The Hitler Options: Alternate Decisions of World War II by Kenneth Macksey

Author:Kenneth Macksey [Macksey, Kenneth]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FICTION / War & Military
ISBN: 9781473842472
Publisher: Frontline Books
Published: 2015-02-18T23:00:00+00:00

The very fact of the war’s continuance at that time underlined the bankruptcy of Göring’s strategic concepts. By then, had he agreed to pass operational control of any significant part of the Luftwaffe to the Kriegsmarine, peace would have been long achieved. As it was, the Fatherland itself was now subject to bombing raids by Britain’s Royal Air Force—something that the Reichsmarschall had confidently claimed would be impossible with “my Luftwaffe” on guard.

Meanwhile, the Kriegsmarine had continued on its own account. Before the war, the British believed they could control U-boats by means of escorted convoy and Asdic. But Asdic worked only against deep-submerged boats, and the only means of detecting surfaced boats was eyesight; so when a convoy was sighted, the U-boat commanders had only to shadow it during the day at periscope depth, then attack on the surface at night like invisible vengeful angels. Operating with the celebrated “wolf pack” tactic devised by Admiral Dönitz, they wrought havoc. Battles could last for 72 hours or more, with dozens of ships going down. Commander (now Admiral) Otto Kretschmer in particular developed the highly skillful technique of penetrating within the convoy before commencing his attacks, so that the convoy itself protected him from its own defending escorts. Throughout 1940–41 the British strove to invent some improved method of locating U-boats, yet could come up with nothing. There was one important but more or less fortuitous British victory at sea: the sinking on 27 May 1941 of the battleship Bismarck. However, coming as it did just three days after she herself had valiantly attacked and sunk the British battlecruiser Hood, this left the balance of surface warships unaltered. In contrast, the U-boats could report a year of steady, determined forcefulness: 1299 merchant ships in British service, totaling over 4.3 million tons, were no longer afloat. This was news which, for a man like Dönitz, could only be delivered with deeply mixed emotions. On the one hand, as a naval officer in wartime, he could not but be satisfied; on the other, as a sailor, he could not avoid the private human recognition that he had had to inflict upon fellow sailors the ultimate terrors of their common enemy, the deep. There was only one consolation: the knowledge that it was in the best of causes, transcending both his fate and the fate of any individual British merchant seaman—the reinstatement of a pure and kindly brotherhood of the sea unadulterated by politics.

First, foremost and throughout, Dönitz provided an almost unexampled quality of support and leadership to the brave men under his command. He gave them to understand, rightly, that they were the champions of the Reich, and they, nicknaming him der Löwe (“the Lion”) and Onkel Karl, responded with a mixture of respect and devotion which has had few equals in naval history. In any navy of any era, he would have been an outstanding leader; in the Kriegsmarine in 1939–43 he was pre-eminent.

He was the one man and his U-boats were the one weapon to inspire real fear in Churchill.

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