by David Wragg
The ultimate objective of German naval planning was to have a fleet that was the equivalent of the Royal Navy or the United States Navy. The head of the Navy, Grand Admiral Raeder, believed that a substantial surface fleet, pre-positioned in foreign waters, would be able to deal with the Royal Navy. The weakness in this argument was that suitable foreign bases would be a problem for Germany which had lost its small number of colonies in the defeat of 1918, and the ships would be heavily reliant on a good fleet train for resupply, which would be vulnerable.
HITLER’S DOUBLE SURPRISE
March 1935 was the month in which Hitler began to make his intentions clear to a wider world. It was an abrupt breaking of the shackles of Versailles. On Saturday 9 March, the Air Minister, Hermann Goering, revealed the existence of the Luftwaffe, the most fundamental breach of the terms of the Versailles Treaty. Exactly a week later, the second Saturday surprise was Hitler’s announcement on 16 March that conscription was to be introduced and that the Wehrmacht was to have a peacetime strength of twelve army corps and thirty-six divisions.
Hitler had already ordered the construction of the first U-boats on 1 February, maintaining secrecy by having them assembled in large sheds that had been specially constructed.
Those who had wanted to know, as opposed to those who buried their heads in the sand, had been aware that Germany had started to rearm, despite the attempts to maintain secrecy. Nevertheless, the blatant rejection of the terms of Versailles after just sixteen years set the alarm bells ringing in capital cities across Europe. The Nazis liked to maintain that other nations had never disarmed, but the normal reduction in the size of armed forces once peace had returned had also been increased by the economic pressures of the inter-war years and by the presence of a strong pacifist movement in many of the democracies. These moves were aided by many who believed that the First World War had been so terrible that never again would nations go to war. These were also people who ignored Japan’s aggression in China, and who had a rude awakening when Italy’s actions in Abyssinia, present day Ethiopia, became widely known.
There were those, especially in Great Britain, who agreed that the terms at Versailles had been too strict and that it was only to be expected that Germany would want to rearm. Others saw the main threat to Europe as Communism, and wanted Germany as a bulwark against the westward march of this brutal and oppressive ideology.
Unknown to himself, Karl Dönitz had been selected as head of the U-boat service. While this was not known generally when the Naval High Command held a conference in March, it was agreed that the chief of the pending U-boat 1st Flotilla would report to the admiral in command at Kiel, at this time Admiral Foerster. When the idea was put to Foerster, he responded on 8 April, agreeing but also proposing that a Fuhrer der U-boote, FdU, be appointed early in 1936. The name of Karl Dönitz was put as commander of the 1st U-boat Flotilla when the autumn appointments were announced on 6 June. It is not known who proposed Dönitz for the post, and it seems that it was done verbally.
When Raeder told Dönitz about his new post, actually visiting the Emden on her return to Wilhelmshaven, Dönitz recorded his reaction as being unenthusiastic. He had been looking forward to taking his ship to the Far East, and by comparison, felt that U-boats were unimportant in the plans being prepared for an enlarged German Navy and that, in effect, he was being pushed into a siding. In fact, as in the Royal Navy and the Imperial Japanese Navy at this time, the Marineleitung was dominated by ‘big gun, big ship’ men who saw the battleship and battlecruiser as the naval weapon of the future.
There were U-boat enthusiasts at the Marineleitung, however, and at senior level, there was considerable disagreement over the future shape of the German Navy. Raeder was a big ship man, and his logic was that the increasingly widespread use of Asdic, as sonar was known at the time, meant that submarines were obsolete and vulnerable, and that surface raiders would be more important. The U-boat advocates were fervent supporters of the submarine, and believed that unrestricted submarine warfare against British merchant shipping would bring the United Kingdom to starvation and its armed forces would be unable to fight for want of fuel and munitions. Uncertainty over Asdic meant that some advocated firing torpedoes at long ranges, around 3,000 yards, while others believed that the detection system was underrated and had severe limitations.
As for Dönitz, his return home, followed by leave with his family, sailing with his two sons in the Baltic, was interrupted when he was sent to Turkey to see the U-boat school established by Furbringer, and which had retained the link with the Kriegsmarine through the presence of another wartime U-boat ace.
On 21 September 1935, the Reichsmarine ensign was replaced by the Kriegsmarine swastika ensign, amidst celebration amongst the officer corps of the German Navy.
COMMUNISTS AGAINST FASCISTS IN SPAIN
The Kriegsmarine was less involved in the Spanish Civil War, which broke out in July 1936 and lasted until April 1939, than the other two armed services. The Condor Legion was raised to enable the German armed forces to participate in supporting the Nationalists against the anti-monarchist and pro-Communist Republicans. The air element fielded by the Luftwaffe was especially successful in using the conflict to develop its tactics and create a battle-hardened core of airmen. Italy also supported the Nationalists, while the Soviet Union and, to a lesser degree, France supported the Republicans.
It was not uncommon for warships to be sent to areas of such great danger even by neutral nations to protect their own nationals, and it still happens today.
The German presence offshore was the Panzerschiff Deutschland, and she soon received a timely reminder of the danger that air power posed to surface vessels. On 29 May 1937, she was attacked by Republican aircraft while in Ibiza Roads, with at least two bombs hitting the ship and exploding, killing more than thirty members of her ship’s company.
Admiral Scheer was also present off Spain, and in retaliation for the attack on her sister ship, she bombarded the coastal town of Almeria.
The attack on Deutschland undoubtedly helped influence the decision to rename her Lutzow in November 1939, and it also reflected pessimism on the part of senior naval officers.
CHAPTER FIVE
Plan Z Emerges
Dönitz may not have been enthused when he first heard that he was to become commander of a U-boat flotilla, but he must have quickly realised the advantages of being in a new arm of the Fleet at the beginning, and perhaps also recognised that the U-boat was once again to demonstrate great potential. Either way, even before he took up his post, he sent a paper to the Marineleitung giving his views about the organisation of the German submarine service. He prefaced it with an introduction on the role of the U-boat in wartime.
The U-boat is essentially an attack weapon. Its great action radius makes it suitable for operations in distant enemy sea areas. In consequence of its low submerged and surface speed its tactical ability against fast forces is fundamentally excluded. Its employment will therefore in essence be only stationary.
The operational mission of U-boats in war will be dependent on the war tasks of the Navy. In a war against an enemy whom is not dependent on overseas supplies as a vital necessity, the task of our U-boats, in contrast to the World War, will not be the trade war, for which the U-boat in consequence of its low speed is little suited. The U-boat will be placed in a stationary position as close as possible before the enemy harbours at the focal point of enemy traffic. Attack target, the enemy warships and troop transports.1
From this, it is clear that Dönitz was considering a future war against the Soviet Union and her ally France that had replaced Poland as a potential foe. He was also considering attacking French forces in the Mediterranean, correctly guessing that there would be substantial numbers of troop transports carrying reinforcements from North Africa to France. He was not thinking about war against the British Empire. There is little in his paper about U-boat strategy as it was practised during the Second World War. Indeed, his
paper advocates night surface attack, suggesting that his thinking had not moved on from the First World War and from his experience with the torpedo-boat exercises post-war.
Dönitz advocated the creation of an attacking spirit amongst the crews. Like the British admiral, ‘Jacky’ Fisher, so many years earlier who believed that ‘Our drill ground should be our battle ground,’ he pressed for considerable sea time and training in the planned operational areas. He also advocated using the surface fleet for exercises. The flotilla should not be tied to a home port, but instead should have a depot ship capable of supporting up to twelve submarines. A note of realism about the hardships of life aboard a submarine was that he also specified that the depot ship should have ‘numerous baths’.
Foerster, the admiral in command at Kiel, was delighted with the paper, and allowed Dönitz complete freedom with training and exercising his flotilla. In September, all but one of the first twelve U-boats, all small 250-ton craft, had been commissioned. Out of necessity, many had been allocated to the U-Schule, and when he took up his appointment on 28 September, he had just three U-boats. His flotilla was named ‘Weddigen’ after the First World War ace. On 1 November, he became Kapitan zur See, or captain. Dönitz was not a desk officer at this time, for he joined his men in training and exercises in their submarines, despite his rank.
DEVELOPING U-BOAT TACTICS
Initially, U-boat tactics were based on those evolved for torpedo-boats, but these evolved until the tactics became more suitable for the submarine. Dönitz and his flotilla practised many different means of attack and in different numbers. It was not until November 1937 that he produced a long paper and for the first time argued in favour of group tactics, the wolf pack. He was later to claim that he started in the U-boats with the plan for group tactics already in mind, but there is nothing to prove this. One feature introduced during these exercises was that of centralised control and coordination, for which he used a command ship.
By this time, Dönitz was finally Fuhrer der U-Boote, FdU, although still in the rank of captain, having been given the title on 1 October 1936. A second flotilla was already forming, using the large Type VII which displaced 625 tons, by far the most numerous U-boat class built.
He took up his command at a difficult time for Germany. The unrealistic goals of the rearmament programme meant that the country was consuming iron ore, oil, rubber and other vital but always imported materials faster than it could pay for them. The demands of the armaments industries were such that it was difficult to spare capacity for exports that could have helped redress the balance of payments deficit. The Fuhrer system meant that each of the three armed forces had its own programme, which it pursued regardless of the impact on the economy or of the other armed forces. It is usual for each service in any country to be in some form of rivalry with the others, especially for public funds, but this was taken to extreme lengths by Hitler who, as already mentioned, had rejected any form of committee for the service chiefs. When faced with demands by his own economic adviser, Schacht, in 1936 for an easing of the rearmament programme to cut imports and increase exports, Hitler formulated a new ‘four-year plan’, this time to make Germany self-sufficient in those raw materials essential for armaments. Vast sums were ploughed into research and development of artificial oil and rubber, but these proved to be several times the cost of the real thing, with oil between four and five times as expensive, while the rubber proved extremely difficult to produce in quantity.
As for the Kriegsmarine, despite Hitler’s desire for a strong navy, it was suffering from a limited steel quota. Eight battleships were now planned and in 1937, Raeder considered adding a ninth ship to the programme, with an armament heavier than that for the British King George V, but already the programme was suffering delays for want of steel.
Frustrated, Raeder started to appeal for larger quotas of steel and other metals during 1936. On 25 October 1937, he lost patience and issued an ultimatum, award the Kriegsmarine higher quotas or face having shipbuilding back drastically so that he could complete a few modern warships ‘in a conceivable time’. This prompted one of the few occasions on which Hitler brought together all of the chiefs of his armed forces, as well as the Foreign Minister. He began the meeting by reiterating the question of finding Lebensraum for the German people, but went on to remind them that France and Great Britain were both ‘hate-enemies’. He mentioned the weaknesses in British and French positions and looked back at the policies of Frederick the Great and Bismarck. His audience was told that he intended to resolve the question of Lebensraum by 1943–1945 at the latest, but might possibly bring this date forward should an opportunity present itself should France be weakened by war with another country or by an internal political crisis.
Hitler by this time clearly recognised that the British were unlikely to be fooled for long by his self-imposed limits on warship construction, and might intervene in any continental war.
For the first time, the Kriegsmarine started to consider the possibility that in any future war with France, the British might side with their First World War ally. This was a nightmare scenario that everyone had tried not to consider earlier. The prospect was given formal recognition when the Operations Division produced a study entitled ‘The Tasks of Naval Warfare 1937/8’. Meanwhile, Krupp was ordered to expand their steel mills so that Germany could fulfil the Fuhrer’s promise to Raeder that his annual steel quota would be increased from 40,000 to 75,000 tons. Raeder then began to worry that war might break out before his plans were completed, but the Fuhrer reassured him.
It was at this time that Dönitz started to change his ideas for naval warfare. The changes in strategy were highlighted in his report, ‘The Employment of U-boats in the Framework of the Fleet’, dated 23 November 1937, which called for the use of U-boats to threaten enemy commerce. This took a realistic view of a state that lacked a good strategic position and lacked colonial bases, as well as having a limited surface fleet. It argued that the U-boat might be the only means to threaten enemy sea communications. In this report, Dönitz was clearly thinking of war with the United Kingdom, and that would only happen if the country sided with France, something on which Hitler was taking a gamble.
The report also considered the possibility of the U-boats operating with surface vessels. The U-boats could provide reconnaissance, patrolling off enemy ports and reporting movements, and as attacking groups in the path of the enemy. Good communications were to be an essential part of this, with a good communications centre ashore to collect and coordinate information from the U-boats and issue orders, all of which recognised the poor visibility from an individual U-boat, although it tended to ignore the risk to the U-boats from enemy direction finding or code-breaking.
A feature of the report was that it also took aircraft into account. Aerial maritime-reconnaissance had featured in the First World War, with Royal Navy semi-rigid airships for convoy protection and flying-boats for active maritime-reconnaissance. The presence of aircraft would undoubtedly hamper U-boat operations and force the craft to remain submerged, but he did not envisage constant air patrols, so decided that aircraft would only restrict operations for a short time.
Finally, he proposed research and development of faster U-boats so that tests could be conducted on their potential.
FEARS OF WAR
It is tempting to compare Hitler’s position in 1937 with that of the Kaiser in 1912. There were essential differences. In 1912, it was the Army that received the lion’s share of the available resources, leaving Tirpitz opposing von Moltke’s demands for war. In 1937, it was Blomberg and Fritsche, the Army chiefs, who feared war. They simply could not believe that Great Britain and France would allow Germany even to begin its continental expansion, the incorporation of Austria and the German-speaking areas of Czechoslovakia into the Reich, let alone the other more ambitious plans involving Poland and, ultimately, the Soviet Union. Raeder on the other hand fully accepted Hitler’s assurances that there would be no war with
the UK before 1943.
Not brooking any disagreement or independence of opinion, or taking advice from experienced and well-trained professionals, Hitler soon moved to replace the Army chiefs. A homosexual scandal was arranged to force Fritsche to resign, while Blomberg followed after he disgraced himself by marrying a former prostitute. Hitler then appointed himself Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces before replacing the Foreign Minister von Neurath, a professional diplomat, with von Ribbentrop, doubtless as a reward for his coup with the London Naval Treaty, and finally sacking Schacht, his economic adviser, with the economically-illiterate Funk. Just Goering and Raeder survived the October, or ‘Hoss-bach’, meeting. Only Raeder was a true professional, for despite having been a First World War fighter ace, Goering was simply another party hack with no experience of high command or staff work.
Hitler then proceeded with the first stage of his plans. In mid-March 1938, the Anschluss was declared after 100,000 German troops marched into Austria, and the Austrian government decided not to oppose these overwhelming forces. The Anschluss, meaning coming together, was at first very popular with the majority of Austrians. In contrast to other later occupations, the Germans were anxious to make the whole affair seem as un-military as possible, but the troops initially stationed in Austria were under strict orders to suppress any opposition.
