into any favorable fantasy you wish.

A video on the Russian-Japanese war plz

Britain has the Atlantic, Baltic is another story.........Denmark Narrows is too easy to defend

Don't you think that by 1916 possibly even earlier the advances in aviation would habe led to disaster with british ships operating so close to german shores? Ships at the beginning of the war were barely equipped to defend themselves against attack from the air. I think that plan would have failed.

Really interesting. But as a French, I really doubt this plan would have been enough to defeat Germany. I mean, without the BEF, the front would have been difficult to hold or we would have bleed even more. Or it would only been positive for the British, not for the Allies.

British decline meant reliance on the French which dragged the Empire into war with Germany. Given this the greatest "what if "and regregret is the failure to develop a genuinely Corbettian grand strategy.

Yes this might have been more in the spirt of the "British way of war," but would it have worked?

Jackie Fisher.a real Giant!!(despite short..).

If the BEF didn't support France in force, it would have capitulated within months. France had substantial resources and military industries, and to trade all of France for part of Denmark is an insane proposition. Massively expanding the BEF wasn't some fun and novel idea, it was an absolute military necessity. If the BEF isn't expanded, or doesn't defend France, then Germany takes over everything and turns it all around on Russia, precisely fulfilling its pre-war plan. The Baltic strategy also fails to account for tactical issues observed in WW2 such as German coastal defenses erected around Denmark and Oslo denying access to the Baltic, nor does it consider the capabilities of the massive High Seas Fleet. The High Seas Fleet was not as powerful as the Royal Navy in its totality, but if the RN splits its forces and separates itself so that huge portions are isolated in the Baltic, closer to German ports, it is extremely likely the Germans would amass all of their naval power and blast it into oblivion. The bulk of the Royal Navy would either be too far away to react, or have to itself move into the Baltic: Germany's backyard. That and the Germans might have decided to do what they did in WW2: invade Norway to fully secure the entrance to the Baltic and protect its Swedish iron ore shipments. Additionally, access to the coast of France would mean U-Boat operations would massively expand, reaching even the central Atlantic, again as happened in WW2. As such, the Baltic focus would be putting Britain into an almost identical situation as in 1940: the worst case scenario. And beyond that, the US was in total isolationism, Russia was unprepared for war, and the Germans had a vast colonial empire. While it's true that WW1 was not Britain executing its traditional grand strategy, in my opinion this is not an oversight, rather an unfortunate necessity. Prestige was insufficient to forestall the deleterious effects of military gigantism on the traditional British qualitative superiority, which broke down when it was forced to expand to a similar degree to that which the other major powers exercised. This same effect would be observed to far greater extremes in WW2, where within 3 years the British Empire would be utterly dwarfed by the quantitative and qualitative supremacy of both emerging superpowers. I would also like to point out that many other nations' historical grand strategies failed in WW1. A good example is the United States, which employed a small but capable navy. Not enough to defeat a true major power navy, but enough to warrant its full deployment. In a hypothetical scenario, the British Empire could not invade the US without deploying its entire navy, thus leaving itself open to opportunistic rivals in Europe. This defensive strategy worked well for over a century, originating in the Revolutionary War, yet WW1 would be the instance where this strategy breaks, as Germany both upset its isolationism as well as very nearly took over all of the European continent. This necessitated a massive shift in American military strategy, for the first time resulting in American forces entering Europe in large numbers. In fact, 1918 was the first time an American president even set foot on European soil. It is as you stated at the outset of the video, nearly every country's grand strategies failed in this war. All that said, this was a great video as usual. I'm eagerly anticipating the next video on The Other Great Game.

"Copenhagend" is one of my new favorite words

I would love to see a video on Churchill's time in the trenches after he resigned as First Lord of the Admiralty. I know his time was brief (less than 6 months) but any time at the front during the Great War was a dangerous untaking.