Setting down the telegram, Colonel Mainz was at a loss for words.
The mass sinking of the High Seas Fleet was a famous event, well known to him, but he had never considered altering the outcome. For Germany, still a defeated nation, the fleet was lost—there was no way to recover it. And if they could not recover it, they would only watch the fleet, built over decades with immense manpower, material, and financial resources, fall into foreign hands.
It was better, Mainz thought, to let the ships sink than to see them flying another country's flag in German waters.
In fact, the sinking was not entirely unwelcome to the British Empire. Many Royal Navy officers, including Admiral Roslyn Weems, viewed it as a convenient solution. Upon hearing of the fleet's destruction at Sparka Bay, Weems reportedly said, "These ships sank at just the right time; now we need not worry about how they would be divided."
The High Seas Fleet had been the world's second-largest navy, intact at the end of the war, and a prime target at the Iron Tower City Peace Conference. Many nations—France, Italy, Japan, and even the United States—hoped to claim a few of Germany's main battleships to bolster their own navies.
For the British Empire, however, this posed a threat. To maintain global naval supremacy, the Royal Navy needed its total tonnage to exceed that of the next two largest navies combined. If Germany's battleships were handed over to other powers, this delicate balance would be disrupted, especially with the United States ramping up its shipbuilding programs.
Thus, the disappearance of the High Seas Fleet solved an immediate strategic problem. Without the fleet, the threat of it strengthening foreign navies vanished.
Soon rumors spread that Britain had deliberately orchestrated the sinking to prevent other nations from seizing the ships. These rumors gained credibility when it was revealed that, en route to Sparka Bay, British officers had privately informed German commanders that the Royal Navy might allow one or two capital ships to return to Germany.
Excited by the possibility, German naval officers and sailors had cooperated calmly along the journey. But upon arrival, they learned through subtle leaks from the Tower City Peace Conference that no ships would be returned. Germany's hopes were dashed after six months of waiting—a blow too great for many to bear.
The solution they devised was simple and resolute: if the ships could no longer serve their homeland, they would sink them themselves. Each officer and sailor felt the act was a final tribute to their beloved fleet, ensuring it would never fall into enemy hands.
Thus unfolded the collective self-sinking of the High Seas Fleet at Sparka Bay. The news spread worldwide, and speculation that Britain had engineered the outcome was widely accepted—or, at the very least, exploited by some nations to pressure Germany further.
At the Iron Tower City Peace Conference, representatives of the British Empire were attacked by envoys of other powers eager to claim their share, forcing Germany to make concessions in other areas to appease the great powers. Slowly, the controversy subsided.
Few realized that, in this carefully staged drama, every major power had unwittingly become a pawn on someone else's chessboard. Each acted according to its role, increasing rifts between nations and deepening mutual distrust—an outcome that, paradoxically, served Germany, a defeated country struggling to survive under the pressure of the victors.