"The Kriegsmarine and Compound War at Sea in WW2" Topic

"The campaign against Nazi Germany is often characterized as a land battle, but Hitler also lost the war by losing the sea. The former army corporal never truly grasped the importance of sea power and did not appropriately invest in Germany's navy. Despite this, the Kriegsmarine nearly broke Britain through its use of aggressive surface action groups (SAGs) and irregular commerce raiders. The Kriegsmarine entered a war it was ill-suited for, well before it was prepared to fight, but by employing a form of maritime compound warfare it nearly disrupted Allied sea control which would have starved Britain and the Soviet Union of seaborne supply. Germany's near victory demonstrates the potential of compound war at sea…"

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Amicalement
Armand

It isn't that Germany did not invest in a navy, it did. The problem was that it was starting from scratch and so it pushed the ships that would take the longest (BB/CA/CL/CV) and expected to start the smaller ships later. Hitler assumed the major war would start in 1944 instead of 1939. That is one of the reasons there were so few submarines in the fleet when the war started (short building times) and were not as advanced as in other navies (other navies had fleet subs with longer range and more torpedoes).

The US had a somewhat similar problem in WW1. We had the Battleships and somewhat had the heavy cruisers (armored cruisers) but were very short on the light cruisers (protected cruisers) and destroyers. Many of the CLs and DDs actually came out after the war ended and went right into reserve.

I think he overplays the DKM's success. The Royal Navy had ships spread across the globe and could have reinforced the home fleet any time by drawing back ships from elsewhere. They kept enough to minimize DKM activity while fulfilling other, lesser commitments. The Royal Navy's big problem was localized to Atlantic convoy protection (escorts and the air gap).

Thanks!.

Amicalement
Armand