Hitler's Commanders (40 page)

It takes much longer to build a navy than an army and, to a much greater degree than with ground forces, a navy must be modeled after that of its most likely enemy. Hitler told Raeder to pattern his navy after those of Russia and France—the most likely enemies. Raeder did so without a backward glance. Neither wanted a war with Great Britain; therefore, they assumed that there would be no war with Great Britain. Apparently it never occurred to either of them that, whatever the provocation, Britain might declare war on Germany in 1939, just as she had done in 1914.

The honeymoon period between Raeder and the Fuehrer continued into 1937. In 1935, Raeder’s title was changed to commander-in-chief of the navy, and on April 20, 1936, Hitler used the occasion of his own 47th birthday to promote Raeder to
Generaladmiral
(full admiral). The straitlaced officer was made an honorary member of the Nazi Party in 1937. Meanwhile, in 1936, the keels were laid for the giant battleships
Bismarck
(41,700 tons) and
Tirpitz
(42,900 tons). In the following two years the battle cruisers
Scharnhorst
and
Gneisenau
joined the fleet, as did the light cruisers
Leipzig
and
Nuremberg
. The heavy cruisers
Admiral Hipper
and
Bluecher
followed soon after. Numerous destroyers, submarines, and other vessels were also built during this period, and the 1st U-boat Flotilla was created under Captain Karl Doenitz (see later discussion).

Cracks began to appear in Raeder’s relationship with the Nazi Party in 1938.
11
As early as January, Hitler was clearly putting pressure on him, saying that Germany needed a bigger battle fleet and criticizing Raeder for not moving fast enough. The admiral caustically pointed out that his naval construction program was in competition with Hitler’s public works programs, such as the Munich subway system, the huge Volkswagen Works, the autobahns, the reconstruction programs in Berlin and Hamburg, and others. As a result, the shipyards lacked skilled laborers, welders, and raw materials. Hitler ignored the protest but brought up the matter again on May 27; when he demanded, among other things, that the
Bismarck
and
Tirpitz
be completed by early 1940, that shipyard capacity be increased, that an artillery U-boat be developed, and that the Type VII U-boat go into mass production. No doubt on Raeder’s instructions, the German Supreme Naval Staff (
Seekriegsleitung
, or SKL; also referred to as the German Admiralty) responded by asking that all nonmilitary construction projects be shut down to release skilled labor for the military. Hitler refused to do this, so the naval construction program struggled slowly forward—well behind Hitler’s schedule for it.

A major part of the problem was that Hermann Goering, the commander-in-chief of the Luftwaffe, was also head of the Four Year Economic Plan, which was in charge of resource allocation to industry and to the various branches of the armed forces. He and the puritanical admiral despised each other. Raeder hated Goering because he blocked all the admiral’s attempts to secure a Fleet Air Arm and because of Goering’s disgraceful part in the Blomberg-Fritsch affair. Goering, on the other hand, undermined Raeder’s standing with Hitler by questioning his political beliefs, by pointing out that he went to church suspiciously often, and by giving the Fuehrer false or misleading information about the navy. Unwilling or unable to curry favor, or to persuade Hitler to overrule Goering on matters of allocation, the admiral saw his program languish. He did not seem overly concerned about it, however. The Fuehrer had told him that he would not need the navy until 1944 at the earliest, and Raeder believed him and acted accordingly.

Raeder was also having trouble from another enemy at court: SS-Gruppenfuehrer Reinhard Heydrich, head of the notorious State Secret Police (
Geheimes Staatspolizeiamt
, or Gestapo) and the Security Service (the SD). As a young naval officer Heydrich had broken off a marriage engagement in such a “peculiarly tasteless manner” that the young woman subsequently suffered a nervous breakdown. The puritanical Raeder—always the unbending guardian of naval morality—had him hauled before a court of honor and dismissed from the service for “impropriety.”
12
Heydrich retaliated in the late 1930s by trying to “get something” on Raeder. He never did (because there was nothing to get), but having the vengeful chief of the Gestapo as an implacable enemy would be enough to play on anybody’s nerves. Because of the backbiting political infighting, Raeder was considering resigning in 1938.

Erich Raeder viewed the Nazi persecution of Jews and other groups as a nasty business of which he did not approve, but, as it was not a naval matter, he considered it basically none of his concern. When such persecution touched on his navy, however, he sprang into action like an angry rooster. In the late 1930s, for example, the Nazis began to harass retired Rear Admiral Karl Kuehlenthal because he was half-Jewish and his wife and children were Jews. As soon as Raeder got word of it, he took the matter straight to Adolf Hitler himself. The first time Raeder brought up the matter, the Fuehrer sharply refused the naval commander-in-chief’s request to exempt the Kuehlenthals from the Nuremberg Laws (which set the framework for the Jewish persecution), but if Hitler thought the matter was ended here, he was seriously mistaken. Like a bulldog that has been kicked off once, Raeder simply kept coming back to it. These people were navy! Stinging verbal reprimands to the sailor’s face did the Fuehrer no good. The diminutive admiral brought up the request at the next encounter, and the one after that, and the one after that, until Hitler finally realized that the only way he would ever lay the matter to rest was to replace Raeder or give him his way. At last worn down, he personally signed the exemption. With this document, the Kuehlenthals not only avoided the death camps—they got to keep their property and Admiral Kuehlenthal continued to draw his pension until the end of the war.
13
This was not the only case of Raeder protecting naval people who happened to be Jewish; in fact, the Nazis succeeded in forcing only two non-Aryan officers out of the navy under the Nuremberg Laws. When the war broke out, however, Raeder quickly recalled them to active duty, where they received the same treatment as other officers.
14
Raeder even went so far as to intercede (successfully) for a few Jewish families he knew as a child in Gruenberg, even to the point of securing their release from the concentration camps, which he later swore he knew nothing about. This was as far as he would go, however; he did nothing to try to halt the persecution of non-naval Jews or other groups that the Nazis hated.

Jews were not the only people Raeder protected—provided, of course, they were navy people or personal friends. Christian Science Church members (with navy connections, of course) benefited from his intercessions, and at least one was released from a concentration camp because of him. Raeder also had a more or less continuous running battle with Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels and the Gestapo over the naval chaplains, who Raeder firmly supported on every occasion. A 1942 incident is typical. A naval officer (who doubled as a Gestapo stool pigeon) accused a naval chaplain of making derogatory remarks about some leading Nazis. The Gestapo attempted to have the case tried in a civil (i.e., Nazi) court, but Raeder would not stand for it. The chaplain was quickly brought before a naval court-martial (the members of which were appointed by Raeder) and was promptly acquitted. The admiral personally confirmed the verdict and then gave the Gestapo agent a dishonorable discharge from the navy for perjury!

Raeder’s relationship with Hitler became strained on November 1, 1938, when Hitler lost his temper with the admiral for the first time. Hitler tore the naval construction program plans to pieces and ordered Raeder to submit a new one. The Fuehrer was especially critical of the weak armament and armor on the
Bismarck
and
Tirpitz
and demanded that the U-boat fleet be rapidly expanded to reach parity with the British submarine fleet. He also ordered that the British be notified of his intentions immediately, in accordance with the terms of the 1935 treaty.

There were several more meetings between Hitler and Raeder in the winter of 1938–1939. And Raeder warned, “If war breaks out in the next year or two, our fleet won’t be ready.” Hitler loftily replied, “For my political aims I shall not need the Fleet before 1946!”
15

Once again Raeder believed him, just as he had when he had promised that there would be no war with Great Britain. Now the talk was of war with Britain and her allies, but not before 1946, and still Raeder believed—even though the Sudetenland crisis had brought the world to the brink of war barely three months before. The results of all of this was the famous Z-Plan (
Z
for
Ziel
, or “target”), which Raeder submitted to the Fuehrer on January 17, 1939. Although its final target date was not until 1947, the new naval construction plan called for Germany to have six Type H battleships (of more than 56,000 tons displacement and armed with 420mm guns) by the beginning of 1944, in addition to four
Bismarck
class battleships. It was also to have four aircraft carriers, 15 surface raiders (Panzerschiffe, or pocket battleships), five heavy cruisers, 44 smaller cruisers, 68 destroyers, and 249 U-boats. Hitler approved the plan on January 27 and assigned it absolute priority over both other services, while at the same time assuring Raeder that he would not need the fleet for several more years.

After the approval of the Z-Plan, Raeder was back in the Fuehrer’s good graces in the first half of 1939. On April 1, 1939, Hitler promoted him to grand admiral (
Grossadmiral
), the fifth in German history.
16
This era of good feeling was short-lived, however, and the reason was Hitler’s defense of a woman he had not even met.

In June 1938, Commander Karl-Jesso von Puttkamer, Hitler’s naval adjutant, returned to the destroyers for a tour of sea duty. He was replaced by 35-year-old Lieutenant Commander Alwin Albrecht. In 1939, Albrecht married a young schoolmistress from Kiel, with Erich Raeder acting as one of the witnesses. A few weeks later, in June 1939, the grand admiral received some anonymous letters revealing that she had been living in sin with a wealthy man. It turned out that she was well known to the local naval garrison at Kiel—in the biblical sense. Naturally, tales of Frau Albrecht’s past reached the ears of the navy wives, who quickly made their indignation known. Commander Albrecht sued one agitator—and lost. At this point the puritanical Raeder sent the adjutant on leave and showed up unexpectedly at the Berghof (Hitler’s residence on the Obersalzburg) and insisted that the commander be dismissed for entering into a dishonorable marriage. Hitler, however, refused to sack Albrecht or allow the grand admiral to do so.

The ensuing argument lasted two hours. Hitler screamed at Raeder—and Raeder screamed back. Their shouts could be heard all over the house. “How many of the navy wives now flaunting their virtue have had affairs in the past?” yelled the outraged Fuehrer. “Frau Albrecht’s past is the concern of nobody but herself!” Finally Raeder announced that he would resign unless Albrecht were dismissed.

The grand admiral could do as he pleased, Hitler replied. Raeder returned to Berlin in a huff. Shortly thereafter, Hitler invited Frau Grete Albrecht to the Obersalzburg. She was taken to the Bechstein guest house, an isolated villa near the Berghof, where Hitler visited with her for an hour and a half. Grete Albrecht was a tall blonde—just the type of woman Hitler liked. He found her charming and left the guest house furious with what he considered the double standard of the officer corps.

After this the incident took on overtones of a comic opera. Instead of resigning, Raeder dismissed Albrecht as naval adjutant on his own authority as commander-in-chief of the navy. Hitler retaliated by making Albrecht a personal adjutant. Albrecht was discharged from the navy on June 30, 1939, and was commissioned Obetfuehrer in the National Socialist Motor Corps the next day. (In effect, he had been promoted three grades in rank.) Raeder then refused to appoint a new naval adjutant. With war on the horizon, however, this important post could not remain vacant, so Puttkamer was recalled from the destroyer branch to reassume his old duties (although he was officially referred to as Alfred Jodl’s adjutant until October, to save Raeder’s face). Meanwhile, the navy invited Hitler to a launching at Bremen on July 1, but the dictator declined. The navy wives, meanwhile, rallied around Raeder, bombarding Albrecht with social invitations but not inviting his wife. For his part, Admiral Raeder never forgave Hitler’s insults and refused to confer with him again—a resolution he did not break until the start of the war.

Meanwhile, as if to complete the comedy, Grete Albrecht left her husband and moved back in with her former lover. Oberfuehrer Albrecht divorced her in 1940 and remarried the following year—more fortunately, this time. As a footnote, Albrecht never forgot the way Hitler defended him. He became a fervent Nazi and was reportedly killed fighting Russians in the streets of Berlin in 1945.
17

On the afternoon of September 3, 1939, two days after the invasion of Poland began, Grand Admiral Erich Raeder put his personal feelings aside and met with Adolf Hitler. Even now Hitler expressed the opinion that Britain would not fight. For the first time, Erich Raeder did not believe him. But now it was too late. The United Kingdom declared war on Nazi Germany that same day.

The German Navy went to war five years ahead of schedule and only four years after the post-Versailles expansion began. It had the wrong kinds of vessels and was in no way ready. “The surface forces . . . can do no more than show that they know how to die gallantly,” Admiral Raeder wrote gloomily in the SKL war diary. The German Navy’s total strength in surface vessels stood at two battleships, three pocket battleships, one heavy cruiser, six light cruisers, and 34 destroyers and torpedo boats. Of this total, however, very little was at sea, except for the pocket battleships
Deutschland
and
Graf Spee
, and the U-boats, which were under tight restrictions. Gradually Raeder persuaded the dictator to relax these restrictions until, in November 1939, with the main armies home from Poland and western Germany no longer exposed to invasion, Hitler agreed to declare unrestricted submarine warfare.