"Surface Ships: The Kriegsmarine’s Downfall during the" Topic

…Second World War

"During the early days of the Second World War, the German Reich had steamrolled a large portion of the European continent. By July of 1940, Germany had total control of France, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and its agreed upon portion of Poland, amongst others. At this stage, Germany only remained at war with the United Kingdom. Hitler's Germany no longer had the option of launching Operation Sea Lion, a planned invasion of the British island, due in large part to the naval losses sustained in the invasion of Norway.[1] Therefore, Hitler decided to launch a campaign of terror and starvation against the British defenders. While the Luftwaffe bombed RAF airfields from the sky, German U-boats raided thousands of tons of war and merchant shipping in the Atlantic. This strategy was outlived very quickly, as Germany was unable to starve the UK into submission before ground warfare in the Soviet Union, Africa, Italy, and eventually France and Germany itself ground the Third Reich to a screeching halt. The strategy was, in large part, an effective one. However, Germany severely hindered its own ability to starve the UK into submission through submarine warfare by splitting its naval production between surface vessels and U-boats…"

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Armand

Seriously?

"Germany possessed, in 1933, the following: Battleships Scharnhorst, Gniesenau, pocket battleships Scheer and Graf Spee, heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper, twenty-two destroyers……. Battleships Bismarck and Tripitz were under construction, as well as five heavy cruisers…… two aircraft carriers….."

Um, no.

Sharnhorst, Gniesenau and Hipper started construction in 1935.

Bismarck, Tripitz and Graf Zeppelin were laid down in 1936.

NO destroyers in 1933. Z1 laid down in 1934.

And…. no mention of Deutschland?

Sheesh. A college senior history major should be able to do better than this.

And I am pretty sure that Germany stopped all work on ships larger than destroyers so as to concentrate on (not split effort on) submarines.

* 63 U-boote between 1935-39 was the maximum allowed by the Anglo-German agreement of June 1935 : 100% of the Royal Navy total submarine force.

* The fact that most alliad shipping losses occured in 1941-43, while most U-bootewere lost in 44-45 simply reflects the fact that despite Germany's best efforts in Submarine production (since a lot of Germany's production capacity had to be devoted to the ground war in the Soviet Union), the Allies managed to hold the line and eventually win the Battle of the Atlantic. Allied capacities were incommensurably greater than Germany's, which never could master enough resources to build the technologically superior types XXI & XXIII in significant numbers early enough to have an influence.

The author does not consider the "fleet in being" issue, the idea that just by remaining afloat the German ships tied up significant amounts of Allied warships, particularly destroyers that could otherwise have been assigned to convoy duty.

The steel, oil, and manpower issues also have to be considered across all the German armed forces. Not only did Germany going to war in 1939 prevent them completing "Plan Z," depriving us of the opportunity to set up a duel between a couple Class H battleships and a couple Lion class ships, but it also meant the Heer went to war with Pz I tanks originally intended for a training role.

While I would agree that the British would have been in greater trouble if the Germans had started the war with more U-boats, they had to ramp up their submarine production capabilities from zero. I'm not sure they had the capability to produce more U-boats than they did; allocating more material and manpower would just have resulted in piles of material at the builders and another naval infantry division.

Grelber

Imagine what would have happened in the Med if the UK didn't need to keep the Kriegsmarine bottled up?

Thanks

Armand