The German Naval Intelligence Network in East Asia and Australia before the First World War

Abstract

Some Australian historians still fail to acknowledge that the young Commonwealth faced an existential threat in the First World War. Such an assessment is untenable in the light of the evidence available in the German archives. The German Naval Intelligence System was central to the economic warfare planning of Germany’s East Asian Cruiser Squadron, which aimed to interdict raw material and food exports from Australia to Britain in the event of war and bombard port infrastructure. Australian defence capabilities and economic production were reported on, and assessed, at the highest levels in Berlin. This required the establishment of an intelligence gathering network managed by the various German consulates in Australasian cities who employed leading businessmen loyal to the German empire.