The War With Hitler's Navy

By Adrian Stewart

As this well researched work reveals, Hitlers handling the German Navy during the Second World War was full of contradictions.The seriousness of the U-boat threat was never in doubt and in the dark days of 1940 1942, the Donitzs daring strategy coupled with the courage and determined actions of the captains and crews became perilously close to starving Britain into submission.But, despite having built and nurtured a surface fleet with capital ships of formidable power, Hitler was uncharacteristically cautious of employing them aggressively. Examination of the reasons for this make for fascinating reading, possibly stemming from the early loss of the Graf Spee and the fact that, whenever possible, the Royal Navy threw all its weight regardless of cost at the Nazi threat; the loss of the Hood in the pursuit of the Bismarck being one example. Even Goebbels could not spin the loss of a battleship.The War against Hitlers Navy describes in fascinating detail the many fronts on which the adversaries faced each other and analyzes the reasons for the ultimate outcome.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Oct 30, 2018
• ISBN: 9781526710598

Adrian Stewart

Adrian Stewart was educated at Rugby School before taking First Class Honours at Caius College, Cambridge. His previously published works with Pen and Sword Books include: Eighth Army’s Greatest Victories, Early Battles of Eighth Army, They Flew Hurricanes, The Campaigns of Alexander of Tunis 1940-1945, February 1942 – Britain’s Darkest Days, Carriers at War, Six of Monty’s Men and Ten Squadrons of Hurricanes (2015) have all been published by Pen and Sword Books. He lives near Rugby.

Book preview

Chapter One

The Construction of Hitler’s Navy

In fact, the navy that fought for Adolf Hitler in the Second World War was already in existence before he became Chancellor of Germany on 30 January 1933. It was, however, small in size, with its future development strictly regulated by the terms of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles. These allowed Germany to retain only six obsolete pre-dreadnought battleships; their number could not be increased and if any were replaced, this could be done only with vessels that did not exceed 10,000 tons and possessed guns of no more than 11in calibre. Germany was not allowed to have 8in-gunned heavy cruisers and only six light cruisers, with 6in guns and not exceeding 6,000 tons. The tonnage of smaller warships was also controlled and no submarines were permitted. The navy’s strength was limited to 15,000 officers and men who had to serve for a minimum of twenty-five and twelve years respectively. Germany’s army was also drastically reduced and military aeroplanes were forbidden absolutely.

It was perhaps not surprising that every effort was made to evade these restrictions even before the advent of Hitler. The German army, officially not to exceed a strength of 100,000 men, slowly but steadily rose above that figure. Coastal defences were either not destroyed as ordered or were quietly reconstructed. A military air force was secretly revived under the guise of state-owned civil aviation and government-sponsored flying clubs, while a certain Major Hermann Göring, for instance, spent a total of six years at different times flying with the Swedish Air Force.

Similar evasions were commonplace in the German navy. The limit on manpower was surpassed by such devices as placing naval departments under civilian ministries. In 1925, the first new light cruiser, Emden, was launched. She was just within the limits prescribed at Versailles, but over the next five years three more light cruisers appeared that not only had nine 6in guns compared to Emden’s eight, but a tonnage that exceeded those limits. So did that of twelve new destroyers that came into existence at the same time. Still more significantly, a ‘Submarine Development Bureau’, disguised as a shipbuilding firm, was set up in Holland, by which U-boats were built in Spain and Finland, while future U-boat crews were trained under the pretence that they were learning methods of anti-submarine warfare. By 1930, Germany was quite capable of producing and manning her own U-boats if the Versailles prohibition could only be lifted.

Meanwhile, other potentially ominous events had occurred. In 1928, work on the first vessel designed to replace Germany’s old battleships had begun at Kiel. The Deutschland was armed with six 11in guns and eight of 5·9in calibre. She had diesel engines that proved troublesome at first but gave her a maximum speed of 26 knots, faster than that of any British capital ship except the battle-cruisers Hood, Renown and Repulse, and an operational range of some 19,000 miles. Yet she was supposedly of only the 10,000 tons allowed by the Versailles Treaty and although it would later emerge that she was really at least 12,000 tons, it was still a remarkable achievement for a ship of this size to have such capabilities. The Germans called her a panzerschiff or ‘armoured ship’ but other countries admiringly labelled her a ‘pocket battleship’.

A vessel with this speed and range had obvious potential for attacking convoy routes, a fact that would have given considerable satisfaction to Admiral Erich Raeder who became the head of the German navy in 1929. During the First World War, Raeder had served with Germany’s High Seas Fleet and seen action at the battles of Dogger Bank and Jutland as an officer on the staff of Vice Admiral Franz von Hipper, commander of its Battle-Cruiser Force. Later, however, he was to be one of the authors of the German navy’s Official History and during his researches for this, he became fascinated by the German surface ships that had operated as commerce raiders thousands of miles away from their homeland.

Raeder particularly admired the German Pacific Squadron commanded by Vice Admiral Graf (Count) von Spee, which had defeated a British cruiser squadron at Coronel before being destroyed itself, fighting gallantly against impossible odds, in the Battle of the Falkland Islands. When he reached the height of his profession, therefore, Raeder’s first action was to order the building of two more pocket battleships which, presumably much to his approval, were named after von Spee and the German commander-in-chief at Jutland, Vice Admiral Reinhard Scheer.

This then was the situation when Hitler became Chancellor. Just three days later, on 2 February 1933, he addressed his chief military and naval commanders, frankly declaring his intention to tear up the Treaty of Versailles and urging them to proceed with the rearmament of the country as soon as possible. Raeder, who was among his audience, would later admit that he was ‘highly pleased at the prospect’.

He had every reason so to be. German rearmament, supported by massive state loans, now proceeded at a frightening pace. In the naval sphere, the first result was an order for two more battleships and it soon became clear that they would be far more powerful than the Deutschland class. Their armament had been increased to nine 11in and twelve 5.9in guns, their speed to more than 31 knots and their size to a later admitted 26,000 and an actual 31,000 tons. With their high speed and their comparatively light armament, they were in fact battle-cruisers. Again no doubt to Raeder’s approval, they were named Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, the same as the 8in-gunned armoured cruisers that had formed the main strength of von Spee’s squadron and, incidentally, been the champion gunnery ships of the Imperial German Navy.

In March 1935, the mask came off. Already as early as October 1933, Germany had contemptuously withdrawn from both the Geneva Disarmament Conference and the League of Nations. Now the tonnage of the German battle-cruisers was discovered and it was revealed that Germany had a new military air force with Göring as its commander-in-chief. Finally, on the 16th, Hitler introduced conscription and announced that there would be a huge expansion of the German army to a strength of half a million men. Every one of these steps was contrary to the provisions of the Versailles Treaty but since these had been hated throughout Germany as symbols of humiliation, their removal was hailed with joy and the Führer received an adulation from the German people that was only forfeited by the catastrophes of the Second World War.

Even before March 1935, Germany’s withdrawal from the League of Nations and persistent rumours of her secret breaches of the treaty had produced an air of tension. As a result, the year 1934 saw Britain’s then National Government take the first steps to strengthen her armed services. The weakness of the Royal Air Force caused particular concern, for it was felt that if hostilities with Germany should occur, the greatest danger to Britain would come from an aerial bombardment and Winston Churchill, then a backbencher, was loudly warning that Germany was already violating the terms laid down at Versailles and creating a strong military air force.

On 19 July 1934, therefore, the government proposed that the Royal Air Force should be increased by forty-one squadrons over a period of five years. The very idea horrified the Labour and Liberal parties which had persistently called for progressive disarmaments, not rearmament. They combined to bring a Vote of Censure on the government in the House of Commons and supported this with a determination worthy of a better cause. Their principal spokesman was Mr Clement Attlee, a future leader of the Labour Party and a later prime minister, who bluntly stated: ‘We deny the need for increased air armaments.’ Mercifully, Parliament did not agree and the belated expansion of the RAF began.

With regard to the Royal Navy, the Treasury was less generous with its provision of funds, so naturally naval rearmament was more modest. Nonetheless, one very important and significant step was taken: a new aircraft carrier was ordered. It would join the fleet in 1938 and was given the inspired name of Ark Royal, once carried by the flagship of Charles, Lord Howard of Effingham at the time of the defeat of the Spanish Armada.

In 1935, though, a different attitude was adopted by the Admiralty. On 21 May, Hitler made one of his cleverest moves. Though on this same day the name of his navy was changed from the Reichsmarine to the Kriegsmarine (War Fleet), the Führer did not want a war with Britain, at least so long as she did not obstruct his aims and in any case not just yet. He therefore declared that he had no wish for a British-German naval rivalry similar to the one that had existed before 1914 and specifically stated that he was willing to limit his fleet to a tonnage of 35 per cent of that of the Royal Navy which, incidentally, would be 85 per cent of the current strength of the navy of France.

Though the French were understandably unhappy with the idea, the British government, strongly supported by the Admiralty, eagerly accepted Hitler’s proposal. They have been accused of being incredibly naive but they felt that since the Germans clearly had no respect for the Versailles Treaty, the naval provisions of which had already been ignored in practice, it would be best to limit the damage threatened and reach a new agreement that no-one could possibly claim was ‘dictated’, as Germany alleged Versailles to have been. On 18 June 1935, the Anglo-German Naval Agreement was signed in London, confirming the 35 per cent limitation, at least where surface vessels were concerned.

It had been the Admiralty’s hope that with the bonds imposed at Versailles removed, Britain and Germany could rely on the integrity of their fellow professional seamen. Unfortunately, this trust was quite misplaced. In 1936, Germany began work on two new battleships that would be known as Bismarck and Tirpitz. The British were advised that these would be of 35,000 tons, the limit previously accepted by all the great powers except Germany, and the British Naval Attaché in Berlin, Captain Troubridge, would later recall ‘Raeder’s earnestness and apparent sincerity, assuring me that Germany meant to adhere strictly to the Agreement.’

Yet it was Raeder who expressly ordered that the new battleships should exceed 35,000 tons. They would be of 42,500 tons standard displacement; of well over 50,000 tons fully laden. They would be able to make 30 knots despite armour 13in thick in places and with eight 15in guns in four massive turrets each weighing 1,000 tons plus twelve guns of 5·9in calibre, they would be superior to anything in the Royal Navy. Similarly, the 8in-gunned cruisers that Germany was now allowed to build were stated as being of 10,000 tons but in reality were of a standard displacement of more than 14,000 tons, nearly half as big again as their British equivalents, and more than 18,000 tons fully laden.

Since the Germans were also engaged in building up their army and air force and Hitler assured his naval advisers that there would be no war with Britain before 1944, his navy had not in fact reached the size authorized by the Anglo-German Naval Agreement when hostilities broke out in 1939. Still less was it anywhere near the huge fleet that Raeder intended should be in existence in 1944. To this extent, therefore, the consequences of the agreement were not as severe as could easily have been the case.

There had, however, been another aspect of that agreement. Germany, forbidden to have any submarines by the Versailles Treaty, was now allowed to build them up to 45 per cent of the British tonnage and with the right to increase this to 100 per cent if she considered it necessary, as she informed Britain that she did on 21 January 1939. Since the frames and parts of a dozen U-boats had been secretly stored at Kiel during 1934, construction of them proceeded rapidly but, somewhat surprisingly, it appears that the Germans did not exceed the number allowed by the agreement so long as that remained in force.

In return for permission to build U-boats, Germany agreed that they would not be used against merchant shipping and in 1936 joined with other countries in expressly denouncing such attacks. This at least aroused some scepticism in Britain, for in that case it was difficult to see of what value submarines could be to Germany, and in 1938 the Admiralty openly published instructions to the captains of merchantmen on how they should act in the event of war. These doubts were well-founded. On the outbreak of hostilities, Hitler, for political reasons – he hoped for a compromise peace after the fall of Poland – did order his U-boat commanders to obey the Hague Convention under which merchant ships could not be attacked without warning. All limitations, however, were progressively lifted on the insistence of Raeder, who favoured an unrestricted submarine war.

This was also the view of the officer to whom was entrusted the development of the new U-boats and the training of their crews. Captain – soon to be Commodore – Karl Dönitz was a capable, experienced officer who had for a time been a U-boat commander during the First World War and had made attacks on the surface at night, when his submarine’s low silhouette had enabled him to remain undetected. He was convinced that his U-boats would be the major weapon in a war with Britain and, unlike Raeder, as early as 1937 he was certain that such a war was inevitable.

His Führer was soon to take steps that would prove Dönitz right. Already on 7 March 1936, he had sent troops into the Rhineland, where their presence had been expressly forbidden at Versailles and by the subsequent 1925 Locarno Treaty. It can now be seen that this was a fateful moment. The French army was perfectly entitled to move into the Rhineland and drive out the three German battalions that were all that had entered it. Had this happened then, as Hitler later admitted, Germany would have received a check that would probably have destroyed his prestige and brought down the National Socialist regime. At the time, though, there was a general reluctance to interfere with a German action in what was undeniably a part of Germany and had been acclaimed with delight by the Rhinelanders. The French did not act and they received no encouragement to do so from Britain.

In 1938, however, Hitler moved outside the boundaries of Germany. On 13 March, Austria was swallowed up and became ‘a province of the German Reich’. Next, Hitler turned his attention to Czechoslovakia where more than 3 million Germans lived in areas, collectively called Sudetenland, that bordered on Austria, Bavaria and Silesia. A vicious propaganda offensive began, accusing the Czechs of ‘terrorizing’ these people and demanding that their territory become part of Germany.

This, indeed, was exactly what happened on 30 September 1938, after a series of frantic conferences usually collectively known as the ‘Munich Crisis’. For this sad result, much abuse has been heaped upon Neville Chamberlain and Edouard Daladier, prime ministers of Britain and France respectively. Yet these men were only reflecting the attitude of their peoples whose longing for peace was sincere and who faced the prospect of war not only with loathing but with dread. That the German army chiefs did not want war at this time either was not then known and even if it had been, would probably not have lifted British and French pessimism.

For the French, the first concern was that they would have to attack Germany unaided by the British who still firmly believed that their army should not become involved in fighting on the Continent, for which it had been provided with utterly inadequate funding. The next concern was the Siegfried Line, the German defences in the Rhineland. Its fortifications had been steadily built up since 1936 and although not yet complete, they provided, as even Churchill admits, ‘a fearful deterrent’ to a France that remembered only too well the blood-baths of an earlier conflict.

For the British, the position is thus summed up in Victory at Sea by Lieutenant Commander Peter Kemp, an officer with Naval Intelligence during the war and Admiralty Archivist and Head of the Historical Section after it:

The Prime Minister, Mr Neville Chamberlain, asked for a report from the Chiefs of Staff on the military implications of an alliance with France and other European states to resist by force any German attempt to attack Czechoslovakia. Their reply was categorical. They stated, without making any qualifications, that the country was not ready for war, that no measures of force, whether alone or in alliance with other European countries, could now stop Germany from inflicting a crushing defeat on Czechoslovakia, and that any involvement in war with Germany at this stage could well lead to an ultimate defeat, through unpreparedness, of this country herself.

What seemed particularly alarming to the Chiefs of Staff were the threats to Britain from German U-boats and German bombers. There was a serious shortage of the warships needed to protect British merchantmen from the former and a still more serious shortage of the modern fighters needed to defend the country from the latter. Even though the range was too great for German fighters to accompany their bombers, the vast majority of British aircraft had insufficient speed and armament to deal with these: one squadron commander bluntly informed his pilots that the only way they could bring down enemy aircraft was to ram them. The only modern monoplanes with eight machine guns then operational were two squadrons of Hurricanes and these could not fight above 15,000ft since heating for their gun-bays had not yet been installed.

Mercifully, after Munich, steps were belatedly taken to remedy the neglect of years and rectify Britain’s problems. The army began to receive sufficient funds and equipment to enable it to fight in Europe. The navy began to fill the gap by building small escort vessels such as the Hunt-class destroyers and the Flower-class corvettes. As for the RAF, in September 1938 it had had no Spitfires at all but a year later it had nine squadrons of them with two more converting, and it had nineteen squadrons of them during the Battle of Britain. The Hurricanes, though bigger than the Spitfires, were easier to build and their two squadrons at the time of Munich rose to sixteen in September 1939, twenty-eight at the start of the Battle of Britain, and thirty-four by the end of it.

This was just as well, for on 15 March 1939, in flagrant defiance of promises made at Munich, Hitler seized the rest of Czechoslovakia. From that moment on, all illusions vanished. Until then, it had been easy, if self-deluding, to feel that Germany had only been rectifying provisions of the Versailles Treaty that many considered unjust and redrawing her frontiers to include other members of the German race. This, after all, had been the principle on which in 1919 Austria-Hungary had been fragmented and Germany herself had lost territory to France, Belgium, Denmark and Poland. However, such an excuse would serve no longer and German aggression stood revealed with obscene clarity.

Until this moment, Britain had done everything possible to avoid a confrontation. Now no reasonable person could doubt that Germany could only be stopped by force. Chamberlain, who was very honest if lamentably shortsighted, was outraged and revolted by the revelation of Hitler’s craftiness and deceit. On 17 March 1939, he denounced the German dictator and everything the dictator stood for.

He did more. It was clear that Germany’s next move would be against Poland, towards which the usual preliminary demands, threats and abuse had already been directed. On the 21st, Chamberlain persuaded the French government to join with him in guaranteeing that if any action was taken against Poland, their two countries would join with Poland in resisting it. On the 31st, this decision was formally conveyed to the House of Commons. Of course, neither Britain nor France could directly protect the borders of Poland – or of Czechoslovakia for that matter – but the warning was clear: ‘Thus far and no farther.’ If Germany invaded Poland, then she would risk all the consequences inherent in fighting a major war.

In case there should be any doubt that Britain’s intention was serious, on 27 April Chamberlain announced the introduction of military conscription. Although the men still had to be trained and armed, this was, as Churchill noted in The Second World War, ‘a symbolic gesture of the utmost consequence to France and Poland’ and he tried hard to persuade the Opposition parties to ‘support this indispensable measure’. Astonishingly, they refused and Attlee, now the Labour leader, even declared that ‘The measure proposed is ill-conceived and, so far from adding materially to the effective defence of the country, will promote division and discourage the national effort.’ Happily, his arguments were rejected and Chamberlain’s proposal was carried by 380 votes to 143.

While it is possible that this parliamentary dispute may have given Hitler some hope that the British might yet flinch from war, it seems that in his heart he knew they would not and he was certainly not prepared to flinch from it himself. On learning of Chamberlain’s undertaking to Poland, he had flown into a berserk rage, screaming threats against Britain. Now, on 27 April, he curtly ended the Anglo-German Naval Agreement and thereby, according to Vice Admiral Friedrich Ruge in Sea Warfare 1939–1945: A German Viewpoint, issued ‘a blatant threat to England’s vital interests’.

Hitler’s naval advisers had mixed views as to whether Britain would fight if her warnings over Poland were ignored. Dönitz, as was mentioned earlier, already believed that war with Britain could not be long delayed but Grand Admiral Raeder, as he had become, was reluctantly reaching the same conclusion. The end of the Naval Agreement meant that Germany could build as many U-boats as she wished. Dönitz urged that she should start to do so as soon as possible, and after naval exercises in the summer of 1939 had convinced Raeder of their likely effectiveness, he supported his subordinate’s demands. The competing requirements of the German army and air force prevented any great expansion for the moment but the time would come when it would take place with a vengeance.

Events then moved remorselessly to their appointed end. On 10 May, the German navy and air force were instructed to make ready for attacks on British merchant shipping, in the navy’s case to be carried out by both submarines and surface vessels. On 23 May, in a conference with his senior officers including Raeder, Hitler declared that England, as he persisted in calling Britain, was Germany’s main enemy and he did not think it would be practicable to reach ‘a peaceful settlement’ with her. By mid-August, plans for the assault on Poland were complete and Hitler was working to secure his eastern front by reaching an understanding with the Russian dictator Josef Stalin. On 19 August, Stalin agreed to enter into a non-aggression pact with Germany. This was signed on the 23rd, together with a secret