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CHAPTER I - The German Navy, the Russian Pact, the British Problem and the Decision to Make War
- F. H. Hinsley
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- Hitler's Strategy
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- 12 September 2013, pp 1-27
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Summary
When Hitler invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, Germany was not ready for a major war at sea. The German surface fleet consisted of no more than 2 old battleships, 2 battle-cruisers, 3 pocket battleships, 8 cruisers and 22 destroyers. A few heavy ships were still building; but only two battleships and one cruiser were completed during the war. More surprising still, no preparations had been made for a prolonged U-boat campaign. The U-boats had been the most serious menace to Great Britain in the First World War; subsequent technical developments had further increased the efficiency of under-water weapons; yet only 57 German U-boats had been built by 1939, and only 26 of these were suitable for Atlantic operations.
This was not the Navy which the German Naval Staff had hoped to command in a war against Great Britain. There was neither the battle-fleet with which Admiral Raeder, the Commander-in-Chief, had thought, one day, to challenge British sea-power, nor the U-boat force which Admiral Doenitz, Flag Officer U-boats, regarded as indispensable for a German victory.
In the autumn of 1938, in preparation for a future war against Great Britain, Raeder had made plans by which Germany would have, if not a large, at least a well-balanced fleet within a reasonable period; Doenitz had taken care to see that these plans provided for an increase in the number of German U-boats. As these plans stood at the beginning of 1939, the German navy, including the fleet in being and the ships already building, was to consist of 8 battleships, the 2 battle-cruisers, the 3 pocket battleships, 16 cruisers, 2 aircraft-carriers and about 190 U-boats by the end of 1944. Further additions were to produce a total fleet of 8 battleships, 2 battle-cruisers, 3 pocket battleships, 33 cruisers, 4 aircraft-carriers and about 270 U-boats by 1948. But Raeder was forced to modify these plans in the Spring of 1939, when increasing international tension suggested that war might break out earlier than had been expected. He was forced to abandon them altogether when war did break out, in spite of his hopes, in the autumn of that year.
CHAPTER XI - The End of the German Surface Fleet, January 1943
- F. H. Hinsley
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Summary
The year 1942, beginning with Hitler's order that the surface fleet should be concentrated in Norway, ended with an event which led him to order its immediate dissolution. There were transitions more serious than this in that year which saw the turning of the tide. The Japanese offensive faltered and was stopped; Rommel was halted, and forced back from Alamein; the Allies began their series of major offensives with the landings in North-West Africa; the U-boats reached and passed the peak of their successes, entering the decline from which they never recovered. But nothing is more illustrative of the shift that was taking place than the relatively insignificant question of the German Fleet; for that question throws a clearer light on Hitler's state of mind than these more important developments.
The German surface fleet, so small at the beginning of the War, had escaped Hitler's attention for the first two years. Until he developed his fear for Norway in the autumn of 1941, he had left Raeder quite free to make the best possible use of the few ships at his disposal; and Raeder had used them to good effect. The completion of the few ships under construction was frequently delayed; some of Hitler's remarks had suggested that, in a crisis, his attitude to the surface fleet would be hostile. On 16 September 1939 he had confessed that ‘the Bismarck, the Tirpitz and the two heavy cruisers will not yield very much’. On 10 October 1939 he had wondered if it was ‘really necessary’ to complete the Graf Zeppelin, Germany's only aircraft-carrier. But the delay in completing the ships on the stocks was never a bone of contention, and there was no crisis affecting the fleet before the end of 1942. After the loss of the Graf Spee in 1939 there were, it is true, mutterings from Hitler. After the loss of the Bismarck on 27 May 1941 he reacted in the same way, wondering, on 6 June, why the ship ‘did not rely on her fighting strength and attack the Prince of Wales in order to destroy her after the Hood had been sunk’.
CHAPTER X - 1942
- F. H. Hinsley
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The attack on Pearl Harbour was a striking example of the disunity of the Axis Powers; it was the result, as well, of Hitler's own inability to co-operate with others, of his wilful acceptance of risks, of his intuitive pursuit of confused and divided aims. But if it seemed to him to be a disastrous development, that was chiefly because he had also failed to defeat Russia ‘in a rapid campaign’. For this reason, his attitude to the War, if not his actual strategy, was fundamentally defensive, if not defeatist, before the attack on Pearl Harbour occurred; and that remarkable operation, coming so soon on his disappointment in Russia, far from offering new opportunities and welcome relief, seemed yet another reverse. The possible consequences of the American entry far outweighed, for him, the opportunities provided by the entry of Japan.
This is made quite clear by the fact that Raeder took the other view. Surprised by the Japanese attack, anxious about the United States, he still felt that the Japanese entry could be turned to good account. On some fronts it could offer new opportunities. Japan's intention, after this single and successful attempt to destroy the United States Fleet, was clearly to turn on South-East Asia, against British and Dutch positions, and to threaten the British control of the Indian Ocean. This would greatly increase the embarrassment of the British in the Middle East, and should assist Germany in a final successful attack on the key position of Suez. In the Atlantic, on account of the withdrawal of American merchant shipping and escort forces to the Pacific, ‘the situation with regard to surface warfare by heavy ships and auxiliary cruisers will probably change in our favour’, while U-boats could be despatched to a new and probably profitable area off the American east coast.
On other fronts, in Raeder's view, the Japanese entry provided a most welcome breathing-space. ‘The danger of major operations against the west coast of France’, he declared on 12 December 1941, ‘will decrease for the present… and such a respite will be very welcome.’ Anglo-American action against Dakar, the Azores, the Cape Verdes and North-West Africa, of which danger he had been so anxious for so long, also ceased, in his view, to be imminent.
Hitler's Strategy
- F. H. Hinsley
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First published in 1951, this book examines Hitler's strategy and how it developed during the Second World War. Hinsley, who had worked as a code breaker during the war, uses a variety of contemporary documents as sources, including records taken from the German Naval Archives after its capture by the Allies in 1945. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in military history in general or the Second World War in particular.
Frontmatter
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APPENDIX B - Germany's Infringements of the Naval Clauses of the Treaty of Versailles
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There were, almost as a matter of principle, infringements of the Versailles provisions, wherever possible in matters of detail, from the outset. Early E-boats, for example, were secretly armed for torpedo-firing because it was not intended to count them against the number of torpedo-firing vessels allowed by the Treaty. (See N.D., 141-C of February 1932). Another N.D. (32-C) contains a long list of the evasions of this type, as effected up to or intended in 1933. N.D., 17-C and D-854, show that a small amount of U-boat building was carried on abroad, in Holland, Spain, Finland, for example, by the German Navy continuously after 1920. These and other documents are recapitulated in Nuremberg Proceedings, Part I, pp. 191-203. Up to the end of 1934, however, the total effect of these many minor infringements had done little to create a new German Navy.
In 1934-35 more serious infringements began, the Anglo-German Naval Agreement being anticipated in several directions. A building programme in accordance with the Agreement was announced within a month of the Agreement, and some progress was made with it before the negotiations began, as, for example, with the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau (N.D., 180-C) and with the construction of U-boats in Germany, the first of which were launched in June 1935, the month in which the Agreement was concluded.
But such further expansion as took place was kept within the restricted limits negotiated with Great Britain in 1935. It is clear, moreover, that, to some extent, the Agreement was anticipated, and the anticipation was deliberately allowed to leak out, with the object of putting pressure on Great Britain to secure her acceptance of the German naval proposals. The fact, for example, that U-boat construction had begun in Germany in contravention of Versailles was openly announced, with this end in view, before the beginning of the Anglo-German negotiations.
CHAPTER IX - German-Japanese Negotiations in 1941
- F. H. Hinsley
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Hitler's negotiations with Japan, in the months before the attack on Pearl Harbour, were inconsistent with the object he sought with his policy in the Atlantic. At first, it is true, his efforts with Japan were guided by the hope that, in conjunction with the German attack on Russia, the Japanese entry into the War would ensure the final collapse of Great Britain and deter the United States from entering the struggle; and to this end his first objective was to persuade the Japanese to attack Singapore without delay. But he was forced to admit from the outset that such a move by Japan might bring America in on Great Britain's side; and, as the negotiations proceeded, provoked by Japan's delaying tactics, he became increasingly disposed to accept that risk, despite his caution in the Atlantic.
Pressure to persuade Japan to attack Singapore was first brought to bear on 23 February 1941, at a conference between Ribbentrop and General Oshima, the Japanese Ambassador in Berlin. Ribbentrop was at pains, during this interview, to emphasise that Germany was already the victor in the West, that the collapse of Great Britain was only a matter of time. But he was even more anxious to persuade Japan to enter the War at once, with an attack in South-East Asia. Japan must act soon if she wished ‘to secure for herself, during the War, the position she wants to hold in the New World Order at the time for the Peace Treaty’. ‘We have the desire’, he went on, ‘to end the War quickly and to force England to sue for peace soon. To this end the co-operation of Japan is important.…’ Japan's intervention would destroy Great Britain's key position in the Far East:
the effect on the morale of die British people would be very serious and this would contribute towards a quick ending to the War. … A surprise intervention by Japan was bound to keep America out of the War. America, who is at present not armed and who would hesitate to expose her Navy to risks west of Hawaii, could do this even less in such an eventuality.
CHAPTER VI - THE DECISION TO ATTACK RUSSIA
- F. H. Hinsley
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It was in July 1940, it is often said, that Hitler was first attracted by the possibility of an Eastern campaign. There is no doubt, according to one authority, that by the end of September 1940 he had finally made up his mind to launch the attack. When he turned on Russia, in the words of another account, he was ‘flushed with success and intoxicated by the propaganda which hailed him as the greatest strategic genius of all time’. None of these judgments survives a close examination of the evidence.
It is true that Hitler's interest in an early attack on Russia first emerges in the documents in July 1940. But the documents, both before the War and —despite the Russo-German Pact—from the day the War began, leave no doubt that what was born in July 1940 was not simply the idea of an attack on Russia, which had long been in his mind, but the feeling that an attack on Russia, in a war on two fronts, before Great Britain was defeated or placated, in circumstances which he had never yet contemplated, might have to be considered. ‘If it is not certain’, he said, on 21 July, ‘that preparations (for ‘Sea Lion’) can be completed by the beginning of September, other plans will have to be considered’; and his other remark on this occasion—‘naturally it is our duty to deliberate the Russian and American questions carefully’— sufficiently indicated the direction his thoughts would take if ‘Sea Lion’ proved impracticable.
To this extent the abandonment of ‘Sea Lion’ in the second half of September was clearly a major turning-point in Hitler's attitude towards the Russian undertaking. But there is a wealth of difference between this fact and the claim that his mind was quite made up by the end of September, as soon as ‘Sea Lion’ was abandoned. The decision to attack Russia was not reached as soon as ‘Sea Lion’ was postponed; and to claim that it was is to ignore the evidence or at least to read it in the light of later events.
CHAPTER II - The First Phase
- F. H. Hinsley
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That the Western Powers would not declare war, that they would be content with some less drastic and more formal protest, this was Hitler's hope until the last minute; and all possible precautions were taken to ensure this result. It was for this reason that, on 24 August, hearing that the formal signature of the Anglo- Polish Agreement was about to take place, as it did next day, he cancelled the order, which he had already issued that same morning, to the effect that the invasion of Poland should begin on 25 August. The cancellation took the form of a postponement of D-day until 1 September. The object of the postponement was to enable him to make a last attempt, through the British Ambassador, to persuade the Western Powers to stop short of war. This last-minute effort failed, but Hitler's hope remained alive, as is shown by a further directive of 31 August. In this final directive he ordered the invasion of Poland to begin on the following morning; but he also insisted that nothing should be done which might incite Great Britain and France.
The responsibility for the opening of hostilities in the West should rest unequivocally with England and France. … The German land frontier in the West is not to be crossed at any point without my express consent. The same applies to warlike actions at sea or any which may be interpreted as such…. Defensive measures on the part of the Air Force should at first be exclusively confined to the warding-off of enemy air attacks on the frontier of the Reich.…
But the directive also assumed that the Western Powers might open hostilities; it could do nothing else, for, even after the conclusion of the Pact with Russia, Hitler could not be certain that France and Great Britain would not declare war. If they did, the task of the Armed Forces, according to the directive, would be ‘to uphold, while conserving their strength as far as possible, those conditions necessary for the successful conclusion of operations against Poland’.
CHAPTER VII - North Africa, The Mediterranean and the Balkans in 1941
- F. H. Hinsley
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In spite of the Russian decision, there could be no question of abandoning Italy. The British offensive in the Western Desert had already necessitated the reinforcement of the Italians in North Africa; it still remained imperative, if the attack on Russia was to proceed unhindered, to hold the southern front. This need, indeed, seemed greater than it was; for, even when their initial alarm subsided, both Hitler and the Naval Staff over-estimated the scale, if not the potential danger, of the British thrust.
Raeder exaggerated it partly in a last attempt to get Hitler to reverse his Russian decision, partly to underline the foresight of his earlier warnings.
The fears of the Naval Staff [he complained on 27 December 1940] regarding unfavourable developments in the Eastern Mediterranean have proved justified. The enemy has assumed the initiative at all points and is everywhere conducting successful offensive actions as a result of Italy's serious strategic blunders. The Naval Staff views developments in the Mediterranean with grave misgivings. … The threat to Egypt, and thus to Britain's position in the entire Mediterranean, Near East and African areas, has been eliminated at one stroke.… It is no longer possible to drive the British Fleet from the Mediterranean, as was continually demanded by the Naval Staff, who considered this step vital to the outcome of the War.
But urgent measures were still necessary to stop the rot.
Hitler had no grounds for disagreeing with Raeder, either about the dangers or about the need for action. He knew Italy's weakness, he feared her treachery: ‘there is a complete lack of leadership in Italy; the Royal House is pro-British’. But the uncertainty of the Italian position only made it more necessary for Germany to come to Italy's aid. He was already ‘considering where German action would be most effective’. At their next meeting, on 8 and 9 January 1941, he was convinced that ‘it is vital for the outcome of the War that Italy does not collapse’; he was ‘determined to do all in his power to prevent Italy from losing North Africa’; he was ‘firmly determined to give the Italians support’.
Note on Sources and References
- F. H. Hinsley
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CHAPTER III - The Invasion of Norway and the Fall of France
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It was Hitler's intention to carry out this ambitious programme at once, before the winter set in. Captured Notes for the War Diary record under the heading ‘end of September’ that he decided ‘to attack in the West and this as soon as possible’. On 7 October, two days before the directive was issued, von Brauchitsch ordered Army Group B to make ‘all preparations … for immediate invasion of Dutch and Belgian territory if the political situation so demands’. Hitler, in the memorandum of 9 October, announced that ‘the attack is to take place in all circumstances (if at all possible) this autumn’. The Notes for the War Diary record that the attack was at one time scheduled to ‘begin at the earliest about 10 November’, that Hitler ‘is determined, however, to attack in November only if the weather will permit operations by the mass of the Air Force’, and that the weather at the beginning of November prevented the execution of the plan. A further directive on the subject, issued as late as 20 November, insisted that ‘the state of alert must be maintained for the time being. Only this will make it possible to exploit favourable conditions immediately.’
These repeated delays were distasteful to Hitler. His difficulties were further increased by the knowledge that there was widespread opposition to his plans. Notes for the War Diary stated in October that ‘the opinion is frequently expressed—by no means shared by the Fiihrer—that an attack in the West is unnecessary; the war could, perhaps, be won satisfactorily if we were to wait a little’. And the opposition was given point by the fact that an attempt was made on his life at this time, though it is uncertain whether there was any direct connection between this particular opposition and that attempt. But the enforced delay served only to increase his determination to carry out his plans; the unpopularity of his plans only strengthened his conviction that they were right.
CHAPTER VIII - The Battle of the Atlantic in 1941
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Hitler did not hesitate to give priority to the Russian campaign over the Mediterranean throughout 1941; he insisted, in the second half of 1941, that U-boats should be transferred from the Atlantic in an effort to save North Africa. If that were the only evidence available it would still be safe to conclude that the Battle of the Atlantic suffered even more than the war in the Mediterranean from the Russian decision. But the evidence is stronger and fuller than that. The loss to the Mediterranean, by December 1941, of thirty U-boats—a half of the number that could then be kept at sea at a time, a quarter of the total operational force available— was but a fraction of the damage done to Germany's effort against the British trade routes in the previous twelve months as a result of the decision to turn on Russia.
It is true that Hitler began to show a greater understanding of, and more sympathy with, Raeder's arguments in favour of the U-boat campaign. The directive of 12 November 1940, though professing to be a comprehensive statement of German plans, had omitted all reference to the war against British trade routes; the ‘Barbarossa’ directive of 18 December 1940, on the other hand, was careful to state that ‘the main employment of the Navy remains, even during the Eastern campaign, clearly directed against England.’ And if that statement was little more than a gesture to console his naval critics, he soon showed himself anxious to make others. On 27 December 1940 he agreed that the existing building output of twelve to eighteen U-boats a month was not enough; he ‘wishes the greatest possible progress in U-boat construction’. On 8 January 1941 he ‘explains’ to Raeder—who had been explaining the same arguments for so long—that, ‘regarding our warfare against Britain, all attacks must be concentrated on supplies and on the armament industry. … The supplies and the ships bringing them must be destroyed’.
CHAPTER V - The Crucial Months, September to December 1940
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It was now that Hitler began to pay for his earlier mistakes. He had entered the war with too few U-boats, with too small a fleet. He had begun it with no military plans except that for the invasion of Poland; he had fought it for ten months without developing any that looked further than the defeat of France. His deficiency in this respect had been hidden by his successes in the Polish, Norwegian and French campaigns, and by the successive hopes that those campaigns encouraged—by the hope that France and Great Britain would stop short of war, then that they would accept a fait accompli when Poland was overrun, and then that Great Britain would make a settlement when France was defeated. None of these hopes had materialised; and when the last had faded, and when ‘Sea Lion’ was frustrated in its turn, it became only too obvious that the new situation was not one in which much hope of an early victory could be retained. He was still anxious, he was more anxious than ever, for an early settlement with Great Britain. But mixed with this anxiety, making it worse, there was now the fear that he would be unable either to inflict an early defeat on this country or to bring enough pressure to bear to induce her to accept his terms within a measurable time.
In these circumstances, if it was out of the question—and not in accord with Hitler's temperament—to do nothing, one obvious policy would have been to abandon the aim of an early end to the war and to concentrate on the Battle of the Atlantic, and on U-boat construction in particular. There was an undeniable logic in Raeder' s claim that Great Britain could be defeated ‘simply by cutting off her imports’: a complete siege of these islands would quickly destroy their ability to resist.
The U-boat campaign, neglected—even if for good reasons— until the defeat of France, had continued to be neglected, as a result of the decision to attempt the invasion of England, from July to the middle of September.
CHAPTER IV - An Invasion of England?
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Hitler's own thorough plans for the attack on France contained no provision for a subsequent attempt to cross the Channel; nor did he regard the rapid success of the French operation as providing an opportunity for an invasion of England. There is no reference to this project in the minutes of the Naval Conferences until 21 May, a whole month went by before it was next mentioned, on 20 June; and on neither of these occasions is Hitler recorded as having any interest in it. This negative evidence for his early lack of interest is reinforced from other directions. Almost certainly, it was on Raeder's initiative, and not on Hitler's that the subject was raised at all in May and June; the record of these meetings shows that Hitler was thinking on other lines at the time; after 20 June, although, on account of the remaining time available in 1940, a decision had become a pressing need, he remained uncertain for nearly another month. When, at last, on 15 July, he finally decided that the operation should be attempted, two months had gone by since the question was first raised, nearly one month since the defeat of France.
It was on 21 May 1940, at their first meeting since the opening of the Western land offensive, that Raeder and Hitler first discussed, ‘in private, details concerning the invasion of England, on which the Naval Staff has been working since November’. Far-sighted and forward in this matter, as he had been over the invasion of Norway, Raeder had ordered his staff to begin to prepare for an invasion of England as early as 15 November 1939. The order had been confined to the Naval Staff, neither Hitler nor the other two Services being informed—a fact which fits in with the view that it was on Raeder's initiative that the subject was now raised in conference for the first time. This assumption is also borne out by the testimony of German naval officers, at the end of the War, to the effect that Hitler showed no interest in the operation at this early stage.
CHAPTER XII - Hitler's Strategy in Defeat
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Such, by then, was the balance of forces in Germany's disfavour that these hopes proved vain in the event, and Hitler's policy produced only a continuous alternation between delay and further defeat for the remainder of the War.
He could insist that Tunisia, as he said on 19 November 1942, was ‘a decisive key point’; he could determine to hold it at all costs; he could reinforce it so effectively that on 6 January 1943 General Eisenhower represented to the Allied Chiefs of Staff that ‘unless this reinforcement can be materially and immediately reduced, the situation both here and in the Eighth Army area will deteriorate without doubt’. But, for all the appearance of near-success, the battle for Tunisia could be nothing more for Germany than a rearguard action, and this fact was recognised from the outset. The decision to fight on in North Africa was taken, as Raeder said on 19 November 1942, ‘because the presence of the Axis in Tunisia compels the enemy to employ considerable forces; it prevents enemy success since the passage through the Mediterranean is denied him’.
The German supply position in Tunisia was rendered desperate by March 1943; and if this fact, which led to the final collapse of the Axis in North Africa on 7 May, was due to the vastly superior strategic position of the Allies, that superiority was partly the result of the continued failure of the U-boats in the Atlantic. ‘The conquest of Tunisia by the enemy’, declared Hitler on 14 March 1943, ‘apart from leading to the loss of Italy, would mean a saving to him of 4 to 5 million tons of shipping, so that the U-boats would have to work for 4 to 5 months to effect equalisation.’ This statement not only confirmed the negative, rearguard nature of his purpose in hanging on; it exaggerated the current U-boat successes. Allied losses from U-boat attack had dropped to 336,000 tons in December 1942, to 200,000 tons in January 1943; and, though this figure rose again, at the end of the winter, to 627,000 tons in March, the months of April and May 1943 stand out as the period in which the offensive in the Battle of the Atlantic finally passed to the Allies.
INDEX
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Contents
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APPENDIX A - The German Surface Fleet
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1. The German surface fleet in 1939:
Battleships: Schlesien and Schleswig-Holstein (both unfit for operations outside the Baltic).
Battle-cruisers: Gneisenau and Scharnhorst.
Pocket battleships: Admiral Graf Spee, Admiral Scheer and Deutschland (renamed ‘Lützow’ in 1940).
8-inch cruisers: Admiral Hipper, Blücher.
6-inch cruisers: Königsberg, Nürnberg, Leipzig, Köln, Karlsruhe, Emden
Smaller vessels; included 22 destroyers, 20 torpedo-boats, about 20 E-boats.
2. Ships lost or damaged during the invasion of Norway:
Ships marked † in the above list were sunk during the invasion of Norway. Ships marked * were damaged. In addition, nine of the destroyers were sunk and one damaged.
3. Surface ships completed during the War:
Battleships: Bismarck (ready to operate by May 1941), Tirpitz (ready to operate by November 1941).
8-inch cruiser: Prinz Eugen (ready to operate by May 1941).
APPENDIX C - The New U-Boats
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The possibility of developing a new type of U-boat was first mentioned to Hitler on 13 November 1941. In the early stages of experiment, the Naval Staff did not think it necessary to refer the subject to him again until 28 September 1942, when the need for a U-boat with increased underwater speed had been underlined by the defeat of the old U-boats, and when experimental production could at last be considered. Hitler then gave full support to the idea, and complete freedom to Raeder to take all decisions concerning experimental and mass production. But it was already obvious, as Raeder announced on 22 December 1942, that the new type could not be operational in any numbers until 1944 at the earliest; and on 8 July 1943 Doenitz, Raeder's successor, made it obvious that further difficulties had emerged and had led to the abandonment of the original models.
He told Hitler that new designs for an ‘electro-submarine’ with an under-water speed of 19 knots, a surface speed of 15 knots and a fish-like shape (some of these details being added by Doenitz on 19 January 1944) had been completed, and that they retained only the hull of the ‘Walter’ design, the model with which the original experiments had been conducted. He added that ‘in comparison with the Walter boats, the new type had the additional advantage of being able to recharge batteries and thus extend its endurance’; recommended that production should be switched to this newest type; and announced that, though he himself regarded it as too pessimistic, the Naval Staff's estimated date for the completion of the first of the boats was November 1944. Hitler expressed his complete agreement and ordered Speer to give top priority to the programme.
The renewed failure of the old-type U-boats, when they returned to the Atlantic in September 1943, confirmed, as Doenitz said on 26 February 1944, that ‘our general tendency to change over to the new-type U-boat and under-water tactics is correct in every respect’; and that failure, leading Hitler and Doenitz to put all their hopes in the Atlantic on the emergence of the new boats, was enough to ensure that all possible emphasis was kept on their development.