Dönitz: The Last Führer (10 page)

The struggle within the Turkish government grew more critical as Enver and the German mission forced the pace with preparatory troop movements for a descent on Egypt and intrigue within that country. The British government considered the possibility of counteracting the German influence by a show of force with the fleet now off the Dardanelles to fight its way in and appear off Constantinople. However, the Germans had increased both the minefields and the efficiency of the forts and the British military attaché advised against it.

In these circumstances Enver decided to force the issue with his fleet—or perhaps Souchon or the German generals suggested it. According to the German official history he waited for a promised German loan of two million Turkish Pounds before putting the plan into operation;
⁷⁵
directly the money had been transferred on October 23rd, he gave Souchon his orders; these were dated the previous day and directed the German
Flottenchef to
sail into the Black Sea with all battleworthy units of the fleet, seek out the Russian ships and attack wherever they were found without declaring war. He was to justify his action as retaliation—at least this is what Souchon did, so it may be inferred it was included in his orders.
⁷⁶

The fleet assembled at the entrance to the Bosphorus to sail, so it was
believed, for a wireless and reconnaissance exercise in the Black Sea; this was for the benefit of the Russian Embassy and other foreign observers in Constantinople. In the early hours of October 27th, as the needle-like shapes of the minarets and the domes of mosques and palaces emerged in the first grey light, the ships awoke to life. Here is Dönitz’s description in his first book,
The Voyages of the Breslau in the Black Sea
, published in Berlin in 1917:

And so they started into the Bosphorus, as Dönitz wrote, ‘perhaps the loveliest Straits in the world, whose sloping banks adorned with gardens, parks, country houses and villas begin to light in the reddish glow of early dawn’. After a while the banks began to separate and fall away, the
vineyards and summerhouses and old ruined castles replaced by forts and lighthouses, and the Black Sea stretched before them and on either hand, sunlit to the horizon.

The morning was spent in exercises. In the afternoon a signal from the flagship ordered all captains aboard. ‘I will never forget,’ Dönitz wrote in his memoirs, ‘the Captain returning with shining eyes.’
⁷⁸
Almost at the same moment a flag signal was hoisted in the
Goeben
, ‘Do your uttermost. It is for the future of Turkey!’ Once again war fever gripped officers and men, this time scarcely even tinged with apprehension; the
Goeben
was the most powerful ship in the Black Sea, and both she and the
Breslau
had the speed to escape from any force that might overmatch them in numbers.

Soon the fleet was steering northeastwards at high speed in divisions gradually separating as they headed for different objectives: the
Goeben
with destroyers and a minelayer to lay minefields across the entrance to Sebastopol, where the Russian fleet was lying, and bombard the ships inside, another division to bombard the port of Odessa, and the
Breslau
and
Hamidieh
, towards the Straits of Kertch leading to the Sea of Azov. Reaching their destination in the early hours of the following morning, the cruiser laid mines, then steamed east to the oil port of Novorossisk, presented a formal demand to surrender and, when it was refused, bombarded for two hours. All the ships there were sunk, the harbour installations destroyed and the petrol storage tanks ignited, the flames sweeping along whole streets of houses. When they left, a huge pall of black smoke hung over the blazing town and the glow could still be seen over the distant horizon that evening as they made their way back to the Bosphorus.

Souchon failed to accomplish anything to compare with this as he was driven off by gunfire and then chased by destroyers! However, he sent the required signal to Constantinople: he had been treacherously attacked by the Russian fleet and in retaliation had bombarded their base and coastal towns. It was such an extraordinary story that he later changed it—he had discovered a Russian minelayer about to lay mines in Turkish waters off the entrance to the Bosphorus, had sunk her, then proceeded to the Russian coast to bombard. This was an equally preposterous tale and although the returning ships were fêted as victors by the local populace, the ministers did not take long to find out the truth; after a violent meeting it was resolved to continue the policy of neutrality. At this point, however, Enver and his German coconspirators
were rescued by the Russian government, which rushed into a declaration of war against Turkey. So the scheme succeeded, with the fateful consequences so well known, the entry of Bulgaria with Turkey, thus securing the southern flank of the central powers, the dissipation of Russian effort, the Middle Eastern campaigns—Gallipoli. As the official British naval historian put it, ‘when we recall the world-wide results that ensued it is not too much to say that few naval decisions more bold and well-judged were ever taken’ than Souchon’s run for the Dardanelles.
⁷⁹

The officers of the
Breslau
now received a training in cruiser warfare in the best school of all, continuous active operations. While most of their comrades in the High Seas Fleet, locked up in the Heligoland Bight by the overwhelming superiority of the British Grand Fleet, fretted at inactivity, the
Goeben
and
Breslau
contested command of the Black Sea with the numerically far stronger Russian fleet. The chief task was escorting troop and supply transports across to the Caucasus where the land war with Russia was concentrated. As this involved crossing practically the whole width of the sea from west to east, and as the Russians, operating from their central base, Sebastopol, were ideally placed to cut them off on either leg of the voyage it called for extreme care, particularly in reconnaissance.

It was on one such reconnaissance sortie that the
Breslau
had its first serious brush with the enemy. It was an impenetrable winter’s night—Christmas Eve—when suddenly the cruiser found herself in company with several ships. A signal lamp flashed; the
Breslau
trained her searchlights on the vessel in response and found the Russian battleship,
Rostislaw
, horrifyingly close. Immediately the gunnery officer, Carls, opened fire. The 10.5-cm shells could not have penetrated the armoured vitals of the enemy but the Russians were surprised by the rapid and no doubt accurate night fighting technique and the cruiser was able to escape.

The same day the
Goeben
struck two mines which had been laid in deep water across the entry to the Bosphorus. She limped home but was out of action for many months. The
Breslau
was now the principal warship in the Turkish fleet as the old pre-dreadnought battleships were too slow to be risked; she cruised continuously, frequently acting as troop transport herself, at night fighting off Russian destroyer attacks. Here is Dönitz’s description in his 1917 book:

On this occasion the badly damaged Russian destroyer sank and the other suffered heavy casualties. The
Breslau
’s own loss was seven dead and fifteen wounded from three hits.

Naturally there was shore leave between the sorties. Here is Dönitz describing a foray into the city in the summer of 1915.

Leaving, they wandered through the old quarter to the town walls and the ancient Jedi-Kule, the castle of seven towers, where they were shown around by a Turkish invalid. When told they were from the
Midilli
, he looked pleased, and placing both index fingers together, said ‘
Alleman Turk biraarder
’ (German and Turk brothers). ‘We nod,’ Dönitz wrote, ‘and reach a hand to him with a generous “baksheesh” in confirmation of friendship.’

Towards sunset they visited the great mosque of Santa Sophia, its mighty cupola already filling with the shades of night. ‘Innumerable oil lamps in chandeliers hanging beneath the cupola are alight, and shining like stars in the gloom of the cupola heaven.’ Impressed by the sight and by the Turks at prayer, they returned aboard.

There is a lightness and sensitivity and a quiet irony in the writing. Not bad, one feels, for a young officer at the height of a war when so many were busy turning out turgid heroics—not that his descriptions of battles at sea are free from heroics. Nevertheless one has the impression of being in the company of a civilized man.

By this time he must have met Sister Ingeborg Weber, his future wife. She was a slim, lively 21-year-old, a fully-trained nurse with a mind of her own; a distinctly ‘modern’ young woman. One can imagine that the snatched times they found together between demanding duties, and the heightened sense of life and the value of the present moment that goes with wartime gave their courtship something of the fairy-tale, poignant quality of old Stamboul itself. Certainly Karl Dönitz would have contributed temperament.

Here is another vignette from his pen of that summer of 1915. Perhaps
Sister Inge was one of the guests on the ‘yacht’ the
Breslau
officers had acquired for pleasure cruising: