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Distant Victory The Battle of Jutland and the Allied Triumph in the First World War
Daniel Allen Butler
Book Code: C9073
ISBN: 0-275-99073-7
ISBN-13: 978-0-275-99073-2
272 pages, table
Praeger Security International General Interest-Cloth
Publication: 7/30/2006
List Price: $44.95 (UK Sterling Price: £25.95)
Availability: In Stock
Media Type: Hardcover
Also Available: Ebook
Trim Size: 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
Subjects: Reviews:
  • [D]istant Victory is an entertaining introduction to the Jutland era in naval history....It provides a good read for buffs.
    —The Journal of Military History     January 2007
  • Germany's new foreign minister Arthur Zimmerman's equally new maritime policies ensured allied victory in the Great War, and the Battle of Jutland is one the best cases in point. Controversial from the moments the guns silenced, with Germany claiming victory in terms of tonnage sunk and the Royal Navy claiming strategic victory in chasing the German fleet back into their harbors, the battle resulted in the failure of the German fleet to break the British blockade. Realizing that despite the boasts of the German admiralty, Germany had in essence failed, Zimmerman and other civilian authorities turned to submarine warfare, a tactic that was successful only in bringing the US into the war out of fear. Maritime writer Butler concentrates on the little-known reasons why Jutland proved to be decisive in ways even its combatants did not fully realize.
    —Reference & Research Book News     November 2006
Description: For the past nine decades the Battle of Jutland has been history's most hotly debated and least understood naval action. Treated usually as a tactical German victory or else as a draw, and dismissed as strategically indecisive, it has been remembered by historians as for its lost opportunities, mistakes, and sheer scale, the largest naval surface action ever fought and the greatest clash of battleships the world would ever see. The Battle of Jutland has never been seen as one of the decisive battles of the First World War.

Until now.

Distant Victory is an examination of the great sea fight at Jutland as more than a balance sheet of ships sunk and lives lost, or which fleet fled before the other, but rather from the perspective of the battle's long-term consequences, the decisions made by both the Germans and the British as a result of each fleet's experience at Jutland. While the German High Seas Fleet could claim a tactical victory because it sank more ships and inflicted higher casualties on the Royal Navy's Grand Fleet than the British did to the Germans, the British could rightly claim that strategically they won the battle, for when it was over the German warships had retreated to the safety of their harbors, having failed in their objective of defeating the Grand Fleet in detail.
The book demonstrates compellingly how the real significance of Jutland lies not in ships lost or casualty figures, nor even in the fact that once the guns fell silent, the Grand Fleet was prepared to give battle again on four hours' notice while the High Seas Fleet required over two months to repair and refit. It examines how the pre-war leadership and naval policies of the Royal Navy and the High Seas Fleet produced each nation's respective strategies, analyzes how those strategies affected the command decisions made by admirals on both sides during the battle, and then explains how in the aftermath of Jutland, the failure of the German battleships to break the British blockade--which was slowly starving Germany to death--and the damage done to the German fleet compelled the German Admiralty to decide that some other means of winning the war at sea would have to be found. They then persuaded Germany's civilian leaders allowed themselves to be into making their single most disastrous political decision of the Great War: to embark on a campaign of unrestricted submarine warfare even when such a course of action was certain to bring the United States into the war against Germany, in the hope that it would strangle Britain's sealanes before American intervention became decisive. It was a gamble the Germans lost: when the fighting ceased on November 11, 1918, it was in no small part the result of the distant victory won by the Grand Fleet almost two and one-half years before. Butler demonstrates how the real significance of Jutland lies not in ships lost or casualty figures, nor even in the fact that once the guns fell silent, the Grand Fleet was prepared to give battle again on four hours' notice while the High Seas Fleet required more than two months to repair and refit. Butler examines how the pre-war leadership and naval policies of the Royal Navy and the High Seas Fleet produced each nation's respective strategies, analyzes how those strategies affected the command decisions made by admirals on both sides during the battle, and then explains how in the aftermath of Jutland, the failure of the German battleships to break the British blockade -- which was slowly starving Germany to death--and the damage done to the German fleet compelled the German Admiralty to decide that some other means of winning the war at sea would have to be found. They then persuaded Germany's civilian leaders to make their single most disastrous political decision of the Great War: to embark on a campaign of unrestricted submarine warfare even when such a course of action was certain to bring the United States into the war against Germany, in the hope that it would strangle Britain's sealanes before American intervention became decisive. It was a gamble the Germans lost: When the fighting ceased on November 11, 1918, it was in no small part the result of the distant victory won by the Grand Fleet almost two and a half years before.
LC Card Number: 2006015110
LCC Class: D582
Dewey Class: 940
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