Marine-Korps Flandern

 

By Phie de Schaepdrijver, Brussels Museum, and the Editors

The  Marine-Korps Flandern was the operational component for Germany's Marinegebiet (Marine Area) of the Flanders coastal area during the Great War. One of the elements of international tension in the run up to the First World War was the naval race between Great Britain and the German Empire. By the summer of 1914 the German fleet, which had been insignificant at the time of Bismarck, had grown into a formidable power—which did not actually play a role in the outbreak of war. While the German land armies advanced to the west and east, the navy's High Seas Fleet lay at anchor, so the British fleet was able to patrol the North Sea and make the first preparations for a blockade pretty much unhindered.

U-boats UB-2 & UB-6 Based in Zeebrugge

A few weeks after the conflict had begun, the German admiralty nonetheless demanded a role for the fleet. No head-on encounters between the warships on the high seas (the so-called Grosskrieg), but a lateral war of attrition against the vulnerable British trade and military shipping routes in the Channel–the so-called Kleinkrieg, to be fought out with lighter torpedo boats, minelayers, and submarines.  On 23 August 1914, Brussels was occupied, the Belgian and Allied armies retreated ever farther, Admiral von Tirpitz made a phone call to the German High Command demanding that marine troops be brought into action on the coast of the conquered districts in the west; as far as he was concerned the French were as good as defeated and the time had come for the war at sea against Great Britain.

Admiral von Schröder with Army and Navy Subordinates

So what would later become known as the Marinekorps Flandern came into being. Initially, a single naval division of around 17,000 reserves and regular troops were withdrawn from the ports of Kiel and Wilhelmshaven. On 24 August 1914, von Tirpitz dragged an old friend of his out of retirement—the 60-year-old Admiral Ludwig von Schröder (1854–1933), knowledgeable about planning a Kleinkrieg against Great Britain, took command of the German naval troops which had been sent west. In November and December 1914 they were strengthened by a 20,000-man second division.

Bicycle Patrols Were Used to Control the Local Population

Which ports were to serve as base of operations for this Kleinkrieg? In October 1914 German naval staff were still in favor of the well-developed and easily defensible French ports of Le Havre and Cherbourg. However, given the rapidly changing positional warfare, which even put Dunkirk and Calais beyond German reach, they proved to be much too far away. Out of sheer necessity they went for the Ostend-Zeebrugge-Bruges “triangle,” even though two of the ports were shallow and difficult to defend and neither Zeebrugge nor Bruges had adequate facilities for ship repairs. Zeebrugge did indeed have a long jetty, and it was linked to Bruges via fairly deep canals, which provided enough room for torpedo boats, submarines, and even light cruisers. On 14 October—the day that Bruges was taken by reserves of the German Fourth Army—von Schröder informed von Tirpitz that he wanted to use the city as his headquarters.

Machine Gun Emplacements Guarding the Beaches

This German Marinegebiet, including three ports in Ostend, Zeebrugge, and Bruges—bases for U-boats, torpedo boats, and destroyers—and the coast to Zeeland were quickly subjected to a particularly severe occupation regime . . .  In a very short period of time the coastal region was to be developed into both a weapon of attrition warfare and an unassailable bulwark, and the local population had to work together on it, whether they wanted to or not. The coastline was to become one immense defensive wall of artillery bases and bunkers, anti-aircraft guns and airfields. From 1915 von Schröder succeeded in creating a submarine, torpedo, and destroyer fleet in Flanders. By the end of the war a quarter of all sunken British vessels could be attributed to the U-Boot Flottille Flandern. . .

Coastal Artillery Mortar at Ostend

An aggressive commander, Schröder built up his area of operations from a division to a two-division corps with coastal artillery and air and naval assets. He battled bureaucratically  to ensure that his command did not become subordinated to the army, which of course carried the burden on the Western Front. On the other hand, the Naval Staff never wavered from its view that the primary theater of operations for Germany lay in the German Bight, followed by the Baltic Sea. The North Sea and Baltic station commanders accordingly resented, opposed, and hindered the transfer of their assets to Belgium. Realistically, the geography of Flanders severely limited meaningful German operations. While the three ports were interlocked via a canal system, all were small facilities without room for much expansion. Capital ships were too large to enter. Port constraints limited the number of surface craft. Even the submarines that formed the Flanders flotilla were small coastal models with limited range and ordnance. All but one were actually shipped in pieces from Germany and assembled in Antwerp and moved to Bruges via canals. Worse, proximity to the front and coast left the docking facilities at Ostend and Zeebrugge highly susceptible to air and naval bombardment and perilously close to long-range artillery. Finally, the ports lay so close to England the Royal Navy could easily intercept any major reinforcement effort. Nevertheless, the command exercised an ongoing not-to-be-ignored threat to the line of communication between Britain and France.

King Albert and the Queen at the Liberation of Bruges,
19 October 1918

The Marinegebiet was held tenaciously for nearly the entire war. Admiral von Schröder organized a successful attack on the Dover Barrage in 1916 and developed plans to counter a seaborne invasion. His forces successfully  beat off the famous Zeebrugge-Ostend raids of April 1918 and had the damage corrected promptly. The three ports were held and remained operational until just three weeks before the Armistice. Admiral von Schröder was called east toward the end of the war by the Kaiser to suppress the Kiel Mutiny, but his orders were never formally issued. For his service in Flanders he was honored with the Pour le Mérite (20 October 1915) with Oak Leaves (23 December 1917).

Sources: Occupied Bruges and the Marinegebiet, 1914-1918 by Phie de Schaepdrijver; Museum Archives of Brussels