As Chief of the Admiralty Staff, Pohl was an outspoken advocate of unrestricted submarine warfare, and he put the policy into effect as he left the post on 1 February 1915.

[1][6] As Chief of the Admiralty Staff, Pohl was involved in the German deliberations during the July Crisis in the aftermath of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand by Serbian terrorists the previous month.

[10] He pushed for fewer restrictions on the conduct of the commerce war beginning in late 1914; he further advocated abandoning the cruiser rules that handicapped the German effort, in favor of unrestricted submarine warfare.

[11] He presented his first plans for an unlimited commerce war in November 1914, but these were rejected by the Kaiser and Bethmann Hollweg so as not to antagonize neutral nations, in particular the United States.

As he was leaving the post of Chief of the Admiralty Staff, on February 1 he successfully negotiated with Bethmann Hollweg to begin a campaign of unrestricted submarine warfare, promising extravagantly that a fleet of twenty submarines would be sufficient and a deterrent effect would cause neutral shipping to cease, and thus cause no diplomatic issues.

Aboard the tug, from the yard to the Seydlitz, which had suffered heavy damage on the 24th January in the Battle of the Dogger Bank, he gave Kaiser details of the U-boat blockade against English which, unknown to me, had been agreed with the Chancellor, apparently on the strength of State-Secretary Delbrück who had declared that in an emergency we could also feed the Belgians (7 millions) until the next harvest.

The whole matter was proof of the inadequacy of the Chancellor and of the personal ambition of von Pohl, who at the start of his new career as Commander-in-Chief wished to show off with this piece of pirate bravado.

During the conversation, I happened to be below in the little cabin and could not hear the gist of Pohl's speech from the stern, otherwise I should have intervened very energetically in this brow-beating of the Kaiser.

With further sinkings, to avoid drawing America into the war, Germany reinstated restrictions on the U-boat fleet, first secretly, then publicly.

Aboard his flagship, SMS Friedrich der Grosse, Pohl conducted a series of short operations into the North Sea over the course of 1915.