Hitler's Commanders (41 page)

Germany’s most effective naval weapon in 1939, however, was not the U-boat but the magnetic mine. Deposited off the east coast of Britain by destroyers and minelayers, and off the southern and western coasts by U-boats and naval floatplanes, they were unsweepable by the technology of the day. By December they had sunk 67 Allied and neutral ships (252,237 gross registered tons), and by March 1940, they had sunk 128 merchant ships, three destroyers, and six auxiliary ships. Unfortunately for Germany, Grand Admiral Raeder, with his multiplicity of prewar armaments plans and his obsession that Germany would not fight England, had all but ignored this as yet undefeatable weapon. Nor was Hermann Goering any help. He refused to use his Luftwaffe to drop mines until his stockpile reached 5,000—and by then the British had discovered a magnetic mine accidentally dropped in a mud-flat by a floatplane and had devised effective countermeasures. Meanwhile, the
Graf Spee
had been destroyed, and Hitler was sending mixed signals to OKM (
Oberkommando der Kriegsmarine
, or High Command of the Navy). In one breath he wanted aggressive naval action, but in the next he advised caution and restraint. Raeder took the same approach: he wanted his surface units to achieve major victories but not to risk their capital ships in doing so. Just how a surface commander was supposed to win a major victory over the Royal Navy without risk to his own forces was never specified. But any surface commander who did not conduct operations exactly as Admiral Raeder and his staff thought he should (after the fact!) forfeited his job. The first to go was Admiral Hermann Boehm, the fleet commander.

hermann boehm
was born in Rybnik/Upper Silesia (now Poland) on January 18, 1884, and entered the Imperial Navy as a sea cadet in 1903. Commissioned ensign in 1906, he served as the commander of various torpedo boats from 1911 to 1918. Discharged from the navy as a
Kapitaenleutnant
(lieutenant) in 1919, he reentered the service the following year and went on to distinguish himself in a number of assignments, including commander of the 2nd Torpedo Boat Flotilla (1926–1928), chief of staff of the Fleet Command (1932–1933), commander of the battleship
Hessen
(1933–1934), and commander of the Reconnaissance Forces (1934–1937), while simultaneously commanding German naval forces in Spanish waters during the first year of the Spanish Civil War (1936–1937). Upon returning to Germany, he was named commander of the North Sea Naval District (on October 4, 1937). Boehm was promoted rapidly by the standards of the day, to lieutenant commander (1922), commander (1928), captain (1930), rear admiral (1934), vice admiral (1937), and admiral (1938). He was made fleet commander on November 1, 1938. His tenure in this important post, however, was destined to be brief. Admiral Boehm was not relieved of his command because he was incapable, or because of any tactical mistakes on his part, or due to any operational considerations whatsoever. Rather, he was sacked because Raeder took exception to the wording of an order that Boehm’s operations officer had issued. The grand admiral thought there was an implied criticism of one of his decisions in an operational recommendation, and Erich Raeder did not take criticism (real or imagined) very well. Boehm was replaced by Vice Admiral Wilhelm Marschall, the former commander of surface raiders, on October 21, 1939.

Despite the fact that he had been sacked, Admiral Boehm’s abilities were never questioned at SKL. After Raeder’s temper cooled he recalled Boehm and appointed him commanding admiral, Norway (and later commander-in-chief, Naval Command Norway), and even promoted him to Generaladmiral on April 1, 1941. He remained at this post until the rise of Grand Admiral Doenitz, who sent him back into retirement in early 1943 because of Boehm’s lack of faith in National Socialism, because of his opposition to the measures imposed on the people of Norway by Reichs-commissioner Josef Terboven, and because the relatively junior Doenitz felt threatened and (like Raeder before him) replaced any senior officer he thought might challenge him.

Hermann Boehm was in retirement a full year. Then, on March 1, 1944, Doenitz (again like Raeder before him) recalled Boehm to active duty as chief of inspectors for naval education. Boehm remained in this office until the end of the Reich was in sight. He retired from active duty on March 31, 1945, and moved to Kiel, where he died on April 11, 1972, at the age of 88.
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The Hermann Boehm case was just one example of Grand Admiral Raeder’s inability to make proper use of a potentially gifted subordinate. Raeder’s unsure hand was also seen in the odd command structure he set up. The fleet commander was not directly subordinate to the grand admiral, at least theoretically. Instead, Raeder set up two naval group headquarters (formerly naval districts Baltic and North Sea), which were directly subordinate to him, and the fleet commander was directly subordinate to one of these. (If the fleet was operating in the Baltic, he reported to Naval Group East; otherwise, Naval Group West. Conceivably, if the fleet was split, he could be subordinate to both. Later other naval groups were established.) However, Raeder himself often issued orders directly to the fleet commander, bypassing group headquarters: a direct and flagrant violation of the chain of command. It was not uncommon for a commander at sea to receive contradictory orders from Berlin and from group command. To make matters worse, Raeder’s orders were frequently vague. But heads would roll if an admiral did not act exactly as Raeder thought he should—every step of the way.

A good example of Raeder’s fractiousness is the case of Fleet Commander Admiral
wilhelm marschall
, a talented (and perhaps brilliant) officer who had a thorough grasp of naval tactics. Born in Augsburg, Bavaria, on September 30, 1886, he entered the navy as a sea cadet (
Seekadett
) in 1906. Commissioned in 1909, he served in several types of vessels, from battleships to hulks. Then, in 1916, he volunteered for U-boat school. In the last two years of the Great War he commanded
UC-74
(a mine-laying submarine) and later
UB-105
and sent a number of Allied ships to the bottom. Consequently, on July 4, 1918, he was decorated with Imperial Germany’s highest medal, the Pour le Merite. Marschall’s postwar career was also conspicuous and included tours as commander of the survey ship
Panther
(1924–1926), first officer of the battleships
Schleswig-Holstein
(1929–1930) and
Hanover
(1930–1931), chief of staff of the Baltic Sea Naval Station (1931–1934), commander of the battleship
Hessen
(1934) and the pocket battleship
Admiral Scheer
(1934–1936), chief of operations of OKM (1936–1937), and commander of German Sea Forces in Spain during the Spanish Civil War (1937–1938). He was commander of pocket battleships (Panzerschiffen) when the war broke out.
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Marschall first ran afoul of Grand Admiral Raeder in November 1939, when he took the
Scharnhorst
and
Gneisenau
out into the North Sea. His objective was to create a diversion in favor of the
Deutschland
, which was attempting to return home after a disappointing raid into the Atlantic. Just as he hoped, the British Home Fleet came after the two battleships, allowing the
Deutschland
to reenter German waters safely. Then Marschall not only eluded the British trap, he isolated and sank the British armed merchant cruiser
Rawalpindi
in the process. However, he received no thanks from the German Admiralty—only unfair and savage attacks and a clear implication that his job was in jeopardy. It seems that the German battleship had withdrawn after seeing the silhouette of a darkened ship at nightfall on November 23. Raeder, ever the chairborne critic, was furious that Marschall had not attacked and sunk the second British ship—whatever it was. Marschall should have attacked an unknown ship at night, in the middle of the British fleet, when any damage that slowed his speed even slightly could cost Germany one of her two operational battleships? This from Raeder, the man who had previously ordered that capital ships should not be risked? “Till now,” Marschall commented, “no one has ever questioned the naval axiom that capital ships should avoid all contact at night with torpedo craft and reconnaissance vessels.”
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Marschall was quite right, of course: the potential prize was simply not worth the risks. Raeder, however, continued to launch scathing attacks, but never officially and never face-to-face. He never gave Marschall a chance to defend himself. Instead, he made his biting remarks behind Marschall’s back but in places where he could be sure that word of them would get back to the fleet commander.

From the beginning of the war both Admiral Raeder and Winston Churchill wanted the same thing: Norway. Raeder wanted it to prevent the British from cutting off Germany’s supply of Swedish iron ore, which was shipped through the northern Norwegian port of Narvik, and to prevent the British from blocking the German exit to the North Sea, as they had done in World War I. Churchill wanted it for the opposite reasons. In addition, Raeder wanted the excellent ports Norway offered.

Hitler was initially opposed to the idea of invading Norway because he did not believe the British would violate Norwegian neutrality. On December 24, 1939, Raeder arranged a meeting between Hitler and Vidkun Quisling, the head of the Norwegian version of the Nazi Party, in an attempt to change Hitler’s mind, but it did no good. Only in February 1940, when a British warship attacked an unarmed German ship in Norwegian waters (to rescue some British prisoners) did Hitler draw the correct conclusions: the United Kingdom would violate Norwegian neutrality, and he had better act quickly to prevent the loss of his vital iron ore supply.

He was right.

Urged on by Churchill, the Allied Supreme War Council decided on February 5 to seize Narvik and the Swedish iron mines at Gaellivare, on the pretext of sending aid to the Finns, who were fighting the Soviets in the Winter War of 1939–1940. The Allied plan was thwarted only because Finland sued for an armistice. First Lord of the Admiralty Churchill did not give up, however. In fact, the British began laying mines in Norwegian waters on April 8, while in the Scottish ports British soldiers were already on the troop ships, awaiting the German reaction that Churchill and his cronies hoped the mine-laying would provoke. They were then to put Plan R 4—the Allied occupation of Narvik, Trondheim, Bergen, and Stavanger—into immediate execution. They were too late: the German Fleet had already sailed.

Operation
Weserueburg Nord
, the occupation of Norway, was the only major action conducted by the German surface fleet in World War II. It was also Erich Raeder’s major contribution to the German war effort. It was an extremely bold and daring plan, taken in the face of nearly overwhelming odds. Even though virtually the entire German fleet was committed, it was no match for the Home Fleet of the Royal Navy; therefore a British intervention while the fleet was at sea would result in the failure of the operation and the virtual annihilation of the German Navy. Everything depended on speed, surprise, and accurate timing. The detailed planning was done by a staff under the direction of Captain Theodor Krancke and was modified by the Supreme Naval Staff under Raeder. It consisted primarily of a warship echelon of 11 groups (to clear minefields and conduct the landings); a tanker and export echelon (carrying military equipment and fuel for the destroyers’ trip back to German waters); and a sea transport echelon of eight groups, which formed the main troop and supply movement. Despite Doenitz’s objections (see later discussion), 42 submarines were stationed off the Norwegian coast, to attack the Royal Navy if it tried to intervene. As Raeder saw it, the most dangerous part of the operation would be the return of the warships to their home bases. They would be exposed to attack by superior British forces most of the way back. However, if everything went according to plan, only the submarines would engage the enemy’s naval forces.

The main German forces departed for Norway in serials between March 31 and April 6—only two days before the British mine-laying operation began. The British spotted the move at 9:50 a.m. on April 7, but it was late afternoon before the Home Fleet sailed—in the wrong direction. Thinking the German Fleet was trying to break out into the Atlantic, they sailed to block this move, leaving the central North Sea uncovered.

The landings took place on April 9 and were successful except for that of Naval Group 5, which was charged with depositing the assault elements of the 163rd Infantry Division at Oslo. It was spearheaded by the heavy cruiser
Bluecher
, which was severely damaged by the 280mm guns at Fort Oscarsborg, 10 miles south of the Norwegian capital, and then was hit by two torpedoes. The crew was unable to control the ensuing fires, which set off a magazine. The captain gave the command to abandon ship at 7 a.m., and the heavy cruiser sank 30 minutes later. Due to the strong currents at this spot of the fjord, many soldiers and sailors drowned, including most of the staff of the infantry division. Oslo did not fall until the next day.

German naval costs began to mount as the Norwegian campaign progressed. The
Hipper
was rammed by a mortally wounded British destroyer (which sank in the collision), and the German cruiser was severely damaged. The light cruiser
Karlsruhe
was sunk by a British submarine after providing covering fire for the landings at Kristiansand and Arendal. During the Bergen landings the light cruiser
Koenigsberg
was crippled by Norwegian coastal gunfire and, unable to put to sea, was sunk at her moorings by British aircraft on April 11. Early that same morning the
Luetzow
(formerly the
Deutschland
) was torpedoed by a British submarine and lost her entire stern. By superhuman effort her crew somehow kept her afloat until she could be towed to Kiel, but her operational usefulness was over. After this, she could be used for training purposes only. For Admiral Raeder this was perhaps the bitterest blow of the campaign, for he had not wanted either the
Luetzow
or the
Bluecher
used in the Norwegian operation, preferring instead to use them as ocean raiders. Sending them to Oslo was Hitler’s idea. But the grand admiral had only himself to blame, because neither he nor the Admiralty staff offered serious objections to the Fuehrer’s decision on this issue. And at this point of the war, Hitler still listened to the advice of his military experts, especially on air force and naval matters.