SBattleforAtlanticCaseStudyPageThree

Rebuilding the German Navy and creating an asymmetric capability

After shrugging off the constraints imposed by the Treaty of Versailles following German
defeat in WWI, National Socialist Germany sought to create a navy. In spite of the German
navy or Kriegsmarine's, rapid six-year expansion, from 1933-1939, notable organizational
problems readily proved evident.

Perhaps the most prominent German mistake arose from the near non-existent coordination
between the German air force, Luftwaffe, and Kriegsmarine and Hitler's failure to force
Goering to either allow the Kreigsmarine to develop its own air capability or to devote
Luftwaffe resources to naval warfare. On the eve of war, and unlike America, Britain, or
Japan, Germany possessed no aircraft carriers. Moreover, at the war's September 1939
beginning Germany was still in the process of building even one aircraft carrier - the Graf
Zeppelin.

Given Germany had failed to adequately prepare a naval air arm what had Germany done to
prepare its navy for war? Grand Admiral Erich Raeder, Commander of the Kreigsmarine since
1928 but quickly recognized by Hitler as hewing to similar political beliefs and thus
maintaining his job after the National Socialists took power, wisely had viewed attempts to
match the British surface fleet's supremacy as problematic to say the least. Nevertheless
Raeder desired to build a battle fleet just as had his mentor Tirpitz and regardless of the
British Navy's dominance. Tirpitz had sought to build at a minimum a "battle fleet in being"
capable of impacting the naval balance of power. Thus the First World War Imperial German
Navy had been equipped with more battleships and battlecruisers than any other navy
save the British.

Following the First World War Raeder's decisions were thus fueled partly by the German
Navy's historically Mahanian approach to naval power and partially for political reasons, as
missing such an effort the Germany Navy would surely fall into irrelevance in terms of
accruing power and resources in its inter service rivalry with the German army and air
force. Hitler's authorization for Raeder to build a navy with just over one-third the total
tonnage of the British Royal Navy gave Raeder the impetus he needed for his political goals
and meant Germany really did not focus on submarines to the extant, in retrospect,
Germany should have during the 1930s.

Although, Germany's more circumscribed construction goals for a surface fleet sounded
reasonable, for Germany's navy to attain a third the size of the Royal Navy's surface fleet
represented a massive undertaking. The German attempt to do so was a miserable failure;
its most notable impact was to help create enormous construction bottlenecks in the
1930s German economy. Consequently, by 1935 the construction of Raeder's surface fleet
of battleships, cruisers, and destroyers consumed gigantic amounts of Germany's limited
steel output and skilled but undersized labor force. German naval planners only partially
offset the poor decision to construct a blue water surface fleet when they also began
exploring an asymmetric approach to challenging the Royal Navy. Although not recognized
outright, just as during World War One, Germany's best chance to challenge the imposing
Royal Navy came via the submarine; a weapon most championed under the leadership of
Admiral Karl Doenitz.

Doenitz was Germany's chief submarine advocate and an ardent National Socialist, fully
committed to Hitler's goals. Doenitz was, like Hitler, an innovator, relatively open to new
ideas for waging war. He was most responsible for the infamous "wolfpack" tactics
developed by the German Navy in the Second World War; tactics which almost brought
Britain to her knees. By massing submarines into "wolfpacks" directed by radio from land
based naval stations fed with intelligence on convoy locations from spotter aircraft, scout
boats, and other such sources, Doenitz noted he could effectively combat the primary
British defensive tactic of putting merchant shipping into convoys. Doenitz predicted
before the War if given a fleet comprising 300 submarines, or U-boats, he could protect
Germany's coastal areas and wage war against the Royal Navy.

Doenitz chose the Type VIIC model U-boat as the primary U-boat for the German fleet.
With a length of nearly 150 feet and a weight of over 800 tons, this efficient weapon was
crewed by 50 men; vs. the 1,100 on the battleship Bismarck in comparison. Although
lacking a battleship such as the Bismarck's firepower, the U-boats carried a formidable
armament including 14 torpedoes, a 3.5-inch deck gun and numerous anti-aircraft
weapons.[13]

The Type VIIC was a more than adequate weapons system for Germany to begin the War
with, although it was really more of a submersible than a true submarine - as was true of
all widely used submarines of the era, and in spite of numerous problems with German
torpedo technology, inexcusable given Germany's alliance with Japan and access to
world-class Japanese torpedo technology, could, in significant numbers, have made
Germany's commerce war against British merchant shipping devastatingly effective.

Nevertheless, in spite of the U-boats promise, the German Navy seemed to only partially
recognize the U-boats potential as a naval weapons system. In addition because Germany
almost completely ignored the aircraft as a naval weapon the German Navy went to war in
September 1939 with no aircraft carriers and only 60 submarines. Germany's battle fleet,
only 2 battleships, with 5 more full sized and smaller battleships, 9 cruisers - both heavy
and light versions, supported by a modern but small destroyer fleet, hardly represented the
force necessary to challenge the Royal Navy's surface fleet.[14]

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