Hitler's Commanders (44 page)

One minute later, at 6:01 a.m., the
Bismarck
turned its guns on the British battleship
Prince of Wales
. By 6:13 a.m. this opponent had sustained several hits and was laying a smoke screen, trying to escape the German task force. Ernst Lindemann, the captain of the
Bismarck
, wanted to pursue the crippled British battleship and finish her off, but Luetjens—ever mindful of SKL orders—refused to do so. A violent argument ensued, but Luetjens held firm, and the
Prince of Wales
escaped.

The
Bismarck
headed for the open Atlantic, where the British lost her. Luetjens, however, broke radio silence and transmitted a long report to Berlin, enabling the British to re-fix his position. Even so, the bearings were misinterpreted and the pursuing force went off in the wrong direction. The
Bismarck
was re-sighted by a Catalina flying boat two days later, and a wave of Swordfish dive-bombers from Vice Admiral Somerville’s Force H attacked the German battleship with torpedoes late in the afternoon of May 26. One of these struck aft, jamming the rudder and making the battleship unmaneuverable. Efforts at repairing her proved futile. Nor could the
Bismarck
be towed, for Luetjens had already detached the
Prinz Eugen
. As he had predicted, it did not have the endurance to operate with the
Bismarck
.

On May 27, the British closed in on the
Bismarck
in overwhelming force. The last anyone ever saw of Admiral Luetjens was early that morning, as he and his staff walked across the deck of the
Bismarck
and headed for the bridge. He was unusually quiet and did not bother to return the salutes of the crew. About 9 a.m. the bridge suddenly became an inferno of flames, and this is probably when Gunther Luetjens perished, but this is impossible to confirm. Only 110 of the
Bismarck
’s crew survived, while some 2,100 (including the entire fleet staff) perished. Many of them drowned after the battleship sank at 10:40 a.m. The British made very little effort to save them. Some have suggested that had the situation been reversed, there would probably have been another “war crimes” trial in 1946 or 1947.

Luetjens made several serious mistakes in his last campaign. There is little doubt but that he should have sunk the
Prince of Wales
when he had the chance. Adolf Hitler was right when he dressed down Grand Admiral Raeder for this failure, which was at least as much Raeder’s as Luetjens’s. Hitler showed a rare flash of strategic judgment when he recognized this fact—although he seems to have forgotten that he himself had urged caution from time to time. In any event, after the
Bismarck
debacle, Hitler never fully trusted Erich Raeder’s judgment again. “Whereas up till then he had generally allowed me a free hand, he now became much more critical and clung more than previously to his own views,” Raeder wrote later.
29
This was not necessarily bad for the German Navy. Raeder had exhibited questionable judgment since before the war began and since 1939 had shown a tendency to dissipate the navy’s strength on raids of dubious value. Hitler’s biggest mistake as a naval leader—other than not building enough U-boats and going to war too soon—was not replacing Erich Raeder much sooner.

Although from all accounts a good person, Luetjens must go down in history as a failure as a fleet commander. Certainly he was an unlucky one. His fatal flaws included an underestimation of the potential threat of aircraft to capital ships, a gross violation of the most elementary principles of radio security, and a slavelike obedience to the poor strategic thinking of the Supreme Naval Staff—even to the point of allowing it to cloud his own, sounder judgment. “Luetjens,” one former German naval officer wrote, “personifies the tragedy of a commander whose personal ability was sacrificed on the altar of dutiful obedience.”
30

And what happened to Wilhelm Marschall, who had warned Luetjens not to listen too closely to the instructions of Raeder and his Supreme Naval Staff? His career seemed to be over until Admiral Raeder suddenly called him out of retirement on August 12, 1942, and named him commanding admiral, France. Six weeks later he was promoted to commander-in-chief of Naval Group West, then headquartered in Paris. Raeder had thus promoted the fleet commander he had previously dubbed a failure and worse, and whom he had forced into retirement in semi-official disgrace. Even so, when Marschall tried to bring up the subject of his actions in Norway, Raeder refused to discuss it. Did this mean that Raeder had realized the validity of Marschall’s concept of tactical freedom of action for commanders at sea and thus recognized his own errors? Marschall thought so but also believed that Raeder “would rather have bitten his tongue out than admit it.”
31

Generaladmiral Marschall was among those senior officers retired in the first weeks of the Doenitz regime in 1943. He was again recalled in June 1944, to head a special authority staff for the Danube River. Retired again in November 1944, he was reappointed commander-in-chief of Naval Command West on April 19, 1945. He held this post until the end of the war. After being released from Allied captivity in mid-1947, Wilhelm Marschall wrote a number of articles on naval history and strategy. He died at Moelln (in Schleswig-Holstein) on March 20, 1976, at the age of 89.
32

karl doenitz
was born in Gruenau-bei-Berlin on September 16, 1891, the second (and last) child of Emil Doenitz, an optical engineer working for the famous Karl Zeiss firm of Jena. His wife, Anna, died in 1895, so Karl and his older brother Friedrich were raised by their father in a thoroughly Prussian mold, with one exception: not being of the nobility, Emil realized that the key to his sons’ futures lay in having a good education. As a result, Karl was sent to the Gymnasium at Zerbst and the Realschulen in Jena and Weimar. Brought up in the Prussian tradition of selfless service to the state, young Doenitz joined the Imperial Navy as an officer-cadet at the Naval School at Kiel on April 1, 1910.

Cadet Doenitz was a hard-working, reserved, stern, and silent young man who believed that “duty fulfillment was the highest moral value.”
33
He was not an outstanding officer candidate (Doenitz proved to be something of a late bloomer) nor a particularly popular one, but he nevertheless passed his intensive training. He was promoted to midshipman in 1912 (the year his father died) and was transferred to the Navy School at Muerwik (on the coast of Schleswig-Holstein) for further training. To complete his apprenticeship he was sent to the light cruiser
Breslau
, where he was named signals officer—an unusually responsible post for a Faehnrich. He was appointed
Leutnant zur See
(equivalent to ensign, U.S. Navy) in the fall of 1913.

Aboard the
Breslau
, Doenitz was part of the international squadron blockading Montenegro during the Balkan crisis of 1913. Caught in the Mediterranean when World War I broke out in 1914, the
Breslau
evaded the Royal Navy and escaped to Turkey, where it, in effect, joined the Ottoman Navy and fought against the Russians in the Black Sea. On one raid it sank every ship in the Russian oil port of Novorossisk and destroyed the petroleum storage facilities there.

Meanwhile, Doenitz met and became engaged to Ingeborg Weber, the independent-minded daughter of a general. At the time the slim, outgoing, and energetic Ingeborg was a 21-year-old nurse at the General Embassy Hospital in Constantinople. She and Ensign Doenitz exchanged vows in May 1916, and it was to be a good marriage despite their different personalities. Both their sons were killed in action as naval officers in World War II.
34

In July 1915, the
Breslau
hit a Russian mine off the entrance to the Bosporus and was out of action for months. While the cruiser was being repaired, Doenitz joined the Air Service and fought at Gallipoli as a gunner and aerial observer. When the
Breslau
came out of dock in February 1916, he was named adjutant, and in March he was promoted to
Oberleutnant sur See
(lieutenant in the U.S. Navy). By now Doenitz was marked as a superior junior officer. In the summer of 1916 he was recalled to Germany and transferred to the U-boats—a branch on which the German Navy now pinned all its hopes.

Oberleutnant Doenitz reported to the U-boat school in Flensburg-Muerwik on October 1 and, after intensive and difficult training, graduated with distinction as a qualified submarine officer in January 1917. Leaving his wife (who was six months pregnant with their only daughter, Ursula), Doenitz was posted to the Adriatic port of Pola, where he joined Kapitaenleutnant (lieutenant, senior grade) Walter Forstmann’s
U-39
as the torpedo officer. Here he received invaluable on-the-job training under one of the outstanding U-boat “aces” of World War I, a Pour le Merite holder who was credited with sinking 400,000 tons of enemy shipping by 1917.
35

Doenitz performed well aboard
U-39
and, after almost a year, was recalled to Kiel, where he attended a four-week U-boat commanders’ course. In January 1918, he was given his first command: the 417-ton
UC-25
, a combination minelayer and torpedo attack boat based at Pola. He was ordered to operate in the Mediterranean. By the time Doenitz went out on his first independent patrol in the spring of 1918, the German unrestricted submarine warfare campaign was clearly being defeated by the British convoy system and its improved depth charges. Doenitz nevertheless excelled, sinking a steamer, and then, boldly entering the Sicilian port of Augusta, he torpedoed a 5,000-ton Italian coaling vessel, which he mistook for the British repair ship
Cyclops
. For this daring raid the Kaiser ordered him decorated with the prestigious Hohenzollern House Order, even though on the way back to home port, while attempting to negotiate a minefield at night, he ran his boat aground and caused significant damage to it. To add to his humiliation, he had to be rescued by an Austrian destroyer, which towed him off the bar the next day.

UC-25
was repaired in July, and Doenitz took her out again, laying mines in the Corfu area before attacking four ships. One was forced to beach at Malta, and the others apparently sank—but Doenitz could not wait around to watch because they were heavily escorted. This cruise was an outstanding success, since the obsolete
UC-25
could carry only five torpedoes. As a reward, Karl Doenitz was given command of the larger and faster
UB-68
. Unfortunately for him, this boat had an inexperienced crew and lacked stability in dives. On October 4, 1918, Doenitz attacked a convoy, sank the 3,883-ton British steamer
Oopack
, and dived. The inexperienced engineer immediately lost control, and the U-boat fell like a rock, almost literally standing on its head. Justifiably concerned that the hull of the submarine would collapse under the pressure, Doenitz ordered compressed air into all tanks, both engines full astern and rudder hard aport. This maneuver terminated the dive at 102 meters—32 meters below the maximum allowable depth rating for this boat. (The deck was, in fact, cracked, and the buoyancy tanks caved in under the pressure of the water.)
UB-68
did not collapse, but it was still out of control. It shot to the surface with such force that one-third of the boat actually left the water. Opening the hatch, Doenitz found himself in the middle of the convoy, with British destroyers racing toward him, their guns blazing. He quickly closed the hatch and ordered another dive. There was no compressed air left, however, so diving was impossible. By now British fire was hitting the boat, and Doenitz had no choice but to order abandon ship. The inexperienced engineer opened the sea cocks to scuttle the boat but could not get out before she went down. His death haunted Doenitz for years. Two other crewmen also drowned. The rest were picked up by the British. A depressed Karl Doenitz was aboard a British cruiser at Gibraltar, awaiting transport to a POW camp, when the High Seas Fleet mutinied at Kiel. A few days later the entire country was in revolt, the Kaiser had fled to Holland, and Germany was asking for an armistice.

Meanwhile, Doenitz was sent to an officers’ prison camp at Redmires, near Sheffield. He naturally wanted an early repatriation, for a number of reasons. Professionally, his chances of getting a responsible job were much better than if he came back with hundreds of other officers. Doenitz went to unusual lengths to get sent home, however: he faked insanity. According to Wolfgang Frank, he played child’s games with tin cans and small china dogs “until even his first lieutenant thought he was crazy.”
36
In fact, years later, many of his former prison mates shook their heads in dismay as Doenitz, whom they remembered as a lunatic, climbed to the highest ranks in the navy. His insanity was instantly cured, of course, when he returned to Germany in July 1919, as one of the first POWs released.

Doenitz returned to duty as a staff officer at the Kiel Naval Station. His ambition, almost from the beginning, was to rejoin the U-boat branch—an arm that he was certain would be reformed someday in spite of the fact that Germany was denied submarines under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. The following year (1920) he transferred to the torpedo boats, and by May 1920, was commander of
T-157
, operating out of Swinemuende on the Pomeranian coast. Promoted to Kapitaenleutnant in early 1921, he returned to Kiel in 1923 as an expert (
Referent
) in the Torpedo, Mine, and Intelligence Inspectorate, where he worked on the development of a new depth charge. In the fall of 1924, following a short staff officers training course conducted by Rear Admiral Erich Raeder, Doenitz was posted to the
Marineleitung
—the Naval Command in Berlin. Here he worked on writing new service regulations and a new military penal code, and on combating Bolshevik subversion in the navy. The political nature of this job forced the apolitical Doenitz to come into close contact with the Reichstag and reinforced his dislike for party politics.