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Crisis in the mediterranean: naval competition and great power politics, 1904–1914

Lord Nelson’s victory over the French and Spanish fleets at Trafalgar in 1805 marked the onset of a century of British domination of the Mediterranean, but the decade preceding the First World War found the region in play once again. The rise of Austrian naval power provoked a response from the Habsburg empire’s nominal ally, Italy, and the growth of the Italian navy, in turn, inspired a response from Italy’s nominal enemy, France. Meanwhile, after the dramatic expansion of the German fleet prompted Britain to concentrate its naval power in the North Sea, Anglo-French naval cooperation in the wake of the Entente Cordiale (1904) ultimately resulted in the concentration of the French fleet at Toulon and the reduction of the traditional British presence at Alexandria, Malta, and Gibraltar. By the eve of the First World War, the and Espionage Act of 1917 (although Blum does not connect the passage of the law to the 1915 incidents as well as he might have). The book reads well, but it suffers from many of the flaws of narrative history written for popular audiences. Although it appears that Mr. Blum has done due diligence in working with primary sources, his footnotes do not allow a reader to check those sources or to know where to go to learn more. Blum merely lists the sources he used for each chapter, usually with no page numbers or specific citations. Having worked with many of these same sources, it certainly appears to me that he has overinterpreted most of them. As with many popular accounts, Blum tries to get into the feelings and thoughts of his ‘characters.’ In doing so, he draws conclusions in excess of what the sources themselves would allow. He has also made too fine an attempt to paint his hero, New York City police detective Tom Tunney, as a man straight out of a bestselling crime novel. Although certainly made for the part, Blum overplays his hand by calling his hero ‘Tom’ throughout the book and reading into his mind far too often. The villains are certainly villainous enough. They include the master spies Franz von Papen (a future chancellor of Germany) and the flamboyant naval attaché Karl Boy-Ed, as well as a deranged college professor named Eric Muenter, who set the bomb in the Capitol and tried to kill Morgan. But the book needs less character development and more historical context so that readers can understand why and how the Germans acted and the Americans responded as they did. Much of the material in the book seems to be mere filler that might enhance a narrative, but does not really help the reader gain insights. Blum does a good job, however, in retelling some of the stories involved in the plots, many of which could easily have come from Ian Fleming. The failed plots included a germ warfare scheme to infect horses bound for Europe with anthrax. As many as five people may have died as a result of the scheme, but it did not produce the epidemic among horses that the Germans anticipated. Blum’s book will not, and should not, be the final word on this fascinating but overlooked facet of the First World War. However, hopefully it will awaken interest in this period and raise awareness of the context within which America made its decision to go to war in 1917.