Dönitz: The Last Führer (23 page)

An interesting observation in view of the tactics of U-boats under his orders in the Second World War. It is more interesting that there is not a word of this alleged encounter in the memoirs he wrote after the war; by that time the official history of the U-boat war had been published and the activities of UC 25 described from his log.

The most revealing of all his embroidered tales, however, concerns his imprisonment in 1918. The memory of this was revived when his steamer called at Malta and he went ashore and revisited the ‘old, cold, damp fort with dark casemates’ in which he had been incarcerated. He remembered how, dressed in only a shirt, pants and one sock, he had been
escorted by ‘Tommies’ with naked bayonets to stand before an English Admiral.

This is an obvious fabrication. Apart from the British interrogation report on Dönitz, which makes no mention of UC 25, the
Cyclops
or Port Augusta, there is the fact that the ship he sank there was not the
Cyclops
, but a coaling hulk. Therefore the British staff officer could hardly have pushed a paper with the words UC 25 and
Cyclops
in front of the Admiral.

It is remarkable in view of his actual achievements as Commander of UC 25 that it was necessary for him to boost himself with these fantasy exploits. The final phrases of the accounts are surely significant: ‘… attempting like a blind madman to cruise into a convoy by moonlight’, and, pure Walter Mitty, ‘… They knew exactly who I was.’ These two lines show that beneath the outwardly diamond tough, gifted, indeed brilliant, dedicated career officer, Dönitz was fundamentally unsure of himself; the revelation supports to the hilt Canaris’ suggestion that he was immature and temperamentally unbalanced.

In view of these examples of the fantasy world he indulged in, it is probable that another rather similar tale in his account—again against the English—is somewhat exaggerated. This concerned the immigration authorities in southern India. He had crossed by ferry from Ceylon overnight, getting scarcely a wink of sleep because of cockroaches and other bugs, and in the morning, in a bad mood, found the Customs and Medical officers seated at a long table on deck with the first- and
second-class passengers queueing to be examined. He sat himself in a deck chair and watched. Finally, when all had been dealt with, a native official was sent across to summon him to the table. He told the man that if his master wanted something he should come himself. The immigration officer duly came over. ‘ “Passport please!”—then the entry formalities, customs and medical inspection, were wound up comfortably from my deck chair … I can recommend this process, only four-square behaviour impresses these people.’
⁶⁴

So much for his basic insecurity. Of a general anti-English outlook there are suggestions; British officials in Ceylon whom he referred to as Secret Police: ‘apparently still live in a war psychosis—in the matter of decreasing war-incitement the colonies limp far behind the British motherland and believe they are able to treat the Germans still with something of the victor’s style.

‘But wait, my boy!’
⁶⁵

What seems plain is that he admired the Dutch colonies he visited rather more than the English. In old Batavia in the Dutch East Indies he was impressed by the feeling that this was not a distant and alien possession exploited for what it could produce, so much as a community closely bound to the motherland by blood, a model of what a colony should be. It is apparent too that he enjoyed the life he found there as a guest in the high, airy bungalows, waited on by Javanese boys in sarongs and white jackets. And he was captivated by the grace of the native women, ‘pole-slender and sinfully lovely’,
⁶⁶
thinking it no wonder if planters on their lonely estates and young administrators settled down with a brown wife and forgot Europe in the magic of this voluptuous land.

From Batavia he went to Bandung, then on a long rail journey to Soerabaya, marvelling at the beauty and abundance of the country and the happiness of the people. After the unemployment, bitterness, violence and greyness he had left in Europe it must have seemed Utopia.

His observations on the people are perceptive and sympathetic. After describing how a small white baby in his carriage was looked after by its native ‘nanny’ who never took her eyes off the infant and attended to its every wish like an ‘animal mother’, he went on: ‘I have also never seen the brown women scold their own children and certainly not hit them—that would be to them, with their strong, animal, natural child-love, quite inconceivable.’
⁶⁸

From Java he sailed to Bali.

He advised visiting the island alone or in the company of a fully sympathetic person who would not disturb ‘the harmony of this fairy-tale land’. And he advised against ‘doing the sights’; it was much more important ‘that in peace and with an open heart you allow the land and people to work on you. Therefore go to southern Bali where no tourist steamers can approach the coast …’ He described his own excursions, putting up for the night in village temples, gazing up from his mat at the starry sky as he was lulled to sleep by the music of the cicadas and the village gongs warding off evil spirits. ‘I am not certain whether the Balinese have not just as much inner decency and natural culture as Europeans.’
⁷⁰

From Bali he went by cargo steamer to Singapore, finding among the few passengers an ‘animal-catcher’ for the Berlin Zoo, a ‘gentleman of education and breeding whose peaceful soul showed in his eyes’. He had his captures with him, and his love and infinite care for them impressed Dönitz greatly. At Singapore he boarded a passenger liner for passage to Ceylon and he found it an unpleasant contrast—‘long menus, music, cinema, dressing up, surface table talk, cliques, flirts and antipathies… a community of snobbery’.
⁷¹

Judging by his descriptions, the things that impressed him most in
Ceylon were the jungle-grown ruins of the ancient capitals of the Sinhalese kings at Anuradhapura and Polonnarua, indeed he describes his days in the jungle there as amongst the best of his journey. He was not so happy when he returned to civilization in Colombo. Nevertheless it was a sad morning when he boarded a steamer for Europe, and had to take his leave of the ‘wonderland of India—from all the colourful, picturesque, luxuriant strangeness that weaves such a spell on the European’.
⁷²

The account of his travels from which these extracts have been taken was probably written in diary form as he went, and worked up into a typescript afterwards; it provides extraordinarily illuminating glimpses of a sensitive and perceptive human being beneath the tight-lipped exterior shortly to be set in stone by the events of the Second World War. Here, before he had to guard every word set down, we can read of his evident delight in children and animals: on the return voyage ‘to my joy there is a crowd of children on board. It is charming to listen to how they understand one another and to observe how the little mixture of nationalities play with one another.’
⁷³

Many of his descriptions reveal a contemplative and even poetic turn of mind; he can gaze up into the black void of the night sky between the Milky Way and Southern Cross and feel his gaze plunging into the infinite breadth of the universe. And he can both admire the precision of a flotilla of dolphins sporting by the bows, and put himself in their place, looking up at the ship:

And we discover with some surprise that this indefatigably conscientious officer can enjoy just sitting in a deck chair in the sun!

Perhaps the strongest impression left by the account, however, is of how deeply he had been affected by the loss of UB 68 and the death of his engineer, Jeschen. When the steamer passed the spot in the Mediterranean where the boat had gone down he stood alone at the stern rail while the flag was dipped—an arrangement he had made with the German captain—saluting the dead in silence.

One is bound to ask after reading this and the heroic fantasies he indulged and his tender observations on children and animals and simple peoples, whether the key to the extremes in his character, the driving duty-consciousness, the ice-hard ruthlessness that was to be demonstrated in the Second World War, was suppression of his natural sensitivity under the weight of the Prussian ethic that ruled Germany—in his father’s home, at the Stoy’scher Academy, in the Imperial officer corps under the tutelage of such a natural epitome of the warrior code as von Loewenfeld.

Dönitz returned to his post in Wilhelmshaven in June. He must have found his internal security duties very much easier since active Communists had been rounded up and thrown into concentration camps. In the nation as a whole there was a new atmosphere of hope; the ‘National revival’ was under way—this at least was the message broadcast by press and radio, now controlled by Goebbels’ propaganda department. On the surface it appeared true: massive deficit financing to cure unemployment by stimulating particularly the armaments industries was beginning to
bear fruit and there was a genuine sense of hope and new purpose and liberation after the last confused years of the Republic.

This was especially so for the Navy. Hitler had ratified a five-year plan for rebuilding the fleet which had been sanctioned by his predecessor, von Papen, and had confirmed to the chiefs of the armed services that he would ensure the undisturbed development of their forces. Moreover, the spirit of unity through common goals he promised the nation was a theme corresponding exactly with the naval officers’ revised conception of leadership through shared aims. Ambitious, middle-rank officers like Dönitz could look to the future with a new confidence.

In October that year he received his step up to
Fregattenkapitän
(Commander), and in November a new Chief of Staff, who had just replaced Canaris, reported on him with unequivocal enthusiasm—‘an officer with magnificent intellectual and character gifts … healthy ambition and outstanding leadership qualities …’
⁷⁷
The testimonial, which almost looks as if it might have been designed to dispel any doubts raised by ‘the Levantine’s’ reports, ended: ‘Truly military and soldierly in thought, warm-hearted as a man and comrade. A superior sea officer of whom the Navy can expect much.’