Dönitz: The Last Führer (12 page)

Dönitz said remarkably little about Walter Forstmann in his memoirs; ‘outstanding’, and in another place ‘one of the best Commanders of World War 1’ are the only comments he permitted himself, while the ten months of eventful, at times highly exciting, always brilliantly successful cruising in U 39 he dismissed in one sentence. This is so different from his eulogies to, for instance, von Loewenfeld and von Knorr, so different from the detailed descriptions of excitements and even quite ordinary events during his cadetship, in the
Breslau
and later in the U-boats he commanded himself as to demand explanation. Explanations are hard to find. Judged by Forstmann’s favourable report on Dönitz at the end of their time together and friendly correspondence later it seems unlikely to have been caused by a quarrel.

Fortunately, both an account by Forstmann himself and the surviving war diary of U 39 allows a reconstruction of this significant period in Dönitz’s career. Before that, though, a brief review of the position reached in the U-boat campaign at this time, January 1917—for just as the Second World War was a continuation of the first, so Dönitz’s own U-boat campaign beginning in 1939 was a continuation of this earlier struggle.

Ever since the sinking without warning of the Cunard passenger liner,
Lusitania
, by U 20 in May 1915, and the subsequent sinking without warning of the White Star passenger liner,
Arabic
, en route Liverpool-New York by U 24 in August that year, the sharp American reaction had governed U-boat strategy. The Navy had been forced by the civilian government in Berlin to abandon ‘unrestricted’ warfare, forced to give instructions that passenger ships were never to be attacked, finally forced to shift the centre of gravity of the campaign from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean where there was less likelihood of inflaming US opinion. This had seriously affected the chances of success, for the approach to the British Isles was the prime area in which to blockade Britain, and the requirement to surface and warn victims before attacking deprived U-boats of their prime advantages of invisibility and surprise as well as exposing them to unnecessary danger from their victims’ guns—particularly since harmless-seeming merchantmen might turn out to be disguised submarine hunters, or ‘Q’ ships with concealed guns or torpedoes and naval crews.

The Navy therefore fought hard against the restrictions. By early 1916 they had found an unexpected ally. The Chief of the Great General Staff, von Falkenhayn, recognized that the Army’s plan had failed; the whole strategy of concentrating hammer blows on one opponent at a time to crush each in turn swiftly had collapsed, and trench warfare had led to stalemate in which the central powers were on the defensive. Moreover the allies’ total command of the surface of the sea—outside the Baltic—was depriving them of essential food and raw materials. In these conditions von Falkenhayn had come round to the naval view that Great Britain was the main enemy, the support of the weaker members of the alliance, and the power that had to be crushed before anything could be achieved on the continent; as the Navy considered itself too weak to support an invasion across the Channel, the sole remaining possibility was the unrestricted U-boat campaign that the naval staff was pressing for.

So the blinkers had been partly lifted from the eyes of the Great General Staff; somewhat late they had come to realize why Tirpitz and Wilhelm and the civilian government had been so alarmed at Great Britain’s entry into the war. However, the larger aspects of naval command and industrial power seem still to have escaped them—or perhaps they had more faith in the professional judgement of the sailors than suited professional soldiers whose own plans had miscarried—for
unrestricted U-boat warfare was bound to bring the United States and other important neutrals into the ring against them. On this count the civilian government managed to block the proposals, but the Chancellor was forced to agree to a resumption of operations in the Atlantic so long as the prize rules of stop and search and allowing the crew into the boats were adhered to, and so long as no passenger ships were attacked. Both services continued to press for the ‘ruthless’ campaign they held essential to defeat Great Britain, and in March 1916 the government gave way another step, allowing attack without warning on all
British
ships within a declared blockade area around the British Isles—though still no passenger ships were to be attacked.

Almost immediately U 29 torpedoed the cross-Channel steamer
Sussex
crowded with passengers. Probably this was a case of mistaken identity rather than the ‘Hunnish brutality’ portrayed in the allied papers; for instance the British submarine Commander, Nasmith, operating in the Sea of Marmora in E 11 the previous year had attacked a vessel which he took to be a troop transport, only to find she was crowded with women and children refugees; miraculously the torpedo had failed to explode and no harm had been done. In any case, amongst the
Sussex
passengers were US citizens; there were also neutral Spanish citizens, two of whom were killed. As a result of the ensuing international furore the Navy was forced to cut back U-boat operations in the Atlantic and concentrate on the less sensitive Mediterranean area.

That summer Germany’s position had grown worse with the entry of Rumania into the war against her and a sharpening of the food and materials shortage caused by the allied naval blockade; as a consequence the delicate balance of power at the top shifted: increasingly a new Chief of the Great General Staff, Field Marshal von Hindenburg, and his Quartermaster General, Ludendorff, became identified in the public mind as the strong leaders needed to rally the nation; the civilian government became more a rubber stamp than before, and since Wilhelm had been cast aside long since, the two Army leaders, repositories of the Prussian tradition, became the real rulers of the
Reich
.

With the Army in power it was only a matter of time before the U-boats were ‘unleashed’—the Prussian use of language was always instructive—to conduct a ‘ruthless’ campaign to knock Great Britain out of the war—for the only alternatives were to submit to slow strangulation and eventual defeat—preceded by internal revolution—or accede to American peace mediation, which would scarcely result in the great
Prussian-dominated
Mitteleuropa
for which so much blood had been spent already. The moment came on February 1st 1917—in fact just as Karl Dönitz was preparing to join U 39. The risk was acknowledged; in the German Foreign Minister’s view it was that ‘Germany will be treated like a mad dog against which everybody combines’.
⁹⁵
In the Chancellor’s view it would be regarded by the neutrals as an act of desperation, without even any proof that it would succeed.

Nevertheless, to the Admiralty staff, the prospects looked good. Their case was based on the average tonnage sunk daily by U-boats in early 1915 before the
Lusitania
incident and the subsequent ‘restrictions’. On this experience it was expected that around the British Isles each U-boat on station would sink at least 4,000 tons per day; assuming four stations continuously occupied, this would give a result of 480,000 tons a month. A further 125,000 tons a month was expected from the Mediterranean—for this had been the average sinking rate after the transfer of the centre of gravity of the U-boat war in the second half of 1915. Thus total monthly sinkings were expected to amount to 605,000 tons—an interesting figure as it is almost exactly what Dönitz set himself to achieve in the Second World War; it is interesting too to see the genesis of what his staff referred to then as the U-boat ‘potential’, that is, the average tonnage sunk per U-boat per operational day.

The 1916 staff calculation assumed that Great Britain was being supplied by 10¾ million tons of shipping. Therefore:

To reinforce this hypothesis, the staff could argue that U-boat production was running well ahead of losses and the enemy had developed no effective counter-measures; in the past six months a mere fifteen boats had been lost, many by accident. Thus the Chief of the Admiralty Staff, von Holtzendorff, convinced himself that the campaign would be decisive, and so short that the entry of the United States would make no difference; it would be all over before she could bring her strength to bear. ‘I do not hesitate to assert that… we can force England to make
peace in five months by an unrestricted U-boat campaign.’
⁹⁷
His conclusion was unequivocal: ‘In spite of the danger of a break with America, an unrestricted U-boat campaign, begun soon, is the right means to bring the war to a victorious end. Indeed it is the only means to that end.’
⁹⁸

Having convinced himself, Holtzendorff had little difficulty convincing Hindenburg, particularly as the country was facing the worst food crisis of the war that winter. On January 31st 1917, suddenly in the Prussian style, the unrestricted campaign was announced, to start the following morning. There were something over 120 operational or
Frontboote
with which to launch it, about a third of them on patrol at any one time; 24 were working in the Mediterranean from Pola and Cattaro. One was U 39.

Kapitänleutnant
Walter Forstmann had been in the U-boat arm since the beginning of the war. He was a legendary name, holder of the
Pour le Mérite
, the highest award for gallantry, and with 300,000 tons of shipping to his credit. He had a squarish face with dark hair brushed straight across the forehead, vigilant dark eyes, dark straight brows, and a determined mouth. His brain was cool and quick and he enjoyed danger; ‘it braces the nerves and strengthens the self-confidence’. He believed the recipe for success as a sub-mariner was ‘cool courage mingled with a certain amount of indifference’,
⁹⁹
but knew the thin line between courage and foolhardiness.

He had all the contemporary racial prejudices: Italians were excitable and none to clean ‘Macaronis’, Portuguese were ‘not black nor white men, but half and half’.
¹⁰⁰
For the English, to judge by his account of the cruises of U 39, he had the usual German mixture of respect and deep antagonism. The sight of the discipline aboard a British ship he had torpedoed moved him to compare Britons favourably with southern Europeans; the sight of the Rock of Gibraltar aroused his ‘anger to see here again how England has established herself at the most advantageous maritime points in every part of the world’.
¹⁰¹

As for the unrestricted U-boat campaign, he rejoiced in it; the declaration, he believed, had the ‘approval and confidence of the whole country, yes, the German people has long demanded that U-boat warfare against England should be utilized to its utmost extent. We are going to meet our enemies with the same harshness and lack of consideration as they have shown us in economic matters and our U-boats will no
longer submit themselves to the danger of stopping ships. And within a reasonable time the hour will strike for England to recognize by the disappearance of her tonnage the hopelessness of her struggle.’
¹⁰²
It is certain that Dönitz, fresh from rationing and shortages in the fatherland, had exactly the same view of the British starvation blockade. It was shared by all hands; here, for instance, is Roman Bader, a U-boat chief petty officer from Bavaria:

U 39, flying the black-crossed white flag with the Prussian eagle in the centre and the black-white-red Imperial colours in the upper corner, cast off from her moorings at 3 o’clock in the afternoon of February 12 1917, and steered for the open Adriatic. She was a boat of some 685 tons, 200 feet long overall. An 8·8-cm gun stood on her narrow foredeck, abaft it the conning tower rose, light grey-painted with rails around the top and periscope housings rising from the forward end; abaft them in the minute deck on which the officers and lookouts stood their watches, a heavy circular hatch gave access to a vertical steel ladder leading down to the tower and the control room below it.

The body of the U-boat was a cylindrical pressure chamber divided into watertight sections by bulkheads pierced by narrow thick steel doors. Right forward were the torpedoes, hammocks and kit bags stowed amongst them; in the next compartment aft, above a steel deck over the batteries supplying power for the motors which drove the boat when submerged, crew bunks rose in tiers to the arching deckhead. Forstmann’s cabin was a curtained-off cubicle by the watertight door leading into the control room; the officers’ accommodation was hard by, soft black leather settees which did duty for bunks at night with other bunks above them, the tiny spaces closed off by green curtains. Next was the control room, a warren of pipes, wires, valves, wheels, levers gauges, with separate warrens for the auxiliary machinery and wireless equipment. Through the watertight door at the after end were the diesel engines, the pistons thudding with a beat so loud that conversation was
impossible. Aft of them was the turbine compartment, then the hull tapered to the stern torpedo room.

As this brief description implies, there was little privacy and little comfort in a U-boat. There was no bath and only one lavatory for the use of all 50-odd officers and men aboard. Few shaved, no one changed their clothes from the beginning to the end of a voyage. The officers used eau de cologne to mask body odour and the indescribable damp, oil-laden, stale smells of the sweating interior of the boat. But because of this closeness and the shared hardship and danger, and because there was no room for men who could not be relied on, a U-boat’s complement was a uniquely tight brotherhood. ‘ “One for all and all for one,” as it was expressed, we were like a great family isolated on the wastes of the oceans … I cannot conceive of a finer or more loyal community of life and labour than that of a U-boat.’
¹⁰⁴
Thus one typical description.