In the afternoon of 3 September, Raeder was called to the Chancellery and informed by a visibly shaken Führer that he ‘had not been able to avoid war with England after all’.2 Disturbed, Raeder went back to his office and sat down to compose a memorandum for the SKL war diary. After recording Hitler’s repeated assurance that a war with Britain would not commence before 1944 at the earliest, he added:
the U-boat arm is, in spite of its determinations, too weak to have a decisive effect on the war. The surface forces [of the Kriegsmarine] are still so inferior in number and power to those of the British fleet that, even at full strength, they can do no more than show that they know how to die with dignity and thus create the foundation for a later reconstruction.3
In July 1939, the Kriegsmarine had held extensive U-boat exercises in the Baltic. Admiral Raeder came to oversee the event and Dönitz had several discussions with him in private. During these meetings as well as in the final speech to the officer corps at Swinemünde after the exercises, Raeder repeatedly held that Hitler had assured him there would be no war with Britain.
The Kriegsmarine was nowhere near the strength needed to sustain a successful war with the Royal Navy. Raeder knew this better than anyone, but it is difficult to accept his claim that he really had not anticipated that it might happen. He was fairly isolated from both the civilian and the military administration, though, and might have chosen to believe what Hitler told him out of convenience, as he could do little about the situation other than to follow the building plans and hope for the best. The navy was under constant threat to have its personnel transferred to the army and the guns taken off the ships to be used on land instead, and Raeder had no wish to rock the boat by arguing with the Führer.
Three main tasks were seen for the German Navy in September 1939: firstly, to defend the German coastlines in the North Sea and the Baltic from attacks and mine-laying; secondly, to protect German sea lanes (though these were few and less important than those of Britain and France); and, last but not least, to attack Allied sea lanes.
At 12:15 German time on 3 September, the SKL issued a signal from Berlin to all units: ‘Beginn der Feindseligkeiten mit England sofort’ – ‘Begin hostilities with England forthwith’. To gain the initiative was vital, but meeting the Royal Navy head-on would be futile. To sever or even hurt the British sea lanes, Raeder believed he would need several balanced groups of fast, well-armed battleships and cruisers as well as auxiliary raiders and U-boats. Such a fleet did not exist, of course, and, in fact, the size and composition of the German navy in September 1939 would make the North Sea the most likely battlefield.
Konteradmiral Karl Dönitz, autumn 1939. (Author’s collection)
Except for the raids of Deutschland and Graf Spee, Atlantic operations were by default limited to U-boat operations west of the British Isles. In a meeting on 7 September, Hitler made it clear to Raeder that, as a result of the unclear political situation, no offensive action should be taken against France. The U-boats were to avoid attacking passenger ships in general and all French ships in particular. Graf Spee and Deutschland were to remain inactive and French ports were not to be mined. The OKW underlined that no operations whatsoever should be initiated that could draw British attention to the Western Front until the land offensive had commenced.4
In spite of Raeder’s initial gloominess, the attitude of the Kriegsmarine quickly developed into a determined will to fight and not to be closed up in port, as it had been during the last conflict. Two main issues were on the agenda of the SKL during the autumn and first winter of the war: the commerce war against Britain and the role of the navy in the forthcoming offensive in the west. The former would require clever use of all of the Kriegsmarine’s resources and as much as could be spared of the Luftwaffe. There was a significant risk of loss, but the navy would receive some credit were it to gain some palpable victories. During an offensive in the west, the Kriegsmarine would inevitably play a secondary role.5
On 23 September, Raeder met with Hitler in Zoppot near Danzig to discuss the situation at sea. After a report on the situation in the Baltic, the North Sea and the Atlantic, Raeder concluded that the first phase of the submarine war had ended; 232,000 tons of shipping had been sunk. Now, the large stream of merchant ships returning individually to Britain was declining and convoys were being organised. The restrictions on attacking French ships had prevented actions against Dunkerque and Strasbourg, considered the main threats to the Kriegsmarine’s merchant raiders, as well as actions against the large number of convoys from Africa to France, he held. Worse, it had also prevented harassment of the troop convoys from Britain to France, as his captains found it almost impossible to distinguish between French and British ships.
Considering, Hitler sanctioned attacks on French capital ships and merchant ships in mixed convoys or those obviously involved in troop transport. A limited mining of French ports, targeting military traffic, was also permitted. Regarding Britain, Hitler approved the torpedoing of ships unmistakably identified as British without warning as these would most likely be armed – except passenger vessels. Neutral ships were still to be treated with care to avoid indicating that things had fundamentally changed. A total blockade of Britain would inevitably involve the Luftwaffe and was deferred to later meetings.6
In early October 1939, the Kriegsmarine was asked by the OKW for its opinion on three options: a land offensive in the west; a siege of Britain, keeping the land war idle; and a defensive war on land and at sea, limiting offensive operations and focusing on political and industrial expansion. It was fairly obvious that the Luftwaffe would favour the two former options, while the army would prefer a land offensive. The SKL, on the other hand, concluded that for the navy, the attack on France would be ‘secondary’ (Nebenfrage) and a ‘siege of Britain’ (Belagerung Englands) was the only alternative that would give the Kriegsmarine a role to play and priority of resources. It was clear that a compelling set of arguments would be needed to convince Hitler and the OKW of the strategic necessity to pursue such a development of the war.7 In a memorandum from the SKL to Raeder, it was concluded that:
the British methods of economic warfare oblige the German authorities to create determined defensive and offensive fronts and to adopt the same type of brutal economic warfare. [. . .] The navy, above all, must execute the operations dictated by the economic warfare [and] the defensive task of protecting our own supply lines falls unmistakably within the realm of economic warfare.8
Coupled with the lack of a clear, offensive naval strategy in the OKW, such thoughts would inevitably constrain the activities of the Kriegsmarine. Except for the siege-of-Britain concept, focus during the first period of the war was largely on tying down British naval forces in the North Sea to make room for the Atlantic raiders.
In a meeting with Hitler on 10 October, it was agreed that the siege should be enforced as much as practically possible. Objections from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and other civilian institutions were to be ignored, as were those from the neutrals, including the USA. Now was the time to become callous. Again, Raeder emphasised that such efforts would need increased U-boat construction, but, as before, he could not secure any additional resources and would have to prioritise within those already allocated to the navy.9
Total Germany
On 3 September, two signals were issued from Whitehall in London to all British naval units. The first was timed 11:17 and read ‘Most Immediate: Total Germany’, which in plain language translated to: ‘Commence hostilities at once with Germany’.10 On board the destroyer Imogen in the Mediterranean, Commander Alastair Ewing put his thoughts to paper:
At 11 a.m. our ultimatum to Germany expired and we were at war. This called for champagne, not to celebrate but to mark the occasion. I was rather glad it had come. There could