Karl Dönitz
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Karl Dönitz (IPA pronunciation: [ˈdøːnɪts] [] ); September 16, 1891 – December 24, 1980) was a German naval leader, famous for his command of the Kriegsmarine during World War II and for his twenty-day term as President of Germany after Adolf Hitler's suicide.
Dönitz was born near Berlin. He entered the Kaiserliche Marine (Imperial Navy) in 1911 and during World War I served on surface ships before transferring to submarines. He ended the war a prisoner-of-war of the British. He remained in the navy after the war's conclusion and rose in the ranks of the Reichsmarine, becoming a Grand Admiral (Großadmiral) and serving as Commander of Submarines (Befehlshaber der Unterseeboote, B.d.U.) and later Commander-in-Chief of the German Navy (Oberbefehlshaber der Kriegsmarine) despite never joining the National Socialist German Workers (Nazi) Party.
Under his command, the U-boat fleet fought the famous Battle of the Atlantic. He also served as Reich President for twenty days following Adolf Hitler's suicide.
Controversially, after the war he was charged and convicted of "crimes against peace" and "war crimes" and held in custody as a prisoner of war for ten years. By ordering the unrestricted submarine warfare conducted by Germany in the North Atlantic, he allegedly caused Germany to be in breach of the Second London Naval Treaty of 1936. However as evidence of similar conduct by the Allies was presented at his trial, his sentence was not assessed on the grounds of this breach of the international law.[Judgement : Doenitz] the Avalon Project at the Yale Law School
On his repatriation he moved to a small village near Hamburg. During his later years he wrote two autobiographies covering different periods in his life. He died of a heart attack on Christmas Eve 1980.
Early life and career
Dönitz was born in Grünau near Berlin to Emil Dönitz and Anna Beyer (d. March 6, 1895). His father was an engineer. Karl had an older brother, Friedrich. 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 as officer's apprentice.On September 27, 1913, Dönitz was commissioned as an acting sub lieutenant (Leutnant zur See). When World War I began, he served on the light cruiser SMS Breslau in the Mediterranean Sea. In August 1914, Breslau began operating out of Constantinople (Istanbul) (part of the Ottoman Empire), engaging Russian forces in the Black Sea. On March 22 1916, Dönitz was promoted to sub-lieutenant (Oberleutnant zur See); in October of that year he was transferred to the small submarine UC 68.
On 4 October 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. Dönitz continued his naval career and became a Lieutenant (Kapitänleutnant) on January 10 1921 in the new Vorläufige Reichsmarine, the naval arm of the Weimar Republic's Armed Forces (Reichswehr). He commanded torpedo boats by 1928, becoming a lieutenant-commander (Korvettenkapitän) on November 1 of that year.
On 1 September 1933, Dönitz became a full commander (Fregattenkapitän), and in 1934 was put in command of the cruiser Emden, the ship on which cadets and midshipmen took a year-long world cruise in preparation for a future officer's commission. The ship returned to Germany at Wilhelmshaven in July 1935, and on 1 September Dönitz was promoted to Captain (Kapitän zur See) in the new Kriegsmarine. He wrote about the cruise in his autobiography. Dönitz was placed in command of the 1st U-boat flotilla Weddigen, which comprised three U-boats: U 7, U 8, and U 9.
Before World War II
Before 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 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 defence.
At the time many, including Dönitz's commander-in-chief, Grand Admiral Erich Raeder, felt that such talk marked him as a weakling. The two constantly argued over funding priorities within the Navy, while at the same time fighting with Hitler's friends such as Hermann Göring in the Luftwaffe, who received much attention. Raeder had a somewhat darker attitude; notably he apparently did not believe the German fleet of capital ships was of much use, since the Kriegsmarine surface fleet was much smaller than Great Britain's, commenting at one time that all they could hope to do was to die valiantly. Dönitz, in contrast, had no such fatalism.
Role in World War II
When the war started in 1939, Dönitz had recently been appointed commodore (Kommodore) on 28 January 1939, and leader of submarines (Führer der Unterseeboote). The German Navy was unprepared for war, having anticipated the war to begin in 1945, as anticipated by previously established war plans which the Plan Z was tailored for. The "Z" Plan called for a balanced fleet with a greatly increased number of surface capital ships, including several aircraft carriers. At the time war did start, Dönitz's U-boat force included only 57 boats, many of them short-range. He made do with what he had, while being harassed by Raeder and with Hitler calling on him to dedicate boats to military actions 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 1 October 1939, Dönitz became a Rear Admiral (Konteradmiral) and commander of submarines (Befehlshaber der Unterseeboote); on 1 September the following year, he was made a Vice Admiral (Vizeadmiral).
By 1941 the delivery of new Type VII U-boats 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 U-boats, and much better operational planning led to increasing numbers of "kills". On 11 December 1941, following Hitler's declaration of war on the United States, Dönitz immediately planned for Operation Paukenschlag (commonly Drumbeat, with connotations of "tattoo" or "thunderbolt" in German), against United States east coast shipping. Carried out the next month, with only nine U-boats, it had dramatic and far-reaching results.
On at least two occasions, Allied success against U-boat operations led Dönitz to investigate possible reasons. Among those considered were espionage and Allied interception and decoding of German Navy communications (the Naval version of Enigma). 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 the Enigma machine (intended to be even more secure) — the M4 — for communications within the Fleet, on 1 February 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 production of Type VII U-boats had increased to the point where Dönitz was finally able to conduct mass attacks by groups of submarines, a tactic he called Rudel and became known as "Wolf pack" (wolfrudel) in English. Allied shipping losses shot up tremendously, and there was serious concern for a while about the state of British fuel supplies.
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 German 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.
Dönitz was a very involved man, often contacting U-Boats up to seventy times a day with questions such as their position, fuel supply, and other 'minutiae'. This helped compromise his cyphers, by giving the Allies more messages to work from. The replies also enabled the Allies to use direction finding (HF/DF, called "Huff-Duff") to locate a U-boat using its radio, track it, and attack it (often with aircraft able to sink it with impunity).
Dönitz replaced Raeder as Commander-in-Chief of the Navy (Oberbefehlshaber der Kriegsmarine) on 30 January 1943. It was Dönitz who was able to convince Hitler not to scrap the remaining ships of the surface fleet. Despite hoping to continue to use them as a fleet in being, the Kriegsmarine continued losing what few capital ships they had. In September, the battleship Tirpitz was put out of action for months by a British midget submarine. In December, he ordered the sole then operational capital ship Scharnhorst under Rear Admiral Erich Bey to attack Soviet-bound convoys, but the battlecruiser was sunk in the resulting encounter with superior British forces led by the battleship HMS Duke of York.
Both of Dönitz's sons died during World War II. His younger son, Peter, was a watch officer on U-954 and was killed on 19 May 1943, when his boat was sunk in the North Atlantic with the loss of its entire crew. After this loss, the 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 13 May 1944. Klaus convinced his friends to let him go on the fast torpedo attack boat S 141 for a raid on the Selsey off the coast of England on his twenty-fourth birthday. The boat was destroyed and Klaus died, even though six others were rescued.
Hitler's successor
In his last testament, Adolf Hitler surprisingly designated Dönitz as his successor as Head of State (Staatsoberhaupt), expelling both Hermann Göring and Heinrich Himmler from the Nazi Party. Significantly, Dönitz was not to become Führer, but rather President (Reichspräsident), a post Hitler had abolished years earlier. Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels was to become Head of Government and Chancellor of Germany (Reichskanzler). Hitler committed suicide on 30 April 1945, and Goebbels followed suit a day later.
Dönitz became the sole representative of the crumbling Reich. The rapidly advancing Allied forces limited his government's jurisdiction to an area around Flensburg near the Danish border, where Dönitz's headquarters were located, along with Mürwik. Accordingly his administration was referred to as the Flensburg government. On 7 May 1945 he authorized the Chief-of-Staff of the German Armed Forces, Colonel-General Alfred Jodl, to sign the unconditional surrender documents for all German forces to the Allies. The surrender documents included the phrase "All forces under German control to cease active operations at 2301 hours Central European Time on 8 May 1945." The next day, shortly before midnight, Jodl repeated the signing in Berlin at Zhukov's headquarters and at the time specified the end of World War II in Europe occurred.
Dönitz appointed Ludwig von Krosigk as Chancellor (Reichskanzler) and they attempted to form a government. During his brief period in office Dönitz devoted most of his efforts to ensuring the loyalty of the German armed forces and trying to ensure German troops would surrender to the British or Americans and not the Soviets, fearing vengeful Soviet reprisals. However his government was not recognized by the Allies and was dissolved when its members were captured and arrested by British forces on 23 May 1945 at Flensburg.
War crimes trial
Following the war, Dönitz was captured by the British and held as a prisoner of war by the victors, who accused him of war crimes. He was Indicted as a Major War Criminal at the Nuremberg trials on three counts: (1) "Conspiracy to commit Crimes against peace, War crimes, and Crimes against humanity", (2) "Planning, initiating and waging wars of aggression", and (3) "crimes against the laws of war". Among war crimes charges he faced charges of waging unrestricted submarine warfare for issuing War Order No. 154 in 1939, and another similar order after the Laconia incident in 1942, not to rescue survivors from ships attacked by submarine. By issuing these two orders he was found to be guilty of causing Germany to be in breach of the Second London Naval Treaty of 1936.
Dönitz was found not guilty on count (1) of the Indictment and guilty on counts (2) and (3) and was sentenced to eleven and a half years. However in view of all the facts proved, and in particular of an order of the British Admiralty announced on the 8 May 1940, according to which all vessels should be sunk on sight in the Skagerrak, and the answers to interrogatories by Admiral Chester Nimitz stating that unrestricted submarine warfare was carried on in the Pacific Ocean by the United States from the first day that nation entered the war, Dönitz's order to conduct unrestricted submarine warfare was not included in his sentence. He was imprisoned for ten years in Spandau Prison, West Berlin.
Later years
Dönitz was released on October 1, 1956, and he retired to the small village of Aumühle in Schleswig-Holstein, near Hamburg. 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. In it, Dönitz explains the Nazi regime as a product of its time, but argues he was not a politician and thus not morally responsible for much of the regime's crimes. He likewise criticizes dictatorship as a fundamentally flawed form of government and blames it for much of the Nazi era's failings.
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 and he made every attempt to answer correspondence and autograph postcards for others. After Dönitz died of a heart attack on 24 December 1980 in Aumühle, many former servicemen and foreign naval officers came to pay their respects at his funeral on January 6 1981.
Quotes
- What would have become of our country today if the Fuehrer had not united us under National Socialism. Split by parties, beset with the spreading poison of Jewry and vulnerable to it, because we lacked the defence of our present uncompromising ideology, we would long since have succumbed under the burden of this war, and delivered ourselves up to the enemy who would have mercilessly destroyed us. (Heroes' Day, 12 March 1944)
- I was of the opinion that the endurance, the power to endure of the people, could be better preserved if there were no Jewish elements in the nation. (Nuremberg trial)
- In a prison camp of the auxiliary cruiser Cormoran in Australia, a warrant officer, acting as camp senior officer, had all Communists, who made themselves noticeable among the inmates of the camps, systematically done away with in such a way that the guards did not notice. This petty officer is sure of my full recognition for his decision and its execution, and, after his return, I shall do everything I can to promote him, as he has shown he is fitted to be a leader. ([Statements at Nuremburg Trial])
See also
References
- Dönitz, Karl: Memoirs: Ten Years and Twenty Days. Da Capo Press, USA, 1997. ISBN 0306807645. (First English translation, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1959).
- Guðmundur Helgason: "[Befehlshaber der Unterseeboote (BdU) Karl Dönitz.]" at [Uboat.net].
- Padfield, Peter: "Dönitz: The Last Führer". Cassell & Co, UK, 2001
Further reading
- Jason Pipes [The Reichsmarine 1919-1935]
- Jason Pipes [Kriegsmarine - The Navy 1935-1945]
- [Re-birth of the U-boat] military history online
Footnotes
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| Erich Raeder | Karl Dönitz | |
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