Hitler’s Ardennes offensive, launched on December 16, split the American and British ground forces and threatened briefly to reach Antwerp, its first major geographical objective. Within thirty days, however, Allied forces recovered from the blow, counterattacked, and severed the German salient at Houffalize. Little more than one week later, on January 28, five American corps, comprising twenty-one divisions, launched a major offensive eastward toward Germany in freezing cold and deep snow. Despite the weather and other obstacles, by the early days of March, American forces had reached the Rhine River and captured a bridge at Remagen.
Meanwhile, on January 12, the Red Army launched a massive offensive westward toward Germany. By February 1, Soviet troops were firmly entrenched at the Oder River, merely fifty miles from Berlin. Behind them, German enclaves at Danzig and Königsberg held out in order to buy time to evacuate finished and partly finished Type XXI electro boats, other new U-boats in workup or older ones in school flotillas, as well as torpedoes, submarine personnel, and hundreds of thousands of German refugees.
Countless Kriegsmarine vessels of all sizes and types carried out the evacuation by sea. German naval records reveal that German ships evacuated 2,116,500 persons, 1,668,000 refugees and 448,500 military personnel. Owing to Allied air attacks, British aerial minelaying,* and Soviet submarine attacks, scores of German ships were damaged or sunk. Soviet submarines sank three big German troop transports loaded with troops and refugees. The loss of life was the worst of the war at sea: 6,200 on the 5,200-ton Goya; 5,500 on the 25,500-ton Wilhelm Gust-loff; and 2,700 on the 15,000-ton General Steuben.
The war in Europe was rushing to a conclusion. The impending end of this unprecedented horror raised scores of military and political questions. Would the Soviet Union at last enter the war against Japan? If so, when and at what price? How would the Allies divide areas of responsibility and influence in postwar Europe?
As the Battle of the Bulge slowly and agonizingly turned in favor of the Allies, Prime Minister Winston Churchill urged another “Big Three” meeting (Argonaut) between President Roosevelt, Joseph Stalin, and himself to settle some of the many unresolved wartime and postwar issues. At Stalin’s insistence, they agreed to meet in early February at Yalta, a Black Sea resort in the Crimea, where long ago the Czars had summered.
At Norfolk on January 23, President Roosevelt and his personal staff boarded the new (1943) heavy cruiser Quincy, which had participated with distinction in both the Neptune and Dragoon invasions. The sailing arrangements to Malta were personally supervised by the new commander of the Atlantic Fleet, fifty-eight-year-old Admiral Jonas Ingram, a close friend of Admiral King’s. A football star at the Naval Academy (1907), Ingram had dutifully commanded the unglamorous but necessary U.S. Navy Fourth Fleet based in Natal, Brazil, for two years † and was in line for four stars. Among other tactful steps, Ingram included the old light cruiser Savannah in the presidential escort. Admiral King’s son, Ernest Joseph, Jr., served on the Savannah.
It was agreed that Roosevelt and Churchill and their military staffs would first meet on the Mediterranean island of Malta (Cricket) to resolve any differences, so that at Yalta (Magneto), they could present Stalin with a united front. Admiral William D. Leahy, Chairman of the U. S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, accompanied Roosevelt on the Quincy‡ Admiral King flew via Bermuda to Casablanca (where he met with Dan Gallery, who had captured U-505), thence by plane to Malta. General Marshall flew via the Azores to Marseilles, France, where he met with General Eisenhower on January 28, the day of the momentous Allied counterattack in the Battle of the Bulge. The next day Marshall flew on to Malta. The chief of the Army Air Forces, Hap Arnold, was ill and could not make the trip.
The Churchill party departed London on January 29 in three aircraft, Churchill in a plush four-engine, American-built Douglas C-54 Skymaster (the military version of the DC-4 airliner), a gift from Hap Arnold.* As the aircraft neared Malta, one of them developed serious problems and crashed near the island of Pantelleria. “Only three of the crew and two passengers survived,” Churchill wrote. “Such are the strange ways of fate.”
When the Americans and British delegates convened in Malta to discuss military operations, the main—and most contentious—subjects were Allied ground and air command and operations in the European and Mediterranean theaters and the Pacific. Nonetheless, the U-boat menace in the Atlantic Ocean was not neglected.
And with good reason. By January 1945, the Allies were deeply concerned about a renewed U-boat offensive that might seriously imperil the ground offensive toward Germany from the west. President Roosevelt in his State of the Union address on January 6 had stressed the possibility of a renewed U-boat offensive. Three days later, Roosevelt and Churchill issued a joint communiqué on the same theme. The media on both sides of the Atlantic had published and broadcast alarmist stories reflecting these dire forecasts.†
The lugubrious forecasts were based on faulty or incomplete Allied intelligence and—whether sincere or calculated—on a classic instance of threat inflation. Although the Allied intelligence failure did not appreciably influence the course of the war, as did the failures in the Pearl Harbor attack and Hitler’s December 16 Ardennes offensive (the Battle of the Bulge), it is worth noting.
Some of the factors that led to the intelligence failure were:
• The assumption that on January 1, 1945, there were eighty-seven big Type XXI electro boats fitting out or in workup and another fifty-two under construction, and that by March 1, fifty Type XXIs were to be ready in all respects to launch the new offensive.
This estimate vastly overcredited the ability of the Germans to build, debug, and work up Type XXIs in the face of intensified Allied air raids on U-boat yards and bases, the heavy mining of training areas in the Baltic, adverse winter weather and ice in the Baltic, not to mention the widespread chaos throughout besieged Germany. ‡ Moreover, Allied intelligence apparently failed altogether to discover promptly that the Type XXIs were crippled by the failures of the engine supercharger scheme, the hydraulic systems, and other defects.
In reality, no Type XXI was anywhere near ready for operations on March 1.
Only one—repeat one—Type XXI was far enough along to leave the Baltic in March for further workup in Horten, Norway. That was the show boat U-2511, commanded by Adalbert Schnee, who wore Oak Leaves on his Ritterkreuz, and who had Ritterkreuz holder Gerhard Suhren for his chief engineer.* The boat sailed from Kiel on March 18 and arrived in Horten on March 23, at which time Schnee and Suhren requested that experts be sent there to fix the periscope, which oscillated badly, even at the slowest speed. The U-2511 sailed from Bergen on April 18, but diesel-engine defects forced her to return on April 21. She finally resailed on April 30—about which more later.
• A similar miscalculation about the readiness of the duck-size Type XXIII electro boats. On January 1, 1945, Allied intelligence estimated there were forty- three Type XXIIIs fitting out or in workup and eighteen under construction in Kiel and Hamburg and that those yards had a combined production rate of ten boats per month. In reality, the commissioning rate of the Type XXIIIs from June to December 1944 averaged 4.4 boats per month. Less three losses during workup † by January 1, there were twenty-eight Type XXIIIs in commission. Only twenty more were to be commissioned by war’s end, a total of fifty-one.
Four small Type XXIII electro boats carried out full war patrols by May 1. The first two, U-2322 and U-2324, each made two patrols of about three weeks duration in the North Sea off the east coast of Scotland and England. The U-2321 and U-2329 each made one patrol to those same areas, the latter a cruise of merely fifteen days. A fifth boat, U-2326, attempted to carry out a patrol but had to abort a luckless cruise often days. In total, these five XXIIIs logged 178 patrol days. Altogether they sank five small British freighters for 8,542 tons and damaged the 7,200-ton Norwegian Liberty ship Sverre Helmerson and the British destroyer escort Redmill.
The Type XXIII electro boats also had numerous drawbacks and faults. The most severe drawback was their tiny size: 114 feet long, about 234 tons displacement. They were smaller even than the prewar and wartime Type II ducks. The XXIIIs had only two torpedo tubes—both forward—and no space for torpedo reloads, compared with three tubes forward and three reloads in the Type II ducks. The XXIIIs were so delicately balanced that after firing even one of the two torpedoes, they had a tendency to broach. The telescopic snorts on the XXIIIs, which were raised and lowered by a compressed-air system similar to that on the Type XXIs, were unreliable.
In sum, the Type XXIII electro boats were little better than useless. Their chief contribution to the German war effort was to confuse many in the Allied camp into thinking that they were more or less the equivalent of the larger Type XXI electro boats.
• A consistent tendency, even by some Allied submarine experts, to over value the snort and to underrate the severe immobility it imposed on the U-boat, and the snort failure rate of that era.
Contrary to a widespread view in the Allied camp, U-boats did not snort continuously on diesel engines at speeds of 6 to 10 knots, making good 150 to 250 sea miles a day fully submerged. As related, they snorted at about 5 knots for only about four hours in twenty-four and they were lucky to make fifty or sixty miles a day. Therefore, it took a snort boat nearly eight weeks of a nine-week patrol to reach the English Channel from Norway and return, leaving barely one week for operations. Hence significantly larger numbers of snort boats were required to cover the sea areas and do the work that had been done in earlier and easier times by the nonsnort-equipped boats. Moreover, there was an acute shortage of upgraded, combat-ready Type VII and Type IX snort boats.
Foremost among the Allied submarine specialists who predicted that a very tough fight versus the new U-boats lay ahead in 1945 was the British admiral commanding Western Approaches, Max Horton. His deep but misplaced concern influenced seniors in the Admiralty to forecast extremely heavy Allied shipping losses in March 1945, perhaps heavier than the spike in the spring of 1943. If and when this occurred, First Sea Lord Andrew B. Cunningham warned the British Chiefs of Staff Committee that land operations on the Continent were bound to be adversely affected.
These overly pessimistic views greatly angered the Admiralty technocrats in charge of the anti-U-boat activities, particularly two senior division chiefs, N. A. Prichard and C. D. Howard-Johnston. They drafted a blistering attack on Max Horton. In part:
At various meetings recently the Commander in Chief, Western Approaches, has made statements to the effect that he considers that we are worse off materially at the present moment, for means of locating and destroying U-boats, than we have been at any time during this war (and, he added on one occasion, “or the last war”).
These statements are, in our opinion, both untrue and misleading, and although the true state of affairs is no doubt appreciated by Their Lordships, we feel that such statements are bound to give a false impression when made in the presence of other senior officers and members of other services who may not be so well informed, and we feel it our duty to submit the true facts as they are known to us....
At Malta, from January 30 to February 2, Roosevelt, Churchill, and the combined military staffs agreed to several important measures to deal with the renewed U-boat menace that they expected.
• A new strategic bombing directive that called for a significant increase in heavy-bomber air raids on U-boat construction and assembly factories, and shipyards and canals in Germany by RAF Bomber Command and the U.S. Eighth Air Force.*
• The doubling of the RAF mining of the U-boat workup areas in the Baltic, thereby driving more U-boat flotillas to abandon the eastern Baltic in favor of workup in the western Baltic, the Jade, and Norway, areas RAF aircraft could reach more easily.
• Intensification of the RAF air campaign against U-boat bases in Norway and German surface shipping supplying those bases.
• The retention in home waters of about half of three hundred British destroyers and escort vessels that were earmarked for the Far East to support the war against Japan. Many of these vessels were deployed in new hunter-killer groups operating in the Minches, North Channel, Irish Sea, and English Channel.
• An increase in Coastal Command ASW squadrons from thirty-two to thirty-eight and a half, comprised of 528 aircraft, and the transfer of several Iceland-based squadrons to bases in Northern Ireland, Scotland, and England. These planes were to concentrate against likely U-boat routes to and from Norway to the British Isles and in the waters of the latter.*
• The laying by surface ships of seventeen thousand defensive mines in “deep” fields on the main Allied convoy routes, focal points in the Irish Sea, and on well-known “shallow patches,” which it was assumed U-boats used for navigational purposes.
At first mystified by the public Allied forecasts of an intensification of the U-boat war, Admiral Dönitz finally concluded that these statements were part of a clever deception. He therefore informed Tokyo that
[t]he sudden onset of a new U-boat war, as announced by the enemy, is not to be expected because we have already been in the new U-boat war since the equipping [of U-boats] with Schnorchel ... If the new U-boats fulfill our expectations of them, a gradual increase in the number of sinkings can be counted on, which will grow with the monthly sending of U-boats to the front....
The enemy continues to be afraid of the U-boat war and its intensification. By a tactical bluff—that is, repeated announcement of a new U-boat offensive—he is attempting, even though the offensive announced by him does not materialize, to give the impression that he has once again succeeded in becoming master of the U-boats.
The American and British parties, grown to about seven hundred persons (!), left Malta for Yalta on the night of February 2-3 in about twenty aircraft. President Roosevelt, Harry Hopkins, Averell Harriman, and others of the Roosevelt inner circle flew in his C-54, the “Sacred Cow’ Churchill and his party flew in Churchill’s C-54 sister ship. It was 1,400 miles to Saki airfield in the Crimea, a seven-hour flight. It took eight more hours to travel by auto the forty primitive and mountainous miles from Saki to Yalta, altogether a hideous trip that further eroded the health and spirits of Roosevelt, already gravely ill.†
This second and final meeting of Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin stretched over eight days from February 3 to February 10. The conferees agreed to a number of fateful military and geopolitical decisions that had no bearing on the U-boat war and do not warrant extended discussion in this history. The most important of the military decisions was Stalin’s pledge to enter the war against Japan “two or three months after Germany surrendered.” The most important of the geopolitical decisions were Stalin’s agreement to fully participate in the newly forming United Nations, the ratification of Soviet hegemony over Eastern Europe, including eastern Germany, which the Soviets had already overrun,* and the establishment of four Allied zones of occupation in postwar Germany.
At the conclusion of the conference, Roosevelt and Churchill traveled by auto on February 11 to Sevastopol, a three-hour trip over rough roads. Both spent the night on headquarters and communications ships: Roosevelt on Catoctin, Churchill on the liner Franconia. The next day, Roosevelt returned by car over more primitive roads to Saki airfield. There he boarded the “Sacred Cow” and flew to Egypt, where he reboarded the heavy cruiser Quincy, and on February 14 held brief conferences with three kings: Farouk of Egypt, Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, and Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia. Churchill left Sevastopol by car for Saki on February 14, boarded his own C-54, and flew to Athens. The next day he flew on to Alexandria, Egypt, where he established quarters on the light cruiser Aurora and had a final meeting with Roosevelt on the Quincy. The next day the Quincy set sail for the States. After an overnight stop in Algiers on February 18, Quincy reached Norfolk on February 27. Roosevelt returned to Washington where, on March 1, he addressed a joint session of Congress from his wheelchair. Churchill flew back to England on February 19 and on February 27, addressed the House of Commons, which approved his decisions at Yalta, although not unanimously. Admiral King and General Marshall, who were not permitted to fly in the same aircraft, returned to Washington by various means and routes.
It was obvious to everyone who saw President Roosevelt—including all of Congress on March 1—that he was gravely ill. On March 29, aides lifted him aboard his private train and he traveled to his favorite hideaway and spa, “the Little White House” in Warm Springs, Georgia. There, on April 12, he died of a massive cerebral hemorrhage. Vice President Harry S Truman assumed the positions of president and commander in chief.
Displaced to Norway, Heligoland, the Jade, and to western Baltic ports, the U-boat force, like its World War I predecessor, dutifully carried on until Germany finally gave up and capitulated.
As commander in chief of the Kriegsmarine in a desperately crumbling Germany, Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz could no longer give the U-boat war his undivided personal attention. The construction and readiness of the U-boats remained the responsibility of Admiral Hans-Georg von Friedeburg. At U-boat Control, Admiral Eberhard Godt, assisted by Dönitz’s son-in-law, Günter Hessler, continued to plan U-boat strategy and tactics.
The remaining Type VII snort boats designated to carry on the naval war in the Atlantic were based in Norway. Hans-Rudolf Rösing, commander in chief, U-boats West, retained that title after the withdrawal from France to Norway. Rein-hard Suhren retained the title of captain, U-boats North (Norway, Arctic). The VIIs were assigned to three combat flotillas: the 11th at Bergen, commanded by Hans Cohausz; 13th at Trondheim, commanded by Rolf Rüggeberg; and 14th at Narvik, commanded by Helmut Möhlmann.
The situation in Norway made it difficult to mount the VII war patrols. Unlike the French, the Norwegians, virtual prisoners of the Germans for nearly five years, remained hostile. Emboldened by the Allied pincers closing tightly on Germany, Norwegian resistance groups stepped up acts of sabotage against the German occupiers and their infrastructure. Allied aircraft repeatedly attacked the U-boat pens and dockyards at Bergen and Trondheim and the German shipping attempting to supply forces in Norway via the Kattegat and the inshore leads. British submarines joined in the antishipping campaign. Further complicating and endangering German naval operations, the RAF planted thousands of mines off the naval bases and in the leads.
Under this continual Allied pressure, most of the VIIs were forced to disperse widely in protective fjords and primitive ports, where refits and replenishing were difficult and hazardous. There were shortages of fuel oil, food, torpedoes, electronics, and competent repair and replacement personnel. Warmed by the last fingers of the Gulf Stream, the seas were ice-free, but everything else was cold, cold, cold, and assaulted by snow and ice.
Remarkably, the Germans were able to mount 145 U-boat patrols from Norway and Germany in the four months from January 1 to April 30, 1945. The boats were assigned as follows:
As can be seen, the preponderance of Type VII snort-boat patrols from January 1 to April 31, 1945, were conducted in waters of the British Isles via the Atlantic: 113 of 119. The other six shown in the chart were mounted by four different tiny Type XXIII electro boats via the North Sea.
These Type VII snort-boat patrols, constituting the so-called “renewed” U-boat war, were difficult and unrewarding. Of the 113 that sailed, nearly half, fifty-six, manned by about 2,800 men, were lost to Allied ASW forces. Those authors who have written exuberantly that the snorkel gave the Germans a decided edge in the naval war should ponder well these figures. It was another terrible U-boat slaughter.
Nineteen VIIs sailed in January, eleven of them new boats making first patrols. Seven of the latter were the deep-diving VIIC41s. Six of these were new. The boats sank ten Allied ships for 30,726 tons. Ten U-boats (53 percent) were lost with about five hundred crew, of which forty-three were captured.* For every Allied ship sunk, one U-boat was lost, a ruinous exchange rate.
Some of the VIIs patrolled off North Minch, some off North Channel, and nine went to the English Channel. It should be stressed once again that the snort voyage between Norway and the English Channel was a long ordeal, usually taking about twenty-eight days each way, leaving only a brief time to patrol the channel.
Because the U-boats remained submerged about twenty hours a day and raised the snort for only four hours to charge batteries and air the boat, sightings and kills by Allied aircraft fell off drastically. Aircraft killed only nine U-boats in the North Atlantic in the period January through April. Catalinas and B-24s of the U.S. Navy’s Fairwing 7 got three of these and shared credit for a fourth kill with British surface ships.
Some January VII patrols, in brief:
• In early January, the U-245, commanded by Friedrich Schumann-Hindenberg, who had made a weather patrol in the fall of 1944, sailed from Norway to the island of Heligoland to carry out a special mission, Brutus, This directed him to sail across the lower North Sea to the mouth of the Thames River and sink shipping. Fighting strong currents in shallow water and mines, Schumann-Hindenberg did in fact sink a ship: the 2,600-ton Dutch tanker Liseta. He returned to Heligoland to prepare for a second Brutus patrol.
• The U-1199, commanded by Rolf Nollmann, making his second patrol, sailed on New Year’s Day. Three weeks later, near Land’s End, he found coastal convoy TBC 43 and hit the 7,200-ton American Liberty ship George Hawley. The tug Allegiance towed her into Falmouth, a complete wreck. Two British warships, the destroyer Icarus and corvette Mignonette, pounced on and sank U-1199 on January 21. One of the crew of forty-seven survived: Chief Quartermaster Friedrich Claussen.
• The veteran U-275, commanded by Helmut Wehrkamp, sailed on January 13. He incurred snort problems and put into Lorient on February 10. After repairs he resailed from France on February 25. Off the south coast of England on March 8, Wehrkamp sank the 5,000-ton British freighter Lornaston. The Admiralty believes that U-275 struck a mine off Beachy Head two days later, March 10, and sank with the loss of all hands.
• The new U-1208, commanded by Georg Hagene, sailed from Norway on January 14. Over a month later, in St. George’s Channel on February 20, Hagene sank the British corvette Vervain, from convoy Halifax 337.
Off the Lizard in the twilight of February 27, three ships of the famous British hunter-killer Support Group 2, the frigates Labaun and Loch Fada and sloop Wild Goose, got U-1208 on sonar and attacked with depth charges, Hedgehogs, and Squids. Nothing further was ever heard from U-1208. The Admiralty apportioned credit for the kill among the three ships.
• The experienced VIIC41 U-300, commanded by Fritz Hein, making his third patrol, sailed from Trondheim on January 21. Since there were too many U- boats in the English Channel, Hein got permission to patrol off Gibraltar Strait. On February 17, he attacked convoy UGS 72 and damaged two ships, the 7,200-ton American Liberty ship Michael J. Stone and the 9,551-ton British tanker Regent Lion. Salvage vessels towed the Regent Lion into Tangier on February 19, where she was declared a total loss.
A British hunter-killer group composed mostly of corvettes got U-300 on sonar on February 19, just west of the mouth of the strait and attacked. The depth charges—in particular those from the British yacht Evadna—severely damaged U-300 and flooded the forward end. Hein remained submerged for as long as possible without periscopes or sonar gear, all wrecked by the depth charges. Finally, on the morning of February 22, he was forced to surface and, quite by coincidence, he came up in the middle of a convoy. Two astonished escorts, the minesweepers Pincher and Recruit, opened fire with all guns that would bear, killing Hein, his second watch officer, his engineer, and six others. The German survivors scuttled and jumped overboard, and the British ships rescued forty-one.
• The new VIIC41 U-1018, commanded by Walter Burmeister, sailed from Horten for the English Channel on January 21. Over a month later, on February 27, the boat intercepted a coastal convoy, BTC 81, off the Lizard and sank the 1,317- ton Norwegian freighter Corvus. The convoy escort counterattacked promptly, dropping 150 depth charges. Finally the British frigate Loch Fada, commanded by B. A. Rogers, got a good contact on U-1018 at 164 feet—sixteen feet off the bottom. Loch Fada fired a Squid that hit and blew a huge hole in the U-boat’s side, in stantly flooding the bow and stern compartments and the control room and killing nearly all of the crew. Five Germans rose to the surface, but three drowned. Loch Fada rescued one officer and one enlisted man, who described a scene of the utmost horror inside the doomed U-boat.
• The new U-927, commanded by Jürgen Ebert, sailed from Kristiansand to the English Channel on the last day of January. Off the Lizard on the evening of February 24, a Leigh Light-equipped Warwick* of British Squadron 179, piloted by Antony G. Brownsill, got a radar contact on U-927’s snorkel. The plane attacked from an altitude of seventy feet, dropping six depth charges at the snort in a perfect straddle. Nothing further was heard from U-927. Brownsill was later awarded a DFC.
Twenty-nine VIIs sailed from Norway in February, fifteen of them new boats making first patrols. Twelve were deep-diving VIIC41s. These boats sank sixteen Allied ships for 50,000 tons. Sixteen boats (55 percent) were lost with about eight hundred crew, eighty-eight of whom were captured, † For the second month in 1945, the Germans lost one U-boat for every Allied ship sunk, continuing the ruinous exchange rate.
Some February VII patrols in brief:
• The new VIIC41 U-1302, commanded by Wolfgang Herwartz, sailed from Norway on February 6. The boat snorted southabout Ireland, thence northeast into St. George’s Channel to an area off Milford Haven. There on February 28, Herwartz sank two small freighters, the 1,926-ton Panamanian Soreldoc and the 646-ton British Norfolk Coast In the same area three days later, on March 2, he sank two larger freighters inbound from the transatlantic Slow Convoy 167, the 4,536-ton British King Edgar and the 3,204-ton Norwegian Novasli. Total: four ships for 10,312 tons.
In terms of numbers of ships sunk, this was the best VII war patrol of 1945. However, the crew of U-1302 did not live to savor the achievement. Five nights later, on March 6, in the same area, the frigate La Hulloise of the Canadian hunter-killer Support Group 25, northbound in the Irish Sea, got a radar contact on U-1302’$ snorkel and periscope. Her skipper, John Brock, fixed a spotlight on the snort and periscope, forcing the U-boat deep. Brock did not attack but her alarm brought up two other frigates of the group, Strathadam and Thetford Mines. While the other two frigates held sonar contact, Howard Quinn in Strathadam made a perfect Hedgehog attack that destroyed U-1302. German food, books, clothing, shoes, snapshots, and “numerous other small objects,” including a harmonica, rose to the surface, but no German survivors or bodies.
• The new U-681, commanded by Werner Gebauer, sailed from Kristiansand on February 16. En route to the English Channel on March 6, Gebauer shot a T-5 at an ASW trawler, but it missed. Five days later, on March 11, while running submerged, the U-681 smashed into a rock near Land’s End and was so badly damaged that Gebauer surfaced to abandon ship and scuttle. As it happened, a B-24 of U.S. Navy Squadron VB 103, piloted by Norman R. Field, spotted the stranded U-681 and attacked from an altitude of one hundred feet, dropping eight depth charges that destroyed the boat. The crew jumped into the water, some with dinghies. In response to Field’s alarm, ships of British Support Group 2 came up and the frigate Loch Fada rescued thirty-eight Germans, including Gebauer. Pilot Field received both a British and an American DFC.
• The VIIC41 U-1003, commanded by Werner Strübing, sailed from Bergen for his second patrol on February 19. Control initially directed the boat to the English Channel but later it shifted the target area to North Channel and, possibly, the Irish Sea via that entry way. About seventeen days out, the snort blocked and felled a number of crewmen, but others made repairs while U-1003 lay in a remote bay on the west coast of Ireland. Strübing, who was dispirited and defeatist, according to some of his crewmen, reluctantly resumed the patrol.
While snorting off Loch Foyle, the waterway to the big Allied naval base at Londonderry, Northern Ireland, a few minutes before midnight on March 20, an undetected ship smashed into the upper works of U-1003. That ship was the Canadian frigate New Glasgow, outbound from Londonderry with three other frigates of Canadian hunter-killer Support Group 26. According to the Canadian naval historian Joseph Schull, when New Glasgow spotted U-1003’s snort, “she bore in at high speed” and hit the enemy vessel “with a grinding crash” and, although herself damaged badly, attacked with 600-pound depth charges and a Hedgehog.
Allied ASW doctrine of that time called for surface ships to hunt to exhaustion any possible U-boat contact, however uncertain, and to press all nearby warships into the chase. Thus while New Glasgow, commanded by Reader M. Hanbury, prepared to put back into Londonderry for repairs to her collision damage, three frigates of Canadian hunter-killer Support Group 25 raced out from Londonderry. and six warships of Canadian Escort Group C-4 joined the four remaining frigates of Canadian Support Group 26. In all, fourteen Canadian warships (including New Glasgow) hunted U-1003 for many, many hours without success.
The collision with and depth charges from New Glasgow severely damaged U-1003. The snort and attack periscope were bent flat back. The bridge rails, radar antennae, and one twin 20mm were carried away. Seawater flooded through a warped hatch into the conning tower and into the control room below. After slipping away, Strübing bottomed for about forty-eight hours to make repairs, but the damage was too great for the crew to overcome.
Shortly after midnight, March 23, Strübing surfaced to run to the coast of Ireland and beach. Some Canadian warships that were still in the vicinity got U-1003 on radar. Seeing these approaching warships, Strübing gave up the fight and at 4:30 a.m., scuttled and abandoned ship. Sixteen Germans, including Strübing, perished in the sinking. Some hours later, the Canadian frigate Thetford Mines of Support Group 25, inbound to Londonderry, picked up thirty-three German survivors from life rafts or dinghies, but two died before the frigate reached port.
• The veteran U-260, commanded by Klaus Becker, one of the last boats to evacuate from France, sailed from Kristiansand on February 21. Three weeks later, on March 12, while going southabout Ireland into St. George’s Channel, the U-260 hit a mine off Fastnet. As a result of the damage, Becker could not dive U-260 and reported that fact to Control, which ordered him to scuttle. When Becker and his crew struggled ashore, Irish authorities interned them.
The U-246, commanded by Ernst Raabe, left Bergen on her second patrol on February 22, and snorted southabout Ireland into the English Channel. Near the Lizard on the night of March 29, Raabe found a convoy and shot a T-5 at one of the trailing escorts, the Canadian frigate Teme. It hit and blew off about sixty feet of the frigate’s stern, but fortunately killed only four men. A Canadian sister ship, New Waterford, hunted for the U-boat while salvage vessels towed Teme into Falmouth, where she was declared a total wreck. That same night, it was thought another of the close escorts, the American-built British destroyer escort Duckworth, found, attacked, and sank U-246 with the loss of all hands.* However, Alex Niestl6 attributes her loss to unknown causes.
The new U-1195, commanded by Ernst Cordes, sailed from Bergen on February 24. He was the skipper who had drifted his VII, U-763, into the British naval base at Spithead during Overlord. He was therefore well acquainted with the difficult currents and shallow water in the English Channel and there was every expectation that U-1195 would survive. It took Cordes twenty-seven days to reach the English Channel. In St. George’s Channel on March 21, he found coastal convoy BTC 103 off Milford Haven. He shot and probably hit the American Liberty ship James Eagan Layne† which was so badly damaged that she had to be scrapped.
While bottomed off Portsmouth on the morning of April 6, Cordes heard the noise of ship propellers and rose to periscope depth to find an oncoming small coastal convoy, VWP 16. He fired T-5s at two different ships and sank the impressive 11,420-ton British freighter Cuba. She was by far the largest ship sunk by a U-boat in 1945.
Cordes bottomed U-1195 at ninety-eight feet, but the escorts easily found her and depth charges began to fall. The British destroyer Watchman, commanded by J. R. Clarke, carried out a deadly Hedgehog attack. Holed, the bow compartment of U-1195 flooded knee deep in two minutes and the men abandoned the room. When Cordes tried to surface, he found the boat was too heavily flooded and gave orders for a submerged escape from the control and after-torpedo rooms. The Watchman fished out eighteen Germans (of forty-nine), but Cordes was not among the survivors.
Twenty-nine VIIs sailed from Norway to British waters in March 1945. Fifteen were new boats on maiden patrols. In all, these U-boats sank nine ships for 20,000 tons, an average of one-third of a ship per boat per patrol. Seventeen of the twenty-eight (60 percent) that sailed were sunk, a loss of another eight hundred German submariners, fifty-four of whom were captured.*
Some March VII patrols, in brief:
• The new VIIC41 U-1024, commanded by Hans-Joachim Gutteck, sailed from Kristiansand on March 3. Control directed him to go southabout Ireland and up through St. George’s Channel to the Irish Sea to an area near Anglesey.
While in St. George’s Channel, Gutteck conducted an aggressive patrol. On about April 4, he shot two torpedoes at a “corvette” and claimed a sinking, but it was not confirmed in Allied records. Several days later off Holyhead, he came upon inbound transatlantic convoy Halifax 346 and fired two torpedoes into the huge formation. One missile misfired, but the other hit the 7,200-ton American Liberty ship James W. Nesmith. Gutteck claimed she sank, but although badly damaged, Nesmith made port. Convoy escorts counterattacked U-1024, but Gutteck eluded them and bottomed in a hollow until they canceled the hunt.
While still in the Holyhead area on the morning of April 12, U-1024 sighted yet another formation of big ships: what Gutteck described as a 12,000-ton ocean liner and four other vessels of 8,000 to 12,000 tons. He shot three torpedoes at the formation and claimed sinking the 12,000-ton ocean liner, a freighter of 8,000 tons, and another of 6,000 tons, bringing his total claims for the patrol to one corvette and three merchantmen for 28,000 tons sunk and one 6,000-ton merchantman damaged. Allied records confirmed only one sinking in this third attack, the 7,200-ton American Liberty ship Will Rogers, making Gutteck’s actual score one 7,200-ton Liberty ship sunk and one 7,200-ton Liberty ship damaged.
British hunter-killer Support Group 8, patrolling nearby, pounced on U-1024. That evening one of the frigates, Loch Glendhu, blew U-1024 to the surface with a Squid attack. Two other frigates, Loch Achray and Loch More, joined in the hunt. Believing his U-boat to be doomed, Gutteck ordered the crew to abandon ship and scuttle, but the scuttling went awry and salvage parties from the frigates boarded and captured U-1024 and obtained valuable gear and papers.† In this melee, eight Germans were killed, including Gutteck, who shot himself, or so the Germans asserted. The British held the other thirty-seven German crewmen belowdecks on U-1024. One frigate, Loch More, took the U-boat in tow, but a thick fog enveloped the formation and shortly after midnight on April 13, U-1024 broke loose, swamped, and sank. The frigates rescued the thirty-seven German survivors.
• The U-1202, commanded by Rolf Thomsen, sailed from Bergen on her second patrol on March 4. Thomsen had won a Ritterkreuz for his bold, solo attack on a convoy in St. George’s Channel on December 10 during his first patrol. He had claimed sinking four freighters for 26,000 tons, but only one, the American Liberty ship Dan Beard, was confirmed.
Thomsen conducted what Control believed to be another sensational patrol. On March 21, he claimed that he sank a destroyer and got two hits on a “jeep” carrier that produced sinking noises, but neither claim was confirmed. Ten days later he claimed he hit two Liberty-size ships and sank both for a total of 14,000 tons. However, these sinkings could not be confirmed either. In the same area on the following day, April 1, Thomsen claimed that he sank two corvettes and damaged another 7,000-ton freighter. Again, none of these successes could be confirmed.
However, inasmuch as Thomsen’s total claims in two patrols were a destroyer, two corvettes, and six freighters for 40,000 tons sunk, as well as damage to a carrier and another big freighter, Dönitz awarded Thomsen Oak Leaves to his Ritterkreuz. This was the first such high honor to be given an Atlantic skipper since the Oak Leaves awarded to Werner Henke, skipper of 17-575, nearly two years earlier.*
Thomsen returned U-1202 to Norway on April 27. He did not make another patrol. The U-1202 was sunk in Bergen on May 10 and later salvaged by the Norwegian Navy, which rechristened her Kynn.
• The new VIIC41 U-1023, commanded by Heinrich Schroeteler, sailed from Norway on March 7. This was Schroeteler’s second command. Earlier, he had been skipper of one of the first Type VII snort boats in the Atlantic, U-667. Almost alone he had praised the snort (“He who knows how to snorkel lives longer”) in a long message that Dönitz distributed widely throughout the U-boat service to build confidence in the device. After four patrols on U-667, Schroeteler had left the boat to relieve Adalbert Schnee as first staff officer in U-boat Control, Berlin. There he met and married the daughter of Admiral Rolf von der Marwitz.
Schroeteler was a free spirit with an artistic temperament. He did not like desk duty in Berlin. He persuaded Dönitz’s son-in-law, Günter Hessler, to send him back to sea. In Norway, Schnee gave him command of U-1023, replacing her first skipper. Merely to be different, he said later, Schroeteler did not wear the traditional captain’s white cap.
Schroeteler conducted an aggressive patrol. Southbound off North Channel on April 9, he intercepted Slow Convoy 171 and fired three torpedoes into the formation, almost hitting the Canadian frigate Capilano. Ten days later, he came upon another convoy off the southern tip of Ireland. He shot three torpedoes into this formation and claimed sinking an 8,000-ton freighter, but it was not confirmed in Allied records. In the same area four days later, he came upon a coastal convoy, TBC 135, and shot two torpedoes at a 10,000-ton freighter. He claimed another possible sinking, but it was not so. Allied records showed that he hit—and damaged—the 7,300-ton British freighter Riverton, but she made port. Upon receiving word of Schroeteler’s supposed three big successes for 26,000 tons, Dönitz presented him a Ritterkreuz by radio, the last such award to a U-boat skipper in the war.
Proceeding into the English Channel on May 6, near Portland, Schroeteler shot a T-5 at a “destroyer” or “corvette.” It hit and sank the vessel, which proved to be the small (335-ton) British minesweeper NYMS 382. She was the last Allied warship to be sunk by a U-boat in the war. Upon receiving word of the German surrender, Schroeteler put into Portland on May 12, completing a forty-nine-day cruise,†
• The new VIIC41 U-1063, commanded by Karl-Heinz Stephan, sailed from Kristiansand on March 12 to patrol the mouth of the English Channel between Land’s End and Brest: Stephan attempted to navigate submerged by means of an Elektra-Sonne antenna mounted on the snort, but the system was not yet reliable. Off Land’s End shortly before midnight on April 15, Stephan rose to periscope depth to take a navigational bearing on the English coast, snort raised and ready.
British Support Group 17 got a radar contact on U-1063’s snort. The very capable frigate Loch Killin carried out three attacks, dropping twenty-one depth charges. German survivors said these attacks damaged U-1063, but not enough to justify Stephan’s panicky order to surface and abandon ship. When the U-boat popped up, Loch Killin raked her with gunfire, killing several Germans. Others, including Stephan, the second watch officer, and a chief petty officer, drowned. The frigates rescued seventeen German survivors.
• The U-396, commanded by a new skipper, Hillmar Siemon, also sailed from Norway on March 13. His primary mission was to report weather, and secondarily to sink ships. It was thought that while the boat was homebound near the Orkneys, a B-24 of British Squadron 86, piloted by J. T. Laurence, attacked and sank the boat with the loss of all hands. However, Niestlé writes that U-396 was lost to unknown causes.
• One of the newly arrived VIICs, U-905, commanded by Bernhard Schwar-ting, also sailed from Norway on March 13. It was believed that on March 20, a B-24 of British Squadron 86, piloted by N.E.M. Smith, possibly spotted U-905 west of the Orkney Islands. The aircraft attacked with two Fido homing torpedoes. On March 31, Control directed Schwarting to patrol west of the English Channel, but nothing further was ever heard from U-905. *
• Another newly arrived VIIC41, the U-321, commanded by Fritz Berends, sailed from Kristiansand on March 17. On April 2, a Leigh Light-equipped Wellington of Polish Squadron 304, piloted by R. Marczak, spotted her snort and periscope about 150 miles off Cape Clear, the southernmost tip of Ireland. The boat dipped under but Marczak attacked at an altitude of 120 feet with six depth charges which, it was assumed, destroyed U-321. Nothing further was ever heard from her.
• The new VIIC, U-1106, commanded by Erwin Bartke, age thirty-three, sailed from Kristiansand on March 23. Bartke had commissioned and commanded the “Milk Cow” tanker U-488 from February 1943 to March 1944. On the seventh day out from Norway, the crew of a B-24 of British Squadron 224, piloted by M. A. Graham, spotted a snort and periscope. Graham attacked with depth charges, which blew the stern of the boat to the surface. He then dropped a pattern of sonobuoys that returned noises that sounded like a dying U-boat. Nothing further was heard from U-1106.
• Another VIIC41, the U-326, commanded by Peter Matthes, sailed from Bergen on March 29. Nearly a month later, on April 25, while on patrol just southwest of Brest, a B-24 of U.S. Navy Squadron VB 103, piloted by Dwight D. Nott, sighted a snort and a periscope. Nott attacked with depth charges, reporting that the snort jumped out of the water. Later the aircrew saw a body floating on the surface. This was the end of U-326 and all hands.
• The new VIIC41, U-1107, commanded by Fritz Parduhn, sailed from Horten on March 30. West of Brest on April 18, Parduhn came upon the transatlantic convoy Halifax 348 and boldly attacked. His torpedoes sank two valuable loaded ships: the 8,000-ton British tanker Empire Gold and the 7,200-ton American Liberty ship Cyrus H. McCormick. In terms of confirmed tonnage sunk (15,209), this was the third best patrol of any VII in 1945.
It was a victory not long celebrated by the Germans. On April 30 a Catalina of U.S. Navy Squadron VP 63, piloted by Frederick G. Lake, spotted the snort spray of U-1107 near the western mouth of the English Channel. Lake carried out a textbook retrobomb attack on the snort, firing twenty-four retrorockets from an altitude of one hundred feet. Debris rose to the surface. Responding to Lake’s alarms, British hunter-killer Group 1, sixty miles away, came up and got a bottom sonar contact and found oil.
This was the last U-boat kill by the U.S. Navy’s Fairwing 7. Since its arrival in southwest England in the summer of 1943, the wing had sunk four U-boats and shared credit for two others.* From January 1 to April 30, 1945, the wing’s aircraft flew 1,549 ASW missions, requiring 14,513 hours, almost all over water. These planes doubtless harassed many U-boats and forced many into evasive actions that thwarted attacks on Allied shipping. On May 17, Admiral King ordered the wing † to return to the States.
By April 1945, the American 12th and British 21st Army Groups, commanded by Omar Bradley and Bernard Montgomery, had crossed the Rhine River into Germany proper and were striking toward the prearranged stop line at the Elbe River. Soviet armies, commanded by Georgi Zhukov, were surrounding Berlin and fighting in the suburbs.
Notwithstanding this chaotic situation, what remained of the U-boat force carried on with loyalty and verve. Twenty-eight VIIs sailed from Norway in April to carry out war patrols in waters of the British Isles, eight in the last week of the month. Twelve were new boats or transfers from the submarine school. Four were commanded by new skippers. All told, these boats sank four ships for 20,000 tons. Ten of the twenty-eight boats, manned by about five hundred men, were lost, including forty-six captured (from U-1206) and one hundred interned (from U-963 and U-1277) by the Portuguese. As ordered, eleven other VIIs of the April group manned by about six hundred men put into British naval bases to surrender.
The U-1055, commanded by Rudolf Meyer, making his second patrol, sailed from Norway on April 5. On April 23, the boat reported her position from the southwest tip of Ireland, but nothing further was ever heard from her. Niestle writes that the cause of her loss is not known.
The U-486, commanded by Gerhard Meyer, who sank the troopship Leopoldville, a big British freighter, and sank or wrecked two British destroyer escorts (Capel, Affleck) on his first patrol in December, sailed from Bergen for another patrol in the English Channel on April 7. The snort broke four days later and Meyer aborted the patrol.
At that time, the big new 1,300-ton British submarine Tapir, commanded by John C. Y. Roxburgh, who had earlier commanded the submarine United in the Mediterranean, was patrolling off Norway. In the early hours of April 12, Tapir detected U-486 running on the surface, inbound to Bergen. Roxburgh fired a full salvo from his eight bow tubes. One or more torpedoes hit and blew the U-boat to pieces with the loss of all hands.
During his earlier action as commander of United, Roxburgh had sunk the Italian destroyer Bomdadière and the big Italian submarine Remo, plus a number of Italian and German freighters. Highly decorated for these successes and for sinking U-486, Roxburgh rose to lofty positions in the Royal Navy in the postwar years and retired with the rank of vice admiral.
• The new U-1206, commanded by Karl-Adolf Schlitte, left Kristiansand on April 7. Her task was to relieve U-778 off the east coast of Scotland between Moray Firth and the Firth of Forth, concentrating on Peterhead.*
Schlitte navigated by Elektra-Sonne. Three days out, the supercharger on the port diesel failed. After the boat reached the area off Aberdeen on April 13, the starboard diesel failed. Forced to run on batteries while the crew worked feverishly to get the diesels back on line, Schlitte had to let pass what he described as an 8,000-ton freighter.
The next day, April 14, the U-1206 suffered another mechanical failure, this one with devastating results. The outboard valve of the forward head (toilet) gave way and the bow torpedo compartment flooded. Because the main bilge pump and other auxiliary machinery also failed, Schlitte could not check the flooding. Faced with this calamity, he fired the torpedoes in the tubes and destroyed the others, as well as all secret materials, then surfaced to scuttle and abandon ship. Three men were lost but local small craft rescued thirty-six survivors and ten others reached the shore at Aberdeen in a raft. All forty-six Germans were promptly escorted to British POW interrogation centers.
• The U-245, commanded by Friedrich Schumann-Hindenberg, sailed on April 9 from Heligoland for a second hazardous (Brutus) patrol to the mouth of the Thames River. In shallow water off Harwich on April 17, he came upon coastal convoy TAM 142 and sank two freighters with new and experimental, extremely long-range acoustic torpedoes. The victims were the 4,900-ton British Filleigh and the 5,000-ton Norwegian Karmt. A T-5 shot at a escorting corvette missed. When Germany collapsed, Schumann-Hindenberg returned U-245 to Bergen.
The VIIC41 U-1017, commanded by Werner Riecken, making his Second patrol, sailed from Trondheim on April 14. Two weeks later, in the early afternoon of April 29, while snorting off Malin Head at the entrance to North Channel, an aircraft spotted the snort wake and smoke. This was a B-24 of the renowned British Squadron 120, piloted by H. J. (“Pop”) Oliver, a protégé of the U-boat killer “ace” Bryan Turnbull. Oliver pounced promptly on the snort, dropping four depth charges. Per doctrine, he then laid out a pattern of sonobuoys at the site of his attack. These picked up “loud and long-drawn-out explosions” and transmitted the noise to the B-24, providing fair proof of a kill, confirmed later by Allied intelligence. There were no German survivors.
The new VII, U-1105, commanded by Hans-Joachim Schwarz, sailed from Kristiansand on April 13. Two weeks later, close off the west coast of Ireland near Donegal Bay, Schwarz shot torpedoes at the American-built British destroyer escort Redmill, which, with American-built British sister ships Byron and Fitzroy, had sunk the VII snort boat U-722. The torpedo hit the stern of Redmill, leaving her a total wreck. Salvage vessels towed her into port, but she was never repaired. The British eventually returned the hulk to the U.S. Navy, as well as her sister ships Byron and Fitzroy. Per orders, Schwarz surrendered and concluded his brief patrol at Loch Eriboll, Scotland, on May 10.
Among the last VIIs to sail from Norway were the. new VIIC41, U-1277, commanded by Ehrenreich-Peter Stever, and the veteran VIIC, U-963, commanded by Rolf-Werner Wentz, making his second patrol as skipper. Stever was to patrol the English Channel and Wentz was to lay a minefield. Neither boat carried out its mission. Both scuttled off the Portuguese coast, Wentz on May 21, Stever on June 3. Portuguese authorities interned both crews and later turned them over to Allied authorities.
Soon to become somewhat famous (or infamous) and the cause of wild speculation in the tabloids, the U-977, commanded by a new skipper, Heinz Schäffer, age twenty-four, sailed from Kristiansand on May 2 to patrol in the English Channel Commissioned on March 31, 1943, in Kiel by Hans Leilich, age twenty-five, she had not previously made a war patrol. During workup in the Baltic, according to Allied intelligence documents, U-977 rammed (or was rammed by) other vessels three times. In the last incident, she incurred so much damage to the pressure hull that German authorities relegated her to school boat status.
In early 1945, Heinz Schäffer, crew of 1939, assumed command of the boat in Hamburg, where on February 20 she entered the yards to be fitted with a snort. Schäffer had made four war patrols, including one in the Gulf of Guinea, as a watch officer on the U-445, based in France. From December 1943 to December 1944, he had commanded the Type IID school duck U-148.
Schäffer said later that he regarded his new command as a “means of escape” from the Allies, rather than a combat vehicle. When Germany surrendered, the U-977 was outbound in Norwegian waters. Schäffer thereupon decided to cruise to Argentina and surrender to what he believed might be more hospitable authorities. “One of my main reasons in deciding to proceed to the Argentine,” he later said in an official statement to the Allies, “was based on German propaganda, which claimed that the American and British newspapers advocated... that all German men be enslaved and sterilized.... It was absolutely my intention to deliver the boat undamaged into Allied hands, while doing the best I could for my crew. I felt the ship’s engines might be a valuable adjunct to the reconstruction of Europe.”*
Having reached the decision to flee, Schäffer said, he then gave the married crewmen a choice of going ashore or going to Argentina. About a third of the crew—sixteen men—voted to go ashore. On May 10 Schäffer ran in close to the Norwegian coast at the island of Holsenöy, unintentionally grounded the boat on some rocks, and put over the sixteen men in dinghies. He then sallied the boat off the rocks and set off for Argentina, about seven thousand miles away. All three of his officers † and twenty-eight enlisted men remained on board. The sixteen men who left the boat were subsequently taken into custody by the British.
The voyage to Argentina was hideous. Schäffer remained completely submerged for a record sixty-six days—from May 10 to July 14—snorting for about four hours a day. The boat crawled southward into ever greater summer heat and many men, Schäffer remembered, were on the edge of nervous breakdowns. He stopped for four hours in the Cape Verdes for a swim call and then proceeded on the surface using one diesel to St. Paul’s Rocks, making good about 150 miles a day. When the boat crossed the equator (July 23) Schäffer authorized the customary initiation ceremony. Finally, on August 17, after a patrol of 108 days and 7,644 nautical miles, Schäffer put into Mar del Plata.
Latin American newspapers soon published stories stating that U-977 had secretly brought Adolf Hitler to Latin America to live out his life incognito. That false story spread to the tabloids worldwide, provoking a good deal of speculation as to whether or not it could be true.
It is improbable that Hitler—or any other high Nazi official—chose to escape on U-977. Given the high rate of loss of U-boats in the spring of 1945 (50 percent plus), the chances of survival on a fleeing submarine were extremely dim. Even if Hitler or some other high Nazi had chosen this risky means of escape, in all likelihood he would have demanded a bigger Type IX snort boat or an IXD2 U-cruiser snort boat, rather than a cramped VIIC. Moreover, young Heinz Schäffer was an unlikely choice of skipper for such an exalted mission. He had never made a war patrol in command of a U-boat and had not served in the Atlantic since October 1943. Furthermore, neither Schäffer nor his crew had any snort experience; U-977 had only recently been fitted with one.
Even if Hitler, notoriously prone to seasickness, chose to flee in a Type VII and to endure the hideous voyage that entailed, he would not have picked this particular VII, which had been thrice rammed in the Baltic and, because of pressure-hull damage, reduced to school-boat status. Moreover, while the U-977 was in the Hamburg shipyard to be fitted with a snort, Schäffer wrote later,* the batteries “were only running at 70 percent efficiency.” He had requested new batteries, but “for want of material” his requests “had been rejected.” None of the thirty-two men on U-977 has come forward to confirm that Hitler (or his ashes), Martin Bormann, or other high-ranking Nazis traveled to Argentina in U-977. In the journalistic climate of the 1990s, an authentic story of that type would be worth millions.
After undergoing close interrogation by the Americans and British, in 1950 Schäffer returned to live in Argentina.
Toward April, a few of the big Type XXI electro boats began to sail from Kiel to Norway. As related, the first XXI, U-2511, commanded by Adalbert Schnee, arrived in Norway on March 23 with snort and periscope problems. Schnee also reported that the maximum safe diving depth of U-2511 was 570 feet, about half of her designed depth limit. On April 18, Schnee sailed from Kristiansand, but his diesel engines were not working properly and he aborted and put into Bergen on April 21, after eluding a British submarine. He resailed on May 3, made a practice approach on a British cruiser, withheld fire, and returned to Bergen.
Several other Type XXIs sailed to Norway. Among them was the U-2513, commanded by Erich Topp, who wore a Ritterkreuz with Oak Leaves and Swords.† Yet another was the U-2506, commanded by Ritterkreuz holder Horst von Schroeter (from the Drumbeater U-123). On April 19, an as-yet-unidentified British aircraft hit the U-2506 but von Schroeter took her on to Bergen and was there when the war ended. Still another was the U-2529, commanded by Fritz Kallipke, whose earlier Type XXI command, U-2516, had been destroyed by an air raid on Kiel.
British aircraft destroyed or damaged a number of Type XXIs in the Skagerrak and Kattegat en route to Norway. These included the U-2502, commanded by Ritterkreuz holder Heinz Franke, whose earlier XXI command, U-3509, had been abandoned in Bremen. Although damaged by RAF Mosquitos, Franke got the U-2502 to Horten and was there when the war ended. Hans Hornkohl, the former skipper of U-3512, destroyed in an air raid on Hamburg, got his new XXIU-3041 to Horten. Eleven British Beaufighters hit the U-2503, commanded by Karl Jürgen Wachter, in the Kattegat. Rockets and cannons savaged the boat and killed Wachter. Others took charge and ran the boat onto a beach to save themselves. On the same day in the Kattegat, British typhoon aircraft damaged the U-3030 and sank the U-3032, commanded by twenty-four-year-old Bernhard Luttmann and twenty-two-year-old Horst Slevogt, respectively.
The Allies continued to sail Murmansk convoys to Kola Inlet in the dark and stormy winter months of 1944-45. The Commander, U-boats, Norway, Reinhard Suhren, maintained Combat Flotilla 14 at Narvik, commanded by Helmut Mohlmann, to attack these convoys.
As Dönitz had long pointed out, the returns from these Arctic boats were too small to justify the force. In the year 1944, the Allies sailed 243 loaded ships to Kola Inlet. The U-boats sank merely three, all from convoy JW 56A in January: two American Liberty ships, Penelope Barker and Andrew G. Curtin, and the British Liberty ship Fort Bellingham* Yet Hitler insisted that the Arctic force of about twenty U-boats keep patrolling.
These convoys in brief:
• JW 62 (thirty ships) sailed from Loch Ewe on November 29, 1944. By then D6nitz had persuaded Hitler to order the Luftwaffe to strengthen its forces at air bases in northern Norway to help the U-boats find the convoys. The German air men located JW 62, but the convoy eluded the planes and the U-boats and there were no losses.
The return convoy, RA 62, had a tougher time. The U-365, commanded by Diether Todenhagen, fired a T-5 at the British destroyer Cassandra and blew off its bow. Salvage vessels towed Cassandra back into Murmansk. Twice during the voyage torpedo-equipped JU-88s attacked RA 62 but they failed to do any appreciable damage. Two Swordfish aircraft from the new (1944) “jeep” carrier Campania † piloted by W. J. Hutchinson and M. W. Henley, sank Todenhagen’s U-365 with the loss of all hands on December 13.
• JW 63 (thirty-five ships) sailed from Loch Ewe in early January. The flag ship was the carrier Vindex, sister ship of Campania. No U-boat or enemy aircraft attacked this convoy and it arrived safely at Murmansk. The return convoy, RA 63 (thirty ships), sailed from Kola Inlet on January 11. This convoy likewise eluded U-boats and Luftwaffe aircraft and arrived safely at Loch Ewe. After these ships proceeded to new destinations, the British closed Loch Ewe to save manpower. Inasmuch as the fleet carriers of the Home Fleet had sailed to the Far East to join in the attack on Japan, there was now room in the Firth of Clyde to assemble and sail Murmansk convoys.
• JW 64 (twenty-six ships) sailed from the Clyde on February 2. The escort carriers Campania and sister ship Nairana; a cruiser; and seventeen destroyers, sloops, and corvettes served as escort. The Germans found and shadowed JW 64, but the shadower’s radio failed and forty-eight torpedo-equipped JU-88s that came out to attack the convoy on February 7 could not find it. Three days later, the Luftwaffe tried again with a massive flight of JU-88s. One of these, romping ahead of the main flights, fired a torpedo at the new (1944) Canadian destroyer Sioux, but missed. This action alerted all hands and when the JU-88s arrived, they met a murderous antiaircraft reception and achieved nothing noteworthy.*
The Germans deployed group Rasmus, composed of eight boats, on a line near Bear Island, but the convoy eluded the group. When the Germans realized this, these boats raced eastward to Kola Inlet, where four other U-boats, including Hess’s U-995, were already waiting. One of the Rasmus boats, the U-992, commanded by Hans Falke, shot a T-5 at one of the convoy escorts and hit the British corvette Denbigh Castle, The British corvette Bluebell towed the severely damaged Denbigh Castle into Kola Inlet, but the British did not repair her. All other vessels arrived safely.
These fourteen U-boats loitered off Kola Inlet, waiting for the return convoy, RA 64, to sail. While waiting, four of the U-boats tore into a local Soviet convoy. All four claimed sinkings or hits on nine ships, but only two were confirmed: the American Liberty ship Horace Gray, sunk by the Ritterkreuz holder Hans-Günther Lange in U-711, and the 8,129-ton Norwegian tanker Norfjell, wrecked by Otto Westphalen in U-968.
RA 64 (thirty-four ships) sailed in the early hours of February 17. An advance ASW sweep off Kola Inlet found the veteran U-425, commanded by Heinz Bentzien, who had commissioned the boat on April 21, 1943. Fitted with a snorkel and Hohentwiel radar, U-425 was out on its eighth patrol, but Bentzien had yet to sink a ship. The British sloop Lark and corvette Alnwick Castle savaged the U-boat with depth charges, Hedgehogs, and Squids. Fatally damaged, the boat sank out of control to 853 feet, then Bentzien blew ballast tanks to surface and scuttle.
The U-425 came up between the sloop and corvette, with the crew scrambling on deck. Both ships opened fire, raking the boat from stem to stern. As the U-boat sank stern first, the crew jumped into the water. Although wounded, one very determined German, Herbert Lochner, survived. The Alnwick Castle rescued him after fifty minutes in the water.
Two U-boat skippers added to their laurels. Otto Westphalen in U-968 wrecked the British sloop Lark with a T-5, mere hours after she had helped sink U-425. A salvage vessel towed Lark into Kola Inlet but the British did not repair her either. The Soviets did, however, renaming her Neptun. Westphalen then wrecked the American Liberty ship Thomas Scott, which Soviet vessels towed back into Kola Inlet. Westphalen also claimed a hit on a destroyer, but that could not be confirmed. Lange in U-711 sank the British corvette Bluebell All but one of the Bluebell crew perished in this sinking.
Proceeding toward the British Isles, convoy RA 64 sailed into the worst weather ever encountered by a Murmansk convoy. Between the violent storms, the Luftwaffe twice launched JU-88s. In spite of the adverse weather, the “jeep” carriers Campania and Nairana each got off ten Wildcats to fight off the Germans. One German plane torpedoed a straggler, the American Liberty ship Henry Bacon. A destroyer rescued all but twenty-two of the eighty-six-man crew and thirty-five Norwegian passengers. When the battered convoy reached the Clyde on March 1, a dozen destroyers had to be docked for hull repairs, damage caused by the hostile seas.
• JW 65 (twenty-four ships) sailed from the Clyde on March 11. It was escorted by two “jeep” carriers, Campania and the Ruler-class 11,500-ton American-built Trumpeter; a cruiser; and nineteen sloops, corvettes, and other smaller craft. The convoy escaped hostile forces until March 20, when it approached Kola Inlet. Eleven U-boats were lying in wait. Five attacked ships in the convoy.
Otto Westphalen in the U-968 sank two ships: the British sloop Lapwing and the American Liberty ship Thomas Donaldson. When Dönitz received Westphalen’s action report, he awarded him a Ritterkreuz*
The youthful Hans-Georg Hess in U-995, who had recently penetrated Kirkenes Harbor, hit the American Liberty ship Horace Bushnell. She beached and her cargo was saved, but so far as is known, she was never repaired and returned to service.† This was Hess’s first and only confirmed sinking. ‡
Jürgen Thimme in U-716 reported sinking a 1,600-ton destroyer. However, this claim could not be confirmed.
Friedhelm Schweiger in U-313 claimed probable hits on three Liberty ships for an aggregate 21,000 tons. None of these claims could be confirmed either.
The return convoy, RA 65 (twenty-six ships), sailed from Kola Inlet on March 21. Nine U-boats were still waiting outside, but the convoy eluded all of them. The convoy reached the Clyde on April 1 with no losses.
• JW 66 (twenty-six ships), the last of the wartime convoys to Murmansk, sailed from the Clyde on April 16. The escort consisted of two “jeep” carriers, Vindex and the American-built Ruler-class Premier; a cruiser; twenty-two destroyers, frigates, and corvettes; and smaller craft. Vindex carried twelve Wildcats and eight Swordfish; Premier, twelve Avengers. Group Faust, composed of six U-boats, deployed in a search line west of Bear Island, but JW 66 slipped by undetected. When the Germans realized this, group Faust redeployed to Kola Inlet, where ten other U-boats gathered, making sixteen in all
JW 66 incurred no losses and entered Kola Inlet. The U-boats remained outside, waiting. While marking time, U-997, commanded by Hans Lehmann, attacked a local Soviet convoy, PK 9. He missed two escorts but hit two freighters: the 4,300-ton Norwegian Idefjord (which Hess in U-995 had missed in Kirkenes Harbor) and the 1,603-ton Soviet Onega. The former survived, the latter sank.
The return convoy, RA 66, sailed from Kola Inlet on April 29. Group Faust, reduced to fourteen U-boats, lay waiting. Ritterkreuz holder Otto Westphalen in U-968 shot at what he described as two destroyers and claimed his torpedoes hit and sank these two warships. In reality, he missed the British corvette Alnwick Castle and sank the British destroyer escort Goodall Only forty-four of Goodall’s crew were rescued.
The next—and last—shooter was Karl-Gabriel von Gudenus, commanding the snort boat U-427 on her first war patrol. While cruising submerged in foggy twilight, a destroyer suddenly appeared. Already on keen alert, von Gudenus fired three torpedoes and claimed sinking that destroyer and another. Actually, he missed the big Canadian Tribal-class destroyers Haida and Iroquois.
In this last convoy battle of the war, British forces sank two U-boats off Murmansk, both during the battle on April 29. The frigate Loch Insh, commanded by E.W.C. Dempster, got sole credit for U-307, commanded by Erich Krüger. Loch Insh rescued Krüger and thirteen other Germans.* The frigates Anguilla and Loch Shin and the destroyer escort Cotton shared credit for U-286, commanded by Willi Dietrich. There were no German survivors.
RA 66 proceeded to the Clyde, arriving on the last day of the war, May 8, without incurring further losses. Von Gudenus in U-427, savaged by aerial bombs and hundreds of depth charges, could not dive. Otto Westphalen in U-968 and Klaus Andersen in the snort boat U-48I escorted von Gudenus back to northern Norway, where they arrived on May 3.
During several Arctic patrols, Ritterkreuz holder Hans-Günther Lange in U-711 claimed sinking two “destroyers.” One turned out to be the British corvette Bluebell; the other could not be confirmed. For these and other supposed successes, Dönitz awarded Lange Oak Leaves to his Ritterkreuz by radio on April 29. Five days later, on May 4, a British task force, including the American-built “jeep” carriers Queen, Searcher, and Trumpeter, launched forty-four Avengers against the U-boat base at Harstad, Kilbotn. They sank a submarine tender, a freighter, and Lange’s JJ-711.
During 1945, four JW Murmansk convoys, composed of 111 loaded freighters, had sailed from the British Isles to Kola Inlet. From these, U-boats destroyed two American Liberty ships: Horace Bushnell and Thomas Donaldson* In return, Allied forces sank four U-boats with the loss of two hundred men, fifteen of whom were captured (from U-425 and U-307).
In all, from 1941 to 1945, the Allies sailed forty convoys (PQ, JW) comprised of 811 merchant ships to northern Russia. Thirty-three ships aborted for various reasons. Fifty-eight were sunk and 720 arrived safely. As detailed by Professor Rohwer, the Arctic U-boat force sank twenty of these loaded eastbound ships.† The Allies sailed thirty-seven return convoys (QP, RA) comprised of 715 ships from northern Russia to the British Isles or Iceland. Twenty-nine of these merchant ships were lost, twenty-one to U-boats. In all, the Arctic U-boat force sank forty-one merchant ships and thirteen warships from these convoys.‡ In return, forty-three U-boats were lost, manned by about two thousand men, of whom ninety-nine were captured. That was an “exchange rate” of one U-boat sunk for every merchant ship sunk.
Including the routes in the Persian Gulf to Basra and the Sea of Japan to Vladivostok, the Americans and British delivered to the Soviet Union under Lend-Lease staggering quantities of goods, including the following:
| 376,000 | Trucks |
| 131,633 | Submachine guns |
| 51,500 | Jeeps |
| 35,000 | Motorcycles |
| 22,206 | Aircraft |
| 12,755 | Tanks |
| 8,218 | Antiaircraft guns |
| 5,000 | Antitank guns |
| 473 million | Projectiles |
| 350,000 | Tons of explosives§ |
The Murmansk convoys delivered less than a quarter (22.7 percent) of this vast tonnage to the Soviet Union. However, the dangers of the Arctic Ocean and seas from the enemy and no less from the elements captured imaginations far more so than did the more perilous North Atlantic run. Moreover, in part to assuage Stalin by highlighting the Arctic deliveries, the Allies propagandized the Murmansk convoys more than could be justified by the results achieved. Thus was left in some quarters the wrong impressions that not only were the Murmansk convoys the most hazardous and costly in terms of ships lost and seamen killed and missing, but also that the deliveries to Kola Inlet saved the Soviet Union from certain defeat.
During 1945, U-boat Control sailed nineteen Type IX snort boats to the Americas: five in February, eight in March, five in April, and one in early May. These included a new IXD2 U-cruiser, the U-873, and five new IXCs on maiden patrols. Four were more experienced boats with new skippers. Hence, ten skippers were untried as such in that role in battle.
These boats achieved almost nothing. In all, they sank six ships for 23,000 tons: three freighters and three small warships. Nine boats manned by five hundred men were lost; thirty-three men were captured.* Eight boats surrendered to U.S. Navy or Royal Canadian Navy forces. One fled to Argentina.
These boats confronted some of the worst winter-sailing conditions of the war: hurricane-force storms, raging blizzards, towering seas. It was no better off the North American coast. The official British oil historian wrote that
[t]he winter of 1944-45 was the most severe for forty years in the eastern United States and weather conditions sharply cut down the amount of oil that could be moved overland. Many marshalling yards and junctions were almost put out of action; [railway] tank cars were immobilized.... The effects of the severe weather on rail and road transport made extra coastwise deliveries of oil by tanker unavoidable. All the main war theaters, even the Pacific, were dunned to release “Greyhounds” [big, fast tankers] to carry oil to the northeast United States. Shipments to the Mediterranean were held back and more vessels were withdrawn from the CU tanker squadrons. †
What makes the recounting of these futile patrols to America worthwhile is that many were featured in another embarrassing Allied intelligence failure. This was a preposterous belief that these boats intended to smash New York and Washington with V-l cruise missiles and/or V-2 ballistic rockets.
Exactly how this belief took root has not been established absolutely. It may have begun with a secret OSS report of October 26, 1944, from Stockholm, in which that station telegraphed that reliable sources indicated a U-boat would “depart for New York harbor to use V-l” for propaganda purposes. OSS Stockholm followed this with similar reports on November 3, November 6 (“four U-boats will be used in operation against New York”), and December 22.*
The American naval historian Philip K. Lundeberg wrote recently † that the German agents recovered from U-1229 and U-1230 (Oscar Mantel, Erich Gimpel, and William C. Colepaugh) predicted a missile or rocket attack on New York mounted from U-boats. In response to a query from Bernard F. Roeder in OP20G, Harry H. Hinsley in the Naval Section, Bletchley Park, wrote on November 29, 1944:
We have of course received the rumours to which you refer that the Germans plan to use a U-boat (or U-boats) to fire robot bombs on the East Coast of the United States and—because, as you say, the project is worthy of considerable attention—we have been in close touch with the Admiralty in an effort to discover whether these rumours have any foundation. To date, both Admiralty and G.C.&C.S. are quite happy that the rumours are mere propaganda, and that they are not corroborated by any reliable high-grade evidence... ‡
Two high-level American officials spoke publicly about German rocket attacks on New York City. On December 10, New York’s Mayor, Fiorello La Guardia, caused a near panic when he raised the possibility. As Lundeberg wrote, a month later, on January 8, 1945, Admiral Jonas Ingram, commander in chief of the U.S. Navy’s Atlantic Fleet, also raised the possibility, but stated that the U.S. Navy and the Army Air Forces were fully prepared with a secret plan (Bumblebee, later renamed Teardrop) to thwart any German U-boat missile attack on any shore of the United States.
Then, astonishingly, Hitler’s chief of war production, Albert Speer, announced in a Berlin radio broadcast that V-l missiles and V-2 rockets “would fall on New York by February 1, 1945.” This caused renewed panic in the highest military levels in the United States. The Admiralty, however, remained calm, and on February 16, cabled this logical appreciation to Admiral King:
| A. | There was no evidence from photographic reconnaissance to confirm preparations by the Germans to mount such attacks. |
| B. | The V-2 ballistic missile could not be launched from a U-boat. |
| C. | The winged V-1 “buzz bomb” (i.e., cruise missile) could be stored in a top side hangar in knocked-down condition, assembled, and fired from launch skids on a Type IX U-boat. |
| D. | The damage created by one V-l (assuming it could hit a target) would be so negligible as to make the putative project not worthwhile. |
| E. | A missile attack from U-boats at this stage of the war was “highly unlikely.” § |
Nonetheless, the Americans remained fixated on the likelihood of a U-boat missile attack on the U.S. East Coast. The plan to thwart the attack, Teardrop, proceeded. It would mobilize massive American air and naval forces.
Some last patrols to the Americas, in brief.
• In the period from February 6 to 11, three IXC40s sailed from Norway for Canadian waters. These were the experienced U-857, commanded by Rudolf Premauer, age twenty-five; the U-866, an experienced boat commanded by a new skipper, Peter Rogowsky, age twenty-five; and the U-879, a new boat commanded by Erwin Manchen, age twenty-six.
As these boats crawled westward on snorts and batteries, U-boat Control directed them to radio daily weather reports, for what urgent reason it is difficult to imagine. These reports enabled Allied intelligence to determine the exact daily positions of the U-boats. Tenth Fleet directed a hunter-killer group of six American destroyer escorts, then refueling in Iceland, and two other destroyer-escort groups to track down these U-boats.
One of these groups sailed from New London, Connecticut, on February 23. It was comprised of four destroyer escorts, manned exclusively by Coast Guardsmen. A year earlier in the Mediterranean, U-371 had blown off the stern of one of these vessels, the Menges. Towed to the States and repaired with a patched-on stern from a sister ship, the Holder, Menges was now back in action with sister ships Lowe, Mosley, and Pride.
Alerted by Tenth Fleet, this group deployed one hundred miles east of Halifax. On March 18, the Lowe got a positive sonar contact and the four ships attacked all day with Hedgehogs and depth charges. These destroyed the U-866 with the loss of all hands. Thus were the hurts of Holder and Menges avenged.
Admiral Ingram and Tenth Fleet deployed massive ASW forces into the northwestern Atlantic to hunt down the other two IXs, U-857 and U-879. These included the hunter-killer groups built around the “jeep” carriers Mission Bay and Croatan, as well as hunter-killer groups of destroyer escorts or frigates.
Directly off Cape Cod on April 5, Premauer in U-857 hit and damaged the 8,500-ton American tanker Atlantic States. A hunter-killer group comprised of two frigates and two destroyer escorts raced to the scene to mount a dogged U-boat hunt. On April 7, the veteran U.S. Navy destroyer escort Gustafson found a U-boat and blasted her “all day” with Hedgehogs. It was thought that these destroyed the U-857 with the loss of all hands. However, the Admiralty recently declared that U-857 was lost to unknown causes.
Off Norfolk on April 14, Manchen in U-879 sank the freighter Belgian Airman. On the night of April 29-30, Manchen attempted to attack a Key West-Norfolk convoy, KN382, but one of the escorts, the Canadian-built American frigate Natchez, drove U-879 off with depth charges. A hunter-killer group comprised of three American destroyer escorts, Bostwick, Coffman, and Thomas, destroyed U-879 with the loss of all hands.
• The veteran IXC40 U-190, commanded by Hans-Edwin Reith, sailed from Kristiansand on her sixth patrol February 22. Off Halifax in the period from April 12 to 16, Reith may have shot at several ships (the pages of the logbook for some days are missing and the record is not clear). On April 16, he definitely sank the Canadian minesweeper Esquimalt with a T-5 off the approaches to Halifax. She went down with sickening speed, so fast that the men could not launch lifeboats. The survivors climbed onto Carley floats, washed by icy seawater. A sister ship, Sarnia, happened along six hours later and rescued twenty-six of Esquimalt’s sixty-five-man crew.
The U-190 was homebound when Germany capitulated. Reith returned to Canadian waters and jettisoned all torpedoes, ammo, and secret papers. Per instructions, he met two Canadian warships on May 12: the frigate Victoriaville and corvette Thorlock. The Canadians boarded the U-boat and obtained “a signed deed of surrender.” Captors and captives then proceeded to Bay Bulls, Newfoundland.
• The IXC40 U-853, commanded by a new skipper, Helmut von Frömsdorf, age twenty-three, sailed from Stavanger on February 23. En route to the Americas on March 26, he celebrated his twenty-fourth birthday. Off Portland, Maine, on April 23, he probably sank the old 430-ton American patrol boat Eagle 56. Off Block Island on May 5, he definitely sank the 5,400-ton collier Black Point, en route to Boston with a load of soft coal. The explosion blew away forty feet of the ship’s stern. In the blast or in the water, twelve of the crew of forty-six perished. The freighter Kamen rescued the thirty-four survivors and broadcast an alarm.
Four Boston-bound American warships, which had escorted ships of convoy GUS 84 to Norfolk, Philadelphia, and New York, heard the alarm. The senior vessel, the destroyer Ericsson, was already inside the Cape Cod Ship Canal, but the next senior vessel, the frigate Moberly, manned by a Coast Guard crew, and the destroyer escorts Amick and Atherton raced to the scene to carry out a determined hunt.
The Atherton got a strong sonar contact and attacked, dropping thirteen depth charges fitted with magnetic pistols. One missile may have hit. Meanwhile, an armada of powerful warships converged to hem in U-853: the destroyer Ericsson, which about-faced in the canal; the destroyers Barney, Blakeley, Breckinridge; the frigate Newport; two former Royal Navy corvettes, Action and Restless; and the auxiliary destroyer Semmes. Upon the arrival of these vessels, Amick left for a vital prior assignment.
The hunt continued through the night into May 6. Atherton, commanded by Lewis Iselin, attacked with Hedgehogs and depth charges, while Moberly, commanded by Leslie B. Tollaksen, held sonar contact, and other warships formed outer lines to block U-853 from escaping to deep water. Owing to the shallow water (one hundred feet), back blasts from the depth charges damaged Atherton’s electronics. Moberly then carried out a high-speed depth-charge attack that damaged her own steering gear. When this had been repaired, Moberly made a second attack with Hedgehogs. These attacks probably destroyed U-853, for German escape lungs, life jackets, an officer’s cap, and other gear rose to the surface amid leaking oil.
At dawn, two Navy blimps, K-16 and K-58, from Lakehurst, New Jersey, arrived to assist in the kill. When K-16 got a precise MAD contact, Atherton, Ericsson, and Moberly resumed attacks at that site with Hedgehogs and depth charges, perhaps on a dead U-boat. These explosions brought up more wreckage: a chart desk, life raft, foul-weather gear, and cork. Then the blimps attacked with 7.2” rockets. Thereafter, Ericsson declared the U-boat killed—the last U-boat sunk by U.S. forces in World War II—and marked the location with a buoyed line. Later that day, a diver from the Navy salvage vessel Penguin descended to 127 feet to the bottomed U-boat to confirm the kill, reporting massive damage and bodies strewn about inside the hull. He identified the boat by its number.*
Nine Type IXs sailed from Norway to the Americas in March. These included four new boats and two older boats with new skippers. On April 12, U-boat Control designated seven of these as group Seewolf, leaving out U-530 and U-548, the older boats with new skippers. Group Seewolf was to attack shipping along the U.S. East Coast from New York southward; the two older boats were to attack shipping in waters of Canada and the northeast United States coast. Two of the chosen seven aborted with snort failures, but both resailed after a week of repairs, delayed but still elements of Seewolf.
Fully aware of these German plans from OP20G’s Enigma decrypts and almost dead certain that the boats of group Seewolf were the long-anticipated V-l launchers, Tenth Fleet and Admiral Ingram deployed massive naval and air forces to intercept them. These were two hunter-killer groups consisting of the “jeep” carriers Mission Bay and Croatan and twenty escorts in northern waters and two hunter-killer groups consisting of the “jeep” carriers Core and Bogue and twenty-two escorts in more southerly waters.
U-boat Control directed the seven boats of Seewolf to rake westward along the North Atlantic convoy routes and to ruthlessly pursue any contacts, because “we must sink ships!” Snorting slowly westward, making barely one hundred miles a day, these boats found no targets. To avoid this U-boat menace, as well as the hideous winter weather, Allied authorities routed North Atlantic convoys well to the south.
American naval forces sank five Seewolf boats. Owing to heavy storms that impeded air operations and to the difficulty of spotting snorts, surface warships got credit for almost all of the killing.
• On April 15, according to Tenth Fleet, two destroyer escorts of the Croatan group, Stanton, commanded by John C. Kiley, and Frost, commanded by Andrew E. Ritchie, sank the new IXC40 U-1235, commanded by Franz Barsch, age thirty-three. There were no survivors and no positive evidence of a kill.
• The next day, according to Tenth Fleet, these same two warships sank the new IXC40 U-880, commanded by Gerhard Schötzau, who celebrated his twenty-eighth birthday that day. There were no survivors or positive evidence of a kill from that boat either.
• On April 22, according to Tenth Fleet, while inbound to Argentia in “mountainous seas,” two other destroyer escorts of the Croatan group, Carter, commanded by F.J.T. Baker, and the Neal A. Scott, commanded by P. D. Holden, sank the IXC U-518, commanded by Hans-Werner Offermann, age twenty-three. Again, there were no survivors or positive evidence of a kill.
• On April 23, the veteran IXC40 U-546, commanded by Paul Just, sailed into the zone guarded by the hunter-killer groups of the “jeep” carriers Bogue and Core. Spotting the Core, skipper Just boldly ran in to attack. However, a patrolling Avenger from Bogue, piloted by William W. South, spotted U-546 and drove her under with depth charges.
This sighting, of course, set in motion a massive hunt. The next morning, one of Core’s destroyer escorts, Frederick C. Davis, commanded by James R. Crosby, got U-546 on sonar. Moments later Paul Just fired a T-5 at Davis and it hit with a shattering blast. Davis sank quickly with the loss of 126 from her crew of 192, including her skipper.*
Nearby destroyer escorts of the Core group raced to the site of the Davis sinking to rescue survivors and find her killer. For ten hours eight determined destroyer escorts probed the seas with sonar and fired off Hedgehogs and depth charges. Finally, the noted veteran Flaherty, commanded by Howard C. Duff, a ship that a year earlier had helped kill Henke’s U-515 and capture the U-505, hit U-546 with Hedgehogs and blew her to the surface. Four or five other warships nearby opened fire with guns and U-546 sank swiftly.† Five warships rescued thirty-three of her crew of fifty-nine, including Just.
Allied authorities rushed the German survivors to Argentia to elicit what information they could about the supposed attack on American cities by V-l or V-2 missiles. Paul Just charged in his memoir ‡ that the Americans beat and tortured them. Seeming to confirm Just’s charge, Samuel Eliot Morison wrote: “They were a bitter and truculent group of Nazis, who refused to talk until after they had been landed at Argentia and had enjoyed a little ‘hospitality’ in the Marine Corps brig.” § Of course, Just had no knowledge of the V-l or V-2 attack.
• In the early hours of May 6, the veteran destroyer escort Farquhar of the Mission Bay hunter-killer group, returning to New York, got a close sonar contact. This was the IXC40 U-881, a Seewolf boat commanded by Heinz Frischke, which had aborted with snort problems and resailed on April 7 and was therefore lagging. Farquhar’s watch officer, Lloyd R. Borst, fired off a quick pattern of thirteen depth charges. These destroyed U-881 with the loss of all hands. This kill occurred on the same day that other American warships got the U-853 off Block Island.
The other two Seewolf boats, the IXC40 U-805 and the IXC40 U-858, achieved nothing and surrendered at sea to U.S. naval forces. The destroyer escorts Otter and Varian, sailing from Argentia, took control of U-805, commanded by Richard Bernardelli, age thirty-six. The destroyer escorts Carter and Muir, also sailing from Argentia, took control of U-858, commanded by Thilo Bode, age twenty-seven. These warships and/or others escorted these boats to the Portsmouth Navy Yard in New Hampshire.
The seven boats assigned to group Seewolf sank only one ship, the destroyer escort Frederick C. Davis. In return, five of its seven boats were sunk, manned by about 250 men, thirty-three of whom were captured.
The two older boats with new skippers that patrolled to Canadian and northeastern American waters in March achieved slightly more than group Seewolf.
• The IXC40 U-548, commanded by Erich Krempl, age twenty-three, sailed from Norway on March 7. East of Norfolk on April 18, Krempl sank the unescorted 8,300-ton American tanker Swiftscout. Five days later, he torpedoed and damaged another tanker, the 7,345-ton Norwegian Katy, which was towed into Lynnhaven Bay, Virginia. A hunter-killer group that included the veteran destroyer escort Buckley, commanded by E. H. Headland, raced out to hunt U-548 to exhaustion. Guided by Tenth Fleet, on April 19, Buckley and another destoyer escort with a famous pedigree, Reuben James, found and destroyed U-548 with the loss of all hands.
• The IXC40 U-530, commanded by Otto Wermuth, age twenty-four, sailed from Kristiansand on March 4. Wermuth had made a number of patrols as watch officer on the earlier IXs U-37 and U-103, but he had not yet commanded a U-boat in combat. In two years in the Atlantic, U-530 under Kurt Lange had accomplished little or nothing. On this voyage, her crew and her skipper were mostly young new hands.
Wermuth had orders to patrol near Halifax. When he found no worthwhile targets there, Control directed him to go south to New York waters. In the period from May 4 to 7, Wermuth encountered ships of several convoys (probably of Halifax 354 and/or Outbound North 298) that had scattered in dense fog. He shot nine of his fourteen torpedoes at these vessels, but all missed or malfunctioned.
When Wermuth learned of Germany’s surrender, he decided to flee to Argentina. After all hands except a few enlisted men approved of this idea, Wermuth jettisoned his five remaining good torpedoes, ammo, and secret papers and headed south. On July 10, the boat reached Mar del Plata and surrendered to the Argentine Navy.
Argentine and American intelligence officers thoroughly interrogated all fifty-four Germans of the crew, seized logbooks, and inspected the boat. Although none of these officials found anything exceptional to report, Latin American newspapers were soon ablaze with all sorts of nonsense, including the assertion that U-530 had smuggled Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun (and/or Martin Bormann and others) out of Germany to Argentina.*
Had Hitler or Bormann elected to flee Germany by submarine, it is unlikely that he or they would have chosen the aging IXC40 U-530, commanded by a green skipper, twenty-four-year-bid Otto Wermuth. There were plenty of big new IXCs, the XB U-234, and some new IXD2 U-cruisers on hand, as well as numerous battle-wise U-boat skippers beholden to Hitler for medals and other considerations, for example, Wolfgang Lüth, then commandant of the naval academy in Mürwick, who wore the Ritterkreuz with Oak Leaves, Swords, and Diamonds, and whose last command was the U-cruiser U-181. No other crewman of (7-550 has come forward to verify the assertions of Farago et al.
There is another point. Had the Allies put any credence in the stories that Hitler or Bormann had fled Germany in a submarine, they doubtless would have charged Dönitz and his underlings with the serious offense of aiding and abetting the escape of war criminals. Yet not even the slightest suggestion of this charge arose in the lengthy investigations for Dönitz’s trial at Nuremberg or during the trial itself.
Apart from the resailing U-881 of group Seewolf, four IXs sailed to the Americas in April to attack shipping.* Two were new boats. One was an experienced boat with a new skipper.
• The first to sail, on April 1, was the new IXD2 U-cruiser U-873, originally converted to a cargo boat. She was commanded by Friedrich Steinhoff, age thirty-five. Earlier in the war, Steinhoff had commanded for a full year the IXC U-511, the boat that Hitler gave Tojo (“Marco Polo I”). During that year, Steinhoff had been assigned briefly to R&D at Peenemünde, where German rocket scientists were developing the V-l and V-2. They had fitted U-511 with experimental topside antiaircraft rockets that could be fired from a submerged position, but the tests were not sufficiently encouraging to justify further work in that direction.
What has not come to light is whether or not the Allies had made the connection between Steinhoff’s U-511 and his U-873 and his work with rockets. If they had, it might have lent credence to the suspicion that U-boats intended to hit New York with V-l missiles. More likely, U-boat Control reconverted Steinhoff’s U-873 to an attack boat and sent her to America to serve as a provisional refueler and supply vessel with a doctor, Carl Wilhelm Reinke, on board.
When Germany capitulated, Steinhoff and several officers considered fleeing to South America. However, the crew objected and after jettisoning her T-5s, all secret papers, the Tunis radar detector, and Kurier radio transmitter the boat prepared to surrender. The American destroyer escort Vance took control of U-873 and escorted her into Portsmouth on May 17. Apparently naval personnel (or Marines) handled Steinhoff and his crew roughly. An official Navy investigation followed. After transfer to Boston’s Charles Street Prison, Steinhoff broke the glass of his watch and committed suicide by slashing his wrists.*
Next to sail, on April 6, was the new IXC40 U-889, commanded by Friedrich Braeucker, age twenty-five. He snorted slowly across the Atlantic but saw no targets. When Germany capitulated, he surrendered to a local Canadian group escorting the outbound Slow Convoy 175: the corvette Dunvegan and three minesweepers. Dunvegan and the minesweeper Rockcliffe escorted U-889 toward Shelburne, Nova Scotia. Two Canadian frigates, Buckingham and Inch Arran, took over escort near Sable Island and observed by swarms of journalists in an aircraft, entered Shelburne on May 14.
The experienced IXC40 U-1228, commanded by Friedrich-Wilhelm Marienfeld, age twenty-five, defied superstitions and sailed from Kristiansand on her third patrol on Friday, April 13. He was to operate off New York. When the war ended, he kept going westward and jettisoned torpedoes, secret papers, the Tunis and Kurier receivers and transmitters, and other gear. On May 11 off the Grand Banks, the U.S Navy destroyer escort Neal A. Scott took control of U-1228 and escorted her into the Portsmouth Navy Yard on May 17.
The experienced IXC40 U-1231, commanded by a new skipper, Helmut Wicke, age twenty-four, sailed from Norway on April 27. When Germany capitulated, he surrendered to British forces and put into Loch Eriboll on May 14.
One boat sailed from Norway to the Americas in May. She was the veteran IXC40 U-802, commanded by Helmut Schmoeckel, age twenty-seven. He left Bergen on May 3 to patrol off New York. However, when Germany capitulated, he surrendered to British forces and put into Loch Eriboll on May 11.
Six U-boats sailed between Norway and the Far East in 1945: four from the Far East and two to the Far East.
Three boats in the Far East set off for Norway in January. Since there were no more surface tankers or U-tankers anywhere, the IXD1 cargo carrier U-195, commanded by Friedrich Steinfeldt, sailed to the Indian Ocean on January 26 to serve as a provisional refueler. The boat carried out this task and returned to the Far East on March 4. When Germany capitulated, the Japanese took control of U-195 and renamed her 1-506.
The patrols in brief:
• The IXC U-510, commanded by Ritterkreuz holder Alfred Eick, sailed from Jakarta, Java, on January 10. He had 150 tons of cargo: wolfram, tin, raw rubber, molybdenum, and caffeine. As arranged, he refueled from Steinfeldt in U-195 in the Indian Ocean. After rounding the Cape of Good Hope on February 23, Eick sank the 7,100-ton Canadian freighter Point Pleasant Park which was sailing alone. Believing he could not survive without a snorkel, on April 24, he put into St. Nazaire to get one. He was still there when the war ended.
• The IXC40 U-532, commanded by Otto-Heinrich Junker, sailed from Jakarta on January 13. He also carried about 150 tons of cargo like that in U-510. A month later he met Steinfeldt in U-195 and refueled. After rounding the Cape of Good Hope, Junker sank two ships sailing alone in the Atlantic: the 3,400-ton British freighter Baron Jedburgh and the 9,300-ton American tanker Oklahoma. When Germany capitulated, U-532 was in the Iceland-Faeroes gap. Following Allied instructions, Junker surrendered and British ships escorted the boat into Loch Eriboll on May 10.
• The IXD2 U-cruiser U-861, commanded by Ritterkreuz holder Jürgen Oesten, sailed from Surabaya, Java, on January 14. He also carried about 150 tons of cargo similar to that in U-510 and U-532. In the Indian Ocean, Oesten met those two and gave some fuel to Eick in U-510. The boat did not attempt to sink shipping and reached Trondheim on April 18.
• The last boat to sail was the IXC40 U-183. She was commanded by Fritz Schneewind, who had brought the U-511 (“Marco Polo I”) to the Far East in July 1943 and had been there ever since, well over a year and a half as skipper of U-183.
Allied codebreakers intercepted Japanese and German messages and predicted that U-183 was to leave Surabaya on about April 12 for a war patrol off New Guinea. He actually left Surabaya on April 21 to cruise homeward.
The Americans, meanwhile, had directed the American fleet submarine Besugo to lie off Surabaya and sink U-183. On April 23, the commander of Besugo, Herman E. Miller, found U-183 running on the surface and shot all six bow tubes. One or more torpedoes hit, and the U-boat sank instantly. There had been seven men on U-183’s bridge, including the officer of the deck, Karl Wisniewski, a warrant quartermaster. Although he suffered from a broken leg, collarbone, and ribs, he alone survived, and Besugo rescued him. Sixty Germans perished.*
Two boats sailed from Norway to Japan in 1945.
The first was the snort-equipped IXD2 U-cruiser U-864, commanded by Ralf-Reimar Wolfram, age thirty-two. He left Bergen on February 5 with cargo for the Japanese. This included plans and parts for the Messerschmitt ME-163 Komet rocket-powered interceptor and the ME-262 twin-jet fighter, as well as signed contracts authorizing the Japanese to legally manufacture these aircraft; plans for other aircraft (JU-1 to JU-6 and “Campini”); plans for “Caproni-” and a “Satsuki”-type submarines; plans for radar manufactured by the Siemans company; and 1,857 flasks of mercury. The passengers included a number of German and Japanese aircraft engineers.
Apparently the snort on U-864 failed and Wolfram aborted to Bergen. One of the British submarines that maintained a continuous watch on Bergen, the small (600-ton) Venturer, commanded by James S. Launders on his eleventh patrol, intercepted U-864 on April 9, while both boats were submerged about thirty-five miles off Bergen. Launders, who won a DSO for sinking the VII U-771 off northern Norway in November 1944, had sailed from Lerwick on February 2. The sonar watch on Venturer picked up loud sounds and shortly thereafter, the periscope watch sighted a “thin mast” and soon, two “masts” or periscopes. With uncanny skill, Launders set up and fired four torpedoes by passive sonar and guesswork at eighteen-second intervals from three thousand yards, their depth set at forty feet.
One or more torpedoes hit, destroying U-864 with the loss of all hands and her valuable cargo. Launders inspected the site by periscope, seeing much oil and “wood” and what might have been a topside torpedo or storage canister. He then returned to Lerwick to well-deserved high praise. He was the only British skipper in the war to sink two German U-boats and the only skipper of any nation to sink another submarine while they were both submerged.
The second U-boat to sail from Norway to the Far East in 1945 was the big XB minelayer U-234. During her construction at the Krupp Germania yards in Kiel in May 1943, she had been severely damaged by an Allied air raid and was therefore much behind schedule. Commissioned on March 2, 1944, she was commanded by Johann-Heinrich Fehler, age thirty-four. After her trials and workup with snorkel, U-boat Control ordered that she be converted to a cargo carrier, removing some mine-launching shafts and using others for storage, as well as other areas and four topside containers. When she was completed, German technicians estimated that U-234 could carry 250 tons of cargo and sufficient fuel and provisions for a six- to nine-month trip.*
According to Allied documents, the type and amount of cargo for U-234 was determined by the Marine Sonder Dienst Ausland, headed by a Commander Becker. An officer of that agency—a Lieutenant Commander Longbein—served as loading officer. The second watch officer of U-234, Karl Ernst Pfaff, was Longbein’s onboard counterpart. These and others stored the following cargo on U-234:
| 74 | tons of lead |
| 26 | tons of mercury |
| 12 | tons of steel |
| 7 | tons of optical glass |
| 43 | tons of aircraft plans, instruments, arms, and medical supplies |
| 5 | tons of 20mm and 37mm ammo |
| 6 | tons of equipment for the U-boat bases |
| 1 | ton of mail, films, and courier post |
| 1,232 | pounds of uranium-oxide ore † |
| 1 | disassembled twin-jet ME-262 |
The U-234 embarked twelve passengers. Eleven boarded in Kiel. These were:
• Two Japanese officers: Air Force Colonel Genzo Shosi (an aeronautical engineer) and Navy Captain Hideo Tomonaga (a submarine architect).
• Three Luftwaffe officers: Colonel Fritz von Sandrath (antiaircraft), Colonel Erich Menzel (communications), and Lieutenant Colonel Kai Nieschling (a military judge).
• Four Kriegsmarine officers: Lieutenant Commander Heinrich Hellendorn (gunnery), Captain Heinz Schlicke (electronics), Captain Gerhard Falk (a naval architect), and Lieutenant Commander Richard Bulla (air-sea cooperation).
• Two civilians from Messerschmitt: August Bringewald (an engineer) and Franz Ruf (procurement).
The chief radioman on U-234, Wolfgang Hirschfeld, wrote* that his skipper, Fehler, was dissatisfied with his first watch officer. He prevailed on passenger Richard Bulla, a friend who had served with Fehler on the merchant-ship raider Atlantis, to take on that position.
Fehler left Kiel on March 25 for Norway. Two days later, the heavily laden boat arrived in Horten. During further snorkel trials, the new VIIC41 U-1301 rammed U-234 abaft the conning tower, tearing open a fuel-ballast tank, spilling sixteen tons of oil into the sea. Unable to dry-dock for repairs in Bergen, Fehler sailed into a quiet fjord near Kristiansand, flooded the boat forward (raising the stern), and his crew carried out repairs.
Finally, the last passenger boarded. He was the flamboyant Luftwaffe General Ulrich Kessler. A specialist in antiaircraft and antiship missiles, he was to be the new German air attaché in Tokyo. He shocked Fehler and others with his derogatory remarks about Hitler and his cronies, Luftwaffe chief Hermann Göring in particular.
The U-234 left Kristiansand on April 15. Fehler was dubious about reaching Japan, but nonetheless he snorkeled on for sixteen days, until May 1, when he reached the Atlantic and a storm forced him to surface temporarily. He resumed submerged cruising day after day, surfacing for two hours at night to charge batteries and air the boat.
When Germany capitulated, Fehler was in mid-Atlantic and he chose to surrender to the Americans, so he surfaced and headed westward. After disposing of his Tunis radar detector, Kurier transmitter, and all Enigma and other secret papers, Fehler met the American destroyer Sutton. Rather than be captured, the two Japanese officers committed suicide, each swallowing a dozen Luminal sleeping pills. Fehler secretly buried the bodies in weighted seabags. Sutton took control of the boat and escorted U-234 into Portsmouth to berth with U-805, U-873, and U-1228.
Like other U-boat prisoners, the Germans on U-234 were jailed at Portsmouth. The Navy took the passengers and some officers to Fort Hunt, outside Washington, DC, for extended interrogations. Hirschfeld wrote that the second watch officer, Karl Pfaff, returned to Portsmouth to advise the Americans about unloading the boxes of uranium-oxide ore. Scientists say this uranium ore would have yielded about 3.5 kilograms (7.7 pounds) of isotope U-235 (not a U-boat), about one-fifth of what was needed to make an atomic bomb.
Subsequently this uranium ore “disappeared.” That is, up to 1998 researchers had not found a paper trail tracing its use and/or disposal. The most plausible speculation is that it was shipped to the Manhattan Project’s diffusion factory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, where in the postwar years it might have been processed into atomic-bomb material.
When Germany capitulated, there were four big German U-boats in the Far East. These were three IXD2 U-cruisers, and one XB minelayer, which, like U-234, had been converted to a cargo carrier. The Japanese took control of these four and commissioned them in the Imperial Japanese Navy. Thus the IXD1 U-195 became 1-506, the IXD2s U-181 and U-862 became 1-501 and 1-502, and the XB U-219 became 1-505. The Japanese interned the German crews, but they were held in fairly comfortable circumstances.
As the Third Reich crumbled and self-destructed, two of its most powerful Nazis, Hermann Göring and Heinrich Himmler, betrayed Hitler. Power mad and severely addicted to drugs, Göring telegraphed Hitler to propose that he, Göring, replace Hitler as Führer of the Third Reich, Himmler, no less power mad, secretly initiated surrender talks with the West through the Swedish consulate in Lübeck, in the person of Count Folke Bernadotte. When Hitler received Göring’s telegram, he stripped him of all official posts, expelled him from the Nazi Party, and directed that Göring be arrested for high treason. When Hitler learned of Himmler’s defection (via a BBC broadcast), he also stripped him of all official posts and expelled him from the Nazi Party.
Few of the senior officials in the Third Reich remained loyal to Hitler to the very end. One was Karl Dönitz. There are several possible reasons for his steadfastness.
He had sworn a personal oath of loyalty to Hitler. His character was so rigidly fixed that he was unable to bend or break that oath.
Mindful of the fact that defections in the Imperial Navy led to the overthrow of the Kaiser in 1918, Dönitz was determined in a knightly manner to prevent repetition of that betrayal, and thereby uphold the honor of the Kriegsmarine.
That by retaining Hitler’s confidence he might eventually gain sufficient power and authority to legally negotiate surrender terms with the West short of “unconditional,” minimize the incursions and plundering by Soviet troops, and prevent the utter and complete dissolution of Germany as a sovereign nation.
That his growing prominence and power with the German people might make him a logical appointee in the postwar years to the job of temporary head of state and put him in a favorable position to win a majority of votes for the presidency of a newly formed, democratic Germany.
That although Dönitz was not an official Nazi Party member, he had in fact become a dedicated Nazi and was Hitler’s most trusted military subordinate.
One thing is clear: Contrary to some speculation, Dönitz did not remain loyal to Hitler because he believed that the new electro boats and other secret weapons could turn the tide of battle or put Hitler in a more favorable bargaining position to negotiate a surrender. No one knew better than Dönitz that the new Type VII and Type IX snort boats and Type XXI electro boats could no longer make a noteworthy impact on Allied shipping; that, indeed, the vaunted Type XXIs were crippled by mechanical defects that could not be overcome in time.
Whatever his motivation, in the last months of the war Admiral Dönitz relentlessly exhorted the men of the Kriegsmarine to soldier on loyally for Hitler and the Third Reich. Often his language took on a threatening tone. Most of his exhortations were intercepted and decrypted by Allied codebreakers, who circulated and preserved them. Some excerpts from that source:*
• On January 31 in a message to “all Sea Defense Commandants,” Dönitz conceded that the advance of the Red Army had brought on a “serious crisis.” It could be overcome, Dönitz told his officer corps, “if every German wholeheartedly obeying the Führer’s orders” performed his duty to the utmost. Everything possible was being done to meet the crisis. He had combed the Kriegsmarine for surplus manpower with which to create several infantry divisions. He had already ordered four naval regiments into action on the Eastern Front.
“Over and above this,” Dönitz went on, “every one of us must prepare himself for this crisis …. We must grow harder. Wailing and complaining is unmanly and shortsighted. Nothing is accomplished by empty, negative talk I cannot rely on officers ... who through too much talking, through an overbearing sense of knowledge, or through miserable feelings of fear express themselves negatively, thereby not only failing in the fulfillment of their duties in leadership but also harming our power of resistance. I will dismiss them and place them at the army’s disposition, with no regard for rank or position.”
• On March 1, Dönitz sent a message to “all U-boats.” “We know,” he said,
that the life of our nation is at stake We must lose no time, must use every hour, every day. We fighting men must serve as the best examples It is a question of action. From nothing comes nothing. Nothing will be accomplished by mere speech making: “Carry on” or “We will soon throw the Russians out again.” ...
Let us learn to improvise. In this sixth year of the war there are many things no longer at hand to which we were formerly accustomed … Let us attack every task with resourceful spirit and initiative, however things may be going.
Let us fly into the face of all those who want to give up, who adopt the silly motto “It is no longer any use.” Those are the greatest weaklings. They are the ones who let themselves be led to the slaughter like patient cattle.
Let us guard against being stifled by dogma in waging our war. The fortune of war is infinitely many-sided, and, especially in naval warfare, dependent on chance and the combination of so many circumstances that new situations and new combat situations are presented again and again …. A fighting service which is stifled by dogma accomplishes nothing more. Many victorious battles have been waged contrary to all rules of the art of war.
Let us show our enemies that the destruction of Germany will cost them more in blood, treasure and time than they can withstand. Then they will have to give up that aim ... and we will have won the war. Therefore let us exert all our power to the utmost, for example by sinking as many ships as possible for the Anglo-Saxons in total disregard of risk. Then their doubts as to whether the unconditional defeat of Germany is practicable and not too costly will increase.
Let us fly into the face of any German who now becomes the least bit shaky in his loyalty to the National Socialist State and to the Fuhrer. The motives for this are only fear, cowardice and weakness. We are the strong and faithful.
• On March 20, in a message to “all officers,” Dönitz stated that “capitulation is suicide and signifies certain death” and would bring “the speedy or gradual destruction of millions of German people.”
Our honor demands that we fight to the end. The same is required by our pride, which rebels against humbling ourselves before a people like the Russians, before Anglo-Saxon sanctimony, arrogance and lack of culture. Every thought rebels against the possibility of handing over cultivated German territory to Polish mismanagement. Thus stern necessity, duty, honor and pride bid us fight to the last if need be.
Let us not allow to exist... dangers which may injure the fighting morale of the men … Trample them out ruthlessly at their first appearance Be hard and strict rather than too soft … If circumstances demand making a quick, horrible ex ample of someone, let us not shrink from the task.
For example, it was recently reported to me that discovery was made of an act of sabotage by a German member of the crew of a passenger steamer which was being used for military purposes under control of the Navy. If the captain of this ship had summarily strung this man upon the yardarm in order to quench such crimes once and for all on board his ship, I would have defended this act of the captain under any circumstances. It is thus better to act at once and vigorously than to let such things keep on smoldering... .*
Let us make our troops fanatical. Let us sow hatred for our enemies ... fill our soldiers with passion, so they will feel superior to the enemy.... The more fanatical and passionate the will to fight is in a soldier, the stronger he is....
Let no one brag about old deeds. Whoever fails now in his duty in this decisive hour of our people must be treated ruthlessly, without mercy in view of earlier achievements. The higher he is stationed as a soldier, the more must be demanded of him. In the present fight for life or death of our people, a flag officer as captain who is in a responsible position and fails decisively in his duty to the detriment of our people can atone for this crime only by death.
Let us trust the leadership of Adolf Hitler without reservation. Believe me, in the two years of my activity as Commander in Chief, I have always found that the Fuhrer has always been right in his strategical and operational views. Our military situation would be better off today if all operational military commands had believed without reserve and had acted accordingly without delay. Very often the realization that the Fuhrer was right again this time did not come for weeks but then it was mostly too late. Let us therefore strengthen our troops by faith in our Fuhrer. All in all: let us be proud of the fighting spirit of our Navy. Let us watch over it as our most precious possession. In whatever way the situation may yet develop, the Navy must stand like a belligerent block that cannot be diverted from its task. It will never bow under the hostile yoke.
• On April 7, Dönitz reiterated his demand for loyalty:
We soldiers of the Kriegsmarine know how we have to act. Our military duty, which we fulfill regardless of what may happen to right or left or around us, causes us to stand bold, hard and loyal as a rock of resistance. A scoundrel who does not behave so must be hanged and have a placard fastened to him: “Here hangs a traitor who by his low cowardice allows German women and children to die, instead of protecting them like a man … “
• On April 11, in a long screed, Dönitz again rose to the defense of Hitler.
I turn against the irresponsible and shortsighted weaklings who say “If we had not had National Socialism, all this would not have happened.” If we had not had National Socialism we would already have had Communism in Germany, further unemployment and political chaos. Without the rearmament which the Fuhrer brought us, Germany would have been trampled over by the Russians in their expansionary push to the west....
I turn against the clever people who say we should have avoided the war against Russia in 1941. Had the leadership done that, then the unweakened Russians would have rolled over us long since at a time that suited them. Then those same clever people would have said: “Yes, the leadership should have prevented it with a timely attack on Russia....”
Alone for years the Fuhrer clearly recognized the threat from Bolshevism. Therefore he did away with our disunity and monstrous unemployment, made us powerful in defense and attempted to enlighten Europe. On the other side stands this hate-blinded Churchill, the grave digger of English power, who entered the war in order to preserve the balance of power and to pledge himself to the freedom of small nations. What now remains of power and where has the freedom of the small nations gone? ... [They] are provinces of Bolshevik Russia....
Europe will learn that Adolf Hitler is the single statesman of stature in Europe. Therefore all negative brooding is unfruitful and objectively incorrect. Because it is born of weakness it cannot be anything else, since cowardice and weakness make one stupid and blind....
Again he demanded that flag officers and captains of the Kriegsmarine “clearly and plainly tread the path of soldierly duty”:
The honor of our flag on board is sacred to us. No one thinks of giving up his ship. Rather, go down in honor.... The Kriegsmarine will fight to the end. Some day its bearing in the severest crisis of this war will be judged by posterity. The same goes for each individual....
In the last hours of the Third Reich, the fifty-six-year-old monster Adolf Hitler holed up in his Berlin Führerbunker and drew up a “last will and testament” in which he named Dönitz to succeed him as “President of the Reich and Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces.” He then married his mistress, Eva Braun, and on the afternoon of April 30, while Eva died of self-inflicted poison, Hitler took poison and also shot himself in the mouth with a pistol. The next day, his ever faithful propagandist, Joseph Goebbels, had a doctor kill the six young Goebbels children (ages three to twelve) with lethal injections of poison. Then, at his orders, an SS orderly shot him and his wife, Magda. Designated aides burned the bodies of Hitler and Eva Braun and Goebbels and his wife. Per Hitler’s orders, his “secretary,” Martin Bormann, fled the bunker to carry Hitler’s last will and testament to Dönitz and to seek a high position in the new German government.
All that remained of the Nazi hierarchy also fled Berlin. Dönitz shifted the naval staff from Koralle to Plon, a small city on an inland body of water midway between Kiel and Lübeck. The senior staff of the former military high command (OKW), including Wilhelm Keitel and Alfried Jodl, moved to the small town of Rheinsberg, north of Berlin, then farther northwest to a site near Krakow, closer to Plön. When the Red Army threatened to overrun those places, Dönitz moved to the naval academy at Murwick, near Flensburg, and established the new German “government” on the large, modern passenger liner Patria, berthed in Flensburg harbor. He was joined there by SS chief Heinrich Himmler and former Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop (both futilely seeking jobs) and by munitions chief Albert Speer, OKW generals Keitel and Jodl, the new chief of the Luftwaffe, Robert Ritter von Greim, and the new commander in chief of the Kriegsmarine, Admiral Hans-Georg von Friedeburg, and others.*
On May 2, Admiral Dönitz assumed the position of chief of state and commander of all German military forces. He broadcast by radio his intentions to the military forces:
My comrades!
The Führer has fallen. True to his great purpose of saving the culture of Europe from Bolshevism, he dedicated his life and met a hero’s death. In him we have lost one of the greatest heroes of German history. In awe and grief we lower the flag for him.
The Fuhrer designated me as his successor and Chief of State and Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces. I assume the Supreme Command over all branches of the German Armed Forces with the determination to continue the battle against Bolshevism until the fighting troops and the hundreds of thousands of families in Eastern Germany are saved from slavery or annihilation. I must continue the battle against the English and the Americans as long as they obstruct me in the prosecution of the battle against Bolshevism.
The situation demands of you, who have already achieved such memorable deeds and who therefore are longing for the end of the war a continued and unabated effort. I demand discipline and obedience. Only through the unconditional execution of my orders will chaos and ruin be avoided. He is a coward and a traitor who now shirks his duty and thereby brings death and slavery to German women and children.
The allegiance you pledged to the Fuhrer is henceforth to be given by each one of you to me as the successor designated by the Fuhrer. German soldiers do your duty. The life of our people is at stake.
In Eisenhower’s view, British forces under Bernard Montgomery, which manned the left (or north) flank of the massive line of Anglo-American forces invading Germany, were not moving fast enough to beat the Red Army to Kiel and Lübeck. Wishing to deny those places to the Red Army and to “seal off” Denmark, on April 23, Eisenhower temporarily assigned to Montgomery the crack American XVIII Airborne Corps (four divisions) commanded by Matthew B. Ridgway. In a little-known operation, which Omar Bradley characterized as “remarkable” and George Marshall, not given to superlatives, described as “sensational,” Ridgway’s corps crossed the Elbe River on May 1 and dashed north-northeast to Wismar on the Baltic. There the corps “linked up” with the Red Army and blocked it from moving farther northwest to Lübeck and Kiel, or Denmark and Norway. Meanwhile, on May 3, Montgomery’s slow-moving British XII Corps finally occupied Hamburg.
In the final hours of the Third Reich, Dönitz sought to hold the new German government together and to surrender as many German forces as possible to the Americans and British, rather than the more feared Red Army. In pursuit of the latter goal, he designated Admiral von Friedeburg as Special Emissary to negotiate terms. On May 3, von Friedeburg and another admiral, Gerhard Wagner, and the German Commander in Chief, Army Group Northwest, Ernst Busch, and subordinates arrived at Montgomery’s tactical headquarters near Hamburg. The delegation proposed that the three German armies (Third Panzer, Twelfth, Twenty-first) facing the Red Army in that area surrender to Anglo-American forces. When queried by Montgomery, Eisenhower rejected the proposal, stating that any formal German surrender must be “unconditional and simultaneous” in all theaters. However, as a “tactical” matter, Eisenhower authorized Montgomery to accept the surrender of German forces in Denmark, the Netherlands, Heligoland, and Schleswig-Holstein and any individual German soldiers who so wished.
This agreement was to take effect at 8:00 a.m. on May 5. As part of the terms, Dönitz directed all U-boat skippers to cease fire and prepare to surrender per instructions to be issued at a later time. He had one final message for these warriors, almost all of whom were unswervingly loyal to him to the very end.
My U-boat men!
Six years of U-boat warfare lie behind us. You have fought like lions.
A crushing material superiority has compressed us into a very narrow area. A continuation of the struggle is impossible from the bases that remain.
U-boat men, unbroken in your warlike courage, you are laying down your arms after an heroic fight that knows no equal. In reverent memory we think of our comrades who have sealed their loyalty to the Fuhrer and the Fatherland with their death.
Comrades, maintain in the future your U-boat spirit with which you have fought at sea bravely and unflinchingly during long years for the welfare of the Fatherland.
Long live Germany!
Earlier the U-boat force had conceived a plan to scuttle all boats h. la the Pyrrhic triumph at Scapa Flow in 1919. According to some sources, the codeword Regenbogen (Rainbow), the directive to initiate scuttling, was transmitted from Flensburg at 1:34 a.m. on May 5, German time, but rescinded by Dönitz or an aide eight minutes later. Whether this is true or not, it is certain that ambiguous orders of some kind regarding scuttling reached the U-boats. As a result, some skippers or surrogates commenced scuttling on May 5, but others did not. According to Allied documents compiled in September 1945 and subsequently revised, German submariners scuttled 222 U-boats, while another 174 U-boats surrendered to Allied forces.*
Still determined to do his utmost to avoid German surrenders to the Red Army, on May 5 Dönitz sent von Friedeburg to Eisenhower’s headquarters in Reims, France, to pursue negotiations. Eisenhower refused to see von Friedeburg or engage in any form of negotiations through surrogates. When von Friedeburg notified Dönitz of Eisenhower’s implacability, Dönitz sent Alfried Jodl, also a fierce opponent of surrender to the Red Army, to Reims. Viewing these emissaries and their imprecations to negotiate as merely vehicles for buying time while German armies all along the front fled to American or British lines, Eisenhower held firmly to his position. Seeing that the situation was completely hopeless, von Friedeburg and Jodl finally obtained permission from Dönitz to sign a formal surrender of all German forces on all fronts simultaneously.
In the early hours of May 7, von Friedeburg and Jodl and other Germans of the delegation met with senior Allied authorities in the war room of SHAEF headquarters, located at the Ecole Professionelle et Technique de Garcons, in Reims. The senior Germans signed the surrender document,† which was to take effect from midnight, May 8. Eisenhower then cabled Washington and London:
The mission of this Allied force was fulfilled at 0241, local time, May 7th, 1945.
In a joint statement of October 30, 1943, which came to be known as the Moscow Declaration, the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union pledged to hunt down and try all those Nazis suspected of committing atrocities and war crimes. At the Potsdam conference of the Big Three, from July 16 to August 1, 1945, the two new heads of state, Harry S. Truman and Clement R. Attlee, joined with Joseph Stalin to reaffirm the Moscow Declaration.
In retrospect, the Moscow Declaration on war criminals seems right and decent, but at the time it was not held in universal favor. Many questioned the legal right of one nation or several to try enemy heads of state for waging war against them. (The Kaiser was not tried for his role in initiating and waging World War I.) Some believed that to allow representatives of the bloody Stalinist regime to sit in judgment on high figures of the bloody Nazi regime would be the height of hypocrisy. Others questioned whether it was possible in the climate of the times to give the Nazis a fair trial. The proceedings might go down in history as a farcical and embarrassing kangaroo court, conducted by victors demanding vengeance and retribution. Still others wondered at the difficulties and cost of amassing and properly presenting hard evidence against what might prove to be thousands of Germans.
The public revulsion at the revelations of ever more horrible atrocities committed by the Nazis became so intense that disputes over legal niceties were soon swept aside. The governments in Washington, London, and Moscow appointed judges and prosecutors to what was officially called the International Military Tribunal, which was to convene at the symbolic soul of Nazism, Nuremberg, on November 1, 1945.
British naval authorities firmly opposed suggestions that Admirals Erich Raeder and Karl Dönitz be indicted and tried. As reported by Ann and John Tusa,* historians of the Nuremberg proceedings, “The British Admiralty took the view that the German Navy had fought a pretty clean war... [and] they knew that the laws of naval warfare were notoriously vague and dangerously open to conflicting interpretations….’’ The Tusas went on to say that in October 1945, a distinguished legal expert at the Admiralty, Humphrey Waldock, later president of the International Court at The Hague, drafted a paper, “warning of legal difficulties in a case against the German Navy,” concluding, the Tusas wrote, that generally, the case against the Kriegsmarine was “shaky” and “weak.”
Senior naval authorities in the United States were of like mind. No evidence had yet come to light indicating that on the whole Raeder and Dönitz had conducted anything other than a clean naval war. Harsh and hard, but clean. Moreover, from December 7, 1941, the United States had conducted harsh and hard unrestricted submarine warfare against Japan, a naval campaign that at times was more merciless than the German U-boat war. In their desire to avenge Pearl Harbor, American submariners shot at and sank Japanese merchant ships without warning, rarely attempted to assist survivors, and, on a few occasions, murdered Japanese survivors in lifeboats or the water.
Nonetheless, ranking government officials in Washington, Moscow, and London insisted that Raeder and Dömitz be tried. Not to do so would be politically and morally unacceptable. It would leave the heavy casualties in the Allied merchant-marine fleets and the ascendancy of Dönitz to the post of Fuhrer of the Nazi Third Reich unredressed.
Ironically, British prosecutors drew the task of making the case against Raeder and Dönitz. The chief of the British team was a well-known barrister and MP, David Maxwell Fyfe. In pursuit of incriminating evidence, he and his team combed through tens of thousands of pages of Kriegsmarine documents that a British combat intelligence team, assigned to George Patton’s Third Army, had captured at Tambach Castle near Coburg.* In addition, British naval intelligence provided synopses of relevant Enigma messages, such as “Policy and Tactical Orders to Submarines,” for background.
Apart from Dönitz’s numerous exhortations of praise for Hitler and National Socialism and his denouncement of “the spreading poison of Jewry,” the teams of British prosecutors found only a single document that could be interpreted as incriminating. This was the so-called Laconia Order of September 17, 1942, which Dönitz issued in the aftermath of the sinking of the British troopship Laconia by Werner Hartenstein in U-156. As related, due to the risks Hartenstein ran in the rescue of Laconia survivors, that order instructed U-boat skippers to “be harsh” and specifically not to assist the crews of torpedoed ships. One could argue that the language of the Laconia Order † was, per se, a violation of the laws of the Submarine Protocol, which Germany signed in 1936.
Owing to the ambiguity of the Laconia Order, the British prosecutors needed testimony from German submariners to the effect that it was a subtle instruction to kill the survivors of torpedoed ships. Astonishingly, the British obtained just such testimony from a prominent submariner, Ritterkreuz holder Karl-Heinz Moehle (from U-123), who commanded Training Flotilla 5 in the Baltic for four years, from 1941 to 1945. It happened that when Moehle was arrested at the end of the war, the British had accused him of issuing the Laconia Order. He swore in an affidavit, taken on July 21, 1945, that not only did he not issue the Laconia Order but he had in fact interpreted it to be a subtle order from Dönitz to kill survivors and, furthermore, that he had implied so to new skippers sailing to the war zones. Moehle agreed to testify in that vein if Dönitz were to be tried. ‡
Another German submariner willing to testify against Dönitz on this issue also appeared. He was a young lieutenant, Peter Josef Heisig, who had been captured by the Canadians from U-877 on December 27, 1944. Heisig was a close friend of August Hoffmann, a watch officer on Heinz Eck’s U-852, whom a British court had condemned to death for shooting survivors of the Greek freighter Peleus. In a futile effort to save his friend Hoffmann from a firing squad, Heisig had given that British court an affidavit on November 27, 1945, asserting that in an address to his class of midshipmen in October 1942, soon after the Laconia Order was issued, Dönitz had left the impression that the killing of shipwrecked survivors was desirable. He, too, would testify against Dönitz.
When the International Military Tribunal convened on November 1, 1945, prosecutors charged both Dönitz and Raeder on three counts:
| 1. | Plotting to wage aggressive war |
| 2. | Waging aggressive war |
| 3. | War crimes |
The tribunal commenced formal proceedings against Dönitz first, on May 7, 1946, one year after he surrendered Germany. The chief defense counsel was a brilliant naval officer, Otto Kranzbühler, who had held the post of Judge Advocate in the Kriegsmarine. He was particularly well prepared to deal with the Laconia Order and with the hostile witnesses Moehle and Heisig. In addition—and most important—with the assistance of one of the two American judges, Francis Biddle, he had obtained permission to interrogate by mail American Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz on his conduct of the American submarine war against Japan in the Pacific.
The chief British prosecutor, David Maxwell Fyfe, laid the case against Dönitz before the tribunal. Inasmuch as Dönitz was a relatively junior captain when the war began in September 1939, Fyfe was unable to convince the judges that Dönitz was guilty on count one, plotting to wage aggressive war. At the end, the tribunal acquitted Dönitz of that specific charge. Since it was the responsibility of Dönitz as a naval officer to wage war in accordance with orders from Berlin—from Raeder and Hitler—to the best of his ability, Fyfe was also unable to make a convincing case that Dönitz was criminally accountable on count two: waging aggressive war. Nonetheless, in a vague and confusing verdict, the tribunal found Dönitz guilty on count two.
It was on the third count, war crimes, that Fyfe mounted his most aggressive and telling attacks against Dönitz. He introduced the Laconia Order, argued that it was a subtle instruction to kill crews of torpedoed ships and, as foreseen, put Moehle and Heisig on the witness stand to buttress his case. Furthermore, he introduced the Peleus incident as one example of compliance with these instructions.
Defense counsel Kranzbühler counterattacked along three main lines.
• He showed the court that the Laconia Order prohibiting help to survivors of torpedoed ships was issued directly as a result of the Allied air attacks on U-156, and the other U-boats attempting to rescue Laconia survivors, which had asked in the name of humanity for a temporary cease-fire in that area. Furthermore, he argued that an order prohibiting assistance to survivors in no way carried with it an implication that survivors should be shot. To make the contrary case, he introduced another Dönitz order of May 20, 1943, in which he instructed U-boat skippers to capture whenever possible ship captains and engineers, stressing the point that the second order contravened any implication in the first to kill survivors. That is to say, it was not wise to rescue some survivors and to kill the rest because the captured German survivors could testify to the atrocity.
• He impugned the credibility of the hostile witnesses Moehle and Heisig. He brought out that each officer had had an axe to grind: Moehle to absolve himself of any blame for the issuance of the Laconia Order and his interpretation of it to the green skippers, and Heisig to save his friend Hoffmann from the firing squad. In his cross-examination, he established that Moehle had completely misinterpreted another important Dönitz order, that neither officer had ever seen a specific and unequivocal order from Dönitz or Control to shoot survivors, and that in Moehle’s twenty ship sinkings while in command of U-123 he had never harmed a survivor. In addition, Kranzbuhler introduced a deposition that he had obtained from Heinz Eck on November 21, 1945, just before Eck was executed, stating that he, Eck, had no orders to kill the survivors of the Peleus, that in fact, he acted in what he believed to be his own self-interest.
• He put Dönitz and his chief U-boat operations officers, Ritterkreuz holders Eberhard Godt and Günter Hessler, on the witness stand to vigorously deny that the Laconia Order was a subtle hint to kill survivors. He also introduced an affidavit, signed by sixty-seven U-boat skippers (then in British POW Camp 18), which stated, in effect, that the Laconia Order was not viewed as a subtle hint to kill survivors. “The undersigned declare that the German Navy was educated by their leaders to respect the written and unwritten law of the sea,” the affidavit concluded. “We have always seen it as fitting our honor to keep these laws and to conduct the combat at sea in a chivalrous manner.”
Finally, Kranzbuhler was permitted to introduce the written interrogation of Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz. In response to questions, Nimitz stated that with the exception of hospital ships and other vessels specifically granted safe passage, it was customary for American submarines to attack Japanese merchant ships without warning and, furthermore, that “on general principles the U.S. submarines did not rescue enemy survivors....”
The Nimitz document had a decisive impact on the tribunal, the Tusas write. The American judge, Francis Biddle, who opened the door for Kranzbuhler to obtain it, declared not inaccurately that “Germany waged a much cleaner [submarine] war than we did,” and he voted to acquit Dönitz on count three, war crimes. However, the other seven judges did not believe Dönitz should get off scot-free and voted him guilty on count three as well as count two. The tribunal then sentenced Dönitz on October 1, 1946, to serve ten years in prison, the lightest penalty assessed of any of those found guilty at Nuremberg. He served the full sentence at Spandau Prison and was released in October 1956.*
The trial of Raeder followed. Inasmuch as he had held a high military post in the Third Reich at the beginning of the war, he was found guilty of count one—plotting aggressive war—as well as counts two and three, waging aggressive war and war crimes. The tribunal sentenced the seventy-year-old Raeder to life imprisonment, but owing to his ill health, he was released in September 1955, at the age of eighty, after serving nine years.
The conviction of Dönitz at Nuremberg outraged a large number of senior Allied naval officers. Over one hundred of them wrote Dönitz to deplore the verdict and the sentence. Some American naval officers published their views. Typical of the comments on Dönitz of that era:
• Four-star Admiral and later U.S. Senator Thomas S. Hart wrote:
I rate Admiral Dönitz as the best of all of... [German commanders], land or sea. He was unique in his handling of the German submarines and they were our most dangerous enemy. His performance with them—and he did most of it himself—was the most outstanding Axis performance of the war. Then he succeeded to command all German naval forces. It was too late for real accomplishments but he made no mistakes and no one could have done better. Then he succeeded the Fuhrer himself, and Ms performance from there on seems to me to have been perfect. So I think D5nitz was the best.
• Postwar naval propagandist Rear Admiral Daniel V. Gallery, wartime commander of the hunter-killer group built around the “jeep” carrier Guadalcanal which sank Werner Henke in £7-575 and captured him and captured U-505 intact, wrote in the epilogue of his 1957 war memoir, Twenty Million Tons Under the Sea:
Nuremberg was a kangaroo court and a travesty on justice. The trial of Dönitz was an outstanding example of barefaced hypocrisy. His conviction was an insult to our own submariners in the Pacific who waged unrestricted warfare the same as the Germans did in the Atlantic.
In the years since, journalists and scholars have diligently sifted the mass of records of the Third Reich seeking proof that subtly or otherwise Karl Dönitz encouraged a dirty naval war and crimes against humanity at sea. Beyond the allegations produced by the British team at Nuremberg, no evidence to support that view has come to light. Notwithstanding shrill attacks on Dönitz in recent years, the preponderance of existing evidence supports the judgment of the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg and the sentence imposed on Dönitz.
Dönitz was deeply loyal to Hitler and the Third Reich. He waged a hard, harsh naval war, but a clean war. Moreover, the thousands of Allied seamen his operations caused to be killed or wounded at sea were not innocent civilian bystanders, like the tens upon tens of thousands of women and children who were killed by Allied bombers in Hamburg, Dresden, Berlin, Bremen, Kiel, and elsewhere. Allied seamen manning merchant ships were as much warriors as were the German submariners.
The U-boat war was not a close-run thing, but rather one more suicidal enterprise foisted on the Germans by Adolf Hitler. According to Alex Niestle, of 859 U-boats that set off on war patrols, 648 were lost (75 percent). Of these, 429 yielded no survivors. Most shocking of all, 215 U-boats (33 percent) were lost on first patrols, usually before the green crews had learned the ropes or inflicted any damage on Allied shipping.
True, Karl Dönitz fought a clean, hard naval war, yet this begs the question. He knowingly and willingly sent tens of thousands of German sailors to absolutely certain death. While not a war crime per se, the fact that he aided and abetted Hitler in this suicidal naval enterprise demands a revaluation of his unusually high standing in the Hall of Warriors.
