Karl Doenitz and the Last Days of the Third Reich E-Book

Barry Turner

• Herausgeber: Icon Books
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 436

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

Among the military leaders of the Second World War, Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz remains a deeply enigmatic figure. As chief of the German submarine fleet he earned Allied respect as a formidable enemy. But after he succeeded Hitler – to whom he was unquestioningly loyal – as head of the Third Reich, his name became associated with all that was most hated in the Nazi regime. Yet Doenitz deserves credit for ending the war quickly while trying to save his compatriots in the East – his Dunkirk-style operation across the Baltic rescued up to 2 million troops and civilian refugees. Historian Barry Turner argues that while Doenitz can never be dissociated from the evil done under the Third Reich, his contribution to the war must be acknowledged in its entirety in order to properly understand the conflict. An even-handed portrait of Nazi Germany's last leader and a compellingly readable account of the culmination of the war in Europe, Karl Doenitz and the Last Days of the Third Reich gives a fascinating new perspective on a complex man at the heart of this crucial period in history.

Leseprobe

KARL DOENITZ AND THE LAST DAYS OF THE THIRD REICH

KARL DOENITZ AND THE LAST DAYS OF THE THIRD REICH

BARRY TURNER

First published in the UK in 2015 by

Icon Books Ltd, Omnibus Business Centre,

39–41 North Road, London N7 9DP

email: [email protected]

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ISBN: 978-184831-922-6

Text copyright © 2015 Barry Turner

The author has asserted his moral rights.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, or by any means, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

Typeset in Dante by Marie Doherty

Printed and bound in the UK by

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CONTENTS

List of illustrations and maps

Foreword

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

EPILOGUE

Bibliography

Notes

Acknowledgements

Index

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS

Plate section

Images from ullstein bild unless otherwise specified

Karl Doenitz in 1939.

Hitler with Doenitz and navy chief Grand Admiral Raeder in September 1939.

Admiral Doenitz awards the Iron Cross to one of his U-boat commanders.

U-boats outside their reinforced concrete ‘pens’ built to protect them from air attack. (IWM/Getty Images)

A German U-boat at sea. Like all submarines, they spent much of their time on the surface, diving only for torpedo action or to avoid detection.

U-boat interior, showing the minimal space crews had in which to perform their duties.

The Wilhelm Gustloff.

Allied forces advance through Aachen.

American and Soviet troops meet at the Elbe.

The German delegation arrives at Lueneburg Heath. (Corbis)

Jodl signs the German surrender at Rheims. (Keystone)

Doenitz announces the German capitulation.

The arrest of Speer, Doenitz and Jodl at Flensburg. (dpa/Corbis)

Doenitz takes the oath at the Nuremberg trial.

Doenitz, shortly after his release from Spandau, on his way to Duesseldorf to spend time with his lawyer, Otto Kranzbuehler.

Maps in text

Pages 68–9: The Baltic Sea.

FOREWORD

by Admiral of the Fleet Lord Boyce

Barry Turner’s Karl Doenitz and the Last Days of the Third Reich provides a masterly summation of a confusing period in the closing stages of the Second World War. It switches successfully from describing high-level strategic considerations and interplay within the Nazi and Allied leadership, to the harrowing details of individuals’ first-hand experiences of war at the bottom of the hierarchical structure, with cameos of heroism, cowardice, brave offence and defence.

Captivating stories and insights into the personalities of the main players are unfolded – and nowhere is this truer, of course, than in the case of Doenitz himself. It is here that, as a submariner, I found myself most intrigued. The author has captured very well the ethos of the submarine world and its effect on the individual who lives, or has lived, within it; and the make-up of Doenitz’s personality, his deep professionalism, loyalties and values, reflect this admirably. In particular, and as the book quotes him:

I had been fascinated by that unique characteristic of the submarine service, which requires a submariner to stand on his own feet and sets him a task in the great spaces of the oceans, fulfilment of which demands a stout heart and ready skill; I was fascinated by that unique spirit of comradeship engendered by destiny and hardship shared in the community of a U-boat crew, where every man’s well-being was in the hands of all and where every single man was an indispensable part of the whole.

What he learnt about the effectiveness of submarine warfare in the First World War was to play a major part in his thinking 20 years later; and his own personal belief in the effectiveness of the submariner, hardened by his – improbably – surviving the sinking of the U-boat under his command in 1918, can be seen in the attention he lavished on the personnel in that branch of the Kriegsmarine.

His judgement on submarine warfare was sound, and the success he had in strangling the supply lines across the Atlantic nearly brought Great Britain to its knees in 1942–43 and threatened to do so again when the new generation of technologically superior U-boats was deployed in early 1945. I was interested to read of the difficulties Doenitz had in trying to get more support from the Luftwaffe for his submarine deployments – not too dissimilar from the frustrations the Royal Navy had in getting RAF support!

Having provided the nature of the background that shaped the man, and after an opening chapter on the chess-like moves for the transfer of power following Hitler’s death, the narrative of unfolding events in the first half of 1945 leading up to the end of the war and immediate post-war activity can be characterised as falling broadly into four parts: action at sea in the Baltic, including Operation Hannibal; the final throes of the war on land, including the machinations of both Allied and German senior commanders; negotiations for ending the war; and Doenitz’s actions and ultimate fate post war.

The importance to Germany of the Baltic – providing as it did the vital supply lines to keep the all-important, powerful and potentially war-winning industrial machine running – is strongly portrayed, as is its use to facilitate probably the biggest ever evacuation by sea: Operation Hannibal – a story probably unknown to most. The huge scale of this operation eclipses Dunkirk and the book’s vivid and contemporaneous descriptions of such events as the loss of the Wilhelm Gustloff and 9,000 lives paint a chilling picture. Doenitz had a driving, passionate and humanitarian-based determination to save as many as possible of those in the Baltic’s eastern regions trying to escape the jaws of the Bolshevik advance as it swallowed up the Baltic ports with horrendous savagery; and his belief in the importance of the evacuation – in spite of Hitler’s indifference, if not objections – is later shown to be an underlying theme for his actions after the Fuhrer’s death, as he tried to shape circumstances that might allow German and other refugees to avoid capture by the Soviets as they advanced through Germany from the East.

That advance, together with the similar moves by the Western Allies from the Channel and their race to cross the Rubicon-like Rhine and to reach Berlin against the desperate and unexpectedly strong defence by the Wehrmacht, as well as the effect on the civilian population, and the tensions and antipathies between key players on both sides, forms the second part and makes a story in itself – once again brought to life with recollections of individuals there at the time. Massive movements, massive loss of life and massive interplay of politics that would have far-reaching consequences make absorbing reading and lead the reader well into the other two parts of the narrative.

The descriptions of these – the manoeuvrings around Doenitz reluctantly assuming the mantle of Fuehrer, the negotiations leading to German surrender and the final scenes played out in the court at Nuremberg – provide the final pieces of evidence from which the reader can form a judgement about whether Doenitz played his war-leader part in the conflict ‘fairly’. The author argues that Doenitz’s incarceration as a convicted war criminal was more about politics than any crime committed, and in this connection it is interesting that the First Sea Lord supported Doenitz’s appeal against conviction, and that the Royal Navy was represented at his funeral in 1980. Doenitz was a professional warrior who had total belief in his Kriegsmarine – keeping it, and himself, largely free from Nazi ideology – and an ingrained loyalty to his country. He fought a hard war, but no harder than his opposing admirals and generals, and with no worse excesses – although an accusation of uncritical devotion to a political cause would not be unfair.

Like ‘old soldiers’, Doenitz faded away after his imprisonment, never looking for the leadership role many expected and hoped he would take up again. But he left his own mark on European history, not least his anticipation of what he saw as the main threat to world order – Soviet expansionism; and his belief and focus on the effectiveness of the submarine as a war-fighting, potentially war-winning, machine in maritime strategy is as pertinent today as it was 75 years ago.

Admiral of the Fleet Lord Boyce

Karl Doenitz in 1939 when he was commander-in-chief of submarines.

Hitler with Doenitz and navy chief Grand Admiral Raeder in September 1939.

Admiral Doenitz awards the Iron Cross to one of his U-boat commanders.

U-boats outside their reinforced concrete ‘pens’ built to protect them from air attack.

A German U-boat at sea. Like all submarines, they spent much of their time on the surface, diving only for torpedo action or to avoid detection.

U-boat interior, showing the minimal space crews had in which to perform their duties.

The Wilhelm Gustloff, one of the large ships used in the Hannibal evacuations. Over 9,000 refugees died when she was sunk by a Russian submarine.

Allied forces advance through Aachen.

American and Soviet troops meet at the Elbe.

The German delegation arrives at Lueneburg Heath to meet with Montgomery.

Jodl signs the German surrender at Rheims. Friedeburg is on the right.

Doenitz announces the German capitulation.

The arrest of Speer, Doenitz and Jodl at Flensburg.

Doenitz takes the oath at the Nuremberg trial.

Doenitz, shortly after his release from Spandau, on his way to Duesseldorf to spend time with his lawyer, Otto Kranzbuehler.

CHAPTER ONE

Berlin, 30 April 1945 1530 hours

The ruins of a once-great city were about to fall to the invader. In his Fuehrerbunker under what was left of the Reich Chancellery, Adolf Hitler could hear the gunfire as, street by street, the Red Army closed in on him. All hope was gone. With Eva Braun, his mistress of twelve years and bride for less than two days, he entered his private apartment. The door closed. Standing outside were Martin Bormann, Hitler’s secretary and head of the Party bureaucracy; his long-serving adjutant, Otto Guensche; his valet, Heinz Linge; and his personal bodyguard, Rochus Misch. They waited in silence. After some minutes, Linge, with Bormann beside him, opened the door. They found Hitler face down at a table. Blood was dripping from his right temple. Beside him, a picture of his mother as a young woman; behind, a portrait of Frederick the Great. His Walther pistol was by his foot.

Eva Braun was slumped over the armrest of a couch. Linge noticed the scent of burnt almonds. Cyanide. Guensche made for the conference room where others of Hitler’s entourage were gathered. On the way, he bumped into Erich Kempka, Hitler’s chauffeur.

‘What’s going on?’

‘The Chief is dead.’

Among the select few who went to view the scene were Nazi propaganda supremo Joseph Goebbels and head of the Hitler Youth Artur Axmann. Then Linge and another SS man wrapped the late Fuehrer in an army blanket and he was carried out. Hitler’s bloodstained head was covered but Misch, who was standing by, recognised the black trousers: ‘His legs were sticking out as they carried him past me. Someone shouted, “Hurry upstairs, they’re burning the boss.”’1

Hitler’s body, along with that of Eva Braun, was carried up four flights of stairs to the emergency exit to the Chancellery garden. Put in a shallow grave, the two corpses were doused with gasoline. Returning to the bunker, Linge came back with a thick roll of papers. Bormann lit the papers and threw the torch on to the bodies. As the funeral pyre blazed, the small group of mourners, sheltering in the bunker doorway, raised their arms in the Nazi salute.

*

Three hours after Hitler had ended his life, Bormann radioed Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz, recently appointed supreme commander of all land and sea forces in northern Germany and the Baltic, along with the Netherlands, Denmark and Norway. Waiting on developments at his headquarters at Ploen, a lakeside town 150 miles from Berlin and not far from the Danish border, Doenitz had no need to be told that Berlin was lost and he fully expected to hear that Hitler was dead. But the message put before him by his adjutant, Commander Walter Luedde-Neurath, made no mention of Hitler’s suicide. Judged by his own future, the news for Doenitz was more startling.

‘The Fuehrer has appointed you, Herr Grossadmiral, as his successor. Written full powers follow. With immediate effect you should take all measures which seem appropriate.’

Why Doenitz? It is a question that Germany’s most senior naval officer must have asked himself. He was, above all, a professional. Neither allies nor enemies ever doubted his talents as a military commander. As a political leader, however, his credentials were less apparent. A regular attender at Hitler’s strategy conferences, his advice was welcomed and trusted on naval matters but he was by no means a Nazi ideologue. Until 1944 when the bomb plot to assassinate Hitler gave added value to badges of allegiance, he was not even a Party member. Others, surely, were better qualified and better placed to take on the succession. On the other hand, Doenitz must have recognised that a process of elimination had raised his status.

Hermann Goering was the first to fall from grace. The founder of the Luftwaffe and originator of the Gestapo, along with concentration camps, he was designated heir apparent in September 1939. But Goering had not lived up to expectations. His failure to bomb Britain out of the war or to break Allied air superiority had relegated him to the ranks of those who were deemed to have betrayed the Reich. Hitler bade him a chilly farewell on the evening of 20 April when Goering left Berlin for his Bavarian estate, part of the Nazi enclosure that included Berchtesgaden, Hitler’s mountain hideaway.

On that night, as if to underline Goering’s failure as Luftwaffe chief, British and American air forces delivered their last massive air raid on the centre of Berlin. Doenitz, with Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, Hitler’s Chief of Armed Forces, and their wives watched the spectacle from Doenitz’s service quarters. As Keitel recalled:

During this final heavy bombardment in perfect and sunny weather the already badly afflicted Reich Chancellery building escaped further damage; our own fighter squadrons did nothing to beat off the attack on Berlin, and the anti-aircraft defences were powerless against an enemy attacking from such a height. The raid lasted almost two hours, the bombers parading overhead in tight formation as though it were a peacetime air display, dropping the bombs in perfect unison.2

Despite everything, Goering kept faith in what he assumed to be his destiny. He waited confidently for the call to action. It came, or so he believed, on 22 April, two days after Hitler’s 56th birthday. By then, the Fuehrer had come to accept what all others in his tattered administration had long accepted, that the massive counter-attack to drive the Russians from Berlin was not going to happen. Bad news had been followed by news that was even worse. The advancing Allied armies east and west, having joined forces at the River Elbe, had split the Reich in half. Everywhere, German defences were crumbling.

In maniacal rage, Hitler vented his frustration on the liars and traitors who had betrayed his mission. Then, exhausted, he declared that he would defend Berlin to the last. ‘I will never leave Berlin; I will defend the city with my dying breath.’ Keitel and General Alfred Jodl, Chief of Operations, were told to leave for Berchtesgaden. Hitler had no further orders to give.

‘There is no question of fighting now. There’s nothing left to fight with. If it’s a question of negotiating, Goering can do that better than I.’

Hitler’s apparent abdication soon filtered through to Goering, who responded to the invitation, as he put it in a telegram to Hitler, to ‘take over, at once, the total leadership of the Reich, with full freedom of action at home and abroad’.

It soon turned out that Goering had acted prematurely. In calmer mood, Hitler either forgot what he had said or had come to regret his outburst. As one of the few close advisers left in the bunker, Martin Bormann, a long-time Goering rival, fed Hitler’s suspicions that Goering had joined the ever-lengthening list of back-stabbers. Resentment at his worthless pretensions to military glory, not to mention his sybaritic lifestyle, boiled over into a vicious condemnation of the Nazi crown prince and a demand that he should resign at once from all his offices. Without waiting for a response, Bormann, presumably with Hitler’s approval, ordered the arrest of Goering for high treason. For general consumption, it was announced that the Reichsmarschall had retired for health reasons.

What then of Heinrich Himmler, whose power was rooted in the SS and the Gestapo? The master of prevarication and self-delusion, Himmler had been quick to join the exit from Berlin but remained in easy reach at Schloss Ziethen, 30km north-west of the city. There he agonised over his next move.

The Reichsfuehrer relied heavily on the guidance of Walter Schellenberg, his head of foreign intelligence and the youngest of the SS generals. Possessed of a passion if not a talent for political intrigue, Schellenberg was convinced that he could move his boss into prime position for negotiating peace with honour. As early as February, the architect of the Holocaust had signalled his readiness to break ranks by coming to a deal with Count Folke Bernadotte, vice-chairman of the Swedish Red Cross, on the care of Scandinavians held in German camps. The prospect of opening direct talks with Eisenhower, touched on tangentially, was discounted by Bernadotte unless, of course, Himmler was empowered to speak for the Reich. Schellenberg was sure this could be arranged.

But despite several more meetings, it was not until Goering’s downfall that the persistent Schellenberg was able to persuade his master to pursue his fantasies by turning, once again, to Count Bernadotte. The critical encounter took place at the Swedish consulate in Luebeck. With his horn-rimmed spectacles, recalled Bernadotte, the sinister Himmler brought to mind ‘a harmless schoolteacher from the country’. The meeting had barely started when bombs fell and the lights went out. The strain on Himmler was all too obvious. He was ‘indescribably tired and nervous’, said Bernadotte, ‘and fighting hard to maintain his outer calm’. But he had come to a decision. Himmler stated:

It is very probable that Hitler is already dead and, if not, he very probably will be within the next few days. Berlin is surrounded and it is only a matter of days until it falls. The last three times we three have met you urged me to end the war. I agreed with you that the situation was hopeless, that the war must stop, and that Germany must admit she is beaten. But I have not been able to see how I could break my oath to the Fuehrer. Now the situation is different. I recognise that Germany is defeated.

He continued:

In this new situation I have a free hand. In order to protect as much of Germany as possible from a Russian invasion I am willing to capitulate on the Western Front and to let the Western Powers’ troops advance as rapidly as possible eastwards. Conversely I am not prepared to capitulate on the Eastern Front.3

Bernadotte knew Himmler’s aims were hopeless but while refusing to contact Eisenhower, which would have compromised his neutrality, he agreed to pass on the offer, via his government, to the American and British representatives in Stockholm. When Bernadotte set off for home, Schellenberg went with him part of the way. Under orders from Himmler he was to have one last try at getting Bernadotte to appeal directly to Eisenhower.

However [recalled Schellenberg], at our parting on the road near Waren in Mecklenburg, Count Bernadotte said to me: ‘The Reichsfuehrer no longer understands the realities of his own situation. I cannot help him any more. He should have taken Germany’s affairs into his own hands after my first visit. I can hold out little chance for him now. And you, my dear Schellenberg, would be wiser to think of yourself.’ I did not know what to reply to this.4

Schellenberg drove back to Hohenlychen, the hospital and convalescent home reserved for the SS, slept for two hours, and was then called to Himmler at about 12.30 p.m. on the following day, 22 April.

He was still in bed, the picture of misery, and said that he felt ill. All I could say was that there was nothing more I could do for him; it was up to him. He had got to take some action. At lunch we discussed the military situation in Berlin, which was steadily growing worse.

At about four o’clock, having convinced him that it would be unwise to drive to Berlin, we drove towards Wustrow. In Loewenberg we were caught in a traffic jam, troops having become involved with the unending columns of fleeing civilians which blocked all the roads between Berlin and Mecklenburg. As we drove on, Himmler said to me for the first time, ‘Schellenberg, I dread what is to come.’5

Bernadotte duly reported to his foreign minister who passed on the message to the American and British representatives in Stockholm. The response was easily predicted. The Allies would accept only an unconditional surrender to the three powers on all fronts.

By now, rumours of Himmler’s bid to end the war and to create, in effect, an anti-Soviet alliance, were front-page news. Apparent confirmation came with a report on Radio Atlantic, a supposedly ‘free German’ underground station but in fact operated by British intelligence, which spiced up Himmler’s role in the negotiations with claims that his sole purpose was to supplant Hitler. And this was precisely what the Fuehrer himself concluded when news of Himmler’s ‘betrayal’ reached him on the evening of 27 April.

It was one item in a catalogue of disasters. Early that day, Berlin’s two airports, Gatow and Tempelhof, were lost, cutting off all communication and supplies by air. For Hitler’s evening briefing General Weidling, Berlin’s commandant, reported on the near-exhaustion of ammunition, food and medical supplies. He proposed a breakout from the ‘Berlin pocket’. But to what avail? As Hitler commented, they would simply be going from one pocket to another. At midnight, Admiral Voss, liaison officer for Doenitz, telegraphed from the bunker: ‘We hold on to the end’. An order was given for Himmler’s arrest.

After the toppling of the two leading contenders, it was still not clear that Doenitz was next in line. But the list was shortening. Of other candidates who came to mind, Goebbels had the strongest claim, if he chose to press it. For those who knew Goebbels, that was unlikely. The man who had shaped the Nazi myth could not imagine acting independently of his proudest creation, a leader who could do no wrong.

With a stronger sense of self-preservation, Martin Bormann, the arch intriguer who had long cast himself as the power behind the throne, may have had dreams of the succession. His talent for command, however, was not obvious. As for Joachim von Ribbentrop, his defects were even more glaring. Whatever misplaced respect Hitler had once had for his foreign minister, his cock-eyed schemes for a diplomatic breakthrough had stripped him of all credibility.

That left Albert Speer. Making for Hamburg, he flew out of Berlin on 21 April. It says much for his relationship with Hitler that he was allowed to go. In his capacity as armaments minister with all-embracing control of the war economy, Speer made no secret of his conviction that having lost the war, the German people should be urged to protect whatever was left of their commercial and social infrastructure. Hitler would have none of this. For him, the only substitute for victory was annihilation. On 19 March he had ordered the destruction of all factories, water and electrical installations, railways and bridges at risk of falling into enemy hands. Four days later, the gauleiters, Hitler’s regional hatchet men, were given detailed instructions on implementing the scorched earth policy.

Fully expecting retribution, Speer voiced his opposition. But the Fuehrer retained a soft spot for the youngest of the Nazi big barons and his favourite architect with whom he had planned and partly implemented a monumental rebuilding of Berlin. When Speer left the bunker, on the night following Hitler’s birthday, he carried with him a written plea for common sense that he planned to broadcast from Hamburg. Enlisting the help of his friend Karl Kaufmann, gauleiter for Hamburg, Speer recorded his speech but then decided to keep it under wraps until the drama had played out in the Fuehrerbunker. As Speer noted: ‘Once more Hitler had succeeded in paralyzing me psychically … I justified my change of mind on the grounds that it would be wrong and pointless to try to intervene in the course of the tragedy.’6

Speer now made for Eutin in Schleswig-Holstein, where he set up a base not far from the Doenitz headquarters. But left to himself the old magnetism in Berlin recovered its power and he was soon drawn back to the bunker. He finally took his leave on 24 April.

By now it was about three o’clock in the morning. Hitler was awake again. I sent word that I wanted to bid him farewell. The day had worn me out, and I was afraid that I would not be able to control myself at our parting. Trembling, the prematurely aged man stood before me for the last time; the man to whom I had dedicated my life twelve years before. I was both moved and confused. For his part, he showed no emotion when we confronted one another. His words were as cold as his hand: ‘So, you’re leaving? Good. Auf Wiedersehen.’ No regards to my family, no wishes, no thanks, no farewell.

In his last words to Hitler, Speer talked of coming back while knowing it was impossible. But he did leave Hitler with a piece of advice that had long-reaching consequences. He suggested to the Fuehrer that in looking for a successor, Doenitz might fit the bill.7

In truth, Hitler was beginning to run out of options. Of the generals of any stature, most were dead or discredited. Once a favourite, Field Marshal Kesselring, commanding German forces in the south, was thought to have joined the lobby for peace at any price. A likelier prospect was Field Marshal Ferdinand Schoerner who had proved his worth by slowing the Russian juggernaut as it advanced on the Baltic states. Noted for his brutality towards his own troops when they fell short of his exacting standards, Schoerner was the last promotion to field marshal under the Nazi regime. Goebbels praised him for his ‘superb political insight’ which was one way of saying that he knew how to disguise unpalatable facts – making defeat sound like victory. But Schoerner was too focused for the top job, even assuming that he ever aspired to it – a long shot indeed.

Doenitz had more going for him. As chief of the German navy and as the architect of a mighty force of submarines that had constituted the single greatest threat to the Allied war effort, he had avoided the flak that Hitler had showered on the land forces. Doenitz was good at exuding confidence. Refusing to buckle under pressure, his genuine protestations of loyalty with the underlying assumption that somehow all would be well, were a steadying influence on an otherwise chaotic administration. In charge of the only military sector where recovery was remotely possible, Doenitz held out the promise of a new generation of super submarines that even at this late stage could turn the fortunes of war. His messages to his staff stressed duty, pride and honour. ‘The Navy must stand as an unshakeable fighting entity. It will never bow to the enemy yoke.’ Rather than submit to defeat, Doenitz professed a wish to die in battle. He refused to associate himself with Speer’s plea for an acceptance of the inevitable.

Even so, Speer detected in Doenitz a rational intelligence that would, in the last resort, hold him back from the Wagnerian finale, an explosive descent into purgatory that Hitler wished on Germany. And he was right. The live Hitler held his spell over both of them. His death changed everything.

CHAPTER TWO

The briefest study of the life of Karl Doenitz is a warning, if any could possibly be needed, against an uncritical devotion to a political cause. But given the mess that was Europe during the inter-war years, many intelligent young people were drawn to an authoritarian rule as an alternative to shambolic democracy. The choice was communism or fascism. Doenitz chose fascism.

Born in 1891, Doenitz was a child of Prussian yeoman stock. As he would write in his post-war memoirs, ‘My ancestors had for centuries succeeded each other as landowners and mayors of the village in the old Germanic frontier settlement on the Elbe.’1 The young Doenitz was inspired by the Bismarckian vision of Germany as the dominant European power. This image was reinforced by a patriotic, male-orientated family, his mother having died before his fourth birthday. Karl and his elder brother Friedrich revered their father, who lived by hard work, thrift and ‘duty fulfilment as the highest moral virtue’. As Karl put it towards the end of his life, ‘The acceptance of discipline came quite naturally to me.’ A lonely child, one who did not make friends easily, Karl’s imagination was fired by the macho heroes who populated boys’ books. Adventure at sea had a particular appeal. In 1910, when Doenitz was eighteen, he joined the navy as a sea cadet.

The Imperial German Navy had started in a small way as a coastal defence force commanded by officers seconded from the army. By the early 1880s Germany was still in the minor league of naval powers. Wilhelm II, who became Kaiser in 1888, was determined to change that. The brief for Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz was to build up naval strength to match that of Britain while seeming not to challenge Britain’s supremacy at sea. It was soon apparent that those were contradictory aims.

With Germany steadily chipping away at Britain’s reputation as the workshop of the world, rivalry and antagonism between the two countries covered a lot of ground – and water. The first clash at sea came with Britain’s war against the Dutch separatists in South Africa. Suspected of supplying arms to the insurgents, three German ships were stopped and searched. Public outrage in Germany was made to justify doubling the size of the fleet. With the coming of the First World War, active service for Lieutenant Doenitz took him to the Mediterranean and the Black Sea where an encounter with a Russian dreadnought earned him the Iron Cross. In 1916 he transferred to submarines. His leadership qualities soon gained him his first command.

Doenitz quickly caught on to the potential for U-boats to disrupt British trade routes. Even with the sinking of the Lusitania in May 1915 with the death of 128 American citizens, a critical turning point for US opinion on Germany, the U-boat campaign against Allied shipping was counted as a triumph for the German navy. The introduction of merchant shipping convoys with destroyer escorts cut the U-boat success rate but, as Doenitz was quick to spot, a counter-strategy of having U-boats working together to mount combined attacks (what became known as his ‘wolf-packs’) did much to restore the balance.

An unsought opportunity for Doenitz to contemplate the future of submarine warfare and his own future in the service came at the tail end of the war when, a month into a new command, his U-boat was sunk by British warships off Malta. It happened when he made a risky attack on a convoy while submerged at periscope depth.

Thanks to a fault in the longitudinal stability of my boat we suddenly found ourselves submerged and standing on our heads. The batteries spilled over, the lights went out, and in darkness we plunged on into the depths. Beneath us we had water in plenty – about 1200 or 1500 fathoms of it. 180 or 200 feet, however, was the maximum depth our pressure hull permitted. I ordered all tanks to be blown, stopped, then went full astern with rudder hard over in the hope of stopping the boat’s downward plunge. My First Lieutenant, Muessen, shone his torch on to the pressure gauge in the conning tower. The indicator was still moving swiftly to the right. The boat, then, was still going deeper and deeper; at last the indicator stopped quivering for a moment between 270 and 300 feet and then started to go back at speed. The blowing of my tanks with compressed air had just done the trick. But now, the U-boat was much too light. Like a stick plunged under water and then suddenly released, it shot upwards and out of the water, to arrive with a crash on the surface. I tore open the conning tower hatch to find that we were right in the middle of the convoy. Sirens were howling all round us. The merchant ships opened fire with guns mounted on their sterns while the destroyers, firing furiously, came tearing down on us. To crash dive was impossible. My supply of compressed air was exhausted, the boat had been hit and she was making water. I gave the order, ‘All hands, abandon ship’.2

Fished out of the water, Doenitz was taken to a POW camp near Sheffield.

He faced a year of humiliation. The news from Germany was of defeat on all fronts while from the Kaiserliche Marine it was even worse – defeat from within. A last desperate effort by the navy to score a victory at sea ended when crews mutinied against orders to sail. A sense of pride, albeit somewhat perverse, was restored when, in June 1919, the entire German fleet was scuttled as it lay at anchor at Scapa Flow. A month later Doenitz was repatriated. He later claimed that he had secured an early release by feigning insanity but given that he was inclined to embroider his anecdotes it is more likely that he simply made such a nuisance of himself that the authorities were only too glad to be rid of him.

Back in Germany, Doenitz rejoined the renamed Reichsmarine with the rank of lieutenant. On the face of it, this was not the smartest of career moves. The Treaty of Versailles tried to put the lid on German naval ambitions. While some allowance was made for balancing the Russian presence in the Baltic, there was no compromise on ‘the construction or acquisition of submarines, even for commercial purposes’. The ban was total. But it was an imposition that was unlikely to stick once Germany began to regain her commercial strength. Before resuming his naval service Doenitz was confidently assured by his superiors that within two years Germany would once more have its own U-boat fleet. The promise was all he needed to sign on:

During the war I had become an enthusiastic submariner. I had been fascinated by that unique characteristic of the submarine service, which requires a submariner to stand on his own feet and sets him a task in the great spaces of the oceans, fulfilment of which demands a stout heart and ready skill; I was fascinated by that unique spirit of comradeship engendered by destiny and hardship shared in the community of a U-boat crew, where every man’s well-being was in the hands of all and where every single man was an indispensible part of the whole. Every submariner, I am sure, has experienced in his heart the glow of the open sea and the task entrusted to him, has felt himself to be as rich as a king and would change places with no man.3

Throughout the 1920s intense but fruitless international efforts were made to reconcile German demands for equality with correspondingly strident appeals, largely from France, for security. Diplomatic confusion and weakness of resolve gave more than adequate cover for Germany to circumvent Versailles and rearm. For the navy, private and public finance was raised to produce a new generation of warships. At this stage, submarines were still beyond limits but under cover of a Dutch dummy company, German engineers built two submarines for Spain. Meanwhile, Doenitz was honing his tactical skills in command of torpedo boats. In one exercise, which marked him for certain promotion, he was reckoned to have destroyed an entire convoy. In 1933, the year Hitler came to power, a training centre for submariners was established at Kiel.

The breakthrough for the Reichsmarine, soon to be renamed yet again, this time to become the Kriegsmarine, was the 1935 Naval Treaty with Britain. After a lot of diplomatic huffing and puffing, the treaty represented an extraordinary climbdown by Britain. In quick order, Germany was given the go-ahead to build up its navy to 21 cruisers and 64 destroyers, around 35 per cent of Royal Navy tonnage. Such was the sense of urgency – or panic – that no one thought to consult France or Italy, the other two European naval powers. Nor was any account taken of the views of Sweden and Denmark where there was an understandable fear of German dominance in the Baltic.4

By way of feeble excuse on the British side, it was said that because Germany had already repudiated the Versailles Treaty with the creation of an air force, an army of 36 divisions and the introduction of conscription, it made sense to come to a deal on relative naval strength. Supporters of the treaty argued, as Doenitz was later to claim, that it ‘clearly showed Germany did not reckon with a war against England as she voluntarily renounced arming against English sea power’.5 In that case, rather more attention should have been given to details. Incredibly, virtually no attempt was made to limit the building of submarines.

Just eleven days after the signing of the Naval Treaty, the heavily guarded sheds built at Kiel in 1934 were opened to reveal the first new German U-boats. Another eleven submarines were under construction. All of them had been commissioned well before the Treaty. The first U-boat flotilla of six vessels came under the command of the newly promoted Captain Doenitz. Soon afterwards, he was made Commander-in-Chief of the entire submarine arm. Almost immediately, he began lobbying for a bigger share of the naval budget.

British intelligence had a fair idea of what was going on. That the warning signals were ignored was the result of a fatal mix of overconfidence and ignorance. The first mistake was to assume that the development of Asdic, a sonic echo revealing the bearing and range of a detected object, had made submarines virtually obsolete. Putting its faith in Asdic, in 1937 the Admiralty declared that ‘the U-boat will never again be capable of confronting us with the problem we faced in 1917’.

But Asdic was an imperfect device. What was thought to be a U-boat on the offensive was just as likely to be a school of fish or a wreck. Then again, Asdic could not identify a submarine on the surface or even underwater at close range. The shortcomings were all the more consequential given that the submarine, despite its name, was still essentially a surface craft which submerged only to avoid danger or, a rarity, to make a daylight attack.

It was the submarine’s efficiency as a surface craft that had been raised to a point where the machines were virtually unrecognisable to veterans of the First World War. Torpedoes no longer left a tell-tale swell when launched or an easily observed wake on course to their target. Magnetic firing devices allowed for detonation under a ship’s keel where the torpedo could do maximum damage. With more efficient batteries, the U-boat was able to stay underwater longer and operate noiselessly. Long-range radio allowed tactical planners to coordinate activities at sea from their land-based headquarters.

But the British and American navies were slow to catch on to the submarine as a war machine of enormous potential. Doenitz was way ahead in his thinking when he argued, with Britain in mind, that his submarines were capable of starving an enemy into submission by cutting off food imports and other supplies by sea. The figures supported him. In 1939 Britain was importing by sea an annual total of 55 million tons of supplies, including all its oil and half its food and raw materials. The Merchant Navy had around 2,500 ships at sea at any given time. All were vulnerable to U-boat attack.

A strong but not always tactful advocate for his cause, Doenitz touched on the sensitivities of senior officers of the old school who favoured a battle fleet on the British model. Leading the conservatives was Erich Raeder, Commander-in-Chief of the German navy and soon to be Grand Admiral, who professed admiration for Doenitz and who, indeed, did most to give the younger man a higher profile, but who could never quite make the leap in strategic imagination that was second nature to Doenitz.

That said, Raeder’s position was not entirely irrational. The case for accommodating the submarine force within a wide range of naval weaponry rested on the assumption, shared by Doenitz, that war with Britain was not an immediate prospect. Rather, the focus was on France as the likeliest adversary. Thus, if war did come it would be fought on land and in the air with the navy in a supporting role. In this scenario, the surface fleet would have more to do than the submarines.

In arguments with Doenitz over funding priorities, Raeder could declare convincingly that it was hard enough competing with the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe for scarce resources without parading divisions within his own ranks. Assured by Hitler that if there was to be war with Britain it would not break out before 1944 at the earliest,6 Raeder put his faith in the ‘Z Plan’ to expand Germany’s surface fleet to a point where it could contend with the Royal Navy on equal terms. He was supported by Hitler who visualised great battleships as symbols of Nazi power. The fault in Raeder’s strategy was in taking Hitler at his word.

So it was that in September 1939 when Germany invaded Poland and Britain and France declared war, the Kriegsmarine was far from ready to do battle. Just a month earlier, Doenitz had staked his reputation on the claim that with 300 ocean-going U-boats and without any assistance from the army or air force, he could force Britain into early submission. Successful exercises in the Baltic and Atlantic had so impressed Raeder that he agreed to amend the Z Plan to give Doenitz what he wanted. But before decisions could be translated into action, the Z Plan was consigned to the archive. With a meagre 56 submarines, ill-suited to action beyond coastal waters, and only 49 of them ready for operational duties, there was little chance of Doenitz meeting his monthly target of sinking 600,000 tons of British shipping – the total calculated to bring about a decisive victory.7

The most effective U-boat available to Doenitz was the Type VII. It could accommodate twelve to fourteen torpedoes, had a diving time of 20 seconds and a maximum speed of 16 knots. But it could carry no more than 67 tons of fuel oil, which limited its radius of action to 6,200 miles.

Doenitz was further constrained by technical faults with the firing of torpedoes. Detonators had a high failure rate while steering fins were found to be vulnerable to changes in air pressure when submarines were diving or surfacing. The higher the pressure in the chamber, the deeper a torpedo ran. As a result, torpedoes often passed harmlessly under their targets.8 On 31 October, Doenitz reported in his war diary, ‘At least thirty per cent of our torpedoes are duds’. It took a change at the top of the Torpedo Inspectorate for the problems to be recognised and rectified, a process that dragged on for more than a year.

The challenge for Doenitz to deliver on his promises was all the greater for the lack of a naval air arm. This meant that the Atlantic shipping routes had to be reconnoitred by the U-boats alone. ‘Yet,’ wrote Doenitz, ‘the number of U-boats was too small for the complete surveillance of the open sea … once contact was made with a convoy the attack succeeded every time. The difficulty lay in the finding and not in the attacking.’9 As chief of the Luftwaffe, Hermann Goering was disinclined to make concessions. While he offered to provide nine long-range reconnaissance squadrons, the promise was not kept. Raeder was told bluntly that he would ‘never have the naval air force he so much desired’.10

Despite the limitations, Doenitz, a rear admiral from October 1939 (he was promoted to vice admiral a year later), pitched in with whatever was to hand. In the first four months of the war, 47 British and French ships were lost to German U-boats, surface raiders and mines. With properly functioning torpedoes the number would have doubled.

Guenther Prien, captain of U-47, was the first of Doenitz’s new breed of young and daring submariners to sink a British merchantman. The Bosnia was caught off the north coast of Spain on 5 September. The crew was picked up by a Norwegian ship as the Bosnia, having caught fire, was finished off by a torpedo. Prien claimed two more British steamers before returning to base at Wilhelmshaven. Patrolling off the Hebrides, the Ark Royal, Britain’s most modern aircraft carrier, had a narrow escape when three torpedoes from U-39 exploded prematurely. The Courageous, a First World War cruiser rebuilt as an aircraft carrier in the 1920s, was less fortunate. Three days after the attack on the Ark Royal, U-29 came so close to Courageous it could hardly miss. With two torpedoes finding their mark, it took only fifteen minutes for the ship to capsize with a loss of 519 lives.

Doenitz had bigger targets in his sights. He needed a master stroke to set against the sinking of the Athena on the very first day of the war between Germany and Britain. The Athena was a medium-sized passenger liner on its way to Montreal with a full load of passengers only too eager to get away from Europe before the real fighting started. Captain James Cook assumed immunity from attack for an unarmed vessel. Germany had taken a pledge against unrestricted submarine warfare and Hitler was wary of upsetting neutral countries, the US in particular.

Unfortunately, the message had failed to get through to Fritz-Julius Lemp, captain of U-30, who judged the Athena to be fair game. She succumbed to a single torpedo. Most of the 118 passengers who died were trapped between the lower and main decks after the stairways collapsed. Among them were 28 Americans. Propaganda efforts to cover up for the Kriegsmarine including Goebbels’ claim that the liner had been sunk on Churchill’s orders to sway neutral opinion against Germany did nothing to stem the flood of hostile commentary from across the Atlantic. Memories of the Lusitania were still fresh.

The objective Doenitz had in mind, one that would restore the prestige of his service and his own standing with Hitler, was no less than to strike at the British fleet at its main anchorage at Scapa Flow. Guenther Prien was selected to lead this bold, some might have said suicidal, mission. U-47 set out from Wilhelmshaven on 8 October to make a surface crossing of the North Sea en route to the Orkneys. There were seven entrances to the Flow, all heavily defended, but air reconnaissance had shown a gap 50 feet wide at Kirk Sound between the island of Mainland and the islet of Lamb Holm. Cables obstructed half the entrance but there was just enough space for a submarine to squeeze through. This the U-47 did around midnight on 13/14 October.

Since the Home Fleet was out at sea in a fruitless search for the German navy, there were fewer targets than Prien had been led to expect. But the Royal Oak, a semi-retired battleship which lacked the speed for front-line duty, was at anchor, her crew blithely unaware that they were in easy range of U-47. Four torpedoes struck home. The Royal Oak exploded, turned turtle and sank, taking with it over 800 seamen. With a 10-mile-an-hour current running against U-47, Prien had more trouble getting out of Scapa Flow than getting in.

Prien was well on his way home when the Admiralty acknowledged belatedly that the Royal Oak had met its end not by accident, as first assumed, but by design. Churchill recognised ‘a remarkable exploit of professional skill and daring’. So too did Doenitz, who was on the quayside at Wilhelmshaven to welcome the crew and to bestow on each of them an Iron Cross – Prien’s being the Iron Cross, First Class. They all then flew to Berlin for a victory parade through the streets. The ‘Bull of Scapa Flow’, as Prien was now known, was received by Hitler who upgraded his decoration to the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross, Germany’s highest military decoration.

Prien became the first German war hero, feted wherever he went. An autobiography, suitably embellished by ghostwriters, was wildly popular. Under Prien’s command, U-47 went on to sink 31 Allied ships before she was reported missing in March 1941. What happened precisely has never emerged but the entire crew were presumed to have died. Prien was aged 33.

While Doenitz was rapidly gaining credibility he had yet to be given the freedom to mount random attacks on merchant shipping. But it was not long before neutral sensitivities took second place to the main objective of cutting the British lifeline to the US. In January 1940, Hitler agreed to the sinking of neutral ships without warning where the sinking might be attributed to mines.11 With the occupation of Norway and the fall of Holland and France in May 1940, the Kriegsmarine came into possession of ports that extended U-boats’ operational range by bringing them closer to Atlantic shipping. Said Doenitz, ‘The sea routes were now, so to speak, at the front door’. More U-boat commanders joined the ranks of national heroes. Volunteers lined up to join a service that had the pick of naval talent.

In charge of training was Hans-Georg von Friedeburg. Promoted to rear admiral in 1942, Friedeburg was to have a leading role in the winding-up of the Nazi regime. For now, however, it was his job to keep up the supply of dedicated officers and crews for the newly commissioned U-boats. Doenitz had high regard for his ‘true friend and loyal subordinate’ who proved to be a ‘particularly gifted organiser and a man endowed with an exceptional capacity for work’.12

By the end of May 1940, U-boats had sunk 241 ships totalling 853,000 tons. In June alone another 250,000 tons was sent to the depths. Given the small number of U-boats at sea and their less-than-perfect weaponry, this was quite an achievement. From July to the end of 1940 was known as die Glueckliche Zeit (‘the happy time’) for German submariners as they scored a succession of hits against British shipping. The victims included the Empress of Britain which, at 43,200 tons, was and remains the largest ship ever sunk by a submarine.