The Navies of the Baltic Sea Region During the Interwar Period: Development of Fleets, Organizations and Naval Strategies 1918-1939

269 pages

The book is available direct from the University of Tartu Press: https://shop.ut.ee/en/pood/the-navies-of-the-baltic-sea-region-during-the-interwar-period-development-of-fleets-organizations-and-naval-strategies-1918-1939/

Prof Andrew Lambert

King’s College London

The Baltic has a long history of geostrategic shifts, shaped by the relative weight of land and seapower, the actions of ‘Great Powers’ and their security fears. Few periods in that long history were more dynamic than the inter-war years, when new nations were carved out of old empires, new strategic alignments developed, and then everything changed in 1939. This period in Baltic history has rarely taken centre stage, an oversight that is amply rectified in the tenth text from the Estonian Maritime Museum series, which publishes the proceedings of the 2022 Tallinn conference, which brought together regional and extra regional navies, in a period that saw a new order in Eastern Europe emerge. The 13 papers begin with an assessment of the German Navy as the dominant regional naval force, critically shaping the successful advance of German land power down to the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. There successes were swiftly overtaken by imperial collapse. The greatly reduced German post-war Navy faced new states, notably Poland, which took the place of Russia as France’s preferred strategic partner. Meanwhile the Royal Navy dominated the Baltic in 1919, Rear Admiral Walter Cowan’s dynamic, rotating force of light cruisers, destroyers and minesweepers pushing Soviet forces off the coast of Estonia, with significant losses, without a formal declaration of war. Avoiding mission creep enabled Britain to step back once the Bolsheviks recognised the independence of Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia and Finland, which effectively restricted the Russian coast to little more than 100 miles, and ensured the Soviet fleet would be entirely focussed on local defensive operations for some years to come. The RN continued to visit the Baltic after 1919, visiting friendly powers on an almost annual basis, quietly asserting regional control into the 1930s, The absence of a Russian study can be rectified by reading Gunnar Aselius’s excellent The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Navy in the Baltic 1921 – 1941 of 2005. Briefly the dominant Baltic force, Swedish Admirals imagined bottling the Soviet fleet in the Gulf of Finland, a position that collapsed in the summer of 1925 when the Soviet fleet sortied across the Baltic with three dreadnoughts, all three renamed to celebrate the Soviet’s primary weapon system, communist revolution. Sweden demonstrated little interest in linking up with the new states of the Eastern Baltic – it had not suffered from being neutral in 1914-18. While Russia re-asserted regional hegemony in 1925 it was focussed on improving the defence of its now truncated coastline in the Gulf of Finland.

By contrast Denmark’s fleet became obsolete, just as Germany recovered, and a major war loomed. Once again Denmark mined international waters at the behest of Germany: this time it did not prevent an invasion. Finland fought for independence in 1918-19, and again in 1940, having developed a sophisticated response to independence. Recovering former Russian naval officers, ships and bases, along with a coast defence posture not unlike that of Russia in 1914, relying on mines, along with new submarines, heavy calibre coastal batteries and specialist coastal warfare assets. After Stalin’s unprovoked attack Finland had little option but an alliance with Germany, but unlike Poland and the Baltic States it avoided re-absorption into the Russian Empire in 1945, perhaps a response to the sustained, largely successful war effort, and the sympathy of Britain and America. Estonia’s new navy of 1919 was linked to hopes for a Baltic Entente that could preserve the 1919 balance of power, and keep the Soviets bottled up in the Gulf of Finland until the Royal Navy arrived. While this might look like a logical approach, Britian had far too many commitments across the world to be able to focus on the dead-end of a landlocked sea where Russia could easily recover dominance, as he did in 1940, by unleashing massive armies. Little wonder the British did not encourage Estonian dreams. Stalin would be disappointed in 1941 the newly acquired ice-free ports proved useless in the face of Operation BARBAROSSA.

While the Baltic State’s navies disappeared, the Polish force, built from Russia, and Austro-Hungarian manpower and new warships, fought with distinction in 1939. Hoping Poland would create a large army, to balance Germany, France resented costly naval projects, even shipbuilding orders. By 1924 France had abandoned the region, focussing attention on its eastern border and the German question. Polish ships and sailors made a significant contribution to the British war at sea.

The Tallinn Museum and the contributors should be congratulated for bringing this well delivered and illustrated text before an international readership that is only too familiar with analogous situations, looming crises, and the endless shift between land and sea power in this complex, enclosed sea.