The struggle of the various German governments since 1871 to achieve world sea-power has been one of the visible manifestations of an expansionist and aggressive philosophy. Geographically a large fleet was not necessary for the protection of Germany’s shores. Her coastlines are relative short and protected. Other nations, particularly Norway, her neighbor to the North, have been able to maintain far-flung merchant fleets without a large naval force. In like manner the Dutch and Portuguese have until recently governed distant empires without a mighty fleet.
Potential continental enemies have given Germany a rational excuse for large armies. These have, however, been land threats. Any desire of Germany for great sea power has always been an expression of a desire for conquest and expansion. Under the Kaisers, naval rivalry with England was fostered with an eventual struggle in view, and naval might was superimposed on a nation that could use it only aggressively. Re-creation of naval power under Hitler was an obvious warning of his dreams of conquest, no matter how it was excused in terms of national defense and national honor.
After the Imperial fleet’s self-destruction at Scapa Flow and the severe restrictions of the Versailles Treaty, it seemed inconceivable that a scant twenty years later Germany could once again possess sea power that could be a threat to the world. Within two decades German naval might, as a component of a colossal military force, dared once again challenge the combined power of the English and French fleets.
The scuttling of seventy-four major warships at Scapa Flow was the Gotterdämmerung of the Imperial fleet. The short lived but carefully nurtured Imperial naval tradition, stemming from the naval force of Prince Adelbert von Preussen’s small mid-nineteenth century fleet, was literally wiped out. Yet this tradition did not die completely, but was carried over into the new Reichsmarine.
Under the terms of the Versailles Treaty, Germany was allowed only a small impotent navy; a token fleet rendered harmless by severe restrictions. The naval establishment was limited to 15,000 officers and men, and the fleet to six old battleships, six light cruisers of not over 6,000 tons, twelve destroyers, and a small assortment of light craft and patrol boats. The battleships could be replaced by ships of not over 10,000 tons after they were twenty years old. Likewise cruisers could be replaced only after twenty years of service.
Although minute in size, the nucleus of officer personnel stemming from the old Kaiserliche Kriegsmarine was made up of men devoted to the cause of German sea power. Perhaps it was innate love of militarism, or perhaps a need for self-justification for the years spent in Imperial service, but in any case the officer corps of the new Reichsmarine pursued the goal of once again making the German fleet a power with which to be reckoned with masoschistic devotion and energy. They were not, however, humble men wrapped up in what they considered a holy cause. They were as arrogant as their brothers in the Reichswehr, as proud as their cousins on the great Junker estates in Pomerania and Silesia, and as self-seeking as their friends in the Herrenklub in Berlin.
The formal purpose of the Reichsmarine as stated in the Weimar constitution was, first of all, national defense. It was also organized to protect German commerce and the merchant marine and fisheries. It was responsible for charting and hydrographic work, and was also charged with coast artillery defense, a duty not entailed to the old Imperial navy.
Treaty limitations set the number of officers of the Reichsmarine at 1500. This was roughly divided into 660 line officers, 170 engineer specialists, 90 medical officers, and 510 warrant officers. Some 70 supply corps officers were designated as officials with officer rank. There were to be approximately 3,500 petty officers and 10,000 seamen. As all enlistments had to be for twelve years, these treaty quotas were filled over a number of years to insure a future turnover of personnel and to make possible the continuous recruiting of younger men.
In early post World War I years, the Reichsmarine stayed out of politics. Political strife was one of the causes of the demoralization of the old navy, and the first chief admiral of the Reichsmarine, Admiral von Trotha, had been forced out of his position when he too actively backed the wrong political horse. Until the advent of Hitler it was naval policy to be above and aloof from the continual change of chancellors and cabinets, and the foibles of national unrest and disturbances.
Typical of the post-Versailles Reichsmarine officers was a Kapitän-zur-See Francois. Francois had started his naval career as an enlisted man on the Kaiser’s yacht. His energy, efficiency, and enthusiasm soon brought him to Wilhelm’s attention, and he became a chief boatswain’s mate, then an officer. During the First World War he commanded an auxiliary in the Baltic, and had later been assigned to the naval enlisted personnel section in Berlin.
In the Reichsmarine he was given the post of chief of enlisted personnel. Francois had complete self-confidence in his judgment of people and human nature. He was convinced that by talking with a man he could size him up, and claimed to have personally interviewed every recruit accepted by the Reichsmarine during the first decade of its existence.
Francois exemplified the traits found in Reichsmarine officers. He was proud—proud of his service and devoted to it. He evidenced a typical German melancholic romanticism, talking continually of the past glories of German sea tradition. He was energetic, opinionated, and bull-headed. He was, however, zealous and possessed of dynamic singleness of purpose. He was able, intelligent, and patriotic. His interest in politics extended only as far as it affected naval matters.
By 1921 the groundwork for the Reichsmarine had been completed, and the first vessels were officially commissioned; the battleship Hannover and the cruisers Hamburg, Medusa, and Arkona. They were all old vessels, useless as fighting ships but adequate for training purposes. Gradually other remnants of the old Imperial fleet, too old even to have been surrendered at Scapa Flow, were recommissioned, and by the end of 1925 the fleet was well up to Treaty limitations. Two coast artillery companies were also activated as part of the naval establishment.
The Reichsmarine was organized into two separate fleets, geographically and tactically independent. The North Sea fleet had headquarters at Wilhelmshaven, and the Baltic fleet was based at Kiel. Except for joint manoeuvres these fleets operated independently and maintained their own shore establishments, much as do our Atlantic and Pacific fleets. Coastal defense was a third and separated command. One ship was usually on “foreign station,” making extended cruises purely for public relations and flag-waving purposes. After the ascension of the Nazis to power, the personnel of any vessel assigned to such duty was always carefully hand-picked to make a good impression in the lands it visited.
The administrative organization was planned from the beginning for building, maintaining, and operating a great fleet. The planning and operations staff was composed of seventeen sections, each headed by an officer of rank and having several juniors. The bureaus into which the naval ministry was divided were maintained on a similar scale. The Reichsmarine was planning and looking ahead to the day when the restrictions of the Versailles Treaty would be lifted, or a regime would come into power that would dare to defy them. Much of the technical and research work was carried out by civilian officials who were to all intents and purposes officers, although not formally commissioned. Thus the junior officer strength could be kept in the fleet, rather than dissipated throughout the bureaucracy of the naval administration.
In 1926 the first new major post-Versailles ship, the light cruiser Emden, was commissioned. She was an experimental vessel, and again primarily for training. In 1929 the 6,000-ton light cruisers Köln and Karlsruhe were placed in service. They were the first post-war fighting ships, but their appearance meant much more than the addition of two light cruisers to the fleet. To the officers and men of the Reichsmarine they were symbols of hope and of spiritual rebirth. They were the first signs of resurgent German power. As ships they were well designed, and compared most favorably with contemporary ships of like size of other navies. Three other ships of the class followed at intervals, and Germany once again possessed a fleet-in-being that, although small, could command the attention and respect of her neighbors.
In the earlier days of the Weimar Republic the Reichstag maintained a generally pacifistic outlook, and was not overly generous in the appropriation of funds. Had the naval ministry received the appropriations it requested annually, the outmoded ships would have been speedily replaced. Not until Hitler came into power were practically unlimited funds placed at the navy’s disposal. Nevertheless the Reichstag never made any attempt to curtail the slow growth of the navy; and the navy, unlike our own during that period, generally got most of the funds for which it asked.
The problem of replacing the outdated battleships with 10,000 ton vessels that could match the heavier ships of other nations presented a challenge to German technical ability. The old relics of the Imperial navy were approaching the age when they could be replaced under Treaty restrictions, but to coordinate offensive firepower and speed with defensive armor in a vessel of such size seemed well nigh impossible. The result achieved, while a hybrid design, startled the naval world. The Deutschland, first of the famous “pocket battleships,” was laid down in February, 1929, and immediately attracted the attention of naval experts of all nations. Her construction made a particularly strong impression in France, and popular magazines took up the cry of a new threat from the Germans. On paper the German navy was still a powerless token force, but in France were felt the first chills of fear of renascent German power. France immediately countered Deutschland with the battlecruiser Dunkerque, and the drafting rooms in many nations, including our own, were busy with designs that would outweigh, out-speed, and outshoot the ingenious pocket battleship.
Extreme measures were taken in the Deutschland to save weight. For the first time in any major warship, all-Diesel propulsion was used. Two M.A.N. Diesels drove her at a rated twenty-six knots. Rivets were replaced by welded plates, again to save weight. The Deutschland was crammed with every known technical device to give her striking power out of all proportion to her actual tonnage. Her cost was thus tremendous, in excess of $1800 a ton, a huge sum for the early 1930’s.
Few experts would concede that the pocket battleship’s tonnage was within Treaty restrictions, but the point was never pressed. Actually the Deutschland and her two later sister-ships were in excess of 12,000 tons.
With the construction of the Deutschland, control of the Baltic was once again restored to Germany. The Reischsmarine was now more than a match for the outmoded ships of the Russians and the smaller ships of other Baltic powers. Despite the Naval Treaty of 1930, the Deutschland signaled the start of a new naval race, and the Reichsmarine began to receive more attention than it warranted because of its size. What was feared, however, was not its existing size, but the potential danger of revived German sea power.
The slow rebirth of the German navy was accompanied by the gradual reactivation of shore installations and a thorough training program. The inflation and depression following the financial debacle of 1929 made a naval career attractive and secure, and the innate Germanic love of militarism meant that the small German armed forces could attract the cream of the nation’s youth into their ranks. While facilities were limited, training was carried out with Teutonic thoroughness and iron Prussian discipline. It is interesting to note that in 1933 out of 13,500 petty officers and enlisted men, 9,355 were Prussians.
With the advent of National Socialism the chains of the Versailles Treaty were broken. The combination of the old-line militarists and the new political robber-barons, both out for all they could get, made military aggrandizement inevitable. Almost immediately after the ascension of Hitler to power the green light was given to all the armed forces to embark on a heretofore unequalled peacetime expansion. The General Staff, outlawed at Versailles, but which had been quietly functioning behind the scenes, was brought out into the open. Steps were immediately taken to create an invincible air arm, and the concept of “Blitzkrieg” was introduced into German military planning.
As a corollary of military expansion, a vicious program of indoctrination of German youth in thinking and acting along military lines was undertaken. Into every phase of German education was introduced a subtle emphasis on military life, the glory of war, and the dedication of manhood to fighting for one’s country. Through the Hitler Youth every boy received a basic training not only in military discipline but also in military thinking. Saturday outings were devoted to “war-games,” and every youth was thoroughly indoctrinated with the spirit of militarism and nationalism. This can be contrasted with the youth peace movements and pacifist propaganda that were so strong in America, England, and France during that period.
The German navy also received the go-ahead signal from Hitler. In Admiral Erich Raeder, who had been named Admiral-in-Chief of the Reichsmarine in 1928, Hitler found a staunch supporter, and it was unnecessary to replace him with a more sympathetic commander. Hitler represented to Raeder his long dreamed of opportunity to enhance his own power and prestige. National Socialism stood for the re-creation of Germany’s military might, and it represented to Raeder a chance to make his fleet a mighty one, a chance to reassert the power and position of the Fatherland, and his chance to become a personage of world importance. Thus he followed Hitler for the advantages it brought. From the beginning Raeder was a true Nazi. He was a confidant of the Party big-wigs, and used his position to his own and his service’s advantage as much and as often as possible.
A particularly painful thorn of the Versailles Treaty had been the clause forbidding submarines. This had been, of course, Germany’s most potent naval weapon, one in which she excelled and which had nearly brought her victory in 1917. Without an underseas arm, her small fleet was incapable of offensive action, and before embarking on any campaign of conquest, it had to be backed up by underwater strength. Soon after the Nazi’s Machtübernahme in January, 1933, the keels for the first submarines were laid, and early in 1935 Germany was able to proclaim to the world the existence of a submarine force in defiance of the Versailles Treaty.
The rise of Hitler was, however, not the reason for the reappearance of German submarines. It was merely the agent which made it possible. These submarines had been on the drafting boards in the design rooms in Wilhelmshaven and Kiel for years. They had been a gleam in many an Admiral’s eye, and the advent of the Nazis made them possible.
The first post-Versailles submarine flotilla was commissioned in Kiel in the spring of 1935, and was christened Weddingen in honor of the World War I U-Boat ace. In command was Admiral Doenitz, whose star was to rise with the growth of the underseas fleet. These first U-Boats were small 250 ton coastal craft, ideal for experimental purposes and the task of charting the underseas currents in and around the British Isles.
As did the German populace at large, the officers of the Reichsmarine gave their loyalty to Hitler in varying degrees. There were some who were strong and active Nazis, either because they believed in National Socialism and the philosophy of the Superman, or because they were eager for personal power. Raeder gathered around himself in Berlin a personal staff of dyed-in-the-wool Nazis, and one could sense a distinct gap between them and many of the ranking fleet officers. Nevertheless it did not pay to let any anti-Nazi feelings be shown, for position, promotion, and career depended upon outward loyalty to der Fuehrer.
The vast majority of the officers accepted National Socialism for the strength it had given the armed services. Through it their own positions, security, and importance were enhanced. Naval expansion meant more rapid promotions. The Nazis stood for military expansion, and thus an officer could easily excuse or shut his eyes to other acts of the Nazis that he did not like. Above all, the Nazis were clever in maintaining the traditional position of the officer in the eyes of the German people. From times of the early Teutons, to be an officer was the epitome of social position and prestige. By continuing and emphasizing this tradition, the Nazis assured themselves of an officer corps loyal to the regime and to the country, if not to the Party itself.
There were a few, however, who were absolutely opposed to Hitler, but felt that their duty as officers required them to submerge their political feelings. That too may have been a rationalization of lack of moral courage in giving up security and position to follow true beliefs. But it took the courage of the Gods to openly oppose the Nazis, and few were able to do so. One man, however, developed this courage, although too late. Admiral Canaris, for many years, prior to Hitler, Chief of German naval intelligence, was a ringleader in the 1944 plot on Hitler’s life, and lost his own because of it.
In 1935 the Reichsmarine achieved the greatest victory of its entire quarter century of existence, a victory not at sea but in the halls of diplomacy. The Anglo-German Naval Treaty of 1935 opened the first chapter in the disastrous policy of appeasement. Faced with existing German submarines that openly flouted the Versailles Treaty, England was forced to recognize that the Treaty was all but dead. The result was the Naval Pact of 1935. It allowed Germany to build up its surface strength to thirty-five per cent of the Royal Navy. It further allowed Germany an underseas fleet forty-five per cent as large as Great Britain’s, and contained an escape clause which would allow her submarine parity with Britain should Germany ever deem such strength necessary to her national defense.
The flood gates were thus opened for well nigh unlimited new construction, and the naval building program was stepped up to intense proportions. The last of the three pocket battleships, the Luetzow, was commissioned in 1936, and a new class of straight 10,000 ton eight-inch gun cruisers was started. These ships were roughly equivalent to the Washington Treaty cruisers of other nations, but were perhaps the best designed of that type up to that time. To parry France’s Dunkerque class, the battle-cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau were completed. The underseas fleet grew rapidly and Germany began to concentrate on larger submarines of the ocean-going 500- and 750-ton classes. Similar expansion of other types of vessels—destroyers, mine craft, tenders, training ships, and auxiliaries—also took place.
From 1934 on, all German shipyards were crammed with naval construction. The navy yards at Wilhelmshaven, Kiel, and Emden were supplemented by the huge yards of Blohm & Voss at Hamburg and Vulcan at Vegasack. Deschimag at Bremen concentrated on U-Boats, and the Krupp owned yards of Germania and Deutsche Werke at Kiel specialized in U-Boats and cruisers.
Technically these new warships were excellent. Emphasis was put on rate of fire rather than size and calibre of guns. The optical range-finding equipment built by Zeiss was unsurpassed. Great emphasis was laid on automatic control in the engine and fire rooms of surface ships, and in some destroyers Askania high pressure boilers that were completely automatic were installed. In the battle-cruisers and battleships, weight-saving cruising Diesels were employed.
The expansion of the fleet was backed by tremendous expansion of shore installations and personnel. By 1936 there were 40,000 officers and men in the Reichsmarine—nearly three times its strength in 1933. The Kiel area was a center of training, and new shore facilities dotted the coastline. At Eckernforde the old Torpedo Experimental Station was reactivated and enlarged into three tremendous units. Adjacent to the Naval Academy at Flensburg-Muerwick a tremendous torpedo school was erected. The new gunnery school at Kiel dominated the western shore of the bay, and the administration headquarters and barracks at Plon would make a campus of which any American University would be proud. Similar expansion took place at nearly all North Sea and Baltic ports, with more perhaps in the Baltic area where most of the training and experimental work was done. It was better protected and farther removed from prying foreign eyes.
Industrial production was also coordinated with the needs of the armed forces. At Kiel, for example, the Elektroaukoustic torpedo plant was erected. In a near-by village, submarine engine development work was carried on at the Walther Werke plant.
The revolution in Spain was the testing ground for many of the new weapons to be used in World War II, and in a most ignoble way the Reichsmarine had a brief opportunity to actually try its prowess. It took part in the farcical non-intervention patrol off the Spanish coast and, while lying in Iviza Harbor, Balearic Islands, the Deutschland, was bombed by an unidentified plane. Twenty-two of the crew were killed and several score wounded. In retaliation, a few days later a contingent of German warships bombarded the defenseless Republican town of Almeria. This was one of the most outrageous acts of modern naval history, and was a foretaste of some of the fighting methods of the German armed forces. The entire civilized world was shocked and disgusted by such an atrocious retaliatory attack.
Kiel in 1938 was the center of tremendous naval activity, an activity obviously geared to an expected war. Ship after ship was being commissioned, and new ambitions and new plans were being hatched. The atmosphere was one of magnificent uniforms, romantic militarism run wild, and arrogant nationalism. Such activity stirred the German soul. The Nazis were drunk with power and conceit, and the German nation as a whole had lost what little sense of proportion and tolerance it had ever had. War not only seemed inevitable, but an observer felt that he was already in the midst of one. It was merely a question of which international incident created by the greedy, ambitious Nazi hierarchy would be the spark that would once again set the world aflame.
During 1938 the first formal plans for an eventual war with England were drawn up by the General Staff in Berlin. Psychologically the navy was far less enthusiastic about the inevitable struggle than were the land and air forces. Although the growth of the Reichsmarine during the previous five years had been phenominal, years more of preparation and new construction would be required before the Reichsmarine would feel ready to meet the mighty Royal Navy. The Reichsmarine, alone of the German armed forces, was not ready for conflict, but in their enthusiasm for the potentialities of victory on land and in the air the General Staff felt that the navy need only harass the British fleet and tie up its surface units. They gambled on the vast superiority of the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe to bring them speedy victory. Nevertheless the navy made war preparations with an inferiority complex. Many experienced sea officers realized that the Reichsmarine was far from ready to successfully combat the combined fleets of England and France.
In all this expansion, naval aviation was forced into the background. Goering would tolerate no rivals to his Luftwaffe, and quashed any plans for an independent naval air arm. The German fleet had to rely on the Luftwaffe for air coverage and coordinated attack. When the Luftwaffe was organized, a group of younger naval officers was transferred to it. After flight training, they were assigned to the so-called “Naval Wing” of the Sixth Area Command of the German Air Force, based near Kiel. They wore Luftwaffe uniforms, and were part and parcel of it. They served, however, aboard ships that carried observation planes, and specialized in working with the navy. Goering had made the Luftwaffe his pet project, and simply would not accede to the existence of any independent naval air force.
The Reichsmarine made one abortive attempt at carrier construction. The Graf Zeppelin was from the start a white elephant. Logically Germany could have little use for aircraft carriers, for her immediate potential enemies were well within striking range of land-based planes, and the Reichsmarine did not possess sufficient surface support to maintain a carrier task-force at sea on long- range missions. Raeder felt, however, the need for “keeping up with the Joneses,” and since other major powers boasted of carriers prestige demanded the construction of the Graf Zeppelin. Her design was hasty, and her construction laborious. In 1945 Allied forces found her three-fourths completed hull abandoned in the harbor of Kiel. It was said that to balance the “island” on the flight deck, her designers had simply placed a thick steel slab on the opposite side of the ship.
In 1938 Hitler invoked the escape clause governing submarines in the Anglo-German naval pact, using increased Russian submarine construction as an excuse, and the underseas forces began to receive great emphasis in German naval planning and new construction. The greatest of the Reichsmarine’s surface units were, however, also nearing completion, the Bismarck and the Tirpitz. These were magnificent ships. The battleships of the English and French construction programs were to be 35,000 tons, and the Germans simply designed ships that would be more powerful in every respect than the new vessels of these rival powers. They were over 800 feet long, with a beam of 118 feet and a tonnage in excess of 40,000 tons. Their main battery consisted of eight 15-inch guns, and their defensive armor and compartmentation were prodigious. These were the first of the world’s modern super-battleships, and were the most powerful of any European power. “Scuttlebutt” quickly spread the legend that the Bismarck was unsinkable, and her eventual loss was a tremendous blow to German naval morale.
Despite this feverish expansion, the Reichsmarine was not as strong at the outbreak of hostilities as it could have been. Apologists for the German navy have maintained that the Anglo-German Naval Pact was the only treaty Hitler never broke. Early in 1939 he denounced it, but it was impossible for him to violate it in most categories of ships. There was simply insufficient time and, still more important, insufficient materials to build up to treaty limitations. Under the Pact, Germany could have had five Bismarcks. Yet only two could be brought to completion during the early stages of the war. The same ratio held true for other types of surface vessels, although the underseas fleet soon outstripped England’s in size.
All raw materials for naval construction were allocated by a national raw material control in Berlin. There was insufficient to meet the insatiable demands of the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe, let alone the Reichsmarine. Shortages of bronze and electric cable were particularly acute. Completion of one destroyer, for example, was held up for months because of imperfectly cast propellors. Spares were not available, and the propellors had to be shipped back to the foundry to be recast.
The Reichswehr had held several dress rehearsals for war. The overrunning of Austria and Czechoslovakia had been public displays of military power, and it was now the turn of the Reichsmarine to show its teeth. In March, 1939, it swooped down on unsuspecting Memel. This was practically an all-naval affair. Naval landing forces and a small contingent of soldiers were landed by the Baltic fleet early one morning, and in the afternoon the Fuehrer himself landed and proclaimed the reintegration of the lost Memelgebiet into the Third Reich. It was a speedy surprise operation, meeting no resistance, but it proved that the German navy was once again a force with which to be reckoned.
By September, 1939, the German navy had reached sizable proportions. True, it was by no means the equal of the Royal Navy, and it was not ready to be committed to a naval war, but it possessed strength that could not lightly be dismissed. The mighty Bismarck was fitting out and the Tirpitz was nearing completion. The Scharnliorst and Gneisenau were powerful ships, more powerful than all but a handful of French and English warships. Four cruisers of the Prinz Eugen class were either in commission or fitting out. There were the three famous pocket-battleships and six relatively new light cruisers. Two additional light cruisers of a new class had been laid down. Most important of all, however, was the powerful U-Boat fleet, upon which Germany once again counted to strangle Britain’s life-line of merchant shipping. In support of these vessels was a host of new destroyers, mine craft, tenders, and auxiliaries. Backing up the fleet were excellent shore facilities and a national industry already geared to war production. Personnel was well trained and the younger officers zealous and confident. In the two decades since Scapa Flow, the Reichsmarine had come a long, long way.
On September 2, 1939, the die was cast. As the Panzertruppen rolled across the plains and marshes of Poland, the Reichsmarine converged upon the short Polish coastline. In a few days its ships were in the harbor of the free city of Danzig, and—shades of the Versailles Treaty!—newsreels in the theatres of the world were showing pictures of the aged Schleswig-Holstein, completely modernized, pouring shells into Gdynia and the Westerplatte ammunition dump, defended by a handful of gallant Polish troops. The damned fools were at it again!