Read Dönitz: The Last Führer Online
Authors: Peter Padfield
Dönitz found it so; in the shared purposefulness, the need for constant alertness and self-discipline, the close camaraderie his reserved nature and ardent spirit found fulfilment.
The day following her departure, February 13th, U 39 reached the Straits of Otranto after dark. This was the narrow bottleneck which the British Naval Commander in the Adriatic, Rear Admiral Mark Kerr, had sought to cordon off with a net and mine barrage protected by drifters, but without sufficient of either and without enough destroyers or aircraft or control over the other anti-U-boat forces in the area. The Italians had by this time entered the war on the allied side, but their naval and air forces for this work were under divided control and did not come under Mark Kerr. He constantly pressed the home authorities for more and better-armed craft. ‘All the submarines come in and out of Cattaro,’ he wrote. ‘We hear them every day by the Telefunken stations here. An Austrian plane flies over the drifters and reports where they are, and as the water is deep and the gaps large, they dive and dodge us with impunity.’
105
Cruising on the surface under a dark, starry sky with a phosphorescent wash at the bows and eddying up the curving sides of the hull, Forstmann made out a line of eight guardships shortly after eight o’clock, and dived, continuing his course submerged. He came up at 11.15; there was nothing in sight and he continued on the surface. Half an hour later another line of guardships, sixteen this time, reared from the dark; he dived again and motored with the electric engines until 2.25 in the morning. Surfacing, he found all clear. The barrage was behind him.
Shortly after sunrise a steamer was reported ahead steering easterly; as it was too far off to get into position for a submerged torpedo attack, he decided on a gun action; probably Dönitz was in charge of the party which hastened up to the foredeck; however, they had no sooner opened fire than the steamer replied from two medium-calibre guns and, running up the French flag, altered course directly towards them. Forstmann dived hastily. When they surfaced again 45 minutes later the ship was nowhere to be seen, but the wireless operator could hear her reporting their position through the ‘Allo Funkspruch’, as Forstmann called it. She was evidently a French auxiliary cruiser. They proceeded southerly making for a position 36° north 19° east on the steamship route around Greece to Malta.
At a quarter past twelve a smoke cloud was spotted over the horizon in the east; Forstmann ordered full speed and altered southwesterly to get in position for a torpedo attack. At one-thirty he dived ahead of the approaching vessel and 40 minutes later fired from one of the bow tubes. A hit! He watched through the periscope as the crew abandoned her.
Afterwards he surfaced and; steering towards the boats, found that his victim was an Italian steamer. Dönitz on the foredeck called out for her Captain, ‘
Il capitano venga subito a bordo!
’ To his astonishment a woman rose from one of the boats and replied in perfect German that the Captain was in her boat but wounded. Forstmann steered alongside, finding a gentleman in a smoking jacket in charge, the Captain with a broken arm and bandaged head lying across a thwart, and amongst the crew nine women ‘regarding us in a by no means hostile manner’. The former spokeswoman explained that they were members of the German
Reich
living in Egypt who had been forced to leave and were on their way home via Italy. Forstmann transferred the sailors into one of the other boats, leaving only three with the wounded Captain and the German women, allowed in a Swiss couple with a pretty daughter ‘who had already attracted the attention of my men’, and took the boat under tow towards the Malta steamship route he was making for. That evening he cast them off with hearty farewells all round, since, he wrote, it was his practice to spend the hours of darkness submerged.
The next morning U 39 was lying in wait in what Forstmann liked to call his ‘lair’, 36° north, in the Ionian Sea where on the previous voyage he had sunk a troop transport. As dawn broke, two steamers came in sight; he set course for a position ahead of the easternmost and at 7.15
dived and steered in to attack at periscope depth, but after 25 minutes he realized she was going to pass too far ahead and abandoned the attack. An hour later he surfaced and again lay drifting in wait. It was not long before a steamer came up over the edge of the horizon, steering directly for them, to all appearances a freighter bound for Salonika. He decided on a torpedo attack and at 11.50 dived to ten metres, setting a submerged approach course.
Bow to bow we approach. We proceed as deeply submerged as possible so that the long periscope when driven by motor power through the cover of the conning tower may only just break the surface sufficiently to permit a survey. Beneath me in the control room the hydroplane crew gaze uninterruptedly upon the water level and pressure gauge, carefully guiding the helm and giving themselves the utmost trouble to ‘steer straight’, as it is called, in the registering apparatus which shows the depth curve as a straight line when the steering is good … Near me in the narrow conning tower the navigating officer is busy with compass and set-square and bending over his small chart works out the course while the Torpedo officer [Dönitz] gives orders through the speaking trumpet to clear torpedoes for action. The second officer of the watch is in charge of the hydroplanes, the engineer superintends the engines, flooding and venting arrangements. Anxious thought, serious reflection at all command stations! And therein the whole management of the ship is carried on quietly and securely, almost noiselessly beneath me, for each individual knows his responsible duty and foresees all possible contingencies.
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It was Forstmann’s custom to involve his crew in attacks by giving commentaries from time to time of what he could see through the periscope. On this occasion as the steamer was still a long way off, he called men individually to the command position to look through the glass themselves. Meanwhile, up in the bows the torpedo hands flooded the tubes and wished their charges luck.
It was a bright day; a north wind tossed up small white-capped waves, good weather for an attack since it would make the periscope more difficult to spot. As they drew closer Forstmann ran it out more infrequently and only for short periods to check the relative positions. Tension in the boat mounted; they closed within 400 metres, then
Forstmann pressed the black button at his side; immediately the engineer and hydroplane operators went into their routine to regain trim as the bows rose with the release of the torpedo’s weight. The officers started counting the seconds. Forstmann himself was confident all the factors were right for a hit.
With metallic sharpness it strikes the ship’s side, crack goes the steamer in every joint. A hit!
Run out the periscope!
Every hit causes me pleasure. Motionless, struck to death in the engineroom lies the black-painted steamer, her two masts and a short funnel over the slim hull preen themselves close to us. A feeling of exultation fills our breasts. But what is the matter with the steamer? Good God! A dismal spectacle! Hundreds of men are running about like so many caged deer, crowding together or throwing themselves into the relentless sea in mad terror … matchless confusion!
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They wore grey uniforms and caps; Forstmann realized that what he had taken for an ordinary freighter was yet another troop transport packed with soldiers. He watched in disgust as the few lifeboats were lowered in panic, so overcrowded they capsized immediately they hit the water. After half an hour the ship was still afloat, her wireless aerials undamaged, and he decided to give her the
coup de grâce
; he recorded the reason in his war diary: ‘… there is a possibility she is requesting help by wireless, stern shot fired, hit aft. Steamer sank at once after violent detonation in after part.’
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He had never seen such spectacular results from a single shot, and when he surfaced a quarter of an hour later the water was bobbing with wreckage, corpses and struggling survivors. He steered towards the dreadful scene to ascertain details, Dönitz again taking station up in the bows.
‘Two men are drifting over there, sir!’ he called up.
Forstmann steered towards them; a lifeline was thrown and presently two shivering, half-naked and very frightened soldiers were hauled aboard by the forward hydroplanes. Dönitz shouted up, ‘Italians!’
Of course—organ-grinders. Who else should it be!
They were brought on to the conning tower … the younger looks comparatively hearty in spite of the fact that his lower jaw trembles
and his teeth are audibly rattling. With bright dark eyes he takes stock of his strange surroundings … and after several
avantis
and
prestos
we get the most important facts out of him. ‘
A bord de
Minas
un général, beaucoup d’officiers, mille soldats et trois millions en or,
’ he jerks out in the excitable manner peculiar to the Macaronis. Great joy on our side, why he speaks French like a book …
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Forstmann set course westerly with the intention of lying in wait off Malta the following morning, meanwhile taking the two ‘sea-faring organ-grinders’ down for a more detailed interrogation in his cabin, reporting the satisfactory results in his war diary:
It is the Italian troop transport
Minas
, 2,884 tons, on passage from Naples to Salonika. On board were one general, three colonels, and including a 40-man (motor transport artillery) train, 1,000 battle-ready armed Italians from Infantry regiments Nos 31, 39 and 63. The steamer was freighted with munitions and three millions in gold. She was escorted by a destroyer from noon 14.2 until 6.0 am 15.2. In consequence of the great panic on board and the rough seas all the ship’s boats capsized, there was no escort nearby and no wireless signal could be made, we may reckon on the loss of all the troops …
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In his more popular account, no doubt intended at least in part for propaganda effect at home, Forstmann wrote, ‘Help shall come too late! Every soft-hearted act of mercy to the enemy would be foul treason to our own striving people …’
111
Apropos the sinking of the troop transport on the previous voyage, he had written:
And yet to be honest I am not quite satisfied! Again and again the thought goes through my head that when the steamer sank only 150 soldiers were lost out of 900, a comparatively small loss to the enemy in comparison to the total strength on board. However hard it may seem to sentimental minds in time of war, one must energetically put aside all sympathy, all pity and every other feeling of the kind, for there is no doubt that their influence tends to weakness. The object of war is to annihilate the armed forces of the enemy whether it be on the battlefield or in a fight at sea… No Frenchman ought to have escaped with his life to be taken aboard another transport to Macedonia to be used against and cause loss among our field-grey comrades fighting
there. I firmly believe it would have been my duty to them and to the Fatherland to prevent this. I am glad now that I came to these conclusions as I was soon able to put them to practical use when sinking an Italian troop transport.
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The similarity with some of Treitschke’s maxims is apparent, but the logic is irrefutable; thus had this new submarine weapon changed the nature of war at sea. In previous wars and in surface actions in the present war the victors invariably rescued as many of their enemies as they could from the water. But submarines could not accommodate prisoners. The logic of this simple fact, if pressed to its ultimate conclusion in a life-or-death struggle, gives rise to murderous ideas—as will appear during Dönitz’s conduct of just such a campaign in the Second World War.
Most of the remainder of the cruise was spent on the North African coast, where Forstmann sank another four merchantmen with torpedoes and two by gunfire. On one occasion he had to dive for a destroyer which dropped a depth charge—one only. On March 7th he brought the boat back to the depot ship at Cattaro.
‘Bravo U 39!’ Loud cheers greet the fortunate and victorious returned warriors … groups forming on deck are pumped with questions, ‘How are you?’ ‘What is it like?’ etc…. then we receive on board the most welcome greeting of all, the monthly post. Boatswain’s mate Herdecker takes the letters out of the heavy mail bag, made of sail cloth, and distributes them …
… And there in quiet corners the men sit, dreaming of home, of love, of many faraway things.
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Probably Dönitz managed to get home, for U 39 spent some months refitting at Pola and did not sail again until the end of May; it is quite likely, therefore, that he was at home when his first child was born on April 3rd; it was a girl; she was christened Ursula.
April was a month of euphoria for the U-boat service and the Admiralty staff. Despite America’s entry into the war on the 6th, the figures of enemy tonnage destroyed had exceeded von Holtzendorff’s estimates handsomely from the beginning of the unrestricted campaign—so, at least, it was believed. Now for the month of April they passed the million mark. In fact they had not, but the actual figures were
sufficiently great to have caused profound alarm in London; they were (German estimates in brackets):
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| allied shipping sunk | allied shipping sunk | |
| by U-boats | by all means | |
| February | 464,599 tons (781,500) | 532,856 tons |
| March | 507,001 tons (885,000) | 599,854 tons |
| April | 834,549 tons (1,091,000) | 869,103 tons |
The German figures, although inaccurate, were probably the better indication of the way the campaign was going, for in addition to the ships actually sunk some 300,000 tons had been temporarily removed by damage, hundreds of neutrals had, as von Holtzendorff expressed it, been ‘terrorized away’, and delays and re-routings accounted for many more thousand tons unused. It is not the place to analyse why the Royal Navy had discarded the lessons of its own and others’ past wars and failed to institute a system of convoys which had always proved an effective protection for merchant shipping; it is interesting to note, though, that von Holtzendorff and the German Admiralty staff made a graver mistake by failing to allow for the fact that their campaign might
force
the adoption of convoy—or indeed that it might force any reaction which could have any effect on their precisely extrapolated figures; this egocentricity was a feature of all German naval planning; it had been in Tirpitz’s time—indeed
Weltpolitik
itself had been undertaken with almost frivolous disregard for the reaction of the intended victims—it was to be so again in Dönitz’s time—a fatal belief in simple, preferably ‘ruthless’ plans on which the enemy would allow himself to be impaled. It was a facet of the Prussian mind which the Imperial Navy had absorbed unconsciously, unaware that it did not suit naval conditions and that great maritime empires had always acted more pragmatically—indeed one of the chief causes of the Royal Navy’s failure to bring in convoy was such excessive pragmatism as to lack any proper planning staff!