On 20 July, Berlin warned Norddeutscher Lloyd and Hamburg America Line to bring ships home and ordered the High Seas Fleet to concentrate for a possible general war. British naval intelligence detected these movements, but political leaders failed to connect them with the Austro-Serbian crisis. Churchill did not place the Royal Navy on a precautionary basis until much later, and open general mobilization followed later still. Warning indicators had little value when decision-makers failed to assemble them into a strategic picture.
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German naval preparations outpace Britain
Germany recalled merchant shipping and concentrated the High Seas Fleet while British leaders failed to connect those preparations with the Austro-Serbian crisis.