Dönitz: The Last Führer (53 page)

He went on to list the weapons needed before resuming full-scale attack in the North Atlantic; first was a receiver to intercept the beams of the enemy location device and give warning of attack; in the meantime he had ordered U-boats to operate at night on one electric motor so that, without the noise of the diesels, the lookouts would be able to hear approaching aircraft. He did not admit it but this so reduced speed as to make night surface attack ‘in the new moon period’ virtually impossible. Meanwhile work was under way to find means of jamming or dispersing enemy radar waves; experiments had already shown that it was possible to reduce conning-tower reflections by 30 per cent, he said, so cutting by a third the distance at which a U-boat could be located.

In addition conning towers were being rebuilt and fitted with four-barrelled machine guns for use against aircraft, and by October boats would definitely have an acoustic torpedo for use against escorts; this, however, would not be effective against an enemy making over twelve knots, for which reason every effort was being made to ensure that the
Zaunkönig
acoustic torpedo, effective against ships moving at up to eighteen knots, would also be in service by the autumn.

‘I shall discuss this with Minister Speer,’ he went on, and asked for Hitler’s support ‘since I consider it absolutely necessary that the U-boats be supplied with the anti-destroyer torpedo before the favourable winter fighting season.’

Again he did not explain how, in the radar age, the long winter nights were ‘favourable’. Nor did Hitler question him; he simply agreed that everything possible had to be done.

At this point, according to an account of the interview by Wolfgang Frank,
⁶³
Dönitz glanced down at his notes. Frank was not there, only Hitler’s chief of staff, Keitel, his naval adjutant, von Puttkamer, two other staff officers and the official stenographers; nevertheless it is likely there was a pause for Dönitz now took the offensive, cautiously at first—in his opinion
Luftwaffe
support for U-boats was inadequate and it was essential that Messerschmitt 410s be transferred to Biscay to shoot down the enemy patrols—but as Hitler sought to disassociate himself from mistakes in aircraft production, Dönitz thrust deeper: in his opinion suitable planes for naval warfare should have been constructed at the latest when the larger U-boat construction programme had been started.

Hitler, who was entirely responsible for not forcing Göring to allow Raeder the naval air arm he had wanted from the beginning, agreed.

‘Undoubtedly,’ Dönitz continued, ‘the U-boats would have sunk very much more shipping over the past year if we had had naval aircraft.’

Hitler agreed.

‘Even now it is not too late to give the Navy an air arm.’

Again Hitler agreed.

Dönitz launched into a scheme for starting a school for naval fliers at Gdynia in direct contact with the convoy training flotillas and the U-School so that they learned how to keep touch with a convoy, how to navigate and above all learned to speak the same language as the U-boats; Hitler was in full agreement. Then, according to Frank, he rose suddenly and began pacing with his hands behind his back. He might well have done. He was racked with anxiety over the possibility of an imminent Italian desertion to the allies—with all the dangers this held for his continental position and the vital Rumanian oil fields. The
Luftwaffe
meanwhile was not capable of stemming the allied mass raids devastating his industrial towns, yet here was his Navy chief wanting a separate air
arm with new designs of plane and more young men who were needed for Russia and Italy!

If he paced now, it was not with the arrogance of 1940; his left leg tended to drag, his left hand trembled uncontrollably in his right behind his bent back, his dulled eyes and pouchy skin told of the extraordinarily unhealthy life he led—as Speer was to realize later in conditions resembling those of a prisoner, scarcely ever seeing the sunlight or feeling the fresh breeze in the close rooms of his headquarters bunkers. His dark hair was sparser and flecked with white. Those who visited him only occasionally were shocked by the suddenness with which he was ageing.

Dönitz, trim and erect as ever, passed on to future prospects in the U-boat war. He quoted the U-boat ‘potential’ for 1940—1,000 tons sunk per boat per sea day—and for the end of 1942—200 tons—but avoided the present figure, simply saying it was impossible to foretell the extent to which U-boat war would again become effective.

‘Nevertheless I am of the opinion that U-boat warfare must be carried on even if the goal of achieving greater successes is no longer possible, because the enemy forces tied up by U-boats are extraordinarily large. Jellicoe in his book described the forces the U-boats tied up in the First World War…’

‘A let-up in the U-boat war is quite out of the question,’ Hitler interrupted. ‘The Atlantic is my first line of defence in the west and even if I have to fight a defensive battle there that is better than defending myself on the coasts of Europe. The enemy forces tied up by the U-boats are so extraordinarily large that even if we no longer have great successes, I cannot permit their release.’

Dönitz took the opportunity to press for his increased construction programme! He had an order form with him, previously agreed with Speer, listing 30 boats a month, and after saying that in his opinion they should now strive for 40 a month he handed it to Hitler for signature. Hitler obediently scratched out the ‘30’, wrote ‘40’ in its place and signed.

In such a casual way, without any analysis of the actual enemy resources the U-boat campaign was tying up or discussion of alternative options which might be open, huge German resources were tied up in a patently obsolete weapon.

Three days later Dönitz addressed his departmental chiefs again. His starting point was that continental Europe, ‘which provides us with our food and raw materials must be held against attack from outside, and, I
am convinced, will be held’.
⁶⁴
It was a significant change from his attitude on taking office only four months before.

He blamed the present crisis on the
Luftwaffe
’s failure to support the U-boats, and on the enemy’s ‘technical expedient’, the location device; there was no doubt, however, that ‘in the changing fortunes of war between attack and defence’ they would once more gain the upper hand. They must put aside the old ideas of trying to manage as frugally as possible and work on a grand scale to force weapon development ahead. Then, the tonnage war would be resumed. It is evident, though, that he no longer believed it could be won; he repeated the arguments about tying up huge enemy resources and holding the war at a distance from the coasts of Europe.

He developed this idea afterwards in a memorandum,
⁶⁵
and in discussion with the station Commanders and staff on June 8th stressed that since there was no possibility of the eastern campaign bringing victory the centre of gravity of armaments production had to be shifted to the Navy, which alone could affect the outcome of the war by striking at allied sea communications. Similarly the centre of gravity of the air strategy had to be shifted to the tonnage war.
⁶⁶

By this time detailed estimates of the manpower requirements for the programme had been worked out, and the following week Dönitz presented them to Hitler—altogether 335,000 men above the Navy’s allocation of 103,000 for the coming year, and 141,800 extra shipyard workers. According to his own probably boastful account of the meeting to his staff on the following day, his demand had the effect of a bombshell at Führer headquarters.

‘I haven’t got them,’ Hitler said. ‘It is necessary to increase flak and night fighters to protect German cities, necessary to strengthen the eastern front—the Army needs divisions for the protection of Europe.’
⁶⁷

Dönitz warned him that if U-boat warfare were to cease the whole material strength of the enemy would be hurled against Europe and the coastal supply routes bringing in vital materials would be endangered, and he hammered the necessity of manning the expanded U-boat service … transferring officers from the Army and Air Force, increasing the number of naval officer candidates … it was his duty to point out the consequences of too small an assignment of men … until Hitler said that discontinuing the U-boat war was out of the question, he was to submit a list of the required numbers of men and when they were needed. Dönitz passed on to the question of shipyard workers, provoking Hitler
into another declaration: calling up men from the shipyards was out of the question.

Once again Dönitz had every reason to be pleased with his influence over the Führer; he appeared well on the way to a major shift of resources in favour of the Navy, and with it a major increase in his own standing in the highest councils of the
Reich
. Yet the real effects were less than they seemed at the time. This was particularly so for the new air strategy and the naval air arm he demanded; the reason was that despite ‘quarrels’ with Göring, which he made much of in his memoirs, he never forced a showdown with him directly or with Hitler. Hansen-Nootbar recalls that Göring’s ‘special relationship with Hitler’ was always first on the agenda when Dönitz went to see the Führer, but he always came out without having broached the subject. ‘I can’t do it,’ he would say, ‘after all, it is not my job to interfere in the long-standing trust between Hitler and Göring. And so I left it.’
⁶⁸

As for his own relationship with the gross and gaudy
Reichsmarschall
, it was more successful than Raeder’s—at least it produced a show of harmony—but there was no radical change of the kind that was needed, indeed the crisis in the
Luftwaffe
itself, and Hitler’s constant interference probably precluded the scale of air co-operation necessary for worthwhile results. And in that bizarre court where the Führer held all power and jealously prevented the separate arms of the services and departments of State from knowing what the others were doing or what intelligence they were working on, Dönitz could not have gained his ends unless Hitler had been prepared to force the matter. He was not. Dönitz did not offer his resignation; he tried instead to extract specific aircraft for specific tasks and used them in local co-operation with naval forces, meanwhile rubbing along as best he could with the fat one.

Hansen-Nootbar recalls one argument between the two which ended when Göring unpinned the diamond-studded pilot’s decoration from his exquisite uniform and handed it to Dönitz who to the delight of the officers watching them unpinned the U-boat decoration from his own service blue jacket and handed it to Göring. It was a typically nimble and appropriate response. Von Puttkamer gives a shorter version of this episode in his memoirs,
⁶⁹
implying that from then on Dönitz made his way successfully with Goring. One is left wondering about the incident. Was it the force of Göring’s personality and intelligence or the aura of his power and the long-established position he held in the Nazi hierarchy, or loyalty to the Führer perhaps, that caused Dönitz to respond as he did
and humour and get along with the
Reichsmarschall
in public while privately regarding him as a national disaster? When he and Hansen-Nootbar were alone they referred to Göring as ‘the grave-digger of the
Reich’.
⁷⁰

Dönitz meanwhile, with Hitler’s agreement to his five-year naval building programme in his pocket, drove the organizational details of his planned hand-over of all construction to Speer’s Ministry ruthlessly through the opposition of all departments. His argument was that they were engaged in an economic war with the sea powers, therefore a war of long duration, and the difficulties of gaining the necessary share of raw materials and labour which had crippled Raeder’s efforts would increase. Indeed, he told his department chiefs on July 5th, the new programme was only practicable
with
Minister Speer; ‘
without
him meant
against
him’.
⁷¹

He had a similar fight for new methods of building U-boats. His hopes for regaining the advantage in what he saw as the see-saw struggle between offence and defence were now placed chiefly in new types known as ‘electro’ boats. These had been proposed earlier that year as an alternative to the large Walter boat; they were to achieve high submerged speed by a combination of streamlined shape as pioneered by Walter, and vastly increased battery capacity in a deeper hull. Two classes were proposed, a 1,600-ton Type XXI for the Atlantic and a smaller Type XXIII for coastal waters. The Atlantic type, in which he was chiefly interested, had a designed underwater speed of eighteen knots for one and a half hours or twelve to fourteen knots for ten hours. This was not quite as good as the Walter boat promised but it had the advantage over Walter’s scheme that the batteries could be recharged and, by using the Snorchel, recharged while submerged. Its chief advantage in the present circumstances was that it involved no new techniques and could therefore go straight into production.

This at least was what Dönitz and Speer hoped. The naval construction department expected to build two prototypes in the usual way first. Speer’s technical director, however, came up with a proposal based on the American method of overcoming the merchant tonnage problem by prefabricating sections complete with fittings in factories, then transporting them to the shipyards to be welded together. Such a sudden break with traditional methods carried grave risk and demanded much skilled labour and investment in new plant at the yards; if successful, however, it promised to halve building times and, more important, by dispersing the
work, shorten the period between start and completion. It also meant that a good deal of the work could be done in factories far from the coast and out of range of enemy bombers. Undoubtedly, though, it was the prospect of getting the new types quickly and being able to take the offensive once more in the Battle of the Atlantic that made Dönitz decide on the ‘radical’ new method. Given his character and circumstances there could have been no other choice.
⁷²