Mahan's theories were based on the notion that maritime trade would lead countries into war. The first hint of that kind of war was an incident in 1889, which involved the United States in the risk of war in a distant place and against an unexpected foe. The place was Samoa. At the beginning of the 1880s, there were American and British coaling stations in Samoa along with a German-run coconut plantation. Bismarck's Germany had not been in competition for imperial colonies like other European nations, his famous line being that they were "not worth the bones of a Pomeranian grenadier." In the year 1884, however, German policy underwent a dramatic reversal, the so-called Torschlusspanik, the fear of being shut out in the acquisition of colonies. [20] In a very short time Germany endeavored to acquire colonies in Africa and the Pacific. In a crudely engineered coup, Germany attempted to establish a puppet government in Samoa, ignoring the objections of the United States and Britain. The issue took a dangerous turn in March 1889, when three German warships, the Adler, the Olga, and the Eber, and three American warships, the Trenton, the Nipsic, and the Vandalia, squared off in Samoan waters ready to do battle. [21] This early glimpse of German-American hostility seems to have been judged to be premature even by Providence, for on March 15th the 100 mph winds of a major typhoon destroyed all six ships. But the fact could not be denied that in the military rivalries of the world, the United States could not remain uninvolved. In the 1890s, the event with the most influence on military reform was the 1895 Sino-Japanese War. This war suggested that, as Army Commanding General John M. Schofield put it, the Atlantic Ocean was "little more serious an obstacle to the navies and transports of Europe than are the Japan and Yellow Seas to those of Japan." [22] Officers like S.chofield saw distinct parallels between the unpreparedness of China and the United States on the one hand, and the power of smaller but mobilized states like Japan and Germany on the other. In 1897, Schofield warned that unless Americans were: willing to prepare in advance for putting into the field at a moment's notice a very large and effective army, as well as to fortify all important seaports, they may as well make up their minds to submit, at least for a time, to whatever indignity any considerable naval power may see fit to inflict upon them. [23] This kind of thinking influenced the United States in its next confrontation with an imperialist power. In the mid1890s the American public focused its attention on the insurrection being waged by Cuban revolutionaries against their Spanish rulers. Thanks to the efforts of a number of energetic and articulate expatriates, Americans believed that the Cuban insurrectos deserved American support. In anticipation of likely hostilities, the Naval War College began to study the possibility of war with Spain. In 1894 a student, Lt.Cdr. Charles J. Train, completed a plan for war with Spain as a War College requirement, and in 1896 another student, Lt. William W. Kimball, wrote a paper entitled "War with Spain." When Secretary of the Navy John D. Long convened the Naval War Board to plan for the impending war, Lt. Kimball's plan, with only slight modifications, became America's first deliberate war plan. One of the most far reaching aspects of this plan was the provision for operations in the Philippines to prevent the concentration of the Spanish navy in the waters around Cuba. [24] Thus, ironically, popular feelings against Spanish imperialism led the United States into a war which would transform it into an imperialist power. When Admiral George Dewey sailed the U.S. Asiatic Squadron into Manila Bay, humiliating the Spanish fleet in the Philippines and practically ending Spanish rule in the Pacific, the United States had no intention of annexing the Philippines. It found, however, that other countries had designs on Spain's former empire. At this stage of the 19th century, the most aggressive of all the imperialist powers was Germany, and the Germans were not happy about the American seizure of Spanish possessions. The Kaiser said: the scoundrels the Yankees want war ... America plunders Spain's colonies, and England Portugal's. [25] The United States was now faced with a dilemma. To leave the Philippines would abandon them to German domination. Further, internal strife, which the Spanish were trying to suppress when the war began, threatened to break out into open warfare. For these reasons, in August 1898, 8500 U.S. Army troops, under the command of General Wesley Merritt, were sent to the Philippines to complete its conquest and pacification. In reality, of course, the United States did not really take the Philippines from Spain so much as inherit an insurgency from the Spanish Army. Unlike the Cuban insurrectos, the Philippine insurgents had neither asked for nor welcomed U.S. assistance. The counter- insurgency would go on intermittently from 1898 to 1913. For the first time in its history the United States had to maintain an army in a theater of war many thousands of miles away, underscoring the need for a close working relationship between the Navy and the Army. The legacy of the War with Spain was mixed. For the Navy, the battles of Manila and Santiago Bay were legitimate victories but, for the Army, the victories tasted a lot like defeats. On the battlefields in Cuba the U.S. Army had been as valorous as ever, but for every American soldier killed by the enemy (381), more than four had died due to the negligence or incompetence of Army officers (2061). Clearly reform was in order, and the instrument of that reform was the newly appointed Secretary of War, Elihu Root. Root turned to Upton's work, and as a result, Upton's ideas were vindicated 20 years after his death. Chief among his recommendations had been the institution of a general staff and the creation of the "War Academy," which was implemented as the U.S. Army War College in November 1904. Now the Army and Navy had complementary structures for the joint study of strategic problems. At the War College dedication speech, Root encouraged the Army and Navy "never to forget your duty of coordination ... this is the time to learn to serve together without friction." [26] The final ingredient in tying together the Army and Navy's efforts was the 1903 creation of the Joint Army and Navy Board, the first standing interservice war planning association in American history. The board consisted of four principal officers of each service, with Admiral Dewey as chair until his death in 1917. The board's function was to issue broad guidelines for the defense of the United States, its possessions, and the Western Hemisphere. Detailed planning was the responsibility of the General Staff and the Navy Staffs, with most of the actual work done by the two war colleges. [27] By this time, the danger of war with Germany was real. In the first three months of 1899, a combined AngloAmerican force appeared in Samoan waters to overthrow a native government installed by the Germans. This force began to shell areas considered friendly to German rule, and later landed a force which suffered seven casualties in fighting German supported Samoans, the first blood shed in German-American hostilities. [28] Bad feelings began to grow between the two countries. The Washington Post editorialized that: We know that by a thousand unmistakable signs and by the experience of years that in the German government the United States has a sleepless and insatiable enemy. [29] On the German side, the confrontation between German and Anglo-American forces in Samoa was a major issue in the deliberations associated with the Flottengesetz, or Navy Law, of 1898. The Flottengesetz was influential in the formulation of German strategy in the years before World War I not only because it appropriated the money required to build a large, modern fleet, but also because it resulted in Kaiser Wilhelm's decision to include the German Admiralty in the Prussian cabinet. [30] The German navy was now the political and statutory equivalent of the army, which would have an ominous impact on the development of war plans. In December 1899, Vizeadmiral Otto von Diederichs was appointed Chief of the German Admiralty Staff. Dewey and Diederichs were acquainted with each other. In May 1898, after the battle of Manila Bay, a squadron of ships from the German Pacific fleet steamed into Manila Bay on Dewey's heels. Thinking that the Germans were there to aid the Spanish, Dewey ordered one of the German ships, the Irene, to be detained. Diederichs, the German commander, arrived in person in June, and called upon Dewey to say that the Americans had no right to interfere with the Irene. Dewey lost his temper and told the German interpreter "Does Admiral von Diederichs think he commands here or do I? Tell your Admiral if he wants war I am ready." [31] With the memory of this incident in his mind, Diederichs' first order of business was to plan for war with the United States. [32] The subject had been the theme of a number of projects assigned for study to officers of the naval staff in the form of Winterarbeiten, or winter projects, and the sum of these studies had concluded that "an effective blockade of the American coast with the means [provided by] the Naval Law of 1898" was not possible. [33] Diederichs recommended a doubling of the German fleet and a study of joint operations with an army expeditionary force for operations on the eastern seaboard of the United States. German naval officers studied the problems of landings conducted from bases (Shitzpunkt) located in Canada, Cape Cod, and Puerto Rico to support operations oriented toward the ultimate objectives of New York, Boston, and Charleston. [34] On the Army side (one can imagine Scheibert's studies on American coastal defenses coming out of their filing cabinets), general staff officers concluded that the American army was pretty much a negligible quantity. The only combat seasoned troops were those on the frontier, and 10,000 of these troops would be tied dovm guarding against Indian uprisings, [35] (this was 10 years after Wounded Knee). The readiness of the militia was discounted as a Spielerei. [36] But Diederichs' enthusiasm about war with the United States was not matched by the Chief of the General Staff, Count Alfred von Schlieffen, who was more concerned about the military situation in Europe than an expedition to the Americas. As early as May 1900, Schlieffen was in consultation with the government on Germany's "strategic options" in the event of a two front war. [37] As the consequences of a European war were potentially far more grave than a war with the United States, Schlieffen's participation in the planning was vague and uninspired. [38] The plan, eventually labeled O.P III, was never really brought to an operational status, and its impact might have been negligible if it had not been for the zeal of a relatively junior army officer. In 1901, Freiherr von Edelsheim, a first lieutenant in the 2d Garde-Ulanen Regiment, published a study on German joint operations in the United States. [39] This book caused a furor. In March 1901 Massachusetts Senator Henry Cabot Lodge wrote Vice President Theodore Roosevelt that a German landing in his constituency was "well within the range of possibilities, and the German emperor has moments when he is wild enough to do anything. [40] Back to Table of Contents Joint U.S. Army-Navy War Planning WWI Back to SSI List of Issues Back to MagWeb Magazine List © Copyright 1998 by US Army War College. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com