How highly mobile German commerce raiders (light cruisers) performed at sea and met their fate is one of the more compelling and controversial stories of World War I. One such account is that of the SMS Dresden and how it successfully eluded capture or sinking at the hands of a far superior British navy and their allies in 1914-1915. This essay charts the performance of the light cruiser from its prewar position off the eastern coast of Mexico to its scuttling in Chilean national waters on March 15, 1915.[1] It asks: In terms of carrying out cruiser warfare, what expectations did the German navy have for its overseas cruiser squadron at the beginning of the war? Was SMS Dresden under capable command and prepared to take on the role of an independent commerce raider? As the sole survivor of the German East Asian Squadron at the Battle of the Falkland Islands, what determining factors forced its commander, Captain Franz Ludecke, to opt for a strategy of “protracted evasion” over the “spirit of enterprise?” By taking the former action, SMS Dresden successfully avoided enemy contact and forced the British navy and their allies to commit warships to the region that were best served in the North Atlantic. In the process, it continued to pose an immediate threat to British shipping interests in the Far East and South Atlantic.[2]
The origins of German cruiser warfare evolved in the early 1900s under the supervision of Secretary of Defense, Alfred von Tirpitz (often referred to as the creator of the new German Navy). Despite his preoccupation with building a battleship fleet in the North Atlantic comparable to Great Britain's, German naval strategists still considered cruiser warfare a viable part of its future war plans. Outside of home waters cruisers they served as defense mechanisms for the Empire's colonies in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean. Although most officers and men of the German High Seas Fleet possessed a “spirit of enterprise,” Tirpitz pointed out, “Our ships abroad could not produce any permanent effect on the course of the war…deprived as they were of the assistance of any bases of their own, they could only hold out for limited periods.”[3]
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