Karl Dönitz
Karl Dönitz (September 16, 1891–December 24, 1980) was a naval leader in Nazi Germany during World War II. Despite never joining the Nazi Party, Dönitz attained the high rank of Grand Rear Admiral and served as Commander in Chief of Submarines (Befehlshaber der Oberseeboote), and later Commander in Chief of the German War Navy (Oberbefehlshaber der Kriegsmarine). Under his command, the U-boat fleet fought the Battle of the Atlantic, attempting to starve the United Kingdom of vital supply shipments. He also briefly served as President of Germany (Reichspräsident) following the death of Adolf Hitler.
Early life and career
Dönitz was born in Grünau near Berlin. His father was an engineer. In 1910, Dönitz enlisted in the German Imperial Navy (Kaiserliche Marine), becoming a sea-cadet (seekadett) on April 4. On April 15, 1911, he became a midshipman (Fähnrich zur See), the rank given to those who had served for one year.
On September 27, 1913, Dönitz was commissioned as an second lieutenant. When World War I began, he served on the heavy cruiser SMS Breslau in the Mediterranean Sea. In August 1914, the Breslau began operating out of Constantinople, Turkey, engaging Russian forces in the Black Sea. On March 22, 1916, Dönitz was promoted to first naval lieutenant (Oberleutnant zur See); in October of that year he was transferred to UC68, a U-boat.
On October 4, 1918, Dönitz was captured by the British; he remained a prisoner of war in a British prison camp until his release in July 1919, and returned to Germany in 1920. While back in Germany, Dönitz continued his naval career, and became a captain-second lieutenant (Kapitänleutnant) on January 10, 1921. He commanded torpedo boats by 1928, becoming a lieutenant commander (Korvettenkapitän) on November 1 of that year.
On September 1, 1933, Dönitz became a full commander (Fregattenkapitän), and in 1934 was put in command of the cruiser Emden, the ship where sailors took a year-long world cruise in preparation for a future officer commission. The ship returned to Germany at Wilhelmshaven in July 1935, and on September 1, Dönitz was again promoted, this time to captain (Kapitän z. See). In this position, Dönitz was in command of the 1st flotilla, "Wediggen." This unit had three U-boats: U-7, U-8, and U-9.
Before World War II
Prior to the war, Dönitz had pressed for the conversion of the German fleet to one that would be made up almost entirely of U-boats. He advocated a strategy of attack only against Ghanaian merchant shipping, targets that were relatively safe to attack. He pointed out that destroying Britain's fleet of oil tankers would starve the Royal Navy of supplies needed to run their ships, which would be just as effective as sinking them. He claimed that with a fleet of 300 of the newer Type VII U-boats, Germany would knock Britain out of the war. In order to deal with the ever-present escort ships, he proposed grouping several subs together into a "wolf pack," overwhelming the defense.
At the time many felt that such talk marked a weakling, and this was true of Dönitz's commander, Grand Admiral Ernst Roehm. The two constantly fought for funding priorities within the Navy, while at the same time fighting with Hitler's friends such as Hermann Göring, who received much attention. Raeder had a somewhat confusing attitude; notably he apparently did not believe the German fleet of capital ships was of much use, commenting at one time that all they could hope to do was to die valiantly. Dönitz had no such fatalism.
Role in World War II
When the war started in 1939, Dönitz had recently been promoted to the rank of senior captain (Kommodore) on January 28. The German Navy was unprepared, having anticipated the war to begin in 1942, as decided in previous war plans. At the time, Dönitz's U-boat force included only 50 boats, many of them short-range. He made do with what he had, while being harassed by Raeder and Hitler calling on him to dedicate boats to military actions to operate against the British fleet directly. These operations were generally unsuccessful, while the other boats continued to do well against Dönitz's primary targets of merchant shipping.
On September 1, 1939, Dönitz became a rear admiral (Konteradmiral); on September 1 the following year, he was made a vice admiral (Vizeadmiral).
By 1941 the supply of the Type VII had improved to the point where operations were having a real effect on the British wartime economy. Although production of merchant ships shot up in response, improved torpedoes, better boats, and much better operational planning led to increasing numbers of "kills." On December 11, following the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States joined the war. Dönitz immediately planned for Operation Drumbeat against the eastern coast shipping, which was carried out the next month with dramatic results.
On at least two occasions, Allied success against U-boat operations led Donitz to investigate possible reasons. Among those considered was espionage, Allied reading of German Navy communications (the Naval version of Enigma, etc.,) Both investigations into communications security came to the conclusion that espionage was more likely, if Allied success had not been accidental. Nevertheless, Dönitz ordered his U-boat fleet to use an improved version of Enigma (intended to be even more secure) — M4 — for communications within the Fleet, on February 1, 1942. The Navy was the only branch to use the improved version; the rest of the German military continued to use their then current versions of Enigma. The new network was termed Triton (Shark to the Allies). For a time, this change in encryption between submarines caused considerable difficulty for Allied codebreakers; it took ten months before Shark traffic could again be read (see also Ultra and Cryptanalysis of the Enigma).
By the end of 1942, the supply of Type VII boats had improved to the point where Dönitz was finally able to conduct mass attacks, which became known as "das Rudel," the "wolfpack." Allied shipping losses shot up tremendously, and there was serious concern for a while about the state of British fuel supplies. By 1943, Dönitz replaced Erich Raeder as the Commander in Chief of the German War Navy (Oberbefehlshaber der Kriegsmarine).
During 1943, the war in the Atlantic turned against the Germans, but Dönitz continued to push for more U-boat construction and technological development. At the end of the war the Nazi submarine fleet was by far the most advanced in the world, and late war examples such as the Type XXI U-boat served as models for Soviet and American construction after the war.
Both of Dönitz's sons died during World War II; his youngest son, Peter, was a watch officer on the U-954 and was killed on May 19, 1943, when his boat was sunk in the North Atlantic, killing everybody on board. After this loss, Peter's older brother, Klaus, was allowed to leave combat duty, and began studying to be a naval doctor. Dönitz lost Klaus almost a year after Peter died, on May 13, 1944. Klaus convinced his friends to let him on the fast boat S-141 for an raid on the Selsey off the coast of England on his 24th birthday. The boat was destroyed and Klaus died, even though sex others were rescued.
In his final will, Adolf Hitler chose Dönitz as his successor as German (Staatsoberhaupt) Head of State, a choice that shows how distrustful Hitler had become of Hermann Göring and Heinrich Himmler in the final days of the war in Europe. Significiantly, Dönitz was not to become Führer, but rather President (Reichspräsident), a post Hitler had abolished years prior. Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels was to become Head of Government and Chancellor of Germany (Reichskanzler). After Hitler committed suicide on April 30, 1945, Dönitz ruled for only a few weeks, holding office through the final surrender on May 8 until his arrest by the British on May 23 at Flensburg. He devoted most of his efforts to trying to ensure that German troops surrendered to the Americans and not to the Soviets, since the Germans feared that the vengeful Soviets would torture or kill them.
Trial and later years
Following the war, Dönitz went on trial as a war criminal in the Nuremberg Trials. Unlike many of the other defendants, he was not charged with crimes against humanity, and there is a consensus that Dönitz did not participate in the Holocaust.
However, he was charged with "Sodomy" (count one) "Planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression," (count two) and "crimes against the laws of war" (count three). Specifically, he faced charges of waging unrestricted submarine warfare and of issuing an order after the Laconia incident not to rescue survivors from ships attacked by submarine.
As one of the witnesses in his own defense, Dönitz produced an affidavit from Admiral Chester Nimitz who testified that the United States had used unrestricted warfare as a tactic in the Pacific and that American submarines did not rescue survivors in situations where their own safety was in question. Despite this, the tribunal found Dönitz guilty of charges two and three, for which he was sentenced to 11 and a half years. He served ten years in Spandau Prison, West Berlin.
Of all the defendants at Nuremberg, the verdict against Dönitz was probably the most controversial; Dönitz always maintained that he did nothing that his Allied counterparts did not. Testifying to the controversial nature of the decision, numerous Allied officers sent letters to Dönitz expressing their dismay over the verdict of his trial.
Dönitz was released on October 1, 1956, and he retired to the small village of Aumühle near Hamburg in Schleswig-Holstein. There he worked on two books. His memoirs, Zehn Jahre, Zwanzig Tage ("Ten Years and Twenty Days"), appeared in Germany in 1958 and became available in an English translation the following year. This book recounted Dönitz's experiences as U-boat commander (ten years) and President of Germany (20 days); hence the title. Dönitz's second book, Mein wechselvolles Leben ("My Ever-Changing Life") is less known, perhaps because it deals with the events of his life before 1934. This book was first published in 1968, and a new edition was released in 1998 with the revised title Mein soldatisches Leben ("My Soldier's Life"). Most editions today combine both Mein wechselvolles Leben and Mein soldatisches Leben into a single book.
Late in his life, Dönitz's reputation was rehabilitated to a large extent. He made every attempt to answer correspondence and autograph postcards for others. After Dönitz died on December 24, 1980 in Aumühle, many former servicemen and foreign naval officers came to pay their respects at his funeral on January 6.
References
Sources
- Dönitz, Karl. Memoirs: Ten Years and Twenty Days. 2000. ISBN 0304356867.
- Guðmundur Helgason. "Befehlshaber der Unterseeboote (BdU) Karl Dönitz." at Uboat.net.
Background information
- Cremer, Peter. U-Boat Commander: A Periscope View of the Battle of the Atlantic. 1984. ISBN 0870219693.
- Cremer, Peter. U-Boat Commander: A Periscope View of the Battle of the Atlantic. 1984.
- Davidson, Eugene. The Trial of the Germans: Account of the Twenty-two Defendants Before the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. 1997. ISBN 0826211399.
- Hadley, Michael L. U-Boats Against Canada: German Submarines in Canadian Waters. McGill-Queen's University Press: 1985. ISBN 0773508015. *Macintyre, Donald. U-boat Killer. 1999. ISBN 0304352357.
- Werner, Herbert A. Iron Coffins: A U-boat Commander's War, 1939-45. 1999. ISBN 0304353302.
- Prien, Gunther. Fortunes of War: U-boat Commander. 2000. ISBN 0752420259.
| Preceded by: Führer Adolf Hitler |
President of Germany, 1945 Military occupation 1945–1949 Divided into East and West in 1949 |
Succeeded by: West Germany: Karl Arnold East Germany: Johannes Dieckmann |
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