by David Wragg
Austria not only provided Germany with additional territory and manpower, with a population of some 6.7 million, it also brought additional industrial capacity, energy and raw materials for the increasingly hungry German industrialisation. Austria’s gold and foreign exchange reserves were a welcome windfall. The Anchluss with Austria added around 7.5 per cent to Germany’s industrial output, although it gave only an extra 4 per cent in steel production, and half of this was destined for export. Nevertheless, there was one invaluable asset, the Erzberg, a mine of the highest grade iron ore, much of which was exported to neighbouring countries. This was not of itself sufficient to meet German demand, but it certainly cut the balance of payments strain of importing all of Germany’s iron ore.
Germany had had earlier designs on Austria, which had lost much of its territory to neighbouring Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Italy and Yugoslavia, including areas such as the South Tyrol, ceded to Italy, which were German-speaking. Immediately after the First World War, the name chosen for the country at first was Deutsch-Österreich, and union with the new post-war German republic was planned, but banned by the Treaty of Versailles, anxious to avoid creating a new power group.
Incorporating Austria in the Reich had other benefits over and above the industrial resources gained. It increased Germany’s influence over the nations of central and southern Europe. Hungary suddenly found that instead of Germany taking 26 per cent of the nation’s exports, it now accounted for 44 per cent, while Yugoslavia found that Germany took 43 per cent of its exports instead of 32 per cent. These were market shares that would be impossible to replace within any reasonable time, so both nations were drawn into the German orbit.
The annexation of Austria was a boost to German confidence. They had seen that the rest of the world seemed to lack the will to intervene. Now was the time for Hitler to demonstrate what he meant when he described the German people as ein Volk, one people. He had his eyes on those Germans living beyond the country’s borders, of whom the most obvious were the Sudeten Germans, living in the west of Czechoslovakia. The Sudetenland had been ceded to Czechoslovakia, a new state created from the ruins of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, by the Treaty of Versailles. The German population of 3 million was a substantial minority of the 14 million people living in Czechoslovakia.
Hitler’s demands for the Sudetenland to be incorporated into Germany became increasingly strident, and Europe appeared to be on the verge of all out war. Nevertheless, the British and French were anxious to avoid another war if at all possible, and in the Munich Agreement of 30 September 1938, signed by the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Italy, Czechoslovakia was effectively compelled to cede the territory to Germany.
Often criticised, usually with the benefit of hindsight, the Munich Agreement bought the democracies time in which to continue their rearmament, but unfortunately it also reassured Hitler that an aggressive tone could win the day. With Czechoslovakia reeling from the loss of so much of its territory and almost a quarter of its population, and the democracies standing by, Slovakia, by far the poorer end of the country, began to come under the sway of the Germans, while Hungary annexed part of its territory. In the north, the Poles seized their chance and annexed the main area occupied by the 60,000 people of Polish descent living in Czechoslovakia. Despite the original German demands having been met, in March 1939, Germany occupied most of what remained of Czechoslovakia.
Earlier, on 28 May 1938, Raeder once again met Hitler, who had wired him with proposals for a massive acceleration in naval construction. By this time, it was clear that Hitler did not expect the United Kingdom to stand idly aside in the future as she was also rearming. To avoid war, the Fuhrer needed to have such a strong Navy, and in particular such a massive submarine force, that the British would hesitate to intervene in the planned continental expansion and war for fear of being blockaded and cut-off by U-boats.
If further evidence was required that Italy and Germany were embarked on a course that could only ultimately lead to war, it came on 7 April 1939, Good Friday, when Italy invaded Albania, a poor, mountainous country on the other side of the Adriatic. Once again, the United Kingdom and France did nothing, with the UK recognising the annexation in an attempt to discourage Italy from allying itself with Germany in the future conflict that was increasingly being seen as inevitable.
Once again, appeasement had been the preferred option.
PLANNING FOR WAR WITH BRITAIN
Even before the Munich crisis of 1938, Raeder considered that there was a danger of war with both France and the United Kingdom, but this was still not discussed officially. While it is possible to draw parallels with the situation before the First World War and before the Second World War, there were differences, not least in the attitude towards war of the Army and the Navy. Another big difference was that Raeder and his staff envisaged a war against shipping rather than the major confrontation between the opposing fleets that had so concerned Tirpitz.
The naval staff appreciated that Britain enjoyed a commanding strategic position that barred Germany’s access to the open seas, but that her weakness was her dependence on overseas trade and supplies. Nor was there any question of Germany rivalling the strong British battle fleet. On the other hand, if Germany could seize Denmark, Norway and the Netherlands, the situation could be improved, but it would need the occupation of the entire northern coastline of France as far as Brest to have complete access to the oceans of the world. This would not only benefit the Kriegsmarine, it would also give the Luftwaffe the bases it needed to attack British shipping in the Channel and the Bay of Biscay, and British ports.
Much of this was outlined in a paper, Seekriegsfuhrung gegen England, ‘Sea Warfare Against England’, prepared on 25 October 1938, by Admiral Heye.2 Nevertheless, it gave little idea of the way in which the war would be conducted at sea. It was very dismissive of U-boats.
There are grounds for assuming that the English countermeasures against U-boats, in the first line detection, have reached a high standard. U-boats’ attacks on English forces will therefore not be too successful. So long as no unrestricted U-boat war can be allowed, ‘cruiser war’ against merchant ships – if it is only conducted by U-boats – will have a limited effect. It comes down to the fact that the single U-boat by its nature does not come into question for ‘cruiser war’ on the high seas, but must be employed in a more or less stationery role.
The conclusion drawn from this was that Germany should build large ‘cruiser U-boats’ armed with four 12.7-cm (5-in) guns and a surface speed of 25 knots. Even so, once forced to dive, the low speed of submarines would mean that it would be at the mercy of Asdic. This was an interesting concept, although not quite so heavily armed as the French concept of the Corsair submarine, such as Surcouf, or the British M-class, by this time withdrawn. The medium-sized U-boats proposed by Dönitz were simply classed as ‘Other U-boats’ and would be positioned outside enemy harbours and in the main shipping lanes, but it was anticipated that they would be playing a sacrificial role as strong countermeasures could be expected at such locations.
The strategy proposed was one of commerce-raiding by fast armoured cruisers, in effect the Panzerschiff or ‘pocket battleship’ (reclassified as heavy cruisers by the Germans during the war), escorted by light cruisers, while a squadron of powerful battleships would be needed to assist these vessels in their breakout into the open seas. It was also envisaged that the Kriegsmarine should have its own aircraft, indeed, it was vital.
The document was circulated for comment. The commander of the fleet, Admiral Carls, was enthusiastic, and advocated planning for war. Raeder moved him to head a staff committee that would implement the recommendations in Heye’s paper. A succession of plans had in fact been drawn up by the naval staff, starting with Plan X, which was in turn superseded by Plan Y, and then ultimately came Plan Z.
Plan Z was Raeder’s dream. This was the plan for the big battleships and aircraft carriers, armoured cruisers and other vessels, incl
uding 249 U-boats. Formulated in late 1938, it received Hitler’s approval in January 1939, and was due to be completed by 1947, although the bulk of it would be completed by 1945. The initial plan included four aircraft carriers, six large battleships known as the H-class and three battlecruisers, the O-class, no less than twelve Kreuzer P-class Panzerschiff, two Hipper-class heavy cruisers, which would be Seyditz and Lutzow, two improved M-class light cruisers, and six Spahkeuzer-class large destroyers, as well as 249 U-boats.
In fact, as the table shows, the Plan ultimately envisaged that by 1947, in addition to the above there would be another four aircraft carriers, albeit of a smaller type than the Graf Zeppelin, up to twelve battlecruisers and eight heavy cruisers, twenty-four light cruisers, thirty-six scout cruisers, seventy destroyers and seventy-eight torpedo-boats. There would be 162 Atlantic-type U-boats, sixty coastal U-boats and twenty-seven special purpose U-boats, almost certainly either minelayers or supply boats.
Kriegsmarine Plan Z Projections 1939–1947
Number of ships to be completed by:
Source: Bekker, C, Hitler’s Naval War, London, 1974
The problem was that Germany did not have the shipbuilding capacity for this work, let alone the necessary materials. There had been no sustained new construction of major warships for many years and so the slipways were simply not available. Worse still, the fuel needed exceeded the total fuel consumption of Germany in 1938.
Construction had already started on the first German aircraft carrier, the Graf Zeppelin, in 1936, and after she was launched in 1938, plans were laid to begin work on a second ship, the Peter Strasser. During 1939, orders were placed for carrier versions of the Messerschmitt Bf109 fighter and the Junkers Ju87 Stuka dive-bomber, designated as the Bf109T and Ju87C. In mid-1939, the two battleships Bismarck and Tirpitz were both launched, and then the keels were laid for the first three of the giant H-class battleships.
Nevertheless, the Luftwaffe, or to be precise the Minister for Air, Hermann Goering, would not relinquish control of any aspect of military aviation. This was at a time when the British had realised their mistake in combining all service aviation in the Royal Air Force and were returning naval aviation, the Fleet Air Arm, to the Royal Navy. The lack of any earlier German interest in aircraft carriers also meant that the Graf Zeppelin’s design was obsolete even before she was launched. The best comparison was with the British Courageous-class and the French Bearn.
Even so, Dönitz started to lobby for a stronger U-boat arm, creating tension between himself and his superior, Raeder, but eventually Plan Z was amended to allow 300 U-boats. Given the state of the German economy, already on a war footing and heavily in debt, Dönitz’s ideas were in fact far more realistic than those of Raeder. Even though the latter had no immediate ambitions for a major fleet battle with the Royal Navy, at least not until 1947 or 1948, he was still a ‘big gun, big ship’ man. His subordinate Fuhrer der U-Boote, argued that only U-boats could deliver the necessary attack on British shipping while Germany waited for its armies to reach the Atlantic coast of France. He was also on firm ground when he argued that U-boats were quicker to build, used fewer raw materials, and were far cheaper than the large ships Raeder favoured. There was also the question of manpower, and even today, one advantage of the submarine is its low manpower requirement.
Early in 1939, Dönitz had a book published, called simply Die U-Bootswaffe, ‘The U-boat Arm’. The book avoided mention of such matters as the wolf pack or group tactics, but it left the reader in no doubt that the U-boat was to be a major offensive weapon in the Kriegsmarine and that merchant shipping would not be spared. He also held firm to his belief in night torpedo attacks, for which he argued that the U-boat was ideal because of its low silhouette. ‘The destruction of the enemy trade,’ wrote Dönitz. ‘The attack on the enemy sea communications is the proper purpose of sea warfare …’
In short, anyone reading the book had been warned, but British Naval Intelligence did not obtain a copy until 1942.
RED v BLUE
While the long term fleet planning was due to reach its full potential in 1947, Dönitz instead worked on a naval engagement based on what he saw as the conditions that would prevail in 1943. This was the earliest date for a war with Great Britain. The war game covered ‘Atlantic war operations with U-boats, including combined operations between surface commerce raiders and aircraft with U-boats; employment of artillery – and fleet U-boats.’
The Naval High Command saw the enemy or ‘Red’ side as bringing together substantial numbers of warships from the Home and Mediterranean fleets, and the American and African stations, to give a total of five aircraft carriers, twelve battleships and heavy cruisers, twenty-seven light cruisers and a hundred destroyers to protect five convoys. The convoys would include two from Cape Town and one each from the River Plate, the West Indies and Canada. The rules of the war game also allowed that the Royal Air Force would be providing cover for the convoys when within reach of its bases in the United Kingdom and Africa, and possibly France as well.
Ranged against these convoys were the German or ‘Blue’ side, with fifteen torpedo U-boats of Type VII and the larger 1,000-ton displacement Type IX, two large fleet U-boats, two large artillery U-boats, a minelaying U-boat and an armoured cruiser commerce raider with attendant supply ship. This was a small force to set against five target convoys that were extremely well-protected.
The Blue commander deployed his torpedo U-boats in five groups each of three, with the most northerly accompanied by the armoured cruiser positioned on the shipping lanes between Canada and the Western Approaches. Another three were positioned around the Azores and the Canaries to intercept the convoys coming from Cape Town and the River Plate. All were kept well away from the British coastline to avoid being detected by maritime-reconnaissance aircraft. The result was inevitable. The U-boats were spread far too thinly and so three convoys were not even sighted. One of the Cape Town convoys met the River Plate convoy west of Cape Verde, and the combined convoy was intercepted by a U-boat, which kept radio silence initially to avoid giving away her position, then belatedly radioed the other two boats in her group, which were promptly detected and destroyed by the convoy escorts.
Dönitz concluded that the small numbers of the boats and the vast expanses of the ocean combined to ensure failure. Nevertheless, he could see a solution to this problem. While wireless telegraphy between U-boats had been possible in the Mediterranean and the English Channel as early as 1918, what had not been possible had been shore-based communication that would assimilate the overall picture and direct the U-boat wolf packs accordingly. This was the strategy of ‘concentration against concentration’. He advocated having three boats form a group deployed over a breadth of around 50 miles and a depth of 100–200 miles, with additional groups positioned at some 200–300 miles away along the shipping lane. All would be directed by BdU in Germany. Once a convoy was reported by the boats in a group, they should attack independently, while BdU would decide whether to order the other groups to the attack. The Luftwaffe and surface vessels would provide reconnaissance, otherwise fast fleet U-boats would have to be used.
Essentially, he wanted ninety boats at sea, which meant that BdU would have to have 300 U-boats available allowing for time spent on the passage to and from operational zones and time in port refitting the U-boats and resting the crews. The problem was that this was a paper calculation, and no one really knew just how many U-boats would be needed at sea, or the concentration required.
Dönitz went on to suggest that the large artillery or ‘cruiser’ U-boats be used for distant operations, with three each in the South Atlantic and the Indian Ocean, suggesting that a total of eighteen would be required, while he wanted three large mine-laying U-boats and ten fast fleet U-boats which would displace 2,000 tons, known as Type XII, and which would operate with surface vessels and reconnoitre harbours in the United States, then track convoys from the US and direct the waiting wolf packs in mid-Atlantic
to them.
The gist of Dönitz’s paper signed in April 1939, was that war was likely to break out before 1943 and in any case well before Plan Z was completed. Therefore, it was important that the U-boat arm be built up as quickly as possible.
That spring saw Dönitz take the U-boat fleet for a spring cruise in which he decided to test his group tactics. Starting early on 12 May and ending during the evening of 14 May, the exercise was conducted in the Bay of Biscay and off the Portuguese coast. Dönitz commanded the exercise from aboard the Erwin Wassner, his command ship, which represented a surface raider for the exercise, while his former command ship, the Saar, represented her escort. Fifteen U-boats of types VII and IX represented the rest of the ‘Blue’ force, while the target was a convoy, ‘Gold’, represented by a tanker and a cargo vessel. The convoy could steam at a maximum of 13-knots, and the commander could vary its course as he wished on the condition that his overall point-to-point convoy speed must not drop below 11-knots.
The convoy was set to steam from a point 130 miles west of Lisbon towards Ushant, and the Blue U-boats were deployed in four groups at intervals of 200–300 miles along the convoy’s intended path. The Erwin Wassner made long searching sweeps. In visibility of less than five miles, it took just four hours for the convoy to be sighted by the most southerly of the U-boats, U-46, at 12.05, which signalled the position, course and speed of the convoy before attacking, but she was driven off and later lost contact. The other three U-boats in U-46’s group responded to her signals and found the convoy at dusk, but the continued poor visibility and rising seas with spray ensured that they too lost the convoy.